| |
|
Why not? Just asking?
Short version: A lot of what constitutes "chaos magic" has seeped so far into the culture of occultism, especially in places like barbelith, that the prefix "chaos" is pretty meaningless. It tends to emphasise the "image" of chaos magic rather than the substance. An image that is so steeped in the pre-millenial zeitgeist of the mid-to-late 90s that it feels really dated and inappropriate in the very different cultural landscape of 2006.
Also, there are a lot of suspect, unexamined dogmas within chaos magic (the notion of continual paradigm shifting, reductionist approaches to sorcery, a utilitarian approach to deity, to name a few) that have received a significant amount of criticism, both on barbelith and elsewhere. I like to locate chaos magic in the past, as a body of writing and techniques to be studied, internalised and built upon through successive work, rather than a "cool" cutting edge system of magic to follow like a recipe. It is a starting point to move off from, not a destination. Most of the more interesting posters here tend to be very familiar with the main tenets of chaos magic, yet speak from their own personal experience of practicing magic. Most of the more tedious, brain-achingly annoying posters here tend to reel off chaos magic platitude after chaos magic platitude without much reference to their own experience or ideas beyond what has been read, absorbed and regurgitated.
Long version: Read the last three years of barbelith. |
|
|
