"The chaos magical view of self is that it is based on the same random capricious chaos which makes the universe exist and do what it does. The magical self has no center; it is not a unity but an assemblage of parts…"
-Peter Carroll (Liber Kaos pg. 59) "What does all this chaos have to do with me?" you ask. Who are you? What is this ‘you’ or ‘I’ you commonly think of yourself as? You may find upon investigation into the matter that you can't really point to a single defining locus in your mind/body/heart that is unquestionably ‘you’. You could easily slide past your investigative responsibility by claiming that your ‘soul’ or your ‘spirit’ is your center and that that is undeniably ‘you’. But tell me exactly what the hell is a ‘soul’ or a ‘spirit’ to begin with? For, you see, the ‘soul/spirit’ can only be defined by whatever paradigm you viewing it from and it appears to exist or not, based on one’s outlook. So define just what the hell ‘soul/spirit’ is and why you think that that is ‘you’. Can’t do it, can you? Don’t fret. It’s not so much that you don’t have a real soul but that you are going about looking for/at it in ways which confuse you.

The ‘soul/spirit’, the thing we so often think of as our central ‘self’ is really a collection of assembly points by which we base our sense of who we are. If that sounds close to multiple-personalities, you are right. However in healthy, functioning, minds, that collection of assembly points, some of them more autonomous than others, works more or less in unison…thus allowing us to feel our individual personalities the way we do. But think of your capacity to take on different roles. Think about how different aspects of your personality come out at different times. The fact that you may not like what you do under the influence of one aspect or another doesn’t change the fact that it is still really ‘you’. Upon meditation, you will find your neat fiction of being a continuous ‘self’ throughout time starting to crumble in the face of the apparent fluidity of your existence. You will discover that your idea of your ‘self’ is just the story you have edited for yourself. (Thus, if your life is boring, you know it’s really your own fault. You’re the one telling yourself its story, afterall.)

Just as your body is really an accretion of chemicals, cells, organs, systems, which all work together to create what you know of as your body, so too is your ‘soul’ an accretion of memories, cultural values, personal conjectures based on experience, worries, hopes, emotions, and patterns learned from others. (One could go further along and say that it also contains the fragments gathered from past-lives.) All of these pieces go together to give you the impression of being unitary…but being unitary does not mean being one. Just as there are different parts of your body to perform different tasks, so there are different ‘selves’ of your psyche that perform different tasks. Buddhists are the most advanced so far in having broken this idea down in psychological terms. But you will find this idea expressed in many other traditions just as profoundly…such as the old Celtic ‘three selves’ idea. Or the Hermetic idea of the ‘Angel’. The Chaos Magic approach simply allows you to make up your own mind what to call the various selves.

"…magic should attempt to undermine the decaying remnants of monotheism without offering itself as a target in the process."
-Peter Carroll (Liber Kaos pg. 72)

In terms of the underlying inspiration of human society, Chaos is on the way in and Materialism is on the way out! All Hail Discordia! The nihilism characterized by over-consumption of luxury goods in an ecology that can not support such behavior is the most flagrant symptom of the Materialist paradigm. People will demand more and more of what can not work, and to maintain this over-consumption, will be willing to see suffering, privation, and untimely death for millions of people…as the population rises and the global economy continues its wealth flight from the majority of people to a small minority. Many are trying and will continue to try and ameliorate the effects. Some are even trying to dissolve the causes. But, despite all measures that materialists take, they will fail due to the underlying greed that propels their supposed altruism. The transcendentalists, of the more fundamentalist strains, may try to stir up an apocalypse in a last ditch attempt to restore the primacy of religious government in the world. And like the materialists, the transcendentalists, whether fundamentalist Islamists, Christians, or New Agers, are willing to contemplate and allow the suffering and death of anyone they feel would not fit in with their New World, whether a Caliphate (as the militant Islamists want it), a Millennial Theocracy (as the militant Christians want it), or a world in which all the Bad People are simply disappeared (as the New Agers want it) . Hopefully those of us with a chaoist, or at least a more chaos-positive, approach to life and a magical worldview can subvert the efforts, energies, and enthusiasms of the Militant Fundamentalists and the Materialists so that any transition to something that has a chance to be, finally, better than before, can be more peaceful and productive.

The rise of Neo-Paganism in the West is a reaction to the collapse of the dominance of a monotheistic Christianity that had prevailed as the major tyranny for 1500 years. It is also a reaction to and a growth from the materialistic rationalism that gave Christianity’s dominance a death blow. If Christianity survives at all it will be as one choice in a Neo-Pagan type society that offers many spiritual choices for everyone. But if Neo-Paganism is to survive it must learn to get over itself and stop trying to prove how non-Christian it is. Neo-Paganism must learn to deal with the remaining traces of transcendentalism that it has absorbed unconsciously from Christianity and its forebears. Why? Because transcendentalism is a potentially deadening approach which can lead to a disgust and hatred for the physical world in which we live. If magical traditions are to survive, they must get past both the prevailing energy paradigm adopted in response to materialism, and the spiritual paradigm adopted in response to the old Paganism at the foundation of the Greco-Roman world. This is because it is time for magic(k) to stand on its own two feet, as its own art, craft, and science.

"Enough research tends to support one’s theories."
-a Discordian saying

The Chaos Magic idea that whatever you believe about magic tends to be confirmed can be explained thusly: If you believe and accept the Hindu Chakra paradigm, then you will experience Chakras. You will begin to perceive body energies in terms of Chakras. Likewise, if you care little for the Chakras because you are a 4th century Druid (or a modern Celtic Reconstructionist), you would possibly accept the Gaelic ‘3 Cauldron’ (trí choire) system of energy and will have experiences based on that paradigm. Personally, I see little merit in simply accepting such systems at face value. You could just as easily invent your own energy model paradigm and experience the energies through that. It is important not to confuse magic with energy. That would be like confusing a flame with the candle. In Vajrayana I learned how to shift Chakras and mix them about. This exercise was to show us the remarkable ability our mind has in manipulating energy to conform to our expectations. It is good to use magical paradigms only inasmuch as they are ready-made approaches that work wonderfully even for beginners. However, at some point you must realize that even the best magical paradigm is fabricated or created, whether individually in one lifetime, or collectively through the strands of shared tradition. Belief in the paradigm becomes simply a tool for you to achieve success, and to really experience the vibrancy of the perspectives based on that paradigm. But it is not the be all end all.

The reason I think that many people absorb whole-heartedly the poorly researched and constructed theories of the so-called experts is because they have little magical experience. Or possibly all of their experience is within someone else’s paradigm and they have not taken that leap towards freedom that is the real incentive that drives all magical people towards practice. "What?" you’re saying, "You reject the truths of Chakras? Of karma? Of spirituality?" My non-acceptance is not outright rejection. I see some use in karma, in chakras, and in aspects of spirituality. But its usefulness will not make a believer out of me. Especially when I have experienced other paradigms in just as vivid and ‘objective’ ways. It’s all up to the person. (And don’t get me started on karma right now. Most people who talk about karma, don’t know crap about it and stupidly imagine it to be some sort of cosmic balancing agency. )

Chaos magic is not about doing as you wish on the same level as a fluffbunny. Nor is it about being into ‘darker than thou’ left-handed power-tripping hocus pocus. It is about researching and practicing magical systems in concrete ways that produce results. The Chaos approach sees merit in investigating all traditions, whether right-handed, left-handed, or somewhere along the middle. It approaches magic from the idea that one needs to have results in order to show that a system or technique works. Forget all the bullshit obfuscation that armchair occultists use to explain away their lack of experience in magical ability. The Chaos approach is investigative in everything, including the deeply held yet fabricated assumptions about the existence of a ‘self’ and the ‘energies’ that go into making the self up. On one hand, you are not what you think…yet on the other hand, you are. Because your perception will be based on how you think. None of this means that you are essentially anything…but it’s obvious you are not nothing. Take care to avoid the dogmatic pitfalls of both nihilism and essentialism.

In my magical experiments I have uncovered the reality that magic can be performed independent of any motion of energy…For many rituals or operations it is only necessary to put the information of your desire out into the universe in order to get the desired-for results. "What’s that?" you say. Well…you’re non-theistic-deity-damned right! The game is up! Energy is matter, silly! And spirit (as hinted above in the paragraphs about the ‘self’) could debated to no end. If you think of spirit in terms of some gaseous type non-material substance that is a mere shadow of material things, you could be deluding yourself…though you could be onto something there. Let me unveil upon you my Eris-inspired explanation: Matter and spirit are simply the shadows of magic. Everything is an expression of Chaos. (Or as the Buddhists say, everything exists because everything else exists.) Blam! Since the mind is really not separate from the rest of the universe than it is really no stretch to see that some aspects of magic can work just by pure thought exchange. That’s my story. It’s about as realistic as any other. And it works for me surprisingly well at this stage in my life. My attitude is that magic things seem like a shadow because the prevailing thought consensus and energies we live among are focused on either matter or spirit (much like how, for so long, people ignored the necessity of the existence of Chaos)…and that is why there is so much convolution and inability to explain magic easily. Seeing matter and spirit from this magical paradigm actually collapses the false difference between matter and spirit quite nicely…and in a way that doesn’t require the reading of an entire book to understand.

If one were to approach magic from an actual magical paradigm that is free of materialistic-energy explanations and transcendentalist-spirit dogmas, you would quantum leap your magical ability from a place in which enchantment occasionally works to a life of successful results magic in such a short time that you’d fall in danger of not accepting it. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?) The Chaos approach is about doing exactly that—approaching not only magic but all of existence (which is of course magic…are you confused yet?) from the viewpoint of Chaos. Who knows how creative one’s magical endeavors or rituals would then be? I do have my own magical paradigm, which is like the sky in that it changes with life experiences. But please practice and experience magic for yourself and come up with your own.

Now, if you want to experience life from a Wiccan perspective, then you will have Wiccan experiences that will confirm that perspective. Likewise, if you want to do it from a Christian perspective, you will have Christian experiences. (Likewise, if you are an atheist and a materialist and believe that this magic-thing is a bunch of crap, than you will experience life that way.) And so on…and so forth. Either it’s all true or none of it is. Or something else entirely. Don’t hate me for saying that, I didn’t design the multiverse. I wish I knew what the fuck was going on. Nope. I don’t. And Eris wouldn’t explain it coherently, if I asked Her. So, I am happy being alive and content that there is so much to learn and to try.

"Illumination is only a light switch away."
-The White Mouse (a Discordian trickster)

"Thus, rationalists, who are all puritans, have never considered the fact that disbelief in magick is found only in puritanical societies."
-Robert A. Wilson (a alleged fiction writerr)

Anyone who would like to discuss this further can find out how to find me.

by Irreverend Hugh / Tequilarius Malignatus KSC
this web version on Bureaucracy 54th, 3172
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