"Chaos Magick", by Ray Sherwin -

Chaos Magick

by Ray Sherwin

Chaos Magick has its roots in every occult tradition and in the
work of many individuals. If any one person can be said to have
been responsible, albeit unintentionally, for the present climate
of opinion that person would be Austin Osman Spare, whose magical
system was based entirely on his image of himself and upon an
egocentric model of the universe. He did not intend that the
system he devised for his own use should be used by others since
it was clear to him that no two individuals could benefit from
the same system. Nor did he fall into the trap of presuming that
the information revealed to or by him was pertinent to all
mankind as all the messiahs did. Aleister Crowley came to look
upon him as a "black brother" purely because he refused to accept
Crowley's Law of Thelema, preferring instead to work beyond
dogmas and rules, relying on intuition and information uprooted
from the depths of self.

The most recent public expression of Chaos Magick has been
through the work of the Illuminates of Thanateros, an order which
Pete Carroll and I initiated in 1978. Our aim at that time was to
inspire rather than lead magicians interested in the Chaos
concept by publishing ideas of a practical nature. Our approach
differed to Spare's only insamuch as we were interested in group
as well as solo magick. The response to our writings was much
greater than we anticipated and by 1982 there were groups working
in England, Australia, America, Egypt and Germany as well as
allied groups such as the "Circle of Chaos" and many individuals
working alone.

The difficulties of running such an order soon became apparent.
What seemed simple to us, both in concept and technique, was not
simple to people who had not suffered the bizarre and arbitary
intricacies of what is now referred to as "traditional magick."
This put us in an awkward position because it meant that a
magical concept which, by our own definition, could not be taught
now needed to be taught. Both Pete and I held guruship and
hierarchy as anathema yet now we were being expected not only to
teach but also to lead.