Rather than invest belief in abstruse metaphysical theory, Nick Hall has chosen here to build a system from an eclectic range of practical procedures culled from many cultures. Informing the whole treatise however is the chaoist meta-belief that belief structures reality. This is pragmatic magick at its best. Devise or discover a technique that seems worth investing belief in, and if you can validate it, include it in your grimoire, without worrying how or why it wo. . .
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Gee,
Chaos and sorcery is an excellent book . It scans topics`and supplies detail. Its a good read for any chaos magician.
Rating: 3 / 5
It is difficult for me to review this book, yet I feel compelled to make an attempt as it really scared me. I felt my bourgeois little expletive of an existence threatened by it. Obviously I am not a magician, yet automatons like me are prone to platitudes in their organic-mechanic repetitions.
This piece of work is in the Post- Modern Tradition(or PMT” Psycho Magickal Terrorism”). You’ll get plenty of pragmatic advice on ways of spicking up your daily routine to it’s optimum with witching for all occasions. It has a shamanistic, and primal orientation/bias, and largely dispenses with the dogmatic teachings you’ve probably come across in most literature on ritual magic. There is something of an anthropological diatribe on many pages of this brief treatise, and if the pedagogic historio-archaeological aspects interest you; It might be worth your while corroborating the author’s statements on these matters with diligent research of your own; Diverse figures from Sodom Hussein to the Bokongo people of Zaire are mentioned. The book(bear in mind it first published back in 1992) claims that Saddam Hussein was magickally protected by devoutly religious followers!, there a number of statements in this ilk that struck me as erroneous, let alone many citations which I have overlooked, also having no first hand or even vicarious knowledge of, to begin with. We are led to believe the powerful N. Hall is more a wizard at sorcery than scholasticism of the ‘consensual realistic’ sort; generally the domain of the more conventional minds, confounded by radical genius.
There are also a number of noticeable A. O. Spare styled illustrations by someone billed as Robert Taylor, (not the late Hollywood thespian who played Ivanhoe opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the early 1950′s)
My naivety however allowed me to imagine that an author who proclaims/preaches amoralism and the well worn slogan “Nothing is true,all is permitted”; will probably not appear devoid of guile and a propensity for rooting deeply into his impressionable readers’ heads, along with Setting snares for the literal minded.
Perhaps this grimoire is the closest you’ll get to the core of the Chaos magic current, available to the general public (uninitiated, such as myself) outside the elitist Illuminati of Thanateros; incidently Peter Carroll who in the occult legend of the public domain was a principle founder member of the IOT, rates this book and it’s author a mysterious figure who writes as Nicholas Hall, in the highest esteem, and in a somewhat quasi-grovelling manner. Nonetheless Carroll’s introduction is revealing, and probably not to be underestimated if you are as credulous as I am of such things.
As far as I know this is the only book Hall has published, yet the author and it’s book are held in awe by Carroll who has had several of his books published, written many essays, and is considered foremost in bringing Chaos magic to the bookshops. My predominant reference to Carroll’s commendation is on grounds that you might give a little more credence to his review than mine!
Note Well: this is a 1998 German-English edition of a 1993 German translation of the original English edition of 1992. As it so happens I have compared this edition with one of the 300 extremely rare first editions; and there are a number of discrepancies betwixt these two editions as one might expect. Nothing so major short of pedantry; that makes me not recognize I was a dupe to have purchased a first edition at a sinister price: I wish I had discovered the availability of this Bohmeier Verlag version before I discovered an original for sale.
The original is 111 pages; this version is marked as 125, pages excluding the 126th dedicated to Our Saviour 333; who has the last words; “ZAZAS ZAZAS NASATANADA ZAZAS”.
Rating: 4 / 5
This book along with The Chaos Cookbook are good instructional chaos magick books that chunk down and give specific techniques. What this book is good for is that it teaches rare subjects, such as techniques to kill (in self-defense of course) and explaining the process and theory behind the Haitian Bokor’s Zombie.
One of my favorite books on sorcery well written! Small book but it concentrated with only “meat and no fat”!
Rating: 5 / 5
Primarily, I wish I had read the description more carefully – this paperback runs to 128 pgs. So I was somewhat dissapointed on arrival. I do understand that these tiny-press Euro books cost a lot in the US. . . AS to the content, it’s pretty good. There is a minimum of self-congratulation about how much cooler the system is than more traditional methods, and a fairly close focus on actual practice. The author mixes and matches from cultures freely, now from Africa, now North America. he has managed, nevertheless, to compose a pretty coherent system, based primarily in the symbols that have come to be associated with ‘chaos’ magic as a school. If you’re interested in practical spell-work and magical power, with little regard for conservative occult ethics, this is a good book if you can afford it.
Rating: 3 / 5
This book is dangerous. True to the amoral nature of Chaos Magick, Nick Hall has exceeded the limitations of mainstream ethics. And true to amorality, he does it in matter-of-fact manner that neither shocks nor comforts the reader. This book was written by a master of the art. Mr. Hall’s presenation of his magickal principals are at once simply and eloquently stated and immmensely practical. This work is not your run of the mill “contact you holy guardian angel” tripe, it is a practical manual of post-modern sorcery. I respect most is the cander with which he discusses subject matter that is normally taboo in more mainstream occult literature.
Rating: 5 / 5