some thoughts on chaos magic

Post Reply
luminousraven
Initiated
Initiated
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2014 4:43 pm
Location: michigan usa

some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by luminousraven »

I know its natural that the human mind has to organize things, that's our nature to find and make patterns, and maybe it's just me, but ... chaos magic? is it really supposed to be this dogmatic and system-oriented? Chaos is Chaos. To me it's anti-system and anti-structure or methodology. I am not complaining, I realize labels are just words to hang one's hat on and not the hat itself.
I do find this whole sigil thing a bit disturbing, tho- I am sure the methods being described work, but these are not sigils.

User avatar
Desecrated
Benefactor
Benefactor
Posts: 3223
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:50 pm
Location: The north

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by Desecrated »

luminousraven wrote:I know its natural that the human mind has to organize things, that's our nature to find and make patterns, and maybe it's just me, but ... chaos magic? is it really supposed to be this dogmatic and system-oriented? Chaos is Chaos. To me it's anti-system and anti-structure or methodology. I am not complaining, I realize labels are just words to hang one's hat on and not the hat itself.
I do find this whole sigil thing a bit disturbing, tho- I am sure the methods being described work, but these are not sigils.
It's not dogma, it's just a suggested framework.
You don't like that part, don't use it. You like this part, then use that.

If you want something even more chaotic, make it so. Do the LBRP backwards covered in balloons or remove all of that and dance naked in the woods singing hallelujah instead.

Ramscha
Magus
Magus
Posts: 1177
Joined: Wed Jun 19, 2013 7:24 pm

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by Ramscha »

Desecrated wrote:
luminousraven wrote:I know its natural that the human mind has to organize things, that's our nature to find and make patterns, and maybe it's just me, but ... chaos magic? is it really supposed to be this dogmatic and system-oriented? Chaos is Chaos. To me it's anti-system and anti-structure or methodology. I am not complaining, I realize labels are just words to hang one's hat on and not the hat itself.
I do find this whole sigil thing a bit disturbing, tho- I am sure the methods being described work, but these are not sigils.
It's not dogma, it's just a suggested framework.
You don't like that part, don't use it. You like this part, then use that.

If you want something even more chaotic, make it so. Do the LBRP backwards covered in balloons or remove all of that and dance naked in the woods singing hallelujah instead.
You took the words out of my mouth [crazy]

Of course there are dogmas put up by people claiming it is chaos magic. It is the same in every system. If you don't like it, then don't use the stuff, there are myriads of other ways to choose from. And if you still don't like the given pictures, take your colours and draw your own one [yay]
bye bye

luminousraven
Initiated
Initiated
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2014 4:43 pm
Location: michigan usa

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by luminousraven »

I would never, ever criticize someone else's path and if it works, all the better. I am probably quibbling over terminology and I don't mean to do that. I am not in any way finding fault.
My definition of chaos magic begins with the concept that reality is infinite- that everything that is possible (or even impossible) does exist absolutely and literally and this totality is 'chaos.' The human mind organizes its perceptions or experiences into a seemingly rigid, tight and dogmatic reality, shutting out all other possibilities but this is our reality is only because that is all the human mind allows itself to experience. The other 'stuff' is there but its like the jungle outside of the tended garden walls.
Chaos magic, then, is a process of dipping into the totality of 'chaos'/everything to modify that perceived reality by picking and choosing what one will allow oneself to perceive.
Obviously by this definition all chaos magic however defined is acceptable (and who am I to say what is or is not acceptable anyway?). I would just personally prefer to work more directly and obviously with the chaos beyond perception to effect the changes and not use systems which in and of themselves are not based on the theory of Chaos as All.
Tho I suppose, again, by definition any magic is 'chaos' magic if it involves changing one's presently perceived reality into other possibilities which already exist beyond the boundaries of common existence.
I have no real complaints, here, just some remarks.

User avatar
Desecrated
Benefactor
Benefactor
Posts: 3223
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:50 pm
Location: The north

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by Desecrated »

luminousraven wrote:I would never, ever criticize someone else's path and if it works, all the better. I am probably quibbling over terminology and I don't mean to do that. I am not in any way finding fault.
My definition of chaos magic begins with the concept that reality is infinite- that everything that is possible (or even impossible) does exist absolutely and literally and this totality is 'chaos.' The human mind organizes its perceptions or experiences into a seemingly rigid, tight and dogmatic reality, shutting out all other possibilities but this is our reality is only because that is all the human mind allows itself to experience. The other 'stuff' is there but its like the jungle outside of the tended garden walls.
Chaos magic, then, is a process of dipping into the totality of 'chaos'/everything to modify that perceived reality by picking and choosing what one will allow oneself to perceive.
Obviously by this definition all chaos magic however defined is acceptable (and who am I to say what is or is not acceptable anyway?). I would just personally prefer to work more directly and obviously with the chaos beyond perception to effect the changes and not use systems which in and of themselves are not based on the theory of Chaos as All.
Tho I suppose, again, by definition any magic is 'chaos' magic if it involves changing one's presently perceived reality into other possibilities which already exist beyond the boundaries of common existence.
I have no real complaints, here, just some remarks.
A lot of that comes from trying to explain something fairly complex in a simple way.
If you wrote a book about chaos magick in complete chaos with no structure; no-one would get it. It would be pointless.

So you simplify it, you present the idea a bit more square and leave it up to the student to straighten it out, or in this case, twist it into something more complex.

Chaos magick is not for beginners, it demands a certain amount of maturity and self-reliance.
You have to have enough magical experience to fill in the blanks sometimes.

User avatar
manofsands
Adept
Adept
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2012 12:50 am
Location: The Ancient Mountains of North Carolina, USA

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by manofsands »

I think the label Chaos magic is ill fitting. Chaos is at the opposite pole to Order. What I've read of it, the users want lack of order, not it's opposite. And it's not even lack of order, its lack of established order, dogma. Chaos magic is all about taking bits and pieces of what you like and what works for you and organizing it into your own personal system. But somehow Quilt Magic and Patchwork Magic didn't sound as sexy.
YOU ARE
where your
ATTENTION IS

there is no need to push the river... it will flow on its own

luminousraven
Initiated
Initiated
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2014 4:43 pm
Location: michigan usa

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by luminousraven »

yes, this is it exactly! the name does not fit what many have been using it to describe. Tho again I am not criticising what is called chaos magic. Among other things, I was hoping to stir up a discussion of what chaos magic really is (or what people mean by it, which is the same thing). And I would like to suggest that a real magical system based upon the concept of chaos is not impossible, and might be interesting....

User avatar
manofsands
Adept
Adept
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2012 12:50 am
Location: The Ancient Mountains of North Carolina, USA

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by manofsands »

I think there is a Chaos Magick of that sort already. Its what the Muggle does everyday. We all use magic, just what we call magic is differentiated by Intent and Will, neither of which is very synergetic with Chaos. All magic I've read on required focus. True Chaos magic would, by its very nature, be ineffectual, I would think.
YOU ARE
where your
ATTENTION IS

there is no need to push the river... it will flow on its own

User avatar
Desecrated
Benefactor
Benefactor
Posts: 3223
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:50 pm
Location: The north

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by Desecrated »

manofsands wrote:I think the label Chaos magic is ill fitting. Chaos is at the opposite pole to Order. What I've read of it, the users want lack of order, not it's opposite. And it's not even lack of order, its lack of established order, dogma. Chaos magic is all about taking bits and pieces of what you like and what works for you and organizing it into your own personal system. But somehow Quilt Magic and Patchwork Magic didn't sound as sexy.
It's also about being free to invent stuff for yourself and not necessarily follow a rigid program.
In golden dawn you always have to do this before you can do that, and everything has an order. The kabbalah follows a pattern and so on. The middle pillar ritual after the LBRP and the bla bla bla.

Sometimes you just want to arrange your alter in alphabetical order, fuck the elements and hex someone.

User avatar
manofsands
Adept
Adept
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2012 12:50 am
Location: The Ancient Mountains of North Carolina, USA

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by manofsands »

Tru Dat
YOU ARE
where your
ATTENTION IS

there is no need to push the river... it will flow on its own

User avatar
DeclareInsane
Initiated
Initiated
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2014 10:08 pm

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by DeclareInsane »

It's really an understanding of how magick all works utilizing different frameworks and models. By understanding how it works we are able to explore more deeply the entity hiding behind the curtains which answer to the name of......

Chaos magick is the asshole sitting in the back of religious studies class who keeps asking blasphemous questions because the paradigm doesn't fit well together. All other magick systems are the rest of the class trying to shush saying when he speak no one questions as he'll strike you down. Chaos Magick tears into the fabric of magick and rips it apart limb by limb, holds it's beating heart and then sticks it with electrodes to see what happens. By doing this Chaos magickians become powerful resourceful magickians as the boundaries of self and reality has dissolved into a rotting decaying lifeless corpse. They stare in fascination to see what will be grow from the death. [clown]
Suspend all your disbelieve as well as all your beliefs.

User avatar
manofsands
Adept
Adept
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2012 12:50 am
Location: The Ancient Mountains of North Carolina, USA

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by manofsands »

.


. . [eek]
YOU ARE
where your
ATTENTION IS

there is no need to push the river... it will flow on its own

User avatar
RoseRed
Magus
Magus
Posts: 1658
Joined: Sun Jul 07, 2013 2:40 pm

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by RoseRed »

Sometimes you just want to arrange your alter in alphabetical order, fuck the elements and hex someone.
That sounds an awful lot like witchcraft.
When my wings get tired I grab my broom.

User avatar
Eremita
Adept
Adept
Posts: 183
Joined: Thu Jan 30, 2014 6:37 am

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by Eremita »

manofsands wrote:I think the label Chaos magic is ill fitting. Chaos is at the opposite pole to Order. What I've read of it, the users want lack of order, not it's opposite. And it's not even lack of order, its lack of established order, dogma. Chaos magic is all about taking bits and pieces of what you like and what works for you and organizing it into your own personal system. But somehow Quilt Magic and Patchwork Magic didn't sound as sexy.
Hey there ManofSands :)

I think the title Chaos Magic was taken as a sort of nod to chaos theory in science - something along the lines of: even though every effect has a definite cause (or rather, causes) and thus we have the comfortable illusion of order - ultimately the number of causes for any one particular effect is practically infinite, stretching right back to the dawn of time, and altering any one of these multitude of causes completely changes or nullifies the effect.

For example, you might pour a glass of water. You do this because you're thirsty. Your thirst is the cause of this effect. However, your thirst was in the first place caused by you not having drank enough water in the preceding hours, which in turn was caused by being too busy from working too hard, which was caused by having a need for cash, which was caused by spending too much money on the weekend, which was caused by your friend calling you and inviting you to a party, etc. etc. All of these events were ultimately the result of your parents meeting one day and yada yada yada running right back to the Big Bang. A change in any one of these preceding events - say, your father had the flu and decided not to go out on the night he was to meet your mother - would completely change the whole course of events.

Therefore, the universe is completely unpredictable and all systems and paradigms based on ideas of objective reality are doomed to failure because the sheer infinitude of variables that allow things to happen are too vast to account for.

Er herm.

I believe Peter Carroll used some sort of reasoning vaguely along these lines to justify how an action as seemingly random and non-connected as doodling strange symbols on a piece of paper could actually (magically) bring about tangible effects in the material universe. A butterfly flaps its wings in South America and creates a hurricane in the Pacific.

But I may be wrong.

User avatar
manofsands
Adept
Adept
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2012 12:50 am
Location: The Ancient Mountains of North Carolina, USA

Re: some thoughts on chaos magic

Post by manofsands »

Eremita wrote:
manofsands wrote:I think the label Chaos magic is ill fitting. Chaos is at the opposite pole to Order. What I've read of it, the users want lack of order, not it's opposite. And it's not even lack of order, its lack of established order, dogma. Chaos magic is all about taking bits and pieces of what you like and what works for you and organizing it into your own personal system. But somehow Quilt Magic and Patchwork Magic didn't sound as sexy.
Hey there ManofSands :)

I think the title Chaos Magic was taken as a sort of nod to chaos theory in science - something along the lines of: even though every effect has a definite cause (or rather, causes) and thus we have the comfortable illusion of order - ultimately the number of causes for any one particular effect is practically infinite, stretching right back to the dawn of time, and altering any one of these multitude of causes completely changes or nullifies the effect.
I understand what you're saying about Chaos. Often on the discussion of Chaos I just describe it as Infinite Order... where as you pointed out, the variables are so vast that things appear random. Chaotic. But there is order in there. I'm not sure I believe anything is completely random. And against what people may put up as an example of actual randomness,... (putting up my blast shield)... I'm not even sure I believe in actual freewill... I understand how ridiculous that sounds... but I know the thought rests on a shelf in the back of my brain.

For the sake of discussion I describe Order and Chaos as opposite poles, but I think it's less an opposite pole and more a gradient that starts at the first cause and spreads out infinitely into the horizon (kind of how you described it). I think human choice... sentient choice is at the furthest point of that gradient.

I think I saw a Ted Talk about chaos... or entropy, where they said things break down, or more properly, become more complex, and at each stage order comes in as a frame work to support it (not sure if I'm explaining that properly). The point was that things get more diverse, not necessarily more chaotic, but more complex. Order supporting the diversification. As a thought experiment (I personally use these not as statements of belief, but as a way to explore ideas) we could imagine the purpose of the universe is to create from the ultimate order (the point before the Big Bang), the closest thing to actual randomness (freewill). Where chaos is more of a... momentum to diversify. The ultimate order, impregnated with chaos = creation, ongoing complexity, evolution.
Eremita wrote:Therefore, the universe is completely unpredictable and all systems and paradigms based on ideas of objective reality are doomed to failure because the sheer infinitude of variables that allow things to happen are too vast to account for.
I don't believe the point of "all systems and paradigms based on ideas of objective reality" are trying to perfectly control or predict, but to work with what they've got, with the little we know. I think the error comes if one assumes we can perfectly predict or control anything. That's the point of the saying "a wise man knows that he does not know". It's not that the wise man is ignorant, but that he/she always keeps in mind that there are always variables out there that one may not take into account or understand... and it is wise to keep things free form, open to change. So I don't think they are doomed to failure unless the system thinks it can perfectly control and predict everything. It must always keep an opening for the unknown variable.

Back to the original topic, I still think the label 'Chaos Magick' is ill fitting (from the way I personally define the word). To me chaos is 'the momentum to diversify'. Uh,.... After all that being said [rolleyes] , maybe I'm confusing my definitions (complexity and chaos). Actually chaos is more 'the momentum to confuse or contort'. Even so, it is still an ill fitting title. I think there could be a magick system which does that, but I don't think it describes what most people call Chaos Magick at the moment.

'Chaos Magick' is more about personalizing the symbolism to where it resonates with ones own energies, beliefs and preference of action. Maybe it would be better labeled 'Freeform Magick'.
YOU ARE
where your
ATTENTION IS

there is no need to push the river... it will flow on its own

Post Reply

Return to “Chaos Magick”