Sacred-texts
Esoteric
Chaos Magic
Defining Chaos
by
Jaq D Hawkins
aka Mark Chao
Introduction
Chaos, according to the “Oxford English Dictionary”, means:
1. A gaping void, yawning gulf, chasm, or abyss.
2. The “formless void” of primordial matter, the “great deep” or
“abyss”
out of which the cosmos or order of the universe was evolved.
There are a couple of additional definitions, but they are irrelevant to
this
discussion. When chaos is
used in magic, there is no place for confusion or disorder.
Chaos is the creative principle behind all magic. When a magical ritual is
performed, regardless of “tradition” or other variables in the elements of
the performance, a magical energy is created and put into motion to cause
something to happen. In his book, Sorcery as Virtual Mechanics, Stephen Mace
cites a scientific precedent for this creative principle:
I quote: ‘To keep it simple, let us confine our example to just two
electrons,
the point like carriers of negative charge. Let us say they are a part of
the
solar wind - beta particles, as it were - streaming out from the sun at
thousands of miles a second. Say that these two came close enough that
their
negative charges interact, causing them to repel one another. How do they
accomplish this change in momentum?
‘According to quantum electrodynamics, they do it by exchanging a
“virtual”
photon. One electron spawns it, the other absorbs it, and so do they repel
each other. The photon is “virtual” because it cannot be seen by an outside
observer, being wholly contained in the interaction. But it is real enough,
and the emission and absorption of virtual photons is how the
electromagnetic
interaction operates.
‘The question which is relevant to our purpose here is where does the
photon
come from. It does not come out of one electron and lodge in the other, as
if
it were a bullet fired from one rock into another. The electrons themselves
are unchanged, except for their momenta. Rather, the photon is created out
of
nothing by the strain of the interaction. According to current theory, when
the
two electrons come close, their waveforms interact, either cancelling out
or
reinforcing one another. Waveforms are intimately tied to characteristics
like
electric charge, and we could thus expect the charges on the two electrons
to
change. But electron charge does not vary; it is always 1.602 x 10(-
19)
coulombs. Instead, the virtual photons appear out of the vacuum and act to
readjust the system. The stress spawns them and by their
creation is the stress resolved.’
Austin Spare understood this principle in regard to magical phenomena long
before scientists discovered photons or began experiments in the area of
chaos science.
Austin Osman Spare - Some History
Austin Spare was born at midnight, Dec. 31st, 1886 in a London suburb called
Snow Hill. His father
was a London policeman, often on night duty.
Spare showed a natural talent for drawing at an early age, and in 1901 -
1904
left school to serve an
apprenticeship in a stained glass works, but continued his education at Art
College in Lambeth. In 1904
he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. In that year he also
exhibited
a picture in the Royal
Academy for the first time.
In 1905 he published his first book, Earth Inferno. It was primarily
meant to be a book of drawings,
but included commentaries that showed some of his insights and spiritual
leanings. John Singer Sargent
hailed him as a genius at age 17. At an unspecified time in his adolescence,
Spare was initiated into a
witch cult by a sorceress named Mrs. Paterson, whom Spare referred to as his
“second mother”. In 1908
he held an exhibition at Bruton Gallery. In 1910 he spent a short time as a
member of Crowley’s
Argentium Astrum. The association did not last long. Crowley was said to
have
considered Spare to be a
Black Magician. In 1909 Spare began creation of The Book of Pleasure.
In 1912 his reputation was growing rapidly in the art world. In 1913 he
published
The Book of Pleasure. It is considered to be his most important
magical
work, and includes detailed instructions for
his system of sigilisation and the “death postures” that he is well-known
for.
In 1914 - 1918 he served as
an official war artist. He was posted to Egypt which had a great effect on
him.
In 1921, he published
Focus of Life, another book of drawings with his unique and magical
commentaries. In 1921 - 1924
Spare was at the height of his artistic success, then, in 1924 he published
the Anathema of Zos, in
which he effectively excommunicated himself from his false and trendy
artistic
“friends” and
benefactors. He returned to South London and obscurity to find the freedom
to
develop his philosophy,
art and magic.
In 1947 Spare met Kenneth Grant and became actively involved with other
well-known occultists of the
period. In 1948 - 1956 he began work on a definitive Grimoire of the
Zos Kia Cultus, which is referred
to in his various writings. This is unfinished and is being synthesized from
Spare’s papers by Kenneth
Grant, who inherited all of Spare’s papers. Much of this information was
included in Images and
Oracles of Austin Osman Spare by Kenneth Grant, but there are some
unpublished
works which Grant
plans to publish after completion of his Typhonian series.
[Note: This has since been released as Zos Speaks by Kenneth
Grant]
References for this section are mostly from Christopher Bray’s introduction
to
The Collected Works of Austin Osman Spare (Sorcerer's Apprentice)
and
from Excess Spare, which is a
compilation by the Temple ov Psychic Youth
of photocopied articles about Spare from various sources.
The Magic of Austin Osman Spare
Spare’s art and magic were closely related. It is reputed that there are
messages in his drawings about
his magical philosophy. One particular picture of Mrs. Paterson has
reportedly
been seen to move; the
eyes opening and closing. Spare is best known for his system of using
sigils.
Being an artist, he was
very visually oriented.
The system basically consists of writing down the desire, preferably in your
own magical alphabet,
eliminating all repeated letters, then forming a design of the remaining
single
letters. The sigil must then
be charged. There is a variety of specific ways to do this, but the key
element
is to achieve a state of
“vacuity” which can be done through exhaustion, sexual release or several
other methods.
This creates a vacuum or “void” much like the condition described in the
introduction to this
discussion, and it is filled with the energy of the magician. The sigil,
being
now charged, must be
forgotten so that the sub-conscious mind may work on it without the
distractions and dissipation of
energy that the conscious mind is subject to. Spare recognised that magic
comes
from the sub-conscious
mind of the magician, not some outside “spirits” or “gods”.
Christopher Bray has this to say about Spare’s methods in his introduction
to
The Collected Works of Austin Osman Spare;
‘So in his art and writing, Spare is putting us in the mood; or showing
by
example what attitude we need to adopt to approach the “angle of departure
of
consciousness” in order to enter the infinite. What pitch of consciousness
we
need to gain success.
‘One must beware making dogma, for Spare went to great pains to exclude it
as
much as possible to achieve success in his magic; however a number of basic
assumptions underpin chaos magic.
‘Chaos is the universal potential of creative force, which is constantly
engaged in trying to seep through the cracks of our personal and collective
realities. It is the power of Evolution/Devolution.
‘Shamanism is innate within every one of us and can be tapped if we qualify
by
adjusting, our perception/attitude and making our being ready to accept the
spontaneous. Achieving Gnosis, or hitting the “angle of departure of
consciousness and time”, is a knack rather than a skill.’
There are other methods to utilise the same concept that Spare explains for
us.
Magicians since Spare have written about their own methods and expansions
of
his method quite frequently in occult magazines, mostly in Great Britain.
Spare is certainly not the first person in history to practise this sort
of magic, but he is credited with the first associations to magic, of the
word
chaos.
Chaos Since A.O.S.
Austin Spare died May 15, 1956, but his magic did not die with him. There
have
been select groups of magicians practising versions of Chaos ever since,
especially in Northern England and Germany. In the late l970’s, Ray
Sherwin
was editor and publisher of a magazine called The New Equinox. Pete
Carroll
was a regular contributor to the magazine, and together, due to
dissatisfaction
with the magical scene in Britain at the time, they formed the “Illuminates
of
Thanateros”. They advertised in New Equinox and a group formed. Part of the
intention of the group was to have an Order where degrees expressed
attainment rather than authority, and hierarchy beyond just organisational
requirements was non-existent.
At some point, about 1986, Ray Sherwin “excommunicated himself” because he
felt
that the Order was slipping into the power structure that he had intended
to
avoid with this group, and Pete Carroll became known as the leader of
“The Pact”. The IOT continues to survive and was identified as the only
international Chaos organisation until early 90’s.
There are smaller groups of Chaos practitioners, as well as individuals
practising alone. Chaos since Spare has taken on a life of its own. It will
always continue to grow, that is its nature. It was only natural that
eventually the world of science would begin to discover the physical
principles underlying magic, although the scientists who are making these
discoveries still do not realise that this is what they are doing. It is
interesting that they have had the wisdom to call it chaos science...
Chaos Science
Modern chaos science began in the 1960’s when a handful of open-minded
scientists with an eye for pattern realised that simple mathematical
equations
fed into a computer could model patterns every bit as irregular and
“chaotic”
as a waterfall. They were able to apply this to weather patterns,
coastlines,
and all sorts of natural phenomena. Particular equations would result in
pictures resembling specific types of leaves, the possibilities were
incredible.
Centres and institutes were founded to specialise in “non-linear dynamics”
and
“complex systems”. Natural phenomena, like the red spot of Jupiter, could
now be
explained. The common catch-terms that most people have heard by now -
strange
attractors, fractals, etc, are related to the study of turbulence in
nature.
There is not room to go into these subjects in depth here, and I recommend
that
those who are interested in this subject read Chaos: Making a New
Science
by James Gleick.
What we are concerned with here is how all this relates to magic. Many
magicians,
especially Chaos Magicians, have begun using the terms, “fractal” and
“strange
attractor”, in their everyday conversations. Most of those who do this have
some understanding of the relationship between magic and this area of
science.
To put it very simply, a successful magical act causes an apparently acausal
result. In studying turbulence, chaos scientists have realised that
apparently
acausal phenomena in nature are not only the norm, but are measurable by
simple
mathematical equations. Irregularity is the stuff life is made of. For
example,
in the study of heartbeat rhythms and brainwave patterns, irregular patterns
are
measured from normally functioning organs, while steady, regular patterns
are a
direct symptom of a heart attack about to occur, or an epileptic fit.
Referring
back again to “virtual” photons, a properly executed magical release of
energy
creates a “wave form” (visible by Kirlian photography) around the magician
causing
turbulence in the aetheric space. This turbulence will likely cause a
result,
preferably as the magician has intended. Once the energy is released,
control
over the phenomena is out of the magician’s hands, just as once the equation
has
been fed into the computer, the design follows the path set for it.
The scientists who are working in this area would scoff at this explanation,
they have no idea that they are in the process of discovering the physics
behind magic. But then, many common place sciences of today, chemistry for
example, were once considered to be magic. Understanding this subject
requires,
besides some reading, a shift in thinking. We are trained from an early age
to
think in linear terms, but nature and the chaos within it are non-linear,
and
therefore require non-linear thinking to be understood. This sounds simple,
yet
it reminds me of a logic class I had in college. We were doing simple
Aristotelian syllogisms. All we had to do was to put everyday language into
equation form. It sounds simple, and it is. However, it requires non-linear
thought process. During that lesson over the space of a week, the class size
dropped from 48 to 9 students. The computer programmers were the first to
drop
out. Those of us who survived that section went on to earn high grades in
the
class, but more importantly, found that we had achieved a permanent change
in
our thinking processes. Our lives were changed by that one simple shift of
perspective.
Chaos science is still in the process of discovery, yet magicians have been
applying its principles for at least as long as they have been writing about
magic. Once the principles of this science began to take hold on the
thinking
process, the magician begins to notice everything from the fractal patterns
in
smoke rising from a cigarette to the patterns of success and failure in
magical
workings, which leads to an understanding of why it had succeeded or failed.
Defining Chaos Magic
Chaos is not in itself, a system or philosophy. It is rather an attitude
that
one applies to one’s magic and philosophy. It is the basis for all magic, as
it
is the primal creative force. A Chaos Magician learns a variety of
techniques,
usually as many as s/he can gain access to, but sees beyond the systems and
dogmas to the physics behind the magical force and uses whatever methods are
appealing to him/herself. Chaos does not come with a specific Grimoire or
even
a prescribed set of ethics. For this reason, it has been dubbed “left hand
path”
by some who choose not to understand that which is beyond their own chosen
path.
There is no set of specific spells that are considered to be “Chaos Magic
Spells”. A Chaos Magician will use the same spells as those of other paths,
or
those of his/her own making. Any and all methods and information are valid,
the
only requirement is that it works. Mastering the role of the sub-conscious
mind
in magical operations is the crux of it, and the state called “vacuity” by
Austin
Osman Spare is the road to that end. Anyone who has participated in a
successful
ritual has experienced the “high” that this state induces.
An understanding of the scientific principles behind magic does not
necessarily
require a college degree in physics (although it wouldn’t hurt much, if the
linear attitude drilled into the student could be by-passed). Experience in
magical results will bring the necessary understanding.
This essay is directed toward the increasing numbers of people who have been
asking, “What is Chaos Magic?”. It is very basic and by no means intended to
be
a complete explanation of any of the elements discussed. Many of the
principles
of magic must be self-discovered. My only intent here is to try to define
and
pull together the various elements associated with Chaos Magic into an
intelligible whole. For those of you who wish to learn more about this
subject,
I have prepared a suggested reading list, however, I must emphasise that
there
are always more sources than any one person knows about, so do not limit
yourself to this list. Chaos has no limits...
The Book of Pleasure by Austin Osman Spare
Anathema of Zos by Austin Osman Spare
A Book of Satyrs by Austin Osman Spare
Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare by Kenneth Grant
The Early Works of A.O.S., Excess Spare and
Stations in Time are three collections which are available from TOPY.
Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick
Turbulent Mirror by John Briggs & F. David Peat
Liber Null & Psychonaut by Peter J. Carroll
Practical Sigil Magick by Frater U.D.
Condensed Chaos by Phil Hine
For an expansion of the overview expressed in this essay:
Understanding
Chaos
Magic by Jaq D Hawkins