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Author Nicholas Hall - Chaos & Sorcery (1998)

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MorganBlack

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Making a comment and discussion thread for Book – PDF - Nicholas Hall - Chaos & Sorcery


Holy moly! I've never seen this book until now. Thank to Rowena for posting it here.

To have Peter J. Carroll hisownsef' giving the thumbs up here is kinda huge.

As an Anglo-Latino American whose been influenced by Chaos Magic , for years I've been wondering how it came to be so many European chaos magicians GET New World Sorcery.

Early 1980's to mid 1990's Chaos Magic theory can tend to be a bit self -balkanizing, and so it's not a natural leap to just start messsin' around with graveyard dirt, animal parts and other "icky" sorcerous stuff.

I've been wondering when chaos magicians all started researching Folk Catholic and African American sorcery and started getting initiated into African diaspora religions and magical practices.

This is maybe not the total origin story, but by the late 1990s, the Anglo Western Magical Revival of Hermeticism, Thelema, Gardnerian Wicca, and early chaos mechanics, had begun to feel a bit sterile.

Pete Carroll say in the preface, Hall was a "one-percenter" - a practicing sorcerer more interested in what validated itself in the occult field more interested in theory. Love the boot-on-the ground Punk DIY attitude. Much to love there.

So is this the book that sparked Jake Statton-Kent, another Englishman, to start looking over here in the New World?

We can see Hall part of a cohort that realized African Diaspora Religions like Quimbanda, Santeria, and Vodou, alongside Folk Catholic grimoire traditions and American Hoodoo, never lost the practical technology that Western high magic had largely intellectualized away into purely symbolic structures. How much was just what as going on then?
 
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