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The Sorceries of Zos, from Cults of the Shadow

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~The Sorceries of Zos~

                               (Austin O. Spare) 

                taken from Cults of the Shadow by Kenneth Grant

Sorcery and witchcraft are the degenerate offspring of occult
traditions coeval with those described in the second chapter. The
popular conception of witchcraft, shaped by the anti-Christian
manifestations that occurred in the Middle Ages is so distorted and so
inadequate that to try and interpret the symbols of its mysteries,
perverted and debased as they are, without reference to the vastly
ancient systems from which they derive is like mistaking the tip of an
iceberg for its total mass.

It has been suggested by some authorities that the original witches sprang    
from a race of Mongol origin of which the Lapps are the sole surviving 
remnants. This may or may not be so, but these 'mongols' were not human. They 
were degenerate survivals of a pre-human phase of our planet's history 
generally- though mistakenly- classified as Atlantean. The characteristic that 
distinguished them from the others of their kind was the ability to project 
consciousness into animal forms, and the power they possessed of reifying 
thought-forms. The bestiaries of all the races of the earth are littered with 
the results of their sorceries.

They were non-human entities; that is to say they pre-dated the human life-   
wave on this planet, and their powers- which would today appear unearthly- 
derived from extra-spatial dimensions. They impregnated the aura of the earth 
with the magical seed from which the human foetus was ultimately generated.

Arthur Machen was, perhaps, near the truth of the matter when he suggested    
that the fairies and little people of folklore were decorous devices 
concealing processes of non-human sorcery repellent to mankind.(1)

(1) See The White People, The Shining Pyramid, and other stories. This theme  
is a frequent one with Machen. The hideous atavisms described by Lovecraft in 
many of his tales evoke even more potently the atmosphere of cosmic horror and 
'evil' peculiar to the influx of extra-terrestrial powers.

Machen, Blackwood, Crowley, Lovecraft, Fortune, and others, frequently used   
as a theme for their writings the influx of extra-terrestrial powers which 
have been moulding the history of our planet since time began; that is, since 
time began for us, for we are only too prone to suppose that we were here 
first and that we alone are here now, whereas the most ancient occult 
traditions affirm that we were neither the first nor are we the only ones to 
people the earth; the Great Old Ones and  the Elder Gods find echoes in the 
myths and legends of all peoples.

Austin Spare claimed to have had direct experience of the existence of extra- 
terrestrial intelligences, and Crowley- as his autobiography makes abundantly 
clear- devoted a lifetime to proving that extra-terrestrial and superhuman 
consciousness can and does exist independently of the human organism.(2)

(2) See The Confessions, Moonchild, Magick Without Tears, and other works by  
Crowley.

As explained in Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare,(3) Spare was        
initiated into the vital current of ancient and creative sorcery by an aged 
woman named Paterson, who claimed decent form a line of Salem witches. The 
formation of Spare's Cult of the Zos and the Kia(4) owes much to his contact 
with Witch Paterson who provides the model for many of his 'sabbatic' drawings 
and paintings. Much of the occult lore that she transmitted to him suffuses 
two of his books- The Book of Pleasure and the Focus of Life.(5) In the last 
years of his life he embodied further esoteric researches in a grimoire(6) 
which he had intended publishing as a sequel to his two other books. Although 
death prevented its publication, the manuscript survives, and the substance of 
the grimoire forms the basis of this chapter.

(3) Frederick Muller, 1975.

(4) 'The body considered as a whole I call Zos' (The Book of Pleasure, p.45).  
The Kia is the 'Atmospheric I'. The 'I' and the 'Eye', being interchangeable, 
the entire range of 'eye' symbolism- to which repeated reference has been 
made- is here applicable.

(5) First published in 1913 and 1921 respectively. There has been a recent    
republication of The Book of Pleasure, with an introduction by Kenneth Grant. 
(Montreal, 1975).

(6) This was to have been divided into two parts: The Book of the Living Word  
of Zos and The Zoetic Grimoire of Zos; in the present chapter it is referred 
to simply as the grimoire.

Spare concentrated the theme of his doctrine in the following Affirmation     
Creed of Zos vel Thanatos.

I believe in the flesh 'as now' and forever . . . for I am the Light, the     
Truth, the Law, the Way, and none shall come unto anything except through his 
flesh.
Did I not show you the eclectic path between ecstasies; that precarious       
funambulatory way . . . .
But you had no courage, were tired, and feared. THEN AWAKE! De-hypnotize      
yourselves from the poor reality you be-live and be-lie. For the great Noon-
tide is here, the great bell has struck . . . Let others await involuntary 
immolation, the forced redemption so certain for many apostates to Life. Now, 
in this day, I ask you to search your memories, for great unities are near. 
The Inceptor of all memory is your Soul. Life is desire, Death is reformation 
. . . I am the resurrection . . . I, who transcend ecstasy by ecstasy, 
meditating Need Not Be in Self-love . . .

This creed, informed by the dynamism of Spare's will and his great ability as  
an artist, created a Cult on the astral plane that attracted to itself all the 
elements naturally orientated to it. He referred to it as Zos Kia Cultus, and 
its votaries claimed affinity on the following terms:

Our Sacred Book : The Book of Pleasure.
Our Path              : The eclectic path between ecstasies; the precarious
                        funambulatory way.
Our Deity             : The All-Prevailing Woman.
                        ('And I strayed with her, into the path direct'.)
Our Creed             : The Living Flesh. (Zos):
                        ('Again I say : This is your great moment of     
                        reality- the living flesh').
Our Sacrament         : The Sacred Inbetweenness Concepts.
Our Word              : Does Not Matter-Need Not Be.
Our Eternal Abode     : The mystic state of Neither-Neither.
                        The Atomospheric 'I'. (Kia).
Our Law               : To Trespass all Laws.

The Zos and the Kia are represented by the Hand and the Eye, the instruments  
of sentiency and vision. They form the foundation of the New Sexuality, which 
Spare evolved by combining them to form a magical art- the art of visualizing 
sensation, of 'becoming one with all sensation', and of transcending the dual 
polarities of existence by the annihilation of separate identity through the 
mechanics of the Death Posture.(7) Long ago, a Persian poet described in a few 
words the object of Spare's New Sexuality.

The kingdom of I and We forsake, and your home in annihilation make.

(7) Vide infra.

The New Sexuality, in the sense that Spare conceived it, is the sexuality not  
of positive dualities but of the Great Void, the Negative, the Ain: The Eye of 
Infinite Potential. The New Sexuality is, simply, the manifestation of non-
manifestation, or of Universe 'B', as Bertiaux would have it, which is 
equivalent to Spare's Neither-Neither concept. Universe 'B' represents the 
absolute difference of that world of 'all otherness' to anything pertaining to 
the known world, or Universe 'A'. Its gateway is Daath, sentinelled by the 
Demon Choronzon. Spare describes this concept as 'the gateway of all 
inbetweenness'. In terms of Voodoo, this idea is implicit in the Petro rites 
with their emphasis upon the spaces between the cardinal points of the 
compass: the off-beat rhythms of the drums that summon the loa from beyond the 
Veil and formulate the laws of their manifestation.(8) Spare's system of 
sorcery, as expressed in Zos Kia Cultus, continues in a straight line not only 
the Petro tradition of Voodoo, but also the Vama Marg of Tantra, with its 
eight directions of space typified by the Yantra of the Black Goddess, Kali: 
the Cross of the Four Quarters plus the inbetweenness concepts that together 
compose the eightfold Cross, the eight-petalled Lotus, a synthetic symbol of 
the Goddess of the Seven Stars plus her son, Set or Sirius.(9)

(8) See previous chapter.

(9) The significance of the number eight as the height, or ultimate One, is   
explained in Aleister Crowley & the Hidden God.

The mechanics of the New Sexuality are based upon the dynamics of the Death   
Posture, a formula evolved by Spare for the purpose of reifying the negative 
potential in terms of positive power. In ancient Egypt the mummy was the type 
of this formula, and the simulation by the Adept of the state of death(10)- in 
Tantric practice- involves also the total stilling of the psychosomatic 
functions. The formula has been used by Adepts not necessarily working with 
specifically tantric or magical formulae, notably by the celebrated Advaitin 
Rishi, Bhagavan Shri Ramana Maharshi of Tiruvannamalai,(11) who attained 
Supreme Enlightenment by simulating the process of death; and also by the 
Bengal Vaishnavite, Thakur Haranath, who was taken for dead and actually 
prepard for burial after a 'death trance' which lasted several hours and from 
which he emerged with a totally new consciousness that transformed even his 
bodily constitution and appearance.(12) It is possible that Shri Meher Baba, 
of Poona, during the period of amnesia that afflicted him in early life, also 
experienced a form of death from which he emerged with power to enlighten 
others and to lead a large movement in his name.

(10) i.e. the assumption of the 'god-form' of death.
(11) See Arthur Osborne: Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self Knowledge,      
London, 1954.
(12) See Shri Haranath: His Play and Precepts, Bombay, 1954.

The theory of the Death Posture, first described in The Book of Pleasure, was  
developed independently of the experiences of the above mentioned Masters 
about whom nothing was published in any European language at that time.(13)

(13) i.e. 1913.

The Rosicrucian mystique of the pastos containing the corpse of Christian     
Rosencreutz- dramatized by MacGregor Mathers in the 5¡=6ú Ceremony of the 
Golden Dawn- resumes the mystery of this essentially Egyptian formula of the 
mummified Osiris. Spare was acquainted with this version of the Mystery. He 
became a member of Crowley's A.^.A.^., for a brief period, in 1910, and the 
Golden Dawn rituals- published shortly afterwards in The Equinox(14)- may have 
been available to him.

(14) The 5¡=6ú Ritual was published in Volume I, No.3. in 1910.

The concepts of death and sexuality are inextricably connected. Saturn,       
death, and Venus, life, are twin aspects of the Goddess. That they are, in a 
mystical sense, one idea is evidenced by the nature of the sexual act. The 
dynamic activity connected with the drive to know, to penetrate, to illumine, 
culminates in a stillness, a silence, a cessation of all effort which itself 
dissolves in the tranquillity of total negation. The identity of these 
concepts is explicit in the ancient Chinese equation 0=2, where naught 
symbolizes the negative, unmanifest potential of creation, and the two the two 
polaritites involved in its realization. The Goddess represents the negative 
phase: the atmospheric 'I' symbolized by that all-seeing Eye with all its ayin 
symbolism;(15) and the twins- Set-Horus- represent the phase of 2, or duality. 
The lightning-swift alternations of these terminals, active-passive, are 
positive emanations of the Void, i.e. the manifestation of the Unmanifest, and 
the Hand is the symbol of this creative, power-manifesting duality.(16)

(15) See Chapter I.
(16) By qabalah, Hand=Yod=10; Eye=Ayin=70. The total, 80=Pe (Mouth), the      
Goddess, Uterus, or Utterer of the Word.

The supreme symbol of Zos Kia Cultus therefore resumes that of the Scarlet    
Woman, and is reminiscent of Crowley's Cult of Love under Will. The Scarlet 
Woman embodies the Fire Snake, control of which causes 'change to occur in 
conformity with will'.(17) The energized enthusiasm of the Will is the key to 
Crowley's Cult, and it is analogous to the technique of magically induced 
obsession which Spare uses to reify the 'inherent dream'.(18)

(17) Crowley's definition of magick. See Magick, p.131.
(18) i.e. the True Will.

One of the foremost magicians of our time- Salvador Dali- developed a system  
of magical reification at about the same time that Crowley and Spare were 
elaborating their doctrines. Dali's system of 'paranoiac-critical activity' 
evokes echoes of resurgent atavisms that are reflected into the concrete world 
of images by a process of obsession similar to that induced by the Death 
Posture.

Dali's birth in 1904- the year in which Crowley received The Book of the Law-  
makes him, literally, a child of the New Aeon; one of the first! His creative 
genius adumbrates at every stage of its flight the flowering of the essential 
germ that has made him a living embodiment of New Aeon consciousness, and of 
the 'Kingly Man' described in AL.

Dali's objects are reflected in the fluid and ever-shifting luminosity of the  
Astral Light. They resolve themselves and melt continually into the 'next 
step',(19) the next phase of consciousness expanding into the further image of 
Becoming.

(19) Crowley defined the Great Work in terms of the 'Next Step', implying that  
the Great Work is not a remote and mysterious thing, unattainable by humans, 
but the realization of the 'here and now', and attention to immediate reality. 
Both Spare and Crowley castigated the prevaricators who, scared of the idea of 
work, look to the 'future life' and the unattainable, instead of seizing 
reality and living NOW. 'O Babblers, Prattlers, Loquacious Ones, . . . learn 
first what is work! and the Great Work is not so far beyond' (The Book of 
Lies, Chapter 52).

Spare had already succeeded in isolating and concentrating desire in a symbol  
which became sentient and therefore potentially creative through the 
lightnings of the magnetized will. Dali, it seems, has taken the process a 
step further. His formula of 'paranoiac-critical activity' is a development of 
the primal (African) concept of the fetish, and it is instructive to compare 
Spare's theory of 'visualized sensation' with Dali's definition of painting as 
'hand don colour photography of concret irrationality'. Sensation is 
essentially irrational, and its delineation in graphic form ('hand done colour 
photography') is identical with Spare's method of 'visualized sensation'.

These magicians utilized human embodiments of power (shakti) which appeared-  
usually- in feminine form. Each book that Crowley produced had its 
corresponding shakti. The Rites of Eleusis (1910) were powered, largely, by 
Leila Waddell. Book Four, Parts I & II (1913) came through Soror Virakam (Mary 
d'Este). Liber Aleph- The Book of Wisdom or Folly (1918)- was inspired by 
Soror Hilarion (Jane Foster). His great work, Magick in Theory and Practice, 
was written mainly in 1920 in Cefalu, where Alostrael (Leah Hirsig) supplied 
the magical impetus; and so on, up to the New Aeon interpretation of the Tarot 
(The Book of Thoth), which he produced in collaboration with Frieda Harris in 
1944. Dali's shakti- Gala- was the channel through which the inspiring 
creative current was fixed or visualized in some of the greatest paintings the 
world has seen. And in the case of Austin Osman Spare, the Fire Snake assumed 
the form of Mrs. Paterson, a self-confessed witch who embodied the sorceries 
of a cult so ancient that it was old in Egypt's infancy.

Spare's grimoire is a concentration of the entire body of his work. It
comprises, in a sense, everthing of magical or creative value that he ever 
thought or imagined. Thus, if you posses a picture by Zos, and that picture 
contains some of his sigillized spells, you possess the whole grimoire, and 
you stand a great chance of being swept up and attuned to the vibrations of 
Zos Kia Cultus.

A little known aspect of Spare, an aspect that links up with his friendship   
with Thomas Burke,(20) reveals the fact that a curious Chinese occult society- 
known as the Cult of the Ku- flourished in London in the nineteen-twenties. 
Its headquarters may have been in Peking, Spare did not say, perhaps he did 
not know; but its London offshoot was not in Limehouse as one might have 
expected, but in Stockwell, not far from a studio-flat that Spare shared with 
a friend. A secret session of the cult of the Ku was witnessed by Spare, who 
seems to have been the only European ever to have gained admittance. He does, 
in fact, seem to have been the only European apart from Burke who had so much 
as heard of the Cult. Spare's experience is of exceptional interest by reason 
of its close approximation to a form of dream-control into which he was 
initiated many years earlier by Witch Paterson.

(20) 1886-1945.

The word Ku has several meanings in Chinese, but in this particular case it   
denotes a peculiar form of sorcery involving elements which Spare had already 
incorporated in his conception of the New Sexuality. The Adepts of Ku 
worshipped a serpent goddess in the form of a woman dedicated to the Cult. 
During an elaborate ritual she would become possessed, with the result that 
she threw off, or emanated, multiple forms of the goddess as sentient shadows 
endowed with all the charms possessed by her human representative. These 
shadow-women, impelled by some subtle law of attraction, gravitated to one or 
other of the devotees who sat in a drowsy condition around the entranced 
priestess. Sexual congress with these shadows then occurred and it was the 
beginning of a sinister form of dream-conrtol involving journeys and 
encounters in infernal regions.

The Ku would seem to be a form of the Fire Snake exteriorized astrally as a   
shadow-woman or succubus, congress with which enabled the devotee to reify his 
'inherent dream'. She was known as the 'whore of hell' and her function was 
analogous to that of the Scarlet Woman of Crowley's Cult, the Suvasini of the 
Tantric Kaula Circle, and the Fiendess of the Cult of the Black Snake. The 
Chinese Ku, or harlot of hell, is a shadowy embodiment of subconscious 
desires(21) concentrated in the alluringly sensuous form of the Serpent of 
Shadow Goddess.

(21) Hell is the type of the concealed place symbolic of the subconsciousness;  
the 'infernal' region.

The mechanics of dream control are in many ways similar to those which effect  
conscious astral projection. My own system of dream control derives from two 
sources: the formula of Eroto-Comatose Lucidity discovered by Ida Nellidoff 
and adapted by Crowley to his sex-magical techniques,(22) and Spare's system 
of Sentient Sigils explained below.

(22) See Chapter 10.

Sleep should be preceded by some form of Karezza(23) during which a specially  
chosen sigil symbolizing the desired object is vividly visualized. In this 
manner the libido is baulked of its natural fantasies and seeks satisfaction 
in the dream world. When the knack is acquired the dream will be extremely 
intense and dominated by a succube, or shadow-woman, with whom sexual 
intercourse occurs spontaneously. If the dreamer has aquired even a moderate 
degree of proficiency in this technique he will be aware of the continued 
presence of the sigil. This he should bind upon the form of the succube in a 
place that is within range of his vision during copulation, e.g., as a pendant 
suspended from her neck; as ear-drops; or as the diadem in a circlet about her 
brow. Its locus should be determined by the magician with respect to the 
position he adopts during coitus. The act will then assume all the 
characteristics of a Ninth Degree Working,(24) because the presence of the 
Shadow-Woman will be experienced with a vivid intensity of sensation and 
clarity of vision. The sigil thus becomes sentient and in due course the 
object of the Working materializes on the physical plane. This object is, of 
course, determined by the desire embodied in and represented by the sigil.

(23) Vide, infra, p.204.
(24) i.e. a sex magical working with a female partner.

The important innovation in this system of dream control lies in the            
transference of the Sigil from the waking to the dream state of consciousness, 
and the evocation, in the latter state, of the Shadow-woman. This process 
transforms an Eighth Degree Rite(25) into the similitude of the sexual act as 
used in Ninth Degree Workings.

(25) i.e. a solitary sex act.

Briefly, the formula has three stages:

I. Karezza, or unculminating sexual activity, with visualization of the Sigil  
until sleep supervenes.
2. Sexual congress in the dream-state with the Shadow-woman evoked by Stage I.  
The Sigil should appear automatically at this second stage; if it does not, 
the practice must be repeated at another time. If it does, then the desired 
result will reify in Stage.
3. after awakening (i.e. in the mundane world of everyday phenomena).

A word of explanation is, perhaps, necessary concerning the term Karezza as   
used in the present context. Retention of semen is a concept of central 
importance in certain Tantric practices, the idea being that the bindu (seed) 
then breeds astrally, not physically. In other words, an entity of some sort 
is brought to birth at astral levels of consciousness. This, and analogous 
techniques, have given rise to the impression- quite erroneous- that celibacy 
is a sine qua non of magical success; but such celibacy is of a purely local 
character and confined to the physical plane, or waking state, alone. 
Celibacy, as commonly understood, is therefore a meaningless parody or 
travesty of the true formula. Such is the initiated rationale of Tantric 
celibacy, and some such interpretation undoubtedly applies also to other forms 
of religious asceticism. The 'temptations' of the saints occurred on the 
astral plane precisely because the physical channels had been deliberately 
blocked. The state of drowsiness noted in the votaries of the Ku suggests that 
the ensuing shadow-play was evoked after a fashion similar to that obtained by 
a species of dream control.

Gerald Massey, Aleister Crowley, Austin Spare, Dion Fortune, have- each in    
their way- demonstrated the bio-chemical basis of the Mysteries. They achieved 
in the sphere of the 'occult' that which Wilhelm Reich achieved for 
psychology, and established it on a sure bio-chemical basis.

Spare's 'sentient symbols' and 'alphabet of desire',(26) correlating as they  
do the marmas of the body with the specific sex-principles, anticipated in 
several ways the work of Reich who discovered- between 1936 and 1939- the 
vehicle of psycho-sexual energy, which he named the orgone. Reich's singular 
contribution to psychology and, incidentally, to Western occultism, lies in 
the fact that he successfully isolated the libido and demonstrated its 
existence as a tangible, biological energy. This energy, the actual substance 
of Freud's purely hypothetical concepts- libido and id- was measured by Reich, 
lifted out of the category of hypothesis, and reified. He was, however, wrong 
in supposing that the orgone was the ultimate energy. It is one of the more 
important kalas but not the Supreme Kala (Mahakala), although it may become 
such by virtue of a process not unknown to Tantrics of the Varma Marg. Until 
comparatively recent times it was known- in the West- to the Arab alchemists, 
and the entire body of alchemical literature, with its tortuous terminology 
and hieroglyphic style, reveals- if it reveals anything- a deliberate device 
on the part of Initiates to veil the true process of distilling the Mahakala.

(26) Described in The Book of Pleasure (A.O. Spare), republished 1975.

Reich's discovery is significant because he was probably the first scientist  
to place psychology on a solid biological basic, ant the first to demonstrate 
under laboratory conditions the existence of a tangible magical energy at last 
measurable and therefore strictly scientific. Whether this energy is termed 
the astral light (Levi), the elan vital (Bergson), the Odic Force 
(Reichenbach), the libido (Freud), Reich was the first- with the possible 
exception of Reichenbach(27)- actually to isolate it and demonstrate its 
properties.

(27) See Letters on Od and Magnetism; Karl von Reichenbach, London, 1926.

Austin Spare suspected, as early as 1913, that some such energy was the basic  
factor in the re-activization of primal atavisms, and he treated it 
accordingly as cosmic energy (the 'Atmospheric I') responsive to subconscious 
suggestion through the medium of Sentient Symbols, and through the application 
of the body (Zos) in such a way that it could reify remote atavisms and all 
possible future forms.

During the time that he was preoccupied with these themes Spare dreamed       
repeatedly of fantastic buildings whose alignments he found quite impossible 
to note down on waking. He supposed them to be adumbrations of a future 
geometry of space-time bearing no known relation to present-day forms of 
architecture. Eliphaz Levi claimed a similar power of reification for the 
'Astral Light', but he failed to show the precise manner of its manipulation. 
It was to this end that Spare evolved his Alphabet of Desire 'each letter of 
which relates to a sex-principle'.(28) That is to say he noted certain 
correspondences between the inner movements of the sexual impulse and the 
outer form of its manifestation in symbols, sigils, or letters rendered 
sentient by being charged with its energy. Dali refers to such magically 
charged fetish-forms as 'accommodations of desire'(29) which are visualized as 
shadowy voids, black emptinesses, each having the shape of the ghostly object 
which inhabits its latency, and which IS only by virtue of the fact that it is 
NOT. This indicates that the origin of manifestation is non-manifestation, and 
it is plain to intuitive apprehension that the orgone of Reich, the Atmosheric 
'I' of Austin Spare, and the Dalinian delineations of the 'accommodations of 
desire' refer in each case to an identical Energy manifesting through the 
mechanics of desire. Desire, Energized Will, and Obsession, are the keys to 
unlimited manifestation, for all form and all power is latent in the Void, and 
its god-form is the Death Posture.

(28) The Book of Pleasure, p.56.
(29) See The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, New York, 1942.

These theories have their roots in very ancient practices, some of which- in  
distorted form- provided the basis of the mediaeval Witch Cult, covens of 
which flourished in New England at the time of the Salem Witch Trials at the 
end of the 17th century. The subsequent persecutions apparently obliterated 
all outer manifestations both of the genuine cult and its debased 
counterfeits.

The principal symbols of the original cult have survived the passage of aeon- 
long cycles of time.(30) They all suggest the Backward Way:(31) The Sabbath 
sacred to Sevekh or Sebt, the number Seven, the Moon, the Cat, Jackal, Hyaena, 
Pig, Black Snake, and other animals considered unclean by later traditions; 
the Widdershins and Back-to-Back dance, the Anal Kiss, the number Thirteen, 
the Witch mounted on the besom handle, the Bat, and other forms of webbed or 
winged nocturnal creature; the Batrachia generally, of which the Toad, Frog, 
or Hekt(32) was preeminent. These and similar symbols originally typified the 
Draconian Tradition which was degraded by the pseudo witch-cults during 
centuries of Christian persecution. The Mysteries were profaned and the sacred 
rites were condemned as anti-Christian. The Cult thus became the repository of 
inverted and perverted religious rites and symbols having no inner meaning; 
mere affirmations of the witches' total commitment to anti-Christian doctrine 
whereas- originally- they were living emblems, sentient symbols, of ante-
Christian faith.

(30) They were carried over from the Draconian or Typhonian Traditions of pre- 
dynastic Egypt. See The Magical Revival, Chapter 3.
(31) The Way of Resurgent Atavisms.
(32) Hecate, the witch or transformer from dark to light, as the tadpole of   
the waters to the frog of dry land, as the dark and baleful moon of witchcraft 
to the full bright orb of magical radiance and enchantment exemplified for 
Spare by 'Witch' Paterson who changed from the hag to the virgin before his 
eyes. See Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare, 1975.

When the occult significance of primal symbols is fathomed at the Draconian   
level, the systme of sorcery which Spare evolved through contact with 'Witch' 
Paterson becomes explicable, and all magical circles, sorceries, and cults, 
are seen as manifestations of the Shadow.
 

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