The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love)
Austin Osman Spare (1913)
- First attested
- 1913Privately published by Spare in London in 1913 with his own automatic drawings and typography.
True magical efficacy springs from bypassing conscious intellectual doubt and allowing subconscious belief to manifest.
Austin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure (1913); Phil Baker, Austin Osman Spare (2011).
A revolutionary magical treatise introducing modern sigilisation and the concept of Kia.
Privately printed in London in 1913 with automatic drawings and dense typography, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy by artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare revolutionized modern Western occultism. Rejecting complex ceremonial regalia, Spare formulated a radical, psychologized system based on sigils (condensing conscious desire into abstract glyphs forgotten by the intellect) and the "Death Posture" (vacating discursive thought through sensory exhaustion), enabling direct contact with Kia, the primal unconditioned source.
Light
Direct experiential magic, artistic freedom, psychological insight, and self-reliance.
Shadow
Solipsism, nihilistic isolation, and potential psychological instability.