the numbered book of chaos

the numbered book of chaos – or, how many fingers am i holding up?

“the most powerful chaos mages may have a success rate of less than 10% … however, the most unsuccessful of these may in fact be successful 100% of the time.” – old cmm saying

the entrance into chaos is guarded by a nine-headed serpent called fluffy. ignore it. it’s only there to look funky.
instead, follow the path through random hallways until you come to a green door.
reach out for the handle, but don’t grip it.
just allow your fingers to brush the surface, the skin of your palm to breathe against the metal, and your hand to lightly clasp around it, rather than enclose it in a tight fist.
then, slowly, turn the handle in a clockwise direction.
enter.
with caution, because you never know if fluffy has pissed on the rug.
all occult learning is a journey. at least, that’s the popular misconception.
to use a metaphor of a journey as a module for learning is a bit of a stab in the back really, as it hints at beginnings and endings which (as every good chaotician knows) don’t exist.
toss that concept of journey into the rubbish bin. you won’t be needing it.
come to think of it, toss away the concept of learning, too.
after all, you already know everything you need to know.
anything more is just a bonus.

example:
when i was a kid, i went to school. most of us do, and the person who thought up such an institution should be executed for crimes against humanity. school, far from providing a good base for learning, instead provides a restrictive barrier to constructive thought ensuring everyone who graduates these institutionalised death camps does so only with a very limited concept of the universe.
one of the first things we learn is the times table.
the times table is, without doubt, the single most useless thing you could teach a child and is primarily geared toward a common acceptance of the yoke of capitalism rather than anything remotely practical.
after all, any kid knows if you put one finger together with another finger you get two fingers – they just don’t necessarily know the words for them. why the hell anyone thinks they’ll ever have a trillion fingers is beyond me, and the only use for numbers like that seems to be in national military “defence” budgets.
numbers impose order, though, and it is order which the greater majority like to see imposed because it brings a sense of control and allows us to believe we are somehow more intelligent than your average farmyard animal which would have a difficult time adding up just how many blades of grass it was currently chewing on.
as if it matters.
numbers also go so far as to appear magical, and many a potential mage has been poisoned by the seeming power of numbers.
scientists, in particular, love their numbers.
they say they have whole numbers which can calculate the exact weight of the universe, the exact age of the entire universe – they have numbers which can explain pretty much everything.
they have numbers which can predict the exact movements of any astral body, and can tell you with numbers exactly how many stars are in existence.
they still can’t tell you what next week’s lotto numbers are going to be exactly, and that pretty much sums up the cold hard reality of numbers.
nothing can be measured.
nothing can be weighed.
nothing can be numbered.
numbers are simply another form of perception.
like colours.
or words.
a mouse is not a mouse just because we all agreed it was. it did not simply be a mouse for us.
it was already a mouse.
we just gave it a name.
scientists, however, have discovered a wonderful word to get around the problem of their inability to predict next week’s lotto numbers.
they call it probability.
the problem with probability is that it relies on averages.
anything can be averaged.
the average price of cheese, for example. first, you take samples from a bunch of supermarkets (goes the theory), and then you add them all up and divide the totals by the amount of supermarkets yada yada yada. then, the probability of cheese being $2.98 for a 450g block becomes an exercise in no-brainer mathematics.
it’s a stupendous piece of logic.
it reinforces their belief that they have somehow unlocked some deep mystery of the universe.
of course, they haven’t. they’ve just interpreted it in a way.
they certainly haven’t solved it, or they should have been able to tell before they went into each store exactly what the price in that store was going to be.
me, i’d have used a store catalogue.
or the telephone.
mathematics defies the universe by attempting to imprison it within a series of numbers and equations – all of which are little more than mumbo jumbo even crowley would have been embarassed to present to his local illuminati meetings.
numbers are a waste of time, and i’ll tell you why.

your chances of winning lotto, say the scientists, are a million billion to one.
actually, they’re not.
your chances of winning the lotto are one in two.
any child could do that kind of math.
you see, you either will, or you will not.
as yoda said (and i do so hate to bring star wars into this), do or do not, there is no try.
you cannot say the night after the lotto draw than you were ooh so close to winning because you had paid for a systems ticket and therefore had more of a chance.
you either got the numbers, or you did not.
you’re either going to the bahamas, or back to your job.
no matter how much you twiddle with your numbers, and your odds and your probabilities, it still boils down to yes or no.
1 or 2.
black or white.
this is why more people make more money selling a “how to win lotto” book than by actually winning lotto in the first place, and why scientists still can’t go ahead and win the game every week so they could retire to the coast of spain and surround themselves with pretty young locals.
numbers, then, will do you no good at all and will instead make you even more obsessed with capitalism than you already are.
they are, without doubt, mankind’s attempt to impose a financial structure onto the universe.
it’s why they argue so much about the universe fiddling the books by hiding away all the dark matter so our scientistaccountants can find it and tax it accordingly.

when you’ve managed to whittle the concept of numbers and probabilities and ratios and quantum physics from your mind, i think it’s about time to face the facts and admit that there is only yes or no.
do or do not.
black and white.
and so on.
this knowledge alone will free you up immensely of a lot of baggage.
especially within the framework of capitalism.
you either can, or cannot, afford it.
easy.
don’t be tempted to wade back into the realms of calculation.
therein lies the maw of madness and its tongue is a hundred dollar bill.

concentrate.
no amount is static. no amount is finite. everything is
connected.
everything connected.
everything is infinite.
i hate to go all hippy on you, but we are all one. we are a part of a whole.
we are no more separate than a brick is separate from the rest of its wall.
our bodies are not solid. they have holes between our cells.
holes wherein smaller particles can zip in and out.
we are part seen, part unseen.
we are infinitely small and infinitely large (that should help those of you with erection problems feel a lot better about yourselves).
we have a capacity for connection and interaction on a scale you just wouldn’t believe until you start thinking about it.

consider, for a moment, the image of a chaos pattern.
it’s a lovely thing.
see it in motion, forever consuming and giving birth to new patterns. infinitely small and infinitely large.
this really is the universe.
it eats and shits and gives birth and kills. it lives and dies. all at once.
we are living and we are dying. all at once.
we are excreting in the form of gas and solid and liquid, and we are ingesting in the same manner.
we consume.
we exhale.
we connect with the universe in the same way it connects with us.
we are immortal, if we would but know it.

the problem with immortality is that for it to be any fun, it involves a level of self awareness which has eluded us.
i blame our obsession with other things.
we see everything else and we obsess over giving out numbers and names that we don’t see what we’re looking at.
it’s like a kid who downloads so much pornography he’s just cataloguing it now. he’s no longer watching it for enjoyment. he’s instead cataloguing it and storing it away just in case.
the obsession has taken over from the actual appreciation of the subject matter.
in fact, the subject is no longer as interesting as the accumulation of the collection and the analysis of the catalogue in terms of how many, how much, and a brief description of just what’s to be expected should he ever double-click a file.
the funny thing is, this describes much of our lives.
we obsess over the accumulation and acquisition of the oddest things.
in fact, the underlying and singularly most powerful drive of the human species is simply to acquire.
in acquiring, and cataloguing, we fool ourselves into believing we have control.
that we have somehow brought order into the universe.
there is never a point in our lives when we say to ourselves that we have acquired enough.
that we are satisfied.
instead, we have a period where we have acquired so much we are tired. we are burnt out.
the constant need to acquire, like an addiction, gets too much and we fall down.
and when, if ever, did we have enough?
always.
we’ve always had enough.
it’s just that we’ve really felt we wanted more.

mick jagger couldn’t get no satisfaction.
he was actually speaking for everyone, and it’s why at his age he’s still trying hard to flounce around the stage like a teenager.
he sets the standard by which the world rolls.

so, how do you get out of it?

ask a kid, “how many fingers have you got?”
the kid, many times, will hold up all their fingers and say, “that many.”
this is the numbered law of chaotics.

Tags: chaos, chaos magic, discordian