Chaos Mysticism

the Kia and its role in Chaos Magick

By Carl Oort

Copyright 2015

Introduction

There is a "missing link", of sorts, in the performance of the rites of magick – the Kia. This was the name given to it by Austin Osman Spare, at least. In other systems it is encountered as the Negative Absolute, the atman or essential, void soul. It is the Kabbalistic ein sof – the unending – and the featureless Tao of Chinese occultism. Whatever its designation, however, it remains always of a simple and decisive aspect: the clear, free and motionless void that underlies all sensation, standing as the most essential principle of our psychology. It is true that magick may be performed without a conscious awareness of such an element, but bullets, too, may be fired without guns. The great difference is accuracy and power, and I would say that without a knowledge of the Kia, occult workings are not quite as profound as they could be.

It is my impression that this Kia was quite clearly known to the occultists of antiquity, and grasped in Europe by most occultists until the 19th century. At this point, the dogmas of progress began to become more influential among most thinkers – occultic or otherwise. Freedom of the press and the arising of "open societies" also ensured that occult literature would become far more widespread than it formerly was, and that many dabblers and dilettantes would get a hold of it, setting themselves up as authorities, gurus, scholars and masters. They would bring their views of progress, industrial ingenuity, Reason, genius and the necessity of activity into their occult learnings and everything old and hoary would be reinterpreted by this new light. This is not necessarily a wholly negative thing, insofar as it allowed many to lead far more interesting lives, but it is inarguable that such events served to dilute and obscure some of the more subtle and esoteric aspects of magick. The problem was that the Kia was often viewed as a throwback to archaic and outmoded ways of thought, and the cult of Dynamism and Flux took precedence, albeit unconsciously. The situation becomes dramatically worse as the 20th century dawned: here we find all-mighty Flux becoming a monolithic force, dethroning everything else. Magicians become students of Heraclitus to the absolute neglect of Parmenides, not realizing that both are necessary. And because of this, the very still, quiescent and monistic nature of the Kia is neglected, to be replaced by "energy", "power" and "force". To those who worship these three, the Kia does indeed look rather useless and petty – but, always, it is neglected to their peril, for whether one is aware of it or not, the Kia is the key to successful magick.

In addition to his work on sigil magick, one of the greatest contributions of Spare's writings is his clear description of the Kia and its relevance and necessity to magickal work. Though based in no small part on the English translations of the Tao Teh Ching and Upanishads, Spare's writing on the Kia is the finest exposition of it that I have come across in the English language, and anything accurate or poetic in what I may write of it is accomplished because of Spare's initial inspiration. If you have not already done so, please read The Book of Pleasure, and do so a few times, slowly, over a period of two weeks. At first the style may seem off putting, but as you get accustomed to it you will see its poetry and philosophical precision with greater and greater clarity, and your appreciation of it will soon turn to an experience of it. It is not very far away: the Kia, always, is beside you, and not a single instant of consciousness occurs without reference to it as the ultimate context of existence.

However, because Spare's style is so idiosyncratic and evocative, it also lacks the practicality of lesser magickal texts. If you spend enough time with it and work towards understanding it, it will become very practical, yet, even so, I know that I found it daunting for many years and would have benefited from a more simple exposition. That is what this present essay intends to be: an explanation of the Kia, its relevance and how to access it, written in a comparatively simple (though not simplistic) style to Spare's. You may think of it as a companion piece or commentary to the Book of Pleasure. Also, it is certain that I do not have the same grasp of the Kia that Spare had – nor, perhaps, shall I ever – and there are aspects of the Kia which I will inevitably gloss over or neglect in this work. The Kia is nothing if not inexhaustible, and it evades perfect descriptions at every turn. I highly doubt a dogmatic person would even read this present essay, but bear this always in mind: nothing written here, or in any book, is final, and should your experience of the Kia transcend the words of this book or any other book, take this as growth rather than delusion. The Kia shall always transcend your conceptions of it, and each time you attempt to put it in a box, it will break free. We often have the best of intentions when we attempt to define something, but the Kia makes shipwreck of our faith time and time again: nothingness can always be more empty. Zero can always be less. . .

Nature of the Kia

As stated, the Kia is the void essence of all existence – the clear, incandescent darkness beyond the aperture of our dying brain. It is that total nothingness which exists prior to everything, without everything, yet abides as the canvas and blackness upon which all this rests. Synonyms for it, in English, are emptiness, vacuity, the nihil, the blank, the hollow, the groundless, the Stranger and the nameless, mindless absence of all and everything. I have went into no small detail as to its nature in another work (Zos Kia) and clarified its position in relation to the other elements of our existence therein, but I fear I did not quite capture its true presence in our experience. The untutored reader, once first learning of this emptiness, is inclined to think of it as something in the distance, likening it to the space which surrounds our current universe. And though it is true that it is distant, in a sense, it is also very near. It is nearer even than thought, for thought is always a barrier, being the medium by which reality is patterned. The Kia knows no medium, in contrast, and the very idea of a means by which it is conveyed is foreign to it: the Kia is wholly other and wholly Self, at once. Such is why it is so difficult to grasp, among other reasons.

A famous science fiction author by the initials of P.K.D. once made the claim that the truth was what does not disappear once belief in it disappears. For the mystic or the mentally ill, the very existence of other people and an objective world can cease to exist, once no longer believed in. Thus everything in experience exists solely by virtue of belief, save for one thing: the Kia. The Kia is the demon that cannot be banished by any rite. The mind's contortions do not evade it at any time. That is how fundamental this Kia is: all reality, once distilled to its basis, is only itself, and nothing else.

But what in experience is like this? To answer this question we must probe the nature of existence itself. Perhaps the only genuinely interesting part of the English Bible is Pilate's question, "What is truth?" He received no answer, of course, for the soon to die rarely bother themselves with such abstractions. Nonetheless, it is the question upon which all questions rest, just as all experience rests upon the eyeless eye of the Kia. Let us first answer this question, and the rest will follow.

That nothing is true and that all is permissible is often taken as the axiom of chaos magick. In fact, it is a paraphrase of Fyodor Dostoevsky – a Russian Orthodox Christian and reactionary thinker, despite his wonderful artistry. It was a negative point for him: in the absence of God, all is lawful. Friedrich Nietzsche, to his credit, saw a positive meaning in the statement and placed it in the mouth of his Zarathustra. Or, at least, this is one theory of how the term developed. Yet I have found the quote attributes to the Assassin sect of Ismaili Islam in references going back to 1835 (in English), and I'm certain there are earlier examples. If it was indeed the historical Assassins who said it, this would be a quite marvelous and evocative historical anomaly – a point which will likely be lost on many who have not investigated just how rigid Medieval Islamic thought really was. And if it indeed was in the mouths of the Assassins, then we could expect it to go even further back to the heretical Gnostic sects of the early centuries A.D., and perhaps even further. But it does not matter so much who said it first: it became axiomatic through William S. Burroughs and other chaos magicians. It is a good testament to possibilities and freedom, as it stands. Still, whether we let such an axiom define chaos magick or reality for us is another matter entirely.

In Spare's work, we encounter another, similar idea: that all lies are true. This is present throughout his work entitled The Logomachy of Zos. Beliefs are true by virtue of being believed, and what is true for one entity may not be true for all entities, as a whole. That which we experience directly constitutes our truth and our reality, so long as the experience remains, and anything else is mere inference and supposition. The flesh is all, and always ubiquitous. There is precious little else. . .

These two statements may seem on opposite ends of the conceptual spectrum, but they are in fact equivalent statements, the intention of which is to refute ultimate duality. If nothing is true, then everything is a lie, and therefore true. If everything is true, then there are no real lies or deceptions: the phenomena of delusion and illumination are mirror images of one other or, even better, one blend of one thing. Yet there is no duality, no division, no true fracture to anything: all moves and rests as One. Flesh and spirit, matter and mind, body and soul are words on a page, swiftly moving to the end of the world, not hesitating to so much as smell the roses before they encounter the last flash of light called their "consciousness" – such is the law.

But once all is negated or affirmed in this way, we are not far from seeing the essentials of what life is. Lies and truths both terminate in a single oblivion: the necessity of being experienced. Without experience, or without the possibility of being experienced, everything is impossibly inane: a cosmos without minds or eyes would be indistinguishable from a non-cosmos. It is sentiency, life, and cognition which bestows its being upon the cosmos, and not otherwise. Everything is alive and being experienced – there is no blind corner, anywhere, nor will there ever be. The more intellectual term for this is panpsychism and it is not essentially different than all magickal views of the universe. Chaos magick exists as a system in this ultimate milieu, just as Thelema, the Golden Dawn, Gardnerian Wicca, etc. all presume it, more or less.

And experience requires just one thing: itself. The mind cannot be mindless and consciousness cannot be unconscious, just as light cannot go completely dark – at least, not in the universe we know. Everything must be what it is for the time that it is, and cannot be elsewhere or otherwise without disappearing from itself. The only exception to this rule that I am aware of are, perhaps, the occult superpositions which take place in evocation and ritual, or under chemical forms of gnosis, but they are not really exceptions when we take into account the fact that they, too, require experience to exist. To see something you must be able to see, to feel you must have the capacity for feeling – the list continues, forever. Therefore, if we look carefully at the subtle and hidden architecture of experience itself, we also touch upon the nature of reality. And it is here where we meet the Kia in its fullness: the ultimate and necessary freedom that is the substratum, space and plenum of all possible experiences, whether nightmares, boredoms or dreams.

How so? Take the eye as a simple example: it sees visions and thus has the capacity and potential for sight. In every image that arises to it, this capacity, this potential, is indicated and alluded to. Such potential rests as the necessary condition for eye-sight, and if we experience the eye at all, we inevitably experience this potential for sight. Were it otherwise, experience would be incomprehensible, and equivalent to impossibility. Yet, most tellingly of all, the eye cannot see itself directly. It is blind to itself: even if it beholds itself in a mirror or in the reflection on a polished or liquid surface, it is still not seeing its actual self: it sees only an image which it imagines is itself. The eye is always blind to this aspect. Even so, it is not entirely blind, for the eye, knowing visions, knows itself as that which beholds visions. It sees into itself through its activity. And if its activity perishes, it also perishes. Such is another "law" – universal, triumphant and axiomatic.

This is where we find the Kia: visions exist in the context of the eye, through the potentiality of the eye. The eye is blind to itself, however, and visual sight rests and relies upon a necessary blind spot. Yet the mind sees the eye, and has an experience of it, along with the other senses. The mind exists as their central nexus and the process of experience – called "life" – is a simultaneity of multiple sense-fields, sense-organs and mental operations. By this process we have "experience", as such. But the mind is no exception: there must be something behind it and beyond which it cannot grasp. Like the eye cannot see itself, the mind cannot behold its ground: it is ever unaware of what it is, fundamentally, and this unawareness may be said to constitute its real nature.

Have you caught what I have said here? Unawareness, unconsciousness, nothingness is the necessary condition for the mind, and for all experience. It is the sleep of being – the absence, the nihil – that serves as the quiet sea of necessity which allows for the growth, persistence and death of all. And this profound unawareness is none other than the Kia, itself.

So it is that the Kia is the ultimate netherworld, void of everything, quiet and motionless as the stillest night. And because of its total and utter quiescence, both Spare and the ancient occultists of India called it the neither-neither or neti-neti. Another translation could be "not this, not that." To be beyond all images and manifestations means for us that it also transcends thoughts and conceptions, or any form of birth. It is the final, unstructured essence, just as it is the first darkness of the universal day: the place of absence in your own consciousness, where neither the mind nor eye can ever see.

Now you will note the many misunderstandings which crop up in relation to it, for some say it is a serpentine energy, or an astral fluid which fills and suffuses all things. Some also liken it to the nature of pure spirit. Or, worse, some merely liken it to a state of psychic oblivion, not recognizing that it is essentially and always present. But all such definitions apply and relate solely to things we can observe. The Kia, beyond being, ought not to be restricted by such definitions. And while it is very true that many of the subtle and primal energies and states described by occultists do indeed exist, it is not the case that they are the final ground. You can perceive how an energy or etheric fluid must be perceived on some level to be defined as "energetic" or having the nature of "fluidity". The same follows for the many other definitions you will encounter. But if any occult writer appears to describe the Kia in terms of something definable and divisible, it is not the true Kia. The Kia always evades definition except via negativa – that is, we can say what it is not, but never what it is. Even the term "essence" or "substance" is woefully inadequate, for while it is true that the presence of the Kia is a necessary condition for being, it is also true that our notions of "essence" and "substance" invariably take their image from visible or perceptible things. The Kia, being neither visible nor perceptible – nor even conceivable in any form – is beyond them, and its reality lies elsewhere.

The utility of the Kia in magick

Now that the Kia is understood, albeit through a negative route, the next area of study is how the Kia relates to magickal practice. It is true that an effective magickal performance need not directly refer to the Kia, and there are many powerful mages who have not the slightest inkling of the Kia's existence in any direct way. Its power, one might say, is independent of its knowledge, for the knowledge of something so poor in aspect yet rich in reality is necessarily a kind of non-knowledge, or agnosis. It is interesting that some might call a dive into this state gnosis, at all, or call the knowers of its shores "gnostics". Nonetheless, all magick requires a degree of concentration and vacuity for it to be properly performed. If the mind is assailed by mundane tasks and unable to focus upon a single action, then one will be unaware and impotent even when occult forces are unleashed. Magick is often subtle and thus requires an equally subtle mind to perceive it.

This, then, is the utility of the Kia: the Kia's power derives from its being entirely bereft of all images and phenomena. Because it is uniquely and eternally empty, all things flow by its power, just as it is the emptiness of a vacant room which allows for it to be a space that can be lived in – and, going further, it is the universal space where all things abide which allows for them to be. Thus space equals power, and it is the same with the mind: when the mind mirrors the Kia in voidness, it is both able to receive magickal impressions with a greater degree of clarity, as well as to influence external reality by its will. When the mind is pure and single, undiluted by anything else, it becomes a microform of Kia, in a sense, and its actions take on a similarly universal and all-embracing quality. That is its utility.

It is not true of the Kia only: any martial arts instructor or artist will tell you that it is often when the conscious mind is less prominent and action is automatic that the greatest physical or aesthetic feats are accomplished. Spontaneity may be prefaced by forethought, but forethought, unaided, can do nothing: for there to be true feeling and efficacy present in any creation, it must emerge viscerally and naturally. The more conceptually constricted it is, the less powerful. This is also why flashes of the greatest insight often come to us when we are least inclined to instigate them, and why some of the dearest people in our lives arrive seemingly from out of nowhere, yet at the right time. The principle in all these instances is the same: the utility of the Kia, of emptiness, of the absence of thought.

In a concrete way, when performing a magickal ritual such as evocation, the spirit, angel or demon will make itself most manifest and palpable when everything external is banished from the mind. It is the solitude, the purity and the vacuity of the mind which opens it to greater force, and all distraction and banality closes us off to the same. Were we to live in a state of constant magickal sight, life would be a far different thing. To even capture this state for a few brief moments in ritual is what allows us the vision of the new, removing our former blindness. Therefore, to be able to both know the Kia (through agnosis) and merge one's mind within it allows one to call at will upon this necessary state of magickal sight and power. Once you are able to recognize the Kia within yourself, you know, also, how to relax the mind into a mimicry of it, facing the void before you and letting go of those mental elements which serve as obstacles to genuine power and vision.

But it is not only in evocations that an emulation of the Kia's voidness becomes beneficial. Sigil magick in particular requires at least a momentary state of vacuity for it to be effective. The common trend in these times is to use pain, ecstasy or some other predominantly physical way to induce such vacuity, yet in the Book of Pleasure Spare advocated for more subtle methods. Once a desire is formed and sigilized in any capacity, it can then be employed by the mind as an object of pure focus. And once it touches the mind in this way, it loses its hold upon the mind's surface – for the intensity cannot continue in such a state – and sinks into the depths of the storehouse consciousness where it may ripen into manifestation. But here again it is the void state of the Kia which, once accessed, allows the power to flow. The mere creation of an object or sign which symbolizes a desire is not enough: it must be beheld in the mind in a tactical and powerful way, and this beholding must always be attended by a degree of simplicity of intent. And nothing is more simple than the void of the Kia. The mind, as with the Kia, rests in a state of "neither-neither" or "it matters not". After the desire rises in intensity – a solid, black flame in a white, pure sky – it is then met with the absolute dissolution of the mind's encounter and mimicry of the Kia, and thereby becomes potent. Everything is spontaneously in motion and automatic, and thought has ended, albeit briefly. Later, the results arrive, and often in an unexpected and marvelous way.

So it is that the Kia is always very necessary, whether known or unknown: it is the principle of manifestation itself, being the nothingness from whence things come, and the mind acts as a magickal agent to the extent that it resembles such nothingness. Here, however, some will undoubtedly ask whether the mind is indeed resembling the Kia, as clay, perhaps, resembles a human form, or whether it is simply dissolving into the Kia and attaining something of its original or more fundamental nature. Yet to this I ask, "What good would it be to know the answer?" Everything which flows forth into being does so without making precise announcements as to its true nature. All is ambiguous; all is veiled. We can only speak confidently of resemblances, but true correspondences or connections always evade our capture. And they are ultimately unnecessary: why not accept the mystery of being to be as it wishes to be, without definition?

The Kia, being neither-neither, absolute freedom, the sky-like (heavenly) "I", is mystery itself, and whatsoever partakes of its mystery is equally mysterious. It is not the knowledge of things that brings us to ecstasy, but rather that quiet relationship we maintain with them wherein all knowledge is cast aside, revealing pure feeling. When knowledge ends, sex begins, one might say, and Spare was often fond of using sex as an analogy for the universal, existential pattern of life – or, perhaps, it was no analogy at all, and we simply have restricted our concept of sex to a biological gesture when, in fact, it is all things.

Yet death, too, is all, as Spare has said. And one cannot confront the Kia without noticing its resemblance to death. How fitting, and how paradoxical, that life's progenatrix resembles life's refutation so well, as the French are in the habit of calling the orgasm the "little death", though without it, no life would occur. Orobas is devouring its tail once again, it seems.

In summation, the state in which the mind becomes most like the Kia is a state commonly known in English as a trance. The "death posture" spoken of by Spare, being that which accesses the Kia, is a trance in itself, and all magick requires a degree of proficiency in trance states.

Yet the Kia is not merely a state of mind which can be attained at will. Trances emerge only to vanish again, but the Kia endures. It abides throughout all states of mind as that intrinsic stillness above and beyond the soul, uniquely undisturbed by anything else. How could it be relegated to trances and evanescent vacancies? It is the very substance of existence, as we have seen, and therefore it can be accessed in any state of mind. All states, in fact, exist within the context of the Kia, and refer to it by their very being. It cannot be escaped – why, then, should it be something discontinuous in our experience? Why not gain an awareness of it at all times and in all places? Why not be wedded to it, eternally? We are, after all, always aware of our bodies and our thoughts: how rare those times when we peer into their origin, though, and know ourselves as greater than them! So too, magick is also an infrequent practice for us, consigned to periodic rituals and desires. Our brains are still infatuated with the mundane, unable or unwilling to plunge into the greater sea. But, with strange eons – as it is said – this death, too, may die.

Accessing the Kia through staring

Now that the nature of the Kia and its magickal utility is understood, the question arises as to how to access it at will, even without aid of the death posture. The Kia, being all-pervasive, need not be relegated to certain acts: it can, as I have pointed out, be the continuous background of ourselves, bestowing its power upon all. But first it must be accessed, and the means of access must be known in such a way as to be repeatable. Otherwise, it is as infrequent as anything else.

But before looking at how to access it, we must know clearly what is meant by "access". As stated before, the Kia is not an object of knowledge and cannot be "known" in the typical sense of the word. If we were to properly define it, we would be forced to define it as the opposite of knowledge – agnosia – and if there were to be a continuous knowledge of it, such knowledge would be more akin to continuous ignorance and blindness than any positive knowledge. The mind accesses it by non-access, one might say, and perceives it through blindness. It must be found like one might find a continual sleep even in the midst of wakefulness, or as death in the midst of life and all her energies. Then, in this concurrent state of voidness, the Kia may be found and used.

The death postures are the easiest way to access the Kia in an intentional, direct way, for the mind becomes blinded and void of everything but a single presence and sensation. But for the Kia to be known constantly, this voidness must always be accessed and felt. To accomplish this, we may look at three set practices, each of which has the object of allowing the mind to become aware of its essential unawareness:

1. Beholding the limits of perception

2. Concentrating on the thought of nothingness

3. Noticing the bare functioning of the sense organs

None of these practices are magickal in the sense of deserving an accompanying ritual or process, but they are indeed magickal insofar as they lead to the expansion of consciousness in a controlled and decisive way. One may think of them more as "chaos meditations", as it were, which aim to let the mind flow out into the uncontrolled and indeterminate essence of itself. Historically, the magicians of India known as tantrikas were proficient with various forms of yoga in addition to their magickal practices, and the same is true of many Chinese occultists. In Chaldea (and, perhaps, in Greece) there were various styles of prayer advocated, all of which likely placed the mind of the sorcerer into continuous touch with the Kia. Many prattle on about the "Western" path being one of activity and movement and the "Easterners" as being still, dry navel-gazers, but there is neither an East nor a West to the rudiments of our magickal being, and oftentimes it is only Westerners saying this, anyway. Tantra to one is another's magick, and both have one aim: let us be done with nationalistic distinctions. There is no magick without meditation, nor meditation without magick.

The practices are given in an arranged and numerical order, but how well you maintain such an order is entirely your choice. I would not insist on one before the other, or the other before the one: each can be done on a daily basis, or you may devote months to one before beginning another. Each are variations on a central theme, and have more or less the same psychic results. One does not access nothingness sequentially, however. Yet to train in them at all will unveil something of the Kia in one's being and awareness, and I am confident that many might find them to be the only necessary practice.

If, however, one does them intermittently, and does not devote time to daily practice, then it is only out of the goodness of fate that one may become proficient in them. And fate is rarely good to anyone: one shouldn't trust her with such matters, knowing that she often gives only to soon take away. Dedication is key. And should you become bored, count it is as a success: the wayward mind naturally inclines to boredom once it comes face to face with nothingness. After boredom comes ecstasy and, finally, horror, and once one passes through the veil of horror – peering, as it were, into Azagthoth's own veil – then one lives in the power death, as fearless as a cadaver, and just as patient.

Beholding the limits of perception

The first method, as stated, is to cease gazing at perception itself and draw one's attention instead to the limits or bounds of perception. Contrary to what a famous English poet hoped for, the doors of perception are nowhere near infinite. The infinite is unperceived. The instant you begin speaking of a door to infinity, or speaking of perception and infinity in the same sentence, already you are hopelessly lost: if the infinite is ever to be found, it is to be found where all knowledge, all seeing, all vision ends. It is in total nothingness, absolute darkness and pure oblivion. Infinity is found in the Kia itself. To perceive where perception ends is to let perception die, and perceive true infinity in this death. Some visions only blind eyes can see, after all – Kia is one of many.

It is not difficult to know what you see, and to gaze at what is before you. If you do this in a concentrated and meditative way for a period of time, you will certainly be able to become acquainted with perception itself. This is the first step to knowing its limits. A scrying mirror is especially valuable for this practice, for whereas physical objects are purely material and passive, and mental objects are immaterial and active, a scrying mirror possesses elements of both. Thus, through a scrying mirror, perception is on its fullest display, and one may easily see how it is limited in both its material and immaterial aspects.

Gazing at the scrying mirror, wait for the images to arise. Then, as they appear, notice them simultaneous to the mirror itself. The mind and matter are both present before you, and your act of perceiving them contains both of them in element. Aware of this fact, you may then extend your perception to what is not perceived in them. Inquire of your perception: what is it that it does not see? What is it that it cannot see?

You may think this experiment too simple or trite, but that is only because you have not actually sat and done it long enough. Perception has a texture to it, whether it is of material objects or immaterial perceptions, and because it has this texture one is able to notice, also, where the texture ends. Even if you spend an hour gnawing at it with your mind's eye, eventually you will find your sense of things passing into this oblivion, this nowhere. It requires deep and artful mindfulness to know your own perception thoroughly enough to know where it ends, and if you find that the nothingness escapes you, return to what is present. But once you are able to see the end of perception, then it will feel as if your entire physical and mental presence is enveloped in a perfectly blank and empty space. You are in the void: even as the colors, sounds, thoughts and other impressions of the world persist, a non-world is known as the place of their being. Emptiness, far from being a mere absence or merely an interesting Eastern novelty, will then be seen as a natural part of experience, and you will be able to see it anywhere, no matter what contortions experience may take. An image will always come with a formless aspect, just as sound will always reference silence and the sensations of the body will always point to a bodiless, ethereal space as their locale. The mind, too, will always be able to pluck a sense of oblivion and annihilation out of the miasma of its conceptions, and this power will make it far easier to say "neither-neither" to memories, to feelings and to consciousness itself. Then, beyond motion, the circuit of the individual rises upward, bursts and fades in the perfect nonchalance of the Kia itself, bestowing its power on all actions. But, again, first you must perceive what is finite, and what is then impossible to perceive: you must direct your gaze to nowhere, allowing your gaze to recoil in on itself, whereafter it becomes aware of the boundless – not as an object, but as the necessary space for objects to dwell in.

If I have been too vague in my instructions, you may try this:

Sitting perfectly still, gazing at the scrying mirror by candlelight, let all sensations and images rise up within you as normal, letting go of all concerns. Then direct your vision to them in a penetrating and fascinated way, taking them as if they were matters of prime importance, noticing all their contours, textures, weight and any other attributes you may think of. Then, once this sense of perception itself feels sufficiently strong, begin to notice the places where it cannot go, and what it cannot see. Shine your light upon these dark spaces, aware of that edge where sensation meets the void. Then, look to the void itself, noting carefully to yourself the vastness of its extent, its quiet majesty, and its presence both within and without experience. Note to yourself silently, "the Kia is here", and even if you find it difficult to sense it again, it will become easier as time passes and your practice deepens. When engaged in an act of sigil magick or ritual, spontaneously the Kia will show itself at the moment of agnosis, showing you were stands the true door to infinity. The soul says under its breath, "it could not matter less", all is detached from and all is let go: the image sinks into the imageless and becomes a cosmic seed, waiting to sprout forth into potential reality, and the work of magick is made complete.

Concentrating on the thought of nothingness

We have seen how the perception of physical and mental imagery can lead to a perception of total voidness, provided attention is directed properly to their limit. Yet the Kia does not only extend to raw experience. In saying "neither-neither", two worlds are indicated: the objective and subjective. Both are refuted as unnecessary to the life of the Kia, however necessary the Kia may be for them. In looking to perception, we see the Kia as the ultimate oblivion of the real and objective. Yet what of the unreal and the subjective? Existence may be wholly thoughtless and direct for certain lower types of organisms, but a degree of thought and conceptuality is necessary for any being which has a sense of time – birds and mammals, that is, and perhaps certain types of octopi. We, being mammals, live through concepts just as much as we live through perception, and we would be remiss to neglect the conceptual aspect to the Kia's negation.

Nothing at all is necessary in this exercise save one's own mind. It is best done in total isolation, reducing the sensations of the body as much as possible. That is, no visions, no sounds, no scents, no flavors or sensations of any sort: let thought alone exist, and send the rest away. Simply allow yourself to sit entirely still, without preoccupations or concerns. Let thoughts travel freely, yet maintain yourself in an awareness that they are thoughts, and nothing more. Do not allow yourself to be carried away.

When the time feels right, then gather these thoughts together and place them around a single, new thought: total nothingness. Know that each thought is a thought of something, and thoughts, like stem cells, can potentially be of anything in the context of the greater mind. Now turn these thoughts to nothingness itself, pondering and ruminating upon this nothingness, leaving all else aside. Think of nothingness and all its synonyms: absence, vacuity, nowhere, nothing, emptiness, the void, oblivion, annihilation, silence, non-existence, non-being, unawareness, zeroity. These words, as concepts, will dissolve thoughts as they come into contact with them, for the mind's picture of nothingness is its most indefinite, and the more indefinite the thought, the greater its nothingness. Each of your conceptions ought to be as Icarus flying too close to the sun; touching this great thought of nothingness, it turns to cinders. Or, consider them like moths drawn to a single flame: they strive on in intense fascination and enchantment, only to die in heavenly fires.

Such practice is more difficult than the former. Exhaustion is the key: agonize over the thought of nothingness, desperate in your attempt to arrive at it. To slave and agonize in an attempt to think the unthinkable, while distasteful, nonetheless serves to point out to the mind its own limitations, whereby it gains a glimpse of what is beyond itself, in infinity. After the brilliant state of tension that your mind finds itself in (provided you apply yourself effectively), quiescence will ensue, and the mind, seeing all its thoughts near death, if not already slain, will gain a subtle glimpse into the Kia.

It was by such a method that certain philosophers arrived at this wisdom, perhaps. But it should be noted that thinking of nothingness is by no means equivalent to thinking of empty space, or a living, present void. To think of nothingness is to quite literally think of what cannot be thought of, for a thought, by definition, pertains to something. Even when it considers the absence or presence of space left by an object's absence, thought is still thinking of something. To contemplate ultimate nothingness in the way I describe is to have the mind encounter its own limitation through its own creative potential: the mind naturally crafts thoughts and impressions out of its own psychic substance, but if these phenomena emerge in such a way that refutes and nullifies the very notion of "crafting" anything, then the mind soon arrives at the netherworld of its own extinction.

To add clarity to this, you must realize that your first attempts at contemplating actual nothingness will be failures to be aborted. The mind will latch on to a "something" or presence which it considers suitably pure and bereft of images, but, once you notice this, you must refute it. It is not true nothingness. Rather, when the mind thinks of true nothingness, the mind finds it has nowhere to go: it is hanging aloft, as it were, supportless in its own nowhere. Fear should be felt, unless you are already accomplished in these or related matters, and if fear is not felt – the fear of annihilation, that is – then you must reduce these thoughts even further. If the mind does not feel an initial horror at the breadth of nothingness, it is not nothingness that it sees, but rather a warm meadow with few leaves.

One might think this method the least useful of all, for vacuity is possible by other, more enjoyable means. Why torment oneself with such vagaries? But the Kia is poison not only to perception, but to thought, and it is eminently possible for the mind to be aware of the limits of material and imagistic perception while, at the same time, imagining all sorts of lies in them. The metaphysical philosophies of the world are replete with examples of men who attained a brief but true glimpse of the Kia only to drown it in the morass of their own ridiculous concepts.

Yet there is a better way to perform this method, for some: the words "neither-neither", as words of the Kia, can be applied to whatever comes to mind, reducing them back to nothing. A thought arises and the sorcerer says, sitting in the quiet, "not this." Another thought arises to supplant the former and, again, the words are spoken, "not this." The mind may reach exhaustion through this method more easily, perhaps, though far more slowly.

Most important of all, however, is to never mingle concepts with the Kia. You will sense your nothingness, absence, emptiness and oblivion as felt items of experience, but do not mistake them for a soul, for energy, a Godforce, spirit, or any such notions. Nor need you turn them into an ontology or metaphysical conception of any sort: let the nothingness be nothing, for that is its love and natural state. If a defined image or concept arises, again banish it with the words "not this." And if a thought of your fate arrives – the most difficult of all concepts to dissolve – send it to its death with the words, "it could not matter less."

Noticing the bare functioning of the senses

After witnessing perception's limits and contemplating the oblivion of concepts, we now turn our attention to the active functioning of the Kia as the essence of existence. Our encounter with limitation demonstrates the formlessness of the Kia and its total bodilessness, resembling the ether, and our view of the Kia's ultimately incomprehensible nature disallows us from imagining falsehoods about it, or confusing it for a phenomena. Yet these two are purely negative and we have not yet seen what the Kia actually performs; left with these two former aspects, we have the Buddhist nirvana, perhaps, but we have not yet seen its integration into samsara, the sea of birth and death. Or, to use terms Spare might approve of, we have glanced at the netherness of the Kia, but not known it as being the very flesh of Zos, the Ego's secret land, and the canvas upon which the images of memory's ever open door and storehouse take shape.

To witness these, we must speak of the Kia's functioning and power as an active encounter. That is, we must come to an awareness of how the Kia is not only a passive presence, but also a motionless activity. And I say "motionless" for it is not an activity that can be likened to any other, for the actions of all phenomena are invariably characterized by movement and form, however subtle. The Kia is far different: its activity is of a cosmic and general scope, being present in the total field of manifestation as it occurs. In truth, it is the presence of all presence.

To see this directly, you may again make use of your scrying mirror, beholding the emergence of physical and mental images. Yet rather than focusing on the contours and textures of the images themselves, and rather than concentrating on their limits or non-being, look to the eye which beholds them and notice its continuous potential for sight. No matter what it sees, the potential and possibility of vision remains as a silent, invisible presence, needing no instigation or stirring. It is as an ever-shining light, yet burning no perceptible fuel: you are not required to consciously think, "See!" for sight to occur. It arises naturally, spontaneously, freely and gently. Or you may even say it does not arise at all, for it is always present, perfectly wedded to the ultimate fact of conscious experience itself.

This truth of the eye is also true of the other sense organs. You may repeat this experiment with a scented candle, incense, a piece of music, etc. So long as one of the sense organs is stimulated, you can perceive its silent, void functioning, and how it remains open, inviting any experiences to play out upon its surface. Hold your attention on the powers of these organs to allow experience, focusing on this sense of power as a motionless state of potential.

Then, as this sensation grows and expands within you, it may then be seen that behind all of these lesser powers is one greater power, wholly other, wholly strange, pure emptiness in its aspect, yet in the context of which all existence emerges, dwells and vanishes. Your mind, acting as spirit, then realizes that this underlying emptiness is always present and is identified with the former limit of perception and inconceivability of revealed in the prior exercises. The void that stands behind you – the incomprehensible bliss of erasure, which has never encountered birth or manifestation – is itself the power which bestows its strength upon all lesser aspects of being. Such is the Kia which you now know. And this exercise merely builds and expands upon the others in this regard. And no further discourse is required, except to say this: a concerted effort must be made to not allow your imagination to divide these emptinesses into different forms. The nothingness that limits perception is the same force that is known by the oblivion of thought. In turn, it is the same as the nothingness which underlies all, and from which all form derives its form, all flesh is enfleshed, and by which all mentality enters into conception. At the beginning, they may not appear the same, but they indeed are: do not be deceived.

Kia in ritual

Finally, now that all the former has been attained, we are left with the question of how these gnoses and agnoses relate to the mind in magick ritual, and how they are to be employed.

If you have engaged in many rituals before, the path should be clear and obvious: now knowing the Kia in a deeper capacity, the mind, the psyche, can naturally orient itself to it and make use of it, entering it as a mystic domain. The Kia banishes all that is foreign to the ritual, when touched. Nothingness is the great purifier, the final purity: all is absolved and the rite may be performed by virtue of its power.

Before the ritual, you should let your mind dissolve into the Kia to whatever extent it can. During the ritual itself, when you notice thoughts emerging and forming obstacles to direct vision, again dissolve yourself into the Kia. Close your eyes, inhale, let your eyes roll up into your skull, gazing at its dark crown, and destroy thought. Let all forms and imaginations burn away in the Kia's black fires. Allow its emptiness to suffuse the body, and see as simultaneous the limits of perception – that is, the doors to infinity – the unimaginable and the naked functioning of Kia's essence. If this moment of ritual encounter is a painting, you no longer see color, light and shade, but find yourself as the dark canvas to them all. Then the encounter will press upon you with its weight and the intensity of everything will heighten and expand. The Kia's nothingness is a vivifying darkness – the night that gives birth – and, as such, by maintaining your mind in it you will find all elements of experience become that much more visceral and distinct.

This is the application in evocation, and is comparatively gentle and easy when sigils are considered. If you are casting a spell through Spare's sigil technique, it is necessary to achieve a physical crisis, agony or ecstasy, blotting the mind out for a brief second or more in order to cast the required shadow. In evocation, yoga is perhaps the closest parallel: gestures on the surface which may appear weak and drawn out, but which carry with them a continual, defined strength. Yet in both instances the mind is reduced and rendered simple and pure, the implication being that such a reduction and distillation allows it to achieve a greater potential for occult receptivity and influence.

And, yes, it is more difficult than it seems. The mind is ever in the throes of addiction to its own forms, and nature herself is the greatest addict, never ceasing her constant splattering of old forms into new. You, her last child, are no better: seething in you is the indelicate wish to fill all of space with your own image. You are horror vacui, manifest in the flesh. The emptiness pursues you like a demon, and though its embrace is far gentler than any eon, you cry before it like a child. Do you fear death? Do you fear the face of the goat? And why? Ever coagula has its solve, and were it not so, we would indeed know true terror. Absences and presences are in love with one another, and this is a truth the universe can never know: only the Kia knows it and bears witness to it, guiding us gently by her maiden's hand, bringing night to the soft center of our daylight. Yet once you learn to reciprocate her embrace, then what chain could ever bind you? You wander free through the wastes of time, not fearing the inevitable end or your mind nor lusting after its birth into a new womb. You may not know it now, but the sea of birth and death – which, itself, is the unfurling of universal memory and intelligence – is grounded in the passions of your own mind. And it is this which blinds you to the presence of the ghost, when you evoke: you fail to see it standing in the light because you cannot silence the productions of your own mental womb. Once you achieve this, however, the ghost and the witch both "cometh quickly". The Kia's void is the black cat of a familiar spirit, and upon the wings of its power you feel your own sense of recognition made full.

So let the ashes and the dust fall from your eyes, like angels, to the floor beneath you. You are evoking now: nothing else is required. Only you and your chosen spirit exists, whether angel, devil or a melange of the two. Breathe slow, deep and calm, and banish all your thoughts. The soul should say, at every turn, "neither-neither", "it could not matter less", and in this new void you shall be filled with an ecstasy beyond form. Vitality communicates to vitality, and death to death; the void in your mind touches the void in the spiritual and metaphysical plane, where all is dead, having been slain upon the fields of honor. So too, the touch of the ghost will craft new images in your mind once more, and from the thick jungle of blood you will find the infinite pouring out, spoken and unspoken, in form and formlessness the same.

Do you doubt this? Try once more: upon the night of the ritual, reach that state where you can throw your body and mind away, along with the entire universe. No love, no hate, no mind, no body, no self, no one else: just a shadow cast in nowhere, void even of that primordial wish to be. You will fail a thousand times, but it is the effort – or effortlessness, perhaps – which counts. A great wish to reduce everything will, by its very presence, reduce some things. And it is evidence of nature's ultimate grace that she allows us to peer into her depths when even a few blinders are removed from our eyes. Therefore, make the attempt. I speak of it in the severest of terms to ensure that, for you, you will not give in to weakness. After all, the notes must be loud and sharp if you, yourself, are to mimic them. And you will: the embrace of the Kia is not far away, for when even a single thought dies, you immediately catch a glimpse of it, if you are perceptive. All thoughts die, do they not? Therefore, you have infinite opportunities to see into the Kia. Seeing into it, you become it. Becoming it, your finitude takes on the color and shape of an infinity, and when the spirit rises in your night's sky, it has all the resources it needs to convey itself to you – or, as the Greek Bible reads, it gives you "eyes to see with ears to hear."

Conclusion

What is left to be said? The key is in your hands now. If ever there were a doubt as to what the Kia was and is, or what it will be for you in the night, these doubts are gone now. "Death is all" is one of Spare's many maxims, and it is very true: death is everything, all things, everywhere, in all places. The eyes which peruse these pages and the hands that hold them are the eyes of death herself – no other. Life is death. There is nothing but death, now and forever. Though you feel yourself brilliantly alive, you are dead even now. There is no awareness of anything but death and her contours, and in every step it is death who steps – not you, not I. And in knowledge of this, you may enter into the darkest of nights, though it is day: all things can pass through your own body, and you may wander among the living stars, knowing your death occurred in some long ago landscape, prior even to the emergence of your first thought.

However, the ubiquity of death does not mean that death is gentle. The night's tranquility deceives us: death is difficult. It is almost impossible. You must stretch and break your body – made, as it is, of all worlds – to the very limit, and let your mind ice over with the carrion stare of the infinite in all things. Touch the emptiness and you will see: fall into the Kia and you will know. Beside you, where no thoughts can travel, is the long song of death, speaking her unintelligible words and making those gestures which only the departed know. And the delusion of the world is that it does not see the myriad flora, fauna and other phenomena of the world as woven from death's true body. The world beholds one side of the aisle, and nothing more, believing in the "twoness" of life and death. But, in truth, the Kia is the body of her children, and Zos – the infinite spectrum of living, swarming flesh – is her shadow. This Egoic mind of yours is a small part, beneath which surges the storehouse of universal memory, from whence all forms emerge and into which they die again. You therefore must learn to softly spin among these elements, like a self-revolving wheel, and come to know their differences and their final blend. And this is not as difficult as death herself is: you can do so by merely doing your time, evoking, spell-casting, posturing as death, witnessing as life.

Spare says, in his Logomachy, that we are never alone. Even if we were locked away, so long as the mind is present, then we are in good company. All things are found in this sovereign mind: the living and the dead, the heavens and the earth, the ghosts of the past and premonitions of the future. You are your own genius, friend, lover and God: when you perceive these forces as outside you, you are mistaken. Consider the foolish dog who begs at his master's door – does the dog not realize that it may gnaw its own flesh, becoming infinitely above its master? Our thoughts are so superficial on these things that when the truth is actually said, it seems hideous – and it is. It is not the monsters of existence that we fear, but the lack of existence: living, breathing death. But that, too, is only within us. The piano knows all its songs, even if never played – they are there. And you know all your incarnations, for there never was another place for you, or them.

These are hard sayings, as well they should be. If you find them too difficult, let them stand for now, and I will tell you an easier place to find the same general ideas. As you know, Spare based his Book of Pleasure upon the Tao teh ching and writings of Chuang tzu. These were Taoist masters in China, prior to so-called "Taoism" becoming an established Church, very similar to Roman Catholicism. Not feeling the need to reconcile the darkness as we do, the Taoists wrote very clearly, simply, and directly, and the same idea is conveyed: be empty. Know emptiness. Live without forethought. Live without shame. Let simplicity suffuse you. Walk steady and true, without direction. Empty your hands. Avert your gaze. Then you will find that everything is inside you and you are inside all things: the magick of existence is how and what you are, forever. All things achieve their balance, in time, and therefore you need not fear your darkness or long for your light. If they are not there, they will come in time. What is left for you to do is to continue your study of death, finding the extent of this belief called "Zos", and bringing to recollection the beasts and eras of your unconscious, universal mind. Saying this, I wish you well. Never stop working magick.