﻿Chaos Magick is known for its rejection of hierarchical structures and dogmatic beliefs.
Yet, it gave rise to the magical organization The Illuminates of Thanateros.
Is this a paradox? Can Chaos be institutionalised? What is the history and structure of this system?
Don’t worry! I’ve got you covered!
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Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University
Lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magic, Paganism,
Shamanism, Esotericism, and all things occult.
Thanks to a new research output by Dr Bernd-Christian Otto, who you may remember
from a past interview, here on the channel, we have new academic scholarship on Chaos Magick.
And indeed, this study will be the source of today’s video, tackling the IOT.
Considering the Philosophical system underpinning Chaos Magick, the foundation of the IOT was more
the exception than the rule’. A loose network like ‘Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth’ could be seen as
more suited to the ideological inclination of this magical tradition, just like the
other common social organisations formed within the Chaos Magick milieu of the 1970s and 1980s.
It is commonly believed that Chaos Magick was born in 1978 with the publication of “Liber Null” by
Peter J Carroll and the “Book of Results” by Ray Sherwin. However, at that time the conversation
had already been going for some time as demonstrated by the first appearance of Sherwin’s
journal “The New Equinox” in 1976, a clear echo of Aleister Crowley’s “The Equinox” founded in 1909.
In 1976 and 1977, Carroll and Sherwin had already declared, in The New Equinox,
the foundation of a new order focussed on the practice of magic and called
The Illuminates of Thanateros. Thanateros, Carroll explains in his Liber Null,
takes its name from the god of sex, Eros, and the god of death, Thanatos.
So, the birth of Chaos Magic in a way coincides with the birth of the IOT,
even though the organisation became really active in 1986.
It’s also key to highlight that Chaos Magick has always been much broader than the IOT
and only a small number of Chaos Magicians were and are members of it.
As Otto explains, when reconstructing the history
of the IOT we only have primary sources at the moment, meaning documentation produced by the
community and hardly any historical study to verify the accuracy of the information.
Indeed an outline of the history of the order is offered in a document
entitled “The Secrets of the Illuminates of Thanateros”, also called “The Book,” available
in two different versions, 2002 and 2014. According to the 2002 version, ‘is accepted
by all Sections and all Pact members as valid’, the IOT was, soon after its foundation in 1976,
1977, ‘rarely more than a loose correspondence network and a few
people meeting for rituals in East Morton.’ It was only in the mid-1980s that the IOT
turned into a fully operating order with regular group rituals and occasional meetings
at different places, seeing short-term group formations and dissolutions.
Peter Carroll (also known as ‘Frater Stokastikos’ in the IOT) established a temple in Bristol
in 1982, the ‘The Bristol C.H.A.O.S. Temple’ or ‘Cabal Heraclitus,’ which
remained operative until Carroll’s resignation. If we exclude another small short-lived group
with approximately 8 to 14 members (The ‘Circle of Chaos’, 1984 or 87), the IOT, as we know it today,
could be said to have started as a result of a public seminar in Bonn-Ramersdorf,
held by Peter Carroll and a German practitioner called Ralph Tegtmeier in 1986.
This seminar saw different tests being performed, and the practitioners who were able to pass
got invited to a ‘Mass of Chaos’, where a new magical order was attested to have formed.
This event was also called ‘The Founding of the Pact’ or just ‘The Pact’.
In the official IOT calendar, 1986 is thus the year Zero. The re-formation of the now
re-named “Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros” was announced in another manifesto
called “The Pact/Liber Pactionis,” which was published in August 1987 in the journal
Chaos International. The same event led to the formation of a UK section, the ‘UK Pact Temple’
which was in London along with the formation of a German-speaking section that included, at
the same time, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The first ‘World Pact Meeting’ was held in Austria
in August 1987, and 25 new members were initiated. These meetings have been held ever since,
with the 28th AGM was held in Germany in 2014. In the years following 1986, various independent
national sections or ‘satrapies’, as they were called, were founded in different places,
such as in Bulgaria, Brazil, Denmark, Holland. So, was the IOT trying to institutionalise
the religious individualisation so dear to Chaos Magic as a whole?
Not quite! as the order aimed to be: (one) anti-hierarchical; (two) anti-dogmatic;
and (three) anti-secret. Concerning the first issue, the IOT attempted to overcome
power imbalances thanks to the institution of the ‘Insubordinate.’
Interesting to notice that in IOT they claim that ‘rising within the hierarchy
is based on the mastery of magic and endorsing, in a way, a kind of ‘magical meritocracy.’
Even though each IOT section or group was encouraged to operate freely,
independently, and creatively to mirror the ethos of Chaos Magick, there were standardised practices
for individual and group rituals. Especially for the first degree, the Neophyte (4°),
a summary of basic techniques is provided in the “Liber MMM,” part of Carroll’s “Liber Null.”
As explained in a previous video and here by Otto, the book includes instructions
on mind control, visualisation techniques, Sigil magic, dream control and divination.
As for group rituals, some instructions are presented in Carroll’s “Psychonaut,” including
the five ‘Rites of Chaos’, with the ‘Mass of Chaos’ being described as the most important.
The group ritual here described is aimed at raising ‘a particular manifestation of energy
for inspiration, divination, or communion with particular domains of consciousness’
as well as to ‘modify physical reality.’ This would consist of six steps, revolving
around group invocations of Chaos, here understood as an entity and Baphomet, here understood as ‘the
representation of the terrestrial life-current.’ The purpose of having a structured group
activity - in an individually-tailored system such as that of Chaos Magick - is to generate
more power than individual efforts might achieve. That said, Peter Carroll always encouraged to
experiment, be creative and research-oriented when engaging with group rituals, rather than being
rigidly adherent to a fixed model. In this sense, we can see that,
despite the tendencies of ritual standardisation within the IOT, the experimental, creative and
individualist approach still appears to prevail. And indeed it is precisely the anti-hierarchical,
anti-dogmatic, individualist and experimental agenda of the IOT which may have led to the schism
in the early 1990s. ‘After all – as Urban
highlighted - an organised movement of Chaos Magic is inherently contradictory
and could only logically end by dismantling itself in its own act of total liberation’.
Around 1986 Ray Sherwin already resigned from the order by excommunicating himself
as he felt that the Order was slipping into the power structure that he had intended to
avoid. Peter Carroll also backed out from the IOT shortly after the Ice Magick War, though it
was only in 2016 that he ‘publicly announced withdrawal of support for the organisation’
We might perhaps dedicate a future video to the IOT major schism known as the Ice
Magick War. Well, if you let me know in the comments that you’re interested, that is!
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