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

Liberation
Liber LUX

In creating life out of the primeval slime, Chaos has always sought to increase its possibilities of expression and to diversify its manifestations. During the evolution of life there have been many stagnant periods and some reversals. But overall, the inherent superiority of the most flexible, adaptable, inclusive, and complex creatures, cultures, men, and ideas always wins out. To seek these qualities is to achieve more liberation than any bizarre feat of renunciation or reorganization of political power is likely to create.

It is a mistake to consider any belief more liberated than another. It is the possibility of change which is important. Every new form of liberation is destined to eventually become another form of enslavement for most of its adherents. There is no freedom from duality on this plane of existence, but one may at least aspire to choice of duality.

Liberating behavior is that which increases one's possibilities for future action. Limiting behavior is that which tends to narrow one's options. The secret of freedom is not to be drawn into situations where one's number of alternatives becomes limited or even unitary.

This is an abominably difficult path to tread. It means stepping outside of one's own culture, society, relationships, family personality, beliefs, prejudices, opinions and ideas. It is just these comforting chains which seem to give definition, meaning, character, and a sense of belonging to most people. Yet, in casting off one set of chains, one cannot avoid adopting another set unless one wishes to live in a very reduced and impoverished style—itself a limitation.

The solution is to become omnivorous. Someone who can think, believe, or do any of a half dozen different things is more free and liberated than someone confined to only one activity.

For this reason Sufi mystics were required to master a handful of secular trades in addition to their occult studies.

Chief among the techniques of liberation are those which weaken the hold of society, convention, and habit over the initiate, and those which lead to a more expansive outlook. They are sacrilege, heresy, iconoclasm, bioaestheticism, and anathemism.

Sacrilege: Destroying the Sacred

Energy is liberated when an individual breaks through rules of conditioning with some glorious act of disobedience or blasphemy. This energy strengthens the spirit and gives courage for further acts of insurrection. Put a brick through your television; explore sexualities which are unusual to you. Do something you normally feel to be utterly revolting. You are free to do anything, no matter how extreme, so long as it will not restrict your own or somebody else's future freedom of action.

Heresy: Alternative Definitions

By seeking out ideas which seem bizarre, crazy, extreme, arbitrary, contradictory, and nonsensical you will find that the ideas you previously clung to as reasonable, sensible and humanitarian are actually just as bizarre, crazy, and so on. Whatever is suppressed, restricted, ridiculed, or despised, almost always contains a telling counterpoint to mainstream ideas. In argument always disagree, especially if your opponent begins to voice your own opinions.

Iconoclasm: Breaking Images

Immense gulfs exist in human affairs between theory and practice, means and ends. Contrast pornography and romance, cordon bleu gluttony and skeletal famine, dignity and masturbation. Consider violence as entertainment. Mass slaughter for idealism's sake. Look at what goes on in the name of religion and the consumer society. Relish the cacophony of neurosis, fantasy, and psychosis which guides material sensationalist culture to an uncertain end. Picking through society's dirty underwear, we discover its real habits. You can extend this list indefinitely and indeed you should. For human folly is without limit though society does much to disguise its darker side. Cynicism, sadness or laughter is the magician's privilege.

Bioaestheticism: The Body

There is a thing more trustworthy than all the sages, and which contains more wisdom than a great library. Your own body. It asks only for food, warmth, sex and transcendence. Transcendence, the urge to become one with something greater, is variously satisfied in love, humanitarian works, or in the artistic, scientific, or magical quests of truth. To satisfy these simple needs is liberation indeed. Power, authority, excessive wealth and greed for sensory experience are aberrations of these things.

Anathemism: Self-destruction

Sidestepping conventionally still leaves you with a mass of prejudices, idiosyncrasies, identifications, and preferences which give comfort and definition to the personality or ego. An idea cannot be said to be completely understood till you understand the conditions under which it is not true. Similarly you cannot be said to possess a personality until you are able to manipulate or discard it at will.

Anathemism is a technique practiced directly upon yourself. Eat all loathsome things till they no longer revolt. Seek union with all that you normally reject. Scheme against your most sacred principles in thought, word and deed. You will eventually have to witness the loss or putrefaction of every loved thing. Therefore, reflect upon the transitory and contingent nature of all things. Examine everything you believe, every preference, and every opinion, and cut it down.

The personality, a mask of convenience, becomes stuck to the face. Eye becomes clouded by “I.” The human spirit becomes a trivial mess of petty identifications. The most cherished principles are the greatest lies. “I think therefore I am.” But what is “I”? The more you think, the more the I closes. Thinking, “I am alseep”; my I is blinded. The intellect is a sword, and its use is to prevent identification with any particular phenomenon encountered. The most powerful minds cling to the fewest fixed principles. The only clear view is from atop the mountain of your dead selves.