kaos

following though. For rank beginners, the juxtaposition of ideas according to a set
pattern like Kabbalah is a tool for seeing connections in the world that were, previously,
invisible. Now, I am not touting any one system or systems in general, only pointing out
that new ways of thinking arise from rearrangements of connected symbols (whether
they be ideas or physical objects existing in space).
For me juxtapositional magick is how I create music. The compositional control is
loosened so that the Universe can create through me. Each instrument is more or less
channelled, and interactions, mostly “accidental”, occur that Could Not Be Written
Out. No compositional system can hold them, or spew them out, because each system
is based on arbitrary restrictions which keep things from happening. In fact, it has been
my staunch refusal to learn a musical theory that has allowed me to explore in realms
no music theory can touch, so from that point of view, the system becomes a hindrance
to the manifestation of willed forms. All things that come out of these systems will
always be an extension of the relationships in the given system and will miss the multitude
of relationships not covered by the system. The results, for me, are always more real if I
abandon system constraints and just do.
Joel, you may not relate to this music analogy, but you do a type of visual art which,
I bet, bears relation to this type of magick.
Joel Biroco: Oh absolutely, and I was discussing this very point with some artist friends
only last night and gave a kind of spontaneous lecture on the relation between
juxtapositional magick and the creation of art. The essential difference is that in magick
there is a purpose in the creation of an object beyond aesthetics, in juxtapositional
magick the creation of an object is the means not the end. I suspect artists may grasp
the actual “doing” of juxtapositional magick more than many occultists, but not grasp
the magical side of what they are doing and not know how to use that for specific
magical ends. I have seen this many times in the artists’ group to which I belong and
often wish that occultists had this kind of talent for what is really magick, particularly
in performance art, quite a few of the members including myself having an interest in
performance art. One girl astonishes me every time with the sheer originality of her
created objects (cutting open an apple, staining the inside with red food dye and placing
a pomegranate in the cored-out centre, and stapling it back together like a Frankenstein
apple which she opens up to show us, all of her objects she opens up layer by layer to
show us, or she might bake silver foil spiders in Cornish pasty cases, or place a lightbulb
and sunflower seeds inside a hollowed-out loaf, stoppering it with a bread brain, and
her use of mold, and hair, and other found materials) and I have had conversations with
her about how I identify her manner of creation of art objects as being similar to my
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