The Wild Hunt - Reassessing Chaos
Reassessing Chaos
When Chaos Magick sprung forth in Britain in the 1980s, it styled itself as the naughty child of magickal movements. Inspired by a combination of punk and DIY culture, the work of Austin Osman Spare, Thelema , Robert Anton Wilson, and popular culture, Chaotes like Ray Sherwin and Peter Carroll proposed a rejection of “orders” and “traditions” and “lineages” and advocated a emphasis on the perfection of magickal technique for the purposes of getting results by concentrating on the universals of magickal technology. It was a movement that commented on the confines and limitations of magickal orders , promoted experimentation and technical excellence. Part of the ethos of Chaos Magick was that the practitioner needed to be able to genuinely adopt a variety of perspectives, even radically opposing ones, in order to experience the truth in everything, to cultivate mental flexibility and above all to not become consumed by the artifice of religious dogma. But in recent years there seems to have been a growing dissatisfaction with the fruits of Chaos Magick. Chaotes are frequently seen as dabblers, people with more style than substance, and sadly, as having a lack of dedication to genuine, sustained practice. What happened to this potentially revolutionary movement?
