The Focus of Life, The Mutterings of AOS is a comprehensive treatise written and illustrated by Austin Osman Spare on key occult concepts he introduced in his previous writings.
The book first published in 1921 by the Morland Press and edited by Fredrick Carter with an introduction by Francis Marsden. The book contains 11 full page illustrations.
The first edition was quarter vellum with buckram sides, lettered in gold on the spine "The Focus of Life". Released in 50 copies, numbered and signed on the half-title.[1]
The book contains three "Aphorisms" along with various accounts of Spare's dreams. The "Aphorisms" section in this book is the sole comprehensive reference to three central ideas of Kia, Ikkah and ZOS.
In this book, Spare also introduces another important central concept of his teachings, the 'great duality':
Belief and desire are the great duality which engender all illusions that entangle the senses [i.e. sexuality] and prevent free will.
Dzogchen, also known as atiyoga, is a tradition of teachings in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Yungdrung Bon aimed at discovering and continuing in the ultimate ground of existence. The primordial ground is said to have the qualities of purity, spontaneity and compassion. The goal of Dzogchen is knowledge of this basis, this knowledge is called rigpa. There are numerous spiritual practices taught in the various Dzogchen systems for awakening rigpa.
Austin Osman Spare was an English artist and occultist who worked as both a draughtsman and a painter. Influenced by symbolism and art nouveau, his art was known for its clear use of line, and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery. In an occult capacity, he developed magical techniques including automatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilization based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self.
Chaos magic, also spelled chaos magick, is a modern tradition of magic. Emerging in England in the 1970s as part of the wider neo-pagan and esotericist subculture, it drew heavily from the occult beliefs of artist Austin Osman Spare, expressed several decades earlier. It has been characterised as an invented religion, with some commentators drawing similarities between the movement and Discordianism. Magical organizations within this tradition include the Illuminates of Thanateros and Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.
John Langshaw Austin, OBE, FBA was a British philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts.
A sigil is a type of symbol used in magic. The term usually refers to a pictorial signature of a deity or spirit. In modern usage, especially in the context of chaos magic, a sigil refers to a symbolic representation of the practitioner's desired outcome.
Summum is a religion and philosophy that began in 1975 as a result of American citizen Claude "Corky" Nowell's claimed encounter with beings he described as "Summa Individuals". According to Nowell, these beings presented him with concepts regarding the nature of creation, concepts that have always existed and are continually re-introduced to humankind by advanced beings who work along the pathways of creation. As a result of his experience, Nowell founded Summum in order to share the "gift" he received with others. In 1980, as a reflection of his newfound path, he changed his name to Summum Bonum Amon Ra, but news stories indicate he went by Corky Ra. Summum religious practices draw upon both Ancient Egyptian religion and the Hebrew prophet Moses.
Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits is a book by 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1878. A second part, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, was published in 1879, and a third part, The Wanderer and his Shadow, followed in 1880.
Kenneth Grant was an English ceremonial magician and advocate of the Thelemic religion. A poet, novelist, and writer, he founded his own Thelemic organisation, the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis—later renamed the Typhonian Order—with his wife Steffi Grant.
The Novum Organum, fully Novum Organum, sive Indicia Vera de Interpretatione Naturae or Instaurationis Magnae, Pars II, is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon, written in Latin and published in 1620. The title is a reference to Aristotle's work Organon, which was his treatise on logic and syllogism. In Novum Organum, Bacon details a new system of logic he believes to be superior to the old ways of syllogism. This is now known as the Baconian method.
Andrew D. Chumbley was an English practitioner and theorist of magic, and a writer, poet and artist. He was Magister of the UK-based magical group Cultus Sabbati.
Organon of the Art of Healing by Samuel Hahnemann, 1810, laid out the doctrine of his ideas of homoeopathy. The work was repeatedly revised by Hahnemann and published in six editions, with the name changed from the second onwards to Organon of Medicine, and has been so since the mid-19th century.
Earth Inferno is the first book by the English artist and magician Austin Osman Spare, written when he was 18.
The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): Psychology of Ecstasy is a chapbook written by artist-occultist Austin Osman Spare during 1909–1913 and self-published in 1913.
Gerald Roberts Reitlinger was an art historian, especially of Asian ceramics, and a scholar of historical changes in taste in art and their reflection in art prices. After World War II he wrote three large books about Nazi Germany. He was also a painter and collector, mainly of pottery. Reitlinger's major works were The Final Solution (1953), The SS: Alibi of a Nation (1956), and between 1961–1970 he published The Economics of Taste in three volumes.
Bahujana sukhaya bahujana hitaya cha is a dictum or aphorism enunciated in the Rigveda in Sanskrit.
All models are wrong is a common aphorism and anapodoton in statistics; it is often expanded as "All models are wrong, but some are useful". The aphorism acknowledges that statistical models always fall short of the complexities of reality but can still be useful nonetheless. The aphorism originally referred just to statistical models, but it is now sometimes used for scientific models in general.
In chaos magic, gnosis or the gnostic state refers to an altered state of consciousness in which a person's mind is focused on only one point, thought, or goal and all other thoughts are thrust out. The gnostic state is used to bypass the "filter" of the conscious mind – something thought to be necessary for working most forms of magic.
Within the magical system of Austin Osman Spare, Kia is a mystical concept – a sort of universal consciousness or unity, similar to the Tao. The concept has been adopted by numerous other occultists, such as Kenneth Grant, and has been particularly influential on the chaos magic movement.
Within chaos magic, a servitor is a psychological complex, deliberately created by the magician for a specific purpose to operate autonomously from the magician's consciousness.
Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish? is a 2016 book by Liam Kennedy, professor emeritus at Queen's University, Belfast. Kennedy introduces, as well as criticizes, the concept of "most oppressed people ever" (MOPE) to describe what he sees as a pervasive assumption both among Irish nationalists and the Irish diaspora that Irish people have been uniquely victimised throughout history. Throughout the book he plays devil's advocate while questioning many truisms he perceives as being commonly accepted about Irish history.
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