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

The First Step

People say that Chaos Magick is about taking on a belief, using it for a while, and then discarding it. That’s sort of true, but this creates the impression that we’re just pretending one thing after another. It’s a bit more sophisticated than that. I think the best way to approach chaos magick is to accept that all magick can work. It’s all real.

Some chaos magicians say that even fictional magick works. If you do spells from Harry Potter, or use The Force from Star Wars, you can supposedly get results. That’s what some people think, but I’m not a big fan of that approach because it feels too silly, and it automatically connects you to a feeling of fiction. Things being made up. Not real. And not getting results. If you disagree with me, well, there’s room for all ideas in Chaos. We invent, reinvent and change as we go, and nobody owns this magick. If you want to use fiction instead of more established methods, you can adapt everything I say by putting in a bit of made-up magick. This book will focus on spirits and methods that some people regard as real, because that’s going to charge up your magick a bit faster.

I think a mistake people make is to think that if you pretend to believe something, you’re doing Chaos Magick, and that’s the end of it. Making things up is not as powerful as taking a belief that already exists. If other people have genuinely believed in a power, that power can work for you. Pretending to use a spell from Harry Potter won’t work so well, because nobody really believes in Harry Potter as a reality. Everybody knows it’s fiction. But, use a bit of angelic Hebrew magick, and you’re tapping into a real belief system.

The belief does not need to be global. If seventeen people genuinely believe in the power of The Wild Hog of Grizedale, you could invoke that beast and use its power. The sincerity of the belief is the bit that matters.

In Chaos Magick, people have been borrowing beliefs for decades, so this secret is not big news. But, I think it’s a real time-saver to focus on the established beliefs of others, and archetypal energies, to get the magick going. You can make up magick, you can invent entities (and you will do some of that in this book), but when you want to access the most fertile energies of creation, the pathway to that power is the belief of others. You don’t need to believe what somebody else believes, you only need to act as though you have that belief. Speak to an angel as though it’s real and the angel will help you whether you believe or not.

You still get to make magick up from scratch once you’re in tune with the energies at hand. It can be very creative. Making magick your own is a big part of all this. But, when you need a quick jolt of real magick, you can dip your finger into anything from hoodoo to pagan rites, and the pressure of belief behind the magick will bring you results.

If you believe that magick is a reality, you’re going to be ok. You can get magick underway, and as you go, you’ll find that you do believe. It becomes really, really obvious that magick just works.

In many of the old, established magickal orders, Initiation was the first step to magick. It still goes on today, and it’s a long, slow, and often expensive process. There are usually a lot of old people (usually men) making you feel inferior, teaching you some very boring and largely fruitless rituals, and then eventually telling you you’re initiated, and then they follow that up by saying that you can’t really do much, and you’re going to have to wait a lot longer, and spend more money, and take more instruction, before you can do any magick that works. What I love about Chaos Magick is that people who read about sigil magick go out and make a sigil, and get a magickal result that week, making the old orders look a bit stuffy. Doing magick - that is initiation.

You really don’t need a room full of old men to initiate you - you just need to do some magick. The moment you get one magickal result, that’s it, done, you’re a magician. You’ve been initiated. And then when you make up some magick of your own and get it to work, you can give yourself some grand title and start your own magickal order. Or, if you’re a sensible person, forget all that posturing and just do magick that works to get a better life.

My next sentence should be something telling you that it’s time to do some magick. Nearly, almost — we’re nearly there, but not quite. This is where a lot of people stumble with Chaos Magick. They get to this point, all excited, and think, ’Ok, let’s give it a test drive and see if it works.’

No, no, no! When you take a car for a test drive, you do not do so to see if it works. You know it works. Cars work. That car better had work, because it’s sitting in a showroom, pristine and polished and with one purpose — to be driven. You test drive a car not to see if it works, but to see how it feels, how much you want it, what it can do for you. When you go into magick you should not think of it as a test of the magick’s veracity. If you do, the magick will turn on you like a trodden weasel, or it will just fizzle out to meet your expectations of failure.

This is not an experiment. OK, it’s true, lots of magick is about experimentation and trying things out and seeing what works, and genuinely giving yourself feedback on what’s useful and what isn’t. No point in keeping a crappy spell that doesn’t work. But, when you set out, you should do so with a commitment to magick. If you test the magick, it’s like you’re saying, ’OK magick, I’m pretty special and know all about reality, so let’s see if you can meet my expectations and live up to my high standards.’ It’s a bit arrogant and entitled. Magick works, and you should just treat it as real rather than seeing if it can appease your skepticism.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to bow down respectfully before magick. Not one bit of that. But, you do need to treat it as though it’s real. Can you imagine if you went down to that showroom to test drive a car, and you’re sitting there going, ’OK, well let’s see if turning this key really does fire up the combustion engine that will make these wheels turn. Oh, wow, the engine started. I don’t believe it.’ You’d look a bit foolish. You turn the key because you know the engine will fire (Unless there’s a fault.)

That’s how you approach magick. There probably isn’t a fault with the engine. Turn the key, because you know it will fire up. Perform the ritual, because you know magick works. (I stole that example from a good friend of mine — because that’s how he convinced me to believe in magick. Turn the key!)

Decide now that you’re going to do magick, as part of your life, because it works. Take it into your life as a reality. You will experiment, and you will find what works best for you, but experimentation in Chaos Magick means trying new things with courage and expectation, rather than measuring and testing as accurately as a scientist. You’re going to get a pretty clear idea of what works best for you, without focusing on judgment. After a few weeks you might love sigil magick, or you might not. It will be really clear that it works for you, or that it’s a bit of a letdown. No need to test it and evaluate it. You’ll just know. Now, let’s do some magick.