Austin Osman Spare

[poliphilo]

This guy trundled onto the Antiques Road Show with a picture by Austin Osman Spare that he'd bought in a car boot sale or found in his attic. "I understand" he simpered to the expert. "That he dabbled in black magic."

"Dabbled"? That's like saying Einstein dabbled in physics or Tiger Woods plays a little golf.  Dabbling is what children do in muddy puddles.

But the words have become glued together, joined at the hip. If it's magic you're a dabbler. Even if, like Spare, you're the world's number one.  The ready made phrase, besides displaying a lack of thought in its user, suggests middlebrow distaste, a waving of the proverbial barge-pole, a nervous refusal to take the subject quite seriously. "Eugh, look at the naughty man, he's dabbling. Children, avert your eyes."

And while we're being prissy, "black magic" is another no-brainer. You might as well talk about white science and black science. Or white shop-keeping and black shop-keeping.   Magic is magic.  It's a discipline. A  profession.  No more or less disreputable in itself than any other.  Like most things people do it can be done with bad intent.  Spare practised magic. He was a magician. He was the magician's magician. Even Crowley deferred to him. It was widely acknowledged that if you wanted results- as opposed to lots of pretty theorising- then Spare was your man.

Much of Spare's writing is available on line. I tried to read some of it last night. And got choked off pretty quickly. Humourless, self-pitying, phallocentric are words that come to mind. Spare was- and I'm weighing my words carefully here- a complete wanker.

But he was also- incidentally, as it happens-   a quite brilliant artist. I wish I had a Spare in my attic.

Comments

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

I heard about this AR incident through a pagan writer's blog and had a dream involving Spare somehow and a local botanica. Weird. I have heard of Spare and know a little about him, but not much; not being the self-promoter Crowley was, he seems to have generated fewer books, bios, etc.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's a large archive of Spare's work here- http://www.banger.com/spare/. He's definitely worth a look.

[silveredmane.livejournal.com]

It's been my impression that artistic brilliance often overlaps with, ah, wankerism.

I have The Focus of Life which is his teenage discovery of how the seasons and their ambient energy affect personal power, and The Book of Pleasure which is literally beautiful how-to manual about the spiritual aspects of wanking. Both of them, particularly The Book of Pleasure have inspired and inspirational automatic drawings. It's my understanding that he worked himself into the stupor required to produce them by having an excess of self-induced orgasms. I don't think that Kenneth Grant does him justice in Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare but justice doesn't appear to have been interesting to Grant.

Spare said that there is no such thing as being a genius, that some people, some times, are connected to genius and that there are various methods of becoming and staying connected to genius. Spare's personal method involved wanking. Crowley elevated wanking into a form of sex magick that can be done without a date. Spare had no such social aspirations, perhaps because he preferred the company of para-terrestials to that of humans.

My other favourite thing he said is that since, in time, all things happen, anything that isn't currently true is prognostication (- and that therefore it's narrow-minded to call him or anyone else a liar.

Crowley defined magic(k) as the science of understanding one's self and one's condition and the art of applying that understanding. Application seems to have been Spare's strong suit. I greatly admire him.

[amritarosa.livejournal.com]

It's good the fellow was selling that Spare, then. Doesn't sound like he deserves to own one.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I first became aware of Spare in the early 70s- when the part-work, Man, Myth and Magic- which I read avidly- featured a lot of his art, but it's only very recently that I've come to have any understanding of his thought- and to see what a seminal (ahem) figure he was.

I've looked at the Book of Pleasure on-line and I'm sure the scans do it little justice. A local art gallery has a copy of the first plate on display and it's a fabulous piece of work.

My problem with Spare (a minor problem) is that- unlike Crowley- he doesn't seem to have a sense of humour.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I just checked the Antiques Roadshow site. The guy bought his Spare for £10 in 1997.

I'm sooo jealous.

Incidentally, it's now valued at £6,000. In my opinion that's still a bargain basement price.

[oakmouse]

"ROSES!"

*evil grin*

He was indeed a brilliant magician and artist, as well as a complete wanker. Well worth observing provided one has the intelligence and sense of self-preservation necessary to avoid his less desirable traits.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We need people like him who are prepared to go out on a limb. They make life interesting.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

When my husband was "into magic," as we said in those days, he brought home The Golden Dawn, and one night I dreamed that A. Crowley was chasing me down corridors.

He had long fingernails.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Crowley was a rather stout individual.

I don't suppose he could run very fast.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

How funny! I thought he was a burning-eyed awful man, sort of like a young Bela Legosi.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Crowley was very establishment and pals with people like Winston Churchill. When he wasn't summoning demons and having sexual congress with goats he was relaxing at the club with a big cigar and a brandy.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Good God...

My husband told me one September morning over breakfast that he would be driving down to Atlanta over Halloween to summon a demon with his little group...

He mentioned the meeting (provocatively, I think now) from time to time over the three weeks, but when I tried to ask simple questions--"Exactly how do you plan to do this?"--he was evasive and patronising: "I can't talk about it."

He was amazingly calm about it.

I wondered if he would bring back something from the Other world where demons dwell, but I didn't know how to ask.

He spent most of the day reading The Golden Dawn by the living room window, studying up for the big weekend, while I took the children for walks, to the library, to see their grandmother.

Then the big weekend arrived, and he didn't leave. I made Katie and Ricky costumes for Trick-or-Treating, and they wore them around the house all day. Richard sat in his chair, reading The Golden Dawn.

"Aren't you--you know?--going to Atlanta?"

"Cancelled," he said, turning a page and not looking up.

--It was during this waiting time that I dreamed about Crowley chasing me down corridors.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Your husband was a silly man.

Also unkind.

Crowley- who despised people who dabbled in magic- would have been far more cutting.

He was a complex person, was Crowley. For all the hype and bragadoccio I believe he did very little real harm and possibly quite a lot of good.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about what Einstein said, that mystery is the most beautiful thing, and about my mother who is increasingly frail and who says almost every time we're together, "I want to know--everything! About the universe!"

In our different ways, we're all yearning to look behind the veil and "know everything." Most of us don't know how to go about it--when I get most yearning, I tend to pray, just because I don't know what else to do.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Crowley wanted to know everything too.

Maybe thats our destiny- to know it all.

I think it'll take a lot of lifetimes (and whatever comes after lifetimes) for us to get there.