Insight Editions · No. 95
This Is Chaos
Embracing the Future of Magic
Peter J. Carroll (ed.) and contributors · Foreword by Ronald Hutton
A collection of essays on Chaos Magic traces its history and examines contemporary practices involving belief, spirits, psychedelics, technology, group ritual, and symbolic systems.
A study guide to This Is Chaos by Peter J. Carroll (ed.) and contributors, foreword by Ronald Hutton. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
The Book in Brief
The argument in brief
- Chaos Magic is the magic of late modernity. Hutton: experimental, individual, eclectic, and allied with science rather than religion.
- It came out of revival and punk. Carroll, Sherwin and Brewster drew on the Golden Dawn, Crowley, Spare and Discordianism in 1970s London and Yorkshire.
- Symbol systems are tools. Hawkins turns tarot from an oracle into a spell kit.
- Drugs were always part of magic. Vayne restores chemognosis to a lineage running from Eleusis to Crowley.
- Spirits and archetypes interact. Sipes's dialogue model; Wachter's animist offerings; Corvus's threads that let you change belief.
- Magic goes collective and online. Lee's egregores such as Kawa Pohr and WABRI; Snell's virtual reality and the "desktop" theory of reality.
- Maps help keep balance. Pinzón's eight circuits and colours; Karika's eight drives and the will to power.
- The current keeps branching. Into print and AI (Abrahamsson), Japanese esoteric Buddhism (Kurono) and theistic witchcraft (Daffowt).
Argument map: the anthology's five clusters of essays.
| Ch | Author | Core point |
|---|---|---|
| Intro | Hutton, Carroll | Chaos Magic defined; entropy and the "Pandaemonaeon" |
| 1 | Carroll | From the Platonic-Monotheist-Pagan paradigm to the Quantum-Neo-Pagan one |
| 2 | Hawkins, Carroll | Social history: hippies, punk, Speedwell House, the IOT |
| 3 | Karika | Complex systems: conjure rarely, randomly and for what matters |
| 4 | Hawkins | Tarot's invented history; card layouts for casting spells |
| 5 | Vayne | Drug use in magic as an old tradition, not a radical break |
| 6 | Sipes | Spirits and archetypes both exist and shape each other |
| 7 | Wachter | Animist sorcery by invitation, offering, asking and thanks |
| 8 | Corvus | Thread theory and techniques for paradigm jumping |
| 9 | Lee | Group egregores and degrees of engagement in online magic |
| 10 | Snell | VR, Johnstone's Paradox; "a reality is a space where magic is forbidden" |
| 11 | Pinzón | Eight circuits and eight colours; shocks and anchors |
| 12 | Abrahamsson | A love letter to Chaos International; the Mega Golem |
| 13 | Kurono | Planetary correspondences for Japanese deities; the Mass of Izanami |
| 14 | Daffowt | Theistic Chaos Witchcraft built on panpsychism and string theory |
| 15 | Karika | Baphomet as blind Will; the eightfold will to power |
How the book is built
The anthology moves roughly from past to future. The two history chapters establish the founders' story and principles: results over doctrine, belief as a tool, the many-self, and science as ally. The middle essays debate method: how cautiously to practise, which symbols and substances to use, and whether spirits are real or psychological, with answers ranging from Karika's restraint to Corvus's eager belief-shifting. The later essays push into collective, digital and cross-cultural practice and offer two large maps of the psyche. The contributors disagree openly, ironic versus sincere, psychological versus theistic, which itself demonstrates the movement's refusal of dogma.
This Is Chaos
Hutton's foreword: the magic of our times
Hutton begins with two observations that, he says, sum up the movement: Chaos Magic is "the most dynamic form of ceremonial magic in the contemporary Western world," and its principal founder was a science teacher. Ritual magic revived from the 1890s partly as a reaction against disenchantment and partly as a branch of investigation that grew up alongside psychology. Chaos Magic updated that project for late modernity.
Hutton's list of what Chaos Magic contributors agree on, converging on the power of belief.
He lists the features on which the contributors agree. Chaos Magic abandons the idea of a single real self, judges ideas by utility, identifies with science (especially quantum physics and chaos theory) rather than religion, treats deities as useful creations of the imagination, prefers action to introspection, lets practitioners build and swap belief systems, replaces faith with the paradigm, and stresses the power of belief to shape what we experience.
| Layer | Feature of Chaos Magic | Precedent |
|---|---|---|
| Perennial | Eclectic experiment; free choice among systems | Greek Magical Papyri; Golden Dawn |
| Modern | Alignment with science; core principles; paradigms; power of mind | The 1890s revival and psychology |
| Postmodern | Doubt about objective reality; belief shapes the real; the individual as unit | Postmodern thought; information technology |
Carroll's introduction: the Pandaemonaeon
Carroll argues that energy and information per person have climbed exponentially since the Second World War. More energy and information mean more entropy, which science defines as the number of possible microstates of a system. For an "orthodox" Chaos Magician, Chaos means entropy in that sense: the source of both Order and Disorder. He calls the resulting age the Pandaemonaeon, a supermarket of contradictory beliefs and identities.
Chaos Magicians, he writes, have given up self-consistency and the "post-monotheist illusion" of a single real self. They judge ideas by meaning and use, on the principle that since all ideas come from the imagination, imaginary things can have real effects.
Pandaemonaeon and the anthology's bet
Carroll's introduction frames the collection as a report from inside a living current, not a museum catalogue. Entropy, chaos mathematics and the playful coinage "Pandaemonaeon" name a mood: many spirits, many models, no pope. Hutton's foreword places Chaos Magic as the magic of late modernity: experimental, individual, eclectic, allied with science rather than religion.
How to read the anthology: Hutton's frame plus Carroll's bet.
Hutton to Carroll: late-modern magic framed as experiment.
The Origins of Chaos Magic
Three revivals
The 1970s brought wars, crises, the decline of religious authority, popular quantum physics and mass psychedelic use. As in earlier upheavals, a magical revival followed, fed by reprints of Eliphas Levi, the Golden Dawn papers of MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley, plus books on Tantra, Taoism and shamanism. Witchcraft, Druidry and Chaos Magic all grew from it. Chaos Magic took the "radical post-modernist step" of dismissing sacred tradition and spiritual authority in favour of what works.
Carroll's three magical revivals and their paradigms.
The first revival, in Hellenistic Alexandria, fused Judaic monotheism, neo-Platonism and paganism. It produced Kabbalah, Gnosticism and Hermetics: a supreme source emanating a hierarchy of archons, gods, angels, demons and spirits, reached by incantation, invocation, evocation, divination and enchantment. For Carroll, this "ancient wisdom" then ran almost unchanged for two millennia.
The second came with the Romantic reaction to industrialism. Mathers built a vast synthesis from the British Museum Library on a Kabbalistic frame and founded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Its most seminal idea was the "Assumption of God-Forms": becoming the deity you invoke through visualization, ritual and altered states, from any pantheon you like. Carroll sees this as a precursor to Chaos Magic, flawed by Mathers's appeal to "Secret Chiefs."
Crowley, Spare and results magic
Book figure 1: Hagen von Tulien's sigil-style illustration for Carroll's essay; his black-and-white plates open most chapters.
Spare's sigil method, the core technique Chaos Magic took from him.
Two Golden Dawn alumni shaped the new current. Crowley pushed techniques of sex, drugs and meditation to extremes, then founded Thelema; Chaos Magic kept his fearless methods but rejected his theology, his doctrine of "true will" and his posthumous cult. Austin Spare looked instead to the subconscious, automatic drawing and sigils: abstract designs of desire charged in altered states so they bypass conscious interference. Carroll found Crowley's copy of Spare's Book of Pleasure in a Sydney library, annotated with Crowley's dismissal of Spare as a "Black Magician" for seeking worldly results.
Science, magic and religion
Natural philosophy once held science and magic together. They separated by repeatability: phenomena that repeat with an accepted cause went to science, while rare, unexplained ones stayed with magic. Psychology and placebo sit on the contested border. In science, "Nothing is True" because every theory remains open to disproof; in religion, "Some Things are True" forever. Science and magic can explain how religion works, Carroll argues, but religion explains neither, so magic's future lies with science.
| Scientific idea | Carroll's magical reading |
|---|---|
| Quantum indeterminacy | Causality is a bulk illusion; reality, causality or locality must go |
| Wave-particle duality | A hidden wave-world echoing the astral plane |
| Chaos mathematics | The future is open, so "Enchant Long and Divine Short" |
| Neuroscience of the self | The mind is a "parliament" of selves, not one sovereign |
| Inhibition in focused states | "Gnosis" names the state of extreme focus, not a revelation |
The "multiple selfs" idea matters most. Chaoists explore many selves through invocation and treat fixation on a "Holy Guardian Angel" as possession by Choronzon. Because all deities evolved in the imagination, invented ones serve as well: Lovecraft's Elder Gods, or the "recently realized goddess Apophenia," who finds hidden links, with her sister Pareidolia. Where Levi stressed will and imagination and Crowley stressed will, Chaos Magic holds that will arises from imagination. Magic becomes "the use of imaginary phenomena to create real effects."
Five operations and the many-self
Carroll lists five practical operations. Enchantment nudges events toward a desired outcome. Divination yields information. Evocation sends out servitors or spirits to act. Invocation borrows power by becoming a god-form. Illumination should produce specifiable skill gains, not vague "spirituality." Most early Chaotes, he notes, were not born rich and wanted results in ordinary life. Where Levi stressed will and imagination and Crowley stressed will, Chaos Magic holds that will arises from imagination: magic is "the use of imaginary phenomena to create real effects."
Carroll's five operations: each judged by a practical result.
The "multiple selfs" idea matters most for practice. Chaoists explore many selves through invocation and treat fixation on a single "Holy Guardian Angel" as possession by Choronzon. Because all deities evolved in the imagination, invented ones serve as well: Lovecraft's Elder Gods, or the "recently realized goddess Apophenia," who finds hidden links, with her sister Pareidolia. Science and magic, Carroll argues, can explain how religion works, but religion explains neither, so magic's future lies with science. "Nothing is True" in science because every theory remains open to disproof; religion freezes "Some Things are True" forever.
Against true-will fixation
Carroll's strike at the Holy Guardian Angel as Choronzon-possession clarifies the many-self ethic: explore selves through invocation; invent deities (Apophenia, Pareidolia, Lovecraft's Elder Gods) when inherited ones stall. Science and magic can explain religion's mechanisms; religion explains neither. "Nothing is True" stays a scientific open-endedness, not a sulk. Illumination must name a skill gain. Early Chaotes wanted ordinary-life results, not priesthood.
Seeds of Chaos
Roots in the 1960s
No magical system springs from the void. Hawkins and Carroll insist that the late-1970s punk story everyone knows was preceded by a longer train of innovations in both the US and the UK. In the mid to late 1960s, social anarchy, sexual revolution, Eastern religion and mind-altering drugs overlapped with a new magical revival. What made this revival stronger than earlier ones was the sudden availability of books chronicling Victorian orders and the individualist methods of Aleister Crowley (d. 1946) and Austin Osman Spare (d. 1956).
Crowley's image appeared on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's in 1968 (the chapter dates the album 1968; the release was June 1967), and International Times Vol. 1, Issue 33 ran a piece on him the same year. Crowley had been elected head of the Ordo Templi Orientis in 1925 (the chapter notes the founding date as 1895 or 1906, sources differ) and held the post until death. Spare, better known as an artist, privately published The Book of Pleasure (1913) with his sigil method. His literary executor Kenneth Grant, formerly Crowley's secretary and later head of the Typhonian Order after an OTO succession fight, put Spare before a new generation in The Magical Revival (1972, Frederick Mueller). That chapter is what brought Spare to Carroll's attention.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn had effectively ended after 1908, with a US revival in 1977. Its hierarchical degrees and theurgy still shaped Gardner. Crowley's Thoth Tarot, illustrated by Lady Frieda Harris, appeared from an American games company in 1977 with a contact address for the reviving OTO. In San Francisco the Principia Discordia entered the public domain in 1965; Discordianism replaces a creator god with the sisters Aneris (Order) and Eris (Disorder). The Church of the SubGenius, a parody religion founded in 1979 around salesman J.R. "Bob" Dobbs (the chapter says 1970), is often paired with it.
Seeds before Deptford: US and UK streams that fed Chaos Magic.
Brewster, the Tribe and Stoke Newington
While Carroll and Ray Sherwin were still schoolboys in London and North Yorkshire, Charlie Brewster was initiated into Thelemic Freemasonry in 1968 at age twenty. That June his group went to a flying-saucer convention and came back to find they had lost their apartment and their leader had gone into rehab. Brewster then joined the Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom, which practised freeform magic "of the same character as the as yet unrecognized Chaos Magic." Between 1969 and 1973 he lived near Kingston-upon-Thames with other ex-Tribe members, married and had children.
In 1971 Carroll began chemistry at Queen Mary's College; Sherwin studied English in Yorkshire and soon taught in Egypt while pursuing occult interests. Carroll finished his degree, completed teacher training, and attended occult lectures where the Stoke Newington Sorcerers formed after a Time Out advert seeking a Golden Dawn-style group. Respondents included Brewster (back in London by 1974) and Lionel Snell (Ramsey Dukes), who had written on Spare for Agape Occult Review (1972) and published SSOTBME: An Essay on Magic (1974). Snell brought Spare's Book of Pleasure to a meeting and introduced sigil magic; Carroll took it up at once.
Speedwell House and Liber Null
Carroll moved into Speedwell House, a five-story block in Deptford awaiting demolition, where his girlfriend (later his wife) already lived. The neighbourhood kept its old notoriety: press gangs, and the stabbing of Christopher Marlowe at the Brown Bear. Brewster visited for rituals, then squatted a vacant flat with a cinema door marked "Projection Room." Scrap-metal traders camped on the waste ground behind the building and fought local rivals. Carroll kept an iron bar by the door, nicknamed the Ateph Wand of Steel, which he still treasures in the chapter's telling.
How the movement formed: from small groups to Liber Null and the IOT.
Brewster dates the birth of Chaos Magic to the Deptford Olympics Goat Roast of 1976, timed with the Montreal Olympics. Carroll bought a goat from the Halal butchers on Deptford High Street; it was spit-roasted over a bonfire, followed by a live punk band and homemade fireworks from local anarchists. In 1976-77 Carroll drafted the White Edition of Liber Null and wrote for Sherwin's The New Equinox (Morton Press, East Morton, Yorkshire). The book was meant as a training program for the IOT, drawing on formal orders and on animistic practice often loosely called shamanism.
In 1978 the council again moved to demolish Speedwell. Carroll left for India and Australia, studying for months at the Tibetan Library in Dharamsala, and left publication to Sherwin, who issued Liber Null and his own Book of Results that year. The chapter's ingredients list: old orders for technique; Crowley and Spare for stripping religious trappings; Discordianism (via Illuminatus!) for irreverence; hippie and punk culture for do-it-yourself freedom.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1965-66 | Principia Discordia public; Church of Satan founded |
| 1968 | Brewster initiated; Crowley on Sgt. Pepper / IT |
| 1972-74 | Grant's Spare chapter; Snell's SSOTBME; Stoke Newington forms |
| 1976 | Deptford Goat Roast; Speedwell House rituals |
| 1978 | Liber Null (White Edition); IOT notionally formed |
| 1980-81 | Red Edition; Carroll in Yorkshire writes Psychonaut |
| 1982 | Carroll's second India trip; settles in Bristol |
| 1983 | Sherwin's Theatre of Magick |
| 1986 | Chaos International magazine launched |
| 1987 | Weiser publishes Liber Null & Psychonaut; first Chaos Symposium, Leeds |
| 1988 | Gleick's Chaos; first US Temple of the Pact |
| 1990 | Brewster's Liber Cyber |
| 1995 | Carroll retires as head of the IOT (CI No. 12) |
| 1996 | Hawkins, Understanding Chaos Magic |
| 1999 | Chaos International ends at issue 23 (ad hoc revival to 26) |
Spread, magazines and the internet
Carroll returned in 1980, moved to Sherwin's Yorkshire village, and produced the Red Edition of Liber Null. The IOT only really got going after his arrival. He wrote Psychonaut that year, citing catastrophe theory as a precursor to chaos math then being developed at IBM, without knowing the IBM work. After six months back in India in 1982 he settled in Bristol. Sherwin "excommunicated himself" from the IOT over structure, though not from Chaos Magic. Carroll renamed the group the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros. By the mid-1980s temples existed in England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Australia; the first US temple formed in 1988.
In 1986 The New Equinox became Chaos International. Christopher Bray of the Sorcerer's Apprentice in Leeds kept the Red Edition in print until 1987, when Carroll sent both books to Samuel Weiser with a recommendation from Israel Regardie via Gerald Suster. The combined hardcover opened the German-speaking world; Ralph Tegtmeier invited Carroll onto his seminar circuit. Sherwin organized the first Chaos Symposium at the Griffin Hotel in Leeds in 1987. James Gleick's Chaos: The Making of a New Science (1988) made the match with results magic obvious. Bulletin boards then the web spread the ideas beyond the Pact.
After Liber Null: print, seminars and networks that carried Chaos Magic abroad.
Hawkins, after reading Spare, Carroll, Sherwin and an early Phil Hine Prime Chaos, wrote "Defining Chaos" for Mezlim Vol. 2, No. 2. Carroll had Brewster send her a four-page typed history; Sherwin answered a Pagan magazine query and became a regular correspondent. An online contact posted the article under her BBS handle Mark (Markie) Chao. Brewster's Liber Cyber appeared in 1990. Hawkins expanded the article into Understanding Chaos Magic (1996), later folded into The Chaonomicon (2013) when the original publisher collapsed. Commentators declared Chaos Magic "dead" in the early 1990s, and some tried to commercialize it; the chapter says the spirit kept spreading.
On Naive Interventionism in Magic, How Not to Do Magic, and How to Do It Well
Complex systems and iatrogenics
Taleb's distinction is the chapter's hinge. Complicated machines give exact responses: flip a switch, get light. Complex systems have interdependencies: remove lions from Mount Lebanon and goats strip tree roots, so the mountain deforests. Cause itself becomes hard to isolate. When a treatment harms more than it helps, that is iatrogenic. Naive interventionists fix first-order problems and create worse second-order ones, often from bias for action and no skin in the game.
Karika via Taleb: why magicians must not treat the mind as a switchboard.
How other traditions fall: Fourth Way and dream yoga
Karika's cautionary peak is Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's Fourth Way: "Man is a machine," so stretch willpower and stay conscious always. That thesis, he says, is false. Humans are organic and complex; applying if-A-then-B reprogramming against eons of evolutionary homeostasis wrecks people. Gary Lachman's In Search of P.D. Ouspensky records high achievers who became exhausted wrecks with lost autonomy. Long-term dream yoga (systematic lucid-dream cultivation) is another example: occasional spontaneous lucidity is fine; forcing the sleep system for "liberation" insults what Taleb calls Mother Nature unless empirical proof shows humans can do better.
Among practitioners he has known, no "system" elevated anyone, but many harmed people. Achievements and practice both expressed prior multi-selves plus luck, not the system. Chaos Magicians, he warns, are in equal or worse danger: "cut it all on each side like a maniac, then measure the scraps."
Bodymind ecology and nonlinear dose
Everything in the bodymind is interconnected. You cannot invoke Mercury repeatedly for eloquence without stirring the other seven major drives. Strengthen one trait and the opposing trait shifts. After any focused conjuration, watch the whole psychosphere with imagery, dreams or divination and compensate within days or weeks, or the balance corrects "quite violently."
Effects are nonlinear. Five mild Mercury rites may precede a sixth that hits a hundred times harder. Magicians must therefore build antifragility or at least robustness: not talismans, but what Nietzsche (via Karika) credits to Caesar: marches, frugal living, open air, continuous exertion. Consult Taleb's Antifragile and Seneca's Letters from a Stoic.
| Rule | Do | Do not |
|---|---|---|
| Asymmetry | Conjure when payoff dwarfs harm (life stakes, deep innate desire) | Conjure for comfort, minor adjustments, pettiness |
| Training | Frequent irregular grounding, encircling, empowering rites; concentration drills | Only "crisis magic" with rusty technique |
| Exposure | Randomize type and timing of conjurations once skills are learned | Steady daily same-spell stacking |
| Ecology | Watch all eight drives; compensate resonances | Obsess one god-form or trait |
| Via negativa | Remove fragility first | Add novelty onto a brittle life |
How to do it well
Taleb's medical rule becomes the magical rule of thumb: intervene only when the payoff is large and visibly exceeds potential harm. A desire that springs from flesh, not a shallow wish, can count. Between crises, train without enchanting for outcomes. Randomize: prepare two or three goals for each of Carroll's five operations (enchantment, divination, evocation, invocation, illumination); roll a die; rest long; later shatter the pattern. Volatility beats a flat average if you are antifragile to the practice.
Karika's practice loop: train often, enchant rarely, randomize.
Chaos Magicians under the same rule
Karika turns the critique inward. Bodymind complexity means no isolated change in the psychosphere. Nonlinear dose means you cannot forecast strength of effect. Protective means are bodily: exertion, frugality, open air, not circles alone. Between outcome-spells, keep technique sharp with grounding and encircling rites so you are not a rusty "crisis magician." Die-roll practice after learning the five operations in order (enchantment, then divination, evocation, invocation, illumination) supplies Taleb's "convexity bias": random exposure beats a flat average when you are antifragile to the work. Long rest after a block. Then shatter the pattern on purpose and observe.
Why systems fail upward claims
Karika's harshest empirical claim is negative: among people he has known, no occult "system" produced the promised elevation, while many produced harm. Apparent successes expressed prior multi-self gifts plus luck; the system rode along. Fourth Way casualties (Lachman) and dream-yoga tinkering stand in for a wider pattern of mechanistic assault on organic homeostasis. Chaos Magic's five operations inherit the same risk unless antifragile rules constrain when and how often they are used for outcomes.
Chaos or Order: A Chaos Magic Approach to the Tarot
From card game to occult deck
Tarot begins as a card game for bored elites; divinatory and esoteric overlays arrive later. Antoine Court de Gébelin (1781) claimed Egyptian priestly secrets without evidence. A decade later Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla) issued the Grand Etteilla, the first deck built for divination, with astrology and Madness (Fool as zero). The Waite-Smith deck (1910; art by Pamela Colman Smith) packed Golden Dawn symbols into the modern default. Crowley's Thoth with Lady Frieda Harris (1938-1943, published 1944) remade the symbolism for Thelema. Later art decks (Morgan-Greer, dragons, cats, pop culture) often drop Kabbalah for theme.
Hawkins keeps an idiosyncratic elemental call: Swords = Fire, Wands = Air, against the Waite common pairing, because leaves on Waite staves read as ideas (Air) to her and swords as martial Fire. The Chaos point is not to win the argument; it is to own a mapping you can charge.
Hawkins's short history: cards gain occult load over time.
Spellcraft with cards
Any spell uses symbols for intent; cards are symbols. Disrupt tradition when needed: her "epic" legal spell put a white candle left (purity of motive) and blue right (peaceful resolution) against the Golden Dawn black-left/white-right default, because the case needed to break "the lawyer always wins when you represent yourself."
Methods she lists:
| Method | How | Caution |
|---|---|---|
| Single card | Choose a card for the intent; leave on altar through the work | Symbol must match result for you |
| Amulet | Major Arcana pendant charged in ritual (gold/silver if apt) | Long-term energy object |
| Three-card progression | Past / present / future, or a Chaos rewrite of those slots | Speak aloud to lock meaning |
| Avoid Celtic Cross for spells | Ten positions; past slots can misdirect | Too many parameters |
| Eight-colour Chaostar | One card per Carroll colour point | Broad; can dilute focus |
| Pentagram progression | Top point = core intent; four points = result parameters | Her favoured layout |
| Homemade casting deck | Keep charged sigil-cards instead of destroying them | Personal use eases copyright worry |
Hawkins: from ordered Tarot to Chaos casting layouts.
She has imagined a Chaos deck: Flames and Winds as suits; Face of Chaos for the Magician; Choice for Lovers; Disruption for Tower. For casting, imagery may leave tradition entirely. Bottom line: individualized decks and layouts, different packs for divination versus casting, and "bringing a little Chaos into a perceptually ordered system."
Colour magic and speaking the spell
When she sketches an eight-point Chaostar layout, Hawkins maps familiar colour intents onto cards (among them pink for love work and black for reversing or Saturnine dark work). She still prefers fewer cards for focus. Spoken wording matters: symbols can be read differently by the subconscious than by the planning mind, so saying the intended meaning aloud locks parameters. Digital collage can build a private casting deck; collected sigil-cards need not be destroyed after one use. Different decks for reading versus casting keep divinatory fatalism from infecting spell parameters.
Hawkins pentagram progression spell: one core plus four parameters.
Divination versus casting decks
Hawkins collects decks for artwork and keeps separate packs when possible: one whose symbols stay stable for reading, another willing to be bent for manifestation. Fashion decks (dragons, cats, Buffy) show that esoteric load is optional. The Morgan-Greer World card keeps the Christian tetramorph while dropping most other Abrahamic signs, which she likes for divination without that background. Waite's possible swap of Fire/Air to protect Golden Dawn oaths is noted as gossip; her stickling for Swords = Fire is preference with a rationale, not a revealed correction. Chaos Magic's permission to disrupt status-quo symbolism is the real method, illustrated by the candle-side legal spell.
Chemognosis Redux
Twin pillars and the radical claim
Chaos Magic emerged in Europe and the Americas in the 1980s from Discordianism, punk, postmodern culture, science and science fiction. From Liber Null (1978) and Psychonaut (1982) it sought liberation from Thelema's theology, Wicca's duotheology and Christian-tinged ceremonial magic. Carroll's preferred word for the practitioner is "operator," suggesting experiment rather than priesthood.
Vayne names the "twin pillars." First, the magician may choose any paradigm as a container: the "setting." Second, magic needs gnosis, an altered state matched to the work: the "set." Under the postmodern surface lies a modernist, even perennialist, assumption that magic runs on core processes rooted in shared biology. Changing your breathing has similar effects whether you do it through holotropic breathwork, Hindu mantras or Anglican hymns. Only the interpretation differs.
Vayne's twin pillars of Chaos Magic, mapped onto set and setting.
What felt new in the 1980s was stating that psychoactives are a legitimate path to gnosis. The word "psychonaut" comes from Ernst Jünger's Approaches: Drugs and Ecstatic Intoxication (1970). Carroll writes that chemical agents "have always played a significant role in shamanism and magic" (Liber Null & Psychonaut, 1987, p. 147). Early echoes include Ray Sherwin as Paula Pagani in Cardinal Rites of Chaos (1985) and the Lincoln Order of Neuromancers (L.O.O.N.) in Apikorsus (1986), who mock medical monopoly over the brain and place chemognosis from witches' flying ointments to John Lilly's LSD and sensory-deprivation work.
| Stance | Source | View of drugs |
|---|---|---|
| Pro | Carroll, Psychonaut (1982) | Chemical agents "have always played a significant role in shamanism and magic" |
| Pro | L.O.O.N., Apikorsus (1986) | Reclaim pharmacology from medical gatekeepers |
| Nuanced | Dion Fortune (1930) | Magic is to meditation as medicine is to diet: fast, but no substitute for ethics |
| Against | Mircea Eliade (1964) | Narcotics are a "vulgar substitute" for pure trance |
| Against | W. E. Butler; Servants of the Light FAQ | "Drugs and magic do not mix"; hashish, marijuana, peyote called noxious |
W. E. Butler (1898-1978), student of Dion Fortune, wrote Magic (1952), The Magician (1959) and Apprenticed to Magic (1962). He died the year Liber Null appeared. Gareth Knight, in A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism (1965), grouped homosexuality with drug use as "techniques of black magic." Vayne links mid-century pharmacophobia with those other prejudices.
A long chemognostic lineage
Book figure 2: Hagen von Tulien's illustration for "Chemognosis Redux."
Crowley was no outsider. In autumn 1910, with Leila Waddell and Victor Neuburg, he staged the Rites of Eleusis at Caxton Hall for the Argenteum Astrum. The audience kykeon likely held peyote extract from Parke-Davis; Crowley had the drug from 1907 and ran peyote ceremonies until 1917. Reviewers who drank found the rites beautiful; those who refused found them tedious and objected to sitting on the floor "like natives." His lost book The Cactus, Liber CMXXXIV collected hundreds of accounts and was presumed destroyed by British customs after Mussolini expelled him from Sicily. Havelock Ellis published the first English peyote report in 1898 ("Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise"), including notes on W. B. Yeats, a Golden Dawn member who preferred hashish. Many Golden Dawn members used drugs.
Vayne's lineage of chemognosis in Western magic, from oldest to newest.
Grimoires, Dee and nineteenth-century "mainstream" use
Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck argued in The Road to Eleusis (1978, same year as Liber Null) that the kykeon held an LSD-like ergot derivative from Claviceps purpurea on Demeter's grain. In 2005, ergot traces at a Demeter shrine at Mas Castellar (Spain), in a vase and in human dental calculus, offered some support. Historian P.D. Newman (2017) lists nineteenth-century spirit work with cannabis, opium, nitrous oxide and fungi among P.B. Randolph, Emma Hardinge Britten, Helena Blavatsky, and Freemason Frederick Hockley (source spelling "Hockney," 1809-1885) and his students Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie and the Irwins. Hockley had been a pupil of Francis Barrett, compiler of The Magus (1801), itself drawn largely from Agrippa and already recommending psychoactives.
Britten's Art Magic (1876) names "Hasheesh, Napellus, Opium, the juice of the Indian Soma, or Egyptian Lotus." The blue lotus (Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea) was only recognized as psychoactive in the late twentieth century. Scrying unguents mixed hashish, poppy, laudanum, betel, cinquefoil and hellebore. Paracelsus (c. 1493-1541) is credited with laudanum and, in the 1520s, with diethyl ether. John Dee's Actions with Spirits (1581-1583) records him lamenting empty "druvggs" boxes and relying on others' ointments (Whitby 1988). The English grimoire Sepher Raziel / Liber Salomonis (1564) gives cannabis juice with artemisia to see spirits in a steel mirror. The mid-eleventh-century Picatrix blends opium, mandrake, nutmeg, cannabis and hellebore for entourage effects. The Greek Magical Papyri (c. 100 BCE-400 CE) continue the line back toward Eleusis.
The psychedelic renaissance
Vayne welcomes the revival of psychedelic science. Talk of set, setting and an "inner healing intelligence" (Rick Doblin, MAPS; quoted via Valentino 2020) sounds magical. He cites problem-solving lore from Stafford and Golightly's LSD: The Problem-Solving Psychedelic, including Kary Mullis and PCR (source spelling "Mullins") and late-1960s work at Stanford Research Institute's Augmented Human Intellect Research Center (mouse, bitmapped screens, hypertext, cut/copy/paste). Surveys by David Luke and Marios Kittenis (2005) find a small link between drug use and reported paranormal experiences. He expects new "strange drugs," orally active DMT, minimally psychoactive analogues, and drug-free "techgnosis": TMS, neurofeedback, VR, and Brion Gysin's Dreamachine (with Ian Sommerville, after talk with William Burroughs). Kingsland (2019) discusses blending tech and pharmacology.
Vayne's present and near future for chemognosis and techgnosis.
On the Causal Relationships Between Spirits and Archetypes
Redefining the terms
Sipes starts with conservative definitions. A spirit, in the dictionary sense, is the non-physical seat of emotion and character, so "spirit" and "mind" are interchangeable. He adds two features: language and, most important, intention, which produces physical change. On this definition the spirit model is plainly true. Minds exist, cause physical changes and help one another reach goals, as a mother does when she feeds her crying infant.
An archetype, following Jung, is an inherited, unconscious pattern, a Platonic form placed inside the individual, that expresses itself through myths, fairy tales and sacred symbols. Sipes stresses that archetypes are aspirational. The Christian who asks "What would Jesus do?" and the medieval knight Geoffroi de Charny, who modelled his life and his book on ideal chivalry, show self-myths pulling people forward. So the psychological model is also true.
Book figure 3: Von Tulien's figure for the spirits-and-archetypes essay: a god-form summoned between worlds.
Four relationships in two cases
To show that the two are distinct yet linked, Sipes uses causal interaction. He compares it to two hands of one body treating each other. He offers two fictional cases.
Sipes's four possible causal links between spirits and archetypes.
| Case | Direction | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Jamie 1 | Archetype changes a spirit | A wizard image in a bookshop grows into a life-shaping ideal of the philosopher-mage |
| Jamie 2 | Archetype unites spirits | A shared "wizard" myth brings Jamie and an older mentor together |
| Justin 3 | Spirit changes an archetype | Expelled from his druid grove, Justin swaps Senuna for Christ and his character changes |
| Justin 4 | Spirit changes a group's archetype | His vision leads a contemplative group to fasts and service, reshaping its image of the Logos |
Sipes's dialogue model: spirits and archetypes shape each other.
The dialogue model and its uses
The dialogue model has three premises. Spirits and archetypes both exist in some limited sense, they interact causally, and these interactions change practical life. Sipes then speculates that intelligent aliens, even silicon-based ones that communicate with static discharges, might share the same Platonic forms. His rule: "No matter the body possessed, spirits of a mental feather will flock together."
He shows that one generic myth yields many individual versions. Mother Teresa and a Crusader both called themselves Christ-like. His closing advice is to change who you want to become in order to change whom you attract: "Give birth to the god you are."
Jamie, Justin and the living myth
Sipes's two fictional cases carry the four causal arrows. Jamie finds a wizard image in a bookshop that grows into a life-shaping ideal of the philosopher-mage (archetype reshapes a spirit), then meets an older mentor through a shared "wizard" myth (archetype unites spirits). Justin, expelled from his druid grove, swaps the goddess Senuna for Christ and his character changes (spirit reshapes personal archetype); his vision later leads a contemplative group into fasts and service, reshaping their image of the Logos (spirit reshapes a group's archetype).
Four arrows in Sipes's cases: how spirits and archetypes trade influence.
The three uses follow. Submission means conforming to a chosen archetype for inspiration, with prudence. Direction means shaping myths as storyteller or artist. Integration balances endless ideal demands against the body's needs. Combined, they make the magician a "living myth" who attracts like-minded spirits: "Give birth to the god you are." One generic myth still yields many individual versions: Mother Teresa and a Crusader both called themselves Christ-like, a reminder that powerful self-myths are not automatically benign. His speculative aside, that silicon aliens sparking in static might share Platonic forms, underlines the rule: "spirits of a mental feather will flock together."
Definitions that do the work
Sipes's "spirit = mind with language and intention" makes the spirit model trivially true and will not satisfy someone who meant angels and demons. His value is the interaction map, not the ontology. Archetypes as aspirational Platonic forms inside the person explain Geoffroi de Charny's chivalric self-myth and "What would Jesus do?" practice. The dialogue model's three uses (submission, direction, integration) turn metaphysics into craft. Mother Teresa and the Crusader as twin Christ-myths remain the chapter's sharpest warning that a living myth can serve opposite ethics.
Sipes: three practical uses of the dialogue model.
A Path into Animist Sorcery
From Chaos to the spirit model
Wachter received Liber Null & Psychonaut in 1987 and spent about five years in what he calls the "fuck around and find out" school. He did sigils, banishings and group rites in semi-public temples, alongside Thelemites, witches, hoodoo workers and practitioners of African traditional religions. Versions of Carroll's Mass of Chaos B taught him controlled possession. Then Jan Fries's Visual Magick drew him away from the "toys and comics" school of ironic Chaos Magic, because "sorcery begins to work better if approached with sincerity and honesty."
He sorts magicians into two kinds. Some come to magic hoping the world is more than it seems. Others come because they have already had experiences that the flat, materialist account dismissed. He belongs to the second group.
A model for the spirit-agnostic
You can treat spirits as psychological projections best handled "as if" they were external. Tsultrim Allione's Feeding Your Demons, Ramsey Dukes's Little Book of Demons and Internal Family Systems therapy all rest on the idea that talking with a part of yourself differs from thinking about it. From there, Wachter suggests, it is a short step to parts of the collective unconscious that act independently: ancestors, land spirits, gods.
| View | Sovereignty of the Will | Animist relationship |
|---|---|---|
| Self | Centre of the universe; independent agent | One part of an interdependent Field, like a cell in a body |
| World | Largely mechanistic; push buttons, pull levers | Conscious, responsive, full of Others |
| Method | Command and compel | Invite, offer, ask, thank |
| Offerings | Payment, if used at all | Nourishment within a relationship, not a transaction |
His biological story makes each person a spirit sharing a body with bacteria and mitochondria, living inside the larger body of the Earth. His "dream logic" treats physical laws as the current rules of a dream that can shift. His magic worked best when he believed the outcome possible, left room for how it arrived, needed rather than wanted it, and made many offerings.
The practice
Wachter's animist practice: a relationship kept up by offerings, not levers.
Wachter grants that this may simply train neglected parts of the mind, but says what matters is whether it works. The approach extends to house spirits, favourite parks and the front door: "building direct relationships with the world around you, seen and unseen."
Dream, biography and the Field
Wachter's path chapters matter. An early animist dream, years of "fuck around and find out" after receiving Liber Null & Psychonaut in 1987, controlled possession via Mass of Chaos B, then the sincerity turn after Jan Fries's Visual Magick. He sorts practitioners into seekers who hope the world is more than it seems and those who already had experiences materialism dismissed; he is the second kind.
His biological story makes each person a spirit sharing a body with bacteria and mitochondria inside the larger body of the Earth. "Dream logic" treats physical laws as the current rules of a dream that can shift. Results came when he believed the outcome possible, left room for how it arrived, needed rather than wanted it, and made many offerings. The sixty-day experiment extends past a shrine to house spirits, favourite parks and the front door: "building direct relationships with the world around you, seen and unseen."
From Chaos toolkit to animist Field: Wachter's move.
Offerings without transaction
Wachter insists offerings are nourishment inside a relationship, not payment for services. Align inner talk with the work for the sixty days; thank allies for good turns; do the practical work too after you ask. He grants the psychological reading (training neglected parts) and refuses to care which ontology is "true" if results hold. House spirits, parks and the front door extend the shrine into daily space. The tension with early Chaos irony is the essay's real contribution: sincerity as technique.
Sixty-day offering experiment: invite, offer, ask, thank.
Thread Theory: A New Chaos Approach
The problem of belief
Chaos Magic, Corvus says, is a philosophy rather than a system, like pantheism or animism: you do not "do" it so much as believe that belief powers the work. Scoop garden dirt, spit in it, declare it magical DNA, and "so mote it be." The difficulty is getting yourself to believe the declaration. The standard technique is "paradigm jumping" (belief shifting): adopt and discard beliefs to suit the objective. Frequent jumping, she adds, deconditions the ego, loosens social "brainwashing," and trains the capacity to believe almost anything, including magical dirt.
She places the slogan against the models of magic. The spirit model treats deities and spirits as objectively real. The energy model posits subtle forces that can be directed. The psychological model locates power in ritual, symbol and belief acting on the psyche. The meta model holds that the mechanism is unknowable, so any model may be used as needed. Chaos Magic usually sits with the psychological or meta models; thread theory, she says, is a meta-model system with concrete techniques.
| Model of magic | Source of power |
|---|---|
| Spirit model | Objectively real spirits, deities and supernatural forces |
| Energy model | Subtle, nonphysical energies that can be directed |
| Psychological model | The practitioner's mind, via ritual, symbol and belief |
| Meta model | Unknowable; use any model as needed (thread theory's home) |
Subjective reality and overlapping dimensions
"Nothing is true," for Corvus, means humans cannot experience the world objectively. Senses, cognitive biases, culture, emotion and "societal brainwashing" filter every claim about spirits, gods or moral facts. She does not deny that an objective world might exist; she denies that humans can certify any one picture of it. "Everything is permitted" then means creative freedom to choose the reality one lives in. She immediately brackets the flying-off-the-roof objection for later.
She contrasts her idea with Hugh Everett III's many-worlds interpretation of 1957, in which quantum branches never interact. In thread theory, realities overlap. Her stock example is a long-married couple sharing one home: one partner is an atheist who never meets spirits, the other a believer who does. Both are right within their own "dimensions," while sharing a common mundane world. Threads can be cut and retied so an atheist who wants spirit contact, or a cult survivor who wants to shed dogma, can shift experiential reality without leaving the shared house.
Thread theory: the four kinds of thread that tie a person to reality.
Her sources are the energetic cords of witchcraft cord-cutting, energy-flow ideas in traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda and indigenous healing, a non-technical image of string theory's vibrating strings, and Carl Jung's collective unconscious. Distant cultures, she notes, developed similar myths, death rites, initiation rites and solar worship without contact. She prefers "threads" to "cords" or "strings" because the image suggests a woven design rather than a single bond.
Paradigm-jumping techniques
Book figure 4: Von Tulien's tentacled figure for "Thread Theory," with threads reaching in every direction.
Corvus reports that for years, as an atheist who wanted spirit contact, she failed at hauntings, teachers and summoning. After adopting thread theory she began to experience phenomena regularly. The first jump is hardest; later jumps need less regimen. Beginners, she says, should mix the techniques below for about three months.
Paradigm jumping: adopt a belief for the work, then drop it.
Why jump, and what blocks the jump
Why spend three months on daily practice? Corvus answers with a failed-relationship analogy: beliefs that feel fine now may look limiting only after separation. Shedding them, she claims, opens growth, raises confidence, builds resilience and removes barriers to "manifesting." Frequent jumping "broke down barriers" she could not name; magical dirt now meets almost no internal resistance.
The work must reach the subconscious, which holds sabotaging lines such as "I do not have the power to change my reality," "I fear change," or "this is childish make-believe." Journaling prompts she lists: Where did these beliefs come from? Which past experiences shaped them? What messages came from authority or society? What recurring patterns appear? How do you talk to yourself? What would letting go look like? What fears surface? Altered states matter because they quiet the conscious gatekeeper so new threads can attach.
| Objection | Corvus's reply |
|---|---|
| Can I fly? | No: threads to the collective and to the body hold you to this reality's rules; she rejects escapism and says disability cannot be willed away. Changing the whole species' belief might open other dimensions; she will not claim that |
| Spirits exist regardless of belief | Claiming ultimate spirit-realism is as dogmatic as claiming one true God; and her spirits appeared only after she changed belief, then vanished when she switched back |
| I believe but see nothing | Like polar bears: belief without going where they are is not a test; the technique, not the reality, may be at fault |
| Isn't this frequency illusion? | Baader-Meinhof (frequency illusion) explains noticing more of what you just learned; threads, she says, are deeper metaphysical connections you can cut and retie |
Corvus's self-test: belief on, phenomena on; belief off, phenomena off.
She reports objects moving after her shift: a curtain shaped like a figure with no draft, a single book pulled from a shelf. She cites Anil Seth's view that perception is a "controlled hallucination," with a sarcastic aside that flying may wait for future "brain power." She ends by warning that thread theory must not become dogma: "if it resonates, embrace it." Chaos Magic rejects rigid adherence; the theory is a tool for belief-shifting, not a new cosmology of everything.
Collective Spirits: Egregore Entities and Online Magic
What an egregore is
Lee prefers a colleague's etymology ("The Kite"): Latin ex grege, "from the flock," the ethos of a group. Operationally, an egregore entity is a spirit, not a Chaos "servitor." A servitor is an astral machine on a TOTE loop (test-operate-test-exit). An egregore needs enough Chaos, enough mind-stuff, to make judgment calls. Lee likens this to Tibetan tulpas in William Burroughs's sense: characters that walk off the page.
Magical-group cases
Recorded sentient egregores are rare. One is GOTOS (Grado Ordo Templi Orientis Saturni), egregore of the German Fraternitas Saturni, founded 1926 by Eugen Grosche (Gregor A. Gregorius; survived internment; died 1964). Lee's first work was with the Circle of Chaos (West Yorkshire, 1984-87): a psychedelic science-fiction theatre in which future, more powerful selves spoke an egregore into being; artist Len Sherwin made a statue for Mazmoneth (name later revealed online by Ray Sherwin).
In the mid-1990s the IOT found shared servitors worked better. The public healing spirit Kawa Pohr began as Lee's 1993 pathworking, gained sigil and name in 1995, was made heuristic, and shifted shape to clients' needs. A quirky base form (white sphere from the sea, after The Prisoner) gave personality; overlapping skrying of a laser-green undersea pyramid suggested a preexisting mythic layer and emerging sentience.
Memetics and online magic
Most activist magic now runs on social platforms. A posted sigil works exoterically as affirmation and esoterically as spell. Memetics (Dawkins, 1976; surveyed by Meijer 2024) studies cultural replication. Lee notes far-right use of Pepe as emotional piggybacking. But a hundred passive views do little. Physical groups multiply gnosis; his 2021 Occulture Berlin Energy Magic webinar came close but did not match in-person intensity. Online work needs real participation: organic belief while staring at a phone, invitations to use a servitor, shared skrying.
Egregore theory and final thoughts
Between meme and servitor sits phenomena like "John-Joan Mastodon," assembled life-stories with some magical input. Unconscious egregores arise from belief-bound, emotionally charged groups. Lee suggests skrying Reiki symbols as a test of imaginal cartography. Closing images: online magic as strategic transpersonal intelligence, and the optional belief that the internet is a half-conscious technological Ymir for certain spells.
From Mazmoneth to public spirits
The Circle of Chaos working that birthed Mazmoneth (West Yorkshire, 1984-87) remains Lee's template for how shared gnosis plus a material vessel (Len Sherwin's statue) and future-self theatre can mint an egregore. Kawa Pohr shows the multi-year path from private pathworking (1993) to named public healer (1995) with heuristic learning and skryed myth. WABRI shows the online upgrade path: spell (2018) to servitor (2022) to open co-creation (2023-24) with staggered vision-sharing so participants are not merely copying each other. Passive scrolls do not equal a temple.
WABRI's upgrade path: spell to servitor to open egregore.
Theory: flock, meme and machine
Lee's closing theory layer treats some online beings as between meme and servitor (John-Joan Mastodon). Belief-bound emotional groups mint unconscious egregores. Skrying public symbols (he suggests Reiki marks) tests whether imaginal maps recur. He ends with two forward bets: a series of unarguable world-intent spirits after WABRI, and the optional magical stance that the internet is a half-conscious technological Ymir being carved into sentient enclaves. Neither bet is proven; both are usable beliefs for specific spells.
Virtual Reality, Cybermagick, and the Future of Chaos
From Johnson's stone to information
As a boy Snell sided with Dr Johnson, who kicked a stone to "refute" Berkeley's immaterialism, because the 1950s were firmly materialist. Around 1960 a lecture by the cybernetician Frank George persuaded him that consciousness might be information processing. That excited him, because information, unlike matter and energy, is not conserved and can appear anywhere. Seven coins, seven trees and the Seven Sisters share "seven" instantly.
Snell's shift from matter to information, and why it makes magic plausible.
On this view reincarnation needs no soul-substance, only similar information patterns arising again. Snell answers the objection that a life holds too much data. His own past-life memories, of an ageing prostitute in a South American port, were vivid but partial, and dreams create whole characters (he once dined with Elvis) without strain. Memories may unpack from a small store of shared archetypes, much as bodies are built from modest DNA.
Johnstone's Paradox
This paradox, published in Arrow and in Words Made Flesh in the 1980s, inspired Chaos Magic's "cybermagick" movement: treat reality as software and look for hacks. His VR meditation is to walk through nature "as if" it were rendered, admiring the perfect sync of senses, and to treat anomalies as bugs, not impossibilities. Kicking a rock is itself a virtual experience assembled by the brain from nerve signals. A stage hypnotist can make a cushion feel like a rock.
A reality is a space where magic is forbidden
| Kabbalistic world | Computer analogy |
|---|---|
| (Unmanifest) | Machine switched off: not even a zero |
| Atziluth, Emanation | Power on: silicon charged or uncharged |
| Briah, Creation | Zeros and ones; torrents of machine code |
| Yetzirah, Formation | Characters, symbols, programming languages |
| Assiah, Making | The user's desktop: stable, dependable "reality" |
Snell's desktop analogy: each reality is a set of rules, and magic is what breaks them.
The desktop is a reality tunnel, Robert Anton Wilson's term, bored through Chaos. Its value lies in reliability: files that turned into lemons would make it useless. Hence Snell's definition: "a reality is a space where magic is forbidden." Every shared reality protects itself against what breaks its laws. Catholics call transubstantiation God's work, not magic, and South Africa, where consulting ancestors is common, has police units trained to deal with feared muti magic.
Snell turns the usual charge around. Materialism is the "primitive" default of any brain, as in a cat leaping into a tree, while asking a tree's permission before taking its fruit reflects a more sophisticated reality. Primal Chaos must be totally connected, so apophenia (seeing patterns) is a sense for hidden links behind the desktop. He practised seeing faces in clouds and "was never alone." In a postscript he ties the "post-truth" era to Pluto's transit of Capricorn (2008-2023) and urges people to test promises, not believe them.
Truth, sophistication and the post-truth note
Snell turns the usual charge around. Materialism is the "primitive" default of any brain, as in a cat leaping into a tree, while asking a tree's permission before taking its fruit reflects a more sophisticated reality. Primal Chaos must be totally connected, so apophenia (seeing patterns) is a sense for hidden links behind the desktop. He practised seeing faces in clouds and "was never alone."
Johnstone cascade: why virtual views crowd out the 'base' world.
In a postscript he ties the "post-truth" era to Pluto's transit of Capricorn (2008-2023) and urges people to test promises, not believe them. The four-17s story (wonderment, amusement, awe, dismissal) is his ethics of pattern: richer life versus higher income. Cybermagick, inspired by the paradox in Arrow and Words Made Flesh, treats reality as software and looks for hacks; his VR meditation walks nature "as if" rendered and treats anomalies as bugs.
Kabbalah desktop and South Africa aside
Snell's Atziluth-to-Assiah table (power on; machine code; languages; desktop) makes each world a constraint set. Catholics fence transubstantiation as divine, not magical; South African police units trained for feared muti show societies policing rule-breaks. The four-17s ethics (wonderment, amusement, awe, dismissal) and cloud-face apophenia practice dramatize choosing richer pattern-life over purely instrumental dismissal. Postscript: Pluto in Capricorn (2008-2023) as post-truth mood; test promises.
Octomantic Neuro-Hacking: A Map and a Compass for ChaoSurfing
Map, compass and balance
The eight-circuit model comes from Leary's Neurologic and Exo-Psychology. Robert Anton Wilson made it practical in Prometheus Rising via Korzybski's general semantics. Antero Alli, in Angel Tech and The Eight-Circuit Brain, grounded it with paratheatrical rituals, a body-positive bias and "shocks and anchors," against Leary and Wilson's preference for "higher" states and pejorative names for the "robotic" lower circuits. Pinzón admits that neuroscience now has better brain maps and that "the map is not the territory." She values the model as a self-diagnostic tool phrased in neuroscientific rather than religious language, and follows Alli in inviting students to rename circuits from their own experience.
Pinzon's octomantic framework: three borrowed models for one tool.
Book figure 5: "The Map and the Compass," Pinzón's octomantic design joining eight circuits to eight colours on the Chaostar.
From the Principia Discordia she takes the Sacred Chao: Order and Disorder are not opposites but polarized parts of Chaos, each with creative and destructive sides. The first four circuits, on the side of Order, make up the ego, a "user interface for playing the Game of Life on Terra." The last four, on the side of Disorder, are altered states that switch off default programming. Neuro-hacking means shocking the system deliberately and using the windows of neuroplasticity that open during gnosis to install new programs through enchantments, sigils, invocations and evocations. She notes other magicians map colours to circuits differently; this is her sense of fit.
| Circuit | Pinzón's name | Colour | Key need or catalyst | Associated drugs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Bio-Unit Maintenance | Red | Safety; fight, flight or freeze | Opiates, nicotine, SSRIs |
| C2 | Emotional Sovereignty | Yellow | Status, attachment, self-worth | Alcohol |
| C3 | Map- and Sensemaking | Orange | Coherence, language, stories | Amphetamines, cocaine, caffeine |
| C4 | Social Navigation | Green | Belonging, love, sex, morality | Cacao, empathogens |
| C5 | Somatic Hedonism | Blue | Flow, bliss, pleasure | Cannabis, MDMA |
| C6 | Neuro-Hacking | Purple | Metacognition, uncertainty, psychic sense | Mescaline, psilocybin, LSD |
| C7 | Cosmic Network Connection | Octarine | Synchronicity, archetypes, unity | DMT, high-dose psychedelics |
| C8 | Radical Transformation | Black | Void, ego dissolution, out-of-body states | High-dose DMT, ketamine |
The side of Order
Each Order circuit receives an imprint in a developmental window, then accumulates conditioned "freeways" and learned "roads." Learned habits change easily; conditioned freeways take more work; imprints may need intense destructive Disorder to rebuild.
C1 Red (Bio-Unit Maintenance): imprint safe/unsafe in late pregnancy and infancy; fight/flight/freeze. An infant left crying may shut down and freeze; adults often grow disconnected from bodily signals and live in constant anxiety. Poverty activates survival stress even without tigers. Red work: warrior god-forms, martial arts, breathwork, floatation tanks (womb-like safety), blood as life-force juice in spellwork, banishing and defence. Goal question: can you trust your body to keep you alive?
C2 Yellow (Emotional Sovereignty): toddler power struggles; secure/insecure; dominance/submission. Seat of egoic will and attachment wounds. Pinzón rejects "killing the ego"; she wants shadow integration so spells do not return "with a shadow of their own." Yellow work: illumination of shadow, confidence and self-expression invocations, success spells that strengthen flexible agency without inflation.
C3 Orange (Map- and Sensemaking): primary-school symbol and language filters; bright/dumb imprint. Belief structures save energy but become dogma. Orange work: paradigm shifting, rewriting life stories, mercurial wit, pattern recognition, grounded in "skeptical agnosticism" so magicians do not drown in their own delusions.
C4 Green (Social Navigation): puberty; moral/immoral imprint; dating, mating, belonging. Magicians already live at the edge of convention; the higher quest is a personal ethics "to avoid becoming a total sociopath," plus empathy. Green work: fertility and heart-opening spells, Venusian forms, intentional community, releasing hermit attachment to serve.
The side of Disorder
Disorder circuits open once survival is secured, through initiatory practice, random life shocks or drugs. Pinzón links the post-1960s rise in access to these states with wider drug availability. She hypothesizes that many people labelled "neurodivergent" are born with Disorder circuitry already active but lack maps, and that clinical "disorder" labels often mark failed integration, sensory overwhelm or childhood rejection for divergent expression.
C5 Blue (Somatic Hedonism): pleasure, flow, presence; cannabis, MDMA. Yoga, Tantra, dance, music, sensory overload or deprivation, even pain. Blue Magic attracts wealth (time, money, health) by removing obstacles to flow and building trust in provision; Jupiter or Earth-Mother forms; aesthetic, luscious ritual. High sensitivity here risks the overload ascribed to autism diagnoses.
C6 Purple (Neuro-Hacking): metacognition and operator-level access; mescaline, psilocybin, LSD. Watch programs, reshape them in plastic windows, read energetic fields for intuition and psychic sense. Sex magic as preferred Chaote charge method: raise energy through centres and "shoot it out through the crown" with intention. Glamor and Eros forms. Deep imprint change still needs new habit formation afterward.
C7 Octarine (Cosmic Network Connection): muses, archetypes, synchronicity, unity; DMT and heroic psychedelic doses. Downloads that become teaching if given mythic language, or a psychiatric label if not. Craft your own mythopoetic tongue so you are not trapped in religion, New Age clichés or clinical silencing. Pinzón's preferred trickster is Eris, agent of "Cosmic Customer Care" on Terra.
C8 Black (Radical Transformation): void, ego dissolution, out-of-body states; high-dose DMT, K-hole ketamine. Leary added this circuit only after a ketamine out-of-body experience. Work: death god-forms, entropy magic on ready-to-die self-aspects, underworld journeys, death meditation, communion with the disembodied. Goal: shapeshifter comfort with impermanence.
Alli's shocks and anchors: each Order circuit steadies one Disorder shock.
Shocks, anchors and ChaoSurfing
Leary and Wilson called the lower circuits robotic. Pinzón, following Alli, insists that Order work matters as much as the pursuit of higher states. Small integrated shocks expand the system; shocks too big to absorb lead to dysregulation, Wilson's "Chapel Perilous." When the waves become too big, get to shore and do grounding work. The Chaostar diagrams the four anchor pairs.
Disorder details worth keeping
C5 Blue links wealth magic to flow and trust in provision (Jupiter / Earth-Mother), with overload risk for highly sensitive people. C6 Purple pairs sex magic as preferred Chaote charge: raise energy and release through the crown with intention; glamor and Eros forms. C7 Octarine needs a personal mythopoetic tongue so downloads are not trapped in religion, New Age clichés or clinical silencing; Eris as trickster "Cosmic Customer Care." C8 Black uses death god-forms, entropy magic on ready-to-die self-aspects, underworld journeys. Alli's malfunctions (autopilot, looping, confusion, fried circuit) are the troubleshooting table when ChaoSurfing fails.
Chaos, Mon Amour
A printed-matter junkie
Abrahamsson calls himself "a printed matter junkie." In the 1980s he was active in Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), and in 1989 he founded the journal The Fenris Wolf, still published. Chaos International, issued by the IOT, was his favourite magazine from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. It sat alongside Carroll's Liber Null & Psychonaut, Phil Hine's Condensed Chaos and Snell's books, all bound by a shared "desire to go beyond" rather than a doctrine. Its stark black-and-white pages mixed the inner circle (Carroll, Hine, Mace, Lee, Snell) with figures such as Alan Moore, Andrew Chumbley, Don Webb and an interview with William Burroughs.
| Voice quoted | Idea |
|---|---|
| Alan Moore (1995) | Chaos theory means everything is linked, so any work of art "is going to have some effect" |
| Carroll as "Frater Stokastikos" (1994) | Science is the part of magic that works reliably; most magic "only works about as well as economics," and he owns a pointed hat |
| William Burroughs (1994) | Tape cut-ups and playback as disruptive magical techniques |
The Mega Golem and the present
Book figure 6: Von Tulien's illustration for "Chaos, Mon Amour."
Since about 2008 Abrahamsson has built the Mega Golem: a magical being that is also an intangible artwork, with poems, films, performances and music as parts of its body. He then offers a playful mock excerpt from Chaos International "Volume Void, Number Null," a cut-up collage mixing biology (parthenogenesis), astronomy, Greek religion and erotic nonsense, in tribute to the magazine's experimental spirit.
He ends ambivalently. He admits that age has made him more conservative, and mistrusts the young "magical community" that believes it can unite to fight for "good," which he sees as naive compared with the lonely existential experimenters of his youth. Yet young Chaotes working with AI seem to him as fresh as the sigil pioneers of the early 1980s. Fact and fiction have merged into a dystopian novel "modified by AI," like Bradbury's "The Veldt." With "more Chaos now than ever," the magician belongs at the centre of the Chaosphere, sending power into the void.
Voices from Chaos International
Abrahamsson's favourite years of Chaos International mixed the IOT inner circle (Carroll, Hine, Mace, Lee, Snell) with Alan Moore, Andrew Chumbley, Don Webb and a Burroughs interview. Moore (1995) linked chaos theory to the claim that any artwork "is going to have some effect." Carroll as Frater Stokastikos (1994) quipped that science is the part of magic that works reliably and that most magic "only works about as well as economics." Burroughs (1994) discussed tape cut-ups and playback as disruptive techniques.
Abrahamsson's printed Chaos: magazine culture to Mega Golem.
Since about 2008 the Mega Golem has been his long magical artwork: poems, films, performances and music as body-parts of one being. The mock Chaos International "Volume Void, Number Null" cut-up is tribute, not argument. His closing ambivalence pairs distrust of righteous magical "communities" with respect for young Chaotes using AI as inventively as early sigil pioneers.
Cut-up tribute and AI ambivalence
Abrahamsson's mock Chaos International "Volume Void, Number Null" collage (parthenogenesis, astronomy, Greek religion, erotic nonsense) is homage to experimental layout, not a thesis. TOPY years, The Fenris Wolf from 1989, and Trapart publishing ground the memoir. He distrusts righteous magical communities yet praises young AI-using Chaotes as fresh as 1980s sigil pioneers. Bradbury's "The Veldt" names the fear: fact and fiction merging under algorithmic modification. The magician's place is the Chaosphere's centre, sending power into the void.
Abrahamsson's timeline: from TOPY print culture to AI Chaotes.
What the magazine taught
Stark black-and-white pages mixed IOT regulars with Moore, Chumbley, Webb and Burroughs. Science-curious irreverence mattered more than a party line. Old grimoires could "hibernate"; present tools (DTP, video, then net) were fair game. Laughter as banishing, taught by IOT friends, fits the "sanctified lack of respect" that is not contempt. The Mega Golem continues that experiment as one long artwork-being rather than a magazine issue.
The Correspondences of Japanese Gods
Why map at all
Carroll had emailed that correspondences could use "other gods." Kurono's Japanese book Introduction to Chaos Magic used eight. Esoteric Buddhist gods arrived from India via China; finger mudras map to elements. Westerners may think of "ninja hands"; the system is older. Japanese myth gives the frame story: Izanami and Izanagi birth islands and gods; the fire god Kagutsuchi kills Izanami in childbirth; Izanagi flees Yomi and, purifying in a river, births Tsukuyomi, Amaterasu and Susanoo.
Planetary table
| Planet | Hindu | Japanese esoteric | Mantra (as given) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uranus | Vajrasattva | Kongosatta | On Bazara Satoba Aaku |
| Sun | Surya | Nitten (link also to Mahavairocana / Makabirushana) | On Ajicha Sowaka |
| Saturn | Mahakala | Makakaraten | On Makakyaraya Sowaka |
| Moon | Dakini | Dakiniten | On Dakini Sowaka |
| Jupiter | Indra | Taishakuten | On Indalaya Sowaka |
| Mercury | Saraswati | Benzaiten | On Sorasobateiei Sowaka |
| Mars | Ushas | Marishiten | On Marishiei Sowaka |
| Venus | Lakshmi | Kisshoten | On Makashiri Yaei Sowaka |
| (extra) | Ganesha | Kangiten | On Kiriku Gyaku Un Sowaka |
Kurono: same planetary slots, local names and mantras.
Nitten is sun deified; Kurono links funerary return to Makabirushana at mandala centres. Kangiten (Ganesha) is, he says, more popular in Japan than the beckoning cat. Shinto shrines usually show no icons; in Konton-no-Kisidan (Order of Chaos Knights) a priest from Atsuta Shrine drew Izanami as a beautiful woman in a costume of flames with unburnt hair for visualization.
Mass of Izanami
The Mass adapts Carroll's Mass of Baphomet. Intention line: "Our intention is to summon Izanami and perform the Great Work!" Her speech across ages (creator, slaughtered, cursed, sealed mother, then "I am Izanami… transcending death") supplies the invocation spine. Enochian-flavoured lines in the book ("Ol Sonf Varsag Gohu…") sit beside the Japanese mythic voice. Correspondences here are interfaces: swap names, keep functional slots, run the same magical software on a local machine.
Myth frame and shrine practice
Izanami's birth of islands and gods, death by Kagutsuchi, and Izanagi's flight from Yomi supply the emotional charge for the Mass. Tsukuyomi, Amaterasu and Susanoo emerge from Izanagi's purification. Kurono stresses that Shinto shrines typically lack statues; visualization depends on literary myth and, in his Order of Chaos Knights, on a priest-drawn Izanami in flame costume. The Enochian-flavoured lines in the Mass sit beside her age-speech (creator, slaughtered, cursed, sealed mother, transcendence), a deliberate hybrid of Western Chaos liturgy and Japanese theogony. Eight million kami are not catalogued; the table is a starter interface.
Izanami Mass frame: myth stages spoken in the rite.
Notes on selected deities
Nitten deifies the sun; everyday Japanese may say "Dear Sun" without theistic commitment. Makabirushana (Mahavairocana) sits at mandala centres and receives the dead in esoteric funerals. Kangiten as Japanese Ganesha outdraws the beckoning cat in Kurono's claim of popularity. Finger-to-element mudras remind readers that the body already carries the elemental software Western Chaotes meet as colours or weapons. The Mass's hybrid voice (Enochian-style lines plus Izanami's age speech) is intentional liturgy design, not accidental code-switch.
Chaos Witchcraft
Belief, reflection and synchronicity
Reading "Nothing is true, everything is permitted" in Liber Null convinced Daffowt that belief is the single thread uniting all magical systems. If experience conforms to belief, choose empowering beliefs. The "big reveal" of the mystery traditions, she says, is that outer reality mirrors the inner world, and Chaos Magic states it at the outset. In tarot terms, the Fool feels separate and reactive, while the Magician knows reality is a "3D holographic reflection of the mind." Atoms are mostly empty space, the brain builds its model of the world from sensory input, and its filters deliver what we expect. Magic is therefore "the art and science of generating synchronicity," in Jung's sense of meaningful coincidence.
| Principle | Scientific idea | Magical reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Panpsychism | Consciousness is in all things, in degrees | Animism; the Kybalion's principle of mentalism |
| 2. Many worlds | Every quantum event branches the universe | Beliefs select timelines; skilled magicians make their own "luck" |
| 3. String theory | Vibrating strings; extra curled dimensions | The Kybalion's principle of vibration; dark energy as pure consciousness |
She quotes Michio Kaku saying that dark matter may be "a higher vibration of the string" and that we are "the lowest octave," and reads this as the Kybalion's ladder of vibration.
Book figure 9: Daffowt's "scales of vibration": spells create synchronicities that bridge from lower timelines (fate) toward higher ones (destiny).
Gods as fourth-dimensional beings
String theory's hidden dimensions suggest to her the "higher planes" of mysticism. Gods, angels such as Enoch's Watchers, and perhaps "extraterrestrials" could be extradimensional beings who move through time and space as we cannot. She notes with amusement that we three-dimensional beings spend our days staring at the two-dimensional internet.
Daffowt's chain of manifestation in Chaos Witchcraft.
Book figure 10: The spindle torus of energy visualized in the thought-bomb ritual.
She concludes that Chaos Witchcraft keeps Chaos Magic's axioms of belief as a tool and the search for magic's structure, and admits: "at the end of the day, it's only a belief system."
Panpsychism, strings and theistic Chaos
Sanhre Daffowt, host of The Order of Chaos podcast and founder of its mystery school, builds a theistic Chaos Witchcraft on panpsychism and a popular reading of string theory. Belief remains a tool, but the tool is aimed at relationship with a living, minded cosmos rather than at ironic paradigm tourism alone. Witchcraft techniques (circle, herbs, gods) sit inside Chaos permission to revise belief.
Daffowt's theistic Chaos Witchcraft: belief tool meets living cosmos.
Witchcraft techniques under Chaos permission
Daffowt keeps circle, herbs and gods as craft while Chaos permission lets belief revise. Panpsychism supplies a philosophical home for spirits without forcing a return to creedal religion. Popular string-theory talk is atmosphere. The Order of Chaos podcast and mystery school are the delivery system. Read beside Kurono: both treat Chaos as an interface layer that can wear local or theistic clothing.
Daffowt: Chaos permission wearing witchcraft clothes.
The Mythogenesis of Baphomet
Will, Chaos and a not-so-nice god
Carroll (2022) places Baphomet as the spirit of planetary life energy once cast as the Horned God. Karika widens the frame: Chaos / Azathoth as Schopenhauer's irrational Will; Shub-Niggurath as cosmic life-sower; Baphomet as Earth's living segment; Yog-Sothoth as the forms through which we filter desire. Consciousness and intellect serve Will; they do not rule it. Julius Evola (The Doctrine of Awakening, 1996) describes saṃsāric consciousness as falling into a hungry force that pervades "I" and "not-I." Karika's own winter mountain invocation (Gnostic Octaris Ritual, Mass of Chaos, merge) felt like a fall to the core of life and proto-life in rock and metal.
Karika's myth stack: from blind Chaos to eight human drives.
Two hard truths
Baphomet improves by antifragility, but not your preferred kind. Fine print:
- She/He does not see you as an individual, any more than you see one cell. Perception, if any, starts at tribe/species scale. Useless to ask Baphomet for personal favours except to stir the basal drive layer under the multi-self.
- What devastates you can still be a lesser good for Life-as-a-whole.
The dark view has a brighter twin via Nietzsche: self-overcoming in life, not only in death. Will to power (Wille zur Macht) is not Schopenhauerian will-to-live or will-to-happiness. Citing Bernard Reginster (2006), Karika defines it as a second-order desire: the will to overcome resistance while pursuing first-order desires. It "desires displeasure" in the sense of wanting hindrances to master, then new ones.
The eightfold roadmap
The Octaris as a whole symbols that second-order will. Baphomet underlies eight major organic desires (vectors). Modern magicians fuse them with cultural meme-complexes into a personal eight-deity pantheon. Frustrate or overfeed one drive and homeostasis breaks. Maintain at least moderate satisfaction on all eight; push three or four far beyond civilian norms through continuous dissatisfaction without shattering the whole. In the Pandaemonaeon, with external norms fallen and attention-harvesters everywhere, your unique Octaris is the compass.
From blind Life to practice: Karika's closing ethic.
Invocation anecdote and Pandaemonaeon use
Karika's winter mountain working used the Gnostic Octaris Ritual and Mass of Chaos, then a full merge, with no drugs: a vertical fall into life and proto-life. That experience underwrites the "not your personal angel" claim. Compared with Schopenhauer's will-to-live, Nietzsche's will to power (via Reginster 2006) fits Baphomet's stages: always creating something over itself, even at risk to the individual. In a Pandaemonaeon of competing attention-demons, tending your eight rays is how Kia's incarnation keeps a shape. Link back to chapter 3: the same eight-drive ecology that naive intervention wrecks is the roadmap for disciplined overcoming.
Hard truths then practice: Baphomet is not your pet god.
Eight drives and cultural gods
Karika's baseline roadmap (detailed as eight vectors in the book) pairs organic drives with cultural meme-complexes so each ray has a deity face. Long frustration of any drive disrupts the whole; so does overfeeding one. Ratios are personal gifts from Baphomet and drift with life stage. Magic's job, especially in life-oriented traditions, is to push three or four rays past civilian satisfaction through repeated overcoming of resistance, while holding moderate satisfaction on the rest. That is the practical meaning of the Octaris as will to power rather than as a decorative star.
Main Points
- Chaos Magic is late-modern magic. Hutton: experimental, individualist, eclectic, allied with science, and centred on belief shaping experience.
- Revivals recycle. Carroll's three revivals (Alexandria, the Golden Dawn, the 1970s) each rebuilt older material; Chaos Magic replaced the Platonic-Monotheist-Pagan paradigm with a Quantum-Neo-Pagan one.
- Results matter more than doctrine. Following Spare rather than Crowley, Chaos Magic uses enchantment, divination, evocation, invocation and illumination for concrete ends.
- The self is a parliament. There is no single true will; invoking many god-forms explores many selves, and fixation on one is "Choronzon."
- Imaginary things can have real effects. Invented gods (Lovecraft's, Apophenia) work as well as ancient ones; will arises from imagination.
- The movement grew from a scene. Hippie culture, Discordianism, punk and a Deptford squat produced Liber Null (1978) and the IOT; magazines and bulletin boards spread it.
- Bodyminds are complex systems. Karika: interventions have nonlinear, delayed side effects, so conjure rarely, for serious needs, at random intervals, and build robustness first.
- Opportunity cost is real. Karika's bluntest advice: most people would do better without magic.
- Symbols are arbitrary but potent. Tarot's esoteric meanings are recent inventions; what matters is what a symbol means to your subconscious.
- Chemognosis is old. Vayne traces drug use from Eleusis through grimoires and Dee to Crowley; mid-twentieth-century abstinence was the anomaly.
- Spirit and archetype need not compete. Sipes's dialogue model has minds and myths shaping each other, in individuals and groups.
- Relationship may beat command. Wachter's animism invites, feeds, asks and thanks, and treats offerings as relationship, not payment.
- Belief can be trained. Corvus's thread-cutting, subliminal loops and audio sigils aim to make paradigm jumping possible over about three months.
- Groups can build spirits. Lee's egregores (Mazmoneth, Kawa Pohr, WABRI) need many contributors and random inputs to grow.
- Engagement drives online magic. A glance at a sigil does little; co-creating a myth does most.
- Realities forbid magic. Snell: a reality, like a computer desktop, earns its usefulness by stability; magic is what breaks its rules.
- Virtual worlds erode materialism. Johnstone's Paradox anticipated simulation arguments and inspired "cybermagick."
- Balance Order with Disorder. Pinzón's eight circuits pair grounding anchors with ecstatic shocks; when overwhelmed, return to shore.
- Chaos Magic travels and mutates. Into Japanese esoteric Buddhism (Kurono), theistic witchcraft (Daffowt) and AI-age art (Abrahamsson).
- Life's god is indifferent, so strive. Karika's Baphomet does not see you; the will to power, organized across eight drives, gives life direction.
Key numbers to remember
| Item | Value | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| Publication | 2 June 2025, Weiser Books, 288 pages | Overview |
| Contributors | 12 essayists plus Hutton; 15 chapters | Overview |
| Liber Null first edition | 1978 (White); Weiser omnibus 1987 | 2 |
| Chaos International | Launched 1986; issue 23 in 1999; ad hoc to 26 | 2, 12 |
| Five conjurations | Enchantment, divination, evocation, invocation, illumination | 1, 3 |
| Eight colours of magic | Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, octarine | 4, 11, 15 |
| Crowley's Rites of Eleusis | Caxton Hall, 1910; peyote "kykeon" | 5 |
| Offering experiment | About 60 days, at least every other day | 7 |
| Thread-cutting practice | Daily for about 3 months | 8 |
| WABRI empowerment | ~30 (2018), ~20 online plus a Sheffield room (2023), ~50 in London | 9 |
| Mastodon growth Lee cites | 2.5 m to 10 m accounts, Nov 2022 to Mar 2023 | 9 |
| Japanese deities | "8 million" Shinto; over 4,000 esoteric Buddhist | 13 |
| Kangiten mantra | Repeated 700 times over hot sesame oil | 13 |
| Octaris review | 8 drives rated 1-10, every 3 months | 15 |
| Carroll's death | 22 April 2026, aged 73 | Updates |
Five questions to argue about
Terms to know
| Term | Meaning | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Gnosis | A state of highly focused or altered consciousness used to cast magic | 1, 5 |
| Paradigm jumping | Adopting and dropping belief systems to suit a working | 5, 8 |
| Sigil | Abstract design of a desire, charged in gnosis (after Spare) | 1, 9 |
| Servitor | A simple created spirit following set instructions | 9 |
| Egregore | A complex, seemingly sentient group spirit | 9 |
| Chemognosis | Gnosis induced by psychoactive substances | 5 |
| Chaostar / Octaris | Eight-rayed symbol of Chaos and its eight colours or drives | 4, 11, 15 |
| Pandaemonaeon | Carroll's name for the age of exploding energy and information | Intro, 15 |
| Iatrogenic | Causing more harm than the problem it treats | 3 |
| Reality tunnel | A worldview that filters experience (Wilson) | 10, 11 |
| Kia / Choronzon | Spare's free consciousness / the demon of fixation | 1, 15 |
| Will to power | Nietzsche's drive to overcome resistance | 15 |
Extra takeaways from the deepened pass
- Hawkins and Carroll's social history is oral history: rich on Speedwell House, thin on archives; date clashes (IOT resignation 1991 vs 1995) stay flagged.
- Corvus's three-month drills are the anthology's most concrete belief-shift protocol; their metaphysics is optional.
- Vayne's lineage from Eleusis to Parke-Davis peyote is the strongest historical chapter; FDA-era optimism is not.
- Pinzón's ChaoSurfing is integration advice wearing 1970s circuit clothes; keep the anchors, borrow the neuroscience claims lightly.
- Snell's desktop definition ("a reality is a space where magic is forbidden") is the cleanest single sentence in the book.
- Karika's pair of essays (restraint; Baphomet as Will) bookend the collection's ethics: do less harm, ride drive with eyes open.
- Cross-cultural chapters (Kurono; Daffowt) show Chaos as an interface layer, not a British museum piece.
People to know
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Peter J. Carroll | Editor; co-founder of Chaos Magic and the IOT (1953-2026) |
| Ronald Hutton | Historian of paganism and magic; foreword |
| Ray Sherwin / Charlie Brewster | Co-founders; publisher of Liber Null / author of Liber Cyber |
| Austin Osman Spare | Artist-magician; sigils; inspiration for results magic |
| Aleister Crowley | Model for bold technique; rejected as prophet |
| Jaq D Hawkins | Historian of the movement; tarot casting |
| Jozef Karika | Slovak novelist; naive interventionism; Baphomet |
| Julian Vayne | Chemognosis and the psychedelic renaissance |
| Jacob Sipes | The dialogue model of spirits and archetypes |
| Aidan Wachter | Animist sorcery and offerings |
| Ivy Corvus | Thread theory and paradigm jumping |
| Dave Lee | Group magic; egregores; online sigils |
| Lionel Snell (Ramsey Dukes) | Johnstone's Paradox; VR and the desktop reality |
| Mariana Pinzón | Eight-circuit "octomantic" map |
| Carl Abrahamsson | The Fenris Wolf; the Mega Golem |
| Sinobu Kurono | Order of Chaos Knights; Japanese correspondences |
| Sanhre Daffowt | Chaos Witchcraft |
About this book
This Is Chaos: Embracing the Future of Magic by Peter J. Carroll (ed.) and contributors, 2025. This is a chapter-by-chapter study of the book, with summaries, maps, tables and diagrams; short quotations keep their page references. It is shared free for personal study, is not for sale, and is not endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.
Insight Editions · rajeshrmahapatra.com/insight-editions