kaos

A brief evolution of “Mrs
Paterson”, witch mentor to
Austin Osman Spare
by David Cantu
Did a Mrs Paterson actually exist? Let us start away from Grant, but just for a moment.
The only reliable reference I find to Mrs Paterson outside of Kenneth Grant is: From
Inferno to Zos Vol. III—Michelangelo in a Teacup: Austin Osman Spare by F W Letchford.
Frank Letchford became friends with Spare in 1937. Letchford says:
Kenneth Grant has described Mrs Paterson as an elderly colonial clairvoyant who
instructed Austin in the Tarot, Ouija board and other means of occult communication.
Indeed Austin mentioned the woman in vague terms to myself; she must have died
before the Great War. Her portrait is said to appear in The Focus of Life, and in another
drawing is seen as a young girl transformed into a terrifying witch. [p 147]
So apparently she did exist, at least in Spare’s mind.
Now we move into Grant territory and a thing becomes clear. Mrs Paterson becomes
a myth to work Grant’s world around, a ghost from a mouldable past. I wish to make it
clear that I have a high regard for Grant’s world-building abilities and have found his
point of view helpful in many ways, however it will be hard to find the “truth” of Mrs
Paterson in Grant’s work, though she shows up there in profusion. Over the years Mrs
Paterson has become a link to dark Lovecraftian magick that supposedly originated
with Indians of Narragansett provenance in the USA.
Paterson was supposed to be descended from Salem witches, but all of this plays a
little too well into Kenneth Grant’s cosmogony, not that it couldn’t be true.
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