Frater Alloy has worked with several different magical organizations but enjoys working with anyone who is receptive to the idea of absolutely losing their shit in the name of magick. Since the summer of 2001, he has been the Sectionhead of the Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros, North American section. He currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
I have heard it said that there comes a time when one must settle on a single system of magic if any progress is to be made. Within my experience of Chaos Magick, I have found this statement to be false.
I have heard it said that mysticism has absolutely no place within the streamlined practices implied by Chaos Magick Theory. Because of my practice of Chaos Magick, I have found this statement to be false.
Then again, Nothing is True.
It is possible, I am sure, that one could practice Chaos Magick until one found a system of practice, perhaps an entire tradition that appealed to one's personal tastes and proclivities, that surpassed anything one could gather eclectically and thus replace Chaos Magick with a fixed set of rituals that aspired toward the completion of a path that few or many have walked and, possibly completed before.
It is also quite possible, that one could practice Chaos Magick with the sole intent of perfecting numerous paradigms so that one could manifest a mastery of money, sex, and revenge while nay-saying any 'false path' that leads towards a higher or more advanced state of being.
Then again, Everything is Permitted.
Permitted, much in the same way that kicking over the bucket after you've milked the cow is permitted.
What I present below is, surely, not the only way to approach the Chaos Magick method. Pursuing Chaos Magick as either a means to find the magic that really floats your boat, or as a free-form alternative to religiously and mystically derived systems (that gorge you on dogma and deities), is something that has been discussed heavily in many books and articles. It's just that my personal experience of CMT has been a bit different from the stuff I've read, and so, I figure I'll offer another possibility to the system of infinite possibility.
I call this style of Chaos Magick practice two things: I call it 'Yoga' because, aside from this little wad of words you are currently reading, it hasn't involved a whole lot of theory. This style is about practice and doing and eliminating the wall of bullshit between the practitioner and his/her experience of magick. I call it 'Alchemy' because it deals with taking what you have, feel, see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, and turns it into a cycle of evolution that spits out the things you need on the way to being where and how you want to be.
So, lets take a look at the steps of my 'Chaos Alchemy Yoga', of which there are really only four, and some of the simple techniques one can practice to make them more than just a bunch of words.
I mean, if you've worked for that milk, enjoy it!
I. Practice Selection
As anyone who has looked for information on the occult can tell you, the sheer quantity of available resources on magic, mysticism, NLP/DHE, and religion is rather daunting to people at every level of practice. The beginner is overwhelmed by the puzzle of where to start. The more advanced practitioner is equally delayed in the same way that someone with an enormous and stylish wardrobe never has anything to wear.
This, however, is easily remedied.
During this first step, the magician selects a set of external practices which he/she will invest a deep and fleeting faith in. This faith is not the sort of wishful faith that is cultivated by those coming to a new religion, but rather, a knowing through experience that is held in place by witnessing the direct effects of the practices he/she has implemented. Basically, we are attempting to prove to ourselves, through effective practice and magically obtained results, that this series of practices and its effects are as real as anything else is.
Swiss Army Lotto
This is the method I used to select an avenue of practice when I first began my experiments in Chaos Magic. It is super simple and eliminates a lot of the time you'd spend sitting on your ass trying to find a system of practice that will match up perfectly with your needs and wants. A huge part of being in tune with Chaos currents is being able to work with what you have, even if it's not exactly what you want at the time. Remember, this is alchemy so you can turn the bits you don't like into things you've always wanted.
- Get yourself a cardboard box, or a paper bag, and a sheet of cardboard on which you can write easily with a magic marker.
- After doing some quick internet research, write the names of various practice systems down on these cut lots of cardboard and then toss them into the box. The Personal usefulness is the only restriction you should place on your choice of practice systems. Pick stuff that will give you a new edge or tool, not something that will just add to an ever-expanding pile of useless buzzwords. If you have lots of body pains or have trouble focusing, you may want to try some form of Yoga or Martial Art. If your ability to calculate and arrange formulae is lacking, you could write down Kabbalah. Some other systems would be things like DHE, NLP, Cthulhu Mythos, Palo Mayombe, Greek Hermeticism, Taoist Alchemy, Kundalini Yoga, Siberian Shamanism, and Setianism.
- Situate the box in front of you and then sit comfortably for about ten minutes with your eyes closed. Don't fixate on any of the practice systems that you wrote down, but rather, focus on the fact that whichever system you draw from the box, will be the absolute and only system of practice for you at this very moment.
- With your eyes closed, draw your lot.
- For the next several months, do nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe this particular system of practice. If you do this, you will quickly arrive at the next step of Chaos Alchemy Yoga.
II. Random Belief
So now that you have a series of practices you've been doing for a while, you've probably convinced yourself that whatever practice system you've selected and used is the end-all-be-all of magical traditions. That's good. That's what you were going for. The idea of the last practice, as I said, is to come to a knowing through experience that will make that system of practice as real as it can be.
Why is this faith and belief stuff so important? Well, belief in one's perception (especially the perception we arrive at through magical experience) is enabled by this sort of investment. It is this faith that holds our experience of reality together - the very glue that makes 'the real' seem permanent and consistent.
And so, it is this sort of belief that we need to destroy between practice systems so that the next one is as real as the one before it. It is this system of random belief that is the catapult that launches us into the really tricky sleight of mind practices that substantiate the true fruits of Chaos Magick.
Faithcracker
Instead of just installing a new system of practice right over the old one, I've found it best to do a sort of mind, body, soul cleansing that forces us to reject the previous practice system and its associated faith constructs. This almost gives us a tabula rasa on which to establish our new system of practice and belief. However, it also generates an improved flexibility for removing and installing practices as we jump from one system to the next.
Needless to say, we retain the skills and methods we pick up from previous systems. The following ritual is only designed to eliminate that intense sort of belief so that we can approach new systems on their own terms instead of straining them through another system's language and worldview.
This Faithcracker is somewhat based on the Vedic/Hindu methods of Puja insofar as it is an extended rite that has the look of worship. Puja is traditionally the act of worshipping a god (or some sort of divine emanation) through invocations, evocations, prayers, rituals, and songs. With the Faithcracker, we are basically just re-working the ritual as to place our focus on the absence of all of these things.
Insofar as materials, I'd suggest a large bowl of water (preferably cold don't add any oils or crap to it - just nice clean water), a candle, a black sleeping mask (or something else that works well as a blindfold), and a yoga mat or something else to cushion you when you are sitting on the ground.
- Begin by placing the bowl in front of your cushion, and setting the lit candle on a pedestal (or even a stool) at eye level, behind the bowl. Put the sleeping mask next to you so it will be accessible when you are finished with the core practice of the Faithcracker.
- Using a vocalized statement of intent, state "My faith in (practice system you are currently immersed in) is only as strong as I am. If my will breaks, so shall my faith, and nothing is left but the void."
- Proceed to extend your arms out to each side at a 90 degree angle to your torso. The fingers should be closed and the arms should be straight, not allowing the tips of your fingers to fall below your shoulders. Leave them there and don't raise or lower them.
- Pain will mount after a very short time. During this time, repeat, out loud (possibly as a song), "My faith in [paradigm you are currently immersed in] is only as strong as I am. If my Will breaks, so shall my faith, and nothing is left but the void." Use these two lines to ward off any threat to your belief. Keep that belief in place, no matter how much it hurts.
- Eventually, you will break and put your arms down. At this point, the faith that was holding your practice in place is shattered. The reason for this is that the strength of that practice system's reality is too weak to hold your boundless, magical experience.
- Now, lean forward and wash off the remnants of your shattered belief by splashing cool water over your body and face, all the while visualizing the remnants of your former system washing away with all of the strain and over-conceptualized bullshit that has accumulated within you over the last several months (possibly years).
- Now, visualize the flame of the candle as the practice system itself. The system, which was once held in place by your belief, is now an external and fragile thing, with no power or influence over you. While imagining all the gods, rituals, and words of this former practice floating within the flame, blow it out.
- Grab that blindfold and put it on. Focus on nothing but the sensation of your breath and the total emptiness of your practicing mind. Do this for about 20 minutes.
- After you have meditated for 20 minutes or so, splash some more cold water over yourself and then do something totally unrelated to your immediate magical practice for the rest of the day.
Some particularly virulent belief systems will cling to your thinking with spectacular tenacity. To uproot these really tough ones, repetition of the Faithcracker might be necessary. With one practice in particular, I had to repeat this rite (in an earlier, less concise form) over ten times. Whatever it takes, get rid of it.
Overall, give yourself at least a week after performing the Faithcracker before you pursue a new system of practice. The tendency for most magicians to latch their new practices to their old beliefs is overwhelming during this transitional period - nobody wants to start from scratch when it comes to the way they think and function.
It is after several years of building and destroying these faith constructs that we prepare our mind for the third step of the Chaos Yoga Alchemy.
III. Chaos Mind
This phase of the method only comes after extended and repeated practice of the first two steps. This is the desired posture of mind that is the side effect, despite ultimately being the point, of shifting between practices and destroying faith constructs. By building up conceptions that are indistinguishable from what is often considered consensual reality, and tearing them down, we demonstrate to ourselves, experientially, that the concepts we place upon things are all that constitutes these things.
Several religions have attempted to convey the core experience of this state through all sorts of vague language and odd axioms, all attempting to present the mechanics of paradox in a direct and immediate way. Although some models conflict when it comes to the language used to communicate them, there are a few similarities that I think bear pointing out.
Timelessness - By moving outside of concepts, perception folds back into root consciousness and manifests eternally. When I say "eternally" am not saying that perception infinitely extends through all time, but rather, that it takes place within a state that is not subject to the experience of time or the perception of the consensual temporal flow. Time constrains our sense of cause and effect, and therefore must be removed in order to truly view, and manifest, the potentiality of our magical works.
Non-duality - called "adavaita" by the Vedics, the non-dual state is free of distinction. Pain and pleasure, love and hate, useful and useless, are all perceived 'as they are' instead of in relation to their perceived opposite. The sense of difference occurs through a belief in the meaning of either side of the duality, as opposed to being drawn from anything that is essential to the given thing. Because it is our perception that creates these dualities, it is within our power to eliminate them.
Egolessness - Perhaps more so than any other thing, Ego generates the most gross misinterpretation of state. The six perceptual modes, as an extension of our assumed 'I' are are the instruments of our sense of separateness and other. Sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing, and memory all serve to create a distorted disconnectedness that leads us to work our magic in a way that is cut off, in the most immediate way, from the very reality we are trying to effect. It is by eliminating this state of the senses that we expand our sense of self into the entirety of phenomenal reality. In this way, our mind takes the posture that is best suited for extreme modifications of causality, as well as an almost non-local vantage point for self-programming.
There are several techniques that work well for working towards this state of mind. It is generally best to use the method that is leastconducive to your personality type. It is the path of most resistance in this case that usually pans out to best effect. The reasoning behind this is that using a method that is closer to your day-to-day holding pattern will not provide an adequate shock to your senses to adequately peel off the layers of time, duality, and ego.
If you are a generally mellow person, with a resistance to physical exertion and intense stimulation, you would want to pursue a method that worked against that sort of inertia. Ordeals of pain (such as suspension, ritual flagellation, or those methods practiced by the Fakirs or Sadhus) are often the most useful for this sort of personality. If you are of a more hyper-active, unfocused, easily-obsessed sort, things like no-mind meditation, sensory deprivation, and tantric-style exercises may be more effective.
Although a massive, heaping pile of books have been written on the topic (and thus, I will not discuss the topic in any great detail), psychedelic drugs can also provide a means for any type of person to peer through the keyhole at this state. I do not feel that drug-induced mystical states are any less relevant or 'real' than one obtained through other means, however, they are dependant on the presence of the chemical and, often, are accompanied by levels of intoxication that make it very difficult to accurately relay useful information to others, even after the effects of the drug have faded.
IV. Transmogrification
Alright, I lied.
This step is where my grasp of language sort of breaks down. At points in the description of this phase, I'll basically be reduced to poetry in an attempt to convey what I'm talking about. This is not because I am trying to be mysterious, or mystical, or aspiring to be viewed as some sort of guru. It is because I myself have only grazed the edges of this phase within my own practice. Please bear with me.
The final goal of my system is what could be called the siddhi or yogic power of my understanding of Chaos Magick.
The mind, at this point, freed of its bonds is now unified (at least for the duration of the magical work) with what the magician holds to be (real, false, or otherwise). At this point the many-form incarnation of mind bleeds into one's subjective reality in a total form, undiminished by the obstacles overcome in the previous phase. The state of Chaos Mind literally bleeds with chaos and causality, destabilizing the reality constructs of those that the Transmogrified state makes contact with via information exchange. Painting, sex, money, music, email, conversation, and whatever else - all become a vehicle for the 'flux' meme as perpetuated by the practitioner of Chaos Yoga Alchemy.
To perform magic beyond concept is, what I believe, the absolute goal of this system. One might recall the sage of the Chuang Tzu taking his many terrifying forms so as to more fluidly interact and be with his environment - the 'psychomorphic any' being the axiomatic posture one would work at to become this Moebius Butterfly.
Ω
My intention in conveying this information is so that those who do not wish to specialize in a single traditional paradigm, nor break down their magic into cold, materialist pragmatism, have an idea of some of the other things that can be done with Chaos Magic as a long term path. If you find anything in this essay useful, please, by all means, use it - use it in pieces or as a whole. My greatest wish is that you DO.
