Osman Spare Quotes & Sayings

Assimilated by the deceit of its divine origin, its tenets are reward for obedience, punishment for transgression, both holding good for all time (this world and another). This moral code is a dramatised burlesque of the conceptive faculty, but is never so perfect or simple in that it allows latitude for change in any sense, so becomes dissociated from evolution, etc; and this divorce loses any utility and of necessity for its own preservation and the sympathy desired, evolves contradictions or a complication to give relationship. Transgressing its commandments, dishonesty shows us its iniquity, for our justification; or simultaneously we create an excuse or reason for the sin by a distortion of the moral code, that allows some incongruity. (Usually retaing a few unforgiveable sins- and an unwritten law.) — Austin Osman Spare

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

The more Chaotic I am, the more complete I am. — Austin Osman Spare

Art can contradict Science. — Austin Osman Spare

Give me the death of my soul. Intoxicate me with self-love. — Austin Osman Spare

Anyone is capable of anything (will plus belief is ability) if they themselves create the opportune moment and incentive. Heaven gives no genius to disbelievers and no vengeance worse than the body denied. — Austin Osman Spare

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

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

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

A process of self-deception to satisfy and summarily persuade yourself of righteousness. What one among us has any excuse but self-love? We do not create or confess a morality that is convenient, that lends itself to growth, and remains simple, that allows transgression without excuse or punishment. It would be wise and commonsense to do so, whatever the state of affairs in your mind. Nature eventually denies that which it affirms: Through permanent association with the same moral code we help desire to transgress. Desire of those things denied, the more you restrict the more you sin, but desire equally desires preservation of moral instinct, so desire is its own conflict (and weakly enough). Have no fear, the Bull of earth has long had nothing to do with your unclean conscience, your stagnant ideas of morality. The microbe alone would seem without fear! — Austin Osman Spare

The soul is the ancestral animals. The body is their knowledge. — 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

The three heads of God were sundered from existence. Who shall say that this was accident? And likewise, who shall say that accidents be not but arabesques within some wider figure? Of this nothing is known. — Austin Osman Spare

My desires sprang forth as a mighty sun - all embracing - associating in the form - vortex, to enjoy ALL consciousness — Austin Osman Spare

Art is the instinctive application of the knowledge latent in the subconscious. — Austin Osman Spare

In a universe that defies description, all systems of belief can only be false. — Austin Osman Spare

It was the straying that found the path direct. — 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

I am God, and all other gods are my imagery. I gave birth to myself. I am millions of forms excreating; eternal; and nothing exists except through me; yet I am not them they serve me. — Austin Osman Spare

Great thoughts are against all doctrines of conformity — Austin Osman Spare

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

Embrace reality by imagination. — Austin Osman Spare