13
" Alas!’ he writes, ‘I am morbid,
And have put a purple colour about my brow.
All men seem eating and drinking the
“Joy of the Round Feast,” while I am
Melancholy and silent, as though in a
Gloomy wood, astray.
Strange images of myself did I create,
As I gazed into the seeming pit of others,
Losing myself in the thoughtfulness
Of my unreal self, as humanity saw me.
But alas ! on entering to the consciousness
Of my real being to find fostering
"The all-prevailing woman,”
And I strayed with her, into the path direct.
“Hail! the Jewel in the Lotus. "
― Austin Osman Spare
14
" He who deceives another deceives himself much more. Therefore know the Charlatans by their love of rich robes, ceremony, ritual, magical retirements, absurd conditions, and other stupidity, too numerous to relate. Their entire doctrine a boastful display, a cowardice hungering for notoriety; their standard everything unnecessary, their certain failure assured. Hence it is that those with some natural ability quickly lose it by their teaching. They can only dogmatise, implant and multiply that which is entirely superficial. Were I a teacher I should not act as master, as knowing more, the pupil could lay no claim to discipleship. Assimilating slowly, he would not be conscious of his learning, he would not repeat the vital mistake; without fear he would accomplish with ease. The only teaching possible is to show a man how to learn from his own wisdom, and to utilise his ignorance and mistakes. Not by obscuring his vision and intention by righteousness. "
― Austin Osman Spare , The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy
19
" Man in the misery of his illusions and unsatisfied desires, wings his flight to different religions, and doctrines, seeks redeception, a hypnotic, a palliative from which he suffers fresh miseries in exhaustion. The terms of the cure are new illusions, greater entanglement, more stagnant environment. Having studied all ways and means to pleasure and pondered over them well again and again, this self-love has been found by me to be the only free, true and full one, nothing more sane, pure, and complete. There is no deceit: when by this all experience certainly is known, everything sublimely beautiful and exceedingly amiable: where is the necessity of other means? Like the drink to the drunkard everything should be sacrificed for it. This Self-love is now declared by me the means of evolving millions of ideas for pleasure without love, or its synonyms- self-reproach, sickness, old-age, and death. The Symposium of self and love. O! Wise Man, Please Thyself. "
― Austin Osman Spare , The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy
20
" The Ego is ignorant towards both sigils and symbols, but they both give the Ego a flow of knowledge from themselves. All knowledge of ideas, gained by means of sigils, should be re-clothed in pure symbolism to designate and stimulate its own wisdom. Symbolism is also a means of accelerating and exhausting by living a belief instead of repressing it by choice rather than of necessity, which serves its own time. All begging, self-punishment, sacrifice, etc., is but an attempt to escape the law of reaction or Karma, and by symbolising the reading of these laws, they hope to take that power from nature. "
― Austin Osman Spare , The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy
