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Spiritual Trauma and Chaos Magick

02:48 / 09.03.05

This is a personal dilemma, but after ruminating on it I've decided to put it up here for discussion.

To begin, from what I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong!) is that one of the foundations of chaos magick is taking one's personal spiritual apparatus--that is, their personal experiences, beliefs, ideas of the spiritual-- and using it as a guide to explore and experiment with established (or not so established)magickal practices.

However, what if the spiritual apparatus is severely damaged? What if one's innate and personal understanding of the spiritual has, in one's own mind, a negative connotation? In my case,as an example, this negativity was caused by spending my formative years trapped in a cult. Is chaos magick not an option then? Or is it a potentially helpful one?

04:15 / 09.03.05

I'm by far not the best source around here, but my opinion is chaos magick would be a great idea. To me, chaos magick is all about throwing off old, unwanted, unneeded views about magick/life/reality/the occasional trout. Get rid of the negative views you've picked up and replace them with something new and shiny.

08:45 / 09.03.05

Actually, I think you'd find lots of people in all the various "denominations" of belief that make up the pagan/ occult scene are reacting/rebelling against/exploring their earlier religous conditioning, trying to work out a new approach that works with them. Chaos Magick doesn't have exclusive rights on this (and IMO has it's own dogmas and failings). What I'm trying to say is if you do start to investigate "spirituality" in whatever way, it should be about finding what works for you, and thinking for yourself. Also, you'll probably find lots of other people "on the path" who've had similar formative experiences to yourself.

13:20 / 09.03.05

Actually, I think Chaos Magick would be perfect in this situation. The whole idea of Chaos is “to believe nothing” and take your spiritual journey into your own hands. Chaos is also extremely good at getting rid of old programming (and you don’t have to’ve been in a cult to have bad programming) and write your own. So you say your past experience has been a negative one, Chaos is probably the best tool in helping you build new, more positive experiences… on your own.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

18:55 / 09.03.05

heal dem spiritual wounds! now's the time.

Chaos combines two (for the sake of the taoist voice) energies: turbulence and flow. Think of a fast-flowing stream as it comes upon rocks. Or cigarette smoke trailing upwards from an ashtray. flow and turbulence.

turbulence helps to shake up the old, entrenched, stagnant, neglected, whereas flow facilitates progression.

Magic, in my humble estimation, is all about the stories you hold near and dear. Choose one that makes you feel good (not necessarily happy) and create your own pantheon.

Sounds to me like you're on a healing journey, and it's helpful to remember that pain and discomfort is not only an indication that there's a problem that requires attention, it's also a sign that healing progresses.

Hope all passes well.
take care
pablo

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:07 / 11.03.05

I can well imagine that CM could be a very positive path for someone recovering from spiritual abuse. Because it is very abstracted, a lot of the concepts and practices that might come loaded with bad associations for a spiritual abuse surviour may be absent. There's also a great degree of irreverence, also potentially a positive factor ("maaaad as a spoon, me!" bores aside).

CM was my first stop when I came out of a year-long shutdown some time ago. I found I needed something very simple and (as it appeared to me then) lacking in traditional dogma after a number of bad experiences which I won't bore you with here. It's made a good base from which to proceed with my magickal life.

Charlie's Horse

06:11 / 16.03.05

Hey, Dusky! I hope the recovery process is moving along - and congrats on getting to the recovery stage, for that matter. I know some folks who are a long ways away from that...

Anyway, I had a question for you about what you originally posted. You ask if chaos magic an option for recovery after spiritual abuse - I'd agree with all the previous posts. Yes. Sure. It certainly can be. But really, there are a lot of options from here. Any kinda magico-spiritual-religious framework that encourages your own independent thinking and evaluation, your own senses and intuition, will be good. Especially intuition, gut feeling, instincts, whatever you call them - the you that's too deep to be reached by whatever thought pollution the cult pumped through the filter of your mind.

Other than that, what do you mean by one of the foundations of chaos magick is taking one's personal spiritual apparatus--that is, their personal experiences, beliefs, ideas of the spiritual-- and using it as a guide to explore and experiment? Do you mean 'using some ideas from my old understanding of spirituality to practice new systems'? I ask because my impression of chaos magic was that the ideas were already available (in part), and that you simply use them to improv and riff on other systems. One's own personal spirituality isn't as important as the frame exterior to it presented by the books and articles - I mean, I never really thought of things in terms of sigils, gnosis, and servitors/egregores/godforms until Phil Hine and Pete Carroll spoke (from on high). Does 'one's personal spiritual apparatus' involve the deep and unabusive ideas of spirituality, or the thinking taught to you in an abusive situation?

Of course, I guess if you could answer that, you wouldn't have posted any of this. Forgive me if I've been dense. What this boils down to is one question - how exactly are you planning on using chaos magic? I ask because it seems that we could give better advice if we knew what you had thought of and dreamed about. We can all talk about the useful magico-philosophical things chaos magic has done for us, but what do you intend for it to do for you?

03:09 / 19.03.05

To begin, I wanted to thank everyone for their suggestions and thoughts. I wasn't expecting responses directed at me (why I wasn't expecting this, I have no idea) but I've appreciated them, and I've been giving it all thought.

And to answer Charlie's Horse's question, I'm interested in chaos magick because lately (and by lately I mean for the past five years) I've been particularly, painfully aware of the spiritual void in my life. I thought that there was nothing I could do about it, because of all that--for lack of a better term at-hand--spiritual/emotional scar tissue. The spiritual door was opened back then, and I have an eye for such things, but no real way to communicate/interact with that world.

I realized a few months ago that if I was going to move on spiritually, I would have to find my own way with what I had. I couldn't just switch gears, I needed to find a way with the few things I had, which sounds both great and a little awkward in terms of chaos magick. There's always the pitfalls of trauma, but I'm learning it's a risk I should take.