Late Nineteenth-Century Automatism and Proto-Cybernetic Communication: the case of Austin Osman Spare

by Chris Miles

Introduction

The figure I will be talking to you about today, Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956), is uniquely suited to helping us investigate the shifting conceptions of automatism in the long nineteenth-century.

An artist, writer and self-described sorcerer, Spare was initially a celebrated young addition to the London scene of the late 1890s and early 1900s, earning enthusiastic praise from George Bernard Shaw and John Singer Sargent, amongst others. However, the decidedly unusual style and subject matter of his art, as well as his prickly temperament, began to increasingly isolate him from the bohemian establishment and by the time of his death in 1956 Spare was largely forgotten and his work mostly unshown.

His reputation has been progressively growing since the early 1970s, however, as a result of a number of books written by Kenneth Grant, a friend of Spare’s later, down-and-out years and, not coincidentally, a disciple of Aleister Crowley.

Grant’s enthusiastic support of Spare’s art and writing has resulted in his work having a strong influence on modern occultism and his paintings, sketches and ephemera have recently begun to command high prices at auction.

Central to Spare’s oeuvre are the small number of books that he published during his own lifetime that outlined his own personal magical belief system. This system affords automatism a key position and consequently, Spare is one of the few accomplished artists in history to have written extensively on their own use of automatic processes. What I hope to do today is to outline the manner in which Spare’s automatism curiously synthesises the tension between the nineteenth-century spiritualist tradition and the subsequent move towards the ‘scientification‘ of the phenomena produced by that tradition, using as a unique catalyst his magical interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The Spiritualist Tradition

Within the context of Spiritualism, taken as the rough cluster of beliefs and practices that evolved from the initial performances of Maggie and Kate Fox in 1848 and the years following, there are a number of processes often identified as automatisms – automatic writing (practiced by Kate Fox herself), use of the Ouija Board or Planchette, table-tilting, automatic speech and automatic drawing. However, as has been pointed out, for instance by Daniel Cottom, Spiritualism does not represent a very clearly organised or homogenous movement: there was, from its inception, no single guiding voice, the Fox sisters apparently uninterested in providing any form of theoretical or methodological framework for their workings. Consequently, the Spiritualist movement demonstrates a wonderfully wide body of variations across matters of belief, practice and nomenclature. However, much of the early rhetoric produced by supporters of the Fox sisters and the movement that followed in their wake shares the use of the telegraph as a root metaphor. Phrases such as the “spiritual telegraph”, “telegraphic dispatches from spirits” and “celestial telegraph” were common ways of describing the table-rapping phenomenon.

Indeed, Andrew Jackson Davis, a monumental figure in the early history of American Spiritualism, framed the events in Hydesville (the Fox’s hometown) as the final successful result of repeated attempts by Benjamin Franklin (that is, the spirit of Franklin) to establish an “electrical method of telegraphing from the second sphere to the earth’s inhabitants” (Davis, 1851).

From this perspective, Spiritualism is fundamentally an automatism – the seer or medium (in whose presence the raps are manifested) is a telegraph station, a conduit for electrical messages that themselves echo the (by 1848) modish cadences of Samuel Morse’s code.

Work by R. Laurence Moore and Werner Sollors, amongst others, has demonstrated the strong connections between the growth of the physical and spiritual telegraphs. For my purposes today, what is important about this relationship is the common communication scheme that makes the metaphor so appealing.

As we can see here, the telegraph, with its encoded and decoded tappings serving clients on both ends of a transmission conduit is an obvious analogue for the Spiritualist enterprise and one that neatly transferred an acceptable marketing model to the practice. It is noteworthy, indeed, that the communicative role of the medium quickly evolved from a vaguely-defined facilitator or catalyst to that of a more clear and familiar operator. Initially, the Fox sisters’ presence brought on the rapping of tables – they themselves were not involved in any communicative action (speech, writing, etc.): people asked simple questions and then heard rappings which were interpreted as responses. However, as the crowds grew, news traveled and the opportunities for public demonstrations increased – and so there came a need for a more sophisticated and efficient, and perhaps more clearly performative, communicative turn. The initial steps taken were introduced by an acquaintance of the Foxes, Isaac Post, and consisted of a coding of the alphabet to enable the rappings to more practicably spell out words and sentences (rather than signal simply ‘yes’, ‘no’ and the lower numbers). Increasing refinements to the speed of communication in the séance resulted in an increased use of the body of the medium – the hands and the voice in particular became subsumed into the communicative network, or rather the lines of communication became internalized into the body of the medium. The planchette and prototypes of the Ouija Board enabled a far quicker processing of the alphabet but necessitated the highly significant surrender of the body to the spiritual telegraphic mechanism. This surrender was accomplished with little questioning or opposition in part due to the distinct lack of ideological framework around the Fox sisters’ early performances and also in part due to the established (if distinctly marginal) traditions of Swendonborgian seership and Mesmerism. Responding to what well might have been external suggestion, the Fox sisters and those who rapidly followed in their wake, began to surrender their bodily autonomy in order to become living Morse keys.

The production of automatic text thus became a commonplace practice amongst the many varieties of Spiritualist gatherings. For Frederic Myers, a one-time President of the Society for Psychical Research, writing at the end of the 19th century in his canonical, two-volume work entitled Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, automatism, which he divides into sensory and motor varieties, provided the strongest evidence for “something transcending sensory experience in the reserves of human faculty” (Vol. 1, p.222).

Myers’ definition of motor automatism will now serve us as a convenient jumping-off point for an examination of Austin Osman Spare’s own understanding and practice. Psychologists and physiologists had, by the time of Myers’ writing, attempted to include automatism within their own disciplinary bodies. The physiologist William Carpenter’s 1874 coining of the term “ideomotor” to cover any human behaviour that does not depend upon volition was perhaps the initial step to begin to include the variegated phenomena of the automatisms as well as facets of mesmerism and hypnosis within the medico-scientific paradigm. Late nineteenth-century psychology, and in particular the school of dynamic psychiatry which was to influence the later Surrealists so deeply, began to try and offer non-Spiritualist explanations for the quite obvious and repeatable phenomena that automatism produced: Pierre Janet’s important L’Automatisme psychologique, published in 1889, was an attempt to analyse the practices of mediums in order to both explain them using Janet’s model of the mind and then use them for therapeutic purposes.

The scientific investigation of automatism included, on its periphery, the work of those ‘believers’ in the reality of spiritual communication who wished to bring empirical rigour to the examination of psychic or spiritual practices.

Foremost amongst such figures, of course, were the members of the Society for Psychical Research. The writings of Frederick Myers, an SPR member and President, provide us with a clear example of the attempted intellectual fusion of the medical with the spiritual in an attempt to position automatism within a scientific paradigm. The following quote serves to illustrate Myers’ rhetorical hybridisation of medical language:

In the first place, then, our automatisms are independent phenomena; they are what the physician calls idiognomonic. That is to say, they are not merely symptomatic of some other affection, or incidental to some profounder change. The mere fact, for instance, that a man writes messages which he does not consciously originate will not, when taken alone, prove anything beyond this fact itself as to the writer’s condition. He may be perfectly sane, in normal health, and with nothing unusual observable about him. This characteristic –provable by actual observation and experiment –distinguishes our automatisms from various seemingly kindred phenomena.

(Myers, Vol 2. p. 87)

Myers theorized that all of the automatisms were what he called “nunciative”, or message-bearing, but that in most cases those messages originated from “within the automatist’s own mind” (p. 88). This position enabled him to align himself, at least superficially, with the less-marginalised, more scientifically-established, work of contemporary psychiatric theorists and physiologists. However, for Myers, what this really meant was that there was a part of the mind that was innately sensitive to the spiritual or transcendent world and it was that part, the subliminal, as he referred to it, which was taking control over motor movements in a way that Myers (perhaps inadvertently displaying his Spiritualist sympathies) likened to a telegraph operator. For Myers, then, automatisms were a means for the subliminal self to communicate with the supraliminal self and so make the latter aware of a large ocean of information and impressions that it would normally be deaf and blind to.

Spare’s Automatism

Austin Osman Spare’s theory of automatism can be seen as a parallel, if far more extreme, version of Myer’s attempt to frame automatism within the language of contemporary research upon the mind, drawing it away from its rather anti-intellectual roots in Spiritualism and the séance and attempting to couch it in more rational, scientific, if still quite spiritual, rhetoric.

Although Spare had little interest in the Spiritualist and séance scene he was deeply involved in the occult revival of the late 19th century: he was a member of Aleister Crowley’s Argenteum Astrum Lodge, familiar with the writings of Eliphas Levi and S. L. MacGregor-Mathers (one of the founders of The Order of The Golden Dawn) and also deeply influenced by H. P. Blavatsky’s Theosophy movement.

He was, however, first and foremost, an artist and automatic drawing for him was an important, practical element in his method as an artist.

In 1913, Spare published his third book, entitled The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy. This extraordinary work is a collection of short chapters, heavily illustrated with automatic drawings of varying complexity and finish, that impart to the reader the details of Spare’s creed – his personal mythology, his sorcery, his magic.

One of the chapters is entirely concerned with an explication of the practice of automatic drawing and this, along with a more extensive article co-authored with his friend and fellow-artist, Frederick Carter, and published in ‘Form‘ magazine in 1916, provides us with a detailed view of Spare’s theory of automatism.

Before moving on to an examination of these texts, a quick browsing of the illustrations to The Book of Pleasure will alert us to a few obvious features. Drawings which appear to be automatic in nature (they are composed of continuous, meandering lines often appearing to develop the figurative from otherwise abstract forms) are usually framed by a mixture of cryptic text, what look like letters form an unknown alphabet and stylised miniature diagrams. Furthermore, there are some illustrations which have perhaps some automatic component but in other respects are far more ‘worked out’.

We can, then, through a superficial examination of these drawings, get the general impression that for Spare automatism is an integrated part of artistic composition and design.

Turning now to Spare’s own explication of automatic drawing – Spare tells us that “automatic drawing is a vital means of expressing what is at the back of your mind (the dream-man) and is a quick and easy means to begin being courageously original – eventually it evolves itself into the coveted spontaneous expression and the safe omniscience is assured” (TBOP, p.55)

Automatic drawing, then, is used by Spare to initially provide access to the “back of the mind” which can, through an evolution of practice, lead to “spontaneous expression”. Spare’s definition of Art is drawn in similar lines, it being for him “the instinctive application (to observations or sensations) of the knowledge latent in the subconsciousness” (p.55).

Although it might appear that for Spare, the “dream-man” is being passively channelled in the practice of automatic drawing, there is in fact a significant degree of interaction between the ‘consciousness’ and the “subconsciousness”. Initially, for example, the artist must practice the easy, flowing production of “simple forms”. Spare describes this as the hand being “trained from the accustomed practice to work freely and of itself” (p.55). The aim being to “allow the hand to draw itself…with the least deliberation possible” (p.56).

Of course, a traditional Spiritualist approach to the automatic banishes any possibility of conscious deliberation. The medium surrenders themselves to an entirely external message stream and training would be fundamentally anathema. Indeed, the use of the word ‘sensitive’ to describe many practicing (and professional) mediums indicates a natural ability to serve as a conduit for the spirit realm, rather than an achieved mastery of technique.

Furthermore, Spare’s conception of the automatic process is strongly goal-orientated. So, once one has achieved the freedom to let one’s hand draw on its own then one has to consider what one wishes the hand to draw.

Spare directs his automatism through the use of what he calls his “sigil method”. Briefly, one condenses the written goal into a compact monogram which bears no visual relation to the sense of the desire. This ‘sigil’ is then concentrated upon in order to aid in the production of an oblivious or vacuous state in the conscious mind. Then the hand having been trained to draw on its own even when the conscious mind is not directing it, the automatic drawing is produced corresponding to the original desired goal.

Spare’s method is a form of two-way communication, then. The sigil contains a goal stated by the conscious mind which is then encoded and presented to the unconsciousness, the “dream-man”. The hand, trained (in an analogue to the highly trained hand of the Morse operator) to respond to the promptings of the unconscious thus expresses the visualised ‘answer’ to the conscious mind.

From the essay with Frederick Carter we may obtain an even clearer sense of the gaol-directed nature of Spare’s method:

“An ‘automatic’ scribble of twisting and interlacing lines permits the germ of ideas in the subconscious mind to express, or at least suggest itself to the consciousness. From the mass of procreative shapes, full of fallacy, a feeble embryo of ideas may be selected and trained by the artist to full growth and power. By these means may the profoundest depths of memory be drawn upon and the springs of instinct tapped”

(Form, p. 2)

Although this essay is presented within the context of an art journal rather than being extracted from Spare’s highly personal presentation of sorcery, the comparatively more svelte discourse highlights the strong sense of what I will call proto-cybernetics that informs his methodology. By proto-cybernetics what I mean is that the process Spare describes is one that can be formulated in terms of a goal-directed communication and control system that uses knowledge of results to self-correct. Although such terms belong to the early days of cybernetics, particularly the work discussed in the Macy Foundation Conferences during the 1940s and 50s, it is worthwhile noting that some of the core ideas that fed into the study of self-correcting systems where already present at the beginning of the twentieth-century in the form of theories of learning and behaviour based upon what was called “knowledge of results”. The work of the American psychologist Edward Thorndike would provide a prime example.

Let me re-frame the Sparean conception of automatism within these terms:
• Automatism is a technique that focuses on goal attainment. The artist must first establish a system which works fluidly and dynamically to respond to a particular level of control.

• The “dream-man” and conscious mind are mediated by the hand – and the eye.

• The conscious mind forms a goal and proceeds to visualise this goal in a manner that it itself cannot interpret, but the “dream-man” can.

• The “dream-man”, responding to the expression of the goal, proceeds to express it own attempts to attain this goal through the hand (which has now been uncoupled from conscious control).

• The eye observes the hand’s expression and then carries this information to the conscious mind. Spare’s language regarding the subsequent stage is important to remember now – the artist “selects” and “trains” the images – the unconscious is “tapped”: not allowed full dominance but rather actively nurtured. The artist, therefore, is responsible for using, adapting, “training” the flow of images from the “dream-man”-controlled hand.

Clearly, a delicate system is being articulated here, wherein the conscious artist, at certain points, steers the hand which otherwise is controlled by the unconsciousness. Indeed, what Spare would appear to be describing is a negative feedback loop designed to control for a particular goal and which needs to communicate at two different levels, the conscious and the unconscious.

When one considers the exact flow of communication and control in the system that Spare describes a number of features become evident. Although the unconsciousness is the initial source for the drawing, there is conscious judgement at play – at some point, when the artist’s eye notices an artistic opportunity, the hand is once more taken under conscious control. There is, it would therefore seem, an actually quite limited role for the unconsciousness – it provides the germ of an idea, the concentrated essence of something that the artist may immediately develop into something more designed or composed.

However, for Spare, the unconsciousness is not just producing random output for the conscious mind to elaborate upon, but rather unfettered, unmodified apprehension of what he called the “storehouse of memories” (p.47). Spare describes this in the following way:

“Know the sub-consciousness to be an epitome of all experience and wisdom, past incarnations as men, animals, birds, vegetable life, etc., etc. everything that exists, has and ever will exist. Each being a stratum in the order of evolution. Naturally, then, the lower we probe into these strata, the earlier will be the forms of life we arrive at; the last is the Almighty Simplicity.

(TBOP, p.47)

The admixture of terminology here from Blavatskian Theosophy and Darwinian evolutionary theory reflects the highly syncretic nature of Spare’s conception of the “storehouse of memory”. Centrally, the information and experience he alludes to are entirely internal to the artist yet they are, Spare contends, real “existences” contained within us. Spare uses, indeed, the word “Karmas” to describe particularly the earlier existences that an artist might wish to experience, such as the incarnation of a bird or bat. And yet, at the same time as he uses a term from such an obviously Orientalist-mystical background he is also invoking the empirical scientific aura associated with Darwin’s legacy. So, we read:
“The law of Evolution is retrogression of function governing progression of attainment, i.e. the most wonderful our attainments, the lower in the scale of life the function that governs them. Our knowledge of flight is determined by that desire causing the activity of our bird Karmas” (p. 47)
So, in conclusion, if automatisms were seen by Spiritualists as message streams from the dead, and if psychiatry subsumed those messages into the individual, then Spare fuses the two perspectives with a pseudo-Darwinian theory of evolutionary history being contained within the individual unconsciousness. In this sense, the ‘dead’ that Spare is in contact with are dead evolutionary links, ‘atavisms’ from our pre-history that express themselves through the artist’s surrendered hand – in a cybernetically-controlled evolutionary telegraph.

Copyright © Chris Miles, 2007
Reproduced with kind permission

Faculty of Communication and Media Studies,
Eastern Mediterranean University,
Gazi MaÄŸusa,
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

Note: This paper was delivered as part of the ‘Automatic Creativity’ panel at the ‘Minds Bodies Machines” conference held at Birkbeck College, London, on 6th and 7th of July, 2007. I have dispensed with footnoting the paper and instead have provided a bibliography of works cited at the end of the piece.

Bibliography
Cottom, Daniel. “On the Dignity of Tables”. Critical Inquiry, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Summer 1988): 765-783.

Davis, Andrew Jackson. Memoranda of Persons, Places, and Events; Embracing Authentic Facts, Visions, Impressions, Discoveries, in Magnetism, Clairvoyance, Spiritualism. Also Quotations from the Opposition. Boston: White, 1868.

Janet, Pierre. L’Automatisme psychologique. Paris, 1930.

Moore, R. Laurence. “Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of the Spirit Rappings,” American Quarterly, Vol. 24 (1972): 486-494.

Myers, Frederic. W.H. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Volume 1. New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Myers, Frederic. W.H. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Volume 2. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903.

Sollers, Werner. “Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s Celestial Telegraph, or Indian Blessings to Gas-Lit American Drawing Rooms”. American Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 5 (Winter 1983): 459-480.

Spare, Austin Osman. The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy. London: published privately by Spare, 1913.

Spare, Austin Osman & Carter, Frederick. “Automatic Drawing”. Form, Vol. 1, No. 1 (April 1916).

Thorndike, Edward. Human Learning. New York: The Century Company, 1931.

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