the little book of chaos

the little book of chaos

“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.” – an old cmm saying

part one

this is the little book of chaos. it was  written to fit snuggly in your pocket beside your wallet. don’t lose it.
when you’re zipping throughout the cosmos, flitting from dimension to dimension, you’ll find yourself lost if you reach into your back pocket and find it missing.

part two
you are a ball of chaos.
you are a swirling mass of influence.
everything you think and everything you will shall, in one way or another, come to pass.
unfortunately, everyone else around you is also a swirling ball of chaos. they, too, have beliefs and hopes and dreams which shall all come to pass. this constant shifting of influence forms the basis of order.
the basis of order is, simply, the inertia which is enforced when millions of balls of chaos compete with each other for supremacy yet none is powerful enough to dominate for long enough to take control.

when you find yourself held immobile between a couple of balls, you need an erection to point the way. i’m afraid there’s just no escaping this simple fact. there is, quite simply, no way to break through the influence of other balls unless you are an erection. an erection gives the balls focus, and provides the directional component that allows the freeflowing ejaculation of magical force accurately upon the belly of eris which is the universe instead of just gushing it out all over the place like a teenager who has lost his packet of tissues.

dave, the sky is full of stars.

each star is a ball.
the balls seldom compete with each other, so fail to light the sky full of white noise.
instead, a murky glaze of dark matter separates them all from the irritation of close contact with a spatial body somewhat larger in mass than yourself.
this is why they radiate pure power in such a way.
but there is one more powerful than a star, which gives and gives and gives of its energy to make the universe both a pretty place and one which is seeded with the very substance that created life.
black holes.

dave, the universe is full of black holes.

black holes suck power.
they suck up the power quicker than a two-dollar whore given a fifty dollar tip. it actually eats the stars. it takes all that power, and grinds it up and drunk on this power, it swallows everything into the gaping wormhole of its gut. the power travels the length of its intestines and shits out across a foreign universe the very matter it dissembled from dying stars in the same way worms would on our world. the revitalised stuff of the stars acts as seed to a whole new universe and this is
how new universes are born.
that is the nature of power. it begets.
more power.
black holes and stars – nothing in common other than their acting as seeds for power. one hurls its power in all known directions. the other consumes it and shits it out in a concentrated burst somewhere from behind so it never even sees the reaction to its action. it is blind to the effect as its eyes are too firmly focussed on the cause.

the cause is not prior to the effect.
there is no prior, as there can be no firsts.
there are no firsts because to have a first, there must have come a before.

“before god, there was nothing.”
there is no more ridiculous statement ever made, other than, “of course i don’t love you for your body.”

the universe is infinite.
as it is infinite, there can be no beginning, no end, and no walls surrounding it to keep the mongols out.
it cannot be measured, and it cannot be weighed, and it cannot in any way shape or form be finite.
the only thing finite about the universe, is the perception of those who might attempt to measure the immeasurable.
fascinated as we are with our calculators and rulers, we seek to measure and weigh. we seek to find a mystic number to explain the very nature of the universe, and assume because we haven’t found it, it’s just because we haven’t built a better computer.

enter: deep thought.

the answer to life, the universe and everything may very well be 42. and why not, indeed? two times four is eight, and eight is a symbol of the infinite.
i don’t believe we think enough about that word.

infinite.

what does it, really, mean?
only a genius could have thought it up.

infinity has no beginning. it has no end.
it is, in the words of occultists, as above, so below.
the universe is infinitely small, and infinitely large. to comprehend: everything is made of something. just because you haven’t a microscope to see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. everything that is made, makes something larger. just because you don’t have a telescope big enough to see it, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
if our telescopes are so great, why can we not see the wall surrounding our universe? i hope whoever put that wall there put a door there, too. or at least a window to let in the breeze.
we are told that, beyond our universe lies nothing. just dark space.
what’s it made of? what is out there?
not even a speck of dust?
and, beyond that ocean of darkness which we might call an end…?
imagine for a moment, the nonsense of the world being flat.

if colombus was wrong, i’d drive straight off the edge. – alkaline trio.

if the world were flat. once, this was a belief. not only that, it was a religious belief.
the fanaticism associated with this belief defies belief, if you know what i mean.
people died just for daring to think the world wasn’t flat at all. that we weren’t the centre of the universe. indeed, they died for believing the stars weren’t just pinholes in the cardboard box our god had put us in to keep us safe while dropping breadcrumbs in now and then to keep us alive. without those pinholes, the air wouldn’t get in and like the mice we strive to be, we would have died without that fresh oxygen goodness.
suns? the stars were suns? why, you must worship satan. die.

beliefs are like rivers.

they flow and they change with the landscape. consider each king a stone, each government a valley. each pope a waterfall.
they guide the beliefs of a nation, and of a world.
cnn, today, can convince you all arabs are terrorists and have no emotions. they’re like homicidal vulcans. romulans, if you will. they’re the borg and darth vader’s storm troopers all rolled into one.
they deserve to die and they have no souls, no hearts, and no families. they feel no love for their children and when they die, they don’t bleed at all.
it’s tv.
all we need is rambo freeing the tibetans from the clutches of an even more heartless chinese regime.
go rambo.
the belief in the justice of freedom as waved about under an american flag has ruled our world for many years – more than a century (this, too, is a belief).
see stallone looking old.
as old as that flag.
ragged and torn, it waves in the breeze and nations now cower before the heartless cold wave of american soldiers burning their temples and exploding their buildings – all with a message of love and peace and democratic elections (so long as you vote for their candidate of choice).
beliefs – political and religious, are perceptions as ratified by a collective which has nothing to do with the borg and more to do with a crowd afraid of its own individuality while maintaining a desperate fight to prove that sheep, too, can be meaningful in their existence.
so long as they’re no different from the other individuals, of course.
our beliefs change.
sway like the trees in cyclonic conditions.

the beliefs of the many, outweigh the beliefs of the few – and the one. – obligatory star trek moment.

you cannot help but be victim. you are influenced by the balls of chaos which click against you.
you respond to the chaos of others.
you fulfil their expectations, you swim the magical river but can’t make it to the other side. you are just another sperm in a microscopic ocean of billions, swimming forever upstream in search of an egg which only one of you may take.
you are victim.
you try to break free, and convince yourself you are different – as do they – and you make your wishes and your rituals to distract the fact that you, dear reader, are no different from me.
we are the same. we wish for the same things.
we struggle desperately and claw forward, pulling ourselves onward like the wounded beasts we are, hungry for that spark which will ignite the fire in our souls and let us burn so bright we will be mistaken for nothing less than the prime human.
we flare so incandescent in the moonlight, flicker, and die.
we fulfil the expectations of others.
we live.
we dream.
we die.

our beliefs are ordered. structured.
even the pagan considers a more socially accepted god in the quiet moments.
even the so-called atheist believes in god – how else can you deny something until you believe in it? the very act of announcing you don’t believe in something is automatically acknowledging its existence.

structure implies order.
order is not so simple as a brick by brick creation. it is not this neat and tidy. it is, as we’ve mentioned, merely the collection of chaos balls too tightly packed in a single time and place.
like sardines in a can, none can move freely.
the trick, then, is to get out of the can.

the can which is our world is a difficult can to exit without a can-opener.
many of us spend our lives seeking a can-opener, and giving it names.
magic wand.
space ship.
god.
unfortunately, a can-opener is a limited tool and should it even open the can, how can one sardine get out of the tin without the help of a guiding hand?
again, many look to god.

god is a belief in the finite.
to believe in god is to believe in a beginning and an end.
religion is this belief in action.
every religion is centred around beginnings and endings.
how the world began, and what will happen to you when you die.
it preys on our two fears. the fear of where we come from and the fear of where we will go.
it also taps into our arrogance as we strive to prove that we, one species among billions on this world, are singular and unique. it is an elitist and intolerant belief and it is no wonder wars are fought more for religion than for simple accumulation of land (a secondary by-product of religious war).
the stories of god all imply that, before god, there was simply nothing.
or that the universe was empty.
that nothing existed.
then god came and everything was fine.
the problem with this is that the universe is infinite. there were many things in existence before god. if you were to meet god, and ask for his earliest belief, i’m sure you’d find he didn’t know what happened before him, and if he thought there was nothing, he certainly couldn’t tell you for how long that nothing was there. if such an entity were in existence, perhaps then one is created each time the universe turns.
or on each side of a black hole, an entity channels the powers needed to fuel their favourite universes.
who really cares?
these entities are famous in our history for doing little more than giving us a smack on the bottom when we tell them we don’t believe in them or their right to tell us what to do.
these days they don’t even bother to come in for a bit of chitchat.
as far as we’re concerned, that gives us the perfect right to ignore them completely.
whatever their agenda, the gods are no longer part of our world and clinging on to a belief in what they did many thousands of years ago is simply tying a noose around our necks.
it’s no wonder we become more and more rooted to our self-destructive ways.
we feed on the oils, so to speak, of dead animals to fuel our world. we eat the flesh of dead animals.
we are, basically, a planet feeding on the dead in the way of the vulture and the hyena. we are little more than carrion feeders desperately trying to convince ourselves we are something more than animal.
and that’s an interesting notion right there.
are we truly something more than an animal? is that single awareness of our potential what makes us feel more important?
we certainly don’t feel any attachment to these creatures. we slaughter them without thought and destroy their homes without thought. we harvest them as we would wheat.
it’s a strange thing to believe we treat animals as we do and still maintain the fiction of intelligence. not that, necessarily, there is any real connection between intelligence and empathy.
it’s simply that you would believe intelligent beings would be more interested in preservation and admiration of other intelligences despite how alien or animal they seemed to us.
imagine a time when humankind invents some kind of translation device which translates all known language. imagine that.
imagine having such a device left in an abattoir.
the hideousness of mass slaughter of any kind – the spilling of blood and the eating of flesh – surely can be seen in no way as something intelligent. surely it is more an animal behaviour.
i hope the first aliens to find us are not descended from chickens.
they’d kill us all, and who could argue with them? we’d be guilty of the crime of genetically engineering a slave lifeform primarily for the purpose of keeping in small cages until they were fit to be slaughtered and eaten.
we’re vegetarians.
it felt like we were taking a small uncertain step toward accepting the responsibilities of intelligence.

intelligence cannot be measured.
it is a mysterious thing. almost a wave of invisible energy infecting our brains, messing with our chemistry. how only one species could evolve into intelligence is an incredible thought. how is it that no marine animals have evolved to similarly build civilisations beneath the waves? it seems remarkable that such a thing has not occurred.
what is the essence of intelligence?
what makes us have these thoughts we have?
our minds, far from being ordered and structured, are chaotic. we swim in chaos, not just in the pressing within of external chaos balls and their manipulative effects, but also within us, where the chaos has infected our minds.
animals, you see, live very ordered and structured lives. they never go outside their order. they never express themselves. there is no drive in their lives other than to mate, spawn, and die.
the prime difference seems merely to be our priorities and our expression. we expand, and seek to expand within as much as without.
humankind is a sponge. now and then, you squeeze it and it leaks, but it always sucks up more in imitation of the great black holes which drive the powers of creation with evergreater force.

intelligent life is a term coined by an ego so profound it boggles the mind.
we are surrounded by intelligent life. it’s just not the same intelligence as our own.
consider the octopus, and the dolphin.
consider the cat and the ape. all animals express intelligence. it is merely their drive which remains different to our own.
their ends are not the same as ours.
their ends are simply food, mating, or dominance.
ours are a little more flexible or can be somewhat surreal, yet in the end much of what we seek still mirrors these simple animal desires.
it is hard, then, to truly say where our intelligence is so different from an animal, despite the length of our so-called achievements.

our achievements are not the product of something intelligent. they are not built on dreams of peace, or on any intelligent need to be more than we are.
they are, simply, built on the need to dominate.
they are built on war.
war has powered the growth of our minds since our species began wondering if there were better tools to kill our neighbours than a simple club of heavy wood.
hunting did not drive us to build better weapons, or greater fortifications to protect ourselves. war did.
we did.
we fed off each other’s fears, giving ourselves a drive no animals have felt – we fear ourselves.
we fear the great numbers in which we gather. we fear the great tools with which we kill, so we seek to counter them with greater numbers and greater tools. this gathering together has strengthened our collective chaos influence, but has weakened our individual influence.
in fact, it has crippled it.
the density of chaos balls, packed together in fear, has forbidden the growth of the individual. it has made sheep of us all though we seem to spread the propaganda that we are not the sheep but shepherds.
it seems strange to me that a species so soaked in chaos could limit itself to the order of beasts.
we hold ourselves back, afraid of significant power. we desire individual power, but only power over others – and their fear of being dominated by one reduces our power.
we are in a catch-22.
we are caught in a web and we cannot escape and the spider which hunts us is but a shadow we fear yet never feel its bite. we hold ourselves, firmly tied to earth.
firmly tied to something finite, because the concept of infinity and of chaos frightens us.
more so, it frightens those of us who profit from the imposition of order, for this imposition not only cripples our species.
thanks then, to the collective expectations and instincts of the masses to be controlled, this imposition has allowed others to be appointed into positions of power simply by the agreement of many to be shackled.
their power is only considered absolute for a short time. none can hold power for long, as the fear of the masses and the tightly packed power of chaos-fuelled order undermines their very power in an endless cycle of self-destruction.
none can achieve a great height without being quickly reduced for fear their power is allcontrolling.
the greatest powers, you see, are those which are secret. those which channel the deep beliefs of all. only these deep reserves of chaos can be milked. only the subtle imposition upon the collective can work to escape the can.

the secret beliefs are the strongest.
they are the ones we all believe are true, no matter what.
our belief, for example, in the power of science which was able to rise from the ashes of religion on the wave of everyone’s expectations for more. as humankind sought more and more ways to kill, we shaped weapons with more and more power, range, and less human effort. out of this came wheels and pulleys, steam and machinery which were applied to commercial efforts by an expectant collective whose natural instinct will always be “so what’s in it for us?”
as our beliefs slowly wavered away from the domineering force of religion, we discovered science could provide many convenient answers without the necessary zeal.
today, we see science in the same way as we used to see religion. when a claim is made, we never seek the answer of a priest, but instead ask a scientist to provide the answer. von helsing over the pope.

the infection of belief has reduced us, then, to slaves. we hunger for the next handout, be it a documentary which might give us some simple answers as to the nature of everything around us, or a book which might explain the very nature of the stars with cryptic numbers which we’re assured provide proof absolute that our scientists know.
but all they know is simply another belief. another room in the house. as religion was once the lounge room, now we spend our time in the study, looking at atlases and measuring the universe which we can see and claiming that, just because it’s all we see then that’s all there must be.
the blindfold, fixed firmly over our eyes, keeps the fiction alive. we seek not to understand, but to assure ourselves that we understand. we argue that, so long as stephen hawking knows the numbers, then we’re obviously a very intelligent species. just because the numbers are meaningless surely couldn’t mean that what we’re truly doing is simply compartmentalising that which we know so far.
our obsession with categories knows no bounds, and it is this obsession which keeps us from understanding and encourages us instead to seek similarities. this endless quest for similarities has made us deny the very nature of the universe. it has made us deny that animals are sentient. it has made us deny that our universe is infinite. it has made us deny that every single moment is unique, and every single atom in the universe is unique.
it makes us believe that there is some single number which will, when revealed with a calculation, show us that we are the very centre of the universe once more.
as we were so many years ago.
truth time?
there is no number.
there is no calculation.
because no matter what you do with your computers, there is no such way to map or measure the infinite.

look upward.
look to the stars on a beautiful clear night when there’s no moon and no lights from the city to ruin the view.
look upward.
realise that what you are seeing is but a veil, and behind that veil there are more stars,
more galaxies, and more to the universe than you can ever imagine. try to see how deep into the universe you are seeing and try to realise just how little of it you are seeing from your little vantage point where you see only in one direction from a tiny point of the globe on which you live.
and then look inward.
find yourself, if you can.

consider light.

consider green lakes and the idiocy of clocks. – bauhaus.

light, say the scientists, is composed of photons. photons are particles. they’re not something which just bounces out of your eyes and into your friend’s a few seconds later.
everything you see is swallowed by your mind.
when a photon smashes into your eyes to allow you to see, it is swallowed into your brain. imagine all that energy zapping into your mind every second.
even when your eyes are closed, photons can zip through the skin of your eyelids. they still are swallowed by your mind.
what happens to all that energy? imagine everything is giving off that energy. everything you see is seen by this power of photons. without photons, would anything in this 3d universe exist?

we close our eyes and concentrate on the images we can see in the back of our minds. our daydreams.

where does it go? how can our minds destroy photons? something which has travelled from the distance of stars to strike the very back of our eye, and our minds swallow it like a black hole. where does that photon go next? what happens to it?
consider the very power of light.
could we but tap this power and feed off starlight…

tapping into power sources which exist outside the chaos ball in which we individually exist is the prime function of magic.
many claim magic to be the expression of the individual, but considering the effect of the density of chaos balls in our current space, it is impossible to break free without certain adjustments.
to create a situation in which these adjustments can be made is the ultimate quest of all chaomages.
we seek to work within the expected beliefs of the collective to exploit their knowledge and thus escape the can.
alchemy worked in such a manner, combining elements of religious iconology with scientific justification. the power of this belief in chemicals and transmutation lent well toward the exploitation of the collective.
many alchemists in history were able to seemingly exploit such loopholes.
it is interesting to note that, no matter the path chosen to exploit the loophole and escape the can, that no sardine has ever returned to show the way.
perhaps, when you escape, there is no way back or, more importantly, no reason to return. the sudden gift of being truly free must be more than overwhelming, it must render all animal instinct and desire nearly pointless.
some call it enlightenment.
we would call it freedom.

the moment at which we escape is the moment at which we no longer require this dimension or this planet. it is no more important than a well-worn suit.
time to get another.
with most, this moment occurs, perhaps, only at death when we are forced to abandon the physical form.
perhaps it is the only way to move forward. perhaps it is also the only way to escape the can for the majority. or, perhaps death merely recycles. is awareness essential, we wonder, for the next step?

the next step is the opening of a door.
is the door internal, or external?
is knowledge what is needed? is a key
needed?
no, on both counts.
just reach out, take the handle, and turn.
we spend our lives standing before the door. with billions of us standing tightly-packed against it. with billions of ideas on how best to open it with billions crying for a key, and with billions screaming for answers as to the nature of what is behind the door before we open it, we are faced with too much pressure and selfdoubt that we cannot bring ourselves to just simply open it. we are transfixed by the very sight of it that we don’t even attempt to open it for fear it will be locked and any attempt to open it causes great shouts against us that we cannot bear to fight the masses and just simply leave.
the catch-22 of our existence causes us to simply remain in stasis. locked there by the collective until we can somehow work a way to distract them, or gain their consent.
or we stab ourselves in the foot by firmly believing we need a key, or are simply not strong enough to turn the handle.

strength is a fiction.
strength is simply the belief in personal power and how it is manifested.
for much of our time, it is simply physical strength which is accepted. this is because we focus on the physical and everything we do is done in a physical manner.
we grade our very worth on our physical appearance and ability.
if one is unattractive, or not as powerful, we automatically apply mental strength to them or expect something spiritual. we look for strength in all the wrong places.
strength is a fiction.
no chaos ball is more powerful than another. it simply breaks free and finally manages to exert its expectations on the world around it without interference from the white noise that is the collective.

it is a common misconception that a small collective of its own can somehow open the can. cults and covens gather in their little ways and seek to exploit the masses.
they fail in the end, and it always ends in suicide and self-destruction, because despite the vocal beliefs and the certainty of motive for all members, many will still be victim to the expectations of their nature.
they will still remain firmly tied to that place from whence they came.
not many can break this tie.
those who lead these groups fulfil their own need to be powerful among many, and seek power and domination – something which is feared – so cannot rise above the others.
their very existence, while expected, is not tolerated for long.
no matter how they channel their belief – religious or scientific, they cannot maintain the fiction and break free.
they simply corrode and die.

which brings us back to the secret dreams, desires, and basic instincts of human nature.
these must be understood.
powerful chaomages exist, though many may not realise this is how they do so, simply by tapping into the secret belief of people. the collective is dominated by a handful of mainstream religions, all of which are not very old in comparison to our species. christianity is barely two thousand years old, and really only decided its direction some hundreds of years after it was birthed. in accepting these religions as our singular belief, we have had to sacrifice many other religions which were, as perceived by the modern human, to be older. somehow more ancient. more powerful, in a way. definitely more spiritual and somewhat primordial.
as a species, we give much credence to the primordial – it is one of our fears. we fear crocodiles and sharks – two such primordial beasts and we give them an aura of devastating power and strength.
voodoo, shamanism and runestones.
three forms of magic which seem quite potent in modern magic. runestones exist in modern times as symbols and these symbols exist even in advertising. they can be used.
voodoo and shamanism – while somewhat subject to a continual element of near-hollywood melodrama and presented in colourful books which reveal more misconceptions than knowledge (often the knowledge is knowledge clipped from movies and books of horror fiction) – is definitely an infinite source of power.
it is vital, however, to steer clear of anything resembling television, because the collective recognise these things and know them to be “just in the movies.”

touching the earth is hardly a new concept. ancient cultures still exist on our planet.
natives in many countries still practice their ancient ways. while not necessarily more powerful, it taps into the fears of the native which have existed since we first began mingling across the borders of our lands with people we considered technologically inferior.
we have always seen technology as a substitute for religion, and magic.
it is then unavoidable that we see those without technology as being more religious.
more magical.
it is important to tap this power.
for belief is a power.

the thin razor edge of this method, however, is avoiding becoming little more than a figurehead – a cliché.
which is why you should avoid discussing your methods and your ways with others on a face-to-face value. by all means,
discuss magical forces, but your way should remain private.
if you try to influence others, you cling to them. clinging to them will not allow you to escape the can.
it will only pull you in deeper.
power over others is not achievable.
they merely end up with all the power while you delude yourself on your thrown of brass.
remain apart. never mingle.

understand the development of power.
keep your eyes firmly fixed on the concept of the infinite.
try to understand that you are nowhere, and in being nowhere, you are everywhere.
that is infinite.

consider that should the world be infinite, then there are an infinite number of worlds.
an infinite number of you.
you just haven’t met you, yet.
give this, consider what’s out there.

waiting.
for you to reach out, and open the door while no one is looking.

Tags: chaos, chaos magic, discordian