Austin Osman Spare > Quotes

“For I am I: ergo, the truth of myself; my own sphinx, conflict, chaos, vortex—asymmetric to all rhythms, oblique to all paths. I am the prism between black and white: mine own unison in duality.”
― Austin Osman Spare

“The more Chaotic I am, the more complete I am.”
― Austin Osman Spare

“And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer: until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things.”
― Austin Osman Spare

“Great thoughts are against all doctrines of conformity”
― Austin Osman Spare

“Only Art is Eternal Wisdom; what is not Art soon perishes. Art is the unconscious love of all things. ‘Learning’ will cease and Reality will become known when it comes to pass that every human being is an Artist.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English

“Darken your room, shut the door, empty your mind. Yet you are still in
great company - the Numen and your Genius with all their media, and your
host of elementals and ghosts of your dead loves — are there! They need no light by which to see, no words to speak, no motive to enact except through your own purely formed desire.”
― Austin Osman Spare, The Logomachy of Zos

“In our solitariness... great depths are sometimes sounded. Truth hideth in company.”
― Austin Osman Spare

“The soul is the ancestral animals. The body is their knowledge.”
― Austin Osman Spare, The Focus of Life

“Others believe in prayer . . . . have not all yet learnt, that to ask it to be denied? Let it be the root of your Gospel. Oh, ye who are living other peoples lives! Unless desire is subconscious, it is not fulfilled, no, not in this life. Then verily sleep is better than prayer. Quiescence is hidden desire, a form of "not asking"; by it the female obtains much from man.”
― Austin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy

“Quietism, Buddhism, and other religions, everything which denies the flesh—is the great inferiority to God in ourselves, an escapism seeking sanctuary through fear of life and inability to accept 'this reality'. They were hurt? Or was the odalisque unsatisfactory or too expensive? They expected too much for too little, or were too mean to pay—therefore: "All is illusion". But the Stoic smilingly awaits the next shower of shit from heaven. Stoics are not Saviours, Saints or Heroes and are often confused and weary, yet they prefer to find their own way and to accept life as they find it. The schizophrenics, the melancholics and psychotics—they at least are secretive and inflict no religions on others. They prove the possibilities and utilities of 'as if' when totally accepted.”
― Austin Osman Spare

“He who deceives another deceives himself much more. Therefore know the Charlatans by their love of rich robes, ceremony, ritual, magical retirements, absurd conditions, and other stupidity, too numerous to relate. Their entire doctrine a boastful display, a cowardice hungering for notoriety; their standard everything unnecessary, their certain failure assured. Hence it is that those with some natural ability quickly lose it by their teaching. They can only dogmatise, implant and multiply that which is entirely superficial. Were I a teacher I should not act as master, as knowing more, the pupil could lay no claim to discipleship. Assimilating slowly, he would not be conscious of his learning, he would not repeat the vital mistake; without fear he would accomplish with ease. The only teaching possible is to show a man how to learn from his own wisdom, and to utilise his ignorance and mistakes. Not by obscuring his vision and intention by righteousness. ”
― Austin Osman, Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy

“Alas!’ he writes, ‘I am morbid,
And have put a purple colour about my brow.
All men seem eating and drinking the
“Joy of the Round Feast,” while I am
Melancholy and silent, as though in a
Gloomy wood, astray.
Strange images of myself did I create,
As I gazed into the seeming pit of others,
Losing myself in the thoughtfulness
Of my unreal self, as humanity saw me.
But alas ! on entering to the consciousness
Of my real being to find fostering
"The all-prevailing woman,”
And I strayed with her, into the path direct.
“Hail! the Jewel in the Lotus.”
― Austin Osman Spare

“reject expressed belief – and exchange it for the possibility of genuine change.The believers’ formula is a deception and they are deceived – which is a negation of their purpose. Faith is denial, and the metaphor for faith is idiocy, hence it always fails. To make their power more secure, governments force religion down the throats of their slaves, and it always succeeds. Few people escape it; therefore the honour of those who do is all the greater. When faith perishes, the ‘Self ’ comes into its own.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English

“Other than damnation I know no magic to satisfy your wishes; for ye believe one thing, desire another, speak unlike, act differently and obtain the living value.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Rebels & Devils; A Tribute to Christopher S. Hyatt

“The learning of ‘How’ is the eternal ‘Why’ – unanswered! A genius is such, because he does not know how or why.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English

“The one law of Art is its own spontaneity, its pleasure and freedom. How mystic, pure and simple is its wish; it has no idea of potential divinity! Decoration is its creed and vital allegory is its belief. Being the ‘Free Morality,’ it has no sin – then most assuredly Art is all we dare express without excuse.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English

“The conception of "I am not" must of necessity follow the conception of "I am," because of its grammar, as surely in this world of sorrow night follows day. The recognition of pain as such, implies the idea of pleasure, and so with all ideas. By this duality, let him remember to laugh at all times, recognize all things, resist nothing; then there is no conflict, incompatibility or compulsion as such. ”
― Austin Osman, Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy

“The difference between good and evil is a matter of profundity. Which is nearer you, self-love and its immorality or love and morals? Not conscious of desert the compeer of Heaven, and constant happiness in wisdom is the capacity of direction. From self-glorification, from self-exaltation we rise superior to the incapacity of disquieting fear: the ridiculer to destruction of humility in repentance. This "self-love" that does not give but is glad to receive is the genuine opportunity for freedom from covetousness, from the militant amusement of Heaven. He who subordinates animal instincts to reason, quickly loses control.”
― Austin Osman, Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy

“Man in the misery of his illusions and unsatisfied desires, wings his flight to different religions, and doctrines, seeks redeception, a hypnotic, a palliative from which he suffers fresh miseries in exhaustion. The terms of the cure are new illusions, greater entanglement, more stagnant environment.  Having studied all ways and means to pleasure and pondered over them well again and again, this self-love has been found by me to be the only free, true and full one, nothing more sane, pure, and complete. There is no deceit: when by this all experience certainly is known, everything sublimely beautiful and exceedingly amiable: where is the necessity of other means? Like the drink to the drunkard everything should be sacrificed for it. This Self-love is now declared by me the means of evolving millions of ideas for pleasure without love, or its synonyms- self-reproach, sickness, old-age, and death. The Symposium of self and love. O! Wise Man, Please Thyself. ”
― Austin Osman, Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy

“Hidden treasure does not come at your word or by digging with your hands in the main road. Even with the proper implements and accurate knowledge of place, etc., you may just end up re-acquiring what you possessed long ago. There is a great doubt as to whether it is hidden, except by the strata65 of your experiences and atmospheres of your belief. So how does one become a genius? My reply is like the mighty germ: it is in agreement with the Universe, is simple and full of deep import, yet it is for a time extremely objectionable in terms of your ideas of good and beauty. So listen attentively, O aspirant, to my answer, for by living its meaning you shall surely become freed from the bondage of constitutional ignorance. You must live it yourself: I cannot live it for you. The chief cause of genius is the realization of ‘I’ by an emotion that allows the instant assimilation of what is perceived. This emotion could be called ‘immoral’ in that it allows the free association of knowledge without being encumbered by belief. Its condition is therefore ignorance of ‘I am’ and ‘I am not’: instead of believing, there is a kind of absentmindedness. Its most excellent state is the ‘NeitherNeither’, the free or atmospheric ‘I’.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English

“The Ego is ignorant towards both sigils and symbols, but they both give the Ego a flow of knowledge from themselves. All knowledge of ideas, gained by means of sigils, should be re-clothed in pure symbolism to designate and stimulate its own wisdom. Symbolism is also a means of accelerating and exhausting by living a belief instead of repressing it by choice rather than of necessity, which serves its own time. All begging, self-punishment, sacrifice, etc., is but an attempt to escape the law of reaction or Karma, and by symbolising the reading of these laws, they hope to take that power from nature.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English

“There is no illusion but consciousness! This consciousness is ever the smiling monument commemorating "Whether you ever really enjoyed Life"! ”
― Austin Osman, Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy

“Servitude to law is the hatred of Heaven. Self-love only is the eternal all pleasing, by meditation on this effulgent self which is mystic joyousness. At that time of bliss, he is punctual to his imagination, in that day what happiness is his! A lusty innocent, beyond sin, without hurt! Balanced by an emotion, a refraction of his ecstasy is all that he is conscious of as external.[16] His vacuity causes double refraction, "He," the self-effulgent lightens in the Ego. Beyond law and the guest at the "Feast of the Supersensualists."[17] He has power over life and death.[18]”
― Austin Osman, Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy

“The wise pleasure seeker, having realised they are "different degrees of desire" and never desirable, gives up both Virtue and Vice and becomes a Kiaist. Riding the Shark of his desire he crosses the ocean of the dual principle and engages himself in self-love. ”
― Austin Osman, Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy

“Sigils are the means of guiding and uniting the partially free belief[27] with an organic desire, its carriage and retention till its purpose served in the sub-conscious self, and its means of reincarnation in the Ego. All thought can be expressed by form in true relation. Sigils are monograms of thought, for the government of energy (all heraldry, crests, monograms, are Sigils and the Karmas they govern), relating to Karma; a mathematical means of symbolising desire and giving it form that has the virtue of preventing any thought and association on that particular desire (at the magical time), escaping the detection of the Ego, so that it does not restrain or attach such desire to its own transitory images, memories and worries, but allows it free passage to the sub-consciousness.”
― Austin Osman, Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy

“It was the straying that found the path direct.”
― Austin Osman Spare

“In what way can it act as master? Through scores of incarnations, the ‘self ’ we end up with is derived from the attributes with which we endow our God, the abstract Ego or conceptive principles. All conception is a denial of the Kiã, and hence we human beings are its opposition, our own evil. As we are the offspring of ourselves, we are the conflict between whatever we deny and assert of the Kiã. It would seem that we cannot be too careful in our choice, for it determines the body we inhabit. Thus forever from ‘self ’ do I fashion the Kiã, which may be without likeness, but which may be regarded as the truth. From this process is the bondage made, and not through intellect shall we be free from it. The law of Kiã is always its own original purpose, undetermined by anything else, and its emanations are unchanging. Through our own conceptive process things materialize, and take their nature from that duality. Human beings take their law from this refraction, and their ideas create their reality. With what do they balance their ecstasy? They pay measure for measure with intense pain, sorrow, and miseries. With what do they balance their rebellion? Of necessity, with slavery! Duality is the law, and realization by experience relates and opposes by units of time. Ecstasy for any length of time is difficult to obtain, and takes a lot of work. The conditions of consciousness and existence would seem to be various degrees of misery alternating with gusts of pleasure and some more subtle emotions. Consciousness of existence consists of duality in some form or other. From it are created the illusions of time, size, entity, etc.: the world’s limit. The dual principle is the quintessence of all experience, and no ramification has enlarged its primordial simplicity, but can only be its repetition, modification or complexity: its evolution can never be complete. It can never go further than the experience of self, so returns and unites again and again, ever an anti-climax. Its evolution consists of forever returning to its original simplicity by infinite complication. No man shall understand its ‘reason why’ by looking at its workings. Know it as the illusion that embraces the learning of all existence. It is the most aged one who grows no wiser, and is the mother of all things. Therefore believe all ‘experience’ to be an illusion, and the result of the law of duality. Just as space pervades an object both inside and outside it, similarly within and beyond this ever-changing cosmos, there is this single principle.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English

“desire are united to his purpose by the use of Sigils, or sacred letters. By projecting consciousness into one object, sensation becomes intensified because not dissipated by the usual distractions.This intensification is attained by abstaining from desire in anything but the object [i.e. the Sigil]. By non-resistance (involuntary thought and action), any worry or apprehension of it not working, being transient, find no permanent abode, and the practitioner desires everything. Anxiety defeats the purpose, because it retains and exposes the desire; desire is non-attraction. When the mind is quiet and focused, and undisturbed by external images, there is no distortion of the sense impression (there should be no hallucination: that could end in fulfilment of whatever it is that is imagined). Instead, the mind magnifies the existing desire, and joins it to the object in secret.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English

“If the "supreme belief" remains unknown, believing is fruitless. If "the truth" has not yet been ascertained, the study of knowledge is unproductive. Even if "they" were known their study is useless. We are not the object by the perception, but by becoming it. Closing the gateways of sense is no help. Verily I will make common-sense the foundation of my teaching. Otherwise, how can I convey my meaning to the deaf, vision to the blind, and my emotion to the dead? In a labyrinth of metaphor and words, intuition is lost, therefore without their effort must be learned the truth about one's self from him who alone knows the truth . . . . yourself.”
― Austin Osman Spare, The Writings of Austin Osman Spare: Automatic Drawings, Anathema of Zos, The Book of Pleasure, and The Focus of Life

“belief, to be true, must be organic and sub-conscious. The desire to be great can only become organic at a time of vacuity, and by giving it (Sigil) form. When conscious of the Sigil form (any time but the Magical) it should be repressed, a deliberate striving to forget it, by this it is active and dominates at the unconscious period, its form nourishes and allows it to become attached to the sub-consciousness and become organic, that accomplished, is its reality and realization. He becomes his concept of greatness.  So belief becomes true and vital by striving against it in consciousness and by giving it form. Not by the striving of faith. Belief exhausts itself by confession and non-resistance, i.e., consciousness. Believe not to believe, and in degree you will obtain its existence.”
― Austin Osman, Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy