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London and Paris both have a thriving community of African Diaspora and African Traditional Religions (Voudon, Santeria, etc..) which, I suspect, dwarves the pagan/chaos magic community to a fairly large degree. Maya Deren's 'Divine Horsemen' is a good anthropological overview of Vodon in Haiti in the 1920's, but that doesn't necessarily imply that time has stood still since the book was written.
On the subject of magic working, some people don't seem to be able to get away with it all. I don't really subscribe to Grant Morrison's 'works every time' standpoint, it's more like going to the fairground and throwing hoops over coke bottles to win a prize. Some people can do it every time, some people are a bit crap at it but would probably get better with practice, some people will never be able to fucking do it.
But yes, sooner or later, you should start to get results that make you think there is something very weird going on, but this kind of thing can be fairly elusive in the sense that it's probably less likely to happen if you're looking out for it/desperate to prove it to yourself. All of the really mad results that I've had have taken me completely by surprise.
Treat it like a game. There are enough 'magickal' excercises which are effective and beneficial on their own merits and can easily be rationally explained in terms of NLP, etc.. such as LBRP, middle pillar, meditation, sigils to reprogram behaviour, and so on. So if you focus on this kind of thing as your core practice, with occasional forays into seemingly mad experimental stuff that stretches the boundaries of what you think is possible to acheive, it's likely that sooner or later you'll be confronted with something that seriously challenges your pre-conceived notions of reality and what is possible.
On the other hand, if you've been at it full on for years and years and you haven't had any results that make you think something weird is going on and it's all worth while, for God's sake stop and find something more productive to do with your time. Maybe we are all mad after all.
On the subject of ethical parameters, you could ask the similar question "Are there any ethical parameters to Kung Fu practice?". Technically, you could go around laying the smackdown on whoever you like, but responsibility for your own actions is ultimately down to you. One of the better things about chaos magic is that it does encourage you to accept responsibility for your own patterns of behaviour with regards to magickal practice, rather than implying that there's a dissapointed Goddess/Law of Three's waiting to take you task if you step out of line.
Yeah, you could do what you like with chaos magic, just as you could do what you like with your martial arts skill, hacking ability, or skills in any other sphere of human activity. It's down to you what you do with it. Having said that, I do tend to think that there is definitely something to the 'exchange of energy' paradigm. Not so much in a "law of three's" sense, but more like - if you go about town acting the big martial artist, someone is likely to chin you sooner or later; or if you use magic to acquire a string of sexual partners who you then treat in an exploitative manner like they're magickal sex puppets, you might find yourself widely thought of as a twat.
Personally, I think that the process of learning how to develop your own ethical compass with regards to your behaviour and actions, both in magical practice and life in general, is part of the process of becoming an effective magician. You have to learn when to act, and when not to act. If you're not prepared to accept responsibility for your actions, then you should probably consider your motives before you do anything, look at possible alternative courses of behaviour, consult a divinatory system, etc.. |
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