# Chaos Magic ## Intro Chaos magic is a modern form of occult practice built on one big idea: **belief is a tool, not a truth.** A chaos magician does not ask whether a god, a spirit, or a ritual is real. He asks whether it *works*. If believing in a Greek god for a week gets results, he believes in that god for a week. Then he drops it and picks up something else, maybe an Egyptian deity, maybe a cartoon character, maybe a symbol he invented that morning. Practitioners sum this up with a slogan: *"nothing is true, everything is permitted."* The line is traditionally credited to Hassan-i Sabbah, the medieval leader of the Nizari Ismailis at the fortress of Alamut. It reached modern readers through Vladimir Bartol's 1938 novel *Alamut* and, above all, through the writer William S. Burroughs, whose books carried it into the counterculture that chaos magic grew out of. The movement itself is young. It took shape in England in the late 1970s with Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin. But the things it does are very old. Calling up spirits, making charms, reading signs, and trying to bend events by hidden power are exactly the practices the Bible names and forbids, from the Law of Moses to the book of Acts. That is why this page treats chaos magic in three steps. First, what it actually teaches and does. Second, where it came from, through ancient necromancy, Greco-Roman magic, medieval and Renaissance spell books, and the Victorian occult revival. Third, how Scripture answers it, including the question practitioners most often raise: *"But it works. How do you explain that?"* The short answer is that getting results is not the same as being safe. In [Acts 16:16-18](/codex/acts-16-16-18/), a slave girl's spirit of divination was accurate and profitable, and Paul cast it out anyway. Scripture's question is never only "does it work?" It is "who are you dealing with?" ## In full **Chaos magic** (often spelled *chaos magick*) is a late twentieth-century current within Western esotericism that treats belief as an instrument to be adopted, used, and discarded for practical ends. Its distinctive commitments are: - **Belief as a tool.** No symbol system is held to be true in itself. Gods, spirits, and cosmologies are treated as interchangeable interfaces, and the practitioner adopts whichever one serves the operation at hand. - **Results magic.** The test of any practice is whether it produces the desired outcome. Doctrine, tradition, and lineage count for nothing on their own. - **Paradigm shifting.** The practitioner deliberately moves between belief systems, sometimes ones he regards as fictional, to break attachment to any single worldview and to access whatever each one is supposed to unlock. - **Gnosis.** Magical operations are performed in altered states of consciousness, reached either by quieting the mind (meditation, exhaustion, sensory deprivation) or by overloading it (dance, pain, drugs, sexual arousal). - **Technique over theory.** Sigils, servitors, and the evocation of entities are treated as techniques whose mechanism is left open: perhaps psychological, perhaps spiritual, perhaps both. Chaos magic is formally agnostic about what, if anything, is on the other end of its rituals. Many practitioners describe it in psychological language (the "spirits" as parts of the mind, sigils as messages to the subconscious). Others speak of contacted entities as real and independent. The system permits both readings at once, which is part of its appeal and, from a Christian standpoint, part of its danger. The Christian engagement does not depend on settling that ambiguity. Where chaos magic is pure psychology, it is a self-deceiving discipline built on a self-refuting slogan. Where it is not pure psychology, it is contact with spirits that Scripture identifies as demonic ([1 Corinthians 10:20-21](/codex/1-corinthians-10-20-21/)). Either way it cannot be combined with faith in Christ. ## What chaos magic teaches and does ### The slogan and its function *"Nothing is true, everything is permitted"* does two jobs in chaos magic. Metaphysically, it denies that any belief system has a privileged claim to truth. Morally, it removes any fixed boundary on what the practitioner may do. The phrase was attached to Hassan-i Sabbah by later legend rather than by any reliable record of his words; Friedrich Nietzsche cited it in *On the Genealogy of Morals* (1887) as the secret teaching of the Assassins, Bartol built his novel around it, and Burroughs repeated it across his later fiction. Chaos magicians took it from Burroughs. ### Core practices - **Sigils.** The practitioner writes a sentence of intent, strikes out repeated letters, and combines the rest into an abstract glyph. The glyph is "charged" in a state of gnosis and then deliberately forgotten, on the theory that the unconscious mind (or something else) will carry out the intent once the conscious mind stops interfering. The method comes from the English artist Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956). - **Gnosis.** An altered state used to "launch" a working past the conscious mind. Chaos literature distinguishes *inhibitory* gnosis (stillness, trance, fasting) from *excitatory* gnosis (frenzy, pain, sexual climax). - **Servitors.** Deliberately constructed entities, given a name, a sigil, a task, and sometimes a feeding schedule, which the practitioner then treats as an autonomous agent. Servitors are the small-scale version of the *egregore*. - **Egregores.** Larger thoughtform entities said to be built and sustained by the collective attention of a group. See [Egregore](/codex/egregore/) for the full treatment, including the claim that Christ himself is one. - **Evocation and invocation.** Calling an entity to appear outside oneself (evocation) or to inhabit oneself (invocation). Chaos magicians use the classical demons of the grimoires, ancient pagan gods, fictional characters, and invented beings interchangeably. - **Paradigm shifting.** Living inside a belief system for a set period, then deliberately abandoning it. ### Pop culture and the internet Chaos magic spread beyond small circles in the 1990s. Phil Hine's books, especially *Condensed Chaos* (1995), made the system accessible and stripped it of most of its ceremonial trappings. The comic writer Grant Morrison wove chaos magic into *The Invisibles* (1994-2000) and openly described the series as a working. By the 2010s, online communities were describing coordinated meme campaigns as sigil work, and the phrase *meme magic* entered ordinary internet slang. Most people who use the phrase are joking. Some are not. ## Where it came from Chaos magic presents itself as new and experimental, but nearly every technique it uses has a long pedigree. The history matters apologetically because Scripture addresses the old forms by name. ### Ancient necromancy and divination The Mosaic Law lists the practices of the surrounding nations and forbids them all: > *There shall not be found with thee any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one that useth divination, one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Jehovah: and because of these abominations Jehovah thy God doth drive them out from before thee.* ([Deuteronomy 18:10-12](/codex/deuteronomy-18-10-12/), ASV) The list covers divination, spell-work, consulting spirits, and calling up the dead. Chaos magic practices all of these under new names. The most famous biblical case is Saul at Endor. Having already expelled the mediums from the land, he went looking for one when God would not answer him: > *Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, Divine unto me, I pray thee, by the familiar spirit, and bring me up whomsoever I shall name unto thee.* ([1 Samuel 28:7-8](/codex/1-samuel-28/), ASV) The Chronicler's verdict is blunt: > *So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against Jehovah, because of the word of Jehovah, which he kept not; and also for that he asked counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to inquire thereby, and inquired not of Jehovah: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.* ([1 Chronicles 10:13-14](/codex/1-chronicles-10-13-14/), ASV) The séance "worked" in the sense that Saul got an answer. It was also the last act of a ruined reign. See [Spiritualism](/codex/spiritualism/) for the full treatment of Endor. ### Greco-Roman magic and the New Testament The world of the apostles was saturated with magic: curse tablets, love spells, amulets, oracles, and handbooks of incantations. The book of Acts records three direct encounters. - **Simon of Samaria** ([Acts 8:9-11](/codex/acts-8-9/)) *"used sorcery, and amazed the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one"*. After seeing the apostles lay hands on believers, he tried to buy the power, and Peter answered, *"Thy silver perish with thee, because thou hast thought to obtain the gift of God with money"* (Acts 8:20, ASV). Simon treated the Holy Spirit as one more technique to be acquired. That is the chaos-magic posture exactly. - **The slave girl at Philippi** ([Acts 16:16-18](/codex/acts-16-16-18/)) had *"a spirit of divination"* and *"brought her masters much gain by soothsaying."* Her message about Paul was accurate. Paul cast the spirit out anyway. - **The Ephesian magicians** ([Acts 19:18-19](/codex/acts-19-18-19/)) responded to the gospel by destroying their libraries: *"not a few of them that practised magical arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver."* New believers did not keep their spell books as a backup system. They burned them. The early church kept up the same testimony. Tertullian, writing around AD 197, assumed his pagan readers knew exactly what sorcerers did: > *Moreover, if sorcerers call forth ghosts, and even make what seem the souls of the dead to appear; if they put boys to death, in order to get a response from the oracle; if, with their juggling illusions, they make a pretence of doing various miracles; if they put dreams into people's minds by the power of the angels and demons whose aid they have invited, by whose influence, too, goats and tables are made to divine...* ([Tertullian](/codex/tertullian/), *Apology* ch. XXIII, Schaff ANF 3, PDF p. 21) Note the phrase *"what seem the souls of the dead."* Tertullian does not deny that something appears. He denies that it is what it claims to be, and he names the power behind it: the demons *"whose aid they have invited."* Lactantius, early in the fourth century, gave the same diagnosis a chapter of its own, headed *"That astrology, soothsaying, and similar arts are the invention of demons"*: > *These were the inventors of astrology, and soothsaying, and divination, and those productions which are called oracles, and necromancy, and the art of magic, and whatever evil practices besides these men exercise, either openly or in secret.* (Lactantius, *Divine Institutes* book II, ch. XVII, Schaff ANF 7, PDF p. 56) The pseudo-Clementine *Recognitions*, a third- or fourth-century Christian romance rather than a historical record, puts in Simon Magus's mouth a description of how his magic works that reads like a manual of evocation: > *I have made the soul of a boy, unsullied and violently slain, and invoked by unutterable adjurations, to assist me; and by it all is done that I command.* (*Recognitions of Clement* book II, ch. XIII, Schaff ANF 8, PDF p. 71) Whatever its value as history of Simon, the passage shows what early Christians understood magic to be: binding a spirit by ritual words so that it does the magician's will. That is exactly what a modern servitor or evocation claims to do. ### The grimoires Medieval and Renaissance Europe produced a literature of spell books, or *grimoires*, many attributed to King Solomon on the legend that he commanded demons. - **The *Key of Solomon*** (*Clavicula Salomonis*), circulating in manuscript from the fifteenth century, gives rituals, tools, and seals for compelling spirits. - **The *Lesser Key of Solomon*** (*Lemegeton*), a seventeenth-century compilation whose first book, the *Ars Goetia*, catalogs seventy-two spirits by name, rank, appearance, and office, with a seal for each. - **Johann Weyer**, a Dutch physician, appended a catalog of demons titled *Pseudomonarchia Daemonum* to his 1577 edition of *De praestigiis daemonum*. Weyer was arguing against the witch trials and printed the list to expose it, yet his catalog became a source for later goetic texts. - **Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa** published *Three Books of Occult Philosophy* in the early 1530s, the major Renaissance synthesis of natural, celestial, and ceremonial magic. - **John Dee and Edward Kelley** conducted their sessions with spirits through a scrying stone in the 1580s, producing the "Enochian" system later taken up by the Golden Dawn. Chaos magicians still use the Goetic spirits. The difference is that the old grimoires believed the spirits were real and dangerous, while chaos magic is content to leave the question open. ### The Golden Dawn and Crowley The **Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn**, founded in London in 1888, gathered the grimoire tradition, Kabbalah, astrology, tarot, and Enochian magic into a single initiatory system. Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one of its founders, prepared an English translation of the *Goetia*. **Aleister Crowley**, a Golden Dawn initiate, published that translation in 1904 with his own additions. His preliminary essay proposed that the spirits of the *Goetia* might be portions of the human brain, and that the seals and rituals act on the operator's own mind. That move, which keeps the ritual while making its object psychological, is the seed of the chaos-magic attitude. Crowley's own system, Thelema, went on to shape much of twentieth-century occultism. ### Austin Osman Spare Spare, an artist briefly associated with Crowley, developed the sigil method that became the backbone of chaos practice. He taught that desire could be planted in the deep mind by turning it into a symbol, charging it in a state of emptied awareness, and forgetting it. His books on the method date from the 1910s. ### Carroll, Sherwin, and the IOT In the late 1970s Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin, both connected with the small-press occult scene in England, systematized these elements under the name *chaos magic*. Carroll's *Liber Null* (1978) laid out the core techniques. The two founded the magical order known as the **Illuminates of Thanateros** (IOT) around the same time. From there the movement spread through books, small orders, and eventually the internet. ## How Scripture answers chaos magic ### 1. The "spirits" are not neutral > *But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have communion with demons. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons: ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons.* ([1 Corinthians 10:20-21](/codex/1-corinthians-10-20-21/), ASV) Paul has just asked whether an idol is anything, and the implied answer is no ([1 Corinthians 10:19](/codex/1-corinthians-10-19-20/)). Yet the worship offered to it is not nothing. It goes to demons. This is a precise answer to chaos magic's "maybe it is all psychological" stance. The pagan god may well be a fiction. The spirit that answers when you invoke it is not. ### 2. Deception is the expected disguise > *And no marvel; for even Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of light.* ([2 Corinthians 11:14](/codex/2-corinthians-11-14/), ASV) Chaos magicians often report that the entities they contact are helpful, wise, or even kind. Scripture predicts exactly that presentation. A spirit's friendliness proves nothing about its nature. See [Spirit of Deception](/codex/spirit-of-deception/). ### 3. Results are not safety The slave girl in Philippi was the most successful practitioner in the book of Acts. Her divination was profitable (*"much gain"*) and her message was true (*"These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim unto you the way of salvation"*). If results were the test, Paul should have hired her. Instead: > *But Paul, being sore troubled, turned and said to the spirit, I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very hour.* ([Acts 16:18](/codex/acts-16-16-18/), ASV) Chaos magic's central principle is that working is the only test. The apostolic response is that a thing can work and still be a spirit that must be cast out. See [Spirit of Python](/codex/spirit-of-python/). ### 4. Christ has already defeated the powers > *having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.* ([Colossians 2:15](/codex/colossians-2-15/), ASV) Magic is an attempt to gain leverage over unseen powers by technique. The gospel announces that those powers have already been stripped and paraded in defeat by the cross. The Christian does not need leverage over them. He needs to belong to the One who beat them. See [Authority to Cast Out Demons](/codex/authority-to-cast-out-demons/). ### 5. You cannot add Jesus to the toolbox The chaos magician's instinct is to treat Christ as one more paradigm: invoke Jesus this month, Odin next month. Scripture closes that door in three places. > *And Elijah came near unto all the people, and said, How long go ye limping between the two sides? if Jehovah be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.* ([1 Kings 18:21](/codex/1-kings-18-21/), ASV) > *They feared Jehovah, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.* ([2 Kings 17:33](/codex/2-kings-17/), ASV) The Samaritan settlers in 2 Kings 17 did exactly what paradigm shifting recommends: keep the God of Israel as one option among several. The text records it as the reason the land remained under judgment. Then there are the sons of Sceva: > *But certain also of the strolling Jews, exorcists, took upon them to name over them that had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth. And there were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, a chief priest, who did this. And the evil spirit answered and said unto them, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye? And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and mastered both of them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.* ([Acts 19:13-16](/codex/acts-19-13-16/), ASV) This is the clearest biblical case of using the name of Jesus as a magical formula. It failed, violently. The name of Jesus is not a sigil. It works for those who belong to him, because he acts, not because the word does. Trying to fold prayer to Christ into a chaos-magic practice is the Sceva error repeated. The very next verses record the Ephesian magicians burning their books, which is the only biblical model for what to do with a magical practice once Christ is in view. ### 6. "Nothing is true" refutes itself The slogan is either true or it is not. If it is true, then at least one thing is true, and the slogan is false. If it is false, then something is true, and the practitioner's foundation is gone. The same holds for the softer version, "no belief system is more true than another": that statement is itself a belief about belief systems, offered as more true than its rivals. See [Law of Non-Contradiction](/codex/law-of-non-contradiction/). In practice, no chaos magician lives by the slogan. He believes his techniques produce results, that results are worth having, and that his reports of results are accurate. Those are truth claims. The slogan functions not as a philosophy but as a license, a way of setting aside the one question that matters most: *is there a God to whom I answer?* See [Atheism as Escapism](/codex/atheism-as-escapism/) for the parallel move in unbelief. ## Honest limits Christians engaging chaos magic should be careful not to overclaim. - **Much of it is psychology.** Writing down a goal, focusing on it intensely, and then letting it go is a recognizable motivational technique. Many reported "results" are coincidence, selective memory, or self-fulfilling expectation. Christians do not need to treat every sigil as a demonic event. - **Some of it is not.** Practitioners and former practitioners regularly report presences, voices, and harassment that do not fit a purely psychological account, and that frequently escalate. The biblical worldview takes such reports seriously without being credulous about them. See [Demonology](/codex/demonology/) and [Occult contact](/codex/occult-contact/). - **The Christian case does not depend on deciding which is which.** If it is psychology, it is self-deception organized around a self-refuting slogan. If it is spiritual, it is communion with demons. In neither case is it a neutral hobby. ## Pastoral approach People drawn to chaos magic tend to be intelligent, curious, skeptical of institutions, and hungry for experience. Many came through gaming, fantasy fiction, or online subcultures, and many describe early "successes" that hooked them. Some came out of churches where faith felt like a set of rules with no power behind them. - **Take the experiences seriously.** Do not mock what they report. Ask what happened. - **Grant the hunger.** The desire for power over one's circumstances and for contact with something beyond the ordinary is real. Christianity offers something better than technique: a relationship with the living God, who answers as a Person rather than a mechanism. - **Name the cost honestly.** Former practitioners such as [Klaus Kenneth (Ex-Occultist)](/codex/klaus-kenneth-ex-occultist/) and [Jenn Nizza (Ex-Psychic Medium)](/codex/jenn-nizza-ex-psychic-medium/) describe occult involvement that began as exploration and ended in torment, and deliverance that came only through Christ. - **Point to renunciation, not management.** The Ephesian pattern is the model: confess, renounce, and destroy the tools ([Acts 19:18-19](/codex/acts-19-18-19/)). See [Spirit of Witchcraft and Occult Influence](/codex/spirit-of-witchcraft-and-occult-influence/) and [Authority to Cast Out Demons](/codex/authority-to-cast-out-demons/) for the practical side of walking someone out. Per [Evangelism](/codex/evangelism/) guardrails: firm on the position, tender with the person. ## See also - [Egregore](/codex/egregore/), the thoughtform and servitor concept central to chaos practice - [Jesus Is an Egregore Objection Defeater](/codex/jesus-is-an-egregore-objection-defeater/), the chaos-magic claim that Christ is a collectively generated construct - [Spiritualism](/codex/spiritualism/), the nineteenth-century movement built on contacting the dead, with the full treatment of Endor - [New Age Spiritualism](/codex/new-age-spiritualism/), the broader contemporary spirituality cluster that shares much of chaos magic's vocabulary - [Demonology](/codex/demonology/), the doctrinal framework for what lies behind occult phenomena - [Demons](/codex/demons/), the entity page - [Occult contact](/codex/occult-contact/), occult involvement as a gateway to spiritual oppression - [Spirit of Witchcraft and Occult Influence](/codex/spirit-of-witchcraft-and-occult-influence/), the pattern of harm that follows occult practice - [Spirit of Python](/codex/spirit-of-python/), the spirit of divination named in Acts 16 - [Authority to Cast Out Demons](/codex/authority-to-cast-out-demons/), the practical companion for deliverance - [Spiritual Warfare](/codex/spiritual-warfare/), the parent framework - [Klaus Kenneth (Ex-Occultist)](/codex/klaus-kenneth-ex-occultist/), testimony from inside the occult - [Jenn Nizza (Ex-Psychic Medium)](/codex/jenn-nizza-ex-psychic-medium/), testimony from a former professional medium - [Atheism as Escapism](/codex/atheism-as-escapism/), the parallel use of "nothing is true" as a way of avoiding accountability - [Tertullian](/codex/tertullian/), early witness to sorcery as demonic - [World Religions](/codex/world-religions/), parent hub
## Common questions this page answers **Q: What is chaos magic?** Chaos magic is a modern occult practice, developed in England in the late 1970s by Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin, that treats belief as a tool rather than a truth. Practitioners adopt and discard gods, spirits, and belief systems according to whether they produce results, and use techniques such as sigils, servitors, altered states (gnosis), and the evocation of entities. **Q: What does "nothing is true, everything is permitted" mean?** It is the unofficial slogan of chaos magic, traditionally attributed to Hassan-i Sabbah of Alamut and popularized through Vladimir Bartol's novel *Alamut* and the writings of William S. Burroughs. It means no belief system is privileged and no action is off-limits. The slogan refutes itself: if nothing is true, then the statement "nothing is true" is not true either. **Q: Is chaos magic real or just psychology?** Some of it is psychology: focusing on a goal and then releasing it can shape behavior, and many reported results are coincidence or selective memory. But Scripture teaches that worship offered to idols goes to demons ([1 Corinthians 10:20-21](/codex/1-corinthians-10-20-21/)), and many practitioners report contact that escalates beyond anything psychological. Either way, the practice is forbidden to Christians. **Q: What does the Bible say about magic and sorcery?** The Bible forbids divination, sorcery, spell-casting, consulting spirits, and calling up the dead ([Deuteronomy 18:10-12](/codex/deuteronomy-18-10-12/)). Saul died partly for consulting a medium ([1 Chronicles 10:13-14](/codex/1-chronicles-10-13-14/)). In Acts, Peter rebukes Simon the sorcerer, Paul casts a spirit of divination out of a fortune-telling slave girl, and new believers in Ephesus burn their magic books ([Acts 19:18-19](/codex/acts-19-18-19/)). **Q: Can a Christian practice chaos magic alongside prayer to Jesus?** No. Scripture rejects divided worship: Elijah demanded that Israel stop "limping between the two sides" ([1 Kings 18:21](/codex/1-kings-18-21/)), and the settlers who "feared Jehovah, and served their own gods" stood under judgment (2 Kings 17:33). When the sons of Sceva used Jesus' name as a magical formula, the evil spirit overpowered them ([Acts 19:13-16](/codex/acts-19-13-16/)). Jesus is Lord, not a paradigm. **Q: If chaos magic gets results, doesn't that prove it is good?** No. The slave girl in [Acts 16:16-18](/codex/acts-16-16-18/) earned her owners "much gain" and told the truth about Paul, yet Paul cast the spirit out of her. Results show that something is happening, not that it is safe or from God. Scripture warns that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light ([2 Corinthians 11:14](/codex/2-corinthians-11-14/)). **Q: Where did chaos magic come from?** It draws on ancient divination and necromancy, Greco-Roman magic, Renaissance grimoires such as the *Key of Solomon* and the *Lesser Key of Solomon* with its seventy-two Goetic spirits, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888), Aleister Crowley's 1904 edition of the *Goetia*, and Austin Osman Spare's sigil method. Peter J. Carroll's *Liber Null* (1978) formalized it as a named system. **Q: How do I help someone get out of chaos magic?** Listen first and take their experiences seriously. Acknowledge the real hunger for power and contact with something beyond the ordinary, and point to Christ as a living Person rather than a technique. Then follow the Ephesian pattern: confession, renunciation, and destroying the tools of the practice ([Acts 19:18-19](/codex/acts-19-18-19/)). See [Authority to Cast Out Demons](/codex/authority-to-cast-out-demons/) for the practical side.