[Opinion] Foundational Chaos!

[MorganBlack]

Nicely said, ShadowRogue!

I pick on him, but it's out of love. I still think Chaos Magic is still one of the best uh, meta-terriritores to set up base camp and get down to practice.

I agree in This is Chaos, Carroll seems to be softening his anti-animist stance. Younger folk who buy into one or more of the many "continuous tradition' stories don't understand have very little trad magic around when he was writing his first books in the 1970's and 80's . Not for him or anyone back then. They had two things: jack and shit. And it's a mark of sheer genius and determination that he got as far as he did. And the Grimoire Revival was many years away , and the work was yet to be done, where we all needed to empirically Big Data the fuck out of them and try to model first principles. Not that that is all done.

And a special shout out to Ivy Corvus's essay in This is Chaos, in Chapter 8. She's writes about a very fine point of practice that echos something I've been saying for years. We call it Will, call it imagination, and but I think it's also a kind of expectation. Some kind of whole-brain immersion. Like , when I rasise my arm, I not only expect it to, I know it will raise. In my gut, in my sense of how reality is constructed.

My Hougan a called me a 'materialising medium.' Which only confused me at first. Not a title I use. Just... 'magician' here. But I think the reason the spirits (thought beings, daimons, I tend to prefer) show up for me when I ask them to is becasue I expect them to. Deep down. That's it. Somehow I rewired myself away from the anti-spirit materialism quantum reality, and into one where they exist, as she suggest, or whatever. It doesn't matter. It's also not necessary for them to show up for practical sorcery, which is another huge topic.

 

[Asteriskos]

I think the latest book (This is Chaos) does indicate that Pete has softened a bit. The contributors in that book hold all sorts of differing views from Pete, including on animism and astrology (some of these contributors have even outwardly expressed their surprise that Pete even wanted them to be a part of it), so the fact that he still desired their contribution does indicate his maturity and evolution.

The Only Constant is Change Brother!

Great Book, great contributors. I've discussed that book with others off this thread, It's so good it belongs here:

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Surprising insights from all around! Rock On!

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 9:49 PM

@ShadowRouge

And yes, I did see that diagram before, but I struggle with the "Sorcery" part being more directly from animism/shamanism. Personally, I would have said that sorcery is more like chaos magic itself, in that it has no problem with drawing from any of those threads, whatever works. Sorcery could have showed up in multiple places in this diagram at the same time, blending various threads into one.

Okay, I see how you might see it like that.

To me it's fundamentally correct because I see sorcery as the most basic type of magic, concerned with down to earth, real world survival.
The shaman concerned with tribal magic to "feed the people" right up to morphing into cunning craft and modern folk magic.
I see it as concurrent with the OLD religion. For myself, I see the diagram in that respect as pretty on target it depicts the Origin of Sorcery, IMO.

 

[Frater AlNil]

Dee and Kelley? Absolutely chaos magicians. They were winging it with angelic downloads and planetary spreadsheets, half possessed and half improvising. That’s not tradition, that’s tactical madness... and their system still works.
Thelema? Early days were pure rupture. Crowley kicked the door in, rewrote the rules, and dared the divine to keep up. Who gives a fuck what some mediocre modern armchair occultists might say about the man. His shit still works, too. That’s chaos magick: not “I reject tradition,” but “I’ll gut it, stitch it to a comet, and see what screams.”
Chaos magicians aren’t just scavengers. We’re engineers. We steal, we test, we burn what doesn’t work. Odin doesn’t hand out gold stars, he hands you a rope and asks what you’ll sacrifice. If your craft isn’t evolving, it’s rotting.
Magick is dragging infinite possibility into form. Chaos magicians just do it without asking permission...and we make it bite.

ARRR MATEY ......This comment is absolute fire..

 

[MorganBlack]

Totally agreed. The Golden Dawn is closer to Chaos Magic than many know. But who cares? We are the local gods of our sub-quantum universe, in my view, and can make anything work, however we think of it

Oh, same thinking.
Another one of us 'GV guys' Rob Rider Hill, has made a sort of GD-PGM Pagan Chaos Magic training system in his Black Chap Book. Hecate and Helios are your Resident Titans there. No GV material inside. Good stuff overall. I think the community can more of these traning systems, in a variety of mythic frameworks. for folks to get going!

Too many webshops. Here:

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[ShadowRogue]

Dee and Kelley? Absolutely chaos magicians. They were winging it with angelic downloads and planetary spreadsheets, half possessed and half improvising. That’s not tradition, that’s tactical madness... and their system still works.
Thelema? Early days were pure rupture. Crowley kicked the door in, rewrote the rules, and dared the divine to keep up. Who gives a fuck what some mediocre modern armchair occultists might say about the man. His shit still works, too. That’s chaos magick: not “I reject tradition,” but “I’ll gut it, stitch it to a comet, and see what screams.”
Chaos magicians aren’t just scavengers. We’re engineers. We steal, we test, we burn what doesn’t work. Odin doesn’t hand out gold stars, he hands you a rope and asks what you’ll sacrifice. If your craft isn’t evolving, it’s rotting.
Magick is dragging infinite possibility into form. Chaos magicians just do it without asking permission...and we make it bite.

This was written by Grok.

 

[MorganBlack]

You sure, ShadowRogue? It just reads like clean prose to me. I'd hate to think solid writing gets pegged as AI. Hmmm some of the thesis - counterpoint tracks. Thoughts?

 

[ShadowRogue]

I use various AI tools quite extensively in my line of work, and the patterns and styles for certain LLMs stick out to me almost instantly now.

I mean, it's fine if someone just runs their thoughts through ChatGPT, Grok, or Gemini to refine and clean things up, so no judgment to someone who uses AI, as long as they are a real person.

I don't think it's my place to call things out in this way, though, so I apologize if I offended anyone. I also don't want to highjack such a wonderful discussion with something so unrelated, so let's just leave it there.

Whoever is moderating, please feel free to delete this comment and my last one, because I don't want to detract from this discussion, and I don't know how to delete comments.

 

[Asteriskos]

Another one of us 'GV guys' Rob Rider Hill, has made a sort of GD-PGM Pagan Chaos Magic training system in his Black Chap Book. Hecate and Helios are your Resident Titans there. No GV material inside. Good stuff overall. I think the community can more of these traning systems, in a variety of mythic frameworks. for folks to get going!

Never heard about this before, Interesting!

Post automatically merged: Today at 12:23 AM

Whoever is moderating, please feel free to delete this comment and my last one, because I don't want to detract from this discussion, and I don't know how to delete comments.

Believe me I WISH it could be done, only Skull or Yazata can do it, and it's Not Real Common. You get 5 minutes to edit your own posts Unless you're a benefactor, so watch it there, not the first time I've wanted at least a few more minutes to edit content!

Post automatically merged: Today at 12:32 AM

Dude, you're one of the Cogs in the Wheel that make this a Wonderful discussion!
It's turned out better than I ever thought it would and I started it, so I'm real glad people are getting to it, Thank You for calling it Wonderful!

Post automatically merged: Today at 1:59 AM

ARRR MATEY ......This comment is absolute fire..

And that's precisely how a great many non-chaos (so to speak) practitioners view Chaos Magick, that is to say on the cutting edge, dangerous, not shiny and cozy, feral and dark, et al. A small percentage may eventually try to investigate and understand if they dare to leave their comfort zone.
Sad but true.

Post automatically merged: 51 minutes ago

I'm one of those who didn't need any help seeing Crowley's influence on the birth of Chaos Magick, Peter Carroll or Ray Sherwin who edited the "New Equinox" for that matter. If anyone would like a bit of excellent insight this will likely be of interest!

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