Chaos Magicks and the Theorum
I have included
Chaos Magicks here, in the form of information only. This is neither an endorsement of the
practices described below, nor by this introduction do I mean [or even wish] to condemn
them.
There is no
pantheon for Chaos Magicians. Chaos Magick is not centered around Deity and/or a
belief system. It is centered around that which the name implies; Chaos.
"I
must create my own system, or be enslav[e]d by another man's," said William Blake.
"Magick, for me, is a working technology for exploring alternate realities, breaking down
behavioral programs, coming to an understanding with Death and having a laugh," said
Grant Morrison. These are the core tenets of Chaos magick: Belief is a tool, not a
straitjacket. It is malleable. It can and should be changed at Will [sic] to effect change
on oneself and the world. Everything else - cosmology, technique, philosophy - is
negotiable.
History
Chaos magick had its inception in the late 1970s when Pete Carroll began to meld together elements of Golden Dawn ceremonial magick, Thelema, Taoism and Tibetan Buddhism in his articles for the magickal journal, The New Equinox. The inspiration for this synthesis was the work of the obscure, early twentieth-century artist and sorcerer Austin Osman Spare. Spare had developed what he called the technique of 'sentient letters'. Pete Carroll reformed the technique, and the sentient letters were recast as 'sigils'; they became the basis of a system which aimed to generate results through the application of undogmatic magickal technique.Approach
Results are what count. Try something. If it works, try it again to verify. Continue to practice the technique until you perfect it. If the technique doesn't work for you, drop it and try something else. Explore - and don't accept as truth anything you haven't experimented with yourself; you are your own laboratory. "Everything else is mysticism," according to Pete Carroll. Phil Hine is a little more elaborate: "Rather than trying to recover and maintain a tradition that links back to the past (and former glory), Chaos magick is an approach that enables the individual to use anything that s/he thinks is suitable as a temporary belief or symbol system. What matters is the results you get, not the 'authenticity' of the system used."Philosophy
Theoretically, Chaos magick is a meta-belief - beyond belief, a system without a philosophy, or a system that can contain all philosophies. Yet, there is very definitely a Chaos magick 'vibe'. It is not only a magickal practice, but also a magickal (anti-)philosophy. Just focus on the word 'Chaos'. What does it mean to you? Flux, constant change, anarchism? A fractal understanding of a mathematical universe? A discordian object of (mis-)worship? The word is important, regardless of its 'true' meaning. Its cultural baggage imparts a nihilistic, post-modern, anarchistic flavour to much Chaos magick speculation. Insures very Nietzschean stuff be goin' down: God is dead. Laugh, for we have killed him. Since life is meaningless, be the artist of your own destiny. Create your own meaning, rather than be enslaved or conditioned by anyone else's. If nothing is true, then everything is permitted.Magickal Model
There is an understanding in Chaos magick that life is magickal. It may be magickal in a nihilistic, incomprehensible way but it is still magickal, and not just subject to the laws and assumptions of Newtonian science. Chaos magick is the magick of the quantum century: where energy and matter intersect and transmute into the other.Most chaotes recognise three basis models of magick: the spirit, energy and psychological models. Recently, a number of leading-edge chaotes have begun to integrate the magickal models of other eras into a new model: the Cybernetic model. In this model, the Universe is perceived as a system of living information. Frater U.D can explain it better: "The application of the as yet evolving information model has led to the discipline I have termed Cybermagick ... . Contrary to the other models described above, Cybermagick does not rely on magickal trance to achieve its effects. Rather, the Cybermagickian activates either his own main memory banks, namely brain and spine (the Golf-club chakra, so-called because of its shape reminiscent of a golf-club) or those of the target person. The desired information is then called up and transmitted quite similarly to a copy command on an MS-DOS computer. The copy command analogy holds good insofar as the information (not having mass) is not actually 'lost' in the process (as energy would be) but rather is duplicated." (from the Chaos Matrix Website, hosted by Fenwick)
Gnosis
Yet all of the above is just words unless one experiences Gnosis: any altered state of consciousness in which one eclipses the monkey-mind, and achieves an expanded sense of self and the universe. Chaos magick is famed for encouraging the attainment of the state of Gnosis through extreme, exhibitionary methods (drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll: nothing succeeds like excess), but because of the influence of both Taoism and Tibetan Tantra on its originators, there is also a strong proclivity toward inhibitionary paths to Gnosis: sitting meditation, pranayama, etc. What is important is that you use Gnosis as more than a means of spiritual dandyism. Use the insights gained in a Gnostic state to engage in emotional engineering, or to help undermine the collective consensus in preparation for the coming of the New Aeon, or just to have more fun than you've had before. Strive for enlightenment if that's what will wet your pants. Engage fully and without regret in the ongoing, initiatory process of life.A High Priestess's Take on Chaos Magick and Its Practices
"...if you want a one-line definition with which most Chaoists would probably not disagree, then I offer the following. Chaoists usually accept the meta-belief that belief is a tool for achieving effects; it is not an end in itself."-- Peter Carroll, January, 1992
In Chaos magick, beliefs are not seen as ends in themselves, but as tools for creating desired effects. To fully realize this is to face a terrible freedom in which Nothing is True and Everything is Permitted, which is to say that everything is possible, there are no certainties, and the consequences can be ghastly. A sense of humor seems to be the only defense against the realization that one does not even have a real self.
So welcome to the Kali Yuga of the Pandaemonaeon wherein nothing is true and everything is permissable. For in these post-absolutist days it is better to build upon the shifting sands than the rock which will confound you on the day it shatters. Philosophers have become no more than the keepers of useful sarcasms, for the secret is out that there is no secret of the universe. All is Chaos and evolution is going nowhere in particular (unless you attribute ADD/ADHD to evolution, which some professionals do). It is pure chance which rules the universe and thus, and only thus, is life good. We are born accidentally into a random world where only seeming causes lead to apparent effects, and very little is predetermined, thank Chaos.
Reject then the obscenities of contrived uniformity, order and purpose. Turn and face the tidal wave of Chaos from which philosophers have been fleeing in terror for millennia. Leap in and come out surfing its crest, sporting amidst the limitless weirdness and mystery in all things, for those who reject false certainties. Thank Chaos we shall never exhaust it.
Create, destroy, enjoy, IO CHAOS!
It begins with knowing how near and how far Whatever is. Then you concentrate on the placement of objects. Take neither nourishment, nor stimulant, nor any drug. Use pain, when it comes, as a sharp wedge into the lower half.
Dance. Climb a mountain. Strip off your clothes (read civilization) and break something cherished that owns you as you own it.
Avoid recruiters, and shoo away those who want to "teach you magick". To paraphrase Austin Spare, all any teacher can do is show you your own magnificence.
Examine your obsessions. What are they, really? Fuel. Burn them up and move on. Don't let anything restrict you, least of all "groups" (the shortest path to nowhere). Every group implies hierarchy, whatever their press kits may say, and any structure is a lessening of the degree of freedom. Chaos is the greatest degree of freedom there can be, as it encompasses all potential and possibility. So Chaos Covensare nothing more than a walking contradiction. Anyone who is part of one is just a wannabe; a poser, because Chaos magick is about letting yourself GO with no inhibitions and nobody validating you and your magick. So when they tell you they're part of a Chaos Coven, smile politely and know they are nothing.
Turn your will against your fears and your insecurities. Bury yourself. Hang upside-down and sing "Hallelujah" in public. People will think you mad, but what's one more madman, and isn't madness often little more than the idiosyncracies of genius?
You *are* involved! Everything is involved, and it is really a question of what the nature of your involvement will be. Welcome!
Try everything. Be ye manic!!! We are all our own set of variables, and for each of us there are at least slightly different ways by which we can shortcut Cause and Effect. The only secrets are the ones that have to do with the ways that work for *you*, even if others say you're wrong. All that matters is effectiveness, and the only way to find these keys is to *do*. It takes time, and it takes effort, and maybe even a little bit of your own substance; think of it as an investment, if nothing more. It will, without question, pay off, regardless of path.
But you have to start *now*... because a part of the set of variables is time, and it is a very limiting factor.
Lean way back, hold your breath, and count backwards from 418.
It's begun.
"Chaos Theory" is generally concerned with making more complex physical predictions, sometimes based on a "chaos/order" measurement.
"Chaos magick" may or may not be concerned with utilizing paradigms of "chaos theory" to exert change in accordance with ones telos.
It is My opinion that "Chaos magick" may also be the latest attempt to appeal to the testosterone junkie set of the magickal community via their lust of destruction, much as other LHP (Left Hand Path) groups (Satanists & "darkly aligned" Pagans) do in other ways.
Now there may be a large uprising concerning my mention of LHP groups in association with Chaos magicks, but upon researching this trend, I must say that there are an awful lot of mentions of Hell, Satan, etc. in many of the sites and works I've read in creating this article. And, while I realize that many wrongly associate the very word, "Witch" with those darker aspects of Christianity, I must reinterate that there IS no Christian God, be it Jehova, or Satan, in the RHP (Right Hand Path) magickal groups (Wicca, Druidism, etc.).
This is not a condemnation of any religion or their doctrines, I merely need to reinterate
that there is no "Devil" in the Craft.
