Excellent book to clear up doubts about Chaos Magick

books:


	• Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic Phil Hine New Falcon Publications, 1995 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent book to clear up doubts about Chaos Magick

I started reading and practicing chaos magick around 3 years ago, and there were things that were unclear for me, finally with this book I was able to understand and learn from a different standpoint other than Peter Carroll or Frater UD how to approach the system and apply it better.

Highly recommended..

More confused than condensed

I'm sorry to say, I expected much more from this book.

As another reviewer already mentioned, Condensed Chaos is actually a re-print of a previous, and in my opinion, far better work by the same author called, "Oven-Ready Chaos." I guess by "condensed" he meant to say, additional comments inserted and added on to a pre-existing work.

The confusing aspect comes from the differences in demeanor the author displays in combining the two works. In Oven-Ready Chaos, his writing style is cohesive, comical, and entertaining. Light-heartedly poking fun at "established" forms of magical practice and dogma. In short, it's a great read.

In Condensed Chaos, the book is jovial one moment, and harshly critical the next. It starts out with a wonderful introduction to Chaos Magic and how "Nothing is true. Everything is Permitted." And suddenly changes tone, for instance, when dictating how to create and launch a servitor in very specific, "this is how it's done," terms.

Still, there are aspects I really enjoy in this book. The summoning of GOFLOWOLFOG, the spirit of smooth travel and overcoming traffic jams is a hilarious and useful example of Chaos Magic in practical application. Unfortunately, this is the exception and not the rule when it comes to Condensed Chaos.

Most of it seems to be spent on a method of addressing personal behavioral or emotional problems by labelling them as "demons," and then dealing with them in a variety of ways, as seperate entities within the whole of one's psyche.

I'm sure some people would find this approach helpful. However, when the author sites as one example, a situation in which he exorcises a personal anger demon associated with a fellow co-worker, by calmly, directly, and quite seriously threatening them with bodily harm, I can't help but wonder what happened to that jovial fellow who first wrote Oven-Ready Chaos.

And while he seems to take great pleasure in bashing "New Age" philosophy, which is fine by me, it seems as if he might actually gain some benefit from attending some fluffy little class on communing with dolphins or whatever. After all, as the author repeatedly states, any Chaos Magician worth his salt should be able to adopt and find value in any point of view. Seems to me he could use a little quality time with his Inner Unicorn...

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GreaterChaos

This is a great introduction into chaos magic. It has excellent information and is an easy read no pausing and thinking what the author meant. Highly recommend

Great Book!

I loved this book! The author provided a brief history of Chaos Magic and lots of practical ideas to try out. There were recommendations that I would never of thought of.
Another thing I loved about this book was that it was fun. So many of these books about magic are so serious.

Good material put together badly

Phil Hine knows his stuff and has a lot of tips here that will help the working magician. However, the information is not organised into any coherent structure and the book suffers from repitition, gaps and a lack of overall structure.

His outline on how to create servitors will be helpful to any chaos magician, though it lacks detail.

Much of this book is dedicated to understanding and maturely assessing your desires, rather than just chasing after every whim and obsession. This is vitally important and sadly absent from much other work on chaos magic. The poor editing of this book is again apparent here, as the various methods of analyzing a desire are peppered throughout different parts of the book.

The chapter on ego magic has a lot of wise and practical advice on deconditioning.

The chapter on invocation has its strengths and weaknesses. It discusses the purposes and application of invocation very well, but fails to give a workable description of any effective technique to acheive invocation. Instead, it focuses on the theatrical elements of invocation. These theatrical elements are useful, but only as a complement to an invocation ritual - which this book will not tell you how to do.

The pamphlet that became 'Condensed Chaos' - Oven-Ready Chaos - has much of the best material contained in 'Condensed Chaos', and is available on Phil Hine's website. Still, if you're serious about chaos magic, you should buy this book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Magic is a doorway through which we step into mystery, wildness, and immanence. We live in a world subject to extensive and seemingly, all-embracing systems of social and personal control that continually feed us the lie that we are each alone, helpless, and powerless to effect change. Magic is about change. Changing your circumstances so that you strive to live according to a developing sense of personal responsibility; that you can effect change around you if you choose; that we are not helpless cogs in some clockwork universe. All acts of personal/collective liberation are magical acts. Magic leads us into exhilaration and ecstasy; into insight and understanding; into changing ourselves and the world in which we participate. Through magic we may come to explore the possibilities of freedom.

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