Chaos Magick

(also called KAOS or Current 156)

a magickal spirituality with little or no set-in-stone ritual,dogma,deities, or any
other object of faith to which the initiate is bound. The chaos magician only
places faith in himself. It is generally agreed among chaos magicians that magick
is a process of the psyche, not a nebulous 'spirit' or some such thing. All older
magickal paths are seen by chaos initiates as different forms of the same psychic
process, which may be imitated with any and all forms of ritual and symbolism that
hold a personal meaning for the magician. Gods and ceremonial equipment, if present
at all, are seen as symbolic, psychological tools used as vehicles into the
magician's inner potential. Once this potential is fully realized, the God of use
may simply be tossed aside.

Chaos magick finds its origin partially in the 'sigil working' of Austin Osman
Spare. In this form of magickal practice, the magician creates a symbol, or sigil,
representing a goal or desire. Using any method he/she chooses, the magician then
goes into a trance state wherein the sigil is the sole object of consciousness.
after the climax of this trance state is done with, the sigil is to be "banished",
or forgotten, so that the goal it represents will ingrain itself into the
unconscious mind of the caster.
Some sources have it that the history of chaos magick runs further back. Such
sources trace it to the anti-witchcraft hysteria of medieval Christian Europe, in
which witches would have to invent new methods of magick so that they would not be
caught doing obviously magickal ritual.

The first major occultist to write about these ideas calling them 'chaos magick'
was Peter Carroll in his books Liber Null and Psychonaut. Far-out writer William S.
Burroughs is also known for his invocation of Arabic gods by chaotic methods. Comic
artist Grant Morrisson has also written extensively on the subject. Phil Hine's
chaotic path revering Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and other gods from the Lovecraftian
mythos has become widely popular, almost to the point of becoming a traditional
path in itself.

Even chaotic magick has its own organizations. The most popular one is called the
Illuminates of Thanateros. The dual nature of their god (eros,love and
life+Thanatos, death and the will to die) brings to mind the Gnostic yin-yang-ish
deity Abrasax.
Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, a splinter group led by artist, musical pioneer,
cultural engineer, and "pandrogyne" Genesis P-Orridge, places a high emphasis on
sigil work focused on the liberation of the individual from conditioned modes of
thought, as well as bringing about a world of absolutely free artistic expression.
They show a strong preference for masturbation as sigil work, and hold both the
male and female ejaculants as sacred. The Church of the Subgenius, which deifies
Bob the used car dealer, puts out sarcastically toned texts and seems to be focused
on pranks.
A good Chaos magick ritual may be the invocation of Batman in order to escape an
enemy's threat.