Chaos magic is hot in today's occult scene, and here's a handy guide on how to integrate it into your spiritual life no matter what your faith or path.
Chaos magic has been attracting a lot of interest in the occult community as of late. Many people, and you may be one of them, are asking themselves what it is and how it can improve their spiritual lives. To some, “chaos” can connote disorder, destruction, confusion, and possibly evil. Chaos magic isn’t like that at all; it’s a wonderfully user-friendly and logical system of spellcraft that anyone can learn and use with great ease. Chaos magic’s pioneers, like Austin Osman Spare and Peter Carroll hearken back to the ancient Greek definition of chaos: the primordial void of infinite possibility from which all things were formed. And what’s magic about if it’s not about possibilities? Let’s take a trip into this limitless void.
If you’re an eclectic witch or part of a syncretic tradition, congratulations! You already know a little about chaos magic. When you call upon Venus for a love ritual and Odin to give you strength, you are shifting your paradigm (a chaos technique) from ancient Greece to the Norse world. For many neo-pagans, all gods and goddesses are part of one Divinity, and all religious paths are equally valid. Chaos magic takes this a step further and says that all kinds of magic- whether it’s Haitian voodoo, Asian tantra, or Cornelius Agrippa’s medieval European occultism- pretty much work on the same principles. As such, you can use spells from any tradition successfully- and interchangeably.
Gnosis means knowledge in Greek and refers to the heightened state of mind that chaotes believe makes magic possible. You “get into the zone” through meditation or any other method you prefer, and then you concentrate intensely on what you want, on having it, pushing yourself as hard as you can go. After reaching gnosis and burning your intent into your mind, you must immediately blank it out and let it work subconsciously as well as astrally. This “zone” is what people in traditions around the world aim for when they meditate, dance ecstatically, or chant spells and mantras repeatedly. The reason we use things like candles, costumes, and sacred spaces is to help people get into a Gnostic state.
What makes chaos magic different is the concept of magical paradigm shift. Most systems prescribe a set of gods, spirits, spells, certain sacred spaces, and mantras to use. This is because to them, magical power comes from specific things, like spirits, that prefer things to be a certain way. Chaos magic is about personal power, and chaotes believe that magic comes from attaining gnosis. You can combine a Buddhist meditation with a rite to Isis if you feel that that would be the most effective way to do your love spell. You can even invoke Pokemon, Beyonce, or the spirit of your fraternity. This may sound incredibly silly, but there is a saying in this tradition that “nothing is true, everything is permitted”. There’s one catch, though: you have to believe whatever you are doing and snap into different mindsets at will. This means actually believing that you are P. Diddy or Donald Trump when doing a fame and money spell; that you are an Egyptian priestess during the Isis portion of your spell, that you are in a Thelemic lodge when you are doing a Thelemic rite, and that you are a monk wearing saffron during the Buddhist meditation part. If all this seems a bit impossible to you, remember that chaos and magic are about infinite possibility. You have to be able to wrap your mind around different things to be able to actually accept that you can change reality.
Sigils are symbols that chaos mages (and others) make to represent their intent. They’re popular because it’s quick and easy to do a sigil spell. They have been around at least since the Middle Ages, when mages used prescribed sigils to call up spirits. But the idea that anyone can make sigils to communicate and to represent things that they want was popularized by Spare in the early 20th century.
Here’s a simple sigil spell. Write down exactly what you want, for example, “I will get accepted into medical school”. Strike out all the letters that repeat, like so: “Iwllgetacpdnomecash”. Take these letters and arrange them into a stylized glyph made of letters in all shapes and sizes, so that it looks like a symbol. This is just one way to make sigils. Focus intensely on this intention. You can use an ecstatic method, like running around the house shouting out your intention, praying intensely to the deity of your choice, spontaneously coming up with a rap about your intention, diving into ice cold water while focusing on your intention, etc. After doing this, completely forget what the sigil represents. Put it out of your mind. Don’t think about it; crumple up your paper or shred it, throw it away, flush it down the toilet, burn it, rip it to bits. The spell will begin to work right away.
You can also make and incorporate sigils in larger spells, draw them in various places, splice them into film reels, etc. Use your imagination! The trick is to send them out into the world so that they work on making your spell happen when you are going about your everyday life.
This is only a brief overview of what chaos magic is and how it can be used. There are many other topics, like creating entities and suchlike, that are beyond the scope of this article. For further information, a good book to check out is Liber Kaos by Peter Carroll. I wish you the best of luck in applying chaos magic to your practice, and hope that it will improve your life as much as it has improved mine.
