Chaos vs Thelema?
by Alistair Livingstone
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Inspired, no doubt foolishly, by a new moon and the Cramps`
"Psychedelic Jungle", I have decided to enter the Thelema vs
Chaos debate. This is of course an impossible task, which is no
doubt why it appeals to me.
Firstly, what is it that distinguishes Thelma from Chaos? In
Starfire, Mick Staley attempts to distinguish Thelema from
Crowleyanity. Thelema he suggested pre-existed Crowley`s
formulation of it. This immediately causes problems, since for
the majority of magicians, Crowley = Thelema. But if it can be
accepted that there is a something which exists independently of
Crowley`s writings, then it must be this something (Thelema)
which is to be contrasted with Chaos Magick. The core of this
something, I suggest, is the Will. Is this idea of the Will in
any way opposed to Chaos?
What is Chaos then?
For the purposes of this argument I will interpret Chaos as
follows: that the familiar world of everyday experience has its
roots in Chaos. So that any attempt to understand the world via
reason reaches a boundary, on the other side of which lies Chaos,
a state of existence/non-existence which cannot be understood by
the rational ego. However, through the techniques of ritual, that
state can be manifest in the everyday world, suspending the
accepted "laws" of common sense and allowing magick to occur.
Furthermore, perhaps as a result of the practice Chaos magick,
the idea of Chaos is slowly entering the popular imagination via
science. This refutes classical science, which is based on the
belief that if the structure of the physical world could be
sufficiently precisely modelled in a mathematical form, it would
be possible to predict the future state of various systems
(wheather, for example) which make up the physical world.
However, it is now grudgingly admitted that this would require a
precision of measurement which it is impossible to achieve.
Engineers have long since had to accept this uncertainty - that
all measurement is limited by the accuracy of the measuring
device. Absolute precision is an impossible goal. There is always
a degree of uncertainty, an instability, and by focusing the Will
upon this either/or region, the magician can exert an influence
upon the world at this level, which when it occurs, can produce
the Willed outcome.
To the extent that Chaos is a form of magick, ie. it seeks to
exert an influence upon the world of erveryday consciousness, it
must involve the Will. Otherwise it would be closer to a form of
mysticism, that is the attempt to "go with the flow" of the
experienced world without seeking to influence the direction of
that flow. In this form, Chaos is closer to a "higher form of
order", that is that the apparent random or chance events of
one`s experience of existence are in fact the result of some
greater existence than that of the individual. And that by
disengaging the desires of the ego-self, one can experience this
greater existence, interpreting the obstacles and blows of
everyday existence as a stimulus to the development of a "Stoic"
consciousness, which will enable the self to eventually swimm
freely as a fish in the river of the Tao, or Chaos.
The idea which this is based on tends to be that of the hermit,
the forest sage of Hinduism, the solitary adept of High Magick.
No doubt if it was possible in this present age, one could
experience such an existence if one could remove the self from
the rest of human existence. But such a model is no longer valid,
since the growth of human consciousness is such that there is no
virgin wilderness left in which to undertake such a quest. We are
forced to contend with the results of the human desire for
knowledge, power, control and security.
This is perhaps the crucial difference between Chaos magick and
Thelema. Thelema, as developed by Crowley into a form suitable
for the 20th century, contains a whole heritage of experience and
practice which reaches back through the Golden Dawn through
hermeticism to Egypt and Sumeria, which in turn drew on the
beliefs of our nameless ancestors who struggled to create models
of the world, cosmologies and creation myths within which to make
sense of their being in the world.
Crowley`s task, as had been of Mathers and Eliphas Levi before
him, was to synthesize this vast body of conscious/unconscious
knowledge and represent it in a way understandable by at least a
few of his contemporaries. Partly it is a question of language.
Unfortunately the language of magick was limited by the dominance
of Judeao-Christianity on the one hand and Reason on the other.
Our everyday language derives from our perception of a world made
up of distinguishable objects, and on the faculty of sight
primarily. But as soon as we move into the more subjective sphere
of magick, problems arise. To what extent do we share the same
magickal reality and use words such as "the Will" in the same
way? The problem is not confined to magick. For a time I worked
in quality control at London Rubber. Periodically I had to
compare my work with others to make sure we were all applying the
same so that I was not rejecting condoms that another person was
passing. In science the theory is that one person`s work is
critically examined by their peer group. The difficulty is that
as soon as creativity enters the picture, it will tend to disrupt
this process. The test of any form of magick should be "does it
work?". But how can that be judged, since the results of a ritual
may not become apparent for some time. In the early eighties,
much work was done to halt the expansion of nuclear weaponry. But
it is only now, as profound changes occur in Eastern Europe, that
this can be judged a success. And the changes may yet be lost by
a failure of imagination and the difficulty of challenging the
parasitic military-industrial complexes of both East and West.
Thelema may be saddled with the archaic terminology inherited via
Crowley from the Golden Dawn, but at its heart lies a crucial
bullshit detector. I have found that the question "what is your
Will?" directed at any group or individual who claims to be
desiring change is a very effective challenge. What is
unsettling, however, is the discovery that in most cases it
evokes only silence, or at best a string of evasions.
This I feel is the most damaging criticism of Thelema, that it
has failed to cross over from magick into the diverse pool of
"alternative" beliefs which seek to reshape society. This is
hardly a question of mere academic interest, as Green issues
emerge and look set to dominate the next decade, the "spiritual",
that is neo-pagan, belief structures which infest Green
consciousness are also going to exert a growing influence. We may
yet discover that the future, as the Dead Kennedy predicted, will
be "California ber Alles".
Can Chaos magick then succeed where Thelema has not (yet)? I
doubt it, since the reaction to both by the average alternative
type (let alone Joe Normal) is that it is "too dark". The very
word "Chaos" tends to get tagged with "anarchy" and evoke
nightmare visions of mad-axemen running wild in the street. Of
course, for some this may be its very appeal, anything so bad
must be good...
No, somehow we have to achieve the Sysphean task of applying the
notion of Will like Occam`s razor to the fast mulitiplying
dualistic entities of New Age (un)awareness. In practical terms I
understand this to mean directing our Wills at and with the
growing Green movement, so that rather than disappearing into a
fog of "good intentions", it becomes a real and willed critique
of consumer culture. Just as Marxism failed to achieve its
desires, since the working class had already been "mobilizised"
by the capitalists, so magick fails since the energies of the
mass unconscious have already been tapped by advertising, via the
mass media.
The energy tending towards change of consciousness (evolution)
has been subverted by consumer culture into the desire to possess
an unending stream of glass beads and cheap cottons, or in our
case, microwave ovens and mink belly-button brushes. The whole
thrust of advertising is to bypass our logic circuits and touch
directly our desire for status and security. We don`t just buy
the product, we buy the dream, maya the illusion of success. It
is, however much we may protest, a form of magick. I may be an
impoverished squatter in a third world shanty town, but if I can
buy a bottle of Coke, I believe I possess the whole dream of the
richest American millionaire. I may be a Trabant owning East
German, but by crossing the (former) abyss of the Wall I become a
potential Porsche possessor.
But if you look at those already possess such dreams, what do you
find? That it is, as in California, these same people who turn to
the most ridiculous New Age bullshit in order to satisfy their
craving for something more, for something to fill up the endless
aching void they feel scratching and gnawing like some Charles
Manson nightmare outside the walls of their Beverly Hills
mansions.
But of course, the last thing they want to hear is "the truth".
Better to create a multi-billion dollar New Age industry than
accept that within the richest mansions lies the reality of
Chaos, of that Void which spins around itself the veils of maya,
the dance of illusion, in which one is equally a starving beggar
and a voluptuous moviestar. "What is your Will?".
Of course I am somewhat prejudiced for all I used to sing along
with Bowie on Ziggy Stardust (I could make it all worthwhile as a
rock n roll star) I chose magick as a path. Through experiences
both beautiful and terrifying I have come to understand the human
condition as but one aspect of a continuum of consciousness. For
me, the whole universe is a living entity which I interact with
in the fleeting streams of energies which inspire my awareness.
Both rationally and poetically I perceive my brain, my body as
part of the very substance of the universe and not
distinguishable from it (ie NUIT). For me, the human condition is
part tragedy, part farce. We are semi-intelligent apes who have
been driven by fleeting glimpses of what might be, to create this
world, our reality. But in our ignorance, we mistake the glimpse
for the whole, the ego for the self. We strive for "order" and
create a chaos, and then recognize in chaos a "higher form of
order".
"Knowledge is power, power is control, control is security". Oh
yeah? But knowledge is also pleasure, a pleasure more intense
than any created by security. Security is sterility, sterility is
death. We pay lip service to evolution, but cannot accept that
evolution implies change, and change denise security. What do we
will?
If our will is security, stability, then that we shall have, as
so many fossils. To embrace Chaos (Thelema) is to renounce such
false gods and accept that our actions as magicians will change
not only ourselves, but our world. Insofar as both Chaos and
Thelema are valid paths, thus far will they change us. To cling
to an identity, however pleasing or fulfilling, is a denial of
magick. Magick is about change, the only constant factor in the
unfolding of the implicate order/chaos of the universe.
Along with Thelema and Chaos, I also practise the magick of Maat.
To the Egyptians Maat was the "right order of the universe". The
contrast is between the familiar Hindu concept of "karma", which
deals with our human existence and the less familiar concept of
"rta" which deals with our aspects as forms of (universal)
consciousness.
Magick diverged from science some 300 years ago. Science sought
to discover "the hand of god" in the natural world; magick sought
to become the equal of the gods. Now we witness the overlapping
of these paths. We are no longer the creations of some distant
god, but the natural products of the universe. We have "evolved"
out of a handful of organic chemicals. Now we have the ability,
through the replication of DNA to evolve ourselves. We have,
literally, the powers of a god. What we lack, and what magick
must seek to provide, is the intelligence to use (or refuse) such
power. The way to achieve this is to ask the question: "what is
our will?" Are our genes our motivating force, or is there
something else which I call "consciousness"? This consciousness I
hold to be implicit in the structure of the universe, and has
been revealed as such by quantum physics, however difficult such
a realisation may be for us. It may be unprovable/undeniable, and
therefore unscientific, but I suggest that our so-called
consciousness is a quantum phenomena.
This is what Crowley experienced as the interplay of Nuit and
Hadit in the Book of the Law. It is also the root of Chaos. So
that Thelema and Chaos are but different aspects of a single
(multiple) experience, expressed in languages appropriate to
their different times and ambiences.
Alone I cannot fully express the complexity of these
possibilities, and yet we must each try to do so. Only by placing
them at the heart of our experience of being in the world, can we
hope to create a society which will survive rather than perish
under its unconscious contradictions. As yet we are but "naked
apes", but we are apes with sufficiently complex brains to at
least glimpse the possibility of being more than we are and
become "homo veritas", that is truly human at last.
As we are, we cannot fully know this to be true, only with our
imagination can we glimpse the potential implied. It is my Will
to bring this about, this is why I write these words, that they
have touch and stimulate whoever may read them. So mote it be.
On rereading the above, I feel the need to expand the argument
somewhat. Having bashed my way through an anthropological essay
on nationality and the state, it struck me that recent events in
Eastern Eurpe have many consequences. The whole point of the
"iron curtain", was to allow East to develop its alternative
economic system, as spelt out by Marx. What is happening now is
the incorporation of that economic system into a global economy,
which implies the failure of Marxism. This failure leaves a power
vacuum. The majority of critiques of the Western power structure
have come from Marxism. But if it is now seen to have failed, the
possibility exists for a more powerful critique to arise.
Where will we find this critique - in magick. Of course this
requires magicians to adopt a more rigorous intellectual approach
to their beliefs, but surely that is what Chaos/Thelema argument
is about, with each side arguing that the other is deceiving
itself as regards the "true" form of magick. What I am suggesting
is that magicians start to take magic seriously as "energy
directed (willed) towards change". Rather than as an escapist
belief system parasitic upon the economic success of capitalism.
To practise magick we must surely believe that we inhabit a
magical, rather than a strictly economic universe. How much more
effective would our magick be then if we could replace the belief
system of economic society with that of a society rooted in a
magickal conception of reality.
Such is the apple with which I tempt you - do you dare taste the
forbidden fruit ?
Alistair Livingston
____________________________________________________________
I do know him personally and am glad to meet him again in summer.
A. Livingstone is a pseudonym of Ramsey Dukes (which is a
pseudonym too :-)). He is member of the OTO and made a lot of
Chaos working & theory. He wrote some very genuine books about
magic (Liber SGDSMEE, Thunderqueak), is now concerned with KI
(Words Made Flesh). You can contact him via:
T.M.T.S.
Wharf Mill
Winchester, Hants
SO23 9NJ
England
With fractalic greetings and laughter * Fra.: Apfelmann *
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