Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic

One cannot shape the world without being reshaped in the process. Each gain of power requires its own sacrifice.

If “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted,” then there is no purpose or grand cosmic scheme to life beyond what we choose to impose or believe. To some this is cynicism. For the Chaos Magician, it is a breath of dizzying freedom.

Magick is a doorway through which we step into mystery, wildness, and immanence.

The world is magical; we might get a sense of this after climbing a mountain and looking down upon the landscape below, or in the quiet satisfaction at the end of one of those days when everything has gone right for us. Magic is a doorway through which we step into mystery, wildness, and immanence. We live in a world subject to extensive and seemingly, all-embracing systems of social and personal control that continually feed us the lie that we are each alone, helpless, and powerless to effect change. Magic is about change. Changing your circumstances so that you strive to live according to a developing sense of personal responsibility; that you can effect change around you if you choose; that we are not helpless cogs in some clockwork universe. All acts of personal/collective liberation are magical acts. Magic leads us into exhilaration and ecstasy; into insight and understanding; into changing ourselves and the world in which we participate. Through magic we may come to explore the possibilities of freedom.

The Deconditioning Process is one which never ends, for even as we shake ourselves loose from limiting behaviors and beliefs, so too, we tend to form new ones.

Confidence is usually described as a quality that people possess to varying degrees. We “gain” or “lack” confidence, yet it is also perceived that being “over-confident” is a negative trait, so that overall, confidence seems to be something which is finely balanced. For the present discussion, I will define confidence as a skill: the skill of being relaxed in the immediate present. I shall explain what I mean by that as follows… A person who lacks confidence in general, tends not to attempt something which lies outside his rehearsed repertoire of behaviors—he fears the possible consequences of moving into an unknown area—be they imagined, or predicated from past experience. Similarly, a person who is over-confident may attempt something and fail, as he is limited by ‘gazing’ into a future where he has already succeeded, and so his attentiveness to the immediate present is blunted. If one is relaxed within the immediate present, then one is neither projecting/anticipating future scenarios, nor is one limited by the boundaries created by previous experience and past conditioning. Here, the ability to relax refers to being aware—attentive, of the immediate present, without rigidly patterning that present as it unfolds.

Becoming a magician, implies continual change, modification of identity, entering different paradigms of belief and behavior, learning new skills, and shedding life-patterns which have outworn their usefulness. There is thus a shift from a core ‘Ego’ which is based on maintaining differences the self-other divide, to that of ‘Exo,’ the self in a continual process of dynamic engagement.

More recently, western enthusiasts of shamanism (and anti-psychiatry) have reversed this process of labeling and asserted that people as schizophrenic, psychotic or epileptic are proto-shamans. Current trends in the study of shamanism now recognise the former position to be ethnocentric—that researchers have been judging shamanic behavior by western standards.

One of the great pitfalls in magical development is the tendency for people to, when the going gets tough, withdraw themselves into a safe fantasy and count themselves kings of infinite space. Sorcery, which is concerned with the everyday world, can help us keep our feet on the ground, which is very important for those who would reach for the stars.

Chaos Magic is not about discarding all rules and restraints, but the process of discovering the most effective guidelines and disciplines which enable you to effect change in the world.

Ra-Hoor-Khuit is an Egyptian deity who is an aspect of the hawk-headed god, Horus. He is of some significance within the magical paradigm of Thelema, which has evolved out of the magical work of Aleister Crowley. Among other things, he is described as the god of “strength and silence.” He appears as a hawk, or as a hawk-headed man. Ra-Hoor Khuit is generally associated with martial prowess. He is a warrior-god, but we can gain a further insight into his nature by looking at the qualities of a hawk. A hawk is powerful, aggressive and predatory, but in a very controlled sense. It hovers high above the land, until it spots its prey, whereon it swoops in for the kill. Ra-Hoor Khuit also has solar associations, and a powerful representation of him is the ‘Aeon’ card in the Crowley-Harris Thoth deck. So, when invoking Ra-Hoor-Khuit, we are identifying with these qualities; the power, confidence and poise of the god, the perceptual acuity of the hawk, and also a sense of freedom and detachment from the object (target) of our will.

Fear is the bodily gnosis which reinforces any emotional and cognitive patterns which serve us to hold change at bay.