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Underground > Temple >

Does this shirt make me look fat?

23:04 / 13.06.04

i'd just like to thank everyone for sharing their diverse pionts of view, and magickal opinions on the last thread i started, it was a really beautiful thing to see a thread that didn't degenerate, rough start, but it really just kept getting better. i feel like we all learned alot, and we were all able to reach a consensus.

like it was the start of something.

there was one off topic statement that reared it's head throughout the thread, the burgeoning orthodoxy of chaos magick... could it be that the un-orthdox has become the new doctrine of the (un)aware orthodoxy?

could it be?!?

and if it is, is there any way to preserve the individual experience, and the non-dogmatic nature of chaos magick while working, conversing learning as groups?

so if it suits your fancy, take a look into the pros, cons and probabilities of the apparent, burgeoning orthodoxy of chaos magick in the modern magick scene

does this shirt make me look fat? or is it just my gut?

11:03 / 14.06.04

could it be that the un-orthdox has become the new doctrine of the (un)aware orthodoxy? could it be?!?

It's the modern day equivalent to the Golden Dawn, with its own set of (unacknowledged and therefore more insidious) dogmas and its own very specific and rigid framework of operation. Just look at how upset people get when you apply criticism to its basic theory and method of practice. Obviously people are doing interesting things on their own within the umbrella of chaos magic, but to my mind, the people doing the most powerful, fascinating and creative stuff are the ones who have veered so far off the acknowledged well trodden path of CM that they've developed some whole new thing of their own. They might refer to it as chaos magic, but the "chaos" bit starts to become a little irrelevant. If it's good magic, it's just magic.

At the same time, I think its fairly obvious that chaos magic, and its broad tenets, have increasingly become the dominant meme in occult discourse. This is extremely apparent on the web, but most of chaos magic's best ideas are now cropping up in some of the fluffiest of new age textbooks. This phenomena of chaos magic entering, and rapidly becoming the mainstream, seems to have led to a solidified chaos magic doctrine of sigils, servitors, egregores, godforms, paradigm swapping, ouranian barbaric, vortex rituals, etc... which I don't think was ever the point or purpose of CM. Simultaeneously, as a magical current, it hasn't really evolved that much over the course of two decades. It's blatantly no longer the fresh new rebellious thing at the cutting edge of magic. Burn it all. Challenge it. Take it apart and see what's there.

That's my take on things anyway, but you already knew that.

rising and revolving

14:32 / 14.06.04

It seems to me that chaos magic's main principles are still sound, it's just the various pieces of Dogma that have cropped up that are causing problems these days. And the reason they're causing problems, as far as I can tell, is that they effectively only exist in order to bridge people over from GD style ceremonial magic.

Which was a good thing, when most magicians were coming from a GD perspective, but seems a little pointless nowadays given most people start with chaos.

Which is to say, in a sense I think the dogma is still GD based, merely dressed up in chaos clothing. The pointers still seem to lie in the right direction...

Skeleton Camera

00:38 / 15.06.04

I didn't realize just how much of a formula chaos became when I first encountered it via the Invisibles. CM still has strength via people like Phil Hine, who has himself recently written that he's "slowing down", doing more research and exploring beyond chaos-convention. Which seems wonderfully chaotic to me.
Let's find the meaning of the word: if chaos implies a: disorder, and b: an underlying order, that's a lot to go with. You can throw out "chaos magic" altogether and still be practicing the heart of what "chaos magic" offered the world: randomness, fearlessness, experimentation. These are the inherent qualities, and each individual has to find where these resonate for him/her.

A lot of this seems redundant to me, but maybe it will open other eyes. Magic as a whole - no matter the words coming before it - is a way of participating in the universe. It is an interaction with SOMETHING out there, and I personally agree with Gypsy's many points as to that force being intensely personal and even "religious." Find what works!!! That's what it comes down to! And take "works" however it need be taken - meaning whether it grants results, whether it gets you off your ass, or whether it illuminates the cosmos. I'm gunning for all three right about now.

01:30 / 15.06.04

Yes, I would agree that chaos magick has become an orthodoxy of sort. Still, the spirit of what it was IM)O has been absorbed into and is loosening up a lot of systems. I did a book discussion at a local occult bookstore on chaos magick and Phil Hine's book "Condensed Chaos" in particular. I was impressed at how many people thought of chaos magick as a particular tradition of magick, rather than a philosophy of openness and experimentation. I would agree with the posit of chaos magick morphing into "just magick". I believe the movement to separate orthodoxy from magick is still going on. People are experimenting with tweaking reality in their own ways, and in some fashion, that was what chaos magick was all about.