Hermeticism and Chaos Magick: Blending a Philosophy and a Practice

Hermeticism is a positive-oriented mystical philosophy for living that includes seven general principles to help guide your life. Its principles have been recognized by world-renowned occult personalities in the past, but its wisdom is down-to-earth and easy to understand. Anyone can put it to use in whatever way that works for them. 

While hermeticism can be thought of as a philosophy, chaos magick is a mystical practice. Chaos magick is a practical, results-oriented type of sorcery that anyone can use in everyday life. You need not be an occultist to get something out of it. Together, hermeticism and chaos magick can provide a spiritual philosophy as well as spiritual practice. 

Hermeticism

As mentioned above, hermetics has seven basic principles: Mentalism, Correspondence, Polarity, Vibration, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender. We’ll be talking about mentalism and correspondence and how they relate to chaos magick. Mentalism is the concept that All is Mind or consciousness. So, instead of matter being the foundation of reality, consciousness, mind, or thought is the actual basis of everything. It might be difficult to accept this claim, but it is useful to recognize that we have the power to change our reality, starting with a thought. We do it without thinking and have done it all our lives. Sometimes in a positive way, and unfortunately, sometimes in a negative fashion. 

Now, if All Is Mind, then Correspondence is the path to access change and improvement. The Emerald Tablet, the source of the information for hermeticism has a passage that says, “That which is above is like that which is below and that which is below is like that which is above.” One corresponds to the other. This implies that what we think in our head can manifest in the external world. So put out good thoughts, and watch good things appear! And remember to keep that negativity in check.  

Chaos Magick

Enter chaos magick. Chaos magick is free-form sorcery or witchcraft if you will. You can also consider it a type of prayer or self-hypnosis. Magick, prayer, and hypnosis are practical ways to create change in your life through mental and spiritual means. And hermeticism’s Mentalism and Correspondence are the “how” it gets done. 

There are two main magickal operations with chaos magick: Sigils and servitors. Sigils are magickal spells encoded into a symbol–a word, a sound–whatever you decide. A servitor is a thought form considered to be a magical servant of some sort. 

Sigils

We’ll start out in this post with sigils. Often, a sigil is a symbol drawn on a piece of paper or created on a sigil generator website. A phrase or sentence of intent is reduced to a symbol and then launched into your subconscious (that Mentalism thing–All is Mind–from hermetics), the subconscious being–the “well of all reality”–of which you are part. 

So, you could take a sentence like, “I am at a healthy weight,” take the first letter of each word, IAAAHW, rearrange them into a word like WHIAAA, and then launch it. The reason for encoding it into a word like Whiaaa is that your logical mind has probably been programmed by society to say that magick is impossible. 

Remembering “as above, so below,” your logical mind is going to say, “That’s baloney. I am not at a healthy weight,” so that negative message is being sent to the universal subconscious to be manifested. Encoding a statement of will into a sigil or symbol prevents this “Negative Nelly,” or psychic censor, as it is known, from resisting the change you want; in this case, to lose weight. When you launch it, your logical mind hears “Whiaaa” instead of your request to be at a healthy weight. Whiaaa can’t be denied, repressed, or challenged because it is meaningless.

Launching. So how do you launch a sigil? Launching it amounts to entering an altered state of consciousness in order to further anesthetize the logical mind/psychic censor. At that point, you put the sigil in your mind by staring at it, singing the word in your head, or in some way presenting it to the You-niverse. 

Altered states: Chaos magick talks about gnosis a lot. Gnosis, or the gnostic state, or an altered state, or an over-excited state, or an over-relaxed state will do. The state where your logical mind has been suspended for a moment works. Pagans call this “raising power.” Professional hypnotists put their patients in a relaxed state to suggest change. Someone can enter an altered state via prayer. So prayer can work but probably for different reasons than God watching over us. 

“What happens if I remember what Whiaaa means when I’m launching the sigil?!?!”

You could wait a few weeks to cast it to try and forget it, or you could make a whole bunch of sigils for every life improvement you want to make, then cast ‘em all at once, whatever does a better job at confusing the psychic censor. You could post your pretty sigil on Facebook or Reddit and let 100,000 people help you launch it unknowingly. The bottom line for magick is this: the belief that it will work is key.

And eat fewer cookies. 

Further info: Google Phil Hine, Oven Ready Chaos, sigil generator, sigil creation, psychic censor, gnosis in chaos magick. 

We will further discuss hermeticism and chaos magick in the next installment. 

Smoke Rider

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