Psybermagick: Advanced Ideas in Chaos Magic - Peter J. Carroll 2000

Heresy XIX Nothing

NOTHING IS TRUE

EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED

A decade on and the rest of the page remains blank for we still cannot find a single datum that remains true under all possible circumstances, nor evidence of the impossibility of anything under all possible circumstances.

But by all means have a go…….

Commentary 38

Attributed to Hassan I Sabbah. Note the multi-level oxymorons, paradoxes and anontisms concealed within these statements.

The second statement celebrates the bottomless well of human ingenuity from which we have barely yet removed the lid. The flames of hell will doubtless lick out of it, scorching many, but only knowledge will awaken us from the nightmare of history.

We can find three obvious meanings to the first assertion:—

1) Nothing is true. Judge ideas by their relative usefulness, not against some imaginary finality.

2) Nothing Is … true. Nothing exhibits being, but everything exhibits doing. Only the sluggishness of perception and thought creates the illusion of ’being’.

3) Nothing … Is True. Life the universe and everything takes an extravagant journey from nothing to nothing. Let us, therefore, applaud the nothing and relish its extravagance.

3) Amendment. We now suspect that it takes a journey from nowhere and nowhen in particular to other equally arbitrary locations. It did not come from a big bang and it will not end in a big crunch or entropy.