The true Chaos magician is essentially an artist

THE ECLECTIC MAGICIAN VS. THE CHAOS MAGICIAN
by Frater XON

(Alert: High amount of personal opinion about to appear! You are warned!) 


The internet has done a wonderful job of allowing people to have easier access to magical documents and materials. In the course of a year, a person can easily familiarize themselves with several different kinds of magic from runes to tarot to Hermeticism and shamanism. 



No longer is one forced to accept what meager materials one can find though the local book store or from a friend. Instead of being forced into a single paradigm through lack of information, the modern magician has access to countless choices. Today’s magician is a well rounded, though less specialized, being. 


What this has caused, unfortunately, is quite a bit of confusion. The eclectic magician is very often confused with and mistaken for a Chaos magician. They believe that their paradigm shifting, putting on their “Hermetic” face today and their “Norse Rune” face tomorrow, somehow puts them into the realm of Chaos magic. 


The truth is that these eclectic magicians are missing an absolutely essential key to what it is that defines a true Chaos magician: 


Creativity. 


Anyone can read a book on magic and spit back what’s contained within it. Memorize gematria and Crowley’s books, and suddenly you’re a Hermetic magician. Read a book on shamanism, buy yourself a drum, and suddenly you’re a tribal mystic. Shell out some money to the right people, memorize some chants and prayers, and suddenly you’re a Santero. Hell, go ahead and read some Spare, draw up some sigils and poof! Instant “Chaos magician”! 


These are all unimpressive tricks and mental illusions. Even a parrot can repeat the sounds it hears without understanding them. 


The true Chaos magician has the ability to give birth to new and unusual things. They can create new systems, new methods and new rituals outside of what’s already been created. The true Chaos magician is essentially an artist. 


Paradigm shifting isn’t simply about putting on a new “mask” for the year, the month, or even the moment. It’s about challenging one’s own beliefs about oneself, the world, and especially magic. It’s about creating something new, something outside of the rules that you’ve read, and seeing if it works. 


It doesn’t take a lot of work to get a prefabricated spell to work. Your mind will very quickly embrace the idea that other people have used this spell; other people have gotten this spell to work, so you can probably do the same thing as well. 


But to create something new. To create something unusual, different, or downright weird, and get it to work. Wow, that’s an amazing moment. That’s the moment that really gets you to say, “Hey, that wasn’t in the rules. That shouldn’t have been, but it was, and I made it happen!” That’s the moment where someone becomes a Chaos magician. When something new is born that thrives instead of dying, that’s the transformation point! 


When this moment occurs, that’s when the old ideas, the old beliefs, the old paradigms start to fall apart. That’s when we truly start to paradigm shift. Dressing up old ideas in new clothing is meaningless. Shattering the old ideas through creativity is vitally essential. 


Creativity! Creativity! Creativity! 


I stress this point because I feel that creativity is absolutely critical to look for in a novice or a potential candidate for a novitiate. 


If you can’t create something new for me, then I’m not particular interested in you. I don’t care if you’ve memorized every book about magic on the planet. I don’t care if you’re sitting in your temple performing prefab rituals twelve hours a day. If you can’t come up with a single new thing to offer me, then what good are you? You’re just a computer saying the same old things that other people have said before you. 


But if you can create a single simple thing from pure creativity that works, even if it’s not the most amazing thing in the world, it still impresses me a great deal more than all the libraries of magic in the world. 


Can you believe something impossible and make it work? That’s the key to all this! 


Notice, however, that I’m not saying that creativity alone is important. Rather, it’s creativity that WORKS that’s vitally important! You could create a completely wild and ridiculous ritual, but your mind and your being can reject it. The magic can fail, because you really haven’t challenged or changed your beliefs. “Of course it didn’t work! You performed the ritual on the wrong day! You didn’t use the right colors or attributions! Of course!” You’re still not there yet. When you finally get that ridiculous ritual to work, that’s when your beliefs crack and you start to realize that things aren’t what you thought. 


This is what you’re really looking for in a person because it’s the moment of transition from being an eclectic magician to being a Chaos magician. 


Don’t let someone who’s merely studied a bunch of things confuse you. That person is still only an eclectic magician. It’s the person that’s created something new that works who is really a Chaos magician. 


Dead things cannot produce life. Only the living can give birth to living things. 


http://iota.thanateros.org/article/eclectic.php