Chaos Magick Theory & Lovecraftian Magick

Topics of the Mythos

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Adrian
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Chaos Magick Theory & Lovecraftian Magick

Post by Adrian »

Is anyone familiar with the either of those two? Or had any experience with those relating to the Mythos? Ive been interested by it for ages. For some who don't quite grasp it, I'll copy some sections from an article here.


Lovecraft's fiction expresses a "future primitivism" that
finds its most intense esoteric expression in Chaos magic, an
eclectic contemporary style of darkside occultism that draws
from Thelema, Satanism, Austin Osman Spare, and Eastern
metaphysics to construct a thoroughly postmodern magic.
For today's Chaos mages, there is no "tradition". The symbols
and myths of countless sects, orders, and faiths, are
constructs, useful fictions, "games." That magic works has
nothing to do with its truth claims and everything to do with
the will and experience of the magician. Recognizing the
distinct possibility that we may be adrift in a meaningless
mechanical cosmos within which human will and imagination are
vaguely comic flukes (the "cosmic indifferentism" Lovecraft
himself professed), the mage accepts his groundlessness,
embracing the chaotic self-creating void that is himself.


As we find with Lovecraft's fictional cults and grimoires,
chaos magicians refuse the hierarchical, symbolic and
monotheist biases of traditional esotericism. Like most Chaos
magicians, the British occultist Peter Carroll gravitates
towards the Black, not because he desires a simple
Satanic inversion of Christianity but becuase he seeks the
amoral and shamanic core of magical experience--a core that
Lovecraft conjures up with his orgies of drums, guttural
chants, and screeching horns. At the same time, Chaos
mages like Carroll also plumb the weird science of quantum
physics, complexity theory and electronic Prometheanism. Some
darkside magicians become consumed by the atavistic forces
they unleash or addicted to the dark costume of the Satanic
anti-hero. But the most sophisticated adopt a balanced mode
of gnostic existentialism that calls all constructs into
question while refusing the cold comforts of skeptical reason
or suicidal nihilism, a pragmatic and empirical shamanism
that resonates as much with Lovecraft's hard-headed
materialism as with his horrors.



This is just a section of it, but as I see, Lovecraftian Magick or CMT is getting to be a real breeze of fresh wind in the occult communities.
"I just cannot believe any of this voodoo bullshit." - - - Childs
Jesus Prime wrote:You sure love your pudding.
Jesus Prime wrote:ADRIAN LOVES PUDDING
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Post by Aleister »

Very interesting quote.. what is that from?

I have no knowledge of either things you mentioned. I have my own personal theories on the thing people call 'magic'.. Maybe I will give those opinions out sometime :)

I would like to hear more though! It is quite interesting
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Post by Adrian »

Well, in my opinion Chaos Magick Theory is the long-awaited process where science, spiritualism and psychology blend together to produce something... whatever it may be. I have a lot of stuff up on Psybermagick but I guess I'll copy some quotes and longer texts here, that of course, conclude HPL and/or Mythos.


In this book it is spoken of...Spirits and Conjurations; of
Gods, Spheres, Planes and many other things which may or may
not exist. It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By
doing certain things certain results follow.

--Aleister Crowley

Consumed by cancer in 1937 at the age of 46, the last scion
of a faded aristocratic New England family, the horror writer
Howard Phillips Lovecraft left one of America's most curious
literary legacies. The bulk of his short stories appeared in
Weird Tales, a pulp magazine devoted to the supernatural. But
within these modest confines, Lovecraft brought dark fantasy
screaming into the 20th century, taking the genre, almost
literally, into a new dimension.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the loosely linked cycle
of stories known as the Cthulhu Mythos. Named for a tentacled
alien monster who waits dreaming beneath the sea in the
sunken city of R'lyeh, the Mythos encompasses the cosmic
career of a variety of gruesome extraterrestrial entities
that include Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, and the blind idiot
god Azazoth, who sprawls at the center of Ultimate Chaos,
"encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous
dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a
demonic flute held in nameless paws." Lurking on the
margins of our space-time continuum, this merry crew of Outer
Gods and Great Old Ones are now attempting to invade our
world through science and dream and horrid rites.
As a marginally popular writer working in the literary
equivalent of the gutter, Lovecraft received no serious
attention during his lifetime. But while most 1930s pulp
fiction is nearly unreadable today, Lovecraft continues to
attract attention. In France and Japan, his tales of
cosmic fungi, degenerate cults and seriously bad dreams are
recognized as works of bent genius, and the celebrated French
philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari praise his
radical embrace of multiplicity in their magnum opus
A Thousand Plateaus.2 On Anglo-American turf, a passionate
cabal of critics fill journals like Lovecraft Studies and
Crypt of Cthulhu with their almost talmudic research.
Meanwhile both hacks and gifted disciples continue to craft
stories that elaborate the Cthulhu Mythos. There's even a
Lovecraft convention -- the NecronomiCon, named for the most
famous of his forbidden grimoires. Like the gnostic science
fiction writer Philip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft is the epitome
of a cult author.



The word "fan" comes from fanaticus, an ancient term for a
temple devotee, and Lovecraft fans exhibit the unflagging
devotion, fetishism and sectarian debates that have
characterized popular religious cults throughout the
ages. But Lovecraft's "cult" status has a curiously literal
dimension. Many magicians and occultists have taken up his
Mythos as source material for their practice. Drawn from the
darker regions of the esoteric counterculture--Thelema and
Satanism and Chaos magic--these Lovecraftian mages actively
seek to generate the terrifying and atavistic encounters
that Lovecraft's protagonists stumble into compulsively,
blindly or against their will.
Secondary occult sources for Lovecraftian magic include three
different "fake" editions of the Necronomicon, a few rites
included in Anton LaVey's The Satanic Rituals, and a number
of works by the loopy British Thelemite Kenneth Grant.
Besides Grant's Typhonian O.T.O. and the Temple of
Set's Order of the Trapezoid, magical sects that tap the
Cthulhu current have included the Esoteric Order of Dagon,
the Bate Cabal, Michael Bertiaux's Lovecraftian Coven, and a
Starry Wisdom group in Florida, named after the nineteenthcentury
sect featured in Lovecraft's "Haunter of the Dark."
Solo chaos mages fill out the ranks, cobbling together
Lovecraftian arcana on the Internet or freely sampling the
Mythos in their chthonic, open-ended (anti-) workings.
This phenomenon is made all the more intriguing by the fact
that Lovecraft himself was a "mechanistic materialist"
philosophically opposed to spirituality and magic of any
kind. Accounting for this discrepancy is only one of many
curious problems raised by the apparent power of
Lovecraftian magic. Why and how do these pulp visions "work"?
What constitutes the "authentic" occult? How does magic
relate to the tension between fact and fable? As I hope to
show, Lovecraftian magic is not a pop hallucination but an
imaginative and coherent "reading" set in motion by the
dynamics of Lovecraft's own texts, a set of thematic,
stylistic, and intertextual strategies which constitute what
I call Lovecraft's Magick Realism.


And this goes on, but I don't think I should use the forum space this abusingly maybe. But if you allow it I'd gladly continue :twisted:
"I just cannot believe any of this voodoo bullshit." - - - Childs
Jesus Prime wrote:You sure love your pudding.
Jesus Prime wrote:ADRIAN LOVES PUDDING
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lovecraftian chaos wizardry...

Post by darrick »

Chaos Magic is about applying whatever takes your fancy to the problem of reality manipulation. it's the post modern magic that gives total freedom to whatever you want to believe and whatever magic you want to practice. it is a lot more results based than other magic. if whatever you're trying isn't working, then drop it and try something else. if slime, tentacles, and alien gods turn you on, then do that. if you like satan or dr. who, use magic from that paradigm.

very soon i'm going to have a lot of chaos magic, cthulhu mythos sorcery, and more at www.CultofCthulhu.net

my magical organization, the Cult of Cthulhu, is about just that.

thanks,
High Priest of the Cult of Cthulhu, Darrick Dishaw
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Post by nortonew »

Darrick's comment is pretty accurate. However, I think there is a little more to the explanation of the passages you posted.

With Chaos Magic, everything boils down to the gnosis state. Everything else you add to your rituals is about helping you in reaching the gnosis state while still managing to focus your will on your goal. Whatever type of trappings you choose to employ doesn't really matter, just as long as they inspire you.

Thus, if you want to use Cthulhu Mythos style magic, and you want to have a chance of actually getting it to work, your best shot is to use it with Chaos Magic.

Actually, if you closely examine many of the existing magical systems, from shamanism, to Tibetan Tantric Buddhism (Vajrayana), to Taoist wizardry, to Christian prayer, (the variety of Christian prayer that actually has any chance of working, that is), you find that the Gnosis state is at the root of it. Chaos magick theory has basically scraped off all the toppings and exposed the meat of the magickal taco, then told you to add whatever toppings you like.

That being said, I think I should mention that there is a chance that practicing Chaos Magic might be extremely dangerous. Many authorities on magick, from Buddha and the apostle Paul, down to Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, and Gerald Gardener, have warned that using Gnosis to induce changes in the physical world can be dangerous, especially if those changes might hurt others.

In fact, there is some reason to believe that most of the morality contained in major religions is actually meant to be something of a test that initiates would have to pass before the real teachings of those religions would be revealed. Unfortunately, many of the major religions have degenerated to the point where the true teachings have been lost and only the exoteric myths and morality tests remain.
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Post by Adrian »

nortonew wrote:Darrick's comment is pretty accurate. However, I think there is a little more to the explanation of the passages you posted.

With Chaos Magic, everything boils down to the gnosis state. Everything else you add to your rituals is about helping you in reaching the gnosis state while still managing to focus your will on your goal. Whatever type of trappings you choose to employ doesn't really matter, just as long as they inspire you.

Thus, if you want to use Cthulhu Mythos style magic, and you want to have a chance of actually getting it to work, your best shot is to use it with Chaos Magic.

Actually, if you closely examine many of the existing magical systems, from shamanism, to Tibetan Tantric Buddhism (Vajrayana), to Taoist wizardry, to Christian prayer, (the variety of Christian prayer that actually has any chance of working, that is), you find that the Gnosis state is at the root of it. Chaos magick theory has basically scraped off all the toppings and exposed the meat of the magickal taco, then told you to add whatever toppings you like.

That being said, I think I should mention that there is a chance that practicing Chaos Magic might be extremely dangerous. Many authorities on magick, from Buddha and the apostle Paul, down to Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, and Gerald Gardener, have warned that using Gnosis to induce changes in the physical world can be dangerous, especially if those changes might hurt others.

In fact, there is some reason to believe that most of the morality contained in major religions is actually meant to be something of a test that initiates would have to pass before the real teachings of those religions would be revealed. Unfortunately, many of the major religions have degenerated to the point where the true teachings have been lost and only the exoteric myths and morality tests remain.
Dangerous? I don't care much about that aspect. Anyway, the topic is about CMT and Chaos Science in HPL's writings. His story "Dreams in the Witch House" is probably a perfect example of mixing real science with the aspect of chaos magick theory. And the fact that the Ancients can travel through space-time continuum has been considered just advanced science. There was a theory about the Ancients being Men that had gone through hideous changes in form and mind to achieve unlimited knowledge.
"I just cannot believe any of this voodoo bullshit." - - - Childs
Jesus Prime wrote:You sure love your pudding.
Jesus Prime wrote:ADRIAN LOVES PUDDING
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Post by neonchris »

The thing with chaos magick is to recognise that the only "morality" that manifests does so by means of the paradigm within which you're working. The real benefit of working within the Lovecrafian paradigm would possibly be the abscence of morality, and potency of his vision which, I believe is one of the most powerful, unconstructed and honest paradigms available. With Lovecraft, there's no leap of faith, quite the opposite really....

I would heartily reccomend that Adrian and anyone else interested in this thread get a copy of "the pseudonomicon" by Phil Hine which has a really interesting and practical take on the whole issue. For more knowledgeable occultists and beginners alike.

Cthulhu, it's a way of life, man... lol
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Post by Nali »

93 ;-)

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law!
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Post by Adrian »

Nali wrote:93 ;-)

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law!
Your name means "joke" in estonian btw.

HPL wasn't connected to Crowley in any way escept what he may have read from the papers at tha time. HPL certainly didn't live by that motto, rather by "Do what thou aunt says shall be the whole of the Law!"
"I just cannot believe any of this voodoo bullshit." - - - Childs
Jesus Prime wrote:You sure love your pudding.
Jesus Prime wrote:ADRIAN LOVES PUDDING
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Post by JJ Burke »

also called nali are the tranquil 4-armed aliens in the classic fps 'unreal'
A monkey riding a dog is probably the awesomest thing that could ever happen.
Contributors wanted! Fantastic Horror — Original Works of Disturbing Imagination
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Post by Adrian »

I think I see the pattern here.
"I just cannot believe any of this voodoo bullshit." - - - Childs
Jesus Prime wrote:You sure love your pudding.
Jesus Prime wrote:ADRIAN LOVES PUDDING
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Post by Nali »

LOL, Nali was just the name of my character is several MUDs.
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Chaos Magic magazine

Post by darrick »

hey, this is Darrick Dishaw. just found out last night that 3 of my short stories have been published in Konton (Chaos Magic) magazine. follow the links to order it and support ChaosMagic.com

thanks, DDD

____________________________________________



The Summer Solstice issue of Konton Magazine is now out!

You can view it here:
http://www.chaosmagic.com/cgi-bin/store ... k.62853518

In this Issue . . .

Sigil Theory by Frater Yiuk

The Flautist by Soror Ceilede

Tree Fetishes and Tree Sorcery by Andrieh Vitimus

Back Against the Wall Banishing by Animapurasit

A Few Remarks on Sigils and Servitors by Jozef Karika

Who Wears the Biggest Pentagram by Jaq D. Hawkins

Making Your Own Luck by Lupa

Magickal Constructs by Lvx23

Archons & War Pigs by Lvx23

The Ruby Gates and Chartreuse Kingdom by Darrick Dishaw

Claiming a Space by Vargr

The Value of Shock by Andrieh Vitimus

Thee Altered State by Coyote 433

One Green Bottle by Sulien Leybourne

Scrying on a Budget by Thomas Polking Horne

The First Diatribe of Hazard Mink the Unsane, King of the World by
Hazard Mink the Unsane

Magickal Children by Lvx23

The Change by Darrick Dishaw

Demons Dreaming by Michael Szul

The Outrageous Blasphemy by Darrick Dishaw

The Seven Faces of Alchemy Working by Taylor Ellwood

An Examination of Alphabets of Desire by Xi O'Teaz

http://www.chaosmagic.com/cgi-bin/store ... k.62853518

To unsubscribe from these announcements, login to the forum and uncheck
"Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email." in
your profile.

You can view the full announcement by following this link:

http://www.chaosmagic.com/discussion/t5 ... pic=4778.0

Regards,
The Tribe of the 5th Aeon Team.
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Post by neonchris »

I was at a really interesting lecture recently about Lovecraft's influence on contemporary "occulture", I wrote about it in my blog under the heading "primal sources lecture" - let me know what you think?

blog.myspace.com/31207791
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Post by darrick »

very cool. thanks for the blog post. yes, many just "don't get it", but then that's probably for the best. just think if the majority saw fit to worship disgusting and grotesque monstrosities...!

think about joining the Cult of Cthulhu, brother, or at least discussing such issues on our yahoogroup and forum.

by the way, where was this lecture held?


Venger Satanis
Cult of Cthulhu High Priest


www.CultofCthulhu.net
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