Chaos magic, a radical and near impossible practice to completely define, has started to gain more traction amongst modern-day magicians and occultists. Emerging in the UK in the 1970s alongside the punk movement, chaos magic took a radical approach to the occult, reimagining typical magical doctrine and practice. Unlike other occult orders, chaos magicians weren’t concerned with ornate robes or hierarchical structure, but with magic and ritual in its purest form. 

Chaos magic believes the cosmos is in constant flux. Any order of reality – cognitive, perceptual, epistemological or moral – is subject to chaos. As a result, chaos magicians have created their own idiosyncratic magical systems and frequently borrow from an eclectic mixture of post-modernist and post-structuralist thought, as well as other magical traditions, religious movements, popular culture and various strands of philosophy. Eclectic in nature, pagan gods were given the same level of importance as rock stars, pop culture figures and fictional characters, and reality is seen as a field of overlapping belief systems. 

“Chaos magicians distrust that one idea applies to all groups or people,” says Andrieh Vitimus, a chaos magician and author of Hands-On Chaos Magic. For him, chaos magic relies on results rather than universalised notions of truth, in turn creating a practice that is more accessible, as well as more personal. Practitioners are not tied to specific tools, or doctrine, which allows a greater group of people to practise without financial constraints or tetherings to un-changing belief systems. This makes it particularly useful for the modern practitioner, says Luxa Strata, chaos magician and creator of podcast Lux Occult.

“It offers multiple ways of contextualising one’s experiences in various frameworks, mixing both ancient and modern symbols,” Strata explains. This means using whatever works for you, “whether that be Pokemon or tarot cards, chaos magic allows for total flexibility, that is more accessible than translating someone else’s way of thinking”. In the internet-driven consumer culture of late modernity, where identities and belief systems often feel prescribed, chaos magic offers an individualised approach to meaning-making, that does not exclude narratives that deviate from the norm. 

In line with being a creative practice, chaos magicians believe that almost anything, with the correct intention, can be used to achieve magical ends. For example, even a random arrangement of cigarette butts in an ashtray could be seen as a useful divinatory tool, or the tube window could be used for scrying. The mundane is interpreted within the sacred, and magical power is grounded in tedium: spending long periods practising breathing, or finding magical tools in the banal. The aim is to successfully execute an act of magic by bypassing the conscious mind, and the tools needed to get there are up to the discretion of the practitioner. 

Embracing the sacred within the banal, chaos magicians have a constant awareness that things like tools, language and morality are not inherent truths. Magical tools are simply a means to an end. One of my more notable initiatory pulls toward chaos magic was a dream I had where my favourite deck of tarot cards was on fire. A voice in the dream told me I had become too attached to the cards themselves rather than realising they were in fact mundane objects that held a higher meaning. I opened a drawer filled with rubber bands, broken shells and old sweet wrappers. The dream told me if I was a true mystic, I could read with anything, even the objects in the drawer, and if I was too attached to my cards, I would find nothing of importance.

In chaos magic, the magical imagination becomes a tool in itself. There is no ‘temple’ or set order of tools, for the real chaos magicians accept their own inner temple, and know that the tools in themselves are not powerful, but hold power. This creates a uniquely hybridised system of beliefs attuned to a social reality perceived as chaotic and fragmentary and pop-culture lead, whilst also creating a healthy distance between ourselves and symbols of power. 

“You as an individual have to be chaotic, otherwise you are going against the universe,” says chaos magician Jason. “Nature to me, is your own personal nature and the nature of the cosmos.” Chaos magicians, like Jason, embrace the inherent chaos of modern-day life, and integrate it into their practice rather than allow it to alienate them. In this sense, the gnostic aims of the practice seek to transcend the alienating conditions of modern existence by acting in accordance with its inherent unpredictability – rather than resisting it. Instead of containing the unknown, or becoming overly identified with the methodologies that seek to explain it, chaos magicians are constantly open to the Crowlean and Nietzschean notion that none of this could be true, and thus everything is permitted.  

Almost 50 years on from the chaos magic intrigue of the 70s, we have seen a resurgence of people turning to magical practices such as chaos magic. So why are so many more people turning to this subculture of occult practice, and finding deep meaning within the ideals it provides? Arguably, it is because chaos magic represents a response to qualitatively new forms of social, cultural and cosmological uncertainty, something that mainstream institutions or organised religions might fail to do in the same way.  Chaos magic provides the opportunity for people to make their own meaning out of all the chaos that persists in this undecided and ever-changing world. They believe that where the only certainty is uncertainty, there is freedom, and where there is freedom, there must also be magic.

CHAOS MAGIC RITUALS 

In addition to understanding its philosophies, there are some classic chaos magical rituals you can try. The most well-known is sigil work, which involves working with created symbols to achieve a goal. The tag “magic sigils” has over 1.3bn views on TikTok – being heralded by the WitchTok girlies as: “the most powerful manifesting tool”, with several videos warning about sigils’ potency. 

To create a sigil, first write down what you wish to obtain in capital letters, then eliminate repeat letters and rearrange the lasting letters to create a symbol of your choosing. You can overlap letters if you wish (see diagram above). Then burn the piece of paper with the original mantra and forget it entirely. Focus now only on the sigil. Meditate on it, keep it where you see it, or focus on it when you reach orgasm. Do so for as long as you see fit.

Once the sigil has been created, the most important part is to forget the original aim completely, relinquishing it to the chaotic cosmos. This way, the intention falls into the unconscious, who chaos magicians and Freudeans alike, believe we really are. 

Another divinatory method chaos magicians might use is bibliomancy, the ancient act of divining through books that date back to the 1700s. You can do this by first asking a question, then making a numbered list of a few random books you have. Roll a dice to choose the book, and then roll it again to a page that will hold your answer. Using a similar technique, Stevie Nicks channelled the spirit of a Welsh witch and goddess of birds from the book Triad by Mary Leader. Though she had spontaneously found this book on the sofa of someone’s house, it would later inspire the song “Rhiannon”. 

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