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Simple Definition of Chaos Magick?
Over the weekend, I had a conversation where the topic of chaos magick came up. I was trying to give a really basic yet accurate definition of what it entails, but found that I couldn’t really do so in a useful way. The best I could really do was to say something about intentionally trying to change or adopt new beliefs with specific intentions in mind. The idea being that if you’re able to change what you believe to be possible, you’re going to open yourself up to new potential outcomes.
Plus I pulled in Grant Morrison’s idea of the hypersigil, which is sort of where you create a fiction which becomes sort of a model or magnetic center around which you can constellate a new reality. I think both of these distinctions are fairly decent, but since the person I was talking to didn’t have an occult background, they didn’t really grasp what I was talking about in the way that I’d hoped.
Anyway, I think part of it comes from the fact that I myself don’t fully understand what differentiates a chaos magickian from either a regular person, or from somebody involved in other occult traditions. If anybody wants to take a stab at giving a simple workable definition that we could use to discuss chaos magick with non-occultists, I’d be curious to hear it.
October 26th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
My understanding is that CM proceeds from the maxim “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”. The idea is that there is no such thing as truth, that all traditions, whether religious, magickal, scientific, or otherwise, are merely maps that can be used to interface with the world. This position is a reaction to the rigid formalism and hierarchies of traditional magickal groups. Instead of deferring to teacher and tradition, CM places individual subjectivity at the core of experience and practice. Adopting temporary beliefs suitable for a given task and stitching together a personal mythology are hallmarks of the Chaos approach.
CM also places a high value on results magic, again reflecting the personal nature of the practice. Magick is regarded as an extension of will enacted upon the universe to create results in accord with that will (which is not unsimilar to other western magicks). Yet, whereas traditional western magick usually posits some deified universal Will that the individual must be in accord with, CM is more concerned with the individual will as it stands alone. This highly practical approach has caused CM practitioners to often align themselves with scientific principles in order to establish the utility and repeatability of their rituals, as well as provide deeper material/mechanistic definition to the craft by adopting the theories of modern physics.
In a nutshell, Chaos Magick could be regarded as a highly personal and materialistic form of sorcery. Of course, this is only a nutshell definition and the very subjective nature of the art requires that many other definitions may apply.
October 26th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
A simply put mantra… Order out of chaos.
Or by small definition I would say…Manifesting intent in a reality where random events occur amist infinite possibility.
October 26th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
In other words, there really can’t be a single & simple definition, can there?
But so far common characteristics I see being applied:
- Highly focused on the authority of the individual over the tradition, teacher, group, etc.
- Manifesting will as reality (applies to magic in general though).
- No such thing as transcendent truth - or else it’s not stressed as important.
- Beliefs are picked up and cast off only for the duration of a specific action or ritual.
What’s the vision within chaos magick of the larger society versus the sorceror? Based on what I’ve heard, it seems that one notion of sort of “social theory” is that powerful sorcerors run governments, corporations, religions and other social institutions. These sorcerors use these institutions to enact their will into the material sphere. Is this an accurate depiction?
Is there any kind of inherent judgement within chaos magick that says some of these guys are “evil” and some are “good” - or something approximately equivalent? It sounds like officially if “everything is permitted” then there can’t be any inherent value judgements. But unofficially, within the chaos magick community, I see very strong strains of social consciousness and activism. How is that apparent dichotomy either bridged or explored thematically?
October 26th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
I actually find Wikipeia’s entry one of the better descriptions of chaos magic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic
It covers the state of gnosis as utilised by chaotes, and the particular importance placed on paradigm shifting.
After that, it’s more of either you do it, or you talk about it. The only conversations about it are going to based on theory, not experience. And like anything else, it is simply a word. The experience is where the true importance of the definition(s) arise.
October 26th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Well, as I said, I asked the question because I was trying to communicate with somebody about it who’d never and would never experience it. Certainly it’s not going to be 100% accurate when I do so, but at the same time, using that as an excuse not to communicate isn’t especially useful to me.
October 26th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
Hi, been lurkin’ here for awile. Great place you got here
. Magick, Gnostisism, Phil Dick, conspiracy….what else could a girl ask for? In another, older post you asked for suggestions for a good book on chaos magick. Have you read ‘Stealing Fire From Heaven’ by Steven Mace? I have an old partial xerox copy from back in the day, but I think its officially out now and availible on amazon,etc. along with some of his other writings which were circulated privately for some time. It is pretty much stripped down technique…imagine Book Four and Theory and Practice stripped of all agenda…the building blocks, if you will with a nod to AO Spare’s sigil work and a chaos slant in working with eregores, servitors, etc. Basically what he seems to say is ‘here’s the mechanics, you can attach them to any symbolic system and they will work’ I think that is the essence of chaos, being flexible and not being hung up on standardized ritual and thought. I have some of Peter Carroll’s books but the anarchist in me ( a large and unruly one) sort of rebels and says that the IOT stuff is too structured and why should I throw over one strain of institutionalized magick for another. I like Mace becase he’s very DIY. A+B=C, no matter if you’re doing High Magick or dancing around under the moon with a condom pasted to your head. I guess that sums it up for me, Chaos Magick is very aware of the cause and effect thing, it doesn’t really matter what system if any you use with it, certain actions have the ability to influence the patterning that manifests on the earth plane (chaos). Probably a place I would steer newbies is basic fractal theory, this doesn’t have to be dry, there are some pretty profound coffee table fractal picture books out there and sit them down in front of the latest version of fractint or whatever and let them monkey with it for awhile. These help convey the concepts of patterning, syncronicity, and infinity… Just some thoughts.
October 26th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
lvx23’s post hits the nail on the head (or the brainscape as the case may be). I would add that CM is antinomian which dictionary.com defines as:
“Opposed to or denying the fixed meaning or universal applicability of moral law”
That would entail a poststructuralist world view while lambasting the idiocy of poststructurlism. CM is unique, reading books about it does not make one a CM nor does liking authors like Peter Carrol and Phil Hine. You do it or don’t do it is what makes one a chaos magician.
A lot of the decline in the CM current is based on the catchecisms popular authors wrote about CM and instead of burning those books to ashes, a large number of people adopted those ideas without any creative initiative on their own, which put off the more sincere aspirants that made CM a radical current to begin with.
Although I dont call myself a chaos magician, I use the principals of chaos magic in all of my workings, and it’s my opinion that after a certain point of digesting occult teachings, it’s impossible not to create your own occult reality of chaos.
October 26th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
Which is why the Wikipedia description works, because it focuses on the communication of such ideas: paradigm shifting and gnosis. Both are subjective experiences, so the best way to converse with someone unfamiliar with them would be through analogy. The Usual Suspects is a easy pop culture reference to paradigm shifting, in a sense — enough that people can relate to and understand it. As for gnosis, that may be trickier and you might find some sucess in using Buddhist meditation, material such as What the [bleep] Do We Know, perhaps a book with a good description of such. A book may work best for analogy, as a film cannot really convey the abstract notions of meditative states. Perhaps some of the books mentioned by juno jones?
And I agree, LVX23 is pretty accurate there. However, from my own personal work, I use chaos magic in structuring my life. I don’t use it so much for “results-based” magics. Though, on that note, my understanding and belief in the word magic has also been mutating because of my work with chaos magic and, in a sense, I don’t particularly believe in a magic as purported by most magicians anymore. But then again… that’s the beauty of belief…
October 26th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
PS. If you didn’t already notice I actually did link originally to the Wikipedia definition…
October 26th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
That’s one of the interesting things at stake here, I think. Namely, that at least half the characteristics of chaos magick might be successfully applied to any type of magic. And the other half basically sound like a hodge-podge of cultural philosophy and media theory from the past fifty years. Is it really as simple as just saying that? And if so, why aren’t people describing it that way?
In another sense, it sounds a lot like an attempt to get at the heart of what makes magic and religion “work” without getting hung up on the “bad” aspects of the same - although the success and ultimate usefulness of that avoidance is probably debatable.
October 26th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
My bad, I am busy doing other stuff here and didn’t even notice.
October 26th, 2005 at 3:44 pm
oh, this is too easy:
Chaos Magick: A ritual system whereby one attempts to manifest one’s desires by thinking really hard about them and then trying to forget said thoughts.
Chaos Magick: A curious social organization consisting of a bunch of arrogant goth pricks and the servitors who love them.
Chaos Magick: A way to achieve enlightenment by making up meaningless shit that sounds cool.
Chaos Magick: The extension of rebellious teenage angst into a ritual framework. The “Macarena” of the Magickal Arts.
here’s one for the insiders:
Chaos Magick: The Ultimate Spare Key.
i could go on and on all day . . . .
(hahah, don’t take this so seriously)
October 26th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
I was having a conversation with a friend about the altruism of magick practitioners. I mused aloud, “If there is white magic, and beneficial uses for magic, then why isn’t there world peace? You’d think that, if magic was real and people could change things with it, the world would instantly become a better place, no?”
He answered that magic doesn’t work that way, that you just can’t cast a spell for world peace and make it work. I asked why not. Granted, my friend is not into the occult AT ALL, but he replied that there were limitations.
I then asked, “Then what’s the point of magic in the first place if you can’t affect anything?”
“I suppose you affect it for yourself,” he answered. I retorted “That’s my problem with magick practitioners– they’re fucking selfish! They gather all this power and energy, and for what? So they can have better orgasms? Or put a hex on an enemy?”
We laughed about it, but then I read the link that Fell provded, and was struck by this quote:
“The main tenet of Chaos Magick is that ‘Nothing is True and Everything is Permitted,’ a quote attributed to Hassan I Sabbah. Like Crowley’s ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,’ this phrase is often mistakenly interpreted in its most literal sense to mean ‘there is no such thing as Truth, so you can do whatever you want.’ However, ‘Nothing is True and Everything is Permitted’ is more widely interpreted to mean ‘there is no such thing as an objective truth outside of our perception; therefore, all things are true and possible.’”
I think the fact that most occultists and pagans are into magick for the hedonistic benefits is what turns me off from it. That Hassan Sabbah quote gets play from the likes of William S. Burroughs to the Surrealists, but when it comes to people I know personally, it’s their license to live without conscience.
I mean, if you want to be a hedonist, then by all means be a hedonist. Who needs magick to alter the senses and alter reality– you can do it SOBER and without rituals. What’s all this hubbub about white magic and black magic? It seems to me that every magician’s intent is black– and by that I mean self-serving and not altruistic.
October 26th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
I tend to agree for the most part. Which is why I also started asking about how chaos magickians operate around values and ethics. If nothing’s true and everything’s really permitted, then why aren’t chaos magickians out there slaughtering babies, raping and pillaging and in control of all world governments … hey, wait a minute!
Seriously though, most of the people I’ve known who are into chaos magickians are really NOT paradigm-slayers and Nietzschean Supermen who are turning the world upside down with their blatant disregard for mere mortal values. Most of them are young, (sometimes) hip and for the most part socially progressive. My question is - where are they getting that from? There seems to be nothing in chaos magick that promotes or rewards such liberal values. On the contrary, it seems to lay a sort of nihilistic/existentialist philosophy to allow you to get your rocks off and say fuck you to everybody else. Or at least that’s what the Hassan Sabbah quote says on one level.
October 26th, 2005 at 5:23 pm
This leapt out at me because I think everyone does this all the time without being conscious of it. When you think about it, a government or an economic system is just one big story that people organize their lives around. So is a corporation. So are religions.
To me the cool thing about thinking about magick is that raises this story-creation to the level of conscious awareness. If you can create a compelling enough narrative, maybe you can step into it.
October 26th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
Yeah, I really love that idea as well. And have used it many times consciously in my life. Of course, I never really considered it a form of “chaos magick”. I think you’re right though, that this concept - whatever you call it - really is at the heart of everything that we do as humans. Most everything that we do is organized around some kind of story - if only the story of what we consider ourselves to be and not be, our identity.
So is that what chaos magickians are trying to do - carve out a new identity for themselves by crafting fictions, which they then model their lives after, thus manifesting their will into reality?
October 26th, 2005 at 8:21 pm
Sounds about right. Though they might say they use many different fictions. As to your other question:
Heredity or environment, one would suspect. Maybe humans don’t like to kill people!
October 26th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Precisely my point. This shows me that while these people pride themselves on burning down belief systems, they really only do it in very marginal ways - and remain more or less well within accepted norms socially.
In other words, chaos magickians simply AREN’T causing chaos in the real world.
Should they be? Isn’t that what a lot of this implies - that your own values, drives and desires should be embraced at the expense of others? I don’t ask that with the intention of accusing. It’s more that I want to know what people really think, and how this all fits into a larger value system (or doesn’t).
Going through some of the language people use about picking up belief systems temporarily based on “what works” also sounds like it might be sort of an intellectual justification for what some people call consumerist or “buffet-style spirituality“. How is what chaos magickians are doing different from an “eclectic witch” or from a New Ager who just goes by what they like and makes sense to them? Are those people seen in a negative light by chaos magickians?
October 26th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
The rap I always seem to glean from my pagan friends is that they are making a choice: to reject traditional values instead of burning them down. I’ve also noticed that the void created thereafter needs to be filled, so they also make a choice to adopt new values. What I see as the interesting part is how the new values aren’t so different from the old ones.
A Wiccan friend of mine, when asked by me, says she doesn’t believe in God, but she DOES believe in a “higher power”… to these ears, that’s God! She would get upset about me mentioning God, until she asked me what I thought God was: I replied, “God is all the things we were not meant to find out about.” After that, she stopped thinking that I was trying to “convert” her– this was obviously a reaction to past experiences she had with fundamentalist Christians.
October 27th, 2005 at 2:42 am
This is an interesting and perhaps relevant item from one of Zac’s latest:
http://goldenbraid.blogspot.com/2005/1...-enter-dragon-its-devils-way-now.html
By that Rudolph Steiner inspired bit, doesn’t chaos magick start to sound very ahrimanic?
October 27th, 2005 at 4:21 am
Chaos magick - results focused magick that effects change through will, frequently by deconstructing schools of magick and adopting those aspects useful or workable.
The Jeet Kune Do of magick - absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add that which is specifically your own…
Chaos magick becomes not a style of magick but a delivery system… tactics, not dogma.
It becomes confusing because one of the tactics is frequently the assumption of dogmatic persona and “belief” in other schools of magick.
November 1st, 2005 at 5:51 pm
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