"Magic, for me, is a working technology for exploring alternate realities, breaking down behavioral programs, coming to an understanding with Death and having a laugh."
Grant Morrison
Results are what counts. Try something. If it works, try it again to verify. Continue to practice the technique until you perfect it. If the technique doesn't work for you, drop it and try something else. Explore - and don't accept as truth anything you haven't experimented with yourself; you are your own laboratory. "Everything else is mysticism," according to Pete Carroll. Phil Hine is a little more elaborate: "Rather than trying to recover and maintain a tradition that links back to the past (and former glory), Chaos Magick is an approach that enables the individual to use anything that s/he thinks is suitable as a temporary belief or symbol system. What matters is the results you get, not the 'authenticity' of the system used.
Theoretically, Chaos Magick is a meta-belief - beyond belief, a system without a philosophy, or a system that can contain all philosophies. Yet, there is very definitely a Chaos Magick 'vibe'. It is not only a magickal practice, but also a magickal (anti-)philosophy. Just focus on the word 'Chaos'. What does it mean to you? Flux, constant change, anarchism? A fractal understanding of a mathematical universe? A discordian object of (mis-)worship? The word is important, regardless of its 'true' meaning. Its cultural baggage imparts a nihilistic, post-modern, anarchistic flavour to much Chaos Magick speculation. Insures very Nietzschean stuff be goin' down: God is dead. Laugh, for we have killed him. Since life is meaningless, be the artist of your own destiny. Create your own meaning, rather than be enslaved or conditioned by anyone else's. If nothing is true, then everything is permitted.
Yet all of the above is just words unless one experiences Gnosis: any altered state of consciousness in which one eclipses the monkey-mind, and achieves an expanded sense of self and the universe. Chaos Magick is famed for encouraging the attainment of the state of Gnosis through extreme, exhibitionary methods (drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll: nothing succeeds like excess), but because of the influence of both Taoism and Tibetan Tantra on its originators, there is also a strong proclivity toward inhibitionary paths to Gnosis: sitting meditation, pranayama, etc. What is important is that you use Gnosis as more than a means of spiritual dandyism. Use the insights gained in a Gnostic state to engage in emotional engineering, or to help undermine the collective consensus in preparation for the coming of the New Aeon, or just to have more fun than you've had before. Strive for enlightenment if that's what will wet your pants. Engage fully and without regret in the ongoing, initiatory process of life.
Be nice and smooth.
zdroj: barbelith.com