Thursday, April 5, 2018

Why Am I Following Chaos Magick?



To give you some history, I have studied and practiced a lot of different paths and traditions over the past 30 years, when I picked up my first book on Witchcraft (it was a Marian Green book if memory serves, probably A Witch Alone). Since then I have been on a great adventure, with Wicca, Traditional Witchcraft, Shamanism, Ceremonial Magick, Kabbalah and many other paths. I have spoken to some incredibly interesting and well versed people such as the late Joseph "Bearwalker" Wilson and Peter Paddon, Robin Artisson, and not to forgot my good friend Jacobus Swart. It has been marvelous, enlightening, rewarding, spectacular.

Several years back however, I stopped all magickal practices. I was using too many different elements from too many different paths and it became chaotic. Energies were clashing and the results kept fritzing out and short circuiting. I was, too say the least, a bit of a mess. I couldn't get my magical or spiritual life to flow in a direction that was good and solid, and it affecting the rest of my life. Or maybe it was the other way around because my personal and business life was a mess to begin with, it probably spilled over to the rest of it.

Having been down that road where I needed to find my way back to the Hearth, but not sure which direction to take to get there, I can tell you it is an eye opener. I completely stopped all forms of magick and focused on my business. You may ask why I stopped when I could find balance in both, each fulfilling the other. Well that was the problem, I was in a state of imbalance for so long, I became used to it. I needed to make a change and this is the only way I knew how, i.e. focus on one aspect at a time. I had a family to support so my business was the obvious choice.

Since then I have built up my business, gotten divorced and finally found the things I need and want in my life. I have found balance again, and I have found my passions, things I had forgotten about. I also found my drive to better myself and be the best I can be, something I had also given up on.

I am now finding my way back to my magickal and spiritual practice. So the question is, why Chaos Magick? It might seem an odd choice considering how chaotic things became previously. I tend to think it is the perfect choice.

After several years or pondering and reflection, I have come to understand that chaos I went through. It wasn't Chaos Magick because I was trying to pull too many elements into one practice. Instead, I should have been engrossing myself in one path or aspect for the purpose of achieving my goal at the specified time. Something I know Chaotes do, but something I failed to do myself.

Some years back (before Facebook, when Yahoo Groups were still the in thing, remember those?), a Chaos Magician on a group explained Chaos Magick in the following way. Imagine you are sitting at the head of a large banquet table and it is filled with different dishes. On one serving plate are beef dishes, on another there is pork, and some have vegetables, desserts, all kinds of food you could possibly imagine, but all dishes separated into groups. This is the selection of paths, traditions and religions that we have available to us. Now a Wiccan might select the food from one dish, whilst a Buddhist will choose a different one, and they will eat only from that dish. A Chaote chooses from ALL of the dishes and selects the one that suits his or her ends at that time. This suits me and previous difficulties perfectly, I just needed to learn to eat one food group at a time and not gorge myself on all of them.

What has also always appealed to me about Chaos Magick is its simplicity. I have done the elaborate rituals and ceremonies. I do like them, they definitely give you a sense of moving into a different state and separating yourself from the mundane world, placing you in the magickal realm or altered state, but when it comes to magick and spelling, I like the simple, straightfoward approach. A lot of Chaos Magick is just that, it gets to the crux of the matter.

Why come back to Magick at all? It courses through my veins and is infused into my bone. I can't ignore it, it draws me, it is me, and I am it.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Time to come out of hiding



I have been on a very long hiatus, a few years actually. I had some difficulties and things I needed to take care of, and so I removed myself from the community all together, and from magick in general. Actually I have been trying to come back to a steady practice but the energies have been a bit haywire. Now however, things seem to be flowing a little better and my head is creative again. Chaos is fantastic, when it is not being forced into some semblance of order that it can't or won't fit into. We do need to go with the flow sometimes, often in fact, and trying to control every little aspect of our lives just finds ourselves beating our heads against very solid brick walls.

So....this is my announcement, I am back and I have a journey to continue with. I hope you will join me on this adventure. For now, at least, I will be relooking at Chaos Magick mostly as it seems to be what is drawing my attention the most. There will probably be some undercurrents and injections of Hoodoo, Traditional Witchcraft and Kabbalah here and there, but Chaos Magick will be the main focus.