Chaos Magick Review:
Liber Null & Psychonaut,
by Peter Carroll

Excerpts by Elendraug i69!

Contents:

• Chaos (Kia & Chaos Magic)
• Magic
• Gnosis
• Chaoism

Chaos (Kia & Chaos Magic)

• That which is responsible for the origin and continued action of events. (Pg 28)
• ...the force which adds increasing complexity to the universe by spawning structures which were not inherent to its component parts. (Pg 28)
• ...the force which caused life to evolve itself out of the dust. (Pg 28)
• ...is currently most concentrated in the human life force, or Kia, where it is... (Pg 28)
• ...the source of consciousness. (Pg 28)
• ...cannot be known directly. (Pg 29)
• [gets its name]...from the bizarre and indeterminate nature of the aetheric plane. (Pg 29)
• [we are]...centers of Kia or Chaos. (Pg 29)
• All ones thoughts, obsessions, and demons must be reabsorbed before Kia can become one with Chaos. (Pg 40)
• It is true that the mind must be finally surrendered as one enters fully into Chaos, but a complete and balanced psychocosm is more easily surrendered. (Pg 41)
• In beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and conversation [of our Holy Guardian Angel or Augoeides], the magician vows 'to interpret every manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite Chaos to himself personally.' (Pg 49)
• Space, time, mass, and energy originate from Chaos, have their being in Chaos, and through the agency of the aether are moved by Chaos in the multiple forms of existence. (Pg 52)
• What is a god but man wielding the force of Chaos? To him nothing is true; everything is permitted. (Pg 52)
• Yet the Great Goddess Chaos will lend some of Her power to those who can become her favorites. (Pg 52)
• Chaos, the life force of the universe, is not human-hearted. Therefore the wizard cannot be human-hearted when he seeks to tap the force of the universe. He performs monstrous and arbitrary acts to loosen the hold of human limitations upon himself. (Pg 66)
• ...out of Chaos arise the two prime forces of existence, the solve et coagula of existence. The Light power and the Dark. (Pg 103)
• It is impossible to understand Chaos, because the understanding part of ourselves is built out of matter which mainly obeys the statistical form of causality. Indeed, all our rational thinking is structured on the hypothesis that one causes another. It follows then that our thinking will never be able to appreciate the nature of consciousness of the universe as a whole because these are spontaneous, magical, and chaotic by nature.... The universe IS the thoughts of Chaos, if you like. We may be able to understand the thoughts, but not the Chaos from which they arise. Similarly, we may be accustomed to being conscious and exerting our will, but we shall never be able to form ideas of what these are. (Pg 153-154)
• The force which initiates and moves the universe [Chaos], and the force which lies at the center of consciousness [Kia], is whimsical and arbitrary, creating and destroying for no purpose beyond amusing Itself. There is nothing spiritual or moralistic about Chaos or Kia. We live in a universe where nothing is true, although some information may be useful for relative purposes. (Pg 154)
• ...the animating force of the entire vast universe is Chaos. It is the inexpressible pregnant Void from which manifest existence, order, and form arise. Being omnipresent and non-dualistic, it is virtually imperceptible, inconceivable, and impossible to visualize... (Pg 157-158)
• However we choose to see it, the ultimate ground of being is utterly void to our understanding, impersonal and inhuman, whimsical and capricious and far too infinite and incomprehensible to be much use as a god to limited dualistic beings like ourselves. (Pg 157-158)
• The consciousness-force in us that appears as the root of will and perception can be called Kia. This Kia has no form. Any form of innate divinely sanctioned motive that one may seem to have found in it is illusion. It is this void at the center of one's being which is the real Holy Guardian Angel. The psychic censor, on the other hand, is a material thing which protects the mind from magic and from being overwhelmed by the awesome strangeness of the psychic dimension which appears to us as chaos. (Pg 162)
• We cannot perceive Chaos directly, for it simultaneously contains the opposite to anything we might think it is. We can, however, occasionally glimpse and make use of partially formed matter which has only probablistic and indeterministic existence. This stuff we can call the aethers. (Pg 192)
• If it makes us feel any better we can call this Chaos, the Tao, or God, and imagine it to be benevolent and human-hearted. There are two schools of thought in magic. One considers the formative agent of the universe to be random and chaotic, and the other considers that it is a force of spiritual consciousness. As they have only themselves on which to base their speculations, they are basically saying that their own natures are either random and chaotic or spiritually conscious. (Pg 192)

Magic

• [calling]... very unlikely coincidences or unexpected events into existence by manipulating the aether. (Pg 31)
• The magician can only change something if he can 'match' the Chaos which is upholding the normal event. (Pg 55)
• Thus does the magician turn that aspect of Chaos which manifests as causality to his advantage, rather than oppose it. (Pg 56)
• The adept magician however will have so strengthened his spirit by magic that it is possible for him to carry [his personal Kia] over into a new body. (Pg 103)
• Magic is where science is actually heading. (Pg 111)
• It is for wizards to determine how that new [alternative] spirituality will manifest. (Pg 114)
• The methods of magic are remarkably uniform throughout history and across cultures. It is time to unearth them and make them work. Secondly, it is essential that what might be called a spirituality of magic is evolved. Magic must have its own flavor, its own worldview, and its own philosophy. There has been a tendency to regard magic as an antique art. (Pg 114)
• Magic is aligning itself against oppressive forms of order in many fields. (Pgs 113-115)
• Magic is opposed to psychiatry and medicine designed to patch up the damaged automaton and plug him back into the system. Instead it would rather that individuals learn to handle their own mental self-defense and treat bodies with gentler remedies such as herbs. (Pgs 113-115)
• Magic rejects politics as no more than some people's perverse desire to dominate others. It does well to dissociate itself from this monkey squabble and advocates instead personal enlightenment and emancipation, which are the only real safeguards to freedom. (Pgs 113-115)
• Magic is anti-ideological because the main products of ideological solutions are repression and corpses. (Pgs 113-115)
• Magic is profoundly opposed to religion. Although a religion may appear benign when it is in decline, at least half of the madness and violent deaths of history have been caused by mindless adherence to religions. (Pgs 113-115)
• Magic is also opposed to the superstition that the world is wholly material and that men's actions are not intimately interwoven with the psychic sphere. (Pgs 113-115)
• Magic aligns itself to a vision of chaotic good [to oppose repressive forms of order which often impose themselves by evil means]. (Pgs 113-115)
• Magic's commitment to the good is reflected in its concern with individual freedom and consciousness and its interest in all other life forms on this planet. At the highest level this manifests as some unspecified feeling for the "vibes" generated by human thought and action. (Pgs 113-115)
• The chaotic aspect of new aeon magic is psychological anarchy. It is a species of operation mindfuck applied to ourselves as much of the world. The aim is to produce inspiration and enlightenment through disordering our belief structures. Humor, random belief, counter-information and disinformation are its techniques. (Pgs 113-115)
• Full rituals of the meditative or ecstatic variety are usually directed towards one of the four objectives:
  Enchantment - making things happen directly by magic
  Evocation - making things happen through the agency of various demons and elementals
  Invocation - the summoning of various entities and thought forms for the inspiration of their knowledge and conversation
  Divination - obtaining knowledge by direct magical means. (Pgs 118-119)
• The simplest way to orchestrate these rituals for group work is for a presiding officer to perform the main ritual sequence and have the participants deliver their visualizations, mantras, ritual movements and invocations on certain pre-arranged cues. (Pgs 118-119)
• To be effective, the ritual must work like an automatic mechanism in which power can manifest without distraction or hesitation. A variety of trance states from mild suggestibility to deep hypnosis can be used for group magical work. One operator will persuade one or more subjects into a receptive condition by suggestion or invocation, the subject being in a relaxed or lightly drugged condition. The psychic censor is less active in the trance state but often acts to block the awareness of magical events from reaching other lovels. When the trance state is controlled by another person, this problem can be overcome. The trance candidate can be directed to seek information clairvoyantly and to relate it to the operator. Conversely, the subjects will can be directed to perform a magical act that the censor would normally prohibit. (Pgs 118-119)
• One danger with trance experiments is that the operator's influence over the subject may gradually extend itself to non-trance states as well. Another is that the memory and imagination can become very active in trance states and begin to delude both operator and subject. For these reasons trance experiments should be performed infrequently and for objective results only. (Pgs 118-119)
• Magical training is designed to open up the neglected dream level, to provoke an examination of the contents of the robotic level, and to add new programs to it. It should also teach the method of turning awareness on or off at will, and of entering the gnostic level and acting within it. (Pg 123)
• The normal human life is spent in oscillating between the unconscious and robotic levels, punctuated by odd moments of dreaming and awareness. The magician may well strive to establish a new oscillation between dreaming and awareness with occasional excursions into the robotic and gnostic levels for specific purposes. (Pg 123)
• Magical attack takes two forms. At long range, telepathic information is sent which makes the target destroy itself.... At short range, it is possible to injure or drain an adversary's energy field using one's own. This demands close proximity, usually contact. Magical close combat of this type is not effected by mere will or visualization, but by projecting a force that can actually be felt, usually through the hands. More rarely the force can be projected through the voice or the eyes or carried on the breath. The force originates in the navel area and is aroused by the disciplines of breath, concentration, visualization and by sexual disciplines. A part of this force is put into the enemy's body to cause a disruption of the vital energies leading to disease and death.... (Pgs 125-127)
• As with all things, constructive activities are a far greater challenge to our skills than destructive ones. (Pgs 125-127)
• Because consciousness does not fit into... mechanistic schemes, [scientists] declare it illusory. Magicians make exactly the reverse argument. Observing consciousness in themselves and animals, they are magnanimous enough to extend it to all things to some degree - trees, amulets, planetary bodies, and all. (Pg 151)
• To explain their occult and mystical experiences, magicians are forced to develop models beyond the scope of materialistic or religious systems. To the magician it is self-evident that there is some other level of reality than the purely physical. Medieval magicians thought that their powers emanated from God or the Devil. In fact, magic works equally well in any god's name for good, evil, neutral or indifferent motives. (Pg 151)
• Magic offers an alternative view [of the human experience, than the radical stimulus-response behaviorists or the radical god-puppets of the religious]. Consciousness occurs when the Kia (which is equivalent to free will and perception, but is itself formless) touches the materiality (the ego, mind, sensory and extra-sensory information, etc.). So we have both of these things, but we are neither of them; we experience our being only at their place of meeting. (Page 152)
• Occasionally consciousness is able to make things happen spontaneously outside the body when it performs magic. Any act of will is magic. Conversely, any act of conscious perception is also magic; an occurrence in nervous matter is spontaneously perceived in consciousness. Sometimes that perception can occur directly without the use of senses, as in clairvoyance. (Pg 153)
• Magic is not just confined to consciousness. All events, including the origin of the universe, happen basically by magic. That is to say, they arise spontaneously without a final prior cause. (Pg 153)
• ...it is very difficult to imagine events arising spontaneously without prior cause even though this happens every time one exerts one's will. For this reason it has seemed preferrable to call this root of phenomena Chaos. (Page 153)
• Magical, mystical and religious enterprises seek to fulfill five basic human needs, which can be identified as follows:
  To provide techniques of Emotional Engineering
  To give life a sense of Meaning
  To provide some means of Intercession and Intervention
  To supply an explanation of Death
  To formulate a Social Structure or Cult
  (Pg 179)
• Private religion inevitably evolves into mysticism or magic, and these have a tendency to devolve into new religions. (Pg 181)
• [To the magician, spirit and matter] are both part of the same thing, and he exalts neither above the other. He rejects no part of his experience. The magician lives in a continuum beginning with the sublime and ineffable Tao/God/Chaos through the mysterious and subtle Aethers to the awesome and strange material world. To the magician, any piece of knowledge, any new power, any opportunity for enlightenment is worth having for its own sake. The only thing abhorred in this incredible existence is failure to come to grips with some part of it. To be able to operate in all spheres, the magician must master the art of either acting without belief or of being able to invest belief temporarily in anything with which he is experimenting. The magician should be equally at home with a crozier, a paintbrush, a test tube, or a wand. In all things he is seeking to bring his Kia into manifestation; for him life is its own answer, and the way he lives it in his spirituality. (Pg 181-182)
• The magician should be capable of performing any ritual on the astral, that is to say, by the power of imagination alone. By strongly visualizing any of his weapons to the point where he actually hallucinates their presence, he draws both the aetheric form of the weapon and the associated powers within himself into action. Such empty-hand techniques are the mark of the adept. (Pg 189)

Gnosis

• [state of mind to be achieved/attained] ; no-mind; samadhi; one-pointedness/one-pointed consciousness/single-pointed concentration; stopping the inner dialogue; passing through the eye of the needle; ain or nothing; It is an extension of the magical trance by other means. (Pg 131)
• Certain forms of gnosis lend themselves more readily to some forms of magic than others.(Pg 35)
• ...the methods of exaltation. (Pg 35)
• 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.(Pg 60)
• Gnosis, the Alphabet of Desire, and other magical methods tend to liberate.(Pg 90)
• It is quite simple to state exactly what Gnosis is and how to reach it. Gnosis is intense consciousness of something, including the ideas of self or nothingness. Most extremes of emotionality (and not just the nice emotions) can initiate it, and so can a profound act of single- pointed concentration on something. (Pgs 122-123)
• This intense consciousness leads mystics into three common errors. It may create the illusion that oneself and the object of contemplation are the same thing. It may lead to the conviction that oneself no longer exists, and it may lead to the obsession that the object of concentration is the supreme thing in the universe. (Pgs 122-123)
• Magically, Gnosis is the state which most easily allows the will and perception to reach out and touch realities beyond the mind. The contents of gnosis are far less interesting than what can be done with it. (Pgs 122-123)

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
  (Pg 74)

Love is permitted.
Shagalaboolamijigadoolabibidibobidiboo

Elendraug !69i