Austin Omar Spare: Book of Pleasure

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Highlighted quotes from the first two pages

http://hermetic.com/spare/pleasure.html

"The words God, religions, faith, morals.. etc. (they being forms of belief), are used as expressing different "means" as controlling and expressing desire: an idea of unity by fear.."

"Some praise the idea of Faith. To believe that they are Gods (or anything else) would make them such-proving by all they do, to be full of its non-belief. Better is it to admit incapacity or insignificance, than reinforce it by faith; since the superficial "protects" but does not change the vital. "

"What is there to believe, but in Self?....We are what we believe and what it implies by a process of time in the conception; creation is caused by this bondage to formula."

" When faith perishes, the "Self" shall come into its own. "

Dancing around Alan Watts idea in "Taboo against knowing."

" to gain cogency they must adopt dogma and mannerism that excludes possibility . . . . . ."


"Others praise ceremonial Magic, and are supposed to suffer much Ecstasy! Our asylums are crowded, the stage is over-run! Is it by symbolizing we become the symbolized? Were I to crown myself King, should I be King? Rather should I be an object of disgust or pity. These Magicians, whose insincerity is their safety, are but the unemployed dandies of the Brothels. Magic is but one's natural ability to attract without asking; ceremony what is unaffected, its doctrine the negation of theirs"

"... morass of the imagination and a chaos of conditions..."

(Mind Stuff): "The freedom of energy is not obtained by its bondage, great power not by disintegration. Is it not because our energy (or mind stuff) is already over bound and divided, that we are not capable, let alone magical?"

"Decorate your meaning, however objectionable (as fact), after you have shown your honesty. Truth, though simple, never needs the argument of confusion for obscurity; its own pure symbolism embraces all possibilities as mystic design. "

" it will not free you, the mind conceiving the law is bondage. Arrived at that, you will want deconcentration. Dissociation from all ideas but one is not release but imaginative fulfilment, or the fury of creation."


This guy seems a little bit crazy. I am not sure that his overall options have much use for me, but he has a few observations which are interesting if you remove them from the context of his text.