What Magic is This?: Austin Osman Spare

What Magic is This?: Austin Osman Spare

Posted on January 7, 2021 by Douglas Batchelor 

Starting off the New Year with a Titan of Magic. Austin Osman Spare means many things to many people. For some, he was an extremely talented Artist whose antisocial behaviour and unwillingness to compromise left him forgotten by the art world. For others, he is the grandfather of sigil magic; a fiercely independent occultist who came up with his own system of magic which was considered revolutionary long after he passed away. Chances are we will never get the full story of the magic of Austin Osman Spare, but we are able to look back and see that his story is not what it seems.

My Guest for this episode is none other than Derek Hunter. Derek is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, the founder of Love Chaos, a non-dogmatic, agnostic philosophy and way of life. Faced with many trials, he was seeking to find a philosophy to help navigate the world, yet he found that creating his own was by far the best option available to him. All of Derek’s work can be found at his website. Click the pic!

Show Notes

• Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London’s Lost Artist by Phil Baker – Probably the best biography of a magician that you’re likely to find. Must read
  
• Austin Osman Spare Galleries – Lots of AOS art to be seen here. Great stuff. Spend an hour looking at Spare’s work
  
• The Fin-de-Siècle Magical Aesthetic of Austin Osman Spare: Siderealism, Atavism, Automatism, Occultism
  
• On the Chaos Magic Art of Austin Osman Spare
  
• The Bones Go Last – Fantastic 2 Part Documentary on AOS. Must Watch
  
• Short Documentary on AOS – This is the Doc Segment that Derek brought up in the episode
  
• Small Booklet that accompanied a 2017 exhibition of AOS’ Art
  
• Some Articles both old and new
  
• AOS at the Hermetic Library
  
• Jerusalem Press – Several books that feature AOS’ art and essays about him. These are some fine books
  
• The Book of Pleasure in Plain English
  
• From Atavism to Zos: Spare’s Philosophy and Magic
  
• Kenneth Grant
  
• Austin Osman Spare: An introduction to his psycho-magical philosophy by Kenneth Grant – Herein you find the structure of much of what we consider Spare’s techniques
  
• Collected Essays on Austin Osman Spare by various writers
  
• Spare Parts by Ramsey Dukes
  
• Lost Envoy – The Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare
  
• Jonathan Allen – The Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare
  
• The Death Posture: A Definitive Instruction by Alan Chapman – An Interpretation of Spare’s technique
  
• Austin Osman Spare’s Grave
  
• The Natal Chart of Austin Osman Spare
  
• Stealing the Fire From Heaven by Stephen Mace – Interesting book combining Spare and Crowley
  
• Welcome to Spare Street – An art space in old railway arches named after Austin Spare. Not too sure what AOS would have thought of this
  
• Draja Mickaharic Books
  
• Comte de Lautréamont – The writer Derek mentioned in his Post Show Quid Pro Quo
  

This guy looks incredibly interesting.  I have just seen some of his amazing artwork and anybody with a unique approach to thinking, whether it be occult or non-occult philosophy is IMO well worth taking an interest in.  The "Pariahs" very often see farther than the consensus.

I've been using sigil magick for several years now. If nothing else, I enjoy the feeling of control it gives me over things that otherwise would feel insurmountable. If it actually works? Well, all the better then.