(also called KAOS or Current 156)
a magickal spirituality with little or no set-in-stone ritual,dogma,deities, or any other object of
faith to which the initiate is bound. The chaos magician only places
faith in himself. It is generally agreed among chaos magicians that magick is a process of the psyche, not a nebulous 'spirit' or some such thing. All older magickal paths are seen by chaos initiates as different forms of the same psychic process, which may be imitated with any and all forms of ritual and symbolism that hold a personal meaning for the magician. Gods and ceremonial equipment, if present at all, are seen as symbolic, psychological tools used as vehicles into the magician's inner potential. Once this potential is fully realized, the God of use may simply be tossed aside.
Chaos magick finds its origin partially in the 'sigil working' of Austin Osman Spare. In this form of magickal practice, the magician creates a symbol, or sigil, representing a goal or desire. Using any method he/she chooses, the magician then goes into a trance state wherein the sigil is the sole object of consciousness. after the climax of this trance state is done with, the sigil is to be "banished", or forgotten, so that the goal it represents will ingrain itself into the unconscious mind of the caster.
Some sources have it that the history of chaos magick runs further back. Such sources trace it to the anti-witchcraft hysteria of medieval Christian Europe, in which witches would have to invent new methods of magick so that they would not be caught doing obviously magickal ritual.
The first major occultist to write about these ideas calling them 'chaos magick' was Peter Carroll in his books Liber Null and Psychonaut. Far-out writer
William S. Burroughs is also known for his invocation of Arabic gods by chaotic methods. Comic artist Grant Morrisson has also written extensively on the subject.
Phil Hine's chaotic path revering Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and other gods from the Lovecraftian mythos has become widely
popular, almost to the point of becoming a traditional path in itself.
Even chaotic magick has its own organizations. The most
popular one is called the Illuminates of Thanateros. The dual nature of their god (eros,
love and life+Thanatos,
death and the will to die) brings to mind the Gnostic yin-yang-ish deity Abrasax.
Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, a splinter group led by artist, musical pioneer, cultural engineer, and "pandrogyne"
Genesis P-Orridge, places a
high emphasis on sigil
work focused on the liberation of the individual from conditioned modes of thought, as well as bringing about a world of absolutely free artistic expression. They show a strong preference for
masturbation as sigil
work, and hold both the male and
female ejaculants as sacred. The Church of the Subgenius, which deifies
Bob the used car dealer, puts out sarcastically toned texts and seems to be focused on pranks.
