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[from http://www.sfo.com/~max/max/whatis.html ] Subject: What is Chaos Magic? The words "Chaos Magic" reverberate with menace and intrigue. It's rather safe to assume that this was intentional on the part of those who originally coined the term. However, it's important to remember that when Gerald Gardener came up with his reconstruction of European Paganism in the 1950's and called it "witchcraft," I'm sure he was equally well aware of the same effect that that term would have on his contemporaries. There's nothing like a touch of the "forbidden" if you want to intrigue people. The label of "Chaos Magic" suffers from two inherent drawbacks. First, the darkside and "cyberpunk" connotations of the term tend to attract those same misanthropic types who were once attracted to the label "Satanist" for similar reasons. They see it as some kind of "Satanism Lite," as it were. This subclass of human used to use the term "witch" or "warlock" to describe themselves before the term "Chaos Magic" came into vogue, and "Chaos Magician" sounds so much cooler. Those who once might have painted upside-down pentagrams on their black leather jackets and called themselves "warlocks" have switched to Chaos Stars and are calling themselves "Chaos Magicians" instead. Oh goody. The second (and more important) drawback is that the very idea of Chaos Magic inherently defies description. It is highly personal and experimental by its nature. Even those who claim to practice it are hard-pressed to define what it is , outside of their own personal version. To try to organize it into a "system" seems an obvious contradiction. Chaos Magic is dangerous, awesome, full of potential and therefore highly compelling. It is "no-holds-barred magick". The rule is that there are no rules, besides learning what works for you and using it to accomplish your will. In the mystery and intrigue of Chaos Magic lies its power. There is no way to accurately describe Chaos Magic, any more than one can accurately describe the Tao. "That which can be described is not the Tao", as the old sage said. In a way, I suppose that the Chaos Magicians are the ultimate "secret society," though it is inherent in Chaos Magic itself, rather than needing to be enforced by oath or decree. So why is it called Chaos Magic? Well, general consensus more than anything else. But I can offer a few opinions: For one thing, there is the underlying assumption of the inter-relatedness of everything in the universe, for as Chaos Mathematics shows us, what seems random is in fact chaotic and has a higher kind of "order" that can be perceived from a great enough perspective. Chaos gives rise to reality itself, and in particular to the life force, the tendency for matter to accrue intelligence. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "chaos" is Greek in origin. Its original meaning was: "a vast gulf or chasm; the neither abyss, empty space, infinite darkness, the first state of the universe." In modern English, this has been refined to mean "the 'formless void' of primordial matter, the 'great deep' or 'abyss' out of which the cosmos or structure of the universe was evolved." The popular interpretation of the word as being a synonym for "disorder" is a recent and somewhat misleading development. Both order and disorder are themselves manifestations of the Primal Chaos. The original meaning had more in common with what the Eastern mystics call the Tao. I think this is not at all accidental. So we Chaosists call this primal connectivity "Chaos" instead of "God" or some other traditional name to remove any anthropomorphic ideas from something that is so totally un-human as to defy comprehension -- at least by intellectual means. Another reason behind the name is that many of the concepts of modern Chaos Theory can be given metaphysical interpretation. For example, it's obvious that nearly all occult systems have many factors in common. In Chaos Theory, there is something called a "strange attractor," a certain type of coherency that arises in any turbulent system. A good example in fluid dynamics is a vortex; it will arise in air currents, running water, dust storms -- anything from the Great Red Spot of Jupiter to the whirlpool in your bathtub drain. In magical terms, a strange attractor would be, say, astral projection, or energy centers aligned along the spinal column. Chaos Magicians look for these commonalties among seemingly different systems as clues to an underlying factor that can be stripped of its unnecessary symbolism and put to directly use. The intent is to reveal the practical techniques underlying the outer trappings. In cultural terms, Chaos Magic can be described as the vanguard of ceremonial magic. Unlike it's predesesors, it involves more spontaneity and eschews a rigid framework of rituals and procedures. It also explores the techniques of shamanism and sorcery, something most magical traditions tend to turn their noses up at as being "primitive". It is influenced by many modern cultural trends, such as cyberpunk, postmodernism and deconstructionism. It tries to integrate many of the current theories in science and philosophy like quantum physics, synchronicity and, of course, chaos theroy. There are influences from occult history, such as Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, Taoism, Tibetian Buddhism, many forms of native shamanism and even certain science fiction and fantasy writers, such as William Gibson and Michael Moorcock.. To quote one writer, Peter Carroll: "If you want a one-line definition with which most Chaosists would not disagree, then I offer the following: Chaosists usually accept the meta-belief that belief itself is only a tool for achieving effects; it is not an end in itself." Meta-belief is an important concept in Chaos Magic. It is the idea that belief itself is nothing more than a psychological state of mind, although it has the power to shape our own reality, and sometimes other people's reality as well. It is the means, not the end; the vehicle, not the destination. In The Theatre Of Magick, Ray Sherwin wrote: "The Chaos Magician believes nothing in the sense of having faith. He or she experiments practically to ascertain if there is any value in the postulates he or she has either originated or borrowed from elsewhere. It is a fact that we all must hold certain organic beliefs for the sake of convenience. You all believe that the chairs you are sitting in are real -- most of the time. This is not however a mental process, but rather an instinctive or organic one without which life would be impossible." This level of belief is not what meta-belief is concerned with. It concerns the level of belief that is attained by faith. The practice of meta-belief confers an awful freedom and an awful responsibility. Practicing Chaos Magic involves the temporary adoption of an obsessive belief system that allows for the possibility of magic to accomplish specific effects, and then the abandonment of that belief system upon the completion of the work. Subsequent, and even contradictory belief systems are adopted in turn as need or desire may dictate. To do this it is of paramount importance that no one particular set of beliefs is ever accepted as being ultimately true. This is summed up in the maxim, "Nothing is true, and everything is permitted." This rejection of absolutism, more than anything else, accounts for the sinister reputation of Chaos Magic in modern occultism. Nearly all previous revivals of occult philosophy, regardless of their public reputation, have been maniacal about proclaiming their "high moral standards." Gerald Gardner, in his 'revival' of Witchcraft, formulated nearly 200 moral "laws" to govern the activities of his followers, who to this day fight a never ending battle to convince the world of how benevolent they are. Even Aleister Crowley and his successors have churned out reams of prose defending the Thelemic maxim of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" as being a 'greater' system of morality. Whether it is or not is beside the point. Chaos Magic bypasses the issue entirely; there is no dogma to indoctrinate you into "good" or "wholesome" moral standards before getting the details of the technique. When you practice Chaos Magic, you must choose what is ultimately "good" or ultimately "evil". As a result, Chaos Magic is magic without limitations. Chaos Magic is not a new system, nor a rehash of older systems, nor any kind of system at all. It is an attitude. It's a different way of looking at the Art of Magic. It isn't "new", because every ancient adept who ever struck out on his or her own heretical path was, in effect, responding to the call of Chaos. But when a system grows out of any path, when holy books are written, when rituals and manners and moralities are prescribed for "the followers," it has ceased to be Chaos Magic. It is only by pushing our selves out on a limb that we encounter the Chaos Current. However, it is not the same as simply grabbing on to whatever happens to strike your fancy. Bits and pieces of various and sundry old rituals and belief structures, kludged together by a given individual and molded into a "system," albeit a personal one, is not Chaos Magic either. Locked-in belief is locked-in belief. It is far more important to be free to push the envelope than it is to be "correct" -- or even consistent. Chaos magic is not simply a reformulated mishmash of old magical traditions with trendy new labels. Chaos Magic as commonly defined today derives primarily from the work of Austin Osman Spare and Peter J. Carroll. Both rejected most of traditional magical practice as being unnecessarily complicated, culturally bigoted and generally ineffective, and fearful of the powerful but dangerous techniques of sorcery and shamanism. Both also considered traditional occult teaching to be far more concerned with imparting a system of morality than anything else, making them in actual fact religions. Spare was the first one to draw the connection between magic and (in his time) the relatively new field of psychology, freeing occult practice from the necessity of a religious world-view. Carroll, along with Sherwin, founded the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) and attempted to also integrate the concepts of Chaos Theory and Quantum Mechanics with the occult and paranormal. Due to this influence, Chaos Magic is perhaps the first kind of ceremonial magic that doesn't approach the subject as an antique art. Instead, Magic is something to be experimented with and improved upon. Virtually all other systems (they don't call them "traditions" for nothing) assume that "The Ancient Masters" already uncovered all of the secrets of magic long ago, and all we poor moderns can hope to do is recapture a glimmer of the glories of the past. This antiquarian attitude has unfortunately hamstrung the development of the Art of Magic since the fall of Rome. Chaos Magic is further distinguished from the "systems" of the past by its approach. It sees ritual magic as psychodrama, rather than worship. As such, it is quite similar to the Stanislavsky system of Method Acting. The primary goal of a Chaos Magic ritual is to bring about a mental state we call "gnosis." This application of the term is similar to the meaning used by the Tantrists, where the discursive mind is short-circuited and the magician's intention can be imprinted onto the quantum flux of the universe. Like a method actor, a Chaos Magician seeks to circumvent everyday reality and suspend disbelief. To do this s/he uses the tools of the actor: setting, costumes, props, words, sounds, and especially what Stanislavsky called emotional memory. Any powerful, transformative experience can be used to tap into the emotional memory, including sex, pain, confusion, elation, disgust and ecstasy -- especially in paradoxical combinations. Chaos Magicians use sigils (magical intentions that have been rendered into symbolic glyphs or mantras), ritual techniques from any source, especially original ones, and artifacts of any chosen culture to form a magical space, a temporary autonomous zone in which gnosis can be achieved. Gnosis is the gateway to effective magic. It is the moment of timelessness, the state of magical trance where the mind interfaces directly with the acausal interconnectivity of the universe. Powerful emotional reaction is the most accessible key to unlock the gates of gnosis. Psycho-dramatic ritual that uses emotional memory to call up the desired reactions is the hand that holds that key. A ritual is traditionally a map of consciousness, and therefore can be useful as a map of the trail one has blazed into one's own psyche. However, prescribed rituals, along with such contrivances as "books of shadows", "holy books", "publications in class A" and the like, are precisely devised to protect the operant from Chaos. In short, there is always room for new Chaos Magic methods, but none whatsoever for Chaos Magic systems. The practice of Chaos Magic can be destablizing, because it's designed to deconstruct belief. Like psychedelic drugs, it can drastically alter your reality. So it's not for the squeamish, or for those who fear what lurks in their deepest self. Such dualistic concepts as "white" or "black" magic are not applicable to Chaos Magic, at least not in the sense of being good or evil. Magic is a force, like electromagnetism, and has no inherent moral qualities. As a result, Chaos Magicians tend toward pushing the extremes, finding balance by swinging from pole to pole, rather than seeking "moderation." Peter Carroll wrote in Liber Null, "The end results of either path are likely not to be dissimilar, for the paths meet in a way that is impossible to describe. The so-called 'middle way', or path of knowledge, consisting of the mere second hand acquisition of ideas, is an excuse to do neither and leads nowhere." Being morally neutral, Chaos Magic is probably not for those who have not already come up with a well-developed code of personal ethics. In recent years, the ethical stance of the practitioners of magic has been bound up to a large extent with political preference. Most people require some sort of framework on which to hang their opinions and preferences, which makes a mix of magic and politics in a holistic system much more attractive than politics alone. The emergent magical systems of the present day, such as Thelema and Neo-Paganism, are popular precisely because they combine a socio-political belief with a magical appreciation of reality. It gives their politics a "higher purpose". Politics, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with Chaos Magic. Politics is the art of manipulating others into conforming to (or at least acknowledging the predominance of) a particular set of cultural values. Chaos Magic exposes the folly of politics by showing us that all our efforts to bring order to this dimension are foolhardy in the extreme. Attempts to organize are attempts to increase the certainty of existance. This is antiethical to Chaos Magic. Life-force is spontaneous as evolution itself is spontaneous. No political or social movement has ever followed the course laid out by its founders. It has either been altered almost beyond recognition, or disappeared. And in any case, an over-politicized social group is invariably stultified and unable to cope with the swift changes in consciousness that can occur within the group, especially when their consciousness develops in response to spiritual and magical considerations. How can we seriously expect a system that combines magic and politics to be anything but drastically unstable? Similarly, it can be said that religion and Chaos Magic are fundamentally incompatible. The one restricts, the other liberates. The one requires that intellect be twisted to accommodate a prescribed ludicrous belief system, the other adopts ludicrous belief systems of its own choice and for its own purposes -- and then destroys them. Religion -- and most magical systems are and always have been essentially religious in nature -- requires a single mind-set for all people, for all times, in all circumstances. Chaos Magic demands personal, flexible tenets of belief; in other words, meta-belief. Religion requires certain thoughts and actions to be classified as good or evil. Chaos Magic attempts to understand and embrace all aspects of existence. Therefore, Chaos Magic is not concerned with such amorphous mystical goals as finding your True Will or crossing the Abyss, at least not directly. If you wish to worship the Goddess or commune with your Holy Guardian Angel, you would do better to look elsewhere; modern Neo-Paganism offers a vast smorgasbord of various amalgamtions of religion and magic, from Wicca to Thelema, from White Light Brotherhoods to the Church of Satan. The goal of Chaos Magic is developing practical magical techniques, that create real changes according to the will of the magician. This is not limited to external physical effects, but also (and perhaps more importantly) includes operations designed to alter the psyche of the magician in profound ways -- but in ways the magician has chosen or wishes to explore, rather than in a predordained manner. The "structure" of Chaos Magic, if it can be said to even have one, is a non-structure. It is vehemently non-hierarchical. Chaos Magic is magical anarchy, but in the true sense of the word -- it is magic without leaders.With Chaos Magic, the principle is that you can experience anything you wish as you wish it; this is the Chaosists take on "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." Therefore it is up to you where and when, and with what you involve yourself. In short then, Chaos Magic is Chaos Magic. It is not a new religion, nor is it just a new magical system. It is not a "system" at all. Don't ask others to define it for you in sociological, political or religious terms. Although they may be able to construct a dogma that makes sense, it will not have anything to do with Chaos. Or as Duke Ellington put it when asked about the nature of Jazz: "If I have to explain it to you, you'll never understand it anyway!" Being Chaos, the Void has no attributes save itself. This leaves the difficulty of describing it, because it is not an "it". Chaos Magic is a non-dualistic gateway, which has confounded even those who "originated" it by being so multifarious that its development will always advance in unpredictable directions. Chaos Magic will always grow independently of any one source. No one can "teach" you Chaos Magic. To paraphrase Austin Spare, "All a teacher can ever do is show you your own magnificence." Chaos Magic is an extension beyond our reality and beyond the traditionalist systems. If one is unsure how to proceed, and has no experience in magic at all, one is sure to find within the complexity and variety of traditional paths a mix of methods that suits his or her nature. However when he or she has honed their talents on these tried and tested systems, the next step must be the Void and the necessary development of their own methodology -- which is the heart of Chaos Magic. Its description as a "system" simply underlines the trap humans fall into when needing to conceptualize. Chaos Magic has applied such concepts as postmodern deconstructionism to the study of the occult, and has achieved some remarkable insights, particularly the concept that all magical systems are sociologically derived and culturally biased. Within them all, however, lay the "strange attractors" that can be harvested from the morass of archaic symbolism and put to use by the canny magician. This new way of practicing the Art of Magic is as free as possible of all moral dogma, a way solely oriented to personal discovery. Because the practice aims to assimilate and then surpass the limited dualistic approaches to Magic which has hallmarked the traditions and shackles us to the past, it is by its nature beyond our comprehension, and beyond our ability to predict what direction it will take. But its interface is Chaos, and by popular consensus, "Chaos Magic" is its name. _________________________________________________________________ Copyright ©1996 by Joseph Max. All rights reserved. [contact the author: maxx@slip.net] _________________________________________________________________
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