Author: Spare, Austin Osman

Limited to 900 copies.

With essays by Dr. William Wallace & Stephen Pochin. Introduction by Michael Staley.

The introduction and preliminary matter is printed on the fine press paper, Munken Pure Light Cream, and followed by a plate section of 48 pages, in full color, consisting of the reproduction of both of the Spare grimoires. To enhance the graphics, another fine press paper, Mohawk Superfine Eggshell, has been chosen.

To conclude this new book, the two illustrated essays of commentary and analysis by Wallace and Pochin, are printed on Munken Pure. Besides these flourishes, you will also find a colored frontispiece -- the 1905 Spare watercolor, 'I & Myself in Yoga', as well as the black and white endpiece, 'At the Window' -- a 1905 pen and ink drawing by Spare.

These illustrations were chosen for their relationship to the period of grimoires, and show elements that occur throughout each of them.

Neither of these grimoires has been published before, and each consists of more than twenty finely-drawn pen, ink and watercolor images, in some cases accompanied by brief captions.

Internal evidence suggests that they were intended for publication, but were never completed.

The first of these grimoires, entitled THE FOCUS OF LIFE & THE PAPYRUS OF AMEN-AOS, is dated 1905-6. Much of the lettering remains in pencil, some of it giving clues to the underlying meaning of the imagery.

An important element of this grimoire is that it features an early form of the 'exteriorisation of sensation' which Spare subsequently developed into the Sacred Alphabet which is a feature of "The Book of Pleasure".

The second, slightly later notebook is THE ARCANA OF AOS & THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF KIA-RA, dated 1906.

This is in some ways the more finished of the two notebooks, and picks up some of the imagery from the earlier notebook as well as adding some new elements.

THE FOCUS OF LIFE & THE PAPYRUS OF AMEN-AOS have no connection with, or resemblance, to the book published in 1921 also under the title, THE FOCUS OF LIFE. Indeed, it appears that Spare was much taken with this term as he also produced a series of pictures in 1912 which also bore this title.

A Fine Cloth edition in dust jacket. 156 pages. Octavo.Limited to 900 copies.