Within the magical system of Austin Osman Spare, Kia is a mystical concept – a sort of universal consciousness or unity, similar to the Tao.
[1] Spare conceived of Kia as a sort of universal mind, of which individual human consciousnesses are aspects.
"[4] – and like the Tao, or the Hindu Brahman, or the Sunyata of Buddhism, Spare's conception of Kia combined pure transcendent consciousness with a voidness inherent in all things.
[7] One of the founders of chaos magic, Peter J. Carroll, elaborated a system heavily influenced by Spare in his early writings, particularly Liber Null (1978).
[2] However, somewhat confusingly, Carroll uses the term "Kia" to refer to the consciousness of the individual: "the elusive 'I' which confers self-awareness".