results. Things happening, goals achieved, enemies smited, sex had, and a growing skill-set in magical arts. These new kids achieved notoriety as they stripped down magic to basics that delivered results, scaring the wets who had never expected to see shit actually happening, and offending the religiously minded with the new spirit of iconoclasm, of throwing off authority and cynical ransacking of sacred traditions.
Almost accidentally, the name 'chaos magic' eventually stuck as a description of this current, with its sinister overtones overlying its glamour of rock star mathematics. Its leading lights rewrote the grimoire, and somewhere along the line they edited out the Great Work of Magic. Pete Carroll repented of his earlier recommendation to seek the Knowledge and Conversation of one's Holy Guardian Angel, he redefined the word 'gnosis' from 'the direct knowledge of metaphysical truth' to 'any deep trance state,' and instead of the Great Work of Magic he instated the minor work of self-improvement, illumination becoming confused with ego magic.
In his concern to remove the opportunity for transcendentalist fantasy from the work of magic, Pete Carroll threw the baby out with the bath water. I believe it is now time we went and fetched the baby out of the hedge. It's not done by bitching about how crap chaos magicians are and pretending to be the Next Big Thing after chaos magic, as some in a previous incarnation of occultforums used to do. It's done by generating interest in the Great Work of Magic.
At this point, any magician who is already about the Great Work of Magic may with my blessing smirk and mutter 'I told you so.' You did. This is us learning.
So we accept that the Great Work of Magic is what we as magicians are supposed to be about, in the end. It is not merely an intellectual 'illumination' nor the attainment of super magical powers nor of a gooey sense of oneness with the universe. And it is absolutely not an endorsement of any god. It is known in Buddhism as 'Enlightenment,' liberation from the illusions of duality (especially the fiction of a permanent and separate self) and the ability to live this present life to the full.
Illumination in chaos magic focussed on two primary techniques: enchantments on self and invocation. I won't say much about enchantment on self: if you don't know what I'm talking about just ask, right? The techniques of invocation owe much to the founders’ awareness of Tantra. In Tantric invocation we stretch the box of ‘self’ out of all shape and recognition by putting a god in it and identifying with that instead. After having a god stuffed inside it like a bull in your favourite tee shirt, the ‘self’ never quite regains its former shape and smallness. If we do this enough times and with a sufficiently diverse range of gods we can, so to speak, explode the illusion of self from the inside. This form of invocation work does for identity what belief-shifting eventually does for beliefs and paradigms: once you’ve done enough of them you know for sure that nothing you’ve seen ‘is the real one.’
Two notes. Firstly, for our purposes here we’ll mean by the word ‘god’ an experience of:
· that which we could explain as spirit, energy, fragment of our psyche, information matrix or something else;
· with which we can communicate as we would with a human person;
· and which we expect to possess potential beyond the potential we expect to find within our self.
Secondly, as usual in magic, intention counts. Many magicians invoke a god for a specific purpose, perhaps to enjoy a quality of that god for a bit, to obtain knowledge or ability associated with that god in support of some non-illuminatory intention, like blagging that job interview. In Tantra and in our invocation, however, we very specifically wish to challenge our illusion of self.
What can we use then? Gods of the Orange function work well: those concerned with how the gods reach down to us, rather than the other way about. Thoth, Hermes, Mercury, Ganesha, Odin, all display this function. But that said, over time explore a variety of deities to avoid obsession with one type of magic. I have seen someone go ‘orribly bonkers with a combination of long-term drug abuse and an unhealthy preoccupation with invocation of dark gods.
We can make up some suitable entity, as long as it doesn’t simply reflect ourself. We want something from outside the box, yes? The gold standard chaos magic criterion of a good invocation remains that we observe the invocant behaving out of character.
So you get the idea. Find them or make them, but invoke them.
Then again, there's the practice of invoking often that which transcends all, of which the Holy Guardian Angel is but one metaphor. Then there's insight meditation (know therapeutically as 'mindfulness'). Oh, I could go on. But won't. However, I serve notice that this is where we are going, and I invite sane and sincere discussion on it. Resources for such illumination for chaos magicians seem few and far between, but let me recommend my excellent colleagues Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford, whose website The Baptist's Head has a wealth of information. Also their books: Alan's book Advanced Magick for Beginners and their collections of Baptist's Head articles The Blood of the Saints and The Urn. My own, lesser, contributions will arise on the forthcoming relaunch of my website. I'll keep you posted.
I'll bring this unsatisfactory article to an end so we can get started. Chaos magicians (and others): do you want a non-fluffy authentic Enlightenment? If so, join in and say CHOYOFAQUE, which bit of Ouranian Barbaric means 'Doing the Great Work of Magic.'
