The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

244 Spare, Austin Osman
with WITCHCRAFT. Sorcery is derived from the French
word sors, which means “spell.”
Sorcery is engaged to influence one’s lot in the world:
love, fertility, luck, health, and wealth; protection against
disaster, outsiders, and enemies; redress of wrongs and
the meting out of justice; control of the environment;
and explanations of frightening phenomena. Sorcerers
have the power to harm, curse, and kill and to counteract
spells cast by other sorcerers or practitioners of magic.
They make use of FAMILIARs, sending them on magical
errands to fulfill their spells. They have shape-shifting
powers.
Goetic sorcery in Western magic is based on the 72
SPIRITS OF SOLOMON, also called FALLEN ANGELS. Details
of their duties, characteristics, and SEALs are given in the
Lemegeton, a grimoire attributed to Solomon but probably
written much later than his time.
Spare, Austin Osman (1888–1956) English magician
who expressed his occult vision in strange and sometimes
frightening art. Austin Osman Spare’s talent for art was
widely acknowledged and even called genius. He could
have pursued a conventional artist’s career but instead
chose to devote himself to creating images of DEMONs and
spirits raised up from deep levels of consciousness.
Spare was born on December 31, 1888, in London;
his father was a City of London policeman. He left
school at age 13 and worked for a time in a stained glass
factory. He obtained a scholarship to the Royal College
of Art in Kensington and enjoyed success as an artist
by 1909.
The seeds for Spare’s occult life were sewn early in
childhood. Alienated from his mother, he gravitated toward
a mysterious old woman named Mrs. Paterson. She
claimed to be a hereditary witch descended from a line of
Salem witches who escaped execution during the witch
trials in 1692—an unlikely claim, considering that the
Salem incident was perpetrated by hysterical children.
The young Spare referred to her as his “witch-mother.”
Later, he said that she possessed great skill in divination
and had the ability to materialize her thoughts.
Mrs. Paterson taught Spare how to visualize and evoke
spirits and elementals and how to reify, or interpret, his
dream imagery. Information was transmitted in dreams
with the help of Mrs. Paterson’s FAMILIAR, Black Eagle.
She also initiated Spare in a witches’ SABBAT, which he
described as taking place in another dimension, where
cities were constructed of an unearthly geometry. Spare
said he attended such sabbats several times.
Under further tutelage of Mrs. Paterson, Spare developed
his own system of MAGIC, based heavily on will and
sex—his own sex drive was quite intense—and the works
of ALEISTER CROWLEY.
When Mrs. Paterson died, Black Eagle was passed to
Spare. For practitioners of the Left Hand Path, Black Eagle
is seen as a “vampyre spirit” of the dream or astral plane.
Black Eagle can be summoned by ritual involving intense
concentration of will, desire, and belief. It manifests in
different forms, including bestial and demonic.
Spare believed that the power of will is capable of fulfilling
any deeply held desire. The formula, simpler than
ceremonial magic, was in his unpublished grimoire, “The
Book of the Living Word of Zos.” The formula called for
creating sigils, or talismans, in an “alphabet of desire.”
The desire is written down in full. Repeating letters are
crossed out, and the remaining letters are combined into a
sigil like a sort of monogram. The sigil is impressed upon
the subconscious by staring at it. The original desire is
then let go so that the “god within” can work undisturbed
toward the desired end.
According to one story, Spare once told a friend he
would conjure freshly cut roses to fall from the air. His
magic involved creating some symbolic drawings, which
he waved in the air while repeating “roses.” He got results,
but they were unexpected. The plumbing in the room
overhead burst, and Spare and his friend were dowsed
by sewage.
In his art, Spare is best known for his atavisms, the
reifying of primal forces from previous existences, drawn
from the deepest layers of the human mind. This, too,
was a product of his education from Mrs. Paterson. According
to another story, one of his atavisms caused the
suicide of one witness and the insanity of another.
Despite his ability to paint the spirits and images he
saw, Spare was occasionally at a loss for words to describe
some of his more bizarre experiences. Some of his visions
put him into a place that he was able only to describe as
“spaces beyond space.”
In 1956, the English Witch Gerald B. Gardner (see
WITCHCRAFT) contacted Spare for his help in a magical
war with Kenneth Grant. Gardner believed that Grant
was stealing his witches for his own New Isis Lodge, and
he decided to launch a magical attack on him and reclaim
his witches. In particular, Gardner wanted back a selfproclaimed
“water-witch” named Clanda. It was the last
year of Spare’s life, and by then he was living in dire poverty
and obscurity, eking out a living by painting portraits
in local pubs.
Using his “alphabet of desire,” Spare created a talisman
for Gardner that would “restore lost property to its
rightful place,” which Spare himself described as “a sort
of amphibious owl with the wings of a bat and talons of
an eagle.” Gardner did not give Spare specific information
as to the exact nature of the “lost property”; he knew that
Spare and Grant were on friendly terms.
During a Black Isis rite at the New Isis Temple,
Clanda experienced the apparent negative effects of the
talisman. Her role was to lie passively on the altar. Instead,
she sat up, sweating and with a hypnotized and
glazed look in her eyes. She behaved as though in the
grip of terror, convulsing and shuddering. Later, she described
what she experienced: the appearance of a huge