Austin Osman Spare
1886 – 1956 English artist, occultist
Artist and magician whose sigil method later inspired chaos magic.
- Religion
- A personal magical philosophy he called the Zos Kia Cultus, centered on the will, the subconscious, and sigils, standing apart from organized orders.
- Affiliations
- Briefly associated with Crowley's A A before developing his own solitary path.
Austin Osman Spare was a gifted draughtsman who developed a highly personal system of magic based on the subconscious mind and on sigils, abstract signs charged with desire and then forgotten. He briefly worked with Aleister Crowley but rejected formal orders and lived on the fringes of the London art world. Decades later his sigil technique became a cornerstone of the chaos magic movement.
Connections
- associate of Aleister Crowley — Briefly involved with Crowley's A A before going his own way.