ÊMagical Theory

Throughout human history three basic paradigms have jostled for

ascendancy for ascendancy or alliance, the magical, material, and

transcendental world views. Neither the transcendental (religious) nor

the magical style of thinking shows much sign of decline despite the

impressive achievements of material thinking through organised science.

Many contemporary magicians argue that although magic and religion have

often allied themselves in the past and borrowed extensively from

eachother's stock of ideas and techniques, magic can and should

establish itself as a completely separate discipline. Some would go

further and claim that if you interpret all the miraculous phenomena of

religion as magical/ parapsychological events rather than as the actions

of various gods and demons, then religion reduces to a purely subjective

psychological phenomenon. We would go further still and claim science as

the study of those forms of magic that lie at the high reliabilit�èy end

of the probability spectrum, and religion as merely a compensation for

failure at either. Those who can, conjure, those who cannot, pray, as

the chaoists say.

So what does a purely magical paradigm look like?

Well, to model all the phenomena of magic you need just three things.

Firstly, you need a mechanism to transfer information across space and

time and to let it interact with mind and matter when it arrives.

Secondly you need a model of the mind that explains why it normally

interacts magically with such appalling inefficiency, and which also

explains the curious empirical procedures that can enhance its

efficiency. Thirdly you need a theory of multiple selves to explain the

apparent effects of seemingly supernatural entities.

Traditionally magicians have relied on rather imprecise beliefs about

powers or energies or vibrations or supernatural beings with various

powers to transmit their enchantments and receive their divinations.

Such ideas have often tended �èto inhibit attempts at useful activities

such as retroactive enchantment and have often led to the inclusion of

quite pointless superfluous procedures and superstitions into magical

practice. At last, however, the new physics seems to offer the

beginnings of a comprehensive explanation of non local and atemporal

information exchange.

Modern western magicians owe much of their model of the mental mechanism

of magic to the English mage Austin Osman Spare. He made explicit the

rationale behind the empirical procedures that magicians have always

used. The non conscious or subconscious parts of the mind have far

greater parapsychological effectiveness than the conscious parts . Thus

you have to trick the non conscious parts into action by occupying the

conscious parts with some analogy or symbol of what you want to

accomplish, preferably in a state of frenzied excitement or a trancelike

stupor. Thus you do not think of the target as you treat its abstract

representation. You �èconcentrate on the symbol totally, and let your more

powerful subconscious do the business. If you cannot consciously reme

mber what you made the image to represent then the sleight of mind works

even better. All the apparently irrational procedures worth using in all

the old books of magic and sorcery depend for their effect on the

principle of diverting the conscious mind with a vaguely analogous

representation of desire that triggers the slower and more emotive

subconscious to project or receive information for enchantment or

divination.

However, much of the old symbolism has little meaning now, so you may as

well simply write out your wish and scramble the letters into a

meaningless sigil, and then go berserk or into a trance whilst

concentrating on it, preferably after you have forgotten what you made

it for. As an aid to forgetfulness, make a load of sigils and power them

up at the end of the week.

Most magicians at the cutting edge of occult metaphysics prefer to w�èork

with a multiple self paradigm rather than use neo-religious hypothesis

of objective autonomous spiritual entities or beings. If you can evoke

or invoke a 'synthetic' entity, god, or demon, and get results just as

good as from a supposedly 'real' one, then the temptation to regard all

so called real ones as synthetic becomes overwhelming. Humans have

always made gods in their own image, and even the most cursory

historical research reveals the syncretic nature of all deities.

Thus within the multiple self paradigm all gods, demons, servitor

spirits and so on, appear as various extreme states of mind that the

magician may seek to access for some particular purpose. Most people

have experienced themselves as virtually possed by at least love, lust,

or anger at some point in their lives and found themselves behaving in

unusual ways. Magicians deliberately explore such areas of the mind to

see what strange abilities lie there. Despite the assertions of

conventional psycho�èlogy and post-monotheist culture we all have multiple

selves. Only selective amnesia differentiates between its pathological

clinical and normal manifestations.

We often get asked, what happened to the romance of sorcery in your work

Pete? What happened to black robes, magic circles of blazing petrol,

gratuitous nudity, sex magic, and hand-crafted runeswords? Well we still

have a great affection for these thing and a respect for their

psychological value, you will find plenty of it on our first two books.

However, we offer space on this page to those wishing to debate the

underlying theories, metaphysics, and physics of magic, including ideas

and equations presented in our second and third books. Ramsey Dukes

observed, perhaps sadly, that science assumes perfect methods and

imperfect theories, whilst magic so often assumes perfect theories and

imperfect methods. By this he meant that science assumes that any

trained scientist can perform a specified experiment and the res�èults can

modify the theory, but magic so often pretends to perfect theories whose

failure in practice merely confirms the operators lack of spiritual

power or some other indefinable nonsense. Surely we must now abandon

such medieval ideas and investigate magic with hard edged rationality if

we wish to understand our universe and ourselves in their entirety.

The ideas presented in this paper represent a fairly orthodox view of

chaos magic, although not all chaoist magicians share the author's

interest in quantum parasychological theory. The author founded and led

the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros for the first five

years of its existence and has since acted in a consultative role from

retirement.