5 - Perennialism and Iconoclasm: Chaos Magick and the Legitimacy of Innovation

Summary

Chaos Magick is an innovation of twentieth-century occultism that draws influence from a variety of sources, including occultists such as Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare. It began in the late 1970s with the publication of Peter Carroll's Liber Null and Ray Sherwin's The Book of Results in 1978. These seminal texts would form the theoretical and practical underpinnings for a second wave of authors in the mid-1980s. Some of these later texts provided a critical evaluation of the development of Chaos Magick and firmly established it within the discourse on twentieth-century occultism. There have been very few scholarly commentaries on Chaos Magick, and most of those that have been produced lack the methodological and theoretical components required to build common terminology and further understanding. Of the scholars who have commented on Chaos Magick, Dave Evans has proved to be the most thorough with the historical analysis he offers in The History of British Magick After Crowley, despite his claim that an accurate overall history of Chaos Magick “may not yet be possible”. Richard Sutcliffe's article “Left-Hand Path Ritual Magick: An Historical and Philosophical Overview” gives a description of Chaos Magick as one of the currents of Left-Hand Path Magick, but does not focus on it specifically. This shortfall of scholarly attention, particularly from within the field of Western esotericism, prompted the research on which this chapter is based.