Can Chaos Magick, a system designed to be antinomian, individualistic and basically, chaotic be institutionalised? Can you be initiated into an magical order that is against order? Magical beliefs are full of paradoxes so perhaps we should not be surprised. If we look at the history of the Illuminates of Thanateros we might gain some insight into what happened. We find a magical order with, texts, initiations, degrees of membership, etc. but with systems to keep it from becoming dogmatic and ossified. Did it work? Well the leaders left around the Ice Magick War – talk about chaos!
Summary
Chaos Magick is known for its rejection of hierarchical structures and dogmatic beliefs. Yet, it gave rise to the magical organization The Illuminates of Thanateros.
Is this a paradox? Can Chaos be institutionalised? What is the history and structure of this system?
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Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University Lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magic, Paganism, Shamanism, Esotericism, and all things occult.
Thanks to a new research output by Dr Bernd-Christian Otto, who you may remember from a past interview, here on the channel, we have new academic scholarship on Chaos Magick. And indeed, this study will be the source of today’s video, tackling the IoT.
Considering the Philosophical system underpinning Chaos Magick, the foundation of the IoT was more the exception than the rule’. A loose network like ‘Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth’ could be seen as more suited to the ideological inclination of this magical tradition, just like the other common social organisations formed within the Chaos Magick milieu of the 1970s and 1980s (Otto, 2019, p.762).
It is commonly believed that Chaos Magick was born in 1978 with the publication of “Liber Null” by Peter J Carroll and the “Book of Results” by Ray Sherwin. However, at that time the conversation had already been going for some time as demonstrated by the first appearance of Sherwin’s journal “The New Equinox” in 1976, a clear echo of Aleister Crowley’s “The Equinox” founded in 1909.
In 1976 and 1977, Carroll and Sherwin had already declared, in The New Equinox, the foundation of a new order focussed on the practice of magic and called The Illuminates of Thanateros. Thanateros, Carroll explains in his Liber Null, takes its name from the god of sex, Eros, and the god of death, Thanatos.
So, the birth of Chaos Magic in a way coincides with the birth of the IoT, even though the organisation became really active in 1986. It’s also key to highlight that Chaos Magick has always been much broader than the IoT and only a small number of Chaos Magicians were and are members of it (Otto, 2019, pp.762–763).
Indeed an outline of the history of the order is offered in a document entitled “The Secrets of the Illuminates of Thanateros”, also called “The Book,” available in two different versions, 2002 and 2014.
According to the 2002 version, ‘is accepted by all Sections and all Pact members as valid’ (Illuminates of Thanateros 2002, 14), the IoT was, soon after its foundation in 1976, 1977, ‘rarely more than a loose correspondence network and a few people meeting for rituals in East Morton’ (ibid., 6).
It was only in the mid-1980s that the IoT turned into a fully operating order with regular group rituals and occasional meetings at different places, seeing short-term group formations and dissolutions.
Peter Carroll (also known as ‘Frater Stokastikos’ in the IoT) established a temple in Bristol in 1982, the ‘The Bristol C.H.A.O.S. Temple’ or ‘Cabal Heraclitus’ (ibid.), which remained operative until Carroll’s resignation.
If we exclude another small short-lived group with approximately 8 to 14 members (The “Circle of Chaos”, 1984 or 87), the IoT, as we know it today, could be said to have started as a result of a public seminar in Bonn-Ramersdorf, held by Peter Carroll and a German practitioner called Ralph Tegtmeier in 1986 (b. 1952, also known as ‘Frater U∴D∴’).
This seminar saw different tests being performed, and the practitioners who were able to pass got invited to a ‘Mass of Chaos’, where a new magical order was attested to have formed.
This event was also called ‘The Founding of the Pact’ or just ‘The Pact’.
In the official IoT calendar, 1986 is thus the year Zero. The re-formation of the now re-named “Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros” was announced in another manifesto called “The Pact/Liber Pactionis,” which was published in August 1987 in the journal Chaos International. The same event led to the formation of a UK section, the ‘UK Pact Temple’ which was in London along with the formation of a German-speaking section that included, at the same time, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The first ‘World Pact Meeting’ was held in Austria in August 1987, and 25 new members were initiated. These meetings have been held ever since, with the 28th AGM being held in Germany in 2014.
In the years following 1986, various independent national sections or ‘satrapies’, as they were called (Illuminates of Thanateros 2002, 3), were founded in different places, such as Bulgaria, Brazil, Denmark, and Holland.
So, was the IoT trying to institutionalise the religious individualisation so dear to Chaos Magic as a whole?
Not quite! as the order aimed to be: (one) anti-hierarchical; (two) anti-dogmatic; and (three) anti-secret. Concerning the first issue, the IoT attempted to overcome power imbalances thanks to the institution of the ‘Insubordinate.
Third or Higher Degree member of each Temple, whose aim was to check and ridicule possible abuse and dogmatic behaviour
Otto, 2019, pp.776
The IoT is comprised of four standard degrees – Neophyte (4°), Initiate (3°), Adept (2°), and Magus (1°) – and a range of other offices (see Illuminates of Thanateros 2002, 13–4; the 2014 version differs slightly: The Council of the Magi 2014, 6).
Interesting to notice that in IoT they claim that ‘rising within the hierarchy and mastery is based on actual magical and organisational achievements’ endorsing some kind of ‘magical meritocracy’.
Even though each IOT section or group was encouraged to operate freely, independently, and creatively to mirror the ethos of Chaos Magick, there were standardised practices for individual and group rituals. Especially for the first degree, the Neophyte (4°), a summary of basic techniques is provided in the “Liber MMM,” part of Carroll’s “Liber Null.”
As explained in a previous video and hereby Otto, the book includes instructions on mind control, visualisation techniques, Sigil magic, dream control and divination.
As for group rituals, some instructions are presented in Carroll’s “Psychonaut,” including the five ‘Rites of Chaos’, with the ‘Mass of Chaos’ being described as the most important. The group ritual here described is aimed at raising ‘a particular manifestation of energy for inspiration, divination, or communion with particular domains of consciousness’ as well as to ‘modify physical reality’ (ibid., 130).
This would consist of six steps, revolving around group invocations of Chaos, here understood as an entity and Baphomet, here understood as ‘the representation of the terrestrial life-current.’
The purpose of having a structured group activity – in an individually-tailored system such as that of Chaos Magick – is to generate more power than individual efforts might achieve.
That said, Peter Carroll always encouraged experimentation, being creative and research-oriented when engaging with group rituals, rather than being rigidly adherent to a fixed model.
In this sense, we can see that, despite the tendencies of ritual standardisation within the IoT, the experimental, creative and individualist approach still appears to prevail.
And indeed it is precisely the anti-hierarchical, anti-dogmatic, individualist and experimental agenda of the IoT which may have led to the schism in the early 1990s.
‘After all – as Urban highlighted – an organised movement of Chaos Magic is inherently contradictory and could only logically end by dismantling itself in its own act of total liberation’ (Urban 2006, 243).
Around 1986 Ray Sherwin already resigned from the order by excommunicating himself as he felt that the Order was slipping into the power structure that he had intended to avoid. Peter Carroll also backed out from the IoT shortly after the Ice Magick War, though it was only in 2016 that he ‘publicly announced the withdrawal of support for the organisation.’
We might perhaps dedicate a future video to the IoT major schism known as the Ice Magick War. Well, if you let me know in the comments that you’re interested, that is!
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REFERENCES
Otto, B.-C. (2019) The Illuminates of Thanateros and the institutionalisation of religious individualisation. In: M. Fuchs, A. Linkenbach, M. Mulsow, B.-C. Otto, R. B. Parson, & J. Rüpke eds. Religious Individualisation. De Gruyter, pp.759–796. Available from: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110580853-038/html.
Urban, Hugh. 2006. Magia sexualis: Sex, Magic and Liberation in modern Western Esotericism.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Primary Source
Illuminates of Thanateros. 2002. The Book: Illuminates of Thanateros: The Truth, http://www.pauladaunt.com/books/Illuminates_of_Thanateros.pdf
First uploaded 2 Nov 2021