kaos

own approach to the creation of magical objects and the strange spontaneous processes
I subject them to before they are finished, which makes use of what is to hand, and,
more to the point, what is to hand is always exactly what is needed if you’re in the
juxtapositional-magick way of looking. The astonishing ideas one has that are simply
“perfect” to create the desired magical effect, I use a lot of burning, for instance, and
scorching, and soot-wafting from flames, and wood-cutting, and rubbing in of aloes
wood ash, and beeswax, and use of pigments such as pyrrole red and of course blood,
my own blood, and semen, and the milky sap of dandelion stems, or perhaps a moth
may stray near the lamp I am working under and briefly coat the back of my hand with
a touch of mothwing dust, what a find in the middle of an act of juxtapositional magick!
What does that represent?! Bloody obvious! Use it! Sudden thought, are the lilacs in
bloom yet, should it smell of lilacs, well let’s see if they’re in bloom and out I rush into
the garden in the mad frenzy of juxtapositional magick, no they’re not, they’re not, but
look at the way that centipede is moving on the stones, good god it’s drawing a sigil,
draw that sigil NOW! Draw it on the object in your own blood, slash your palm with a
blade and draw out blood and do it now and I’m commanded so I do it! And so it goes
on. THIS is juxtapositional magick! And so when I tell her like this about some of the
juxtapositional magical objects I have created and the way I have created them she
wonders why I never bring any of this kind of “art” along to the group, just my paintings,
and of course I say: “Er, well, because that’s magick, that’s not art…”
This is not to say that juxtapositional magick is simply about the creation of magical
objects, more it is about the way they are created.
Pansamsara: I’m so so glad that you have written all of this stuff. I feel like you have
handed back to me something I chucked out because I was scared that I was “loosing
it”. What you call “juxtapositional magick” was what I initially thought “chaos magick”
was about—directly working my own meanings. Then I just got confused by reading
too much chaos literature (never quite got over the intellectualism of it all). I used to be
an artist of sorts when I left school and so am familiar with frenzied moments of creation.
It was stupid to try and strait-jacket those abilities like I seem to have done. Thanks
Joel, now I may need never read another “how to do” book again. It’s as I suspected way
back. This all integrates so well with where I am at now. Well timed, thanks again.
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