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~The Sorceries of Zos~ (Austin O. Spare)
Sorcery and witchcraft are the degenerate offspring of occult traditions
coeval with those described in the second chapter. The popular conception
of witchcraft, shaped by the anti-Christian manifestations that occurred in
the Middle Ages is so distorted and so inadequate that to try and interpret
the symbols of its mysteries, perverted and debased as they are, without
reference to the vastly ancient systems from which they derive is like
mistaking the tip of an iceberg for its total mass.
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 the 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.
Arthur Machen was, perhaps, near the truth of the matter when he suggested
that the fairies and little people of folklore were decorous devices
concealing processes of non-human sorcery repellent to mankind.(1)
(1) See The White People, The Shining Pyramid, and other stories. This
theme is a frequent one with Machen. The hideous atavisms described by
Lovecraft in many of his tales evoke even more potently the atmosphere of
cosmic horror and 'evil' peculiar to the influx of extra-terrestrial
powers.
Machen, Blackwood, Crowley, Lovecraft, Fortune, and others, frequently used
as a theme for their writings the influx of extra-terrestrial powers which
have been moulding the history of our planet since time began; that is,
since time began for us, for we are only too prone to suppose that we were
here first and that we alone are here now, whereas the most ancient occult
traditions affirm that we were neither the first nor are we the only ones
to people the earth; the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods find echoes in
the myths and legends of all peoples.
Austin Spare claimed to have had direct experience of the existence of
extra-terrestrial intelligences, and Crowley- as his autobiography makes
abundantly clear- devoted a lifetime to proving that extra-terrestrial and
superhuman consciousness can and does exist independently of the human
organism.(2)
(2) See The Confessions, Moonchild, Magick Without Tears, and other works
by Crowley.
As explained in Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare,(3) Spare was
initiated into the vital current of ancient and creative sorcery by an aged
woman named Paterson, who claimed decent form a line of Salem witches. The
formation of Spare's Cult of the Zos and the Kia(4) 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.(5) In the last years of his life he embodied further
esoteric researches in a grimoire(6) 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.
(3) Frederick Muller, 1975. (4) '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. (5) First
published in 1913 and 1921 respectively. There has been a recent
republication of The Book of Pleasure, with an introduction by Kenneth
Grant. (Montreal, 1975). (6) This was to have been divided into two parts:
The Book of the Living Word of Zos and The Zoetic Grimoire of Zos; in the
present chapter it is referred to simply as the grimoire.
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 is 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 orientated 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 Atomospheric '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.(7) 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.
(7) Vide infra.
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 Daath,
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.(8)
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 Cross of the Four Quarters plus the
inbetweenness concepts that together compose the eightfold Cross, the
eight-petalled Lotus, a synthetic symbol of the Goddess of the Seven Stars
plus her son, Set or Sirius.(9)
(8) See previous chapter. (9) The significance of the number eight as the
height, or ultimate One, is explained in Aleister Crowley & the Hidden
God.
The mechanics of the New Sexuality are based upon the dynamics of the Death
Posture, a formula evolved by Spare for the purpose of reifying the
negative potential in terms of positive power. In ancient Egypt the mummy
was the type of this formula, and the simulation by the Adept of the state
of death(10)- in Tantric practice- involves also the total stilling of the
psychosomatic functions. The formula has been used by Adepts not
necessarily working with specifically tantric or magical formulae, notably
by the celebrated Advaitin Rishi, Bhagavan Shri Ramana Maharshi of
Tiruvannamalai,(11) who attained Supreme Enlightenment by simulating the
process of death; and also by the Bengal Vaishnavite, Thakur Haranath, who
was taken for dead and actually prepard for burial after a 'death trance'
which lasted several hours and from which he emerged with a totally new
consciousness that transformed even his bodily constitution and
appearance.(12) It is possible that Shri Meher Baba, of Poona, during the
period of amnesia that afflicted him in early life, also experienced a form
of death from which he emerged with power to enlighten others and to lead a
large movement in his name.
(10) i.e. the assumption of the 'god-form' of death. (11) See Arthur
Osborne: Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self Knowledge, London, 1954. (12)
See Shri Haranath: His Play and Precepts, Bombay, 1954.
The theory of the Death Posture, first described in The Book of Pleasure,
was developed independently of the experiences of the above mentioned
Masters about whom nothing was published in any European language at that
time.(13)
(13) i.e. 1913.
The Rosicrucian mystique of the pastos containing the corpse of Christian
Rosencreutz- dramatized by MacGregor Mathers in the 5?=6? Ceremony of the
Golden Dawn- resumes the mystery of this essentially Egyptian formula of
the mummified Osiris. Spare was acquainted with this version of the
Mystery. He became a member of Crowley's A.^.A.^., for a brief period, in
1910, and the Golden Dawn rituals- published shortly afterwards in The
Equinox(14)- may have been available to him.
(14) The 5?=6? Ritual was published in Volume I, No.3. in 1910.
The concepts of death and sexuality are inextricably connected. Saturn,
death, and Venus, life, are twin aspects of the Goddess. That they are, in
a mystical sense, one idea is evidenced by the nature of the sexual act.
The dynamic activity connected with the drive to know, to penetrate, to
illumine, culminates in a stillness, a silence, a cessation of all effort
which itself dissolves in the tranquillity of total negation. The identity
of these concepts is explicit in the ancient Chinese equation 0=2, where
naught symbolizes the negative, unmanifest potential of creation, and the
two the two polaritites involved in its realization. The Goddess represents
the negative phase: the atmospheric 'I' symbolized by that all-seeing Eye
with all its ayin symbolism;(15) and the twins- Set-Horus- represent the
phase of 2, or duality. The lightning-swift alternations of these
terminals, active-passive, are positive emanations of the Void, i.e. the
manifestation of the Unmanifest, and the Hand is the symbol of this
creative, power-manifesting duality.(16)
(15) See Chapter I. (16) By qabalah, Hand=Yod=10; Eye=Ayin=70. The total,
80=Pe (Mouth), the Goddess, Uterus, or Utterer of the Word.
The supreme symbol of Zos Kia Cultus therefore resumes that of the Scarlet
Woman, and is reminiscent of Crowley's Cult of Love under Will. The Scarlet
Woman embodies the Fire Snake, control of which causes 'change to occur in
conformity with will'.(17) The energized enthusiasm of the Will is the key
to Crowley's Cult, and it is analogous to the technique of magically
induced obsession which Spare uses to reify the 'inherent dream'.(18)
(17) Crowley's definition of magick. See Magick, p.131. (18) i.e. the True
Will.
One of the foremost magicians of our time- Salvador Dali- developed a
systme of magical reification at about the same time that Crowley and Spare
were elaborating their doctrines. Dali's system of 'paranoiac-critical
activity' evokes echoes of resurgent atavisms that are reflected into the
concrete world of images by a process of obsession similar to that induced
by the Death Posture.
Dali's birth in 1904- the year in which Crowley received The Book of the
Law- makes him, literally, a child of the New Aeon; one of the first! His
creative genius adumbrates at every stage of its flight the flowering of
the essential germ that has made him a living embodiment of New Aeon
consciousness, and of the 'Kingly Man' described in AL.
Dali's objects are reflected in the fluid and ever-shifting luminosity of
the Astral Light. They resolve themselves and melt continually into the
'next step',(19) the next phase of consciousness expanding into the further
image of Becoming.
(19) Crowley defined the Great Work in terms of the 'Next Step', implying
that the Great Work is not a remote and mysterious thing, unattainable by
humans, but the realization of the 'here and now', and attention to
immediate reality. Both Spare and Crowley castigated the prevaricators who,
scared of the idea of work, look to the 'future life' and the unattainable,
instead of seizing reality and living NOW. 'O Babblers, Prattlers,
Loquacious Ones, . . . learn first what is work! and the Great Work is not
so far beyond' (The Book of Lies, Chapter 52).
Spare had already succeeded in isolating and concentrating desire in a
symbol which became sentient and therefore potentially creative through the
lightnings of the magnetized will. Dali, it seems, has taken the process a
step further. His formula of 'paranoiac-critical activity' is a development
of the primal (African) concept of the fetish, and it is instructive to
compare Spare's theory of 'visualized sensation' with Dali's definition of
painting as 'hand don colour photography of concret irrationality'.
Sensation is essentially irrational, and its delineation in graphic form
('hand done colour photography') is identical with Spare's method of
'visualized sensation'.
These magicians utilized human embodiments of power (shakti) which
appeared- usually- in feminine form. Each book that Crowley produced had
its corresponding shakti. The Rites of Eleusis (1910) were powered,
largely, by Leila Waddell. Book Four, Parts I & II (1913) came through
Soror Virakam (Mary d'Este). Liber Aleph- The Book of Wisdom or Folly
(1918)- was inspired by Soror Hilarion (Jane Foster). His great work,
Magick in Theory and Practice, was written mainly in 1920 in Cefalu, where
Alostrael (Leah Hirsig) supplied the magical impetus; and so on, up to the
New Aeon interpretation of the Tarot (The Book of Thoth), which he produced
in collaboration with Frieda Harris in 1944. Dali's shakti- Gala- was the
channel through which the inspiring creative current was fixed or
visualized in some of the greatest paintings the world has seen. And in the
case of Austin Osman Spare, the Fire Snake assumed the form of Mrs.
Paterson, a self-confessed witch who embodied the sorceries of a cult so
ancient that it was old in Egypt's infancy.
Spare's grimoire is a concentration of the entire body of his work. It
comprises, in a sense, everthing of magical or creative value that he ever
thought or imagined. Thus, if you posses a picture by Zos, and that picture
contains some of his sigillized spells, you possess the whole grimoire, and
you stand a great chance of being swept up and attuned to the vibrations of
Zos Kia Cultus.
A little known aspect of Spare, an aspect that links up with his friendship
with Thomas Burke,(20) reveals the fact that a curious Chinese occult
society- known as the Cult of the Ku- flourished in London in the
nineteen-twenties. Its headquarters may have been in Peking, Spare did not
say, perhaps he did not know; but its London offshoot was not in Limehouse
as one might have expected, but in Stockwell, not far from a studio-flat
that Spare shared with a friend. A secret session of the cult of the Ku was
witnessed by Spare, who seems to have been the only European ever to have
gained admittance. He does, in fact, seem to have been the only European
apart from Burke who had so much as heard of the Cult. Spare's experience
is of exceptional interest by reason of its close approximation to a form
of dream-control into which he was initiated many years earlier by Witch
Paterson.
(20) 1886-1945.
The word Ku has several meanings in Chinese, but in this particular case it
denotes a peculiar form of sorcery involving elements which Spare had
already incorporated in his conception of the New Sexuality. The Adepts of
Ku worshipped a serpent goddess in the form of a woman dedicated to the
Cult. During an elaborate ritual she would become possessed, with the
result that she threw off, or emanated, multiple forms of the goddess as
sentient shadows endowed with all the charms possessed by her human
representative. These shadow-women, impelled by some subtle law of
attraction, gravitated to one or other of the devotees who sat in a drowsy
condition around the entranced priestess. Sexual congress with these
shadows then occurred and it was the beginning of a sinister form of
dream-conrtol involving journeys and encounters in infernal regions.
The Ku would seem to be a form of the Fire Snake exteriorized astrally as a
shadow-woman or succubus, congress with which enabled the devotee to reify
his 'inherent dream'. She was known as the 'whore of hell' and her function
was analogous to that of the Scarlet Woman of Crowley's Cult, the Suvasini
of the Tantric Kaula Circle, and the Fiendess of the Cult of the Black
Snake. The Chinese Ku, or harlot of hell, is a shadowy embodiment of
subconscious desires(21) concentrated in the alluringly sensuous form of
the Serpent of Shadow Goddess.
(21) Hell is the type of the concealed place symbolic of the
subconsciousness; the 'infernal' region.
The mechanics of dream control are in many ways similar to those which
effect conscious astral projection. My own system of dream control derives
from two sources: the formula of Eroto-Comatose Lucidity discovered by Ida
Nellidoff and adapted by Crowley to his sex-magical techniques,(22) and
Spare's system of Sentient Sigils explained below.
(22) See Chapter 10.
Sleep should be preceded by some form of Karezza(23) during which a
specially chosen sigil symbolizing the desired object is vividly
visualized. In this manner the libido is baulked of its natural fantasies
and seeks satisfaction in the dream world. When the knack is acquired the
dream will be extremely intense and dominated by a succube, or
shadow-woman, with whom sexual intercourse occurs spontaneously. If the
dreamer has aquired even a moderate degree of proficiency in this technique
he will be aware of the continued presence of the sigil. This he should
bind upon the form of the succube in a place that is within range of his
vision during copulation, e.g., as a pendant suspended from her neck; as
ear-drops; or as the diadem in a circlet about her brow. Its locus should
be determined by the magician with respect to the position he adopts during
coitus. The act will then assume all the characteristics of a Ninth Degree
Working,(24) because the presence of the Shadow-Woman will be experienced
with a vivid intensity of sensation and clarity of vision. The sigil thus
becomes sentient and in due course the object of the Working materializes
on the physical plane. This object is, of course, determined by the desire
embodied in and represented by the sigil.
(23) Vide, infra, p.204. (24) i.e. a sex magical working with a female
partner.
The important innovation in this system of dream control lies in the
transference of the Sigil from the waking to the dream state of
consciousness, and the evocation, in the latter state, of the Shadow-woman.
This process transforms an Eighth Degree Rite(25) into the similitude of
the sexual act as used in Ninth Degree Workings.
(25) i.e. a solitary sex act.
Briefly, the formula has three stages:
I. Karezza, or unculminating sexual activity, with visualization of the
Sigil until sleep supervenes. 2. Sexual congress in the dream-state with
the Shadow-woman evoked by Stage I. The Sigil should appear automatically
at this second stage; if it does not, the practice must be repeated at
another time. If it does, then the desired result will reify in Stage 3.
after awakening (i.e. in the mundane world of everyday phenomena).
A word of explanation is, perhaps, necessary concerning the term Karezza as
used in the present context. Retention of semen is a concept of central
importance in certain Tantric practices, the idea being that the bindu
(seed) then breeds astrally, not physically. In other words, an entity of
some sort is brought to birth at astral levels of consciousness. This, and
analogous techniques, have given rise to the impression- quite erroneous-
that celibacy is a sine qua non of magical success; but such celibacy is of
a purely local character and confined to the physical plane, or waking
state, alone. Celibacy, as commonly understood, is therefore a meaningless
parody or travesty of the true formula. Such is the initiated rationale of
Tantric celibacy, and some such interpretation undoubtedly applies also to
other forms of religious asceticism. The 'temptations' of the saints
occurred on the astral plane precisely because the physical channels had
been deliberately blocked. The state of drowsiness noted in the votaries of
the Ku suggests that the ensuing shadow-play was evoked after a fashion
similar to that obtained by a species of dream control.
Gerald Massey, Aleister Crowley, Austin Spare, Dion Fortune, have- each in
their way- demonstrated the bio-chemical basis of the Mysteries. They
achieved in the sphere of the 'occult' that which Wilhelm Reich achieved
for psychology, and established it on a sure bio-chemical basis.
Spare's 'sentient symbols' and 'alphabet of desire',(26) correlating as
they do the marmas of the body with the specific sex-principles,
anticipated in several ways the work of Reich who discovered- between 1936
and 1939- the vehicle of psycho-sexual energy, which he named the orgone.
Reich's singular contribution to psychology and, incidentally, to Western
occultism, lies in the fact that he successfully isolated the libido and
demonstrated its existence as a tangible, biological energy. This energy,
the actual substance of Freud's purely hypothetical concepts- libido and
id- was measured by Reich, lifted out of the category of hypothesis, and
reified. He was, however, wrong in supposing that the orgone was the
ultimate energy. It is one of the more important kalas but not the Supreme
Kala (Mahakala), although it may become such by virtue of a process not
unknown to Tantrics of the Varma Marg. Until comparatively recent times it
was known- in the West- to the Arab alchemists, and the entire body of
alchemical literature, with its tortuous terminology and hieroglyphic
style, reveals- if it reveals anything- a deliberate device on the part of
Initiates to veil the true process of distilling the Mahakala.
(26) Described in The Book of Pleasure (A.O. Spare), republished 1975.
Reich's discovery is significant because he was probably the first
scientist to place psychology on a solid biological basic, ant the first to
demonstrate under laboratory conditions the existence of a tangible magical
energy at last measurable and therefore strictly scientific. Whether this
energy is termed the astral light (Levi), the elan vital (Bergson), the
Odic Force (Reichenbach), the libido (Freud), Reich was the first- with the
possible exception of Reichenbach(27)- actually to isolate it and
demonstrate its properties.
(27) See Letters on Od and Magnetism; Karl von Reichenbach, London, 1926.
Austin Spare suspected, as early as 1913, that some such energy was the
basic factor 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 Levi 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'.(28) 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 its energy. Dali refers to
such magically charged fetish-forms as 'accommodations of desire'(29) 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 Atmosheric 'I' of Austin Spare,
and 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.
(28) The Book of Pleasure, p.56. (29) See The Secret Life of Salvador Dali,
New York, 1942.
These theories have their roots in very ancient practices, some of which-
in distorted form- provided the basis of the mediaeval Witch Cult, covens
of which flourished in New England at the time of the Salem Witch Trials at
the end of the 17th century. The subsequent persecutions apparently
obliterated all outer manifestations both of the genuine cult and its
debased counterfeits.
The principal symbols of the original cult have survived the passage of
aeon-long cycles of time.(30) They all suggest the Backward Way:(31) The
Sabbath sacred to Sevekh or Sebt, the number Seven, the Moon, the Cat,
Jackal, Hyaena, Pig, Black Snake, and other animals considered unclean by
later traditions; the Widdershins and Back-to-Back dance, the Anal Kiss,
the number Thirteen, the Witch mounted on the besom handle, the Bat, and
other forms of webbed or winged nocturnal creature; the Batrachia
generally, of which the Toad, Frog, or Hekt(32) was preeminent. These and
similar symbols originally typified the Draconian Tradition which was
degraded by the pseudo witch-cults during centuries of Christian
persecution. The Mysteries were profaned and the sacred rites were
condemned as anti-Christian. The Cult thus became the repository of
inverted and perverted religious rites and symbols having no inner meaning;
mere affirmations of the witches' total commitment to anti-Christian
doctrine whereas- originally- they were living emblems, sentient symbols,
of ante-Christian faith.
(30) They were carried over from the Draconian or Typhonian Traditions of
pre-dynastic Egypt. See The Magical Revival, Chapter 3. (31) The Way of
Resurgent Atavisms. (32) Hecate, the witch or transformer from dark to
light, as the tadpole of the waters to the frog of dry land, as the dark
and baleful moon of witchcraft to the full bright orb of magical radiance
and enchantment exemplified for Spare by 'Witch' Paterson who changed from
the hag to the virgin before his eyes. See Images and Oracles of Austin
Osman Spare, 1975.
When the occult significance of primal symbols is fathomed at the Draconian
level, the systme of sorcery which Spare evolved through contact with
'Witch' Paterson becomes explicable, and all magical circles, sorceries,
and cults, are seen as manifestations of the Shadow.