Image of the Week 005

Austin Osman Spare was a 20th century English artist and occultist who worked as a draughtsman and painter. Influenced by symbolism and the artistic decadence of art nouveau, his art was known for its clear use of line, and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery. In an occult capacity, he developed idiosyncratic magical techniques, including automatic drawing (developed by the surrealists as a means of tapping the subsconscious, it required entering a gnostic, almost fugue-like state of introspection) and sigilization (a technique that's been further popularized by chaos magicians, where the artist prepares and casts—or "charges"—sigils in unique ways, oftentimes for spells as well as the creation of thoughtforms).

Ascension of the ego from ecstasy to ecstasy, from Spare's The Book of Pleasure (1913).

“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