Occult & Esoterica
[SPARE, Austin Osman] Two Grimoires (Deluxe Edition of 100 Copies)
[SPARE, Austin Osman] Two Grimoires (Deluxe Edition of 100 Copies)
With essays by Dr. William Wallace and Stephen Pochin
London: Starfire Publishing, 2011. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. 156pp. Limited to 100 deluxe hand-numbered copies (this being No. 16) SIGNED by William Wallace, Stephen Pochin, Michael Staley, and Caroline Wise. Bound in quarter black leather over blue cloth boards with gilt device to front. In original dust jacket. Pictorial endpapers. Color frontispiece. Black and white end piece. 48 pages of colored plates, plus additional black and white images in text. Large two sided card with an A.O.S. color image to front and book announcement details on reverse, is laid in. A fine copy in like dust jacket, in a fine blue cloth slipcase.
The early years of the 20th Century were a time of great creative ferment for Spare, and amongst the items which survive from these early years are two intriguing and sumptuous grimoires, each of which is a notebook consisting of fine pen and ink and watercolor drawings. These notebooks were unfortunately not completed by Spare. There are a number of full-page and half-page paintings and drawings; other pages have embellishments, with spaces for text which was to have been inserted later. From the addition of his bookplate, it is clear that both notebooks were at one time the property of Spare’s patron Pickford Waller. The first of these grimoires, entitled 'The Focus of Life & The Papyrus of Amen-AOS' , is dated 1905-6. Much of the lettering remains in pencil, some of it giving clues to the underlying meaning of the imagery. An important element of this grimoire is that it features an early form of the ‘exteriorization of sensation’ which Spare subsequently developed into the Sacred Alphabet which is a feature of The Book of Pleasure. The second, slightly later notebook is 'The Arcana of AOS & the Consciousness of Kia-Ra' , dated 1906. This is in some ways the more finished of the two notebooks, and picks up some of the imagery from the earlier notebook as well as adding some new elements. These two grimoires by Spare are at once enigmatic and full of haunting beauty. The paintings and drawings from each notebook are here reproduced in full color. With an Introduction by Michael Staley and analytical essays by Stephen Pochin and William Wallace, this publication adds to our understanding of Spare’s early years as an artist, mystic and philosopher and sheds light on the early development of his sigillization techniques.














