Day 21: Favourite song with a persons name in the title
Asgærd: Austin Osman Spare
The title of this song isn't just a name, but the name of someone that actually lived, the artist and magician Austin Osman Spare.
This song was first recorded in the late 60s by Bulldog Breed, whereas this one is from 1972. I like this version better as it is a little more psychedelic.
Guitarist Rod Harrison, who had been in Bulldog Breed before joining Asgærd, had heard about Austin Osman Spare from his grandmother, who was apparently Spare's aquaintance. The rest of the occult world had to wait until Kenneth Grant, and later the Chaos Magic scene, gave Spare's work more attention.
For those of you who don't know much about Austin Osman Spare, his contributions to contemporary magic includes:
- Sigil magic: Spare didn't invent sigil magic, nor was he the first to combine letters of the latin alphabet into sigils, Agrippa wrote about doing that long before Spare to sigilise angelic names. Spare's innovation was simply replacing the angelic name with his desire. So he could make a sigil for 'Strength' or 'Strength of a tiger'. He removed repeated letters to keep the sigil simple.
- Automatic drawing: He didn't invent this either, but he was a superb artist and draftsman. His automatic drawings are of the finest quality.
- Art in general: Surrealism ahead of its time.
- Simplified magical system: Doing away with complex ritual, Spare's magic technique was simply to enter an altered state of conscious through trance, orgasm or his death posture whilst visualising one of his sigils. Later magicians would combine this simple technique back into less rigid ritual structures.
This challenge is a bit of fun, and not a contest. The idea is we find out about each others musical tastes, maybe learn some new tunes, and a little more about each other. To take part, start at Day 1 and post each day with a new tune, along with the meme image. Include the tags #music-challenge and #music and whatever other tags you feel appropriate to your post.
Optionally tag the person you copied (or who challenged you) and another person you'd like to see take up the challenge... ;)