A brand new interview with me on VICE Creators Project!
“I try to use symbols and keys which carry their own ‘thingness’ as well as being aesthetically suggestive of an idea or a feeling. The concept of ‘thingness’ is something I pursue constantly in all my work, not just Problem Glyphs. By ‘thingness,’ I mean the way some drawings are able to give the impression of being very whole or present,” she says. Gauger cites German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer’s drawing of a hare, as well as paintings from the Lascaux and Chauvet caves in France, as examples. It is when the representation of the image moves beyond mere representation and becomes the thing itself, at least in our imaginations, that Gauger finds so magical. “I want my glyphs to have the thing-magic, to be objects, hexes, or spells or blessings, to make their carrier or wearer heavy and rich. I always try to give them that muchness.”
Cultural appropriation is all the buzz. The difference between cultural appropriation and honoring another culture is often difficult to determine. Kinda like art, you know it when you see it. One thing I do know is treating a religion as a fandom qualifies. I’m looking at you Kemetics.
This was Spare’s first published book, issued when he was eighteen years old and studying at the Royal College of Art in London.The title of the third image shown above is “Portrait of hisself aged 17″.
Self-published by Spare through the Co-Operative Printing Society, copies of Earth Inferno were purchased by Sylvia Pankhurst (a prominent Suffragette) and other friends from the college.
The title and structure of this short work references Dante’s Inferno, including the famous first lines of that poem.
The first image is the “clavis” (”key”), to the work, and can be seen as a representation of Samsara, the repeating cycle of birth, life and death (reincarnation) as well as one’s actions and consequences in the past, present, and future.
At the “still point of the turning world” in the center of the wheel is the dominion of Zos and Kia. In the later “Book of Pleasure” (1913) there is an image with the text “The Body Considered as a Whole I Call ZOS”.
Spare was a member of Aleister Crowley’s A∴A∴ from its founding in 1907, leaving it five years later in 1912. Zos has certain similarities to the Thelemite entity Hadit. In turn, his concept of Kia (represented by a vulture in the center of the circle and in some of the other plates) can be seen as an analog of the Egyptian star-goddess Nuit.
In some late texts of the “Book of Coming Forth by Day”, the vulture goddess Nekhbet is referred to as Father of Fathers, Mother of Mothers, who hath existed from the Beginning, and is Creatrix of this World.
The Pillar of Babalon unites the spheres of the mind, physicality, and consciousness through desire. Through desire the energy of chaos is drawn down to bring total presence to the moment. The self is engaged and entangled in that moment and overcome by consciousness, which is neither ego self nor object of the moment. Consciousness claims sense, action, understanding of the world, and the ego self.
The Ritual
Stand balanced and centered. Breathe deeply. Bring your attention to your environment, where you are and what is around you.
Now visualize above you a shining form of your perfect desire. The nature of this should be personal. This is the desire that ties you to the world. Reach up with both hands, touching or penetrating the object of your desire above you. With a full breath begin vibrating “I-A-O”.
As you intone “I”, feel the fluid of brilliant desire upon your hand and bring it down and anoint your forehead.
Continue bringing your hands down to your chest as you begin to intone “A”. Shift your awareness to feeling yourself here in this moment. Realize this moment is brought into being by your experience of it. The objective world is an illusion of the mind. Only this moment of experience is real. Make a gesture of first bringing your hands together over your heart and rending it apart. Continue the motion as if rending a veil until your arms are straight out to your sides.
As you begin intoning “O”, bring your hands down to cover your genitals. Feel the mystery of being. You do make this moment be in your presence in it but you are not your conception of yourself. The “you” that you think you are is no more real than the objective world.
Spend a moment in silence.
Repeat the gesture of reaching upwards into your desire. Hold this gesture and intone “BABALON”.
Repeat the gesture of bringing down the fluid light of love to your heart and say, “May the blood of your passion split the world.”
Repeat the gesture of splitting and bring your hands again down to your genitals and say, “May I be consumed in your fire and reborn.”
Reaching up with your right hand say “In Sense”.
Reaching up with your left hand say “In Thought”.
Reaching out to your side with your right hand say “In Understanding”.
Reaching out to your side with your left hand say “In Being”.
Then clasping your hands over your heart say “and In Wonder”.
Repeat once more the gestures and intonation of “I-A-O”.
A Brief Explanation
This ritual is represented on the 12 tree by the 41 sum sigil. In Desire we bring ourself into the 9th sphere, Desire. Desire is the foundation of being, it is that which anchors us to the world. We focus and amplify this desire to overwhelm the objective by presence.
We position ourself below and reaching up through the sphere of Desire to connect with our true self which is and is beyond thought and experience.
This transitions to the 11 tree, splitting the world of object into Subject and Object. As we shift awareness to the nature of experience we step beyond the ego self into consciousness. The true self that is beyond being
The gestures and words mark the spheres of Sense, Thought, Object, and Subject in the moment of consciousness.
