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

Random Belief
Liber NOX

Various stages in the belief cycle of the self are provided in the following sections. Try each or any of them for a week, a month, or a year. This exercise may save one an unnecessary incarnation or two. It may also help to make clear the aeonic mechanism which creates the various psychic milleniums of past and future history. The beliefs are given in order, with Number 1 understood to follow on from Number 6 in a circle. Atheism and Chaoism are presented in both their early and degenerate phases to make clear the stages of change, and to permit the use of the sacred cube.

Dice Option Number 1: Paganism

The gods show themselves in all things. In the elements, tempestuous and placid by turns; in the seas, the mountains, the green fields, in the hail and in the lightning. They show themselves as various animals and they show themselves in metals and in stones. Most of all they show themselves in the mind of man impelling him to love, to war, to fortune, or to disaster. The gods watch over everything in the world; there is no thing not under the auspices of some god or other.

For in all things there is both substance and essence. The gods came out of Chaos, and from the gods came the essences of all things—some gods giving essences to some things and others to different things. Man contains the essences of all the gods.

What is good or what is ill is what is pleasing or displeasing to the gods. But what is pleasing to Mars may not please Venus. Hence there is war in heaven even as there is war in man. Yet by making an appropriate invocation or offering we may set matters aright and gain their favors. If we live always in devotion to our patron god and do not displease the others overmuch, our shade will go at death to rejoin the essence of its deity.

Dice Option Number 2: Monotheism

There is but One God who created everything.

He created man in his own image.

He gave man free will to do good or evil.

Good is what pleases God, evil displeases him.

After you die God will reward or punish you

For pleasing or displeasing him.

God also created angels and demons.

These are spirits with free will,

Some remained good, some became evil.

These spirits help man to become good

Or tempt him to do evil.

If you stop doing something evil

God will be pleased.

If you stop doing something you enjoy

For God's sake, he is also pleased.

You may pray to God and ask him for help.

You may worship him with prayer also.

By this he will be pleased.

To know how to be good and please God

You must obey the teachings

And the authority of the religious hierarchy

He has established on earth

As the one true religion.

Dice Option Number 3: Atheism

The idea of God or a personal soul is an hypothesis we have no need of. Besides there is not the slightest scrap of material evidence that will stand up to examination. Let's stick to what's real, shall we?

There is always some sort of a reason or explanation for everything even if we haven't managed to work it all out yet. But we're doing pretty well. I mean, you've only to look around yourself, the whole universe works on a sensible cause and effect basis; it's only hocus pocus if you're too primitive to work out how it works. Free will, for instance, is probably just an illusion caused by some defect in the neuroelectro-biochemical plumbing in the brain. But we'll all go on using it till we find out. After all, enjoyment is the whole point in life. The only sort of morality or law worth having is that which stops fools from spoiling their own or other people's enjoyment in the long run.

And when you're dead, you're dead.

Until we find evidence to the contrary.

Dice Option Number 4: Nihilism (Late Atheism)

Material causality is everything. Science can probably explain away everything. There is nothing which is not caused by something else.

But this is no-explanation.

The world now seems accidental, arbitrary, and without meaning. We can know How everything happens but there is no reason Why. The universe has become predictable but meaningless. That is the burden of intelligence, of being able to see through it all. There is obviously no spirit or personal survival after death. Hence there is no reason to do anything, or for that matter, to restrain from doing anything. Even this is to deceive ourselves for there is no such thing as free will. One cannot help but get involved in doing because one happens to be. All motivation is just an attempt to put the body-brain in a lower energy, less tense state, even if by a roundabout route.

There are no absolutes in terms of importance, goodness, meaning or truth that do not arise from the accidental structure of the body brain and its surroundings.

We are just living out the chaotically complex forces which spawned us and which will one day reduce us to nothingness again.

Everything we will ever do is just a result of how we are made and what happens to us. For all our pretense of free will, we are an accident running a fixed but unknown course.

Dice Option Number 5: Chaoism

As above, so below

I am the universe

The life force in us

Is the life force of the universe

The subtle force in us (aether)

Is the subtle force of the universe

The gross matter in us

Is the gross matter of the universe

To Chaos, nothing is true

And everything is permitted

Though it has limited itself

To the principle of duality

In building this world

for itself.

(For a further elucidation of these beliefs consult The Book of Chaos in its entirety.)

Dice Option Number 6: Superstition (Low Chaoism)

All phenomena having come from the one source, there exist mysterious connections between things with similarities.

All like things contain the same signature or essence; they share the same spirit. This essence or spirit can be made to go into other things by bringing the signature-bearing objects into contact with whatever is being treated. This is the principle of contagion.

All things being connected in diverse, mysterious ways, one can take augury from anything about anything of which it reminds one. There is nothing that is not an omen about something else to him that but has the wit to know it.

And by similar wisdom, anything can be affected by performing the required action on some other thing that reminds one of it. Like attracts like, the principle of similarity.

Wisest of all are those who know the most deeply hidden connections. They are able to be reminded of the obscure by the more obscure. They know what sacrifices are to be made to adjust or placate the essences of things. Morality is the avoidance of misfortune. One's next incarnation will be as whatever creature of which one's activity in life is most reminiscent.