IOT, Chaos Magick, and Thelema
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I've recently begun to take a serious interest in the IOT as a means for exploring a new avenue of this obscure area called magick. However in the (admittedly limited) reading I've done on the subject it seems to be a somewhat reckless mishmash of postmodern attitude toward magick with tongue-in-cheek detachment about the whole thing. While I am attracted to the idea of innovation and experimentation with magick, it seems reckless and perhaps a bit dangerous. It seems like pouring light into a vessel full of holes. With regard to Thelema, I am an active member of OTO and I greatly value Crowley's ethical philosophy and am baffled by/in awe of his mystical and magical texts and methods. While this is close to my heart something inside of me sees joining the IOT as somewhat a threat to my own personal inclinations and morality. Chaos magick seems to cheapen these things by using them like condoms in some respects.
My questions are:- Is chaos magick reckless? Do you think it is wise to pursue it?
- Are there some ways in which it contradicts thelema?
- What (if any) positive or negative experience have you had with the IOT or chaos magick?
- Is chaos magick wholly selfish or does it have a benevolent side I'm not seeing?
- Can chaos magick assist one in the attainment of K&C and/or "Moksha" "crossing the abyss" etc?
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also, is it wise to experiment with something that one does not fully understand?
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@Parzival said
"also, is it wise to experiment with something that one does not fully understand?"
Sometimes. But, of course... sometimes not.
Given your impression of Chaos Magick - the way you speak of it - I actually can't figure out why you're interested in spending any time with it. But that's your choice.
Personally, I've never regarded Chaos Magick as having anything at all to do with Thelema. There are, of course, people who identify themselves as Chaos magicians who are self-identified Thelemites, but that's beside the point of whether CM per se is specifically Thelemic.
And from the CM p.o.v., such a label seems excessively doctrinal.
Personally, I've tended to regard it as being performance art that eventually attracted a pool of posers.
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I studied the chaos and IOT materials enough to understand how the fundamentals work. As you can see from this geneology tree, the IOT claims direct descendence from The Master Therion.
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/6950/heirg.jpg
They claim to have stripped away dogma, likely introducing their own and omitting important parts along the way. They also have some wacky linkages to quantum physics, reciting Planks constant during the 'Vortex Rite', which is a modified Opening By Watchtower, and of course the siginificant focus on sigils and 'hot swapable belief systems'. I understand the goal of boiling things down to their essence, and most of the theory is sound, and it works, but is incomplete IMO.
"1. Is chaos magick reckless? Do you think it is wise to pursue it? "
It's probably as wreckless as you want it to be, as is your choice in any magickal system. As a student, its probably good to be familiar with it as is all magickal systems, but not dive into it as a primary system.
"2. Are there some ways in which it contradicts thelema?"
From what I can tell its more about getting material trinkets and influencing events on the mundane plane rather than any notions of spiritual advancement.
"3. What (if any) positive or negative experience have you had with the IOT or chaos magick?"
A few, one of the things they don't tell about, at least from what I have seen, is the magickal equilibrium. If you go around bending the light without consideration for the 'blowback' of how the universe will restore equilibrium, expect, well, chaos.
"4. Is chaos magick wholly selfish or does it have a benevolent side I'm not seeing? "
I've yet to see any mention of service to others in the CM texts.
"5. Can chaos magick assist one in the attainment of K&C and/or "Moksha" "crossing the abyss" etc?"
I don't know, whats publicly available does not seem to, but maybe inner orders of the IOT address it.
It seems highly derivative without adding a whole lot. All magick is chaos magick, because thats how this place works. I would stick with a more mature system, but of course the ultimate is to come up with your own system/rituals that works best for you, including bits from CM if applicable.
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The basic problem with chaos magick is that it is an open system, its eclecticism is not structured to a central schema like the Tree of life, and any element can be redefined with such fluidity that ultimately anything can mean anything. Without clear systems and defined symbols, control is impossible.
Math for examples works because the symbols all are clearly defined and the rules are defined.
2+2=4
But the Chaos equivolent to math would be that any of the symbols and rules have to set meaning, they can mean anything and can change at any time.
2+2=5 For large values of 2 and small values of 5
and if you stretch that logic as far as chaos demands, then you destroy all meaning whatsoever. Thus Chaos magick basically deconstructs all meaning little by little, until all forms and perceptions are stripped of meaning. Which is a rather advanced practice in Thelema, but the entire cannon of Chaos magick seems directed towards the stripping of all semantic content from the empty husks of direct perceptive forms than "swirl like dust devils".
Thus Chaos Magick it seems is calculated as an abyss invoking ritual, or perhaps technically the ritual banishment of all semantic content.
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That's just your trip. A world without semantic consistency, or direct causality being your personal greatest fear.
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read this interview on chaos magick by edred thorsson, i believe he hits the nail on the subject of chaos magick and info about it.
Chaos and Mr. E:
Don Webb Interviews Edred Thorsson
www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/edred.html -
From a personal point of view I think that learning to be "magickally spontaneous" can be important. After all, life, the Universe is magickal, and I think Chaoism can open that up for one.
For example, and this is not a specifically Chaotic idea, though it has been explored by Chaoists, I often find opportunities to change other people's consciousness simply through speech, but this is not an manipulative NLP sort of thing, to me it sort of happens spontaneously when I notice a series of psychological patterns through the person's behaviour, it's as though on some subconscious level and at the spur of the moment I know the right things to say or even what buttons to push to expand that person's consciousness. For me, every action is magickal and there are many "ordinary human" tools such as speech, attitude, role-playing etc for accomplishing magick in everyday life. These are not specifically elements of the Chaotic dogma so to speak, yet this is what a chaoist attitude has opened up for me.
Of course, that being said it's necessary to have a firm grounding in traditional and disciplined practice. We would be lost without a solid system from which to launch our spontaneity and the Chaos authors that I have read agree that it is usually necessary to adopt a specific dogma, not as a truth in itself, but as a means to an end and we must also be careful to be too spontaneous with the more powerful techniques without that traditional grounding and experience.
Here's an interview with Ramsey Dukes (Lionel Snell), who is both O.T.O as well as I.O.T and also an instructor at the Arconorium College. He discusses how chaos suited his spontaneous and somewhat "chaotic" life, while the O.T.O gave him the stability and disciple he needed for true magickal accomplishment:
www.philhine.org.uk/writings/ess_dukesint.html
Also, there's a short article in the appendix of Phil Hine's book "oven-ready chaos", available freely online, where he seems to have developed a sort of modern chaos adaptation of the Abramelin Operation. He defined his personal demons using Maslow's heirarchy, a strong break from tradition - not something I would do personally, but an interesting read that can open doors. Just search for the article called "Howling" in the appendix:
www.philhine.org.uk/writings/pdfs/orchaos.pdf
Definitely worth the read.
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Chaos Magick, as originally conceived by Carroll, Sherwin and Brewster, was never about worship of Chaos or being Chaotic.In fact, it wasn't called Chaos Magic but Results Magic. After Sherwin left the IOT it became Chaos Magic primarily because Carroll, with a PhD in Physics, and Brewster, with a PhD in Maths, wanted to apply Chaos Theory to Magic, this being the early 1980s when chaos theory was about to go public, with everyone wearing fractals on their T-Shirts.
Carroll and Brewster (and Jake Stratton-Kent) had a Thelemic background, when the Notting Hill Sorcerors (c 1971) briefly got suckered in by "Amado Crowley".The system of the IOT is a rigid teaching system that I would recommend to anyone. I left in 1993 due to disagreements with the organisation's direction in the UK and USA, but the actual people involved have long gone. Carroll and Brewster are still active, though in very different ways.
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(please forgive the long-winded intro)
Do what thou whilt shall be the whole of the law,
I find this particular discussion rather interesting, for several personal reasons. I've been studying magick-in-general for the past three years now, having been introduced to the subject through the book "raymond buckland's complete book of witchcraft". I know, I know. And for the record, I don't advise putting any objective validity into that paradigm, unless you really want to. I guess that it just wasn't my cup of tea, but I digress. Anyway, after a few years of spiritual impoverishment, distrust of the religious perspectives I was raised to believe, and two experiences with invo/evocation (which I dramaticlly mis-interpreted/ mis-understood), I chose to get involved in wicca. This choice had more to do with an inner since of desperation as opposed to actual belief in what Mr. Buckland had to say. Now, in that book, Mr. Buckland recommends that one's first year of initiation/probation be spent studying not just the wiccan paradigm of magick, but as many different schools of magick-in-general as you can stand. Long story short, after my first year of study, the only "paradigms" I learned of that I personally considered legitimate were, you guessed it, "chaos" magick, and Thelema. My interest in Thelema was sparked by an excellent book (one of my favorites, at that) which had more than alittle to say about kabbalah: "Genius" by H. Bloom. Unfortunately for me, I became frustrated with Thelema rather quickly due to what I at first percieved to be un-necesarily uber-complicated mumbo-jumbo. Due to a series of philisophic debates with a rather intelligent acquaintance at that time, I chose to pursue the Chaos paradigm. ("What is reality when everyone percieves it differently?")
Now, I grew disillusioned with "chaos" rather quickly, mostly out of a life-long and die-hard alliegence to the philosophy of R.W. Emerson, and a personal loathing towards superficiality. I very recently started taking my first steps towards Thelema as a result. However, I still do feel like most of the Thelemic material I've thus far come across in my studies is far more complicated than it could/should be. And that's when I stumbled across one of the best books on the subject of magick I've ever read.
I found out about this read on "the baptist's head" website. It's a free PDF entitled
"The Camel Rides Again: A Primer In Magick". I feel like this book, moreso than any others, illustrates that there is indeed a way in which one might be able to balance the two schools of magick being addresed here, and I also feel like this book will answer all of the questions asked by the starter of this conversation. I've asked the same questions before, and found answers there myself.
Love is the law, love under will,
K.S. -
93,
"However, I still do feel like most of the Thelemic material I've thus far come across in my studies is far more complicated than it could/should be. "
I don't think anyone finds Thelema easy at first. Crowley didn't, for example, and the Book of the Law left him baffled, suspicious and frustrated for several years.
One reason the system isn't simple is because of the scope of it. I don't know The Camel Rides Again, but there's nothing wrong with starting with Buckland - you have to start someplace, and he's quite commonsensical. But grasping the breadth and depth of Thelema takes all of us a lot of time. And I wonder whether you're finding it 'complicated' or whether it's simply more subtle than other systems? It's the subtlety that tricks us into stretching our imaginations.
93 93/93,
Edward
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Try different things. Thelema has plenty of ritual material. Keep track of what works, what does not and what effects the practices have.
I tend to like to see results shortly rather than do something for years and never have any result.