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Welcome to part 3 of the Satanist Reads the Bible series on magic. I recommend checking out the last two essays for helpful background and context, but I’ll sum things up briefly. I’ve generated five stipulative definitions for magic: stage magic is a performative art in which neither performer nor audience truly believes that magic is taking place; magic proper is what we find in fictional accounts such as Harry Potter; type N pseudomagic describes real phenomena outside of present scientific models which could be studied, explained, and understood, but which have not been; type K pseudomagic describes real phenomena which are magic-like in character and which are explained by present scientific models; and type P pseudomagic is magic performed for the purpose of creating some personal psychological effect. Type K pseudomagic does indeed exist, with electromagnetism being an example. The potential existence and nature of pseudomagics type N and P will be explored in this essay. We’ve also looked at Max Weber’s take on the disenchantment of the world, explored the history of magic and the Western esoteric tradition, and examined the nature of orthodoxies.
The two contemporary magic practices that I had encountered prior to this research project were those of LaVeyan Satanism and of Chögyam Trungpa’s Shambhala Buddhism.
Anton LaVey describes Satanic magic in The Satanic Bible as “The change in situations or events in accordance with one’s will, which would, using normally accepted methods, be unchangeable.” It is not, as he says, scientifically explainable, but he notes that “…science has always been, at one time or another, considered magic” (2005, p. 110). That’s not really a coherent clause. “Always at one time or another?” And if science has been considered magic but magic is not scientifically explainable, how does he differentiate the two? It’s not at all clear what he’s saying here, but that’s often the case with LaVey.
He continues by describing two general categories of magic, ritual/ceremonial and non-ritual/manipulative. “Ritual magic consists of the performance of a formal ceremony, taking place, at least in part, within the confines of an area set aside for such purposes and at a specific time. Its main function is to isolate the otherwise dissipated adrenal and other emotionally induced energy, and convert it into a dynamically transmittable force” (2005, p. 111). Alright. Why isn’t such a mechanism scientifically explainable? I’m not certain that everything in the world is scientifically explainable, but if you’ve listened to the last two episodes, you’ll know that one thing I’m looking for to even begin to take these sorts of claims seriously is evidence of critical thinking, and I’m definitely not seeing anything of the sort here. That doesn’t in itself invalidate LaVey’s claims, but it does indicate to me that they’re not worth spending much time considering. Moving on to the matter of what LaVey calls non-ritual or manipulative magic, what LaVey describes here is psychological manipulation of others through personal charm and charisma, which clearly falls within the domain of type P pseudomagic.
The Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa is an interesting character in the history of religion and particularly of Buddhism in the West. Trungpa fled his homeland of Tibet at the age of twenty after the Chinese invasion and occupation. He studied at Oxford and came to the United States in 1970, teaching a secular blend of Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and Western philosophy that he referred to as Shambhala Buddhism. Trungpa’s book Shambhala (2007) describes the Tibetan Buddhist principle of drala in a chapter called “Discovering Magic:”
Normally, we limit the meaning of perceptions…. We shut any vastness or possibilities of deeper perception out of our hearts by fixating on our own interpretation of phenomena. But it is possible to go beyond personal interpretation, to let vastness into our hearts through the medium of perception…. When we draw down the power and depth of vastness into a single perception, then we are discovering and invoking magic. By magic we do not mean unnatural power over the phenomenal world, but rather the discovery of innate or primordial wisdom in the world as it is.
p. 108
This is close to type P pseudomagic but warrants a new classification: magic as a way of understanding or framing the world. I’ll call this type D for drala. Type D pseudomagic is distinguished from types K and N by being not a property of a particular phenomenon but rather something that is intrinsic and essential to the world collectively, and it’s distinguished from type P pseudomagic by relating to the essential nature of the external world rather than purely to inner mental states. It’s possible that type K and N pseudomagic are the particular magics of a world characterized in general by type D pseudomagic, and that we relate ourselves to this aspect of the world through the practice of type P pseudomagic.
Chaos Magic
Moving on to the new research I’ve conducted, I started with a field of practice called chaos magic. I selected this practice to start with because the Wikipedia page described it as “a union of traditional occult techniques and applied postmodernism” and stated that “chaos magic claims to emphasize the attainment of specific results over the symbolic, ritualistic, theological or otherwise ornamental aspects of other occult traditions” (“Chaos Magic,” 2020), making it a good candidate for evaluation. The consensus recommendation for a book on the topic was Condensed Chaos (1995) by Phil Hine. My opinion of this book is highly unfavorable, to put it mildly, and I’m going to go into some detail as to why because I think it will help set up the final discussion on this topic.
The first chapter, “Is Chaos Magic?” opens with a section titled “What Is Magic?” I’ll quote the first paragraph:
The world is magical; we might get a sense of this after climbing a mountain and looking down upon the landscape below, or in the quiet satisfaction at the end of one of those days when everything has gone right for us. Magic is a doorway through which we step into mystery, wildness, and immanence. We live in a world subject to extensive and seemingly, all-embracing systems of social and personal control that continually feed us the lie that we are each alone, helpless, and powerless to effect change. Magic is about change. Changing your circumstances so that you strive to live according to a developing sense of personal responsibility; that you can effect change around you if you choose; that we are not helpless cogs in some clockwork universe. All acts of personal/collective liberation are magical acts. Magic leads us into exhilaration and ecstasy; into insight and understanding; into changing ourselves and the world in which we participate. Through magic we may come to explore the possibilities of freedom.
1995, p. 11
This all falls squarely into types D and P pseudomagic. While it didn’t really answer my questions as to the underlying theory or mechanism, it did set up a framework for looking at magic that I initially found very attractive. Taking Hine’s definitions here as stipulative, I don’t find anything that I disagree with.
The next section is called “What Is Chaos Magic?” There is some vague discussion of what “chaos” means that fails to establish any clear meaning for Hine’s use of the word. The final sentences read: “…the scientific world-view which has set the limitations of acknowledged human experience is crumbling… new visions and models are required, as are new ways of being, and more importantly, new ways of doing. Chaos Magic is a new approach to ‘doing’ magic” (1995, p. 13). Again, while this doesn’t really answer my immediate questions, this accords with a general response to Weber’s description of the disenchantment of the world which I discussed in the first episode in this series.
Next up, “Core Principles of Chaos Magic.” The first principle is the “Avoidance of Dogmatism.” I’ve repeatedly made clear my opposition to dogma and dogmatism; it’s one of the core tenets of this project, but what Hine says here is that “Chaos Magicians feel entitled to change their minds, contradict themselves and come up with arguments that are alternatively plausible and implausible” (1995, p. 13). Let’s be clear on what dogma is: claims of fact mandated as true by an ostensible authority. Changing our minds? Certainly! No one is an intellectual who doesn’t regularly change their minds on matters as they learn new things. Coming up with implausible arguments? It’s a great way to think through a subject; it’s not at all unusual that one has to land on a few implausible arguments before finding a plausible one. But to willingly contradict oneself? Contradictions are sometimes necessary when one is attempting to express the inexpressible, such as the nature of mystical religious experience, but that’s a special case that should be treated with care. In the everyday sense, self-contradiction is a gateway to nihilism and hypocrisy.
That’s just part of one sentence that, taken by itself, might suggest that I’m reading too much into things, but the book rapidly goes downhill from there. The book has neither index nor bibliography and Hine makes frequent references that are either uncited or completely unsourced. He mentions chaos theory, postmodernism, and quantum physics, but there’s no indication that he understands any of those things in the slightest. On page 21 he mentions the Mandelbrot set and drops in a statement of the underlying mathematical rule, but doesn’t offer any explanation of its application, without which the rule is meaningless. What’s worse, it’s not even a correct statement of the function from which the Mandelbrot set is derived, and worse still, the expression that he does provide is mathematically nonsensical.
A few pages later Hine discusses a maxim which he attributes to Hassan-i Sabbah, the 11th-century Persian founder of the original Order of Assassins. The maxim is stated: “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” First of all, it doesn’t seem to be known that Sabbah ever actually said this; the phrase originates in a novel—Alamut by Vladimir Bartol, upon which the Assassin’s Creed franchise is based—in which Sabbah is a character. Second, there’s no discussion of why this maxim should be accepted. He’s treating it as dogma, in other words, in contradiction to his own stated principles. Third, if the Fandom page on Assassin’s Creed is to be believed, by taking the maxim at face value, Hine is completely misinterpreting it. Hine says, “…you can choose your beliefs and attitudes without feeling the necessity of validating them as ‘Truth’ or scientifically valid” (1995, p. 23). That’s just terrible advice, first of all, and the aforementioned Fandom page indicates that the maxim is more of a caution against dogmatic thinking and claims to universal or absolute truth rather than an embrace of metaphysical nihilism. I tend to lean very postmodernist myself and so I reject what Jean-François Lyotard, in The Postmodern Condition (1979), called “grand narratives” or “metanarratives,” sweeping theories that purport to explain everything in terms of a single idea. I maintain that truth has a subjective component and that much of what we consider to be true is not objective nature but rather social construction. But I do not—and postmodernism in general does not—reject objective truth and embrace metaphysical relativism or nihilism.
In his paper “What Is a Scientific World View,” scientist Matthew Orr describes beliefs as falling into one of three worldviews: scientific, nonscientific, and unscientific (2006). Scientific beliefs contain no falsified components. They are beliefs which can be falsified and which haven’t been. Nonscientific beliefs are unfalsifiable. We all have nonscientific beliefs; they’re an inevitable and at times even desirable part of human experience. My beliefs that Beethoven’s 7th symphony is a good symphony and that it’s wrong to eat babies are unfalsifiable. Unscientific beliefs can be and have been falsified. A belief in a geocentric solar system would be an example of an unscientific belief.
Objective reality exists. There are states of affairs. Things are a certain way, and not some other way. That much is unavoidable. That objective reality is as we perceive it or describe it is another matter, but it seems very likely—obvious, even—that we can make at least some statements which correspond with states of affairs. Thus, objective truth exists. As our beliefs guide our actions, responsible belief is a moral duty. While nonscientific beliefs are unavoidable and even necessary in some spheres of thought, we should attempt to minimize our unscientific beliefs and maximize our scientific beliefs. This, of course, requires a proper understanding of science, which is outside the scope of this essay. I’ve planned it as a subject for a future series, possibly for December. But the willing embrace of unscientific belief is—I can really think of no better word for it—stupid. And I think that’s a fair way of characterizing what Phil Hine is presenting in Condensed Chaos.
I hope I’ve demonstrated through the ethos of this project that I wouldn’t characterize something this way merely because I disagree with it. I took Sam Harris to task for his book The End of Faith (2004) without ever calling it stupid, and I don’t think that it is. Harris’s book is merely wrong but shows ample evidence of robust critical thinking.
On pages 34 and 35, Hine quotes Bertrand Russell as saying that power is “the ability to achieve intended effect.” Again, as there is neither bibliography nor citations, I haven’t been able to confirm that Russell ever said anything of the sort—it doesn’t come up on a google search—much less what the broader context is. I have significant disagreements with Bertrand Russell but I’m familiar with his work and I consider him to be one of the most brilliant thinkers from the last century, and I’m entirely certain that Russell would have repudiated this book and everything that Phil Hine is saying with every fiber of his being.
I’ll quote one last passage so that I can classify chaos magic according to my system and move on:
I used to believe that magic was merely psychology dressed up. That is, until one night I awoke to find something heavy and misty sitting upon my chest. Yes, okay, I admit it—I was scared shitless! I lay there for what felt like an eternity until I mentally visualised a pentagram and projected it forth, and the ‘thing’ promptly faded away. I was in shock for days. Now I’ve heard lots of different explanations from other people, but what is important for me is that it showed me, more convincingly than any argument or book, that magic is something real.
1995, p. 38
This unambiguously removes chaos magic from the domains of pseudomagic of types P and D, which are the very domains under which Hine established chaos magic in the first place. Whatever is going on here, either it has a non-magical explanation, in which case it’s type K pseudomagic (and this seems unlikely as the physical manifestation of beings ex nihilo does not accord with what we know of physics); or it’s part of an underlying phenomenon that we don’t understand, in which case it’s type N pseudomagic; or the entire experience was purely psychological, in which case it’s type P pseudomagic. I have no reason to doubt that Phil Hine actually had this experience; I’ve actually heard several accounts which are very similar in many respects. But what is evident in Hine’s text is that, however bizarre and remarkable his experience, he hasn’t stopped for a second to actually think about it, which means it does not warrant our consideration.
Now, while it’s telling that this was the source that I found to be the most frequently recommended on the subject of chaos magic, it remains a single source and so should not form the basis for a complete dismissal of the practice. I was only able to peruse a couple other sources on chaos magic, Hands-On Chaos Magic by Andrieh Vitimus (2009) and Liber Null by Peter Carroll (1987). The former book seems to fall squarely within the domain of type P pseudomagic and largely presents itself as such. A great deal of it seems rather dubious but I couldn’t find any reason for a prima facie dismissal and I’m actually curious to try some of his experiments just to see what happens, which seems to be the spirit in which Vitimus intends that the book be taken. Carroll’s book I’m less clear on; it’s more abstract and refers to the rituals and practices of a magical organization, the Illuminates of Thanateros, which may provide a necessary context that I’m lacking. There is some resemblance to what I’ve seen of ceremonial magic, which I’ll cover presently.
Ceremonial Magic
The first source I approached in my investigation into ceremonial magic was The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie (1937), an incredibly dense tome lacking both index and table of contents purporting to document the theory and practices of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which falls into the lineage of the Western esoteric tradition that I discussed last episode. The contents are organized into a series of “knowledge lectures” rather than having any systematic organization, so it was hard to know where to start. A general perusal of the book’s contents yielded an elaborate symbology mostly predicated on astrology and an interpretation of the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, along with a few references to Greek and Egyptian mystery religions. It all seems very much in keeping with the origins of the Western esoteric tradition, as I discussed in the last episode.
I suspect that the material is deliberately left without much explanation so as to maintain the mystery and non-discursive nature of the pactices. I don’t say that disparagingly; that seems entirely in keeping with my understanding of what ceremonial magic is seeking to accomplish, that being mental states under which one is receptive to various forms of mystical knowledge, by which I mean non-discursive knowledge about such things as the nature of God and the soul and the relationship between the two.
Typically, at this point, I would cite a passage that I thought was particularly exemplary of what the text as a whole is saying, and in this case I haven’t been able to find anything that accomplishes that function. What’s more, the text is connected to various diagrams which illustrate what the text is saying but does nothing to explain it. I’ve chosen a section of text more-or-less at random just to get the conversation going. Again, this is an absolutely massive book, and the text makes numerous references that I think may be explained in other sections, but lacking in a index, I have no way of finding my way around without reading the entire thing, which I really don’t think would be worth the time investment given my goals.
The third knowledge lecture begins with a discussion of the soul which references traditional Kabbalistic teachings on the subject. Regardie makes reference to the Hebrew language and alphabet and connects these to the suits of a tarot deck. The connections seem arbitrary but they correlate with Kabbalistic writings that I’ve seen elsewhere, such as The Body and Its Symbolism by Annick de Souzenelle (1974).
The text then proceeds into a description of the “Flyfot Cross.” It’s brief section, and having read it, I don’t really understand what the Flyfot Cross is or what purpose it serves, but I’ll quote the description just so that you have some idea what the text is like. For context, I’ll first give a description of the diagrams that accompany it. There are three in a vertical series. The first is a swastika with various astrological symbols imprinted on it. Given the context and dating of this material, I’m entirely convinced that this is referencing the ancient symbol of the swastika completely apart from its associations with National Socialism.
The next diagram is a vertical pillar with three Hebrew letters inscribed over it (shin, aleph, and mem), and then below that is a drawing of the Caduceus, the staff of Hermes in Greek mythology and of Hermes Trisgmegistus in the Western esoteric tradition.
The text reads:
The 17 Squares out of a square of lesser squares, refer to the Sun in the twelve Signs of the Zodiac and the Four Elements: This form of the Caduceus of Hermes is that of the Three Mother Letters placed on one another thus: The Caduceus has another meaning on the Tree of Life. The upper part wings touch Chokmah and Binah: These are the Three Supernals. The Seven lower Sephiroth are embraced by the twin Serpents whose head rests upon Chesed and Geburah. The meaning of Luna on the Tree of Life is thus: In its increase it embraces the side of Mercy; in its decrease the side of Severity, and at the full, it reflects the Sun of Tiphareth.
Regardie, 2002, p. 68
I know most of those words, even the more esoteric ones, but I’m not getting a clear meaning from this section in general. It may be that the specifics of the symbols within this system are explained elsewhere in the text; as I’ve explained, lacking an index, I have no means of further investigation.
Being perfectly honest, I don’t really understand what’s going on here, but I know enough to know that a thorough and comprehensive understanding of this material is well beyond the scope of this essay, this series, and probably the entire Satanist Reads the Bible Project. For all that, it could be complete nonsense, but my inclination is to give the text the benefit of the doubt. My assessment in that context places ceremonial magic as being a form of type P pseudomagic which is aimed at a particular type-D-pseudomagical understanding of the world. There are some sections (such as one on the phenomenon of astral projection) which lean towards claims of type N pseudomagic, but I don’t know how realist they are. A few years ago, I did some work with a shaman, and had some remarkable experiences that accord well with Regardie’s accounts of astral projection. While I understand those experiences as falling within the domain of type P pseudomagic, I don’t want to give the impression that these experiences were mundane or ordinary in any way; indeed, they were some of the strangest and most interesting experiences I’ve ever had, and very useful for effecting a more comprehensive understanding of my own psyche. I’m only saying that I don’t attribute to them anything supernatural. I don’t have a basis at this point for saying whether Regardie or practitioners of ceremonial magic have the same viewpoint, but based on what I know from this survey, I’m classifying ceremonial magic as pseudomagic of types P and D.
Conclusions
I want to mention before wrapping up that even these three episodes have not been at all sufficient to give these topics the coverage needed for a thorough understanding; I’ve really just scratched the surface. The Western esoteric tradition has paralleled the Western orthodox intellectual tradition for about two millennia now, and I probably could do more episodes on magic and on particular magical systems indefinitely and never run out of material. There are numerous other sources on the magic systems that I’ve covered here today and there are numerous other magic systems and beliefs about magic that I haven’t even touched on. If this is a topic of interest to any of my listeners, I hope they’ll investigate on their own.
And I’ll close by reviewing the classifications of magic that I’ve covered in this series and seeing how they’ve landed after some examination and research.
Stage magic is unreal but is accepted as such by performer and audience, and magic proper is by definition unreal. That leaves the four types of pseudomagic: K, N, P, and D. The existence of type K is established and types P and D seem to be viable ways of framing, understanding, and being in the world. The existence of any type N pseudomagics remains an open question, but I find no good candidates among those I’ve surveyed.
In his book The Gay Science (1882), German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche made what would become his most famous—and most misunderstood—pronouncement: the Death of God.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
1974, §125
In the first episode in this series I talked about Max Weber and the disenchantment of the world, under which our processes of rationalizing the world have taken our activities out of their traditional contexts and thus drained them of meaning. Nietzsche is saying something similar; it might be said that he’s actually anticipating Weber, in a sense. It’s not that the Christian God was alive but is now dead, but rather that the concept of God is intellectually dead, and as that was the primary source from which people signified their lives, Nietzsche feared that humanity would be facing a world without meaning, a world of nihilism and madness (cf. Kaufmann, 2013, p. 97 and 101). Chaos magic seems to me to be a manifestation of precisely the world that Nietzsche feared, and not in any way a reenchantment of the world but rather a further disenchantment.
We are born into this world and live within it all of our lives. It is by definition mundane (from the Latin mundus, meaning “world”). Any world in which humans live out the entirety of their lives would necessarily be mundane, no matter how remarkable, no matter how much it might be seen as magical if we were viewing it from the perspective of some other world that was less remarkable than this one. Here on this planet, in one solar system out of billions, in one galaxy out of quadrillions, a monkey is sitting at a desk, turning his thoughts into symbols made of vibrations in the air, symbols which are being recorded using a device which translates them into electrical signals which are then imprinted on a register of binary electrical switches. The monkey will then copy the contents of that register to a globally-distributed network of similar registers so that other monkeys can use various other devices that interface with the registers to reverse the process, reproducing the original vibrations and, to some degree, conveying the original thoughts which the vibration-symbols represent to other monkey minds. And yet, to we monkeys, this sequence of events is mundane and even boring.
Essentially, magic does exist in this world, but we’ve documented it and turned it into the mundane. That doesn’t change what it is and that doesn’t change what we can do with it. When we say that the world is dull and mundane unless magic exists, we are denying the intrinsic magic of the world. The only difference between the real magic of the real world (i.e. electromagnetism or type K pseudomagic) and what we actually call magic is the fact that the latter hasn’t been documented, explained, and understood. When we see magic as being a process of connecting with the real magic of the world (i.e. using type P pseudomagic to connect with type D pseudomagic), that seems meaningful and potent. But when we see magic as having to be magic proper, the unreal magic of fictional worlds, it seems to me to diminish our perception of the real magic of the real world.
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Works Cited and Referenced
Carroll, P. J. (1987). Liber Null & Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic. Weiser Books.
Chaos magic. (2020). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chaos_magic&oldid=979175257
Hine, P. (1995). Condensed chaos: An introduction to chaos magic. New Falcon Publishing.
Kaufmann, W. A. (2013). Nietzsche: Philosopher, psychologist, antichrist (First Princeton classics edition). Princeton University Press.
LaVey, A. S. (2005). The Satanic Bible. Avon Books.
Nietzsche, F. W. (1974). The gay science: With a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs (W. A. Kaufmann, Trans.; 1st ed.). Vintage Books.
Orr, M. (2006). What Is a Scientific World View, and How Does It Bear on the Interplay of Science and Religion? Zygon®, 41(2), 435–444. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2005.00748.x
Regardie, I. (2002). The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites & Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order. Llewellyn Publications.
Souzenelle, A. de. (2015). The body and its symbolism: A kabbalistic approach (First Quest edition). Quest Books : Theosophical Publishing House.
The Creed. (n.d.). Assassin’s Creed Wiki. Retrieved October 2, 2020, from https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/The_Creed
Trungpa, C. (2007). Shambhala: The sacred path of the warrior. Shambhala ; Publishers Group UK [distributor.
Vitimus, A. (2009). Hands-on Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation Through the Ovayki Current. LLewellyn Worldwide.