It has been suggested by some authorities that the
original witches sprang from a race of Mongol origin of which the Lapps are the
sole surviving remnants. This may or may not be so, but these ‘mongols’ were
not human. They were degenerate survivals of a pre-human phase of our planet’s
history generally—though mistakenly—classified as Atlantean. The characteristic
that distinguished them from others of their kind was the ability to project
consciousness into animal forms, and the power they possessed of reifying
thought-forms. The bestiaries of all the races of the earth are littered with
the results of their sorceries.
They were non-human entities; that is to say they
pre-dated the human life-wave on this planet, and their powers—which would
today appear unearthly—derived from extra-spatial dimensions. They impregnated
the aura of the earth with the magical seed from which the human foetus was
ultimately generated.
* * * * *
As explained in Images
and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare, Spare was initiated into the vital
current of ancient and creative sorcery by an aged woman named Paterson, who
claimed descent from a line of Salem witches. The formation of Spare’s Cult of
the Zos and the Kia[i] owes much to
his contact with Witch Paterson who provides the model for many of his
‘sabbatic’ drawings and paintings. Much of the occult lore that she transmitted
to him suffuses two of his books—The Book
of Pleasure and The Focus of Life.
In the last years of his life he embodied further esoteric researches in a grimoire[ii]
which he had intended publishing as a sequel to his two other books.
Although death prevented its publication, the manuscript survives, and the
substance of the grimoire forms the
basis of this chapter.
Spare concentrated the theme of his doctrine in the
following Affirmation Creed of Zos vel
Thanatos:
I believe in the flesh ‘as now’ and forever… for I
am the Light, the Truth, the Law, the Way, and none shall come unto anything
except through his flesh.
Did I not show you the eclectic path between
ecstasies; that precarious funambulatory way… ?
But you had no courage, were tired, and feared.
THEN AWAKE! De-hypnotize yourselves from the poor reality you be-live and
be-lie. For the great Noon-tide is
here, the great bell has struck… Let others await involuntary immolation, the
forced redemption so certain for many apostates to Life. Now, in this day, I
ask you to search your memories, for great unities are near. The inceptor of
all memory is your Soul. Life is desire, Death its reformation… I am the
resurrection… I, who transcend ecstasy by ecstasy, meditating Need Not Be in
Self-love…
This creed, informed by the dynamism of Spare’s
will and his great ability as an artist, created a Cult on the astral plane
that attracted to itself all the elements naturally oriented to it. He referred
to it as Zos Kia Cultus, and its
votaries claimed affinity on the following terms:
Our
Sacred Book: The
Book of Pleasure.
Our
Path: The
eclectic path between ecstasies; the precarious funambulatory way.
Our
Deity: The
All-Prevailing Woman.
(‘And
I strayed with her, into the path direct.’)
Our
Creed: The
Living Flesh. (Zos.)
(‘Again
I say: This is your great moment of reality—the living flesh’).
Our
Sacrament: The
Sacred Inbetweenness Concepts.
Our
Word: Does
Not Matter—Need Not Be.
Our
Eternal Abode: The
mystic state of Neither-Neither; The Atmospheric ‘I.’ (Kia.)
Our
Law: To
Trespass all Laws.
The Zos and the Kia are represented by the Hand and
the Eye, the instruments of sentiency and vision. They form the foundation of
the New Sexuality, which Spare evolved by combining them to form a magical
art—the art of visualizing sensation, of ‘becoming one with all sensation,’ and
of transcending the dual polarities of existence by the annihilation of
separate identity through the mechanics of the Death Posture. Long ago, a
Persian poet described in a few words the object of Spare’s New Sexuality:
The kingdom of I and We forsake, and your home in
annihilation make.
The New Sexuality, in the sense that Spare
conceived it, is the sexuality not of positive dualities but of the Great Void,
the Negative, the Ain: the Eye of
Infinite Potential. The New sexuality is, simply, the manifestation of
non-manifestation, or of Universe ‘B,’ as Bertiaux would have it, which is
equivalent to Spare’s Neither-Neither concept. Universe ‘B’ represents the
absolute difference of that world of
‘all otherness’ to anything pertaining to the known world, or Universe ‘A.’ Its
gateway is Daäth, sentinelled by the Demon Choronzon. Spare describes this
concept as ‘the gateway of all inbetweenness.’
In terms of Voodoo, this idea is implicit in the
Petro rites with their emphasis upon the spaces between the cardinal points of
the compass: the off-beat rhythms of the drums that summon the loa from beyond the Veil and formulate
the laws of their manifestation. Spare’s system of sorcery, as expressed in Zos
Kia Cultus, continues in a straight line not only the Petro tradition of
Voodoo, but also the Vama Marg of
Tantra, with its eight directions of space typified by the Yantra of the Black
Goddess, Kali: the Gross of the Four Quarters plus the inbetweenness concepts that together compose the eightfold Cross,
the eight-petalled Lotus, synthetic symbol of the Goddess of the Seven Stars plus her son, Set or Sirius.
* * * * *
Austin Spare suspected, as early as 1913, that some
such energy was the basic factor in in the re-activization of primal atavisms,
and he treated it accordingly as cosmic energy (the ‘Atmospheric I’) responsive
to subconscious suggestion through the medium of Sentient Symbols, and through
the application of the body (Zos) in such a way that it could reify remote
atavisms and all possible future forms.
During the time that he was preoccupied with these
themes Spare dreamed repeatedly of fantastic buildings whose alignments he
found quite impossible to note down on waking. He supposed them to be
adumbrations of a future geometry of space-time bearing no known relation to
present-day forms of architecture. Eliphaz Lévi claimed a similar power of
reification for the ‘Astral Light,’ but he failed to show the precise manner of
its manipulation. It was to this end that Spare evolved his Alphabet of Desire
‘each letter of which relates to a sex-principle.’ That is to say he noted
certain correspondences between the inner movements of the sexual impulse and
the outer form of its manifestation in symbols, sigils, or letters rendered
sentient by being charged with energy. Dali refers to such magically charged
fetish-forms as ‘accommodations of desire’ which are visualized as shadowy voids,
black emptinesses, each having the shape of the ghostly object which inhabits
its latency, and which IS only by virtue of the fact that it is NOT. This
indicates that the origin of manifestation is non-manifestation, and it is plain to intuitive apprehension that
the orgone of Reich, the Atmospheric
‘I’ of Austin Spare, the Dalinian delineations of the ‘accommodations of
desire’ refer in each case to an identical Energy manifesting through the
mechanics of desire. Desire, Energized Will, and Obsession, are the keys to
unlimited manifestation, for all form and all power is latent in the Void, and
its god-form is the Death Posture.
These theories have their roots in very ancient
practices, some of which—in a distorted form—provided the basis of the medieval
Witch Cult, covens of which flourished in New England at the time of the Salem
Witch Trials at the end of the17th century. The subsequent persecutions
apparently obliterated all outer manifestations both of the genuine cult and
its debased counterfeits.
* * * * *
Although Spare was convinced that an occult
Intelligence frequently painted, drew, or wrote through him, he was unable to
discover its identity. He was, however, in almost daily contact with a
familiar, a spirit-guide, known as Black Eagle whom he had clearly seen and
drawn on several occasions. But he was convinced that Black Eagle was not the
sole source of his automatism. Spare had but to turn his head suddenly and he
would sometimes catch a glimpse of the familiar spirits that constantly
surrounded him. Several times he had “caught” one of them long enough to make a
lightning-swift sketch.
* * * * *
In another writing (also unpublished), Spare
declared that “Sorcery is a deliberate act of causing metamorphoses by the
employment of elementals. It forges a link with the powers of middle nature,[iii]
or the ether, the astrals of great trees and of animals of every kind. Will is
our medium, Belief is the vehicle, and Desire is the force combining with the
elemental. Crytptograms are our talismans and protectors.”
The will, or nervous
energy, must be suppressed in order to create tension, and released only at the
psychological moment. “At that time, gaze into and beyond the immediate vista,
into the Aeon—the spaciousness beyond your meannesses, beyond your borrowed
precepts, dogmas and beliefs—until you vibrate in spacious unity. Indraw your
breath until the body quivers and then give a mighty suspiration, releasing all
your nervous energy into the focal point of your wish; and as your urgent
desire merges into the ever present procreative sea, you will feel a tremendous
insurge, a self-transformation. And the Devil himself shall not prevent your
will materializing.”
[i] ‘The body
considered as a whole I call Zos’ (The
Book of Pleasure, p. 45). The Kia is the ‘Atmospheric I.’ The ‘I’ and the
‘Eye,’ being interchangeable, the entire range of ‘eye’ symbolism—to which
repeated reference has been made—is here applicable.
[ii] This was to
have been divided into two parts: The
Book of the Living Word of Zos and The
Zoëtic Grimoire of Zos; in the present chapter it is referred to simply as
the grimoire.
[iii] i.e. The
astral plane, between the spiritual and physical realms.
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