“Nothing is True, everything is permitted”.That’s from Assassin’s Creed, right?
Wrong! That’s just about the essence of Chaos Magick!

Hello everyone, I’m Angela, and welcome back to my channel. Your online resource for the academic study of magic and magic-practising traditions.

Today we will introduce Chaos Magick and its core philosophical underpinnings. I will make a separate video to address the main practices found in Chaos Magick.

Also, my lovely Patrons and a viewer, in the comment section of my previous video, have highlighted the similarities between the philosophy of Nietzsche and that of the Left-hand Path. I agree and believe that there are a few key elements of the Nietzschean philosophy found across Left-Hand traditions and, although I initially thought of covering them in this video, I then realised the matter deserves a video on its own.

So, stay tuned for that because it’s coming very soon. Now, let’s move on to the Philosophy of Chaos Magick, shall we?

Chaos Magick is a magical practice that appeared in the United Kingdom in the 1970s as part of the magical subculture and it’s now considered by most as a Left-Hand tradition. The name “Chaos” refers to the state of undetermined, unmediated, the very root of yet unrealised potentials – which practitioners can reach through trance states and altered states of consciousness otherwise known as gnosis, which in ancient Greek would be pronounced g’nosis.

Although the founding Fathers, who set the premises for this tradition, are Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare and Kenneth Grant, Chaos Magick was formally created in the 1970s by Peter Carroll and Ray Sherwin, the two magicians who formed the Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros, also referred to with the acronym IOT.

This order still stands as the most popular formalised group of Chaos Magick, even though nowadays, many Chaos magicians practise in independent groups or just by themselves.

Chaos Magick stands between Witchcraft and Ceremonial Magick, with substantial influences from transcultural shamanism. Even though its theoretical framework draws massively from Aleister Crowley, Chaos Magick firmly rejects whatever they perceive as unnecessary ritualism, hierarchy, and strict rules to abide by. Chaos Magick prefers to focus on practical aspects of the magical endeavour, trying to avoid superfluous theorisation and complex rituals. The idea here is to go straight to the essence of what works.

On this note, Peter Carroll complained about “armchair magicians,” too concerned about theorising about magick rather than actually performing successful rituals. Thus, the IOT was established with the aim of stripping down magical theory to its basics, to those practical elements that make Magick work.

Peter Carroll has drawn parallels between the historical Gnosticism and Chaos Magick, perhaps overemphasising the gnostic concept of breaking the boundaries created by the physical world to reach a higher spiritual state. However, there are substantial differences between Gnosticism and Chaos Magick which need to be highlighted. While both ideologies seek to break through a perceived dualistic reality, in Gnosticism, we have a rejection of the physical world in favour of its counterpart whereas in Chaos Magick, we find a total immersion in the physical, to its very core, to then access the spiritual. As Woodman explains, ‘Human alienation is – in Chaos Magick – a result of being trapped in a culturally-determined, Aristotelian-dualistic mode of thought.’

Here, freedom is not found in rejecting one over the other but in embracing the contradictions, endorsing paradoxes, and all the contrasting beliefs and views that people have been conditioned to see as either/or. The principle of non-contradiction set by Aristotle as the founding element of our reasoning is here seen as a chain that human beings need to free themselves from.

The practice-oriented approach, endorsed by Chaos Magick, is also linked to their view of the metaphysical world. If nothing is true, everything is permitted, and contradictions are not even an issue… well, everything you believe is because you choose to. And that choice is instrumental to the aim you want to achieve. You can believe in one or multiple Gods and in none at the same time. As a result, things are only true as long as the Chaos magician deems them useful or instrumental to the set purpose. There are Chaos magicians who even make up deities from TV shows and movies or make up their own magickal correspondences – instead of following the ones found in the books. This is because the power comes from that state of Chaos, which is primordial and full of potential, not by any other human-created means or rules.

Furthermore, most “Chaos Magicians see magic and contemporary scientific theory as two sides of the same coin, as both offer access to the primordial states of non-being.” In Chaos Magick, we find psychological interpretations of demons as hidden aspects of the psyche and accounts of contemporary scientific discoveries, for instance, from quantum physics – as means to explain occult phenomena.

When it comes to how Chaos Magick relates to the wider esoteric milieu, as Colin Duggan highlights, we find two apparently antithetical tendencies called Perennialism and Iconoclasm.

On the one hand, we have an iconoclastic tendency, as Chaos Magick tears down and derides even the established, the dogmatic, and the conventional. This is called iconoclasm because it refers to destroying images, icons, and idols of religious culture. On the other hand, there is an appeal to tradition sought as a form of legitimisation.

However, in Chaos Magick, with its notorious rejection of religious and spiritual establishments – this translated into the concept of Perennialism. As I explained in more detail in my video on the New Age movement, the idea of a Perennial Philosophy conveys the existence of an eternal truth or wisdom that is trans-historical and trans-cultural. Deemed as a form of wisdom underlying all dogmatic religious systems, which have come and gone over the ages, this label-less tradition is seen by Chaos Magicians as no one’s property and accessible to everyone.

This primordial, unstructured, and open-access wisdom is perceived to be found in Shamanism. In the “Liber Null and the Psychonaut,” Peter Carroll mentions that all shamanic cultures share the same methods: a concept we also find in Core Shamanism and that the secrets of magic are universal and very practical in nature. Phil Hine emphasises even more, in his three-volume work “Techniques of Modern Shamanism” in three volumes, the relation between Chaos Magick and Shamanism. By endorsing the view of the Shaman, portrayed by Mircea Eliade, Phil Hine sees the shaman as the first primordial magician.

So, what they are trying to say here is that you don’t need to abide by any rules of any occult order or religious group because the knowledge of magic underlies all religions and can be accessed regardless of specific affiliations. Thus, they say, free yourself of the burden of dogmas and go to the core, as shamans used to do before any established religion was even born. You can access the trance states, the realm of chaos – where everything is in its potential state, and you can turn into reality whichever possibility you choose. This, however, (I need to say that) draws on a romanticised idea of Shamanism (which is quite popular amongst transcultural Shamans), but you find that academic debate in a different video.

There are many philosophical and practical elements in Chaos Magick that I could not include in this video; otherwise, it would’ve been a million years long. But if you like the topic, I’d be happy to make more videos on Chaos Magick in the future.

Let me know in the comments which part of the video you liked the most and what you’d like to see next on the channel.

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This is it for today’s video. If you liked it smash the like button. Subscribe to the channel, and activate the notification bell – it’s really important, you will be notified immediately the next time I upload a new video. And, as always, stay tuned for all the academic fun.

Bye for now.

REFERENCES

Duggan, C. (2013) ‘Perennialism and Iconoclasm: Chaos Magick and the Legitimacy of Innovation’, in Asprem, E. and Granholm, K. (eds), Contemporary Esotericism, London, New York, Routledge, pp. 91–112.

Sutcliffe, R. (1995) ‘Left-Hand Path Ritual Magick: an Historical Overview’, in Harvey, G. and Hardman, C. (eds), Paganism Today, London, Thorsons, pp. 109–137.

Woodman, J. (2003) ‘Modernity, selfhood, and the demonic: anthropological perspectives on “Chaos magick” in the United Kingdom’, Ph.D., Goldsmiths, University of London [Online]. DOI: 10.25602/GOLD.00028683 (Accessed 23 June 2020).