Chaos, the Ability to Perceive Options

I promised this thread on another discussion thread and now...I have to deliver.
Just what makes Chaos Magic(k) chaotic?
We are beings with the ability to perceive many things but is Chaos one of them?
How, as organized life forms, are we able to conceptualize Chaos and then produce a 'system' of magic that utilizes this principle? (the idea of a 'system' implies order by its very nature)
A close friend and I are in the middle of this debate...he's a Molecular Biophysisist and I'm a dropout. He claims evidence of chaos exists in many ways and I've asked him to illustrate this. So far I've not heard of anything objective. True, we can say 'chaos' and write 'chaos' but we are doing so with the tools of order.
Let me bow out for awhile and let the over heated air cool and invite ideas from the Forum. Remember, this is a debate/discussion and we should agree to disagree rather than slinging shots! OK? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

Ah...perhaps semantics is the problem...we agree on so much but still maintain our different perspectives...
Yes, of course Order comes from Chaos! But we can only perceive Order AS it is 'precipitated' from Chaos. To say that 'symmetry' exists as a function or state inherent in Chaos is to deny the Chaos. We, as products of Chaos, are beings of Order. Even Mind has Order. We use language to help us conceptualize Chaos but that is merely illusion . IMHO! I must admit that my logic and understanding may be considered flawed or even too rigid in this discussion...I doubt that this will change in the near future unless an epiphany strikes me...(ouch!) I'll climb back into my cave for the nonce and see if you can lure another soul into this...besides, I talk entirely too much! *grin* (IMG:style_emoticons/default/i_triangle.gif)

Mmm... I am of the mind, after some meditation on the subject of Chaos and Chaos Magick to two momentary plateaus of cognizance.

The first is that, no matter how chaotic you imagine any aspect of reality to be - whether that's the apparently random development of an individual life form, the apparently chaotic electrical activity of the brain, or the apparently chaotic evolution of life and contained self-awareness - in fact everything that is, was caused by something. Effect is preceded by cause, which is in turn an effect preceded by a cause. It is the Yin and Yang. Multiple causes may produce one effect and one cause may produce multiple effects and in a rudimentary sense this can sometimes appear to be chaos - but cause and effect is the essential basis for order, and it is the most basic principle upon which we organize all 'laws' which define the shape of that order in any given era.

If Chaos is antithetical to order, then Chaos must be Acausal. I don't think I can really even say anything to elucidate that. Needless to say, a human being can't even have an acausal thought. You might think so - but if, for instance, you try and prove it is so by 'randomly' thinking about different, say, fruits; the cause of that effect was the instigation present in that original statement that it could not be done (and furthermore your unconscious mind supplies those concepts upon your demand for them based on a thousand sub-conscious processes which are the cumulative total of your experiences, recent mental activity, current fixations, etc.). Nothing you do is random, nothing you are is random. That isn't to say that it is pre-ordained, but that one cause elicited an effect, which caused another, and so on, and the point at which we label 'chaotic' is really nothing more than the isolated instance in a string of causes and effects.

As to Chaos in Chaos Magic(k)... first of all I haven't real peter carrol, and I've read Spare, well, sparingly... although I have read a few spin-offs and essays based upon, and so forth. But regardless the fact of the matter is, the magician may choose paradigms at 'random' and attempt to act 'chaotically' - but in the end (or, really, the beginning!) those choices are the result of psychological activity and impulses derived from a string of cause/effect chain reactions that are not really chaotic at all. A member here said very eloquently (forgive the lack of assigning due credit) "Order is the Chaos I comprehend, and Chaos is the Order I do not Comprehend".

Making a circle of power from shaving cream and cinnamon, for instance - You're still using a circle of power, still applying basic universal principles of ritual magic. A sigil is basically a talisman, substituting one 'charging' ritual for another, and one method of construction for another (method = systematic). Firing the sigil into the apparent 'chaos' of the subconscious mind is not doing that at all - the subconscious mind is not chaotic, just a more complex system than the portion of our 'waking' consciousness that we are immediately aware of, and one that we aren't cognizant of directly.

THe movement of bodies in space may seem chaotic, but really it's a series of gravity wells, torsion fields, (theoretically) dark matter masses, and celestial 'winds' that cumulated in this gracefully systematic dance of galaxies, black holes, stars, planets, and everything in between them.

If anything, then, can be called chaos, it may be the very first Cause, that which had no precedent. IN genesis doesn't it say something about God creating everything out of chaos and void or something? I forget the hebrew wording exactly, but kabbalistically the letters imply this. Chaos might have preceded everything, and everything might one day break down totally into chaos - but in terms of our 'reality' and our ability to percieve or utilize in any way, I must say that I personally cannot reason or anti-reason that chaos is present either to human perception in general, or that it is present in Chaos Magic.

What we can do, I think, is relegate these concepts to matters of Awareness and Comprehension - which on one hand sort of admits an almost willfull ignorance of the principles themselves on an individual scale of Consciousness; and on the other hand takes a general relativistic point of view on what constitutes reality anway.

That is to say - on the one hand cause-effect on a universal scale cannot be denied. If something appears to have happened for no reason, that is only because we do not comprehend the cause. That scale is a mass consciousness/awareness scale point of view and if your cognition is able to handle increasingly complex systems you will eventually comprehend a total order to existence (that's a hypothetical state of awareness of course).

However, we are of course to different degrees limited by our own Awareness and Comprehension so for the individual - if something appears to be chaotic in nature, and we do not attempt to reach a comprehension of the underlying order that is, on a universal scale, actually manifest there, and we treat it as chaos, will it not appear to act chaotically? Is that perception of chaos possibly a form of detachment from order? Even in small scales - we might understand the order in some things but not in others, but those small things in which we do not comprehend that order, maybe our own minds can impose order (relativistic order, that is, just as in relativistic chaos?)

This is akin to the shroedingers cat idea. Except in that case there are two scientists, and one of the them knows whether the cat is dead or not, but the two of them will never meet. The situation remains 'chaotic' to one of them and 'concrete' to the other.

Illustrated, say a wouldbe mage is attempting to affect a weather system. Where he is standing, the sky is clear and he wants it to rain, so he whips up some kind of spell to make it rain. In a few hours the sky gets cloudy and then it begins to rain. He didn't read any weather reports before hand, no one told him rain was coming, he hasn't developed some kind of observational ability to know that it was going to rain. From his ponit of view it was sunny, and then it was rainy, with no apparent chain of events to link the two except for his magical intervention.

However, one mile away another person checked the weather, saw that it was going to rain because air in the northern atmosphere was heated up by the sun, rose, and consequently resulted in a notherly wind which brought towards this previously sunny area a cloud front fresh of the warm atlantic ocean and ripe for a rain storm.

From the one point of view there was an element of chaos which could be manipulated to produce rain - from the other there was never any chaos to begin with.

Is chaos really just ignorance then? And if so what does that make Order? Are the two really antithetical in the first place or are we missing other elements - Like Bym suggested (maybe jokingly) a trine? Chaos... Order... and the thing which connects them? Two poles cannot exist alone with one another - two objects require the space between them.

Mmm, that's all I have right now - this subject is not one that I spend a great deal of time considering or studying. But, can you really study Chaos anyway?

peace

As an afterthought, possibly from an awareness point of view, chaos can really be 'percieved' when we are entirely present in this very moment, divorced totally from past experience and future consideration. Then we do not reason or comprehend cause and effect. If we divorce ourselves so completely from past and future based thinking - like a zen master or something - then everything that we observe simply is, with not precedent or similarity to other phenomenon, and is therefore an unfathomable mystery and completely chaotic. We are not so much discovering chaos as we are surrendering to a state of comprehensive oblivion and being-ness.

This post has been edited by Vagrant Dreamer: Jan 21 2010, 10:50 PM