Chaos Awaits
By Jim Polson
An apparition materializes out of the primordial mists, gliding into the MLA harbor over the silent, Sephrucal Sea. The ship Psychonaut, with Master and Commander Pete Carroll on the quarterdeck, arrives once again to pull back the curtains of time, space and reality for those who chose to peer.
The second MLA Chaos Magic class looms on the horizon for those who missed it the first time or for those who want more. Hogwarts is back in session.
But magic? Why a course on what some call self-delusion? People think of magic, if not the sleight of hand illusionary type, as primitive belief systems to explain such profundities as thunder in the sky and crop failures.
However, under Carroll, magic has reached an epopee that takes the practices of Levi, Crowley and Spare and arranges them under the umbrella of Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Wheeler, Sarfatti and Bell to offer nothing less than a new model of cosmology.
How? By embracing some modern physics and challenging some older assumptions. Quantum Physics has many interpretations. These vagaries seem well suited to Chaos Magic. CM looks at the contradictions between Relativity and Quantum Physics and develops a theory that offer to explain the universe.
Relativity can be viewed as a refinement of classic Newtonian physics where matter can be viewed as smaller and smaller subdivisions of particles that behave in a causal and deterministic fashion, where the speed of light cannot be exceeded and space, mass and time can be continuously subdivided.
Quantum theory describes the universe in terms of probability waves. This produces the premise that "reality" exists as minimum sized pieces or "quanta". These do not exist as distinct points in time/space but as waves of probability. An outcome of this theory holds that a particle can be "anywhere", with the likelihood of it being any one where guided by probability.
"The CMT (Chaos Magic Theory) paradigm states that the wave functions are actually a mathematical description of etheric patterns and this ether can be considered as a form of information exchange between material events operating over the minimum quantum of time, the Planck time."
This "ether", a rather old fashioned term in this context, acts as a central premise in Chaos Magic. Previous magical philosophies could be classed as either animism or spiritism. Animism considers all things "alive" in some sense. The animist magician attempts to manipulate this "alive" principle or "mana", as it is sometimes called. The spiritist views all things as having a certain degree of sentience, or "spirit" which can be cajoled, bullied, tricked or otherwise manipulated to the will of the magician.
CMT postulates the role of ether as an explanation of a mechanism behind any results of these practices. CMT offers five principles:
All matter emits ether and that this ether carries, or consists of, information about the matter which emitted it.
Ether is non-local in space. It is instantaneously available everywhere.
Ether has a shaping effect on matter, having an affinity or similarity with the matter which emitted it, tending to make the behavior of the two more similar.
Ether couples with itself to create etheric patterns corresponding to the possible past and futures of any moment.
Mental events are capable of emitting and coupling with ether. Thus, for example, under the right conditions, a thought or visualization of some phenomenon can create an etheric pattern which couples with that phenomenon to modify its behavior.
The course and materials expand on these ideas to further elucidate (or baffle) the student. But don't let the physics scare you off. Chaos magic is a results oriented, practical philosophy and the class exercises allow the individual to experiment and judge for oneself. From Enchantment and Divination, Evocation to Invocation to good old fashioned War Magic, the exercises reveal to one that the human brain can be looked at as the interface and input station between the microcosm (you) and the macrocosm (everything else) and by manipulating and programming the microcosm, macro results can be obtained. Sometimes. Maybe.
The fundamental tool of magic is Gnosis , an altered state of consciousness that goes by many names under many traditions. No-mind, Samadh i, stopping the internal dialogue, ain or nothing. A CM premise holds that entering into this state allows a desire to be imprinted on the etheric patterns, manipulating the quantum probability waves to obtain a desired objective. The class discussed many ways of gnosis; meditation, exercise until exhaustion, staring at a flame (or a TV test pattern), musical trance, rhythmic dance, dervish dancing, sexual excitement or good old fashioned drugs.
Having obtained a state of gnosis, the magician can attempt to manipulate the macrocosm. Enchantment by creating, then focusing on a Sigil, (a pictorial representation of a desired result). Divination by interpretation of ripples in the ether that form patterns (or seem to).
Then on to the manipulation of the magician his or herself. Of course, manipulation of the psyche of the magician can be viewed as the cornerstone of any of the practices mentioned above. With Evocation and Invocation, however, the magician either deals directly with aspects of himself that might be interpreted as separate entities or brings into himself the aspects of these somewhat mythical entities that he wishes to embody.
What many gained from the class was a sense that, however bizarre and esoteric these ideas may be, applying the practices seemed to lead to changes. Whether these changes existed in consensus reality or not, it became apparent that changes were perceived to have occurred. If these were nothing more than the results of a self-metaprogamming device that left the mental state of the practitioner stronger and better prepared to face the world at large, they can be considered to have great value. A magical transformation, one might say.
So, climb aboard the Psychonaut and set sail "to slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God". Or a least learn more about yourself.
JP
Chaos Magick - a Platypus' Perspective
By Hugo J. Quackenbush
As the Pete Carroll's Chaos Magick class drew near, right on the heels of the delightful Crowley 101 class, I signed up knowing I wouldn't have the time or energy to perform the practices outlined for the class, but not wanting to miss what looked like a rare opportunity. (In 1995, I foolishly passed on the opportunity to see Tim Leary speak at the University of Texas at Austin. Even worse, in 1998 I flummoxed the opportunity to participate in a RAW workshop and lecture in Dallas on the 35th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination.)
So I stumbled into a course which rode high on a wave of enthusiasm and rapid-fire posting from a diverse and interesting group of participants. In short, I struggled to keep up with the energy of the crowd, but managed to learn a few things.
Often when people speak of Pete Carroll, they describe how Chaos Magick shows how to break down the boundaries between different "schools" of magick and create a personalized system of magick for one's own self. Well, it seems to me that Crowley did that decades earlier, Pete simply presents such a methodology in a clear, concise and more direct manner.
Perhaps Pete's strength lies in communicating in a manner that facilitates understanding for today's reader. One thread in the class discussed how Pete strips the mythology and a great deal of the mystery out of magick, and many of us found that lacking - we enjoy the myth and mystery. Pete pointed out that he felt he had helped create a standard vocabulary which facilitates communication on a subject muddled with jargon and mish-mosh. Pete has focused on stripping magick down to a results-oriented scientific framework or skeleton in which one can hang their own personal mythology - be it an Egyptian system of deities, the magick of the Three Stooges and Marx Brothers, or the divine nature of the platypus.
Not only has Pete clarified some of the intent of Crowley and taken it a step further in personalization, but he took Spare's Slight of Mind and applied it across the board to the 5 operations of magick that Carroll focuses in on - Enchantment, Divination, Invocation, Evocation, and Illumination - synthesizing the two most important magicians (Crowley & Spare) in modern history into his own brand of magick - Chaos Magick - and adding tools such as the equations of magick - which boil down the major components of a magickal operation into a few simple variables that one can estimate in order to calculate the relative effectiveness of a given operation as well as to determine the weakest link in the operation - the variable in which the most improvement in would lead to the most gain to the overall operation...
And, at the end of the day, RESULTS are what matters to Pete Carroll in practicing magic. I can really appreciate that in terms of a focused approach, willingly discussing the theory and philosophy behind magic, but realizing that at some point one has to say, "So what? What purpose does it serve? What can one get out of it?"
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