- Kia (occult)
Kia is the supreme mystical concept in the early philosophical writings of English
Austin Osman Spare . It is first briefly mentioned in his illustrated work "Earth Inferno " (1905), and was defined in "The Book of Pleasure " (1913).Definition
Philosophical or magical doctrines usually incorporate either "real" or "Actual" conceptions for representing any metaphysical state. But the quality of Kia is referred by Spare as "not potential or manifest (except as it's instant possibility)" [Spare, Austin Osman, "Book of Pleasure", chap. "Definitions", I-H-O Books, 2005] or "the virgin quantum-by its exuberance we have gained existence." [Spare, Austin Osman, "Book of Pleasure", chap. "The Consumer of Religion", I-H-O Books, 2005]
There are many references to other qualities of Kia in Spare's works (especially "
The Book of Pleasure "), but himself prefers not to define it all as "The less said of it (Kia) the less obscure is it." [Spare, Austin Osman, "Book of Pleasure", chap. "Definitions", I-H-O Books, 2005]The real difficulty in asserting a definition for Spare's ideas pertains to his immense distaste for any "doctrine" in general [Spare, Austin Osman, "The Book of Pleasure"; chap. "Be ye mystic", I-H-O Books, 2005] which makes it very hard to build up any reference from sources outside his own writings. Meanwhile, there seems some similarities to
Gnostic philosophies of Being and non-Being, which Spare had seized upon before he was out of his teens, at a period when he claimed disingenuously that the works ofHomer ,Dante andOmar Khayyam comprised his only literary education [ Semple, W. Gavin, "ZOS-KIA", Fulgur Limited, 1995, page 7] .Peter Carroll has put Kia as "The unity which appears to the mind to exert the twin functions of will and perception is called Kia by magicians. Sometimes it is called the spirit, or soul, or life force, instead." [Carrol, Peter James, "Liber Null", page 26]
Etymology
Austin Osman Spare introduced Kia for the first time at his first book "
Earth Inferno " in 1905. It seems that this word has no apparent root in English. But the word rendered in Persian (کیا) means: King [Nafisi, Ali Akbar, "Farhang Nafisi", Khayyam, Tehran, 1964] , Frontier guard [Asadi, Faras, "Loghate Faras Asadi", Eghbal, page 12] , Four elements [Nafisi, Ali Akbar, "Farhang Nafisi", Khayyam, Tehran, 1964] , Pure [Mo'in, Mohammad, "Borhan Ghate' ", Ibn Sina, Tehran, 1963] . In Sumerian, the word 'kia' or 'ki*' translates as 'Earth' (as opposed to 'an*', 'Sky' or 'Heaven').Notes
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