Eleganza by Spears of Shiva
The Evolution of Magic
By Taylor Ellwood
When I get the occasional interview from a podcast or magazine, one
misperception I often need to correct is the association people make
with my work and chaos magic. I suppose because chaos magic used to be
the latest current of magic and one that seemingly represented avant
garde magic, people find it easier to lump my work into chaos magic.
Admittedly at one time, briefly, I identified as a chaote. But in the
last five or so years, I came to recognize that chaos magic wasn’t
quite the apt descriptor of what I do. While some of the practices I
utilize are derived from chaos magic, I also draw much more extensively
on ceremonial and hermetic practices as well as Far Eastern techniques.
Even more importantly, much of my magical practice is now derived from
disciplines that have little if any overt connection to magic, such as
semiotics, literacy, linguistics, social practice, cultural studies,
psychology, neuroscience, and physics.
While it is somewhat fashionable in certain chaos magic circles to
utilize physics (Peter Carroll comes to mind) in magical practice, for
the most part these other disciplines haven’t really been integrated
into magical practices, beyond the occasional magical alphabet that
springs up. Patrick Dunn, Wes Unruh, Edward Wilson, and to a lesser
extent Bill Whitcomb have written about semiotics, memetics, and magic.
Phil Farber has written a work about blending NLP, neuroscience, and
magic together. And there is my own writing, which has also focused on
blending non-occult disciplines into occult practices. Beyond that
there isn’t much literature that shows how to integrate practices
from
other disciplines into magical work.
Some might argue that drawing on disciplines outside of traditional
occultism is not relevant to what they do and they could even be right,
but I think such an attitude signals something of the stagnation I’ve
long felt is part of the occulture. For all that we might view
ourselves as a radical counter-culture (with the associated meaning of
experiments and progress), the question that I find myself asking is,
“What is the relevance of counter culture to magical practices?” The
answer is that any relevance is arbitrary. The counter culture status
of occultism is really just a cherished image some hold on to show how
cool and radical they are. However such an image doesn’t guarantee any
real progress in occult thinking or experimentation and this is fairly
evident by the lack of genuine progress in the occult literature we
have available to us. The majority of books currently published are
mostly focused on rehashing what has already been written. We see this
in the profusion of 101 books that range from Wicca to ceremonial magic
to energy work, to neoshamanism to chaos magic. Where is the
innovation, experimentation, or evolution of magic in merely rehashing
what has already been written? For that matter where is the
experimentation in replicating
what someone else has done?
I usually identify my approach to magic as experimental magic. My
approach doesn’t draw on chaos magic beyond particular sigil and entity
techniques (and even those have been modified extensively), and the use
of paradigmal piracy in my pop culture workings. I don’t perceive my
blending of non-occult disciplines as paradigmal piracy, because a lot
more is involved than just swapping different religious beliefs for
each day of the week. Experimental magic is the rigorous creation and
application of new and modernized systems of magic that also utilize
principles and practices from other disciplines. The experimentation
aspect arises out of the creation of new systems of magical practice,
with little being derived from traditional occult correspondences and
practices beyond the bare bones of techniques which can be adapted to
these new systems. Instead of relying on traditional deities, rituals,
or meditations, the magician seeks to create new practices based on
concepts from multi-media, semiotics, linguistics, neuroscience, and
other disciplines. The magician then tests these new practices to
determine if they can work or if they need refinement.
In chaos magic, the focus is primarily on obtaining results, and it is
sometimes argued that we don’t need to know how magic works, so long as
it does work. In experimental magic the emphasis is not on obtaining
results. Instead the focus is on developing, understanding, and
refining the process by which a result occurs. Results are considered
to be signs which indicate if you are going in the right direction or
if you need to go back to the drawing board.
Experimental magic is the next step in the evolution of magic. The
focus has moved away from ceremony and ritual, and from an open-handed
approach to magical practice and instead focuses on looking at how
magical practice can be defined and refined as a process. However
spirituality and working with deities and demons is not left out of
that equation. Nor are the practices of the past denied. Working with
deities and demons and spirituality in general is an influence that is
readily acknowledged in experimental magic, as opposed to being written
off as a psychological phenomenon as occurs in chaos magic. The
traditions and practices of the past are acknowledged as influences
that can help refine the process by how magic is worked. Indeed,
sometimes the most innovative practice of magic is found by
experimenting with what others did and improving upon it. But just as
importantly, experimental magic emphasizes using the techniques derived
in other disciplines as a way of further refining and understanding how
magic works.
For magic to continue to be a viable discipline, it must continue to
evolve with the times and situations that inform its use. It must also
continue to evolve as the other disciplines in the humanities, arts,
and sciences continue to evolve. The practice of magic should not be
static, because magic is not a religious practice, even if it is
sometimes affiliated with religions (Religions can change, but they
tend to change much more slowly due to dogma). Indeed, when
practitioners find themselves relying overly much on how magic was
defined in the past, they should be wary of such reliance, for it
signals a dogmatic adherence to the past, and can lead to less
questioning and experimentation.
The experimental magician does not believe in the efficacy of dogma.
Even when a magical process seems to have been refined as far as it can
be taken, we are still left with the questions, “How could I experiment
with this process further?”, and “Is there another method I can use to
obtain this result?” For the experimental magician, the question is the
answer, because the question generates the demand to experiment, to
test, and to refine how magic is worked. The evolution of magic stops
when there are no more questions to be asked,
and no more answers to be
found.
Experimental magic, as a current all its own, is concerned ultimately
with how to evolve the practice of magic through fostering a better
understanding of how magic works as well as how the processes of magic
can be melded with the contemporary practices of other disciplines. As
such, I would like to announce the formation of the Magician
Experimenter Guild, which is focused primarily on defining and
experimenting with the processes of magic. Interested parties should
contact me at taylor@spiralnature.com
for more information.
Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop
Culture Magick, Space/Time Magic,
Inner Alchemy, and Multi-Media Magic. He is also the co-author of
Creating Magickal Entities and Kink Magic. For more information about
him, visit http://www.thegreenwolf.com or
http://magicalexperiments.wordpress.com
