Art Quote by Austin Osman Spare

““The intrinsic non-existence at the heart of entity is what Spare designated the Kiã, and he strove to convey his vision in a theory enshrined as the very keystone of the Book of Pleasure.To this, he wedded a new and radical model of transcendental sorcery that completely rejected all religious ethos and utilised instead those techniques that were most familiar to him, and most fully within his mastery as an artist and designer: for its language, line and letter synthesized as the Sigil and the Sacred Alphabet; for its praxis, the sense of sight extended through touch, emotion and profound nostalgia into a willed and magically fecund synaesthesia that attains its apotheosis in the Death Posture. The Book of Pleasure was a radical departure for magic when it was published in 1913, in its refusal to advance a new dispensation or ‘doctrine’ (as Crowley had done) – indeed, in its intent to overcome the bonds imposed upon raw sorcery by traditional religious thinking. Its concepts remain as radical today, whether applied in a strictly magical or psychological context. Why, then, did Spare’s ideas fail to gain any currency until around sixty years after his exposition? Was it purely because the work itself remained inaccessible until the books of Kenneth and Steffi Grant, and later Francis King and Neville Drury, brought them into wider circulation? In part, yes, but that is not the sole reason. Even given the masterly expositions of Spare’s creed from these authors, the work itself is yet little understood or applied.””

— Austin Osman Spare