Junblog 2025
Firstly, Two seminal books on Chaos Magic have just become published.
This is Chaos https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Chaos-Embracing-Future-Magic/dp/1578638739
Weisers have certainly taken their time getting the long awaited This is Chaos ready, and the result looks splendid, well-illustrated, and filled with informative and provocative chapters from fifteen contributors. Try the ‘read sample’ facility on the link for preview of the riches within.
Mandrake EPOCH https://mandrake.uk.net/epoch/
Mandrake of Oxford have published editions of the epic Esotericon and Portals of Chaos in both Hardcover and Softcover and with the Esotericon Card Deck now in an easier to handle size. Caution - The Necronomicon Grimoire within now appears in a standard font. I had previously presented it in a difficult to read font to discourage casual misuse of this potentially hazardous material.
Secondly, Four Interviews. I spend quite a bit of time giving email interviews with various esoteric enquirers for their specialist publications. By mutual agreement we offer a selection of them here: -
The Daniel Domaradzki & Peter J Carroll Interviews.
Daniel Domaradzki interviews Peter J Carroll.
1) Daniel. What got you inspired to start the chaos magick idea in the first place?
Pete. I picked up a copy of Mastering Witchcraft by Paul Huson back around 1970 at age 17. This seminal book remains in print. Basically it consists of a manual on how to actually attempt more or less freestyle magic for yourself. It doesn’t promote Wicca as a religion and it approaches magic without new age mysticism or moral judgement. Soon after, I went to university and got very bored with chemistry at that level and started reading all the greats of magic – the Grimoires, Eliphas Levi, Mathers (Golden Dawn), Crowley, Spare, and many other lesser lights. I started experimenting with practical work – meditations, invocations, spell castings, evocations, and divinations. I met with others and got into intense discussions and practical work with them. My scientific background led me to a reductive approach to magic – what lies underneath the romance of sorcery, exactly what do we need to do to make it work – and what just functions as window dressing or supporting belief structure.
The Chaos flavour arose from several sources. Quantum science revealed that reality basically runs on randomness rather than cause and effect which only arises on a probabilistic basis. In my own magical experiences I found enchantment far more effective than divination and this confirmed to me that reality exhibits a fair bit of indeterminacy, and that we can nudge the hand of chance more readily than anticipate it. Plus of course I spent my formative years in an era when much social change and upheaval began (it hasn’t stopped since), and Michael Moorcock wrote novels about capricious chaos gods whimsically overturning established order as a matter of principle, so I came to view magic as a Luciferic and Promethean quest to overturn religion and steal the fire of the gods and demons who personify our own abilities writ large.
Pete. I prefer to select my beliefs for their utility. Many of my contemporaries got into the belief systems of authoritarian politics (usually Marxism, sometimes Fascism) or into eastern mysticism or even into conventional religions in their formative years but I couldn’t see the uses of those, such belief systems did not seem to give useful results, particularly when out of context.
If you get given just one wish in life it makes sense to ask for an unlimited number of wishes, by wishing to become a Magician. (Even if that can seem a bit out of context in the modern world.)
The magical belief systems that I inherited from my fairly recent predecessors (Mathers, Crowley, Spare, etc.) consisted of a mixed bag of Imagined Ancient Religions, Neoplatonism, and Post-Enlightenment Rationalism, Psychology, & Parapsychology. These belief systems do not sit comfortably together at all. Rather than attempt a messy integration of these paradigms, it seemed a better policy to adopt the meta-belief that belief has some power to shape both subjective and objective reality. Thus I adopted a situationist approach to belief – believe whatever you need to, to get the job done. The first part of doing anything consists of casting a spell upon yourself.
3) Daniel. Can you give us some advanced examples of how you utilize science in magick?
Pete. That great theoretician of modern magic Lionel Snell said that pseudoscience has become the natural language of magic. (In past ages magicians used largely religious terminology). I certainly use some of the interpretations of quantum physics to bolster my magical beliefs. Physicists who use other interpretations of quantum physics might describe that as pseudoscience. Rather amusingly we currently have no scientific way of deciding between the various interpretations.
I do not favour the loose use of the scientific term ‘energy’ in magic. I think magic works through attention and information transference. However the use of a rather loose concept of ‘magical energies’ can help with the focussing of intent.
I do use magic in my science, I invoke the imaginary(?) deities of Apophenia and the Elder Gods of the Cthulhu Mythos to inspire and perhaps even inform my enquiries into the technicalities of reality – consciousness, the cosmos, matter, space, and time.
Pete. I refer you to my replies to question five for a selection of what I have done, and talk here about what I have observed.
Humans have extraordinary suggestibility. I have seen whole nations in thrall to nonsensical religions and ideologies. You don’t realise how peculiar your own culture can appear until you have seen other people’s. Our extraordinary suggestibility arises with our intelligence – we have a greater ability to learn from each other than any other earthly species, but few manage to take control of their own suggestibility.
When it comes to beliefs, Nothing has ultimate Truth, Everything remains Possible, And the consequences may prove Ghastly.
I guess that I went travelling looking for enlightenment but I came back with the question - precisely what do I want enlightenment about?
5) Daniel. What are the most unbelievable phenomena you witnessed in your practice?
Pete. I prefer to think of the improbability rather than the unbelievability of events that have arisen from a life inspired by the ideas and practices of magic.
For example: -
Several instances of poltergeist type activity in my early career when I felt full of fury and let it rip for the heck of it – objects would teleport very usefully or sometimes they would shatter pointlessly without any physical contact.
Several instances of telepathic communication of useful unexpected information whilst dreaming, later verified by normal means, from my Mother, and bizarrely from my Father just following his death.
Writing a book of magic at age 23 that has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and now appears in numerous languages, despite having a very poor record of English grammar and spelling. (My spelling remains abysmal.)
Surviving numerous near death scrapes including clinging to the back of a railway carriage through the night for hundreds of miles, sailing a self-made open ‘boat’ through a tropical typhoon that sank and killed many on more professionally made boats, climbing to seventeen thousand feet in the Himalayas without any sort of proper equipment or preparation and getting my altitude sick companion and myself back down alive.
Abstracting the geometry and the algebraic equations of magic and hypersphere cosmology (particularly the hyperspherical lensing equation) from raw data, having had no proper maths tuition since age 16.
Somehow, without previous experience or capital, turning a little lock up rented shop into a fair sized enterprise with an extensive wholesale and export network and substantial property holdings.
As you have observed, I don’t like to show off, but I do seem to have become improbably lucky in this life, and I put it all down to my belief in magic.
Pete Carroll interviews Daniel Domaradzki.
1) Pete. What inspired you to get into strength training and mental conditioning in the first place?
Daniel: I was born in Central Europe, Poland, it was very typical for us to exercise physically, and cultivate a strong mindset. As a kid and teenager, I used to watch Japanese anime, where the characters had superpowers and fought against each other. In 2020, I met various business mentors, and expanded my strength coaching business, adding the 'mental conditioning' part, which was a disguise for occult techniques. As 'strength training & chaos magick' did not sound coherent, I decided to call it 'strength training & mental conditioning' just to find out later that a mental conditioning profession actually exists, and there are indeed many coaches offering mindset guidance to professional athletes. This made me very happy, as around 2007, I joined a Polish Chaos Magick Order where some of us practiced martial arts, and incorporated custom occult techniques to increase our physical performance. Finding out that scientific research supports the power of visualization in sports, and that many coaches use similar techniques (just under different names, e.g. NLP - Neurolinguistic Programming), increased my hope of pushing chaos magick to more people. I started off advertising popular meditation, mindset, and positive thinking techniques, and gradually moved on to more esoteric practices under the 'mind hacking' name. As these topics gained popularity and started attracting a wider audience, I decided to start talking about chaos magick, energy healing, and visualization more openly among athletes.
2) Pete. Your approach is highly practical - can you elaborate on how individualizing other belief systems like magic and far eastern ideas helps you achieve better results in strength training and mental conditioning?
Daniel: Energy healing relieves stress. Visualization positively impacts athletic performance and exercise technique. Swearing can be used as a spell to decrease perceived pain (it was proved scientifically). Mind-body techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training or even simple mindfulness can enhance proprioception and interoception. Breathing techniques are important to control one's breath, e.g. during the Valsalva maneuver. Sigils and hypnosis techniques can be used to alter one's mental state and build courage along with mental toughness. Servitors can be used as reminders to incorporate specific techniques or invoke desired mental states during exertion. Mental toughness allows you to keep pushing despite being tired and experiencing discomfort. All of that combined makes a noticeable, positive difference in terms of athletic performance. We even used your retroactive enchantment technique during the World Bench Press Championships, where my athlete won a gold medal.
3) Pete. Can you give us some advanced examples of how you utilize science in strength training and mental conditioning?
Daniel: First of all, providing athletes with scientific research that confirms the effectiveness of mental techniques enhances the placebo effect. Also, by explaining how they(the techniques) might potentially work in detail, prompts the athletes to make more use of their own creativity - e.g. by finding out that 'war dance' is not 'just mumbo jumbo', but an activity that - through the use of sound (war music), visualization, breathing techniques, and deep focus - stimulates the sympathetic branch of ANS, and can actually increase heart rate, pain threshold as well as to cause a release of desired hormones and neurotransmitters, makes it easier for the athlete to jump to their own conclusions, better understand what's happening to their bodies when they use such techniques, and stimulates their visualization as they have to imagine what's going on. I also realized that exposing a person to such knowledge and contemplating its effects on one's body can, in some cases, enhance senses directly related to sports performance, some of them being previously mentioned proprioception, interoception or others, such as equilibrioception. Now, let's move on to the practical part: invoking war deities before workouts, and anchoring such mental states to combinations of simple gestures and words (spells) makes it easier to call upon them during actual competitions quickly; mind-body meditations can be used to relax the muscles and increase blood flow to them post workout, thus improving the recovery; activating sigils that intend to make one lift a specified amount of weight in a specified exercise can make one's subconscious mind point them toward the solutions they might have never previously thought of; cursing your enemies can be, in some cases, somewhat effective to make them more likely to lose their determination or injure themselves so they perform worse during the competition.
4) Pete. The way you act seems very Eastern European - you tend to speak bluntly and directly, you don't argue with fools, and you certainly don’t compromise your opinions just to appear polite. You also look very physically powerful and intimidating. How do you think British people receive this?
Daniel: In reality, it's just a coincidence. I am autistic, so I struggle with social interactions, and don't really understand nor 'feel' the small talk; hence, I speak in a very straightforward, computer-like manner. I am bald because I am obsessed about being clean, and I don't like when my head gets sweaty. In fact, I used to have a very long hair (reaching my lower back) in the past, but it turned out to be impractical during physical training (although I am still a big fan of brutal death metal). While I might possess some muscles, I consider myself mostly just a fat boy, as I enjoy drinking beer and eating fast foods. My tattoos are sigils, and they serve a specific purpose. As you can see, scaring other people is not really my goal, although I do realize that when I start speaking directly and fast, people think I'm angry, which is not the case. On the other, being overly polite can be considered rude and insincere by people from my whereabouts. For example, if you phoned a typical Polish person, and spoke to them for 10 minutes about how they're doing, and what they're up to, to later ask them if they can lend you money, they would get angry at you as they would think you tried to manipulate them into giving you money which is considered a lack of respect, however, if you asked straight away 'Hi, it's Pete, I need to borrow 5 grand for a week, can you spot me on this one?', you would have earned their respect for being honest and not hiding your ultimate motive. I guess it's just a matter of realizing that different people express themselves in different ways, and in case of any misunderstandings, it's important to clarify what do we mean, and what we do not, before jumping to emotional conclusions.
5) Pete. How does strength training and mental conditioning affect the life trajectories of those who master it?
Daniel: I'd say more consistency in other activities, more decisiveness, more motivation, and the ability to bounce back after setbacks. If you want to become a world champion in any sports discipline, you gotta learn how to stick to your workout regimen, how to eat properly, take care of your stress levels, and be patient (among several other things). It takes years. Magickal skills require similar dedication, and so does mastering any other field. Besides, high-intensity exercise can increase the production of BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor), which can stimulate neurogenesis, so it also makes you smarter.
Fausto Interview.
Fausto. Looking back at the initial formulation of chaos magic, what is one core principle or insight that you feel is most often misunderstood or overlooked by contemporary practitioners, and what are the potential consequences of this oversight?
Pete. Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted.
Okay so we borrowed this catchy phrase from questionable sources, it may go back as far as Hassan I Sabbah, polymath and leader of a cult of Assassins around the turn of the eleventh century. In its bare form it contains a self-referential contradiction or paradox - and no caveat that the consequences may prove ghastly. Nevertheless as a slogan it exhorts a questioning of all received wisdom and dogma, keeping an open mind, and attempting the apparently impossible or unthinkable.
For those who appreciate the clarity of V-Prime which avoids the dubious concept of being or ‘is-ness’ in speech and writing and hence in thought; the phrase reappears as: -
Nothing has Ultimate Truth, Anything Remains Possible.
Yet to interpret this as an invitation to complete moral relativism and a license to do anything seems unwise, for plainly some falsehoods have greater utility than others and some acts will probably prove less impossible than others.
Even though Nothing has Ultimate Truth, and Anything Remains Possible, we should still choose our lies and our ambitions with some care and forethought.
Fausto. In an increasingly complex and technologically mediated world, how do you see the role and efficacy of magical practice evolving? Are there new forms of gnosis or magical technologies that you believe hold significant potential for the future of chaos magick?
Pete. A number of my associates seem quite enthusiastic about using AI LLMs to write rituals, invocations, and incantations - and using AI graphics programs to create sigils and evocation images out of text statements. Personally I regard going through the process of making such materials for myself as more magically effective than taking such technologically assisted shortcuts, yet many of the latest generation of techno-savvy magicians do find such augmentations worth using.
Plenty of experimentation takes place with various attempts to induce gnosis using stroboscopic light, white sound, brainwave rhythms, exhaustive exercise, and random timers that deliver shocking surprise stimuli. Like drugs, these techniques can open doors, but they seem best subsequently reopened by mental effort alone.
Fausto. You've often emphasized the importance of direct experience and questioning dogma. What are some of the most persistent "sacred cows" within the broader occult and esoteric traditions that you believe are most ripe for critical re-evaluation in the 21st century?
Pete. Neoplatonism still contaminates a great deal of magical and esoteric thinking, and for many it continues to more or less define it. Neoplatonic theory became ascendent in the first couple of centuries AD as Hellenic paganism and philosophy interacted with a monotheism derived from Judaism. Neoplatonism basically stated that Phenomena have Essences. This quickly expanded into the idea that Essences had more importance than the Phenomena themselves and actually controlled the manifestation of those Phenomena. Unfortunately ideas about the Essences of things became increasingly based on imaginations about their underlying properties rather than upon observations about their actual properties. Thus we ended up with a huge pile of related theories about the Essences of phenomena like earth, air, fire, and water, the planetary bodies, the constellations of the zodiac, the universe itself, minerals, plants, animals, humans, and imaginary deities. Moreover, some of these entities became imaginatively endowed with sentience and intent. Of course none of these Neoplatonic theories has much explanatory or predictive power, but perversely that just encouraged some people to make them into the ever more baroque and complicated sacred cows of so called ‘ancient wisdom’.
Since the Enlightenment it has become increasingly obvious that the Essences of Phenomena consist of our thoughts about our perceptions of them. Schopenhauer asserted that the will and intent of the operator most likely accounted for occult and magical effects. Eliphas Levi developed this theme to some extent and frequently mentioned the operator’s will and imagination, but he also delved deeply into the supposed occult essences pervading the ‘astral light’ and their complex relationships. The late nineteenth century magical revival, as exemplified by the synthesis achieved by the Golden Dawn, initiated a tradition of trying to have it both ways. On the one hand it promoted the Neoplatonist metaphysical reality of the essences of phenomena, whilst on the other it tacitly acknowledged psychological interpretations of essences, the human ability to create them, and the importance of intent. This effectively allowed practitioners a pick and mix and DIY approach and led to the flowering of a swathe of new occult traditions - most with various pretences to antiquity.
The twentieth century did see some rather grotesque interpretations of intent as The Dominance of Will. Aleister Crowley exemplified a monomaniacal approach to intent based on the ideas that he had a True Will to do whatever he imagined he wanted to, and that everyone else also had a hidden True Will which (miraculously) accorded with his own, and he imagined deities as supreme manifestations of Will.
Yet ideas about Willpower, True Will, the Will of God(s), the Will of the People, and so on, do not generally seem to have given good results because the effects of Will depend on the imaginations used to create them.
Imagination underlies will and so called willpower, it creates them and determines their effectiveness. You can only increase your ‘willpower’ by imagining all the positives of a course of action and imagining away all the negatives. You can only bend the ‘will’ of others by subverting their imaginations.
So, in summary, I consider the second century concepts of Neoplatonism and the twentieth century concept of Will as ripe for critical re-evaluation. Rather than consider Magic as dependent upon mysterious hidden essences, powers and principalities, or upon the will of the operator, I prefer to regard Magic as the use of Imaginary Phenomena to create Real Effects.
Fausto. Given your explorations into consciousness and the nature of reality, what is one fundamental question about existence that continues to deeply intrigue you, and how has your magical practice and philosophical inquiry shaped your ongoing investigation of this mystery?
Pete. Three questions have intrigued me for decades. Precisely formulating these questions in scientific or magical terms does not seem straightforward or easy.
These three questions may even represent a single question asked from different angles. Any comprehensive Theory of Everything would have to answer all three.
In no particular order: -
The Universe – How does it work? Infinite or finite and unbounded in space and/or time?
Consciousness – How does it work? Real or Illusory? What can exhibit it?
Quanta – How do they work? Can we have an ontology about quantum fundamentals underlying reality?
Perhaps they all work via Information – but that remains a wild guess, but if so we need something far more rigorous than Neoplatonism to qualify and quantify it, yet perhaps Information exists only as a human epistemology.
Fausto. Reflecting on your life's work and the impact it has had on individuals seeking to understand and interact with the world in unconventional ways, what is the most important piece of wisdom or guidance you would offer to someone embarking on a serious exploration of chaos magick today?
Pete. Interroga Omnia – Question all things.
I had the good fortune to receive Religious instruction from a daft old fool of a schoolmaster who insisted on trying to teach the christian bible as literally true, English from a master who taught English as an exercise in critical and creative thinking, and Science masters who often admitted that they didn’t have all the answers.
Plus as a child of the socially revolutionary ‘sixties’, I observed and participated in the overthrow of a lot of the old assumptions of western societies; deference, sexual mores, religion, dress codes, and so on.
I didn’t feel much attraction towards either the Authoritarian politics or the Eastern Mysticism that fascinated many of the rebellious youth of my generation, the former had already failed horribly and the latter just seemed like the same old religious nonsense in exotic clothing. Magic on the other hand seemed like a wildly promethean and forbidden quest that could undermine religion and expand the horizons of science. Magic also had a great deal of lore and dogma accreted over the centuries that seemed either superfluous, or contradictory, or just plain wrong, or open to radical reinterpretations. In the early years of my career in magic I spent at least as much time on questioning the ideas and techniques of magic as I did on using them. I recommend that anyone embarking on a serious exploration of magic today do the same. In chaos magic we have the beginnings of a more effective magical paradigm, but much work and more discoveries remain for enquiring minds.
Carl Standley interviews Peter J Carroll.
1) Carl. How did you decide upon the concept of Chaos Magick? What factors led you to give birth and rise to this?
Pete. From an early age it struck me that all religions function as psychological and social control technologies, that all scriptures consist of inconsistent stories made up by people, that the causal chain mechanisms identified by science have to stop somewhen or form loops, and that parapsychological effects do occur - ranging from my experiences of the sometimes astonishing reality bending effects of perception, imagination, and intent.
Starting from there I read hundreds of books on witchcraft, magic, shamanism, psychism, and physics, tried out many practical experiments, and discussed and worked with other interested people. Gradually I analysed the lore of magic to identify the common themes and essentials. Instead of preserving the core ideas of magic as some kind of unusual psychological and parapsychological technology I decided to retain a lot of the traditional terminology and give it a more modern interpretation where necessary. Thus traditional sounding operations like Enchantment, Divination, Evocation, Invocation, and Illumination form core parts of the work. Gnosis also features heavily although in Chaos Magic it just means any ‘altered state of consciousness’ rather than the ‘knowledge content’ that may arise from altered states of consciousness in mysticism.
2) Carl. As far as I understand the practicalities of Chaos Magick to be, all that is required is my own belief in that the spell will work and my belief in the strength of my intention/will and that is it? All the other pomp around the spell such as the ritual, incantations, tools, instructions etc are just components to aid and reinforce the mind that the spell will work - so in essence these components can be swapped or discarded if I feel that they are not helpful to the cause? Is this correct?
Pete. Magicians need to perform sleight of mind on themselves to work magic. This entails engaging the powerful unconscious or subconscious mind and silencing or preoccupying the conscious mind. Gnosis, either excitatory or inhibitory, can help with this and the non-conscious parts of the mind respond to ritual and symbolism and analogy. In general symbols, incantations, and ritual actions which have personal meaning and significance will prove more effective than second-hand material in ancient books, unless of course the operator has made a heavy investment of belief in the authority of antiquity.
3) Carl. I have read, several times over, that in the occult world Chaos Magick is seen as a very controversial practice. Can you shed light as to why people have that view? Because all occult systems are so different and varied, so I am unsure why chaos seems to be viewed as a threat?
Pete. Yes indeed, some love it and some hate it. It threatens those ‘traditions’ of magic whose belief structure depends on the bogus authority of antiquity. I say bogus because no extant tradition has much of a claim to antiquity. Magic reinvents itself as fast as science does these days. Wicca, Thelema, Druidry, and modern Hermetics all arose from adding selective bits of history from books to ideas cooked up in the late nineteenth century when Neoplatonism became melded with colonial Anthropology and Enlightenment ideas.
Chaos Magic also presents itself as a morally neutral technology without spiritual pretensions. You can do whatever the heck you like with it and take the consequences. Results Magic takes precedence over Mysticism. In Chaos Magic works of Illumination you need to specify precisely what you want to become enlightened about. If spirituality means anything it can only mean the way you live your life.
Some have opined that Chaos Magic can lead to laziness and unrealistic expectations and in fairness I note that some dabblers have not committed sufficient effort, dedication, and imagination to it because it can look too easy on paper.
4) Carl. If Chaos Magick leans more towards the psychological, then is it possible for someone who is staunch in their faith in the supernatural, astral planes, deities, otherworldly forces etc to also be a practitioner of Chaos Magick? and if so how does that actually fit?
Pete. Yes you can certainly start with that paradigm, yet anyone with a willingness to experiment will probably find that a paradigm in which operator parapsychology and imaginative intent can also explain their results, works just as well. Not all Chaos Magicians feel the need to apply Ockham’s Razor, some prefer to use different paradigms for different purposes. In practise it may prove effective to plan a conjuration under the paradigm that it will depend on operator intent and then execute it under the belief that it will involve ‘supernatural forces’.
Lastly, an item of garden statuary under construction for the grounds of Chateaux Chaos: -
Herewith the wire frame for a Pan statuette that will either sit atop a repro Roman concrete pillar by the pond or perhaps high on a wall mount in the orchard. 4mm galvanised iron fence wire and 1mm garden binding wire.
I’m gradually bulking him out with Turdcrete (a self-devised 1:3 mix of Portland cement and sieved sheep’s wool and bracken compost, so named because it stinks to hell when you add the water). This material provides a plasticised form of concrete that sets as hard as rock after several days with a furry surface effect. You can work it barehanded without cement burns if you work quickly and keep washing it off. It does however tend to sag if you apply too much at a time, so building up a figure can take a while.
I had considered going for a full Baphomet, but we have the sensibilities of the villagers to factor in…….