The Book of Pleasure (self-love) The Psychology of Ecstasyby Austin Osman Spare, 2011 ed. w/ essays by Alan Moore and Michael Staley, foreward by Kenneth Grant. Jerusalem Press.
Personal Collection / Photos taken by myself
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I added this to the 1975 edition in my collection so as to have the new material, most especially Moore’s insightful essay. Also, it is bound in black cloth with white lettering in facsimile to the 1913 1st edition.
When I see a Zoso tattoo on tumblr, I stop and marvel at the Transcendence of this Sigil. I use the term transcendentin its meaning… "that, which goes beyond" (transcends) any possible knowledge of a human being.
If you stop and mediate on this Sigil’s chosen placement, you can see it placed in that… “In Between” space where her hand joins her body. It is also inverted in such a way, that the Capricorn Symbol [Z] seems to send energy pointed out through the thumb.
I would take a minute and explore the possibility of how Zoso may have came to Jimmy Page and how its power and meaning extends into in a-flock-of-elefants new tattoo.
The Magical writing and art of Austin Osman Spare was not lost on Jimmy Page. Phil Baker even points out in his biography Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London’s Lost Artist (Strange Attractor, 2011): that Jimmy Page has one of the largest known collection of Austin Osman Spare artwork.
And “ZOS” was not only Spare’s magical name, as Spare was also a Capricorn, it gives rise to the idea that ZOS may have been a Sigilized version of Zoso. Would Spare also wanted a Sigil from his Ruling planet of Saturn? Also considering that Spare loved to create sigils from shorten words, it is not a stretch that the ZOS may have been a shorted Zoso. The same symbol for Saturn as published in “ARS MAGICA ARTEFII ET MIHINII” (The
Magic Art of Artefius and Mihinius) Chapter XCI (91)
of Jerome
Cardan’s
( Giralomo
Cardano)
De Rerum Varitate (1557) & Le Dragon Rouge (1820).
But also… for Spare ZOS was much more than just a name and a sigil, it was part of how he referred to himself in the greater context of his magical philosophy. ZOS was symbolized by the hand, and along with concepts of Kia (the eye) that joined sight and touch, and also the “will”, it was through ZOS and KIA that Spare explored a central mystical vision of the “atmospheric I" or [his] “the real self” in the state of “inbetweeness”, or what has been described as “niether-niether’.
Again look at the above tattoo… Zos(o), The Hand, The state of “inbetweeness” to the Body (see essay below)….
This tattoo has all of these powerful ideas and I would imagine that it’s powers are alive & deep in its owners subconscious.
Thus, Zoso is a powerful Sigil. And it has been at work long before Jimmy Page, has been in powerful service to Led Zeppelin’s music and now has transcended deep into modern culture via an army of tattooed Sigils.
From 1959 to 1963, Kenneth & Steffi Grant privately published the Carfax Monographs, a series of short articles on magic published in ten installments, each at a limited print run of 100 that would eventually be assembled together and re-released as Hidden Lore in 1989. Many Illustrations from the Monographs even appeared in the Laboratory scene of The 1967 Beatles Film Magical Mystery Tour.
I invite you to read about all of these ideas in an essay from Volume IV of the Carfax Monographs first published in 1960 entitled:
The four symbols that appear in the site header was also the name of the fourth Led Zeppelin album, being one symbol for each band member.
1. Jimmy Page’s symbol = Saturn (ruler of Capricorn astrology sign) ‘Z’ is the astronomical symbol for Capricorn, the goat. The Zoso symbol is for the planet Saturn, and at the front or head we have the symbol Capricorn. Saturn is the ruling planet for Capricorn. For the ‘oso’ part, the circle with a dot in the center could be the sun (also an alchemical symbol for gold), and the axis and “S” representing the rotation of Saturn round the sun and Saturn’s role in resolving karma (the grim reaper). In astrology, Saturn alternately brings fortune and pain – a cycle, perhaps linked to the rotation of Saturn round the sun (which it does once every 29.45 years). 2. John Paul Jones’ symbol = confidence and competence This symbol is used to exercise evil spirits, with the note that a clumsy person would be unable to draw them. This infers that such a person is confident and competent in their abilities.
3. John Bonham’s symbol = the Trinity, or Father-Mother-Child This symbol also appears on The Hierophant Tarot card symbolising Osiris- Isis-Horus (Father-Son-Holy Ghost trinity). 4. Robert Plant’s symbol = Truth or Courage Robert Plant’s symbol is the feather of Ma’at, the Egyptian goddess of justice and fairness, and is the emblem of a writer (as in one who composes song lyrics). Symbol was drawn from the ancient Mu civilization, which exist about 15,000 years ago as part of a lost continent in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between China and Mexico. All sorts of things can be tied in with the Mu civilization, even the Easter Island effigies. It can be found in “The Sacred Symbols of Mu” by Colonel James Churchward.
When Jimmy Page was asked what his symbol meant he said that the band members selected them from a “standard reference book” of sigils. The most accessible text to find these symbols is “Grimoires et Rituels Magiques”, by Francois Ribadeau Dumas (1972), and “The Book of Signs” by Rudolf Koch (1930).
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 Kia which can be vaguely expressed in words is the Neither-Neither, the unmodified “I” in the sensation of omnipresence, the illumination symbolically transcribed in the sacred alphabet, and of which I am about to write.
…
Know the sub-consciousness to be an epitome of all experience and wisdom, past incarnations as men, animals, birds, vegetable life, etc., etc., everything that exists, has and ever will exist.
…
My formula and Sigils for sub-conscious activity are the means of inspiration, capacity or genius, and the means of accelerating evolution. An economy of energy and method of learning by enjoyment. A bat first grew wings and of the proper kind, by its desire being organic enough to reach the sub-consciousness.
…
Sigils are the means of guiding and uniting the partially free belief with an organic desire, its carriage and retention till its purpose served in the sub-conscious self, and its means of reincarnation in the Ego.
All thought can be expressed by form in true relation. Sigils are monograms of thought, for the government of energy (all heraldry, crests, monograms, are
Sigils and the Karmas they govern), relating to Karma.
They are a
mathematical means of symbolising desire and giving it form that has the virtue of preventing any thought and association on that particular desire (at the magical time), escaping the detection of the Ego, so that it does not restrain or attach such desire to its own transitory images, memories and worries, but allows it free passage to the sub-consciousness.”
All images and text by Austin Osman Spare. A print version of “The Book of Pleasure” is available from Jerusalem Press in London.
“Abstract or concrete: if you suggest a wish to the thing you desire, in its own manner, there will be a response. So, if I ask my mind in an appropriate manner for a definition of ‘consciousness’ I shall receive a true answer, although I may not be able to translate it: semantics are either remiss or insufficient to render the sequence of phonograms, but, without understanding, I would receive an emotional impact as from a significant passage of music (e.g, Bach or Mozart) thus inspiring a kind of semantic rendering as true as possible.”
— Austin Osman Spare, Zos Speaks!: Encounters With Austin Osman Spare, p. 168
“Know all ritual, ceremony, conditions, as arbitrary (you have yourself to please), a hindrance and confusion; their origin was for amusement, later for the purpose of deceiving other from knowing the truth and inducing ignorance; and as always happens their high priests were the more deceived themselves. 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.”
“Believing without associating ye are spurious and know not the way of virtue. There is no virtue in truth, nor truth in righteousness. Law becomes of desire’s necessity. Corrupt is the teacher, for they who speak have only spent words to give.”
Occult Aspects 