Chaos

From a seed, a tree grows. Fruit encapsulates a seed. But at the center of an apple there is no seed, no fruit, only air. From our perspective, there is nothing.

From Brian Browne Walker’s translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching:

“Thirty spokes meet at a hollowed-out hub;
the wheel won’t work without its hole.
A vessel is moulded from solid clay;
its inner emptiness makes it useful.” (Lao Tzu, 11).

At the center of all ordered things, there is chaos. Not modern disorganized chaos, but the Greek chasm of chaos; the Middle English primordial formlessness of chaos.

Thus is the canon of Chaos Magick. Before there is something, there is nothing, and out of that nothing arises everything. Before there is God, there is the Unknown God.

For a Chaos Magician (Chaote), belief is formed from nothing. Our view of reality is a belief; based on a faith in sensory information and the ability of the brain to interpret it. Belief is faith in a distinct set of the symbols that form our reality. The paradigms--mental models based on interconnected symbols--through which we view our existence can be crossed and changed. Chaotes call this “paradigm shifting.” It is through this that Chaotes will cross religious symbols, invoking Japanese gods during a Wiccan Esbat ceremony, let’s say, or offering special prayers to the Abrahamic God in the different spokes of a Native American medicine wheel.

Paradigm shifting is especially useful for a mystic--one who seeks an understanding, awareness, or oneness with a greater reality. It allows the spiritual explorer new lenses through which can be seen the different shadows of reality, to journey down different paths--and minds!--and peer off of them into the darkness beyond.

I exist in Chaos. My body is the sensory razor that splits and categorizes it into symbols that my mind can experience. I am the Tao. I am the Everything!

“Out of silent subtle mystery emerge images.
These images coalesce into forms.
Within each form is contained the seed
And essence of life.
Thus do all things emerge and expand out
of darkness and emptiness.” (Lao Tzu, 21)

Shapeshifting

"In all of us there is a lawless side like a wild beast that peers out during sleep." - Jim Steinman.

As afternoon turns to dusk, and the September air goes from balmy to chill, I shed my clothes and return to the earthy embrace of a pine and hemlock forest.

Unfettered by artificial chains, I stalk the forest like a wolf. I sprint across unkempt trails like a deer. I dance with the stars. I undo myself.

Shapeshifting is associated with werewolves, but has a deeper significance and power. It's not only about connecting to the wild beast within. It is about connecting to "nothing" and "everything." It is a return to Chaos.

In that chill September night, I become the Horned God spiraling back to the Goddess--back to the Garden. I am the Garden; there is no seperation. Only when I am fettered by the constraints of the adult human mind--seemingly secure in its razor logic and knowledge, definitions and divisions--am I cast out of Eden. Only then do I spiral away from the Unknown God, the Goddess, the Horned God.

Trapped within "I," I suffer, for I remove myself from the Garden. As long as I live I am removed, trapped within the Temple of perception from which I interpret the world without. But when shapeshifting, I lose myself to the Wild without. I become the child again, running naked without shame or sin. Maybe not in the Garden, but a part of it, for my Temple resides there. And I can choose which windows to look out!

I return on a damp September morning to the adult human world, where I must mask myself and hold back the Garden within.