What is Chaos but the birth, the death, and the rebirth of order.
Chaos is naught but the prelude and the epilogue.
Within its tides all things come to pass for it is the perfection of the natural laws and cycles. The base for all order and the power that the masks of laws make into order for the minds of those that look upon it.
Here I present a rather unique approach to magick that I am rather fond of, an interpretation and set of beings that while supposedly fictional I have found more real and powerful to me than many of the gods, demons, and angels that are traditionally worked with.
Now there are many theories or causes that can be given for this when broken down but I am going to do something different and not bother with that rather you should find your own truth and mythos to these beings and their existence. Instead I shall explain them and their combined path and how it reconciles with more seemingly ordered and strict paths to combine into its own unique supporting truth.
I talk here of the Gods of Chaos in all their myriad forms my favorite being those beings and powers drawn from the Warhammer and 40k universes but they are also drawn from the lore of the Lovecraftian beings such as Cthulhu and drawn from the seas of Oblivion and the Elder Scrolls in the form of the Daedra and Aedra. There are many more sources one can use for all things are embodied and given form and life in Chaos. This is to me the unifying path of Chaos magick but I shall deal primarily with the four beings of Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, Nurgle, and of course the power of the Immaterium itself.
First to explain what are to me the four prime gods of Chaos.
Khorne Lord of Slaughter
Khorne is the embodiment of animal rage, blood lust, and competition. He is the Blood God and Lord of Skulls and represents violence and rage. He is part of the base forces of nature dealing with all things of violence and blood but also contest and competition. He deals with the emotions that inspire such. Emotions such as rage, anger, hatred, jealousy and dominance. Through his power these aspects are turned loose and directed to conquer, destroy and slaughter. They can also be turned however to a powerful driving force of physical perfection and success in physical competition. Care must be taken however for turning it to other fields leads into the power of Slaanesh, desire and passion and tends to make him complain more than usual. He is the most purely physical of the Chaos gods in my experience and does not have much patience for sorcery or planning but can definitely supply the power for such in the form of emotional rage as fuel if you can handle it or be used to inspire it in others. If you need to win a bet at sports put Khorne infusing the side you want to win though it might get a bit more brutal than usual.
Slaanesh Prince of Desire and Passion
Slaanesh is a personal favorite of mine and the one I have the most experience with. Slaanesh is the embodiment of lust, passion, pain, pleasure and excess. Not just of physical lust and passions of sex and substance but Slaanesh governs all desire and passion in all fields. The great artist and his vision and passion of art draws on and feeds the passions of Slaanesh the same as an entrepreneurâs desire to achieve and possess his own company. All that is required is the passion and desire to see it through for it is the joy of passions and desires realized and the pain and journey to them that feed this god and that this god can grant. Sublime pleasure, divine inspiration and vision, and whispers of the perfect path to fulfill ones dreams and wishes. Also embodied is the horror, torment, agony of failure and loss of faith and hope in the self and the death of dreams to those displease the bearer of this godâs power.
Tzeentch Architect of Fate
Tzeentch is the Architect of Fate and Master of Magicians. He is the force of change, probability and possibility. He is the patron Chaos god of sorcery and magick though they all have their own paths of such. He is the schemer and master of plots and their fulfillment and closely tied to Slaanesh in the fulfillment of desires for while Slaanesh gives the motivation and passions so does Tzeentch govern the intellect and mind that would guide such to fulfillment but inversely passion and desire are needed for such plots to even exist. This shows more clearly than other cases the interplay and crossover between the Chaos gods. Tzeentch is the pinnacle of Fate and magick. All concepts of karma and cause and effect are known to him and he sits in the center of reality within and without all knowing. He is also the Keeper of Secrets and all magicians are tied to his realm.
Nurgle Lord of Decay and Resurrection
Nurgle is the god of death and entropy he is the first of the powers of Chaos and the last. It is from entropy and death that all things are reborn and to which they return. His realms are as subtle as they are blatant and can be as delicate and convoluted as the many plans of Tzeentch. For his realm is not just physical but also mental, the death of ideas, philosophies and theories and their the twisting resurgence of those same ideas in new forms just as death can be brought in new twisting forms of decay and disease. Through death there can be rebirth and through rebirth there is change. Tzeentch and Nurgle are in their active forms often opposed to each other but in their passive forms are complementary parts of the cycles for the resurrection and change of ideas cannot be accomplished without both the death of the idea, its rebirth, but also the change and mutation which Tzeentch would govern. This applies physically and circumstantially as well.
While the four primary gods are complementary in many ways they are also opposing to each other in many ways as well and can be seen as representative of different parts of the universal cycles of not just the nature of reality but also of the beings within. They spring from the same source of Chaos as the pure embodiments and personifications of universal forces and powers. They can also be seen as representative of the elements with the Immaterium forming the fifth in this I ascribe Khorne to Fire, Slaanesh to Water, Tzeentch to Air and Nurgle to Earth though their manifestations will belong to different elements so it is up to the magician and his personal relationships to these forces to ascribe his own elemental order. So too will each magician find the mechanisms of these gods to function differently with each other because more than any other I find these beings are first reflections of yourself and then reflections of the external. Their essence resides in each and every living being and the mental nature of reality itself and these names and forms are just the purest widest reaching manifestations and so many names can be given to them each unique and personal to the one that uses them. They are not the same as other named which embody specific sides of these forces and aspects but rather the Chaos gods embody the whole reality of the force and power within yourself and all existence rather than some small part as most other beings would.
To call upon them you reach within to their essence within and raise that to exaltation and call out by the name chosen so that the universal power of your own force responds and takes form drawing the sentience of that force into an embodiment of what is within and projected into you is the embodiment of the external force. These beings are thus the ultimate representation of As Above so Below and Within so Without. This should reveal some of how they reconcile with more ordered paths as manifestations of universal law that has not been limited by terminology.
Now while in the lore of the fictional universes these names and inspiration is drawn from they are shown as foul and corrupt consider the culture in such universes is often opposed already to freedom, expression, and the powers associated with such and so through repression and demonization so do these beings become corrupt to those they deal with as their concepts are corrupted within the one that calls them. They are as demonic, angelic or neutral as their source within yourself is. That is not to say they donât have their own will as for it is important to remember that while they will reflect what is within they also reflect the universal concept and all the forms and ideas of the concept in existence with their own will and sentience.
Now we come to the Immaterium and the full reconciliation with other paths of order.
Immaterium the Foundations
The Immaterium or Warp is the realm of chaos and in my experience the underlying foundations and fabric of all manifestation and structured realms both physical, astral and mental. It is the embodiment of undifferentiated potential in all forms from which all things are put to order and made from. When you call forth the powers of magick to shape reality you shape the Warp and its infinite potential and put order to the undifferentiated chaos and ideas to bring it to ordered manifestation. The astral realms and planes are the realms of emotion and energy put to order by thought, concept, will and energy and many times stranger laws similar to our own physics in those areas. Yet around all this and underlying it through the cracks is the infinite potential of the immaterium. The Immaterium can thus be considered the foundations and surroundings of all that is ordered and structured and is itself surrounded in the gentle strands of fate and mind that is Akasha which permeates all but even that can be considered the subtle gentle strands and reach of the Immaterium just by a different name to indicate its more subtle and gentler aspect of nature. So within can be considered all realms of existence and those realms of the Chaos gods are just astral realms that by their more open and fluid nature to the concepts they are built have a more apparent connection to this infinite potential and possibility. It can be evoked in sentient form as Chaos Undivided which is the greatest God Head and the purest divinity as being the closest perception of the Source in its raw form one is capable of at the given moment though I have different personal definitions for such and encourage others to find their own terms for it.
In perspective of such as Hermetics which I practice in a sense these powers of Chaos are already elaborated as to how they can exist and their places in reality often in discussion of the aspects of man and relation to external beings, god heads, and the source as well as the mental nature of reality. Often these terms are very well structured for comprehension and learning to give a solid system but just as modern science can be stifling to true understanding of a force so too can these terms often do the true nature of these powers injustice. The scientific terms we have today often fail to convey just how wild and chaotic the world is by the forces of nature despite showing its perfect order in the form of laws and explanations and while many of those are true and valid they still fail to convey the whole concept but must be used in tamed nature to teach and learn before experiencing the full brunt of it. Likewise are many explanations from many systems which embody the same concepts just aids to learn, teach and explain forces that cannot be properly conveyed in mere words. Personal experience will show this true in many ways.
There is so much more that can be said. My approach is often much more structured and orderly than this would make it seem but that is refined by experience and technique to harness uncontrolled forces and chaos yet still keep and instill order. For me tapping into these powers and concepts reaches deeper into the currents of magick and primal energies and requires not just more well practiced discipline and technique but also a greater instinct of trust in self to navigate the resulting tides,
