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Nothing is true, everything is permitted? Nothing is real, everything is possible.

This statement is usually taken at face value as the main ethos of chaos magick. From personal experience, the majority of chaos mages do not actually ascribe to the is way of thinking as universal. It is a way to feel “edgy” and to get yourself in the right state of consciousness to perform magick when you are first starting out. The absurdity of it pushes consciousness past the psychic center and allows the user to shed to their ingrained moralism and logical materialism. It allows the beginner mage to exist in a state of consciousness where magick is always possible. That being said, from personal experience, a better understanding of this main principle would be restated as “nothing is real, everything is possible”. This reinterpretation allows the mage to discover their own, ever negotiable, code of ethics through experience, without being tied down to the moralism of concessious reality. It also sheds the immature edginess of the initial statement. NOTHING IS REAL. Reality is an ever changing flux of chaos for the mage. Through the practice of magick, we cast our will upon the universe and manipulate the probability of chaotic phenomena to fall in our favor. EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. The mage’s understanding of the possibilities of the universe is ever changing. To believe we truly know and understand the workings of this absurd and chaotic existence, is to chain ourselves and our conciousness to a miserable and unchangable demiurgic reality. Our conception of the possibilities of reality is determined only by the unmeasurable variables of our magical experiences.

Naming is creating

thevillaoformen:

Imagine reality as an enormous sphere of energy (absurd, but indulge me). Nothing exists beyond this sphere. Now, divide this sphere into parts by giving them names. Divide those parts into new parts and give them names to. Now continue to divide these parts into smaller parts and if need be put them into groups or categories. Give these categories names. Make up rules for why some parts are connected to others. Continue this process of dividing, categorizing and naming.

When we first had an enormous sphere of reality we now have smaller parts divided through naming and categorizing. We have a universe, a galaxy, a solar system, a planet, a surface, soil, plants, a tree, wood, a plank, a chair, a floor. We have molecules, atoms, quarks etc. All divided and individually named and categorized. Why?

Why do we name and make up categories and systems? We do not discover a new part of reality, we just made one up because it fits the system we are using, which is also made up. We do so because we need names and systems to be able to differentiate in our communication.

Fact is (there are no facts), that there is no difference between a chair and the floor it stands on other than language. There is no difference between a bumblebee and a Thursday, between cancer and strawberry ice cream, between death and a smart suit. Reality exists only through language. What we perceive as reality is a set of constructed attributes that we use in order to communicate more efficiently.

There is no reality set apart from human experience.

What has been made can be unmade.

Naming is creating.