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To: Personal Email (Questionaire)
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (Kalki the Flower Urchin)
Subject: Das Kaos
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 14:39:54 -0800 (PST)

| 1. How would you define Chaos Magick?

Chaos Magick is a theme of occult endeavor derived from such authors as
Austin Osman Spare, Ray Sherwin and Peter Carroll, favoring, in theory,
a lack of adherence to tradition or dogma.  It incorporates a variety of
disciplines as determined valuable by the individual practitioners, and
this has resulted in some commonalities, such as the usage of sigils in
the practical realm and 'Chaos Science' in the realm metaphysique.

There are a number of groups and individuals who today associate with the
'Chaos' descriptor, yet as is usual with human beings, some ossification
and dogmatism, even within the Chaos Magick social milieu, has occurred.

There is some question as to whether Chaos Magick is very different
from other themes and movements in occult society, and indeed it does
appear that, like 'New Age religion', Chaos Magick incorporates quite a
few traditional theoretics and devices, though certainly with an added 
emphasis upon individual variation from these.
 
 
| 2. How did you first come into contact with Magick in general
|    and Chaos Magick in particular?

Magick

In high school I visited the local metaphysical bookstore and purchased
the Dover edition of Aleister Crowley's 'Magick in Theory and Practice'.
I'd read 'weird and horrific' books prior to that, but always cheap and
historical synchronicities, oddities of the occult and gothic worlds and 
various strange cultural differences filled their pages.  Reading Crowley 
was something unexpected.

After cutting my teeth on (and not understanding much of) that book, I
purchased _The Book of Thoth_, by the same author, along with the tarot
deck which it presumes to interpret, drawn by Lady Freida Harris.  I'd
seen Smith-Waite decks for years, but had never taken the time to look into 
tarot as a discipline, finding little value in the yellowy Rider cards.  
When I saw the 'Thoth Deck', however, I was inspired.  I took them home 
and, over the years, studied them with interest.  Such was my introduction
to magick.  Ritual and other elements came more slowly to me.


Chaos Magick

After some years of study in Wiccan and more orthodox Hermetic traditions,
including a passing postal relationship with the OTO and Bill Heidrick,
I began to attend Order functions.  I met up with a man who was to become
my lover and live-in friend for a number of years.  He was a socialite of
incredible energy, and a fierce networker among the dedicated.

Among his many interests (Masonry, Rosicrucianism, Thelema, etc.) he found
something called 'Chaos Magick' and thought, from what he knew of my own
practices, that it would be 'right up my alley'.  He kindly provided me with
written materials, including a copy of _Liber Null and Psychonaut_ and a
number of issues of 'Thanateros' and 'Chaos International'.  I've since
done a bit of research on my own and met Chaos Magicians via computer.
 

| 3. What form do your rituals and meditations take?
|    Do you work in a group or solo or both?

This has changed drastically over the years, to the point where I cannot
easily say what if any consistent form I maintain in either.  My intent is
to minimize 'ceremony' and 'presumption' while maximizing the transformative
effect of my workings.

Usually my rites involve psychoactive substances, but not always.  Until
very recently (and with only limited exception) I have done my rites alone.  
Sometimes this was inspired by my tendency to engage activities which I've 
learned that others regard fearfully, such as masturbation or some other 
means of altering my state of consciousness.  Sometimes this resulted from 
my inability to find anyone with whom I shared values and/or common magical 
interests/ideas.

Here's an example of something recent and formal: I made a deck of 
flashcards, each with one of the 99 names of Allah, their translation and 
explanation found on the back of each.  My researches in Islam indicated to 
me that the recitation of these words would yield insight.  At various times
I have indeed found the chanting of these, especially given my exposure
to mosque recitation, to be a remarkable tool of consciousness alteration.
I am gradually reciting them with and without the use of the cards.

 
| 4. How do you feel about political/social justice movements
|    which seek to change the world?

I feel that where they do not become violent they are very useful for
directing people's energies away from gross consumerism.  On the whole
I have little use for them personally.  My preference is to focus upon
how people can affect themselves rather than how I or anyone else might
affect others.

To this end I have begun what I shall develop into a working system and
ideology surrounding ecological magick directed toward inspiring life-
style changes within the practitioner.  I shall likely call the entire
discipline 'Ekoccultism' and will draw from such sources as Richard
Sennett's _The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life_,
E.F. Schumacher's _Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered_,
and Duane Elgin's _Voluntary Simplicity: An Ecological Lifestyle that
Promotes Personal and Social Renewal_.

Perhaps this will succeed along political lines where Wicca and other
so-called 'Earth-loving' magical paths fail miserably, though my main
intent is to see if such a self-transformative vehicle can be created.


| 5. What do you envision the future of Chaos Magick to be?

Like Wicca and the New Age movement, Chaos Magicians must eventually come
to a reckoning with their history and contents.  When this occurs then the
marketeers will of course devise a new emphasis and create a new 
'Revolution' in occult thematics.  

As for the Chaos Magick authors and typical themes, I think that these are
likely to continue a growing trend toward the focus upon the wrathful and
horrific energies which traditionalists within most religious and very many
arcane schools find abhorrent.  Lovecraftian and Enochian mythotypes are 
but the tip of a vast iceberg that modern horror-fiction and traditional,
though often hidden, mystical practices have yet to disclose.  

If the Chaos Magick movement is to prosper it must release its focus upon
certain authors and themes as 'penultimate', explore not only historical
sources (Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese religions, etc.) but also the fabulous
contents of popular imagination.  The merger of fiction-writing-as-mythos
has yet to be mined, especially where icons and theories are concerned.

In regards practice, the trend of taboo-breaking and self-control must
continue, tattooing and scarification giving way to more and less extreme
pursuits, socially, combined with personal practices such as BDSM and the
use of psychoactive substances.

No discipline is sacrosanct to any tradition.  No worthwhile theory is
valuable unless it can stand outside its cultural window-dressing.  The
maxim made popular by Carroll and others ('Nothing is true.  Everything
is permitted') must be applied not only to the theories and forms of
practice *outside* the Chaos Magick culture, but also to those which 
become popular *within* it.  Only in this way will it not calcify into 
a lumbering and hypocritical miasm, bereft of innovation and false of 
ideology.

nagasiva, tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com