The Magic Of Chaos By Peter Carroll :: essays research papers

The Magic of Chaos Crowley certainly helped put the boot in against monotheism but the process was already well advanced. Science, which had basically evolved out of renaissance magic, had more or less finished monotheism as a serious parasite on advanced cultures. Crowley was enthusiastic about science and appropriately so for his era, but in the work of Austin Spare we begin to detect a certain foreboding. However it is Spare's work that appears more austere and scientific when compared to some of Crowley's more baroque symbolic extravagances. Spare rejected the classical symbologies of forgotten ages and sought the magic of his own personal arcana. Using the minimum of hypotheses he evolved a magic from his own racial memories and subconscious. Independently of complex systems he developed effective techniques of enchantment and divination requiring only ordinary language and pictures. Spare's work forms the bridge between an older style of magic brought to fruition by Crowley (which derived most of its appeal, power and liberating potential from its religious style of anti-religion) and the new magic. The new approach is characterised by a kind of scientific anti-science. This is increasingly becoming known as Chaos Magic. It would be no more useful to dub Chaos Magic as pseudo-science than it would be to dub Crowley's ideas as pseudo-religion. It is astrology as it is normally practised that is mere pseudo-science much as satanism and freemasonry are pseudo-religion. Chaos Magic attempts to show that not only does magic fit comfortably within the interstices of science but that the higher reaches of scientific theory and empiricism actually demand that magic exists. This is somewhat analogous to the way in which many religious theories implied the possibility of theurgic or demonic magic. The best magic has always had a strong antinomian flavour. The most remarkable magicians have invariably fought against prevailing cultural norms and obsessions. Their victories represent not only a personal liberation but also an advance for humanity. History bequeaths us no records of the renegade shamanist magicians who must have brought about the advent of paganism, but we know a little of the anti-pagan magicians who created monotheism: Akhenaton, Moshe, Gautam, and so on. As monotheism became a steadily more repressive and obscene force, a new generation of magicians arose and fought it. Some fought too openly and were destroyed; others were more subtle and planted effective seeds of destruction on a purely philosophical level, and others hastened its destruction by taking theological and theurgical ideas to outrageous conclusions. The roll of honour is here much larger, including such notables as Gordiano Bruno, Cornelius Agrippa, John Dee, Cagliostro, Eliphas Levi, and recently, The Magic Of Chaos By Peter Carroll :: essays research papers The Magic of Chaos Crowley certainly helped put the boot in against monotheism but the process was already well advanced. Science, which had basically evolved out of renaissance magic, had more or less finished monotheism as a serious parasite on advanced cultures. Crowley was enthusiastic about science and appropriately so for his era, but in the work of Austin Spare we begin to detect a certain foreboding. However it is Spare's work that appears more austere and scientific when compared to some of Crowley's more baroque symbolic extravagances. Spare rejected the classical symbologies of forgotten ages and sought the magic of his own personal arcana. Using the minimum of hypotheses he evolved a magic from his own racial memories and subconscious. Independently of complex systems he developed effective techniques of enchantment and divination requiring only ordinary language and pictures. Spare's work forms the bridge between an older style of magic brought to fruition by Crowley (which derived most of its appeal, power and liberating potential from its religious style of anti-religion) and the new magic. The new approach is characterised by a kind of scientific anti-science. This is increasingly becoming known as Chaos Magic. It would be no more useful to dub Chaos Magic as pseudo-science than it would be to dub Crowley's ideas as pseudo-religion. It is astrology as it is normally practised that is mere pseudo-science much as satanism and freemasonry are pseudo-religion. Chaos Magic attempts to show that not only does magic fit comfortably within the interstices of science but that the higher reaches of scientific theory and empiricism actually demand that magic exists. This is somewhat analogous to the way in which many religious theories implied the possibility of theurgic or demonic magic. The best magic has always had a strong antinomian flavour. The most remarkable magicians have invariably fought against prevailing cultural norms and obsessions. Their victories represent not only a personal liberation but also an advance for humanity. History bequeaths us no records of the renegade shamanist magicians who must have brought about the advent of paganism, but we know a little of the anti-pagan magicians who created monotheism: Akhenaton, Moshe, Gautam, and so on. As monotheism became a steadily more repressive and obscene force, a new generation of magicians arose and fought it. Some fought too openly and were destroyed; others were more subtle and planted effective seeds of destruction on a purely philosophical level, and others hastened its destruction by taking theological and theurgical ideas to outrageous conclusions. The roll of honour is here much larger, including such notables as Gordiano Bruno, Cornelius Agrippa, John Dee, Cagliostro, Eliphas Levi, and recently,