“By continued experiment, therefore, the individual will discern a sequence of magical principles which underpin his or her practices; taken together, the sigil forms which manifest these points constitute an occult lexicon which Spare terms the ‘Sacred Alphabet’. The Book of Pleasure (p.56) specifies an Alphabet comprised of twenty-two letters; this was Spare’s first formulation and almost certainly a borrowing from the Qabalah. As a Probationer of the A A.-. Spare would have been equipped with a copy of Crowley’s book of correspondences, 777, written as a guide to the construction of a magical alphabet on the Qabalistic schema of twenty-two divisions, and may from this have discerned the previous application of the technique which he was evolving. Over the years, however, Spare’s Alphabet naturally multiplied to cover any possible eventuality. Sigils may be received in dreaming or trance, but the most effective means of their discovery is through automatic drawing. Since the 1850's Spiritists had been using automatism to produce texts and drawings without the interference of the conscious mind, purportedly controlled by spirits of the dead. Under the guiding influence of his mentor Mrs. Paterson, Spare was possibly the first artist to incorporate the technique in his work, preceding the Paris Surrealist group by ten years. Automatism should be employed to encode moments of powerful emotion in line; nuances of sensation are thereby captured - or bound as spirits - at the moment of their resurgence. Spare describes this process as "symbolically visualising sensation" - its virtue is that it prevents kinaesthetic perception and pre-conceptual (non-verbal) knowledge from uniting into internal dialogue, while giving free expression to the subconsciousness.”

“Spare claimed two sources for his oracular inspiration, both of them occult: the entity which he knew as Black Eagle, and another known as the Delphic Pythoness. Black Eagle was a Familiar spirit which he inherited from his mentor in sorcery, Mrs. Paterson. The Delphic Pythoness, an unembodied sybil, he consulted on matters of aesthetics and philosophy. Spare’s mode of working with Black Eagle was curious. He let his mind wander in the network of lines which formed his portrait of Black Eagle, and this created in him a state of consciousness acutely receptive to the Spirit’s influence. In the case of the Delphic Oracle, he had merely to gaze steadily into its eyes for inspiration to flow. When referring to himself in relation to his sorcery Spare identifies himself with a concept which he calls Zos, or the Zos. He first defined the term in The Book of Pleasure ( 1 9 1 3) as “the body considered as a whole”; it is the alembic of his sorcery. Complementary to the Zos is the Kia, the “Atmospheric ‘I”’ or cosmic Self, the field, or playground, of the Zos. The Cult of the Zos and the Kia (Zos Kia Cultus) is the cult of the interplay of forces which Spare further symbolizes by their physical instruments - the hand and the eye . Their magical coordination evokes images latent in the subconsciousness. Hand and Eye, Zos and Kia, “ all-feeling touch and all-seeing vision” facilitate the function of the Primal Id, or Desire, which the Zos is ever seeking to reify, or - as Spare had it - to flesh.”