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.

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.

Viking Beer Stand by Nordstrom

Nordstrom x CATHY'S CONCEPTS 'Antlers' Viking Beer Stand by Nordstrom



Isn't that lovely. Would be great for a Blót don't you think? If you want your own then go here.

I was at the Sabbath

If I haven’t mentioned it yet, I am in the process of fine tuning my lucid dreaming practice. One of the things I have always battled with, I rarely ever remember my dreams, maybe 2 or 3 a year. However, since I have been doing my polyphasic sleep and therefore my 1.5 hour early morning naps in order to induce lucid dreams, its helped a great deal. This morning, I actually managed to take control for a while.

Anyway, wanted to tell you about the dreams I had this morning. Bear in mind that when I start lucid dreaming I tend to keep waking up and then going back into the dream (if I don’t move). Also, I may still be having some personal interpretation going on, in that the scenery and people might not be as they actually are, but it seemed real enough. This Sabbath I was at was in a huge house with hundreds of people and it was a party. There was one point when a load of us were outside and for some reason we all told we had to go back into the house, and if we didn’t make it in time the doors would be shut and locked. A few of us didn’t make it and we were stuck outside, so myself and another guy decided to try and climb onto the roof to get into a window on the top story. I was trying to pull myself up on a lean-to roof, and one of the odd things was that I was as afraid of heights in the dream as I am in waking life, so I was having a difficult time. The other guy found an easy way up and we got back into the party.

Last part I remember was sitting around a table with some folks and a crazy, but very cute blonde girl was writing on me with a black marker. She ended drawing on my face. I then needed the toilet and went looking for one. I think this is where it really started slipping into dream like imagery. There was a daycare like centre that I went into and all the kids looked up and laughed at me because of the drawing on my face. I decided to go to my sister’s house, no idea why, and found the bathroom. Last thing I remember I looked into a mirror and saw my face, she had made huge eyebrows, and massive goatee and handlebar mustache. I was however I hell of a lot younger, probably 18 or so.

Anyway, had an awesome time, and can’t wait for the next party.

PS. I am just recalling that the moment that I took control of the dream I was moving down a corridor or through a kitchen and I took the hand of a very old woman and kissed it with great reverence. May have been a moment where I broke through the personal dreaming imagery.

Moving in Circles

I really need to talk about the concept of deosil and widdershins. Because it seems the majority of practitioners are in the northern hemisphere, the idea that deosil is clockwise and widdershins is counter-clockwise seems to have become the accepted norm. I’m here to tell you its not, and PLEASE COULD EVERYONE GET IT RIGHT FOR A CHANGE! I know, stop shouting and being so anal retentive, but its just been one of my biggest pains for years now and its a problem.

The movement of deosil and widdershins has absolutely nothing to do with moving clockwise and counter-clockwise, except that you are moving in a circle, so sure you would be moving one or the other, but, deosil means “sunwise” and widdershins means “against the sun”. Now because all you folks are in the northern hemisphere and your sun does move “clockwise” around the sky, does not mean you can decide that the term deosil now means “clockwise”. Us poor sorry asses in the southern hemisphere end up moving the wrong way and all sorts of things go wrong, or don’t go wrong (because the energy is reversed and so nothing bloody well happens) because we keep reading your books and watching your videos. If you are going to use a term, then use it correctly.

So, to repeat, deosil means to move with the sun, hence if you are in the southern hemisphere you would be moving east, north, west, south. Widdershins is the opposite, i.e. moving against the sun, so you would be moving east, south, west, north.

So that’s the main point out of the way. Just for a wrap up, why would you move one or the other? Well that depends on your tradition, you belief structure, and what type of work you are doing. In some cases moving deosil is for benevolent magic, and widdershins is baneful magic. Personally I move in an esoteric or exoteric manner, so if I were moving deosil then it would be workings that are exoteric, i.e. exterior to myself, maybe in the case of healing someone. Moving widdershins would then be an esoteric act, i.e. internal to myself, reaching the inner dimensions like moving into the Underworld, that sort of thing.

However, I really needed to clear up that problem with it being clockwise or counterclockwise, the main reason being that someone down here in the lower reaches of the world, as I said, picks up a book written by an American and it states for them to cast a cirlce moving clockwise. All well and fine for the person up north, but then the newbie down south starts moving against the sun and can’t figure out why everything is going wrong or not working at all.

Some time back my friend and Kabbalah mentor, Jacobus Swart, told me about when his mentor, William Grey, came to visit him in South Africa. The topic of moving deosil and widdershins came up and William Grey couldn’t understand why we here move in the “wrong” direction. After some discussion the late Mr. Grey was persuaded to try it, whilst in South Africa of course, and to his surprise he found the same power that he was used to when moving in the opposite direction in the UK. So you see, there is a good reason why I got my knickers in a twist.

Lucid Dreaming: some pattern observations

Not sure if this will help anyone else, but hopefully it will. I’ve noticed a pattern that I use to fall asleep that helps with my lucid dreaming. Firstly, split your sleep up into polyphasic segments. To learn more about polyphasic sleep, check this site out – http://www.polyphasicsociety.com/

What I do is get a core sleep at night of about 4.5 hours and then I take a 1.5 nap early in the morning (4am), and if need be (in case of collected REM debt) another 1.5 nap a little later (8am). You will obviously need to work this out to suit your daily schedule, but the main points are to get core sleep, get up for a couple hours and then get the 1.5 hour nap. Its the nap where you will experience the lucid dreaming, and is best done in the morning.

Something else I noticed is the actual pattern that I use to fall asleep. If I follow it to the tee then I am guaranteed to have lucidity. During the period I am up I find that reading is the best thing to do. At some point I start to hear noises and voices which is that hypnagogic state just before you fall into delta sleep. That’s my cue to go to bed.

When I lie down I lie on my left side and stretch my body out so it is straight, no bent back or legs. Since working toward lucid dreaming I have found I rarely fall asleep on my side anymore, but I do get into a good theta phase. When I start to see images and hear noises and voices again, I turn over onto my right side. During the turning, I need to stretch, and it when that happens I know I am going to be lucid. On right side I then fall asleep, although there is one other odd thing that happens just before that, its kind of like a pressure that pushes down on my head and throat, and although I can still breath absolutely fine, it feels like my breathing gets shallow by force. Kind of odd, but then I fall asleep.

So, if you can find your own pattern, you are A for Away.

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