It’s all old hat
By Psyche | August 24, 2009 | Print This Post | E-mail This Post | 3 Comments
I posted earlier about attending L’Heure Noir, a series of workshops with Andrieh Vitimus followed by a masquerade. The workshops were a lot of fun, as was the masquerade, but at one point a masked man came up to Andrieh, a little nervously, and said the book was “ok”, but it was “nothing new”. This annoyed me.
I felt it was rude, and responded in kind before electing to remove myself from the conversation. The man quite obviously wanted to speak with Andrieh, and I hadn’t even read the book. It clearly wasn’t my place to argue. I stepped out.
At the time I took it for impolite, but now, having read more of Hands-On Chaos Magic, it also entirely overlooks the purpose for which it was written. Indeed, in the first paragraph of the first chapter Andrieh acknowledges that what’s in here isn’t necessarily unique– that’s not why he wrote the book. Complaining that there’s “nothing new” is misguided for (at least) two reasons.
Point the First: It’s all old hat
Human beings have limited senses through which to interact with the world, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that similarities arise. There are only so many ways to do some things.
For instance – to take an example at random from the book – everyone writing about energy work does energy balls. There’s a reason for this: they work. They’re simple, easy to create, and everyone can do them. Creating trapezoids or dodecahedron may have been tried, but they’re not as easy to envision on your first go.
Likewise, when cultural crossovers occur, one shouldn’t be surprised that several people have – quite independently – come up with the same “unique” take on an idea. In conversation about how pop culture has influenced magickal practice, particularly among new chaotes, I used an offhand example of a Pokemon quabalah derived from the zee some ten years hence. I can’t distinguish one pika-polka from another, but the example served.1 I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that Andrieh had written about something very similar.
In Neal Stephenson’s Anathem he called it Saunt Lora’s Proposition after a long-dead character in the novel. It describes the idea that all ideas have been thought of at some point before. The proposition was further demonstrated to be true when a student of Saunt Lora’s discovered the proposition itself had arisen independently in the past!
Ideas that seem novel and innovative usually aren’t. It says a lot about someone when they acknowledge this up front and continue to cheerfully share what they’ve learned and worked with, regardless of point of origin.
Point B, also called Two: That’s not why it got published
Andreih’s intention in creating the book was to produce a book that teaches the fundamentals he feels are necessary for magickal practice. In this the book certainly succeeds, with more than a hundred hands-on exercises that can readily be practiced by anyone with the inclination to do so.
Chaos magick isn’t about “new”, it’s an approach to magickal practice that recombines techniques to produce a desired outcome. The purpose of Andrieh’s book is to develop those techniques. They’re not new, they’re fundamental. This is why the book exists.
Conclusion
No, everything in it isn’t shiny and new to some such grand magus, yet even so, I’m willing to bet that amongst the hundreds of exercises given, there are at least a few untried.
In the unlikely event that this is not the case, at the very least the reader can feel comfortable recommending it to the Nu Kaos Kids, ’cause, baby, you’ve seen it all and done it all.
Amiright?2
Footnotes:
- Remember your Crowley, kids, “You must construct your own qabalah!“ [back]
- Formal review to be posted later on SpiralNature.com. [back]
Psyche is the editor of ahrfoundation.org and the curator for the occult resource SpiralNature.com, Psyche also operates a tarot consultation business, Psyche Tarot. She has been published in The Cauldron, Konton, Tarot World Magazine, among other magazines, and her essay “Strategic Magick” appeared in Manifesting Prosperity (Megalithica, 2008).
Psyche's website is http://www.ahrfoundation.org.
Well, you know that guy apologized to me later.
Basically, when he was not around his friend who had nice big tits, slender thighs and well probably one to many rituals with Lilith to make sure men noticed and worshipper all the time.
And yep that’s exactly what it was about, looking hard core infront of a friend you wanted to sleep with ( or so he made it seem).
There is probably alot people have seen before, where I hope I have succeeded a little better, is getting people to think about how to put those techniques together in a different light, how to think abotu building techniques, and how to use the jigsaw of techniques to morph and create new techniques. That I dont see in many books. How the techniques actually work together and the most innovative thing, I hope… isnt that I share the techniques, but build a system you can practice to actually develop and use the techniques as opposed to well, book knowledge. Funny I wrote a book to inspire experiential knowledge even though its a book. Cosmic Irony.
Just like Lego blocks.
Ah, I must’ve missed the big breasted companion. Even the Nu Kaos Kids are assholes! (I must finish that write up.)
It was still rude.
Yeah well, we talked about the whole asshole thing. I still am not a fan, but I guess more then one person has called me an asshole in my time. I guess its a difference between being an asshole, and having a point.