Article

Damien Ferguson

Published by Damien Ferguson & Rei Tadashi on the 16th of June 2016

An Intro Into Chaos Magick

You often hear about chaos magick and folks new to magick might automatically focus on the word chaos and think about disorder and destruction, negativity, or even evil. These are misconceptions as chaos is not equivalent to discord and is not evil or harmful. The disorder part is true in a way, as chaos magic refers to dealing with the force of chaos itself, the element of force and change and doing away with the strict orders of old. These strict orders refers to set paths and set meanings to things, and basically a traditional way of thinking and seeing things, usually without any or little personal input from the magickian. It has little to do with gods, or rituals written by others or anything of the like. In chaos magic, you are a “god” and it is up to you and your will that directs the energies, elements, force, what have you, to effect changes and things.

The basis of chaos magic is, to simplify, your will.

Since you are the one that directs the process and the results, it means that chaos magick is varied and very personal. A spell made by one chaos magician will most of the time not work for another one, simply because of how personal each and every thing in the spell is to the person who made it. It is easier, and much more beneficial to give examples and help promote thinking up your own ideas when it comes to reading or writing things involving chaos.

However, chaos magick does not mean “omg no order do anything and destroy all!” type of chaos.

Something so chaotic needs also a lot of order and perfection in its workings is the base version of the workings of chaos magick is. You might wonder why that is. Simple; since it is you who will direct the flow of the magickal working, you need to have a method with which to direct that flow.

The thing is, instead of relying on established procedure for a magickal working, it would be up to you how to come up with your own method. The methods and internal workings can be sourced from different fields. One of the common methods currently involve sigils, however, you can use anything from psychology to mathematical equations to other beliefs in other magickal fields. Anything goes, as belief is the cornerstone of chaos magick. The desire and will to achieve would be the focus as opposed to following a rigid set of how-to’s.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. It is how you quantify or qualify, refine, and apply those beliefs that would make the working successful.

Chaos magic is to use order and chaos as one to create a personalized craft.

One example of application, as we mentioned, is sigils. The methods are varied, depending on the magickian. One way to do it is, say, taking one’s name, or a word(s) or a desire or result and laying the words over themselves to form a sigil like so:

Other chaos magickians also use numbers, or simply draw shapes and whatnot to form a sigil that feels right to them like here:

As you have noticed, sigils are pretty popular, but as we have discussed, chaos magick is highly personal because your will is what shapes the force to effect change. Therefore, a sigil will be most effective when you make it yourself and when you apply it to the proper places. An example is when you are looking for work, you can make a sigil signifying that intent and then place it around places where folks gather or where job ads are posted, as well as in your own place, ritual area, etc. Just remember that sigils tend to not only take the energy and power of its creator, but can influence and pick up energy of all those who see it as well.

Aside from sigils, servitors, or beings of energy created and programmed by the chaos magician, are also highly popular. Unlike other crafts that use spirits and the like, or simply constructs, chaos magicians tend to treat servitors like programming or coding an actual computer application. Putting much thought, energy and time into their creation.

For other types of things one may use, it is as varied as the chaos magician wants. They do not adhere to any set method or dogma. One can go look at many paths of magick, take from it what you want and apply it to your craft. There is no grimoire and they may use spells from other paths, or ones they create themselves. It all boils down to what works and what the chaos magician prefers. Chaos magick afterall, is in seeing and understanding the underlying core principles and shaping those seemingly different and/or contrasting beliefs to make them work for you.

The black and white beliefs about polarities like good and evil, magic colors–unless the symbolism was specified by the magician for his personal use–are not really adhered to by chaos magicians. It is simply about the will, results, cause and effect. Unlike many magic paths this one is not a rigid or a set path or system of magick like its traditional cousins. It is more of an attitude or philosophy that one applies to their craft. This is, in effect, why unlike many other crafts, chaos magick has no ill will or negative thoughts on doing much of your craft for self gain. The self is afterall, one of the most important things to most people.

Chaos magic promotes experimenting, creativity, and results. In fact it focuses very much on the physical results of the chaos magicians spells, rituals, sigils or other means to its work. With less focus on the ritual itself, and more on the belief in it, and its ending results. Simply that the end result is it being achieved.

In the end the real beauty of chaos magick is being able to ignore all the dressing and dogma of the other paths and figuring out how it works in a more logical/physics sense and how to use it and apply it to your own craft. It really is one for the creative types and those who prefer to not be tied to a dogma or deity and prefer to explore, expierement and focus on results. Of course it is also one that even the more scientific or mathematical can even understand or get behind in a better sense with not much of a transitional phase due to the focus and formula aspect of it. So if you like math, algebra, calc, physics, science, creativity, not following a set path or deity, and want to focus only on the results, then chaos magick is one path that may very much be for you.