Peter J Carroll

“The most original, and probably the most important, writer on Magick since Aleister Crowley."
Robert Anton Wilson, author of the Cosmic Trigger trilogy.

Peter Carroll began his career in Magic at London University where the Chemistry proved so tedious that he settled on a pass degree in that and an unauthorized first in Magic, with Liber Null & Psychonaut emerging as his postgraduate thesis over the next several years whilst teaching high school science.

He then set off around the world wandering in the Himalayas, building boats in India and Australia and seeking out unusual people.

Then after a stay in Yorkshire, he headed back to the Himalayas for a while again before returning to settle in the west of England to found a family and a magical order. Appalled by the compromises made by so many magi to make a living out of their writing or teaching, Carroll decided to make his fortune with a natural products business so that he could write and teach only what had value and interest for him.

He maintains a personal website at specularium.org and acts as Chancellor to Arcanorium College arcanoriumcollege.com.

  • Past Grandmaster of the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros

  • Chancellor of Arcanorium College

  • Acting Marshall, Knights of Chaos

  • A Bard of Dobunni Grove

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PRINCIPIA CHAOTICA

By Peter Carroll

Chaos Magic for the Pandaemeon

In Chaos Magic, beliefs are not seen as ends in themselves, but as

tools for creating desired effects. To fully realize this is to face

a terrible freedom in which Nothing is True and Everything is

Permitted, which is to say that everything is possible, there are no

certainties, and the consequences can be ghastly. Laughter seems to

be the only defence against the realisation that one does not even

have a real self.

 

 The purpose of Chaos Rituals is to create beliefs by acting as

though such beliefs were true. In Chaos Rituals you Fake it till you

Make it, to obtain the power that a belief can provide. Afterwards,

if you have any sense, you will laugh it off, and seek the requisite

beliefs for whatever you want to do next, as Chaos moves you.

 

 Thus Chaoism proclaims the Death and Rebirth of the Gods. Our

subconscious creativity and parapsychological powers are more than

adequate to create or destroy any god or self or demon or other

"spritual" entity that we may choose to invest or disinvest belief

in, at least for ourselves and sometimes others as well. The

frequently awesome results attaining by creating gods by act of

ritually behaving as though they exist should not lead the Chaos

magician into the abyss of attributing ultimate reality to anything.

That is the transcendentalist mistake,, which leads to the narrowing

of the spectrum of the self. The real awesomeness lies in the range

of things we can discover ourselves capable of, even if we may

temporarily have to believe the effects are due to something else,

in order to be able to create them. The gods are dead. Long live the

gods.

 

 Magic appeals to those with a great deal of hubris and a fertile

imagination coupled with a strong suspicion that both reality and

human condition have a game like quality. The game is open ended,

and plays itself for amusement. Players can make up their own rules

to some extent, and cheat by using parapsychology if desired.

 

 A magician is one who has sold his soul for the chance of

participating more fully in reality. Only when nothing is true, and

the idea of a true self is abandoned, does everything become

permitted. There is some accuracy in the Faust myth, but he failed

to take it to its logical conclusion.

 

 It takes only the acceptance of a single belief to make someone a

magician. It is the meta-belief that belief is a tool for achieving

effects. This effect is often far easier to observe in others than

in oneself. It is usually quite easy to see how other people, and

indeed entire cultures, are both enabled and disabled by the beliefs

they hold. Beliefs tend to lead to activities which tend to

reconfirm belief in a circle they call virtuous rather than vicious,

even if the results are not amusing. The first stage of seeing

through the game can be a shocking enlightenment that leads either

to a weary cynicism or Buddhism. The second stage of actually

applying the insight to oneself can destroy the illusion of the soul

and create a magician. The realisation that belief is a tool rather

than an end in itself has immense consequences if fully accepted.

Within the limits set by physical possibility, and these limits are

wider and more malleable than most people believe, one can make real

any beliefs one chooses, including contradictionary beliefs. The

Magician is not striving for any particular limited identity goal,

rather he wants the meta-identity of being able to be anything.

 

 So welcome to the Kali Yuga of the Pandaemonaeon wherein nothing is

true and everything is permissable. For in these post-absolutist

days it is better to build upon the shifting sands than the rock

which will confound you on the day it shatters. Philosophers have

become no more than the keepers of useful sarcasms, for the secret

is out that there is no secret of the universe. All is Chaos and

evolution is going nowhere in particular. It is pure chance which

rules the universe and thus, and only thus, is life good. We are

born accidentally into a random world where only seeming causes lead

to apparent effects, and very little is predetermined, thank Chaos.

As everything is arbitrary and accidental then perhaps these words

are too small and pejorative, rather we should perhaps say that life,

the universe and everything is spontaneously creative and magical.

 

 Relishing stochastic reality we can revel exclusively in magical

definitions of existence. The roads of excess may yet lead to the

place of wisdom, and many indeterminate things can happen on the way

to thermodynamic equilibrium. It is vain to seek solid ground on

which to stand. Solidity is an illusion, as is the foot which stands

on it, and the self which thinks it owns either is the most

transparent illusion of all.

 

 The heavy vessels of faith are holed and sinking along with all

lifeboats and ingenious rafts. So will you shop at the supermarket

of sensation and let your consumer preferences define your true

self? Or will you in a bold and lighthearted fashion, thieve from

both for the fun of it? For belief is a tool for achieving whatever

one chooses to consider important or pleasurable, and sensation has

no other purpose than sensation. Thus help yourself to them without

paying the price. Sacrifice Truth for Freedom at every opportunity.

The greatest fun, freedom and achievement lies not being yourself.

There is little merit in simply being whomsoever you were destined

to be by accident of birth and circumstance. Hell is the condition

of having no alternatives.

 

 Reject then the obscenities of contrived uniformity, order and

purpose. Turn and face the tidal wave of Chaos from which

philosophers have been fleeing in terror for millennia. Leap in and

come out surfing its crest, sporting amidst the limitless weirdness

and mystery in all things, for those who reject false certainties.

Thank Chaos we shall never exhaust it. Create, destroy, enjoy,

IO CHAOS!