Philosophy

Spiritual and Philosophical Development

I sat down this morning with the intention of updating my bio in honor of the new website. What I’ve come up with is perhaps a little too long to be appropriate on the bio page, so I think I’ll post it here instead. I hope this helps put a few things in perspective.

 

I consider myself an Occult Philosopher rather than a religious man. I love learning, I love reading and I love thinking for myself. As a result, my ideas and opinions are constantly changing, growing and evolving. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My primary philosophical influences to date come from three major sources.

  1. Western Mythology
  2. Eastern Mysticism
  3. Neo-Pagan Occultism

Christianity was never a major part of my upbringing. I was raised on primarily on myths and fairy tales, with just a few Bible fables thrown in. As I learned to read, I ravenously devoured the Hellenic and Arthurian classics. I did not have the great pleasure of discovering the Norse myths until my early twenties, but they instantly became an important part of my life and inner psychological landscape.

I might add that I have also always been a total sci-fi geek. I consider science fiction to be modern mythology and I consider classical mythology to be primal sci-fi.

From the East, I have absorbed much of the Mystic Philosophy. Buddhism and Taoism, I first encountered through the Martial Arts. Hindu philosophy became a part of my life much more recently, but I now consider Hinduism to be the ideal living role model for Heathenism and Neo-Paganism.

From within the Neo-Pagan scene, my influences can also be traced to three primary sources.

  1. Reconstructionist Heathenism / Asatru
  2. Chaos Magic / Discordianism
  3. Satanism / Luciferianism

I was introduced to both Heathenism and Chaos Magic by my spiritual brother Henry almost ten years ago. My predilection for the Left Hand Path, however, seems to come from somewhere much more basic and instinctual.

Politically, I identify as a Libertarian and a Transhumanist.

I’ve come to refer to myself as a Pagan or Heathen as a shorthand way of explaining that I believe in a whole mess of weird, unpopular and apparently crazy ideas. Barbarian or Savage would probably get the point across just as well.

Deciding on a more specific label is difficult for someone who changes his mind as often as I do, but there are two which seem loose enough to fit me for some time to come.

Indo-European Pagan describes the philosophical milieu from which my Path has been born.

Chaos Heathen describes the only fellowship I need. We are an odd group, but we are true to our selves and that is what makes all the difference.

 

Hail Chaos

Viva Loki

Aum Wotan

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Interview with Jan Fries

I’ve been busy with my studies at university, so that little time remained for this blog. Lastly I’ve been very involved with a paper on Seidhr (unfortunately in German). In this context I have interviewed three people involved in these practices of our ancestors. One of them has been Jan Fries (the two others were Diana L. Paxson and Freya Aswynn [Elizabeth Hooijschuur]). He’s not the main  influence to my approach to Rune Work, but his general approach to magick is of relevance and his books Visual Magick: A Manual of Freestyle Shamanism and Helrunar: A Manual of Rune Magick have opened important doors in my mind and soul.

However, the occultnik should become familiar with the objective facts concerning Runology first before engaging in esoteric Work, regardless of how ‘dry’ or ‘boring’ the academic study seems to be to him or her. The objective study of the Runes (academic Runology) should precede subjective study. Otherwise totally subjective systems of the Runes will be the result that must remain without any meaning to others. To put it in other words: you should become familiar with that which is known (exoteric) before you engage in the quest for that which is unknown (esoteric) – not the other way around ;). This approach has been called the Polarian Method by Dr. Flowers / Edred Thorsson formulated.

It’s obvious that Jan Fries’ postmodernistic, relativistic approach supports basically the development of a subjectivistic system. (Even if I don’t know if it’s possible to establish an objective system. But we can at least study what is known.) His refusal of the value of solid academic research and an intellectually ambitious approach to the Runes doesn’t make his work more individualistic, as he somehow seems to believe (at least in my interpretation of our private correspondence). But his “practical pantheism” is very inspiring nevertheless. A certain knowledge of the way our ancestors thought and what they believed could be helpful. The sagas and Hilda Ellis Davidson’s books come to my mind. The dedicated German speaking seeker should study Jan de Vries’ Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte. (I think Jan has used that work too.) First then the esoteric works should be taken into account. Subjective meanings will appear at this stage and they will very likely contradict with (some of) the interpretations of other magical authors. Here Jan is absolutely right: follow your intuition! Noone can help you here except your ‘Deep Mind’ (Jan Fries) or, to say it in a more traditional way, your Fylgja. The only rule is: don’t universalise your own intuitive realisations. (Here Jan’s take on the Runes is again creditable as he always emphasizes that his Rune interpretations are subjective and only of personal meaning.) It is this subjective stage most of us are engaged in. Some say, there is no other stage to reach (than a subjective one), others are convinced that there is a level of meaning that is reflecting a traditional, objective knowledge. It’s not for me here to decide for you what take is the right one, but consider that there exist Vitkis and Rune Masters who have been studying this magical tradition for decades and could possibly teach you a lot, if your mind is open to it. There’s no disgrace in being a beginner. We all remain Learners all life long. Hasn’t once a wise old man said that he knows that he knows nothing? For Socrates all wisdom began with wondering, thus one must begin with admitting one’s ignorance. This certainly applies to the Runic seeker. His search will begin with an irrational, mysterious flash of inspiration, which will cause him / her to seek after the Runes and/or other Mysteries. Jan Fries’ work has its place in the renaissance of Runic Wisdom and will be of use to the practioner of modern magical techniques. I consider Jan’s techniques are worth studying and can be applied in the process of subjective synthesis, when the ancestral Runic wisdom in the seeker’s Soul is reawakening and the life waters are returning to the ancient and dry riverbeds of our forefathers and foremothers.

But get a picture of Jan Fries’ approach and ideas on the magical practices of our ancestors yourself by reading his own words. Though we talked about (postmodern, neo-shamanistic [!]) “Seidhr” you can apply these statements to his take on the Runes, too. Ok, I think I said enough for an introduction to this interview. Here are Jan’s answers to my questions:

Matt Anon: This interview is part of an academic investigation of the practices of Seidhr in the postmodern world. Could you tell me a little bit about your background in the area of magic(k) and/or Neo-Paganism and how you came to practice Seidhr?

Jan Fries: Magic is central to my life. I had my first dreams of Kâlî, Medusa, Lilith etc when I was a child (they usualyy scared me out of my head), learned basic self hypnosis, breathing exercises and vowel singing at the age of eleven from a friend of my grandmother, Dr. Gisela Eberlein, started to meditate in various ways around the age of fifteen, began with Yijing divination, astrology and martial arts at sixteen, rituals at eighteen and so on. My orientation has always been eclectic, I do not believe or subscribe to any tradition apart from ‘find out for yourself’. I respect and appreciate aspects of a number religious, shamanic or magical systems, such as Huang Lao Daoism, early Chinese Wu shamanism, Tantric Kaula, Krama, Mahâcina, Haitian Voudou, non-Crowleyan Thelema, Ma’at Magick and reinterpret the local European pagan religions as I like. If forced to define the whole thing I would call it practical pantheism. However, I believe that the individual is a lot more important than any system, religion, cult or school. And if you have to stick a label to yourself to do your thing you ain’t good enough yet.

As to getting into seidhr, well, I never did think about it. I simply noted that in a number of interesting trance- or obsession states, boddy tends to shudder, sway and shake. More so, it turned out that excitement increases the shaking and shaking can increase excitement. Both of them improve visualisation and produce a state of mind that may look uncontrolled or strange from the outside, but is actually quite focused and lucid from within. As I researched shaking trances worldwide, I found examples in Siberian, Napalese, Chinese, Korean and Japanese ‘shamanism’, in Indian Kaula, the Vedic vipra-seers, Haitian Voudou, a lot of African sorcery, the Mesmeric movement, the medieval Welsh seers and so on. And in one of the trances I had the insight that body is the cauldron while awareness is the seething fluid within. By changing the ‘heat’ (the excitement induced by imagination), the ‘seething’ of awareness can be controlled. It connected neatly with Simrock’s translation od seidhr as Sudkunst, so I began researching ‘shamanic’ elements (or really techniques) in Viking literature. There are some very close parallels.

As I keep emphasising, my identification of seidhr with shaking or trembling trances is hypothetical.

Nor do I claim to teach seidhr, for the simple reason that I don’t know what seidhr really is. After all, Nordic literature on the topic was composed by people who were usually Christian, badly informed or even hostile to the art. And the sources contradict each other. There is not a single statement by anyone who actually practiced seidhr. While we all may guess what seidhr was really all about by emphasising one source and ignoring another, I believe the main thing is not the word seidhr but how people can change their consciousness. The Nordic mystique is just one frame of reference, a useful metaphor if you like. The fact is that seers and healers have used shaking, swaying and rhythmic body motions at least since the Rig Veda was compiled, and regardless whether we call it seidhr or anything else, it happens work.

Matt: Where does Seidhr come from? What was Seidhr in the past and what is Seidhr today?

Jan: Where my impression of seidhr comes from was outlined above. Historically, Viking seidhr seems to have counterparts in the skohsl dances of the Goths and the ‘shamanism’ of the Sami. Not to mention a number of ecstatic trance elements in medieval Island Celtic lore, such as Theo awenyddion which Giraldus Cambrensis daw in Wales, or the frenzied bards at king Maelgwynn’s court (according to Gildas). Such matters are discussed at length in Seidways.

What seidhr is today? I have no idea. All I know is that a number of people do things they call seidhr. You better ask them.

Matt: Why do you think Seidhr should be practiced? What does result from practicing Seidhr?

Jan: Why I think seidhr should be practiced? I don’t. Do you think mountaineering should be practiced? Do you think everybody should go diving?

Look, trancing is not suited to everyone. I don’t know about seidhr, as I don’t know what reidhr really is, but I do know that some people get along perfectly with shaking trances and others don’t. It’s an advanced trance requiring good health and sanity and I would suggest before anyone went into it, a couple of years of regular meditation and daily physical exercise are wise. Nor do I think that shaking trances are a must. There are so many ways of changing consciousness. People do it all Theo time. They get excited or angry, they fall in love, worry or feel sad. The human nervous system has an enormous abilitx for developing and maintaining highly unique consciousness states. You can use ‘shamanic’ methoda, including dancing, shaking, drumming, chanting etc., or maybe Yoga, using posture, breathing, mantra, visualisation, or you could just sit down, induce a deep trance and change your brain rhythms, chemistry and the flow of energy in your body. It’s easy. All of these are conveniences. They produce different states of consciousness, but what happens in them, and how you use (or abuse) them depends entirely on you.

The only thing which I would recommend for other people is to learn how to think and make good feeling. We could do with more happy feelings in this world. When you are happy you make better decisions, and that leads to being even happier. Fellings don’t just happen, they can be learned and made.

Matt: What sources have inspired you to take up the practice of Seidhr? What sources have you studied / read?

Jan: The sources that inspired me can all be looked up in my bibliographies provided one isn’t too lazy.

Matt: Do you think one has to speak Old Norse or has to study the original sources to be able to practice Seidhr?

Jan: I don’t think one has to learn specific languages to practice any sort of magic or consciousness changing. A couple of hundred words of special terminology, sure. Learning languages is fun, but not essential. It’s different when the literature happens to be untranslated. I learned bronze age Chinese as most of the inscriptions have not been translated into European languages. Now some people need old languages for the feeling. Others dress up in costumes, or redecorate their homes. Well and good. Anything that works is fine.

As to the practice of ‘old seidhr’ well, even with Old Norse you won’t be sure what thaz really was about.

Matt: Despite the fact that the term ‘shamanism’ is itself controversial outside the context of Siberian shamanism, do you believe that Seidhr is a kind of ‘Northern Shamanism’? Does Seidhr feature shamanistic elements?

Jan: If we use ‘shamanism’ in the common, Eliade-type definition (which I am not too happy about) as a loose term for ecstatic consciousness changing healing trance ritualism, sure, there are parallels. Read them up in my books. Personally, I am not too fond of the term as it was used in such a sloppy way by a few anthropologists and a lot of fakes. So if we have to use it, then only in want for a better term. I prefer to speak of shamanic techniques, which you find in many cultures, than of shamanism, which is such a wide (or narrow) field of cultural activity that I wouldn’t like to define it at all. Instead of looking for what people call themselves (or others) I prefer to learn what they do, how they do it, how it works and what it is good for.

Matt: What are the differences between shamanism and Seidhr? What are the specifics of Seidhr?

Jan: We had these questions earlier. You tell me what these two things are. What is ‘shamanism’ and what is ‘seidhr’? One term is too vague and the other refers to a phenomenon we don’t know much about, and that is questionable. So please tell me. When you’ve done that you can look for differences and similarities. Or do something worthwhile for a change.

Matt: Do you consider Seidhr as part of the ‘Northern Tradition’ / Teutonic-Germanic Religion?

Jan: I don’t know what you or anybody else understands as ‘Northern Tradition / Teutonic-Germanic religion. In my opinion there are wide differences between the beliefs of various Vikings (about which we know far too little), the prehistoric so-called Germans (about which we know even less) let alone whatever you consider ‘Teutonic’. As I recall the Teutons spoke a Celtic language. So just what are you talking about?

Matt: What is the role of women in Seidhr? Is Seidhr somehow more connected to women?

Jan: Yes, we all read that bit about Odin teaching seidhr to Freya and Theo goddesses. So what? There are a number of seidhrwomen in Theo sagas, just as there are women in many forms of ‘shamanism’. And sure, Tacitus also had his say. Well and good, but I really don’t care. I don’t believe in gender or race, I believe in individuals. As far as I’m concerned, souls don’t have a gender. They get one when they are born, but may have a different one in Theo next life. So Theo only thing I can say is that when it comes to shaking (which may or may not be part of seidhr), in my experience women tend to learn it faster. Simply because of gender roles. Males usually learn to freeze their hisps (to use a metaphor courtesy of Wilhelm Reich) in western cultures, and this can make shaking more difficult. But what does this amount to? Tension can be relaxed and shaking is possible regardless of gender. Just like any other trance state.

Matt: Is it ‘unmanly’ to practice Seidhr? What does that say about the role of men and women in (ancient) Germanic culture? How is this seen in (post)modern Neo-Paganism / Ásatrú?

Jan: I don’t know anything about modern, postmodern or postmortal Asatru, as I don’t belong to any such organisation. I know that some people got quite excited discussing the meaning of argr-, you can find my interpretation in Seidways and Helrunar. And I’ve heard people mixing the matter with trans-sexual behaviour and getting carried away discussing whether homosexuals could be pagans or whatever. Frankly, I don’t care. For me, the whole issue isn’t what any organisation says. It’s about you, on your own, experience in your contact with the divine, whatever you call it and however you contact it. And how it improves your life. Cults, organisations, churches, dogmas etc. only get in the way of true experience.

Matt: Germanic Neo-Heathenism has been often accused of being racist / right-wing? Why do you think that is the case? Can descendents of non-European cultures be part of Ásatrú?

Jan: I believe that (at least some people) get reborn (unless they don’t want to), and that any capable sorcerer should live in several distinct cultures. I don’t believe that the concept ‘race’ means anything. ‘Culture’ or ‘subculture’ may be slightly more meaningful, as you can join or leave them as you like. We are talking categories here. This is a long way from real life. And regarding politics, I cannot say anything about groups I don’t belong to. I can only say that politics and religion are usually a bad combination, as they make people even more stupid than they already are.

Matt: Why do you think so many people feel attracted to Neo-Paganism today (including Wicca, Druidry & Ásatrú)?

Jan: One major reason for the increase of new faiths is that people are not satisfied with the old ones any more. But then, it has always been that way. There has always been an urge to commune or unite with the divine (no matter how you call it), and whenever people organised to do so they defined themselves, they included some and excluded others, and as we happen to inhabit mammalian bodies, they also organised group behaviour in terms of territory, hierarchy and finally power poltics and money. By then, other people got fed up and invented their own faiths. It happens all the time.

Matt: Finally, what answers does Heathenism / Paganism have to the condition of the modern world (including modern challenges like climate change, overpopulation, financial crisis etc.)? In which way does it help to improve the conditio humana? (I would also like to ask in this context: Why is it ‘better’ than the monotheistic cults?)

Jan: In a world which is steadily becoming more integrated regarding communication, travel, trade, work, culture, art etc., poly- and pantheism make communication with other faiths and cultures easier than a monotheistic attitude does. Especially a narrow-minded monotheistic attitude, as in the first commandment. But that’s really all. I don’t believe ‘Heathenism / Paganism’ have any answers to anything. There ain’t such thing. It’s just two words you put together as if they were meaningful. Words, words, words. We are not talking churches or politics, we are talking people. And we don’t talk them either. They all have their own answers. Ask them. And listen.

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Getting My Act Together

I’ve always believed in the principle that a healthy mind requires a healthy body. I haven’t always practiced what I’ve preached but when I’ve stayed from the path, my experiences have always served to reconfirm that initial premise. I need to be in shape physically if I want to function well mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

I used to be a Bouncer. I ended up leaving that life because I’d come to realize that the bar-scene is not exactly a healthy environment to live and work in. (Sometimes I catch on a little slow.) These days I work as a Personal Trainer. I got into the fitness industry expecting to find it a much healthier environment. It is, kinda, but not so much as you’d think.

Now, before I go off on some kind of stupid rant about everything that’s wrong with the health, fitness and nutrition industries, I better put in that I take full responsibility for my own physical and mental well being. I’ve found that to be the only useful attitude to take on the matter. Suffice it to say that I’m not in anything like the kind of condition I want to be in, which brings me to my point…

I am thirty-one years old and I have a few oaths to make.

1. I will get at least one hour of physical exercise every day.

2. I will strive to eat and drink right every day.

3. I will learn to relax.

Notice I haven’t put any time limit on these resolutions? That’s because these are for life.

Note that I fully expect to stumble on the path, and occasionally fall. I resolve to pick myself up and carry on.

Note that number three is likely to be the most difficult for me, personally (because I’m no longer willing to count getting drunk as a form of relaxation). I’ll find a way.

There are plenty of other oaths I could make. Indeed, there are plenty I should make but I need to keep things simple for now. Stick to the basics.

There is, however, one more special oath I would like to make. This one is just for me…

4. I will spend at least twenty minutes on some form of martial arts practice every day.

With all of cyberspace as my witness, these things I pledge.

And let my word be my bond.

Clinton James McDowall

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Definitions and Distinctions

“Spectacles, Testicles, Brandy and Cigars. You are all now Discordian Popes and absolutely infalliable, so don’t take any more crap from anybody.”

Reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy on my plane ride back from Paris after midsummer, I came across a set of political definitions so wonderful that I just couldn’t resist sharing them. And, since I’m secretly a repressed plagiarist, I’ve decided to load up the page with another four fun quotes that I just happened to have laying around. 5 quotes in honor of late, great Robert Anton Wilson. 2 by Bob and 3 by some other random weirdos. Hopefully we’ll be able to melt a few minds with this lot.
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FREE MARKET: That condition of society in which all economic transactions result from voluntary choice without coercion.

THE STATE: That institution which interferes with the Free Market through the direct exercise of coercion or the granting of privileges (backed by coercion).

TAX: That form of coercion or interference with the Free Market in which the State collects tribute (the tax), allowing it to hire armed forces to practice coercion in defense of privilege, and also to engage in such wars, adventures, experiments, “reforms”, etc., as it pleases, not at its own cost, but at the cost of “its” subjects.

PRIVILEGE: From the Latin privi , private, and lege , law. An advantage granted by the State and protected by its powers of coercion. A law for private benefit.

USURY: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group monopolizes the coinage and thereby takes tribute (interest), direct or indirect, on all or most economic transactions.

LANDLORDISM: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group “owns” the land and thereby takes tribute (rent) from those who live, work, or produce on the land.

TARRIFF: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which commodities produced outside the State are not allowed to compete equally with those produced inside the State.

CAPITALISM: That organization of society, incorporating elements of tax, usury, landlordism, and tariff, which thus denies the Free Market while pretending to exemplify it.

CONSERVATISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which claims allegiance to the Free Market while actually supporting usury, landlordism, tariff, and sometimes taxation.

LIBERALISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which attempts to correct the injustices of capitalism by adding new laws to the existing laws. Each time conservatives pass a law creating privilege, liberals pass another law modifying privilege, leading conservatives to pass a more subtle law recreating privilege, etc., until “everything not forbidden is compulsory” and “everything not compulsory is forbidden”.

SOCIALISM: The attempted abolition of all privilege by restoring power entirely to the coercive agent behind privilege, the State, thereby converting capitalist oligarchy into Statist monopoly. Whitewashing a wall by painting it black.

ANARCHISM: That organization of society in which the Free Market operates freely, without taxes, usury, landlordism, tariffs, or other forms of coercion or privilege. “Right” anarchists predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to compete more often than to cooperate; “left” anarchists predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to cooperate more often than to compete.

Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy

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“Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?”

“Uh…that’s a trick question.”

“It is the key question, dear Wyoming. A radical question that strikes to the root of the whole dilemma of government. Anyone who answers honestly and abides by all consequences knows where he stands-and what he will die for.”

Wyoh frowned. “ ‘Not moral for a member of the group-’ ” she said. “Professor…what are your political principles?”

“May I first ask yours? If you can state them?”

“Certainly I can! I’m a Fifth Internationalist, most of our Organization is. Oh, we don’t rule out anyone going our way; it’s a united front. We have Communists and Fourths and Ruddyites and Societians and Single-Taxers and you name it. But I’m no Marxist; we fifths have a practical program. Private where private belongs, public where its needed, and an admission that circumstances alter cases. Nothing doctrinaire.”

Capital punishment?”

“For what?”

“Let’s say for treason. Against Luna, after you’ve freed Luna.”

“Treason how? Unless I knew the circumstances, I could not decide.”

“Nor could I, dear Wyoming. But I believe in capital punishment under some circumstances…with this difference. I would not ask a court; I would try, condem execute sentence myself and accept full responsibility.”

“But-Professor, what are your political beliefs?”

“I’m a rational anarchist.”

“I don’t know that brand. Anarchist individualist, anarchist Communist, Christian anarchist, philosophical anarchist, syndicalist, libertarian,-those I know. But what’s this? Randite?”

“I can get along with a Randite. A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame . . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world . . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.”

Mannie: “Hear, hear!” I said. “‘Less than perfect.’ What I’ve been aiming for all my life.”

“You’ve achieved it,” said Wyoh. “Professor, your words sound good but there is something slippery about them. Too much power in the hands of individuals—surely you would not want . . well, H-missiles for example—to be controlled by one irresponsible person?”

Prof: “My point is that one person is responsible. Always. If H-bombs exist—and they do—some man controls them. In terms of morals there is no such thing as a ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.”

…Wyoh plowed doggedly into Prof, certain that she had all answers. But Prof was interested in questions rather than answers, which baffled her. Finally she said “Professor, I can’t understand you. I don’t insist that you call it ‘government’-I just want you to state what rules you think are necessary to ensure equal freedom for all.”

“Dear lady, I’ll happily accept your rules.”

“But you don’t seem to want any rules.”

“True, but I will accept any rules you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

“You would not abide by a law that the majority felt was necessary?”

“Tell me what law, dear lady, and I will tell you whether I will obey it.”

Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

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WHAT IS MUTUALISM?

A one-sentence answer is that mutualism consists of people voluntarily banding together for the common purpose of mutual assistance. Clarence Swartz, in What is Mutualism?, defined it this way:

A Social System Based on Equal Freedom, Reciprocity, and the Sovereignty of the Individual Over Himself, His Affairs, and His Products, Realized Through Individual Initiative, Free Contract, Cooperation, Competition, and Voluntary Association for Defense Against the Invasive and for the Protection of Life, Liberty and Property of the Non-invasive.

A character in Ken MacLeod’s The Star Fraction gave a description of socialism that might have come from a mutualist:

…what we always meant by socialism wasn’t something you forced on people, it was people organizing themselves as they pleased into co-ops, collectives, communes, unions…. And if socialism really is better, more efficient than capitalism, then it can bloody well compete with capitalism. So we decided, forget all the statist s**t and the violence: the best place for socialism is the closest to a free market you can get!’

Mutualist.Org: Free Market Anti-Capitalism

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“I think the best bet for ourselves and for the human race is to completely ignore the fuckers, hope to fuck that others also ignore them and just go ahead and build the world we want to live in. Let’s create our own world…”

Helene sat down and answered, “easier said than done, but I agree that is what we learn from most of the magical movements of our time. Wiccans say ‘ An it harm none, do what thou wilt.’ In Chaos magic, there’s a slogan ‘Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted,’ which comes from the Arabs I believe.” She took a mouthful of beer before continuing. “In Thelema they say, ‘Do what THOU WILT shall be the whole of the law.’ If the left-wing anarchists could make peace with the right-leaning libertarians…Well, if enough of us set our minds to it and followed our hearts instead of the rules, we could build the world we want to live in and transform the world we were born into. Simple.”

Sean Scullion, Liber Malorum

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“Well I sometimes call myself a libertarian but that’s only because most people don’t know what anarchist means. Most people hear you’re an anarchist and they think you’re getting ready to throw a bomb at a building. They don’t understand the concept of voluntary association, the whole concept of replacing force with voluntary cooperation or contractual arrangements and so on. So libertarian is a clearer word that doesn’t arouse any immediate anxiety upon the listener. And then again, libertarians, if they were totally consistent with their principles would be anarchists.”

Robert Anton Wilson
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Hail Eris! Viva Loki! All Hail Pope Bob Wilson!

http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html

http://www.mutualist.org/id24.html

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Wyrd, Runa, and the Beauty of Ignorance

I had another really beautiful, intense and long-drawn possession experience with Woden today, this one totally unplanned and spontaneous. Sometimes I call… sometimes he just turns up.

I cannot say anything about it (because there are some things that I just can’t stick on the Internet for everyone to read). But I can talk about how I’ve reacted to it.

I feel as if the course of my life is reflected in the image of an archaeologist lovingly brushing dust from an ancient relic. When I was born I was buried in the earth. At some point I was dug up. Now the process of carefully cleaning me off begins. Next will be detailed documentation and theorising about my significance and meaning.

Right now it feels like everything that has happened in my life was meant to be according to a hidden logic and significance that I cannot comprehend. I am woven so integrally into wyrd. Of course, everything and everyone is.

I’ve been reading a bit about Leibniz’s philosophy lately, his idea that this world is exactly how it is meant to be. Voltaire might have mocked Leibniz, but I think I might be able to understand what he was saying. Not the best of all possible worlds in any obvious sense we can grasp… but definitely meant to be just how it is.

To ask it to be other than what it is means being world-denying and… well, unHeathen. Just a thought, no need to turn that into rigid doctrine (unless you feel like experimenting with dogmatism to see what it is like [some chaos magicians come up with the most brilliant little psycho-magical experiments]).

If each of us is on a unique trajectory through time then perhaps, well, I cannot complete the thought.

As a Heathen I am both a determinist and a believer in free will. The division between these two is false and built on ill-conceived ideologies; it reposes in an ultimately Christian abstraction, and even hard determinists are thoroughly determined by Christianity in their views.

So here we are, webbed in wyrd, hurtling through time simultaneously under our own power and completely involuntarily as well. Making decisions, responding to the shifting weave of the Norns as best we can. Once things have occurred it is retroactively true that they could never have been otherwise.

But before they occur – well there’s a whole lot of possibility for the oscillations of our agency to come to bear. Free choice is only determined once it is fixed through the hand of time.

We know Urd, the past (though the past constantly changes in meaning as it expands and is never truly fixed despite the illusion of its certain solidity).

We are in Verdandi, the present that stretches forth and most certainly is not fleeting or momentary. Heidegger was right on that one – he was paying attention. St Augustine, on the other hand, really had no idea.

Skuld, the future, is a debt that, sure, we’ll pay, but never just yet. We’re always going to pay or else we’ve already paid but you can never catch any of us handing over a wad of cash to the time bank. And even after the big cosmic foreclosure at Ragnarok things will keep going – you just watch!

So yeah, right now I ride the chariot of trust and calm. Everything is unfolding in just the right way. That isn’t the same as pretending that the world is perfect or that I and others don’t suffer all kinds of wounds or that struggle isn’t both necessary and worthwhile.

But right now I can affirm it all. Not, as Nietzsche demands, that I force myself to see the whole past as an act of my will (as though I could ever have even conceived of all this, let alone willed it!)

Rather, I affirm it all as the veil of Runa – of mystery – which I can never penetrate. Nor can any finite human being. I affirm the beauty of the horizon of Verdandi which escapes me no matter how fast I run towards it.

This is why I ultimately have so many grumpy things to say about the approach to magic typified by the ‘step by step’ logical, linear curriculum that groups like the Rune Gild espouse.

Reality is so much more complex and so much richer than that! Think of all the opportunities you miss out while you dally with you regular rigid practice of galdor, stadha, “rune thinking” and all the rest of it.

While you’re off “constructing” your Wode-Self as Mr Thorsson recommends you are missing out on the real Woden coming and showing you that a) it already exists and b) its way beyond anything you could have created anyway.

We aren’t creating from the force of our ego wills; we’re just brushing the mud off our golden forms so that we can shine with the light that falls upon us from the sun and the moon and the torch of human community (Kenaz, folks, Kenaz).

Yet ironically I worked through all that stuff for years when I was in the Gild and to carry my current train of thought to its conclusion, even that time spent doing “magical training” I now consider nearly worthless was crucial, just as crucial to my evolution as my beloved Jan Fries-style Seidh with all its serendipitous riches.

Sure, the latter is inspiring, beautiful, profound and actually helps you embrace magic and mystery. But for it to be the oasis that it is to me – well, I had to stumble through the desert of ego magic teachings and all that other rigid spoon-feeder magic rubbish first.

(The Gild say they’re against spoon feeding, yet the Gild curriculum is exactly that, an all-too-human crutch and distraction from the magic going on everywhere around the “aspiring Runester” … even if I must confess I profited from the rigid practice of getting my chanting in every day, meditating on the rune poems, etc, etc and owe the Gild a big debt of thanks).

So right now I know that I cannot and never will pierce the illusion, that the way things are unfolding for me is way weirder and more magical than anything I could ever have consciously constructed or conceived, and even my exposure to stodgy ego magic rubbish contributed to that (so maybe its good that such philosophies exist after all and I should be a little more circumspect when I grouch about them… aww, but grouching just feels so good).

And yet I have pierced the illusion at various times and will again. This is also true. Folks, two contradictory statements can be true at the same time; Aristotle was wrong (though, and here’s the kicker, for consistency’s sake I will also say that Aristotle was right).

Well anyway, things are unfolding and I’m in the eye of the storm and always have been and we all have because we’re all on our trajectories and maybe it will take one lifetime or maybe billions of years, I really don’t know if or how that reincarnation gig works, but right now I’m in the heart of marvelling at how ignorant I am and how beautiful the universe is and folks, this is the place to be. Or really, wherever you happen to be right now is the place. Or whatever. You get the idea (or not).

And tomorrow I’ll forget and I stumble back to my fears, frustrations, quirks, my amnesia, my all too human tendency to forget Mimir’s well in favour of disconnected distraction.

That’s ok too.

We forget the big picture so that we can have the pleasure of remembering it again and again, over and over. Endings are great because they guarantee new beginnings and beginnings are great because once something starts it has to stop.

And every time you come back to Mimir’s wisdom, well, I’d like to think you crawl a little closer to wherever.

What is the ultimate point and purpose of existence? I have no idea. I feel so strongly that my life is unfolding exactly in the way it is supposed to, but that doesn’t mean I have even a shred of a clue. “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment” said Rumi – I reckon he and Odin would have gotten on something fierce.

Socrates was the wisest of all the Greeks because he at least knew he was ignorant. Somebody remind me to toast that old gadfly next time I’m at sumbel, please?

What is the meaning of the question of Being? Asked Martin Heidegger. Being is Mystery/Runa – this is my answer. We are skating on the ever changing skin of the Well of Memory that feeds the world tree.

If Heathenism really says that there is no sin, no fallen-from-grace-ness, no world-as-bastardised-image-of-God’s-wisdom – well then we might as well start loving the vast cosmic question mark that escapes and entices our every rising breath.

Because that’s all there is, the question is the answer, or might be, or probably isn’t, or…. Well, you get the idea (or you might, or might not or… [yes this can regress infinitely, another secret there! {I just added this layer of parentheses to be a smart ass – or did I?}]).

Hail Chaos! Viva Loki! Aum Wotan!

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Storytelling as the Weaving of the Self

We moderns have nothing whatsoever of our own; only by replenishing and cramming ourselves with the ages, customs, arts, philosophies, religions, discoveries of others do we become anything worthy of notice.
Friederich Nietzsche

Exit all legends, enter the laws of magick.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

“You got no love in your heart. When you got no dreaming, no story, you got nothing”, an Aborigine says to the hero in a movie called ‘Australia’ (the movie is crap, but I’m used to look for gold in shit). The aborigines have a very mysterious concept that they call dream time, this is the mythical & magical time, where the ancestors still live & sing and every thing has a ‘song’ attached to it: rocks, trees, bushes asf. – all have a ‘song’. And the initiated sorcerer of the Australian natives can communicate with these ‘things’ by singing their songs (a form of verbal magic, in Norse magic represented by Galdor). Here we are once again confronted with the holistic vision of a sacred landscape, where everything is interconnected & alive – a worldview that was also common to our European ancestors (or wherever your ancestors come from). This vision is contrary to the modern myths created by the visions of Descartes & ‘Newton’s sleep‘ (William Blake). Both of them had literally visions. Descartes’ thinking has been influenced, for example, by his dreams & Newton has been an occultist, who has received his vision of the mechanistic ‘clockwork universe’ from an ‘Angel’ of the Enochian system of magick ‘invented’ by Dr. John Dee.

Their visions are the stories about the universe we are brought up with. (If you have really bad karma you have been brought up with Kristjan stories about the universe :-). They do not stem from dream time, but from the modern myth of linear time. (‘Our enemies are material. Our enemies are direction and fact. Our enemies are Because.’ GP-O)

Anyway, what really strikes me is the idea how much power a story has over our lives and that – since nobody owes the absolute truth, if such a mysterious thing exists at all – all religions, philosophies, myths, histories, fictions and movies are essentially stories, stories we tell ourselves or that are told to us. Of course, this is a postmodern attitude that I am extremely wary of as it includes the risk of fundamentalist relativism and an ‘epistemological hypochondria’ (Geertz), where ‘anything goes’ and thus real knowledge becomes impossible anymore. But everything has two faces and there are also great advantages, when one uses POMO thought in a critical & self-conscious fashion.

“Post-modern research … embodies a critique of the conventional logical positivist discourse derived from rationalist Enlightenment philosophy, which privileges the European, male, individual subject and the indisputable authority of scientific explanatory frameworks.” (Robert J. Wallis 2003: Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans, p. 2).

I think this critique is a necessary step, if one really wants to understand the local knowledge of a native people, like the Aboriginal tradition (or our Heathen tradition). This means, too, that to select carefully a few essential tenets of postmodern philosophy can bring about changes in attitudes, values, perceptions, and worldviews that help us to heal the wounds between ‘whites’ and the peoples we have hurt (see Henry’s article Culture, Genocide and Whingers). More generally speaking, such a ‘paradaigm shift’ on a grand scale can help us to heal the wounds between humanity and the Earth Spirit (Anima Mundi).

Further, the positive effects of postmodernism can be, if used wisely, that we deny to follow ‘universal rules’ (of life, art, philosophy, or anything else). And those who have the will and determination can choose pathways to individual fulfilment & self-empowerment based on the story (‘paradigm’) chosen or created by themselves, instead of following the universal appeal or supposed authority of a story they were told to believe (be it religious metaphysics or scientific materialism, or whatever your favourite mental prison is). If something feels internally authentic & right, it’s the way to go. For us Chaos Heathens / Pagans this attitude makes it possible to liberate us to return to the trú traditions of our ancestors in new, exciting, and creative ways, in ways that adapt and apply the ancient wisdom to the circumstances and the Need – in the sense of :ᚾ: – of our times.

However, to me storytelling is a form of magick and a form of knowledge. Imagine a tribe 10,000 years ago in a dark forest at night. You can hear the wolves howl, and you hear the strange sounds of other dangerous animals, above you the stars and a full moon. Only a little bonfire enlightens the night and you sit there in a circle with your comrades, the shaman of your tribe – a miraculous man with special powers, who is treated with awe by all men of the tribe – sits with you there and tells wyrd stories of cosmic, uncontrollable and daunting forces, of Fire and Ice generating the events that created the universe. He tells you about Ymir, the bipolar Giant, dismembered by the mighty Gods, Odhinn (Master of Ecstasy), Vili (Sacred Will) & Vé (Hollowed Space), who made order (Futhark) out of the totality of existence (Ginnung) and shaped the first man & woman, Askr and Embla, out of trees (!), giving them the triple Gift (Gebo) of human shape (Lík), life-breath (Önd = Prana, Chi, Libido) and (divine) consciousness (Ódhr). His stories tell you about the adventurous journeys and brave deeds of heroes that are your direct ancestors, whom maybe your dead great-grandfather met personally, when he was a child. These journeys of those heroes turn into ordeals & initiations, where they gain insights into the mysteries and cycles of birth, life, death & rebirth. These stories are strange allegories that illumine your understanding of the world surrounding you. They give you heroic models of behaviour that help you to live in an honourable way. Our shaman from 10,000 years ago is a storyteller. He creates a sense of self, of who and where you are. He gives codes of meaning & an intelligence to your life that makes you aware of the interconnectedness that the Web (Wyrd) woven by the Three Norns originates. Magick is possible here – you are not alone, disconnected and alienated from the world!

But 10,000 years later these stories of old are not told to us anymore. They became myths in a negative sense, fantasies of stupid, uneducated, brutish barbarians. The modern stories describe such states of consciousness (as mentioned above) as being ‘primitive’, ‘infantile’ and ‘wishful thinking’. They are something that must be ‘overcome’ by logical & scientific thinking. The French ethnologist Lévy-Bruhl interprets such a healing and wholesome state of unitary consciousness in a negative sense as participation mystique and the Austrian psychoanalyst Freud called this ‘magical thinking’ (based on his idea of primary narcissism). ‘Magical thinking’ is the belief that a person can impact reality by wishing or willpower. Such a belief demonstrates a belief in the self as powerful and able to change external realities. To put it shortly, magical thinking is in many ways what I strive for! For many years now, I try to decondition myself from this vision of ‘flatland’ logic by psychedelic drugs, meditation and magick (more or less successfully until now :-). Though in the long run POMO thinking is not at all ‘magic-friendly’ and, though the whole POMO current has created in many areas a body of knowledge of rather dubious value, I still believe that on a philosophical level some POMO ideas are useful to regain ‘magical thinking’ in a positive, ‘enlightened’ way, namely by creating new stories. Don’t get me wrong, science is invaluable! But the scientific story – if not balanced by wisdom, if not shown where its authority ends, and if not shown where it failed (!) – has not much (interesting) to say about the most important questions of life: What is the purpose of life? What happens after death? What is wisdom? Or, if I may quote again my ‘Aboriginal friend’ (from Hollywood:-), his answer to science would be the same as to the white man: “You got no love in your heart. When you got no dreaming, no story, you got nothing”. This is not completely true, of course. Science has a story: it dreams of ‘eternal progress’ and a condition where all disease, probably even death, is cured. For those who haven’t been so optimistic, it has created nihilism. And what is the story of nihilism? It goes: “The story is pointless. It all makes no sense. End of story.” But we Need a story. A brighter story, a greater story, a hopeful story!

But what can a story do on an individual level? Isn’t a story just a story? Well, yes and no. For example, what is the ego? From a meditative point of view, my ego is just the stories I tell myself about myself. But some stories are charged with a very high emotive energy. So, before my ego would give up its ‘core’ stories, it would probably run mad & defend them from extinction like a religious fundamentalist would protect his belief in God, just because the ego consists of these stories. Probably that’s why it’s so hard to ‘Cross the Abyss’, as Crowley has put it. Probably that’s why most humans fear death! Probably that’s why it’s hard to change at all! Because, you know, ‘that’s just the way I am!’, so I won’t give up this-or-that habit or such-and-such a way of thinking or repetitive emotional pattern, even if it’s bad for ‘me’. Because ‘that’s me’! You get the picture… The ego will all-ways convince you with its stories, why you shouldn’t change, why meditating is boring, or why you have the right to behave angry, feel depressed or be xenophobic. So, in a fundamental way, it’s of great importance what story dominates you, what story you tell yourself about yourself. This, probably, is the reason, why meditative systems of the East have only little use for ‘developing a strong personality’ etc. and focus very much on developing ‘egolessness’, developing equanimity towards life, pain & death and fostering devotion towards the God/dess or the guru, who represents the God/dess and, ideally, works as a ‘mirror’ for the apprentice. Our Northern Tradition fosters instead the development of a strong Hamingja (cp. Sweyn’s True Helm) and of courage towards life, pain and death (cp. Dave Lee’s Bright from the Well: Northern Tales in the Modern World).

On a more profane level just consider what psychotherapy basically does to people. It just gives them a story, a meta-narrative, that makes sense out of all the shit that went wrong and by explaining why this shit has led the individual to feel ‘so-and-so’ about himself. By giving sense to that which seems senseless, by explaining the pain and giving it a meaning, and by telling the person that s/he is not defined by its past and that s/he can now choose to do better. Basically, it creates a better story and thus a better ‘self’ – the stories, of which the ego consits, are changed! (‘Change all memory. And change your ways to perceive.’ TOPY proverb) In a way, the therapist is a modern echo of the storyteller, as is, of course, the priest. But finally that’s not enough, because today, if you are a genuine member of the holiest of all holy orders, the COT (= Club Of Truth-seekers :-), the truth of someone else won’t suffice. The shamanic storyteller from 10,000 years ago is dead and gone. The only one who can ‘replace’ him today is not a politician, priest, psychotherapist or some self-proclaimed guru, but it is you. 

Remember You Are Made Of Star Dust

So creating your own story is a good starting point. The chaos magician Andrieh Vitimus suggests:

“The imagination is more powerful than merely the facts. An idea backed by emotional responses can be seductive enough to enslave many to its cause, whether the idea is a spirit, a piece of art, a cause, or a concept. The majority of people seem content to give away their imagination and creative power. Often, this manifests in letting other forces (advertising, religion, ideas, spirits, whatever) decide what they should do and what they can have and be. This is the power of imagination. It can free us or be our worst prison.” (Andrieh Vitimus 2009: Hands-On Chaos Magic , p. 365, my accentuation)

In days of yore Imagination was a natural part of daily life and regarded as valid as any other human faculty. Walliam Blake, whose Poetic Genius has created a unique poetry (see ‘The Proverbs of Hell’), embraced Imagination as ‘the Body of God’. Today our Imagination, our visualising asf., is ‘stolen’ by the story-sellers, who created the ‘Body of (Pavlov’s) Dog‘.  Advertising is a good example. It sells ‘imagination’. So you buy the ‘myth’ surrounding the package, not the content itself. You don’t buy a perfume, but the ‘imagination’ that it makes you more erotic, attractive, seductive asf. Today we have no genuine storyteller except, probably, the artist. For example, artists who sing about the way they experience truth, like this one: “Waking sleep, cocooned within a veil of fog, Sight no further than my hand, Tearing at this web spun through reality … Through the sacred dance I Awaken, Through faith in myself and my rhythm, Conscious for the first time…” (Ironwood – here’s a fantastic German review). But today such artists are rare. Because in these modern days even the artist has become a whore of capitalism and thus he turned from a genuine storyteller to a storyseller – a faker, a peacock, a good-for-nothing. Mehr Schein als Sein (‘More Appearance than Being’). And stories they sell, packaged in a ‘consumer-friendly’ form, devoid of meaning and any real depth. A true storyteller, shaman & madman, Jhonn Balance (now dead dead dead – may he be blessed by all horned animals!), has warned our culture by proclaiming that Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil! The German artist and shaman (of sorts), Joseph Beuys, has said once: Every human is an artist. I would like to add: …and a storyteller. At least s/he should be. POMO theory started out when it proclaimed that there is no ‘grand narrative’ anymore (that the ‘scientific myth’ of modernity of eternal progress & secularization has kind of come to an end – that’s why post-modern). So, after Nietztsche proclaimed that ‘God is dead’, now the ‘grand narrative’ is dead, too. But I believe that we, as individuals and as a folk, need a narrative again, a story. And, in this globalized world, we need also a story for the earth community – a story that makes us aware of the interconnectedness of everything on this green-blue and fragile planet. Because when I poison the air over here in Europe, your air will be finally poised over there in Australia, too. So what could this story be about? Well, I’m not wise enough to answer this question, but we can silence our minds and listen to what the voice of our hearts has to say (what our ancestors called ‘High Rede’). And surely we can look with confidence to the wisdom of our ancestors and apply it. If the climate catastrophe shall be anticipated in time, science must be part of the solution, I believe. As the Permaculture slogan goes: ‘The problem is the solution.’ Mid-gard – Middle-Earth must be guarded, and it can only be guarded by us humans.


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Baum Und Teufel

1. The Devil Is A Jerk

So if everything is one, a single manifold consciousness of pure benevolent love, a single infinitely recursive web of time, causality and spirit, well that’s pretty good, right? Sure there is death and destruction, but change is a gift: from fallow fields rise fertile crops. And, luckily, from fertile crops fall fallow fields.

It works in both microcosm and macrocosm. The totality of Being is a vast interconnected tree, water coursing up from the wells at its foot, spilling from its branches, back down again – thus time unfolds ecologically, spraying out in simultaneous yet mutually exclusive patterns of probability. Everything is and is not.

Likewise, down the scale a bit, earth’s weather patterns work like this: an endlessly referential and super-complicated web of matrices which are infinitely predictable after the fact; but utterly mysterious when viewed from the eternal crest of the present horizon.

Because of the absolutely uniqueness of every abstracted moment in the matrix we find that the whole system is simultaneously perfect/ideal and imperfect/debased. In the absolute individuality of each moment and phenomenon (which is derived from the absolute dissolving interconnecting oneness of the whole system) consciousness emerges.

Every cloud is spirit; every drop of rain a quicksilver thought in the mind of God (or whatever you choose to call Him/Her/It).

So it goes – fractal geometry replicates down and up infinitely from a set of finite premises – a kind of mathematical, cosmic perpetual motion machine. As we approach nothingness or as we approach Being the ratios contract or expand exponentially.

This is why, as Heidegger says, Being conceals itself. The closer we get to the big picture the harder it is to get close to it. This is why he teaches us to stand back and listen and shelter and think and dwell. Only in this way can we come to Being as a whole: by realising we always already start there.

If I understand correctly (which is unlikely), an analogy can be drawn to Einstein’s point about light speed – the closer we get our spaceship to light speed, the harder it will be to get there because of the geometric ratios at play. But if we could start ourselves off faster than light speed (which might possible?) – well, no problem!

Thus we find ourselves in the gorgeous voluptuousness of the oneness and difference of all things. I am every other being that exists by virtue of the fact that every other being is shaped by its relationship to me just as I am shaped by my relationship to every other being.

The preceding sentence can recurse forever, like the two serpents of a Caduceus; like DNA.

Difference and non-identicalness are real but are also the necessary conditions for the absolute non-difference and identicalness of all Being. There is no “synthesis” of these seeming contradictions that can be expressed in a linear logical way. Only poetry does the job. Thus Rumi teaches: “sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment”.

As manifest fragments of cosmic consciousness (can I really say that with a straight face?), human beings lose perspective all the time on the Big Picture. It doesn’t help that modernity tends to efface all the reminders that pre-modern cultures build into daily life, either.

For the old Germanic tribes lineage was important because one’s descent runs back all the way to the Wells at the foot of the Tree. Cut off the connection and you die. Separation is inevitably fatal, even if total dissolution all the time is a bit pointless.

We need to ride the crest of Verdandi, the present: as individual beings which are non-separate from wyrd. Otherwise? Well, otherwise we become parched vessels, cracked and crumbling in the desert of our ignorance and amnesia.

The devil is a jerk.

Why is the devil a jerk?

The devil is a jerk because he is the agent of amnesia. The devil wants you to forget that everything is One. The devil wants you to think that you alone own your existence, your actions, your will. He wants you to thumb your nose to the infinity of creation that you owe your whole existence to.

The devil tells you that you are isolate, absolute, self-created, a source of meaning which manifests ex nihilo – from nothing. The devil says that reality is fundamentally disconnected, discontinuous.

The natural state of being is not the cycle of life-death-rebirth as in the cosmic tree. No, the devil reckons that the natural state of being is kill or be killed. You can be immortal and moreover you should want it and you should want it at the expense of all other beings.

Sure, some weak-kneed apologists for the devil have proposed the notion of enlightened self-interest – namely that if I help people out they’ll help me out. That if I do my bit to make the world a better place I’ll benefit in unpredictable, rich, non-linear ways.

But implicit in this idea is the notion that the rule of Being is the oneness as well as the difference of all things and a real devil-worshipper will have no truck with this.

The devil says that your actions are your own, your ego is the only thing of value, that you can control anything and everything, that allowing things to be what they are (instead of what you will) is weak and contemptible.

Ironically many people under the devil’s sway are unequal to this dare and challenge and become depressed, lost, confused, somnambulant, pathetic, lonely, powerless, numb, etc, etc, etc.

Only by recovering their connectedness to the horizon of Verdandi, the present (which is to say: the horizon of mystery [which is to say, RUNA]) can such folk be healed.

By giving ourselves to the infinity of the unknowable grandeur of Being we are given back to ourselves as finite but unbounded, as individuated and interconnected. Whole, as the old Germanic tribes would say. Heilige. Holy.

The devil does not want this; he wants us to fight our true nature, to use force of will no matter how much it poisons us and those around us and leaves us, ultimately, empty and cauterised. The devil is a jerk.

2. The Devil is a Champ

The sum total of your domain ends at the surface of your skin; at the limit to which your voice is audible; at the limit to which your words can expand; at the limit to which you can use violence to achieve your ends; at the limit to which you can impose order on the infinite chaos of existence.

Sure, give in to chaos. You’ll be torn to utter shreds. How will you cope if you dare to gaze into the infinite reaches of Being? You won’t. Like the cosmic lamb to the cosmic wolf, you’ll be ripped to pieces, bleating like the pathetic domestic beast that you are.

The chaos doesn’t hate you (although it might) and it certainly doesn’t love you. It has no intentions toward you, no will. It is chaos. As soon as you start to talk about it in coherent language you are projecting human (all too human) characteristics onto something so fundamentally alien that you’ll never even begin to understand. Fall silent!

Ahh, but can you endure being enslaved to ignorance of the true nature of things? We flee into the cloying smell of wool and lamb shit, bleating like wimps. This is it folks – this is all the existence you’ve been given, will you squander it like a chump?

God is the Law of utter Chaos, and he lives inside you and is telling you to bow down and shut up and blunder through the meaningless Brownian motion of your existence. You think it means something? You’re ignorant and blind and stupid and even death is too good for you.

Nothing is connected, coincidence is purely random, the stars haven’t been talking to one another since the big bang and meaning is an illusion created by dumb-ass ape-like mammals that are far too convinced of their own importance. Wake up, you bleaters: we will come and go in the blink of the eye from the point of view of Chaos!

Only the brave win. Only the evil, the cruel, the self-obsessed, the masterful, the bloody, the vicious, the conniving. Only those who instinctively steal from the sheep around them, the wolves in sheep’s clothing, will ever get anywhere.

You think there is meaning? Unless you personally made it, it doesn’t exist. ME is the only important bit of the word MEaning. Well, not quite. MEAN is also pretty damn important.

This is not an easy challenge, to do battle as the isolate being you are with the endless tides of ignorance and ultimately of the contemptuous and mediocritising gravity of the Law of Chaos. The Law of Chaos wants you to be small and weak. You must fight it, you, alone against the cosmos. Alone against the cosmos, you, the true hero.

Not a hero for the people, not a saviour, not a healer or helper. But a hero for villains, liars, betrayers, murderers – all those with guts in this world of cowards. You must steal power from everything you encounter, stuff yourself with it, bloat yourself with it, create of yourself such mass that you exert a gravitational pull on the chaos, until your will orders the space around you.

Then the sheep will flock to your cause, your side, to serve, safe in the harbour of will and gravity that your iron-fisted desire has created. The more that flock to your banner, the more powerful your momentum. You are becoming a god.

The Law of Chaos – the ultimate cosmic deity – will try to stop you with misfortune, conflict, struggle. And others like you, other wolves in the land of sheep, will fear and hate you and try to steal from you to feed themselves.

But you love it, you love crushing your foes. You love crushing anything precious, powerful, beautiful, gravitational. Why? Because it feels good. Power is its own end.

The devil teaches the way. Reject the status quo (except the one you seek to forge yourself, of course). Reject the pathetic order that the Law of chaos has bequeathed you.

He leaps forth recklessly, one flickering spark against the entire ocean of chaos, to declare his will and desire and determination and fire. He smashes the illusion of interconnection, which is actually the armature of psychic bondage, which keeps the lambs bleating and stupid.

You don’t worship the devil. Why would you? Then you’d be placing something above yourself. Sure, you might pretend to worship the devil or any other being, but you don’t really.

You don’t worship the devil but you have to respect the old bastard, even if you’d happily destroy him and take his place at any moment. You copy his way of being, his mastery of fear, violence, theft and isolated arrogance. The devil is a champion of your cause, even though you’d happily knife him to get a leg up the ladder of your will.

3. The Devil Needs A Noose (The Devil Is A Noose?)

Secretly you hate mystery (that is, Being [that is, Runa]) because it refuses itself, and you seek to dominate it at every turn. In a way you love its endless new mysteries because this ensures you never run out of territory to conquer.

But the more you conquer, the more you secretly face how vast it is. Ever more desperate, caught in a vicious, inwardly tightening spiral, you lash out.

Mystery is mystery however. Mystery always wins.

Mystery always wins.

Mystery always wins.

Once, in an altered state, I declared:

RUNA, I give myself to you completely. Take me! I’m yours!

Runa responded:

But my dear boy, I already own you and always have. And you are a part of me and always have been. And so you seek to give yourself to myself, sjalf sjalfum mer as dear Yggr declared on his steed, the Tree. You give yourself to me but you always have been part of me. Give yourself to me and you give yourself also to yourself. Give your isolation to me and I will give you a lineage.

That’s what Runa said as she gently laughed at my expense and loved me all the more for it.

Mystery always wins. I have written two stories about the devil. Is the devil a champ or a jerk?

My experience tells me he is a jerk, but I love him anyway. I love his reckless hilarity, his passion and fury. His simultaneous hatred of injustice and perpetuation of injustice. What audacity to be so unevenly even-handed! What courage to tilt at the marvellous cosmic windmill!

If the devil did not make me forget the wonder of Being then I would not get to endlessly re-experience the ecstasy of remembering it again.

Therefore: thank you, Mr Devil, for my dark valleys – they are the necessary condition for my mountain tops and blessed isles, for my eagle and my serpent. If only Nietzsche had possessed the good taste to worship the natural majesty that nourished him without so much as a please or thank you!

But to those who emulate the devil, those provincial misers of spirit, those who never squander themselves as Nietzsche implores us to do, who erect crumbling towers for their empty egos – to these I say: you would settle for so little and think yourselves so rich.

Thus I declare: tie yourself a noose and break on the tree.

On the tree called by men Laerad and gods Yggrdrassil.

On the tree called by some Ash and others Yew.

On the tree that ever is destroyed and ever renewed.

Break on the tree, friends.

Break and become whole.

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Do What Thou Wilt

‘I thought they were more into restoring democracy’

‘Yeah, for now, though I don’t know how democratic it all feels when the partisans roll into town and call a meeting. But for the long run, when the Sheenisov have conquered the world -’ we share a laugh ‘- their theories advocate the weirdest kind of communism I’ve ever heard of: everybody owns nothing, or everything.’

‘Sounds like every dingbat communist since Munzer -’

‘No, no – every individual owns everything. The whole goddamn universe.’

‘Including every other individual?’

‘Only to the extent that you can.’

‘Nice if you can get it. I just want to be princess of the galaxy.’

‘Modest of you, my sweet. But that’s the catch – the universe is yours to take if you can.’

‘So what’s to stop me?’

‘Only the other contenders, and your possibly reluctant subjects. And the size of the universe. If you can get around all that – go for it, gal!’

‘Oh. I see. And there was me thinking that eating people is wrong.’

Tony does glance at me sideways, now. ‘Eating people is wasteful…but seriously, if you think it’s wrong, fine. I entirely agree. So do something about it. Arm the prey! Set up taboos. Give them teeth! Just don’t think that announcing you moral convictions affects any part of the universe further than your voice can reach.’

‘And they want to base communism on this…this unlimited selfishness? What’s to stop it all degenerating into a war of all against all?

Tony shrugs. ‘No doubt they expect we’d come to some kind of an arrangement.’

Ken Macleod
The Cassini Division

This is really the most important point that people miss when they begin playing around the edges of moral nihilism. No matter which way you choose, moral or amoral, you will still need to deal with practical necessity in the end.

“You are free to do whatever is in your power, and if you want to survive and thrive you had better do whatever is in your interests.”

Most actions traditionally considered criminal or immoral across a range of cultures have come to be considered so because they carry serious potential side effects. Emotional, medical, social and financial side effects. That doesn’t mean that they’re wrong, necessarily, just risky.

Some actions are risky to the self, some to others. Actions that are risky to others always end up being risky to the self, too, if only in a round-about way.

Some actions are so risky they ought to be classified as downright stupid!

On the other hand, there are many traditional moral injunctions, in our culture and in others, that just don’t make any sense. It’s when you run into one of these that you need to seriously start questioning your morality and where it comes from. And once you start pulling on that thread…oh boy!

Which leads us back to our starting point…While I have become quite convinced that all morality is a lie, I have also come to believe that ethics are extremely important. Ethics are derived from the practical necessity of dealing with other human beings. It’s only when we turn away from the twisted lie that is morality, and begin exploring practical frameworks for getting along with each other, that we can ever hope to begin making real progress towards a peaceful, enlightened and civil society.

Of course, that’s all assuming you consider a peaceful, enlightened and civil society important. It’s OK either way by me. I like to fight.

Hail Chaos! Viva Loki! Aum Wotan!

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The True Knowledge

I felt like sharing a quote today. This is from one of my favorite sci-fi authors, Ken MacLeod, and expresses some of the sentiments of my last post, only far better than I ever could.

Enjoy,

Clint.

The true knowledge…the phrase is an English translation of a Korean expression meaning ‘modern enlightenment’. Its originators, a group of Japanese and Korean ‘contract employees’ (inaccurate Korean translation, this time, of the English term ‘bonded labourers’) had acquired their modern enlightenment from battered, ancient editions of the works of Stirner, Nietzshe, Marx, Engels, Dietzgen, Darwin, and Spencer, which made up the entire philosophical content of their labour-camp library. (Twentieth century philosophy and science had been excluded by their employers as decadent or subversive – I forget which.) With staggering diligence, they had taken these words – which they ironically treated as the last word in modern thought – and synthesized from them, and from their own bitter experiences, the first socialist philosophy based on totally pessimistic and cynical conclusions about human nature.

Life is a process of breaking down and using other matter, and if need be, other life. Therefore, life is aggression, and successful life is successful aggression. Life is the scum of matter, and people are the scum of life. There is nothing but matter, forces, space and time, which together make power. Nothing matters, except what matters to you. Might makes right, and power makes freedom. You are free to do whatever is in your power, and if you want to survive and thrive you had better do whatever is in your interests. If your interests conflict with those of others, let the others pit their power against yours, everyone for theirselves. If your interests coincide with those of others, let them work together with you, and against the rest. We are what we eat, and we eat everything.

All that you really value, and the goodness and truth and beauty of life, have their roots in this apparently barren soil.

This is the true knowledge.

On this rock we had built our church. We had founded our idealism on the most nihilistic implications of science, our socialism on crass self-interest, our peace on our capacity for mutual destruction, and our liberty on determinism. We had replaced morality with convention, bravery with safety, frugality with plenty, philosophy with science, stoicism with anaesthetics and piety with immortality. The universal acid of the true knowledge had burned away a world of words, and exposed a universe of things.

Things we could use.

-Ken MacLeod ‘The Cassini Division
’

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Chaos, Wyrd, and the Left Hand Path

Magick is black

Reason is white

Thus magick’s unseen

It’s nature’s to hide


Introduction:

“No-Thing is true. Everything is trance-mitted.” The Fool of the Sacred Chao

My name is Matt Anon. I’m a Chaos Mystic and Left-Hand Path initiate (for my take on the LHP, see below), who studies Chaos Magick, Galdor and esoteric Runology within the broader philosophy of Chaos Heathenism. The aim of my magick is encoded in my name, beside the desire to fall in love with divine mystery :ᚱᚢᚾᚨ: and to reawaken the ancient wisdom in my Soul. I’m attracted by the conception of a Perennial Philosophy that appeared under different guises independent of epoch or culture and seek to understand its eternal mysteries. One of the maps of special interest to me that represents an expression of that perennial wisdom is the Runic tradition as it manifested in the cosmological and magico-mystical structures of Northern European spirituality. I’ve been interested in ecstatic experiences and inspired and altered states of consciousness since my youth. I hold many wyrd beliefs that are subject to change on my journeys along the pathways that lead down, around and up the Tree. That’s why I believe that beliefs and all dualities are fetters to be loosened (the mystic’s aim) or played with (the magician’s game), rather than unchangable dogmas set in stone. Two major influences are to be named that initially got me into the Northern Mysteries: Fire + Ice and True Helm.

I explore the Runic Mysteries by emulating the divine archetype of the Rune-Master Óðinn, who is seen as a mythical role model for spiritual development. But I would look at all philosophical, metaphysical and magical worldviews not as a reality, but recognize them “as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth.” (RAW). That’s why I combine different approaches and techniques of sorcery and mysticism (= magick) to my own Self-Empowerment and explore the mysteries of consciousness and nature.

Though I began experimenting and toying around with magick as a teenager (often intoxicated by shroooooms), my more serious and structured involvement with magick began in my early 20’s (see for my magickal background here). Having gone through all kinds of phases and systems, beliefs and dogmas (though for many years my main focus has been Crowley’s system of Thelemic Magick), ‘enlightenments’ and delusions, I stopped looking for an occult system that ‘explains’ everything and deludes the seeker that the inexplicable could be presented in a ‘step-by-step’-system to enlightenment. After all I came to ponder about the chaosmagickal saying: ‘Nothing is True, Everything is Permittes’. Nevertheless I’m against a postmodern (POMO) relativism with its “Anything-goes”- triviality. This is, perhaps, my only real criticism of the Chaos Magick Current (though also here we begin to hear diverse voices). Once I heard clearly “das Raunen der Runen” (the whispering of the Runes), I turned my face towards the North. In this regard I take the reconstruction of the Runic Tradition very seriously & do not think that it’s just another “paradigm” for the “paradigm pirate” to “exploit”. Such a person will never grasp the profundity of the Runes – especially, when one considers that Runa can never be fully grasped (I am deeply indebted for the concept of Runa to Edred Thorsson). What I liked about the term “Chaos Heathen” that Henry’s genius gave birth to, is that in Chaos Heathenism there are no members, there are no gurus, there are no systems and there are no dogmas. There is only you, you & Runa – the eternal & sacred Dance of Consciousness & Mystery. For the Runic Quest to begin, some essential qualities are required like a thirst for knowledge, a longing for something that is hard to define (probably what deRopp called “the Will to Power”, “the Will to Meaning” & “the Will to Transcendence”), a strong self (not what common man calls ego), courage and, certainly, humour – just to name a few. But the nature of collaboration or participation in chaos Heathenism, as far as I understand it, is defined by every individual herself. In this way, I’d like to begin this journal by exploring some concepts & ideas I came across since I got into magick. Though in magick nothing ever remains the same (hey, it’s the same with life, isn’t it?) I hope that in this way I can demonstrate how I approach “the lonely path where waits the eight-legged steed” (Fire + Ice / Ian Read).

Chaos:

Chaos defines, in many ways, my approach to sorcery. I am deeply indebted for the elaboration of the meta-system of chaos magic(k) made by Pete Carrol and the magicians who developed his ideas to present us an approach to sorcery that is authentic, individualistic, result-orientated and compatible with a world that has gone mad. However, it must be said that the Chaos approach was not invented by the chaos magicians themselves, but was there, hidden and applied and made visible for the first time in the Zos Kia Cultus of the artist and sorcerer Austin Osman Spare. But it was the Illuminates of Thanateros who took on the sparks of this flame and made a huge fire of it that burnt down most – if not all – assumptions of western magic(k), and thus created a tour de force, which changed the underworld of western occultism forever.

Chaos for me means that magick has no form, that the nature of the multiverse is unpredictable, that its behaviour is chaotic, that rules and “laws” are invented by the human hardware, the brain, for making sense out of information that is by its very nature inconsistent. The Chaos approach gives us the opportunity to look at different systems of magic(k) as arbitrary, children of their time and culture, and possible models rather than fixed ones that often can be limiting to one’s transpersonal vision of sorcery. Therefore it encourages the individual sorcerer to explore different perspectives and applications of doing sorcery and developing her own system of magick rather than following the worn-out paths of others. Thus Chaos becomes the major tool to look at various schools of magic(k) and to choose those elements that are appealing to the sorcerer and that work for her. However, to my mind this is – as paradoxical as it may sound – also the great weakness of the Chaos approach. In a way, the traditional assumption that everything must be kept in balance is, once again, also true in this case. By concluding that every traditional system of magick uses an arbitrary classification, we blank out the fact that the traditional ways of thinking are ancient & have been in use over hundreds of generations. They reflect what Carl Gustav Jung has called the Collective Unconscious. Individualistic approaches to sorcery are useful, but an Alphabet of Desire will never achieve what a system like the Elder Futhark can bring forth & reveal (I suppose).

Order:


Chaos is not my aim, it is my primal condition. Basically, the human being is a multiplicity of selves, a morass of chaos, “a ‘schizophrenic’ identifying in one moment with a dominant thought, emotion or sensation that wears the mantle of self, just to be pushed aside by some other ‘I’ in an equally mechanical and accidental manner” (see Robert S. deRopp: The Master Game). Thus it must be the first aim of the sorcerer to make her willed order out of this chaotic condition, to create a Magnetic Centre, to create a “soul”, as it were. Though the Chaos approach is very useful, I practice no apotheosis of Chaos. But also, Chaos is not a condition that has to be overcome, but which must be controlled to an extent that enables the sorcerer to exercise her will upon the multiverse. However, Chaos is necessary and can never be controlled completely, which is not desirable anyway. Chaos and Order must maintain their inherent moment of tension. A universe which is fully controlled, from which Chaos is abolished, is dead. In a universe where order is absent, intentional action is impossible. That’s why the intelligent sorcerer looks – as in every area of her life – for a harmonious balance. Chaos and Order are two polarities from which existence, as we know it, emerges.

Left-Hand Path:

I personally see myself going beyond the Right-Hand Path & the Left-Hand Path divide, at least as its modern, neo-satanic version is concerned. However, as the idea of the LHP has been such an important philosophical thread on my magickal path, I want to discuss it here. Genesis P-Orridge once said something about “the Path of No Distinction”. This, of course, is a Tantric idea. And Tantra is a good starting point to bring clear light into such a confused darkness, because, at its heart, the concept of the LHP developed in the context of Tantra. We should look there first to find some answers. So, I hear you ask, what is Tantra? I have two good excerpts I want to quote that explain Tantra very clearly:

“Tantra is … an attempt to place kama, desire, in every sense of the word, in the service of liberation… not to sacrifice this world for liberation’s sake, but to reinstate it, in varying ways, within the perspective of salvation. This use of kama and of all aspects of this world to gain both worldly and supernatural enjoyments (bhukti) and powers (siddhis), and to obtain liberation in this life (jivanmukti), implies a particular attitude on the part of the Tantric adept toward cosmos, whereby he feels integrated within an all-embracing system of micro-macrocosmic correlations.” (“Tantrism”, Andre Padoux, in: Encyclopedia of Religion”, edited by Mircea Eliade, Macmillan, New York, 1986, Vol. 14, pp. 272 – 76.)

David White adds: “Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices which, working from the principle that the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains the universe, seeking to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosmos, in creative and emancipatory ways.” (David Gordon White (ed.) 2000: Tantra in Practice, Princeton University Press, p. 9)

So, for those of you who thought that Tantra is some kind of “sex religion” – sorry, this isn’t the case. In India the LHP-Tantrika uses unorthodox, transgressive means to achieve bhukti, siddhis and jivanmukti. She cuts her bindings from consensus reality and thus liberates the enlightened nature of her limitless consciousness. She transcends the limitations of the “socially constructed reality”, of the society and culture she lives in. By this she often works with behaviours, symbols, ideas and things that appear abominable to her identity and that are tabooed in her culture. Thus sex, death, drugs and madness become methods of transforming mundane consciousness into a state of enlightenment. Because everything is One, part of the same divine source whose nature is limitless consciousness, there is nothing to fear or to be rejected. Thus the Tantrika is freed from the delusion of separateness and embraces all existence, including her body and the material world. Because in India the left hand is used to do “unclean” things, this path to liberation has been called the Left-Hand Path. Nevertheless it is presumed by spiritual scholars that both paths, the Right-Hand Patt and the Left-Hand Path, lead to enlightenment. Not so in the Western conception of RHP and LHP in modern times. Here the basic idea is that every system of religion, mysticism and magic(k) that belongs to the RHP ultimately leads to dissolution, the Unio Mystica or the absorption of personal consciousness into godhood. Contrary to this popular conception the LHP magician initiates a process that is known as Self-Deification. Rather than dissolving into God (or Buddhahood) by confronting the abyss of existence/non-existence, the LHP magician tries to resist the urge to be absorbed and chooses to separate her psyche from the “objective” universe & to “create a self-aware, individual, enlightened, immortal and semi-divine entity” out of her “subjective” consciousness (see Ross G. H. Shott: The Dark Arts of Immortality). To my mind, this way of defining the spiritual journey (called Setianism, developed by Michael Aquino, founder of the Temple of Set) is short-sighted and rather an intellectual affair. I think the urge is rather stronger to be not absorbed and to maintain a kind of an ego. Please keep in mind that the whole discussion about separation (LHP) & annihilation (RHP) is a neo-satanic fantasy! Buddha once said something to the effect that what looks like annihilation to the outsider, is innermost bliss & enlightenment to the meditator. And this is the point: what modern Western LHP philosophy doesn’t seem to get is the mystical insight that it’s not just an either/or option of preservation or annihilation of self, but about the simultaneity of being self & nonself, the irrational moment of the Coincidentia Oppositorum – the paradox of Oneness. Fuck Hegel, when he mocks that the Coincidentia Oppositorum is“the night, when all cows are black”! Because this is the point, where the otherwise very useful tools of logic, rationality & the intellect collapse. Here language fails or becomes mystical poetry (thus not being an expression of logic anymore). So basically, my scepticism concerning these modern LHP conceptions comes from the fact that trying to preserve one’s ego is born out of fear and “denies thousands of years of meditative experience” (Sweyn Plowright). Eight seconds spent in Samadhi and such philosophical constructions would be burned in the inmost flame of uttermost ecstasy! The whole question of this appears so important to me, because the way one perceives the Sacred Self (or True Self) determines one’s interpretation of what happened with Odhinn at his Yggdrasil Ordeal, where he sacrificed himself to himSelf – expressed in his enigmatic words: sjálf sjálfum mér (myself to myself).

However, one can identify certain threads that can be found in both definitions of the LHP. First of all, there is the rejection of the common values of morality. The Left-Hand Path sorcerer deconditions herself from the cultural fiction she was brought up with – the cultural memes, as it were. Of course this doesn’t lead to an aversion of the values of one’s own culture. Because choosing to be anti-cultural would just mean to submit to a form of control and herd conditioning as well. The core idea here is to break inner taboos, to confront oneself with inner fears, disgusts, dislikes, repulsions etc. and to free oneself from self-imposed limitations of one’s identity (a form of Ego Magic in chaospeak; Ego Magic is about change, not about maintaining the ego like in neo-satanic philosophy). Thus a more authentic, flexible, fluid and free state of Self-consciousness can be reached. This procedure has been called antinomianism in the Western LHP tradition. This should lead to a rejection of dogmatism in general, which enables the sorcerer to question the “truths” of any magic(k)al ‘tradition’ and any route or map that pretends to show the entire path towards perfection. This leads to the second point of a genuine LHP sorcerer from my point of view: the developing of one’s own system of sorcery. (Don Webb in his witty book about the Setian path, Uncle Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left-Hand Path, stresses the point that one should first master a Traditional system of magick, before one attempts to create one’s own system. To my mind, this makes sense.) The sources for this process have been given to us by Austin Osman Spare and chaos magick writers. Further the LHP sorcerer doesn’t fall into the trap of denying their own ego, body and the material world. All of these are tools to power and fulfilment. LHP sorcerers don’t deny this world, they embrace it! LHP sorcerers realize that every individual has to follow her own path, her own unique explorations of what is possible for the body/mind/spirit trinity, without being dependent upon any person or system. Finally it must be add that sorcerers on the LHP are not interested in the “common good”, “God”, the “state” or any other abstract idea that submits the individual to some “higher purpose”. In the first place the LHP sorcerer strives for Self-Empowerment and her own enlightenment.

I think all those ideas describing a LHP sorcerer could also apply to a Chaos Heathen or be applied by a Chaos Heathen to her own ends, though, when I consider this thoroughly, what could be not applied by a Chaos Heathen? So, if one wants to preserve the idea of the LHP in Chaos Heathenism or apply it in that context, the best definition of the LHP to me would be that one does not follow anyone or any fixed routes to enlightenment, but rather that one follows one’s own path. The Chaotick Path makes more sense.

Magick & Wyrd:

Ceremonial Magic(k), also the one with Crowley’s ‘k’, has been associated for a very long time with so-called ‘High Magic’, which suggests that there’s some kind of ‘Lower Magic’. In the late 19th & early 20th century this meant that High Magic strives towards spiritual aims, whilst Lower Magic was orientated towards material results, basically sorcery of the rural population – folk magic (see Phil Hine: Condensed Chaos). The divisions between matter/spirit appear as utter nonsense in the face of modern neurology, or even neurotheology. This is one of the reasons why I came to reject Ceremonial Magic(k) & turned towards Chaos & Rune Magic(k). Such dualistic conceptions, like High & Low Magic, are rooted in Platonic Idealism, which were perpetuated by the monotheistic cults, from which they entered the ideological superstructure of modern occultism with its pretentious obscurantism and pompous, ego-blown ritualism. I wholeheartedly reject such short-sighted, body- and world-denying dualisms.

Magick, as Dave Lee has demonstrated in his wonderful & brilliant book Chaotopia!, includes three things:

1) making things happen to consensus reality (sorcery),

2) making things happen to one’s own consciousness according to will (self-transformation) and

3) experiencing higher states of consciousness, often leading to unitary consciousness (mysticism). In the first case (sorcery) we manifest results in Midgard or, to put it simply, in the material world. In the second case (self-transformation) we change the world of our subjective experience, which is the only way we can experience reality in the end anyway.

Self-Transformation (making things happen to consciousness) often leads to mysticism (see Dave Lee: Chaotopia!). This process (mystical experience) cannot be easily recognized by others as a result in Midgard, probably that’s why it has been excluded from chaos magick – a drawback Dave Lee corrects in Chaotopia!. In the final analysis, magick is a sublime art, and either the results of a working are ‘material’ in its plain sense or they remain – for the sceptic – subjective. The reason why I want to include “chaos-mystical”(Dave Lee) operations into the concept of magick (freed from its Low/High magic divide) has wide-ranging philosophical implications that stem from my vision of the world. This vision is holistic, animistic, & mystical – suspending the immanence/transcendence divide. Here the idea of Wyrd is very useful, which I sometimes refer to as The Net of Power. This multivalent term is reflected in Indo-European mythology of Indra’s Web and, most importantly, in Teutonic sorcery in the idea of Wyrd and the myth of the Three Norns. “Wyrd can be translated as ‘Coming Into Being’. Wyrd is imagined as a tapestry woven by the three Norns, called Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, representing an interconnected ‘fabric’ underlying all events that is manifest in every shape. Urd – still resonating in the German syllable Ur – suggests the primal or ancient and stands for the unseen influences underlying an event. It is the unmanifest potential, wherein all possibilities exist. Skuld means ‘should’ – that, what should happen if all progresses without interference” (see Sweyn Plowright: True Helm). But here we can see the wisdom of the Germanic peoples of old: Skuld is not a deterministic future, like the idea of fate in Christian conceptions of time, but is one that can be influenced, that is changeable and open to ‘chance’. “Verdandi is the process of ‘Coming Into Being’, that which is becoming or manifesting, the present moment, which we perceive as the manifest world” (Sweyn Plowright: True Helm). The sorcerer empowers herself by realizing that this vast Net of Power exists. Dr. Hyatt has described this concept in a non-Germanic context as “a web of gigantic sets of interwoven neocid-correlation matrices where one tiny push in the right place causes an entire field to collapse” (see Christopher Hyatt: The Psychopath’s Bible). We pull an entire system of symbolic signs and correspondences over this Net of Power(or we can say, the system emerges from the Net), which builds up our magickal “psychocosm” (Phil Hine). This enables us to manipulate the Net, or our Wyrd,according to our congruent Will. Thus chaos Heathen sorcerers empowerthemselves to make their innermost dreams, desires, visions and their quest for wisdom flesh. Hence the definition of magick has been often described as the pursuit of power.

References:

– CHAOTOPIA! – Sorcery and Ecstasy in the Fifth Aeon, Dave Lee

– THE MASTER GAME – Pathways to Higher Consciousness, Robert S. De Ropp

– TRUE HELM – A Practical Guide to Nothern Warriorship, Sweyn Plowright

– THE PSYCHOPATH’S BIBLE – For the Extreme Individual, Dr. Christopher Hyatt with Dr. Jack Willis

– THE DARK ARTS OF IMMORTALITY: Transformation through War, Sex, & Magic,
Ross G. H. Shott

CONDENSED CHAOS – An Introduction to Chaos Magic, Phil Hine

Edred Thorsson’s Radio Free Runa talks at: http://edred.net/community/

The band Fire + Ice, especially the albums: RUNA & BIRDKING

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