Dave Green
(Dept of Social Sciences and the Humanities.)

A seminar on the history of twentieth-century occultism, and its relationship to art and the image.
St Matthias Campus, Conifers, Room COO2, 10th March 2010 from 12 noon to 2pm.
All very welcome.
Full details below.

Austin Osman Spare (AOS) (1886-1956) is the most famous occultist that most people have never heard of. A recluse, Spare is something of a missing link in the cultural histories of both art and magic in the early twentieth century. He was an artistic prodigy whose work, admired by Hitler, spans the divide between the Symbolist Art Nouveau of Aubrey Beardsley and the biomorphic Surrealism of painters like Salvador Dali. As a central figure in Twentieth Century occulture, he is arguably the godfather of contemporary magic. A sometime friend and magical compatriot of Aleister Crowley, Spare turned his back on the sorts of ritual magic that characterised fin-de-siecle groups such as The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Crowley’s own Argenteum Astrum. In doing so, he developed his own form of spontaneous, idiosyncratic sorcery which has had a seminal impact on twenty-first century magic. Importantly, Spare expressed his magical philosophy though images, not words, and so this paper intends to look how Spare acts as a missing link in the relationships between art and magic in the early Twentieth century. Written out of conventional art history – and, indeed, magical histories until recently – this paper attempts to contextualise Spare’s life and work in restoring him as a central figure in the relationship between art and the occult.

Dave Green is a senior lecturer is Sociology at UWE. Once a community worker and sometime poverty researcher, his doctoral work focused on a sociology of contemporary magic. Latterly he has become interested in cultural sociology,specifically the sociology of art. In particular he is beginning to conduct research into public art and the relationships between art and spirituality.