Over the years I have met a great many people who have claimed to be Chaos Magicians. They have defined Chaos Magic as being a form of magic with rejects all system, form, structure and tradition. In Liber Null and Psychonaut Peter Carroll says that even the "white magician" must do unspeakable things in order to drive out his humanity, for a magician is more than human. His much abused theme of "nothing is true, everything is permitted" reinforces a lack of ethics and morality which seems to have created a vast number of people who are terribly self-centered and destructive.
I recently had a discussion with a close friend of mine who still calls herself a "chaos magician." During this discussion she described Chaos Magic as being based on the idea of a plastic universe which appears chaotic to us because of its complexity. By focusing the attention, imagination and visualisation tools in a particular direction things can be accomplished, changed or even summoned into your life. This is magic.
Yet this description is not one I'd found in the foundational "chaos magic canon" but rather echoes the teachings of people like Paul Foster Case and Dion Fortune. The question then becomes, what is "Chaos Magic" really?
I think that there are really two answers to this question. On the one hand we have a canon of works from the 70's which define Chaos Magic as an individualist, amoral approach to magic. On the other hand we have people who have, of necessity, rejected the most important structure in their lives and found nothing with which to fill the void. Even if they do not agree with the ideology put forth by Carroll they accept the identity of "Chaos Magician" because it gives them a point of contact and belonging. They ARE something and now they can defend this as an act of defiance.
Our Christian education in North America permits no individual exploration, thought or examination of the relationship between the individual and the Universe. When they see how thoroughly religious organisation can be corrupted and abused the program runs deep and they reject all "organised religion." I cannot count the number of times I've hear people extol the villany of organised religion when all they really mean is "the Roman Catholic Church" or some other specific and fundamentalist Christian sect.
What this means is that they become dogmatic and fundamentalist in their rejection of structure, teaching and organisations. Anything resembling a structured approach reminds them too much of their experience within the Church and is rejected outright. It explains the number of people who I have heard bad mouth the "orders" time and time again when what they say is not congruent with my experience. They have never worked with an order structure, their position is based on parroting the words of others and their experiences growing up in a Christian society. They cannot even see that their rejection of Dogma is dogmatic in and of itself. They cannot see that they are fundamentalist crusaders preaching a dogmatic approach to a specific question.
My wonderful companion pointed out that some of these magicians have had some success, either through luck or sychronicity, and therefore feel that they know everything there is to know about magic. They have not "plugged in" to any of the higher currents and assume that what they have connected to is the sum of all the work we do within the orders. I'll give you a great secret though, most of our work is about inner transformation and connecting to the higher currents, something an amoral, individualist approach cannot manage.
I fully understand this need to have an identity and Chaos Magic gives people an identity without having to join a structred organisation. That fear, though, is based on the experience of one structure and, though it's a very deeply seated program. When I was younger I needed identity in the same way. I'd been reading about Witchcraft and at about 16 I identified myself as a witch. (Laurie Cabot had written that some people are witches if they say "I am a Witch" three times with feeling.) For a long time I identified myself as a "Ritual Magician" since it seemed that one must be identified with either be High or Low magic. Now, I don't know. I can say "I'm responsible for occult education for the Outer Court students of my Order" but in terms of "what kind of magician" I cannot say, only that I serve the Light, and leave it at that.
I think that this fear of organisations is damaging though. A magician should be able to address it and reprogram it and get past their own egos. I think that this is the most dangerous aspect of all when it comes to Chaos Magic: that an individualist approach builds an unbalanced ego. Without a sense of community and service to others it builds a poorly designed and constructed Adytum. The Inner Temple is skewed and those errors of design and construction are reinforced by using poorly designed and constructed magic. Our greatest Work is the shaping of our personalities, the transformation of the self, the alchemical turning of an ordinary person into Homo Spiritualis. Without such goals the broken becomes MORE broken, the unbalanced embrace that which makes them "different" and "special" and, thus, become more unbalanced.
Certainly there are exceptions to every rule. Just as there is the occasional "Enlightened Catholic" there is the magician who carries the name "Chaote" around with them even though they're really on the path, climbing the mountain, trying to know themselves and evolve as better people. Rather than rejecting their humanity as Carroll's early work suggests, they embrace it and refine it and seek to become the best conduit for their true Selves that they can. To my mind, though, they are not "Chaotes" but seekers and students of the Great Arcana. They are no different from myself or any others who I work with, from neither Peers nor Students do they differ in their ultimate goals. All they've lacked is the opportunity to work with a structure that they can feel confident with, and that's a sad thing indeed.
These conversations have given me a new appreciation though. I now have a much greater understanding and respect for those who have joined an order structure (like FLO, SOL, BOTA) after growing up in a Fundamentalist Christian sect (and I include the most fundamentalist of all, the Roman Catholic Church). I had never realised how great a leap of faith, how much against their programming it is to embrace a system like ours, how enormous an act of magic to go against that programming.
In a way I was well spoiled knowing from a VERY young age that I needed to join an Order or Fraternity. When but a child it manifested in an interest in the Christian Monastic traditions and then as a teenager in the occult schools of the West culminating in an initiation at just 19 years of age. Never knowing the struggle which others have had with orthodoxy nor the abuses of the Church I never really appreciated what it meant to put their trust in the order as a whole and even in me as a teacher. I'm humbled by the realisation and feel more pity than anger at those who have never overcome that programming and cling to their individuality driven dogma.
Though I have no respect for the individualist, amoral, approach to magic which rejects all tradition, structure and method, I do have a better understanding of why it appeals and a greater compassion for those who feel the need to attack and malign all structured approaches as worthless. It is not an informed decision but the result of damage perpetrated by an abusive system which was supposed to nurture and educate them. Even those who wrote the foundational books of Chaos Magic seem to have grown up in time. Though the personality needs that process of individuation and rejection (especially during the formative years) it is counter-productive to carry those childish and adolescent tendencies into later adulthood.
It seems to me that the structure of the Church (and other fundamentalist religious education programs) do not allow for a healthy personality development during the time when it is most natural. They punish any attempts to explore the individual and thus a process which should be explored during about 15-25 is pushed until much later. For some they don't even really begin to know themselves until their 50s when they are finally able to overcome the programming of their youth.
When they are thrown out into the world they have no language to express how they are feeling. They reject the Church but have been taught that they have a copyright on God, therefore they must, by definition, reject God—and by rejecting God they reject all religion and spirituality. So how does one who, on one hand knows that there is more to the universe than what is in front of them and on the other has an interest in magic satisfy that without the language of the Church? They might adopt a title, like Chaos Magician, Wiccan, Pagan, Satanist, or something else. Anything but identify with a power structure. They adopt a name which is rebellious to their programming, abuse and oppression. It makes perfect sense. The fact that some people overcome these and find real spiritual paths dispite the religious abuse to which they have been subject, says a great deal for the strength of those individuals.
Anyway, I think that I have a better understanding of the why behind "Chaos Magic" and a greater respect for those who overcome it in time.