Liber Null & Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic - Peter J. Carroll 1987

Enchantment
Liber NOX

BEING THE INITIATE 3° Syllabus of the Magical Order of the Illuminates of Thanateros in Black Magic, this subject is divided up in accordance with the schema shown in figure 6. We will begin by discussing the Spirit of Black Magic.

Magical power is the key to the heaven-hell of the now. Unaware of this, many slip into the unsatisfactory greyness of small fears and small desires confused. Then they invent pleasurable or painful hereafters to replace the present. The life force seeks ever the flesh, body, ideas, emotions, experiences, etc., through endless incarnations. For without the flesh, Kia has no mirror for itself, and there is no awareness, no ecstacy, nothing.

Figure 6. The schema of Liber Nox.

It is either this nothing or the flesh, and the condition of the flesh is dual. Eternal warfare is the price, purpose, and reward of existence.

Kia evolves into a myriad of experiences, and these are all Self. They are all forms of our awareness. To oppose the great dualities like sex and death, or pain and pleasure, the great evolution of Kia, with lesser fears and desires, is the beginning of failure of satisfaction.

Existence is the great indulgence. Anything less than this, any attempt to avoid part of oneself is to invite loss of form, a self-negation leading to a shrinkage of spirit.

The Self alone is God and should recognize itself in all things. For those who uphold limited values bind themselves to mediocrity and failure. Those who self-righteously value their own contradictions are mighty on this earth. Our dual nature is all morality; it is foolish to be other than we are. Acceptance and living without restraint I will call the highest virtue.

The greatest sinners are the greatest saints, though they may be unconscious of this. Great men are greatly dual. And doubleness is not the end of it. Every moment the consortium of “I” puts forward a new face. I am not who I was seconds ago, much less yesterday. Our name is multiple. I am a colony of beings sharing the same envelope. And Kia, the self-love which binds them together, will one day hurl them apart—attempting even death for its satisfaction.

What is a god but man wielding the force of Chaos? To him nothing is true; everything is permitted. There is no purpose in his existence; he is free to choose his own. He has bound himself to earth forever and reincarnates at will. For the universe is mad and arbitrary in her ways. Nothing is unchangeable except change itself. The only universal principle is the universal lack of principle. Yet the Great Goddess Chaos will lend some of Her power to those who can become Her favorites.

And must our dualities be kept in coexistent separation to retain the power of satisfaction? The small pleasures of the gourmet, semidigested, overripe, putrefying food have come almost full circle to the consumption of excrement, with little satisfaction. Rather would I take plain wholesome food for the body, and taste the nectars of revulsion and delight but occasionally.

Reserve Kia for works of inspiration, ecstacy, and magic. Seeking pleasure is the surest invocation of displeasure, one falls back rapidly into the general greyness. But if an emotion be pushed to the furthest realms of non-necessitation, then there is nothing to balance ecstacy but ecstacy.

Gnosis is the mechanism by which Kia draws back from the flesh in preparation for the mighty indulgences of magic. A great saving to accomplish a greater spending.

Kia is nascent energy seeking form. It has been called the Great Desire, the Life Force, or Self-Love. It can be represented by Atu 0, the Tarot Fool, or the Joker. Its heraldic beast is the vulture, for it ever descends to take its satisfaction among the living and the dead.

The experience I received was this, that my innermost self or soul or spirit

Was no thing

formless

without quality

nameless

pure power,

Yet it was anything that it touched,

I am this illusion

and

I am not this illusion

Amen.