MENTAL HEALTH HAZARD
Absorption of the following without the necessary Levity can result in the sudden onset of madness.
which may or may not exist.
It is immaterial whether they exist or not.
By doing certain things certain results follow;
students are most earnestly warned
against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity
to any of them."
Aleister Crowley, Liber O
We do not treat Chaos Magic as a paradigm. Chaos magicians draw freely from any of the several paradigms currently available, such as:
1) Spirit models,. According to these, there ‘are’ spirits, gods etc to whom we appeal, whom we command, or with whom we work.
2) Energy models, According to these, magic works by manipulating the power, the Force (hi Obi-Wan) which penetrates the cosmos.
3) Psychological models. According to these, we seek changes of consciousness using subconscious resources, resulting in differences of our perception of the world,
4) Information models. According to these, we manipulate information rather than energy, using certain implications of quantum theory.
The meta-model we use considers our beliefs as things we own rather than as things that happen to us. Chaos magicians like to quote the slogan attributed to Hassan-I-Sabbah, ‘Nothing is true, everything is permissible.’ Therefore we can choose our beliefs, reject them or alter them, once we have mechanisms for doing so. The primary mechanism for belief change Chaos magicians call ‘gnosis’.
Techniques of gnosis involve bringing the magician to a suggestible state of mind wherein whatever belief one implants at that time becomes the default belief. I prepare a sigil for ‘a new partner’ (favourite topic for magicians). The sigil represents the belief that I have a new partner. I enter a gnostic state and concentrate on the sigil. Afterwards (and let’s get real here: it doesn’t always work out for me) I duly acquire a new partner.
Okay for the plain vanilla. Now let’s say I wish to use a Spirit model, with which I might have an affinity. I get interested in the goddess Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love. I immerse myself in her cult, enter gnosis to meditate on her, etc. At some point I ask her, as her worshipper, to bring me a new partner.
From here on I have limitless choices. I may choose a model for which I have no affinity and which will stretch my abilities. I may choose to mix them. My first efforts may fail, and I may wish to try variations until it works. (I may instead try to divine any reasons for my failure. Feedback: the breakfast of champions).
So Chaos magicians put great emphasis on results (see the Sorcery page), leading to a tendency to reduce out inessentials, following Aleister Crowley, who coined the phrase ‘the aims of religion, the methods of science’. The primary features culled from experimental method include:
1) Documentation. As the astronomers say, ‘if you didn’t write it down it didn’t happen.’ Documenting your activities provides a safeguard against self-deception.
2) Consistency. Could you do it again?
3) Explanatory power. Crowley himself thought it important that his Thelema current comprehensively embrace all magical theories. However, in our postmodern age where ‘nothing is true, everything is permissible’, we consider explanations handy but expendable beliefs. And here we part company with science. See also my Death of Reason page.
A postmodern selection of beliefs appears random. Chaos magicians, appreciating the randomness involved in chaos theory, adopted the word to name the movement. Having ransacked various magical models for input, they dredged chaos theory, quantum physics, computing and other scientific fields, even science fiction and fantasy. And we continue to do so.
We seem to have arrived at the beginning.
