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Ceremonial Magick is Chaos Magick

We're The Great Old Ones Now

10:19 / 19.03.03

I was reading the LBRP thread, and someone asks where the LBRP comes from. And it occurred to me that, like much if not all of the ceremonial magick we have, it was basically cobbled together from Judeo Christian and classical sources (cabalah and sacred geometry) by a bunch of enlightenment-era mystics with a rationalist/spiritualist agenda.

In which case, broadly speaking, it's just someone else's rather elderly kludge, loooong before Carroll and TPY ever got in on the act; a sort of gothic-themed belief system, heavy on the incense and the monotheism.

Which gives it the gravitas of a couple of hundred years and the pleasure of having anticipated CM by that much, but the disadvantage that it can't claim the rather epic heritage often advanced for it.

I'm not sure what the consequences are, if any.

Oh, and LBRP? Let's not rush to remove the word 'banishing'. It doesn't hurt to retain a bit of caution, whether you believe this is all a metaphor for the collective unconscious or you think you really are summoning external entities when you work rituals. Hypnotists have a rule that there should be a third person in the room during deep hypno to protect the hypnotist in case the subject touches a well of aggression. It does happen - I knew a therapist with a pronounced scar over one eye from a chair one of her patients threw at her during a session.

20:43 / 19.03.03

The L(B)RP is definitely Old Aeon magick. But as you say, there is a lot of gravity to the depth of its meaning and usage - the entities and ideas invoked are very old and very powerful when done correctly.

As far as the word "banishing" goes, note that in the Thelemic LRP the ritual is either an invocation or a banishing depending on how the pentagram is drawn. Calling it an LBRP only serves to restrict it as a purely banishing ritual.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

20:51 / 19.03.03

Olde Aeon Chaos Magick.

22:12 / 19.03.03

I'm too busy to get into the LBRP stuff, but my ten pence worth would be that surely all so-called traditions are invented at some time? Ceremonial magick is no more and no less 'authentic' or 'chaotic' than anything else. I think possibly the thing with Chaos is the level of it's self-consciousness as an invention. Saying to a Chaoist, 'you've just totally invented a ritual invocation of the Tellytubbies off the top of your head' is a complement. Saying to a Wiccan 'you're trotting out stuff which either Gardner made up or, worse, Uncle Al made up for him' usually results in magickal warfare.

The Return Of Rothkoid

22:16 / 19.03.03

[rot]
Ye Olde Chaos Magicke!
[/rot]

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

22:29 / 19.03.03

Ye Olde Æon Chaoƒ Magicke

Nietzsch E. Coyote

22:30 / 19.03.03

I think possibly the thing with Chaos is the level of it's self-consciousness as an invention.

I agree that that is the best distinction to make.

09:28 / 20.03.03

Nick – totally. I think Crowley was a “chaos magician” (whatever that is) in the sense of being a great syntheist. I’d guess the same for Macgregor Mathers as well, but I don’t know as much about him. The difference between all this sort of stuff and modern Chaos Magick is that CM is a lot more self-conscious about the manufacture of it’s own traditions as Bill says. Traditional magick has some kind of validating principle behind it. With Mathers, it was his link with the “secret chiefs”, with some of the magicians who preceded him historically – I’m thinking about people like Agrippa and John Dee – they saw this validation as coming from the Judeo-Christian god. With Crowley he seems to have seen himself as the conduit for the forces defining a New Aeon, There’s a couple of letters in Magick without Tears where he seems rather desperate to convince himself that this is the case, and that he still has a link with the secret chiefs.

This kind of thinking affects the rituals etc. insofar as that they’re seen as “holy writ” or handed down from a secret and ancient tradition – Mathers didn’t ever present his stuff as anything other than the “secrets of the ages” as opposed to stuff cobbled together in the British Museum. I’ve seen some magickal books from the 60/70’s which present the LBRP in this way. I guess this sense of “ancient history” could be very powerful on first encountering this stuff even if you later find out that it’s false – this naivety seems more and more unlikely though bearing in mind the amount of information we’re deluged with.