h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Chaos Magick - A2410417
Author: Hussassan the Silicon Samurai - Proud User of Alabaster - U200779

This is the first entry I wrote with no errors in the GuideML!

It may seem a bit , but then, most fields of the occult are.

It seems odd quoting from Alesteir Crowley, when he was one of the greatest charlatans of all time. Hardly what you want to give your entry the ring of truth!

Dude! A very intresting article. Bear in mind that some practioners of "Chaos Magick" prefer to call it Warpcraft as the word Chaos acossiates it with the dark gods i.e: Khorne, Slannesh, Nurgle and Tzeench!

Gnomon - Good point, but chaos magick specifically says that all supernatural entitis do not actually exist, and are merely aids to concentration. Hence, Crowley.

Shadowbane - I did not know that.

This entry left me completely cold. Firstly, 'chaos magick' seems like something dreamt up by somebody on a wet Sunday afternoon with nothing better to do. Crowley was a well-known fraud. It might be that he sincerley believed what he was doing, but quite why the rest of should do so is another matter. I think that the Guide could do with this entry as much as it could do with one on the power behind spoon-bending.

And what the hell is all this 'magick' and 'magitian' crap? As long as I have know these words they have been spelled 'magic' and 'magician'. This is an affectation purely to give a totally spurious activity a ring of authenticity, rather like calling a shop 'Ye Olde Burger Bar'.

FM, there is a difference between magic and magick. Magic is honest entertainment while magick an attempt to deceive.

Magic is practised by people who admit that it all a fake, such as Paul Daniels or David Copperfield. Magick is where the person doing it pretends it is all caused by mystic forces. Alesteir Crowley, the well known fraud, coined the term to try and fool people.

Wise words.

There are plenty of *real* phenomena, people, pastimes etc. in the world to write about. For the exact reason you have given, I can think of entries far more worth of inclusion than this one.

My main point with this entry was to illustrate what chaos magitians believe, hence I use words like 'allegedly.' I do not vouch for the authenticity of any of the statements contained herein. I just wanted to write an informative entry one one specific field of the occult.

I'm in the process of scouting my picks for this month and I stopped to read yours. While reasonably well-written, I don't think it's quite what we're looking for in the EG.

For example, this sentence:
"The workings of Spare are largely shunned by the art world and thus unknown to the general public for three reasons - one, they are seriously weird, two, Spare had a major interest in the occult as well as in art, and three, people who have observed his paintings for too long have observed what can best be described as weird s***. "

The third reason is weak, at best, though I don't doubt for a moment that it's true. It is really just a different way of stating the first reason.

The topic of the entry itself is walking the fine line between fact and fiction. It is really describing the behaviour of some people, rather than an actual "thing" itself.

In any event, this is just my , but as someone else suggested, there could be better topics to write entries on.

Cheers!

I doubt very much whether even 'chaos magititians' believe what they are doing. With Crowley, it was probably more to do with establishing the cult of personality than anything else.

I find this disengaged approach to one's subject matter a bit too disingenuous. Either you are prepared to stand up and say 'this is a real phenomenon, I have the evidence, therefore this is is a true account of a discipline' and take the inetivable drubbing in PR by those who are more critically aware, or you don't bother writing about it. You can't claim it's real while simultaneously distancing yourself from it.

No magic or magick is real. Spirtual forces are quite literally the phsychiall manifestation of imagination. Hence how crowded and dangerous the ether is!

So it's hardly EG material, then is it?

The Ether is a real force which holds all life in the multiverse together however by definition it is just a projection of the imagination of sentinet life. So your statement is both correct and incorrect!

So if it's the fevered imaginations of a few self-deluded individuals, is this the basis for a good EG entry? No.

You misunderstand me. The ether is a real plain in the material universe. The imaginations of creatures with what for lack of a better word I shall call a soul seep into this sub dimention making it extreamly useful to those that control it (psykers like myself.) Phenomna such as telpathy,teleportaion and UFOs (the space craft of most sentinent aliens use the warp as a short cut to the universe as it has no time or place. In my experiance a lot of closed minded individuals who refuse to belive in the existance of the ether are psi blanks. Individuals with a serious lack of spiritual energy who can be a useful human sheild against hostile psychic powers.
Are you...
1) Seriously ulucky?
2) A social misfit?
3) Suffering from a lot of headaches recently?

If the answer to at least one of these questions is true the likely hood is your either a blank or a blunt in which case you are a really gifted individual and could find useful employment with a psyker who hasn't got much defensive ability.

Good stuff, Shadowbane!

'He don't know me very well, do he?'


Erm...none of those things really. It's hard to believe or disbelieve categorically in the presence of this 'ether' as you describe it, having no proof either way. However, invoking Occam's Razor, since there isn't any rational evidence that such a thing does exist, it probably doesn't. What's more, certain people (such as yourself) seem to be convinced in a very real and distinctive form of manifestation of this shadowy plane of existence. This is a non-sequitur based on a false predicate.

Anyway to get back to Planet Sanity, this is hardly a fit subject for an EG entry as it only really describes in great detail how self-deluding a few individuals can be. I can't see how (a) anybody might be edified by reading it or (b) acquire any useful knowledge, as it evokes in its readership more a sense of pity than anything else.

Urm... ditto

I'd suggest a move to the AWW, or maybe try to get this included in the post.