The Apophenion: A Chaos Magick Paradigm - Peter J. Carroll 2008

An Invocation of Apophenia

Part 1. Introduction

Apophenia means finding meanings and connections where others have not; it thus underlies both psychosis and genius. Its occurrence has created progress and innovation in many forms of human mental endeavour. Apophenia has a sister, Pareidolia who brings visions where others see nothing. Whereas Apophenic insights tend to help in magic and science, Pareidolic insights tend to fuel art and religion.

In most disciplines, Apophenic advances arise fortuitously and accidentally, and the disciplines themselves contain no formal procedures for inducing it, practitioners just hope that imagination and intuition may eventually kick in. Art however has recently experimented with various stochastic techniques, the random fall of paint or the random literary cut-up provide recent examples.

The majority of Apophenia inducing techniques actually come from magic and the occult because of their association with sortilege and divination and forbidden realms of enquiry.

Kabbala began as a technique for inducing Apophenia.

(She told me that Herself)

The ancient Hebraic sages attempted to find extra meanings and inspirations in their scriptures by assigning numerical values to letters, words and phrases and then looking for arithmetically equivalent words and phrases. Of course with the passage of time the resulting insights became ossified as 'divine maps' of various kinds; and creative use of Kabbala tended to dry up, although interesting revivals of the technique have appeared in various eras. The world owes a considerable intellectual debt to the genius of Hebraic thought in many fields.

The Moslems also had a kind of Kabbala based on the Zairja, a series of rotating discs inscribed with the letters of the Arabic alphabet which they turned to create new combinations of ideas and concepts.

Writing in 13th Century Spain, Ramon Lull developed his Ars Magna, a technique for randomly combining concepts using stacks of progressively smaller rotating discs with words and symbols on them. For this he almost certainly took some inspiration from the Zairja that he would have encountered on various missions to North Africa.

Ramon Lull's Ars Magna devices carried mainly theological and philosophical ideas and symbols, and as with any computer, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Nevertheless the technique itself created enduring interest, and centuries later that giant polymath of the early scientific age, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, used it as the basis of his De Arte Combinatoria.

Ramon Lull also wrote the original Liber Chaos. Reading between the lines of this strange tome one cannot but conclude that he regarded Chaos as more fundamental than any God, rather as the ancient Greeks did. However, Lull lived under the shadow of the Inquisition and he came under suspicion at various times. Under such circumstances one had to write with a certain circumspection and circumlocution, or face the stake. Amazingly, Lull managed to remain more or less in the favour of the church powers, and they even preserved his deeply heretical Liber Chaos for him, not having the imagination to understand what he was implying. He acquired the informal title or nickname of Doctor Illuminatus.

The graphic representation of concepts and ideas and their geometric relationships has become a staple tool of thought, but the random combination of such concepts and ideas remains rather esoteric, yet Dynamic Ideational Geometry, as we can call it, provides a tremendously powerful and useful tool for inducing Apophenia in more or less any discipline. It forms the basis for the following approach to Invoking Apophenia.

Part 2.

General Observations

The operator can invoke Apophenia on any subject and with any desired degree of intensity. A mild invocation may prove useful for solving particular problems with eccentric insights and need consist of no more than some work at a desk followed perhaps by a walk in the woods. A more intense invocation might consist of an elaborate ritual, cut -up incantations, disinhibitory or hallucinatory sacraments, and intense meditation on strange glyphs and diagrams, and deliberately induced sleep pattern disturbances. This may well leave the operator mentally hyperactive and somewhat disturbed, and possibly somewhat pareidolic, so a formal banishing can follow an intense working. The banishing itself may well work better if followed by deliberate re-immersion in mundane activity, particularly physical work.

In more intense workings, magicians may wish to conceptualise themselves as Apophenia in person rather than simply as an abstract principle.

Plato got it wrong when he identified Necessity as the Mother of Invention.

Very rarely can we invent anything to order. Most inventions come when someone finds an inspiring connection between existing ideas and gives birth to another, so we must regard Apophenia as the real Mother of Invention.

In terms of Chaos magic symbolism, Apophenia has a Uranian quality. Uranus lies outside of the orbit of the seven classical heavenly bodies that represent ordinary drives and motivations. It provides a counterpoint to the central Solar ego or normal personality. We find Apophenia out in the darkness beyond known knowledge, at the frontier between what we know and what we can perhaps intuit or imagine.

She represents an alternate mode of entry to Uranian magic that complements the rather more macho god form of Ouranos who seeks to force the gates of the beyond with strange antinomian conjurations and tries to impose form on what he finds there.

Apophenia just opens the gates, and delights in what comes out. Sometimes on the other side of the gates her crazy sister Pareidolia awaits her, at other times Eris the goddess of discord appears to throw paradox and confusion into the works, just to stir things up. Beware the three Weird Sisters of Chaos, they make challenging Muses.

The symbol of Apophenia shown in her hand consists of five elements, a cross, a circle, and three crescent moons. These combine to include the currents of Uranus, Sol, Luna, and Venus, with a suggestion of Mercury.

Part 3.

The General Form of the Invocation

Magicians will need to spend some considerable time and effort in the preparation of the materials and concepts needed to support the birth of a goddess within their psyches. She has only existed as a god form since 2005 and she needs all the support her Priests and Priestesses can give her, but she gives much back in return.

The old Grimoires demanded considerable efforts at exacting preparations for good reason. It takes time and thought for imagination and belief to build up to useful levels.

An Apophenia Wand and tables of Dualities, Trialities, Quadrads, Pentads, (and higher order figures, if desired,) need preparing in advance. Some examples of tables appear below. Magicians should also construct an Astronomicon, and they may well supplement the period of instrument preparation with practice in consuming the sacrament mentioned below, to acclimatise themselves to the taste and effects. The courteous Magician should also acknowledge the possible presence of Apophenia's sisters in the ritual and prepare a symbol of Eris (see figure) and the materials to create a Rorschach Blot to welcome Pareidolia, and place them at the extremities of the altar.

Perchance the magician may need to add something to the tables or record an insight, writing instruments may also adorn the altar desk.

Magicians usually perform this invocation alone although work with the tables on a suitable altar or desk can take the form of a quickfire brainstorming word association exchange between two or more operators.

Fashion the tables from stiff paper or card. Fashion the wand from any material, a little longer than a hands length. A wand cut from a thick sheet of Aluminium serves particularly well, the symbolism of this light, amphoteric, versatile, and reactive metal proves particularly germane and the result should easily repay the efforts with hacksaw and files.

An Astronomicon typically consists of a black disc of at least a hands length in diameter and upon it the magician moves smaller appropriately coloured discs to represent various archetypes symbolised in planetary form. A Steel disc, enamel painted in matt black, serves well as the void of space. Magnetic discs painted to represent the seven classical planets plus Uranus then serve well as the minimum number of movable pieces.

The full Apophenia invocation begins with a banishing ritual if required (the Gnostic Pentagram Ritual serves well here).

A statement of intent (to taste) begins the ritual proper.

The Magician then delivers a spontaneous appeal to Apophenia delivered verbally or mentally in the vernacular.

Taking the wand, the Magician draws the symbol of Apophenia in the air or smoke and then visualises drawing it in to suffuse the entire physical body. Rapid breathing to hyperoxygenate the brain often proves useful. Magicians may employ supplementary forms of Gnosis such as erotic or autoerotic excitation at will.

The magician then delivers a 23 word invocation in Uranian-Barbaric, previously committed to memory.

The Magician (as Apophenia) then welcomes Eris whilst gazing at her symbol and contemplating briefly the clash of opposites.

The Magician then welcomes Pareidolia by making a Rorschach Blot and contemplating the result.

The Magician then politely requests that these goddesses to remain on the periphery of the ritual

Incense, if required, should consist of a mixture of agreeable and disagreeable ingredients. An Oakmoss and Valerian root mixture serves particularly well.

The alkaloid Theobromine (Xantheose) forms the basis of any sacrament to Apophenia. Prepare a very strong decoction of Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) in hot water. The goddess loves the chocolate alkaloid, but chocolate confectionary consists mostly of fat and sugar with precious little active ingredient.

The Magician then begins work with the prepared tables, pointing with the wand at various of the figures in the tables as they catch the attention. The horns of the moons on the wand can serve to form a symbolic bridge between concepts. The magician can repeat the Ouranian-Barbaric Invocation at will, or use it as a continuous chant.

At various random or inspired intervals during the work with the prepared tables the magician may turn to the Astronomicon and manipulate the moving pieces to create an additional stream of consciousness or as distraction from one which has become blocked. Contemplate the flavour of such conjunctions as solar-martial thought, or lunar-jupiterian attitudes, or mercurial-saturnine philosophies, or whatever may arise by chance or design.

Work continues till exhaustion or inspiration supervenes. Inspiration may come to fill the vacancy attendant on relaxation after exhaustion, so use a final banishing only if disagreeable phenomena persist.

In summary, the full Invocation proceeds as follows, with improvisation and amendment on inspiration:

i) Banishing ritual if desired.

ii) Ignite incense and consume sacrament (if desired).

1) Statement of Intent.

2) Appeal to Apophenia.

3) Draw and visualise and suffuse oneself with the Apophenia symbol.

4) Apophenia incantation in Ouranian-Barbaric

5) A nod to Eris and Pareidolia.

6) Work with Tables and The Astronomicon.

7) Banishing ritual if necessary.

The Apophenia Invocation

The Invocation appears as 23 words of the Ouranian-Barbaric magical language with an approximate English translation italicised below. Those who desire to maximise its efficacy in use should commit the Ouranian-Barbaric phrases to memory by repeated chanting, until it flows fluently, but they should avoid consciously learning the vernacular (English) meaning of it.

Having read the vernacular form several times, the magician should obliterate it from the page.

XIQUAL UNGASCAB GESIZAL CHUWAKAGATHAZ CUDTEG

Phenomenising Uranus Goddess Chaos Lady

COYANIOC FODDAWITH POZATHOR GYCAPORUS GODON

Join together Stokastic Reality, Random Illusion

CHAEQUAI NEKOZY CHAZITER EMUUL ETHENG

Entangling Imagination Coincidence, Do Sex, Do Death.

QYOPAL JOACHABIM DOHBLE THECJECHED DAHZOO

Illuminating Intuition, give me Neither-Neither Genius

KABOTHEYA OFTALA AEPALAZAGE

Bring about the latest Octarine End of the World

A Table of Dualities

The magician may add or subtract from the following list at will and inspiration.

The following merely provide some examples of useful starting points drawn largely from magic, mysticism and physics.

The magician concentrates upon chosen dualities by The Neither-Neither technique.

First consider one side of a duality on its own, and then the other, then upon a conjoining of the two, and then upon the simultaneous absence of both, to see what arises therefrom.

Doing - Being

Will - Perception

Causality - Randomness

Sex - Death

Fear - Desire

Love - Hate

Ego - Enlightenment

Baphomet - Choronzon

Eristic delusion - Aneristic delusion

Atman - Annata

Space - Time

Mass - Energy

Science - Magic

Religion - Art

A Table of Trialities

The Magician concentrates on the concept at each of the vertices of a chosen triangle in turn, and then considers how they may give rise to each other in clockwise or anticlockwise sequence.

A Table of Quadrads

The Magician creates Quadrads by crossing pairs of Dualities, and then concentrates upon them as though they represented graphs with the dualities as axes. The magician aims to try and find meanings for each of the four quadrants.

A Table of Pentads

All things obey The Law of Fives, and you can obtain any number by mucking about with 5, for example, 5 = 3 + 2, and then 3 - 2 = 1, and from then on to any number desired. Moreover, five represents that sort of divine spark or awkward extra bit that lies in excess of foursquare ordinariness.

Five therefore appeals to Magicians and antinomian-minded people everywhere, probably more than any other prime number.

So wherever you see 4, look for something to complete The Iron Law of Fives.

Some examples follow:

The magician may often discover fresh pentads by meditating upon what may lie on an axis going through the plane of a quadrad.