Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current - Andrieh Vitimus 2009

Disclaimer, Warnings, Definitions, and Other Oddities of Writing

First and foremost, I neither claim to be unique nor special in these methodologies. I may not even be that creative, having read so many books on magic. Some of these methodologies maybe covered in other books, inadvertently. I do not think I am right, or that this book is the divine word of magical law. Likewise, I do not think that my word is the end-all and be-all of magical practice. What I offer is opinion, but it is a reasonably educated opinion. It is an opinion that I hope will inspire and in its small way help people do magic.

This book is a process of alchemy for me. It represents some of the hard lessons learned during a multi-year initiation into magic. On one hand, some of those lessons were extremely painful, and the process of this book is the pressure on the coal to start forming a personal diamond. Initiations are very difficult processes, and I was an extremely stubborn agnostic who leaned very heavily toward atheism. Magic was most of what I was in denial about, despite the fact that my entire family is into magic. While many of the exercises in this book may not be quite as traditional as most occult books tend to be, they have worked for me and others in the past.

If you are facing a real initiation, it is my sincere hope that the book will help you in some small way. By "real initiation," I distinctly mean the kind of magical initiation that cannot take place within a magical order, but more so where you alone must face yourself and a host of realizations that probably drastically alter the course of your life. Sometimes, these initiations are not by conscious choice, and I truly hope this book will help some of the people who fall into this category. This is the book that I wished I would have had while learning magic on my own.

So, What Is Magic?

This is a good question, and the first of many you have to answer on your own. In this book, I will present methodologies and example workings that may give you the tools to answer that question for yourself, not via a "book answer," but from your own intuition. Your answer should and probably will be different from mine. Aleister Crowley, in Magick, Book Four: Liber ABA, argued that magic is any intentional act of will (Crowley et al. 1994). This statement is probably a good starting point.

However, I do tend to agree that magicians are born and not made. What I mean by this is that certain individuals seem to have odd coincidences that lead them toward picking up magical training. Why these coincidences happen, I leave to you, the reader, to decide. However, all of the magicians I have talked to have had these coincidences, which have pushed them toward studying magic.

Also, there is a cost to developing and practicing magic. It is not the fantastic cost that Hollywood projects as a world of demons and horrors. Magic includes the rejection of a world of limitations and the acceptance of multiple or infinite possibilities. If taken in this context, magic liquefies the idea of causal progression. The world becomes less and less finitely determined, and the answers seem to become less and less clear. Altering just your perception of an event or action can strain your thinking, since choosing how to view an event can itself become confusing. The process of questioning limits moves a person away from the "automaton" robot (R. A. Wilson 1987). The "automaton" robot is, roughly, the set of habits and conditions that allow us to automatically complete many tasks without thinking about them. Magic can lead to isolation. The general population typically does not accept or is hostile toward magic for a host of reasons that are beyond the scope of this book.

Many books will present various formulae and magic words that "work." Very rarely will these formulae work. Understanding the mechanisms of magic will help you far more than merely reciting an incantation. My book does not present a list of simple spells, although after reading this book, you should be able to get simple spells to work without a problem.

The magician/witch often risks a lot. Shamans risked death for their initiations. Given that the notions of reality are not firm, a magician can certainly have difficulty retaining sanity, and it is all too easy to get frustrated. Some states of mind are difficult for the conscious mind and ego to accept. Of course, success breeds its own insanity, with the god complex otherwise known as magititus. Magititus is dangerous because the magician believes that he or she is all-powerful and therefore becomes insanely sloppy.

The tradeoff here is that reality is not static. If you don't like something about yourself or your situation, you can change it. If you need something to fall in line, you can make it happen. There are many good and bad reasons to study magic, and what follows is a list of some of them.

GOOD REASONS TO TAKE UP MAGIC

1. For self-transformation or to overcome limitations.

2. It's a calling, it's "in your blood," or you're drawn to it by events in your life.

3. You have a desire to know or to be or to create.

4. You desire to change the now.

5. You are unwilling to be subservient to another master (e.g., fate or god), or you believe in the undiscovered powers of humankind.

BAD REASONS TO TAKE UP MAGIC, WHICH MIGHT HURT YOU

1. To be the bad boy or girl, or to have a rebellious image. Eventually you'll do a BS ritual, and something will listen and make itself known. (You won't be prepared.)

2. To seem powerful and great, as opposed to aspiring and working toward greatness. (See number 1.)

3. To sucker people into buying your books, which include magic you didn't even try. (Pet peeve-had to throw it in.)

Why Does the Book Have the Word "Ovayki" in the Subtitle?

While the book is titled Hands-On Chaos Magic, the word "Ovayki" refers to the intelligence of the book. It is the egregoric presence that manifested as a result of the creation process. The name itself was derived through the methods contained within the book to provide an alternate handle to the entire process that led up to the book, and the process of transforming experiences into distilled, useful information. It is the essence of the book, and a type of hypersigil in itself. This handle magically captures a work of personal alchemy in the process of writing, which involved transforming many difficult experiences into applied and practical knowledge. Those experiences bond together to form Ovayki. The subtitle Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current represents the set of training methods that I found most useful to change my internal and external realities, in line with the work of personal alchemy that I needed to do for myself.

What You Will Need for This Book

You definitely will need a journal. A journal gives you a historical progress report, and it gives you direction when rereading your thoughts that occurred during your meditations. Even if I do not state it, each game and exercise was created with the idea that you would co-author the technique with me, and that your own reactions are part of the technique itself. Generally, your journal will be your best friend when you believe you are not making progress, and hopefully your inspiration to keep going.

Access to a library and a computer with an Internet connection would also help where further research is required.

How to Use This Book

Hands-On Chaos Magic is not a book to be read from cover to cover in one sitting. The book teaches the magical lessons through a series of exercises, and it expects you to work through those exercises before progressing to the next exercise. The best way to work with the book is to read a couple pages, journal your experiments with the exercises, and then read a few more pages, doing the exercises and posting any questions you have to the web forum created for the book.

To get the most from this book, you should record your experience with every single exercise and plan to repeat the exercises till you feel comfortable with them.

The web forum for the book will be at http://www.andriehvitimus .com. When you have questions, ask them on the forum, since people on the forum will have been to in-person, extensive trainings and may be able to help.