The Master Works of Chaos Magick: Practical Techniques For Directing Your Reality - Adam Blackthorne 2016

Make Magick Happen

This book will provide you with magick you can actually use. I might get everything else wrong, but I promise you this: the heart of this book is magick that works.

Chaos Magick is meant to be the most practical, simplified, bare-bones way to shift reality in a way that agrees with your desire and your true will. There’s a bizarre irony that most books on Chaos Magick give you wild theory, but no practical magick. I’ll do what I can to set things right on that front. There’s nothing quite like doing magick and seeing it work, so that’s what lies ahead of you.

Chaos Magick is not about causing chaos with magick. It’s about reordering your reality, and directing life the way you want. Just like normal magick, but without a lot of the frills. It’s not quite as exacting and formulaic as old fashioned magick, so maybe that’s why it was called ’chaos’. When it was invented, it probably seemed like a great big sloppy madness compared to the refined rites, robes and rituals of old. Even though it works.

There are millions of approximate definitions, but if you asked me for a definition right now, I’d say that Chaos Magick is an occult technology that puts an emphasis on simplification, flexible beliefs, emotional transmutation and results. If it doesn’t work, it isn’t magick.

Chaos Magick sounds like it might be a slapdash magick for lazy unbelievers. But it works. If you have imagination, it works. If you are good at pretending, it works. If you can be playful, it works. If you can access your feelings, it works. If you have willpower, it works. If you combine all these things, you’ll be crowned Grand Magus of Chaos Magick within a week.

And yes, it can be slapdash. You can cobble together a ritual and see the magick work. It works better than half the rubbish you find in those very thick, heavy dusty tomes that fill a particular shelf of The British Library. But you will get better results if you’re a bit more thorough. And here’s a big secret, straight away, in the sixth paragraph, a great big secret: being thorough doesn’t mean having the right tools and wands and words and sigils — it means letting your emotions drive your magick. And I can show you exactly how to do that.

Let’s pause for a moment. Magick is serious. What you experience is real; it affects your reality. It’s not a joke, and the spiritual development you undergo is absolute. But it can get so pretentious that you lose sight of the fact that magick is really about finding joy in your universe, and reshaping the very universe itself to give you more joy. Let’s not be too pompous.

If I’m lighthearted at times, that doesn’t mean I’m treating magick frivolously. I’m just keeping my mind open and as supple as I can manage at my age. An open mind is how you make magick work, because an open mind makes way for the energy of emotion. And, when you do one little ritual and see one big, surprising, honey-dripping result, you’re going to feel a jolt of joy. You’ll probably laugh, even while sensing a whopping, heavy, somber awareness of your own power. Magick’s like that. Full of contradictions. But, let’s try to keep our focus on magick that works.

I’m not going to bore you with economic theory, quantum physics or my personal philosophy regarding the nature of reality. When people write about Chaos Magick, they go off on weird non-magickal tangents, and write about all sorts of utterly non-magickal ideas they’ve had. This is fun for the writers, but is less effective for you than throwing a coin in a well and making a wish. (Actually, wishing wells can work — but you need to add a little magickal twist. More on that later.)

Chaos Magick is still a developing art, but its heyday was in the eighties and nineties. There were some good books written, and some great occultists who introduced core ideas. It started in the seventies, when nobody was paying much attention. At that time, a lot of the magick was developed by kids - teenagers with attitude who wanted to get magick working, even though they didn’t have access to the inner sanctum of traditional occultism. They read the basic ideas and ran with them. Imaginative kids with ideas bigger than their fears. They made magick new.

It’s a horrible irony that most of the Chaos Magick books written today are as dogmatic, wordy and downright dull as the ancient tomes they used to scorn. Listening to somebody talk about Chaos Magick can be like going to a really tedious Catholic Sermon. You want to ask the priest how to make prayers actually work, but he keeps talking about sin. In Latin.

Theory can be thought-provoking, but it doesn’t get things done. There are many Chaos Magick books that explain how it all works — even though nobody really knows how it works. What I know is that it does work. If you want to get into magick, this is a fast and reasonably easy way. If you’ve been using magick for years, I hope you’ll get into the shortcuts and simplifications to keep magick efficient and effective.

Magick is a noble, spiritual, wonderful art that can help you learn about reality and yourself, but it’s also a great way to get more money, look after your love life, and influence the thoughts and feelings of others. If you’ve got a moral problem with that, then mayhap you don’t want to dabble with magick. But if you’re worried about affecting other people, you might have to lock yourself in your cellar. You already affect and influence people, and you even control them with your stern words, pretty smiles, wise frowns and harsh wishes. Every hope, every promise, every request, every action you make has an influence. Which means that magick won’t make you evil, it just makes it easier to get things done. If you’re a good person, you won’t be evil. Sounds obvious when you write it down, but people miss the point oh so easily.

Magick makes your intentions much more real. If you have an intention, it can manifest. That is power. Make sure you’re ready to have this much fun and this much power. It can change your life.

For every chaos magician who prospers, there are plenty who are still hammering out mini-rituals every day to make a few extra pennies. It’s not always spectacular. I’ll do my level best to show you what works, what doesn’t, and where it all goes wrong, so you can make sure it usually goes right.

If you’ve seen other books by The Gallery of Magick, you might wonder why on earth we’re publishing a book about Chaos Magick. If you believe everything you hear, then you’ll believe that Chaos Magick is all about making stuff up, pretending to believe and hacking the universe, with no respect for angels, demons or anything else. And yet, books by The Gallery of Magick are about real angels, spirits and entities that can assist your life. So what’s the truth?

First of all, Chaos Magick is not just about making things up. Yes, you can invent a ritual and get it to work, and yes, Chaos Magick can be about taking bits from one system and pieces from another. But, at its best, this magick is about personal exploration and having a deep connection to the reality of magick itself.

The Gallery of Magick, as a magickal order, have always simplified things. If you get hold of a copy of The 72 Angels of Magick, it might look like a complex system of chants, sigils and psychological shifting. But compared to tradition, it is a massive, outrageous simplification. According to occult theory and tradition, it shouldn’t work. But it damn well does.

One thing we’ve dedicated ourselves to is exactly that. Simplification. That is what we learned from Chaos Magick — the ability to throw out the wands and daggers and magick circles, and the extra fluff and junk that you don’t need. Magick can work when the essence is all that’s left. That’s what you already get in books by The Gallery of Magick. It isn’t Chaos Magick, but it’s been informed by the revolution of Chaos. It’s the essence of traditional magick, and I don’t for one minute reject it. Use that magick, but use Chaos Magick too, because Chaos can be highly flexible, intuitive, impromptu and adapted to your exact needs.

But just wait a minute. Those other books are about contacting angels and other spirits. Are the spirits real? Does it matter? To me, the spirits are absolutely real. I have seen too much to think otherwise. Call me crazy, but I’ve spoken to angels (and I wasn’t on drugs) and I believe they are real. But you don’t need to believe in them. It’s possible I conjured them up through imagination. Think that, if it helps. Believe or don’t believe, because it won’t change a thing. Belief is a tool in Chaos Magick, so faith is not a ticket to success. If you believe that angels are only as real as unicorns, the magick can still work.

You can get magick to work so long as you believe in magick. That’s all you need. You don’t need to believe in particular gods, angels, demons or spirits. Just know that magick is real. Believe that the mind can affect the universe in a supernatural way.

You already know that the mind can affect reality. You think about moving your hand and your hand moves. A thought has directed matter to shift. Not an original example, I know, but it’s a good one. The ephemeral mind can make matter move, and that’s remarkable. We reside in bodies that can determine how we feel (when we get sick, tired, injured), but we can also direct our bodies to move, create, or jump around the room. Thoughts move bodies, bodies build stuff, and life goes on. It’s weird. Magick only requires a tiny leap of faith to know that your mind, your will, your emotions and your intent can affect reality beyond the confines of your nerves and bones. If you’re reading this book it’s probably because you already believe that magick is a reality.

You can make up reasons to believe it’s all true. This is what most Chaos Magick books help you with — they talk about the way the mind exists in a moment of quantum flux and a string of multiverse potential. That sort of stuff. It sounds scientific and exciting, but it’s really just gobbledygook to convince you that the reality of magick is backed up by science. Most scientists would laugh you out of the room if they read it; better to just trust your hunch about magick.

If you believe the universe is just nuts and bolts working in a mechanical way, please put your skills to use in engineering. We need good engineers. But if you sense that there’s some level of supernatural in the world, if you think your human mind can be a part of that, if you get the slightest hunch that this might be true, you can get magick to work.

When I was a kid, I was completely freaked out by the number of religions that were for sale. I lived in a town that was multicultural, and I just found it so weird that somebody could choose one religion, when right next door there were other religions on offer. How could you pick a belief and really believe it when right next door there was so much faith that went in a completely different direction? And then, when I got into magick, I felt the same way. There are lots of different systems, all with their own sets of beliefs. How do you know which one is the true magick? Well, you don’t, so you can just try bits of magick from all of them. And then you find that they all work. The answer is that magick itself works. The flavor of magick is not so important.

If magick has been used by a lot of people, a lot of times, then it’s more likely to work. To ignore those traditions would be to ignore a lot of good magickal technology. In Chaos Magick you use what works, regardless of origin. Your world changes.

Modern occultists can be so efficient. You read the old books and you’re told you have to hack a particular tree to bits on a particular day, in order to make a wand. Oh yeah? I used a wand that I stole out of my brother’s magick trick box set that he got for Christmas. It worked. You can even use your finger instead of a wand. Or your foot. It’s the act of pointing that counts, not what the stick is made out of. My wand was plastic, and it worked for me. My toes work as well. When you point a wand (or your foot), you’re making a grand gesture. Chaos Magick cares about the gestures, not the tools so much. The stick itself isn’t important.

Traditional magick is fascinating to some, including me. Like my colleagues, I love reading old books, working my way through piles of old documents, searching for a tiny insight into ancient magick, or a secret sigil that the world may have missed. But that’s a hobby. Practical magick can be so simple that you spend a couple of minutes doing a ritual, and it works. You think of something you want, you create the magick to get the result, and the result happens. Those bumper stickers that say Magic Happens…they really should say Chaos Magick Happens. Because it does.