10/21/2007

Chaos Magic

What is Chaos Magic:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "chaos" is Greek in origin. Its original meaning was: "a vast gulf or chasm; the neither abyss, empty space, infinite darkness, the first state of the universe." In English, this was refined to mean "the formless void of primordial matter, the 'great deep' or 'abyss' out of which the cosmos or structure of the universe was evolved." The popular modern interpretation of the word as being a synonym for "disorder" is a recent and somewhat misleading development. Both order and disorder are themselves manifestations of the Primal Chaos. The original meaning had more in common with what the Eastern mystics call the Tao. I think this is not at all accidental.

Chaos Magic:

One of the most frequently cited tenets of Chaos magic is that "Nothing is True and Everything is Permitted," a quote attributed to Hassan I Sabbah and used by Friedrich Nietzsche in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Like Crowley's "'Do what thou wilt' shall be the whole of the law," this phrase is often mistakenly interpreted in its most literal sense to mean that there is no such thing as objective truth, so people are free to do whatever they choose. However, "Nothing is True and Everything is Permitted" is more widely interpreted to mean "there is no such thing as an objective truth outside of our perception; therefore, all things are true and possible."

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