Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30819 in Books
• Published on: 1987-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 214 pages

Customer Reviews

Make your own!
don't make the mistake of adopting someone else's belief system and rituals. use the high level concepts in pete carroll's books to create your own system of magick, make your own. that will be much more powerful.

here's how he describes it ... "beliefs are not seen as ends in themselves, but as tools for creating desired effects." ... "The purpose of Chaos Rituals is to create beliefs by acting as though such beliefs were true." ... "It takes only the acceptance of a single belief to make someone a magician. It is the meta-belief that belief is a tool for achieving effects".

using peter carroll's ideas and MY magic, i've surprised myself numerous times including turning one of my worst failures into undoubtably my biggest success. the ideas in carroll's works are about real freedom and real power.

Reviewed by a Philosopher of Science
Liber Null and Psychonaut by Peter J. Carroll

A Review by Davin C. Enigl

Carroll uses a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach. In general Carroll's (1987) book seems to erroneously force historically older (obsolete?) magical systems (his page 8 history) into his modern Chaos theory. Rather, he should have started fresh by building a chaos-oriented magical system with rational justification.

The sections on mind control and gnosis are good (very much like Raja Yoga). The sigil and mantra (also pictorial and word) construction examples are easy and simple to remember, if incomplete. Lucid dreaming sections are scattered, but useful for new people. The random belief section is wonderfully thought provoking. The Kabbala and alphabet chapter seems to tie Golden Dawn (GD) into the Chaos system. I wish the weapons sections were expanded to other weapons normally used in occult systems. I am glad to see he will not take religions at face value (but then don't do it for GD either, be consistent). The Magical Paradigms chapter could be expanded to better include quantum science. The "Science of Chaos" tie-in is lacking here and generally lacking in the whole book.

I don't expect Carroll to rehabilitate scientific thinking and magical thinking, but an introduction should explain why the relatively new science of Chaos theory is a basis for non-religious-orientated magic. At least tell why the two are related. I read this (1987) book back-to-back with William H. Keith's (2005) _The Science of the Craft_. Carroll, the "psychologist", seems to forget mathematical Chaos theory and Chaos magic are related. Keith, the "scientist" has a poor understanding of Chaos magic. Perhaps they should read each other's books then write second editions.

The best part of Carroll's book, Catastrophe Theory and Magic, is also the most error-prone section. Graphing psychology is highly useful as he does on page 211-212 with bifurcation. Carroll looks at the emotionally neutral mid-point (E) producing two possibilities for strongly held beliefs, A and C. An emotional catastrophe is likely to happen to swing to A or swing to C if one sinks into irrationality. All the graphs in this section are useful but Carroll's explanations are not always correct. . .

Look at page 198! A triangle is 2-D not 3. A tetrahedron is 3-D not 4. A hypercube is 4-D, but that is not given. A pentacle/pentagram within a circle is not 5-D, it's 2. I know he is talking about tips-of-icebergs in hyperspace, but still, . . . get the examples geometrically correct, please.

Now look at pages 208-214. The dotted path lines leave the response surface and go into nowhere. Only one dotted path line is correct (it's on page 214). They should follow the "catastrophic cliff". Figure 3 has B) and C) caption labels reversed. Page 210 erroneously claims transitions away from A are unlikely when actually that transition is what normally happens when theories are improved by "scientific method" i.e., logic. Transitions AB and CD are not "weakened and strengthened" rationality, actually that's: the justification of belief by reason. And, ". . . rationality causes a decrease in the strength of the beliefs", on page 211, is simply wrong. Actually it's the same emotional commitment strength at B and D compared to A and C, because the mid-point of BD and AC are neutral/equal emotional commitments. There is no decrease.

The problem I have is for twelve printings and 20 years, the errors have not been corrected. No index, no references or footnotes or citations or the least bit of credit given to Carroll's sources, save one plus the history chart on page 8. Yet, this book is still interesting enough for me to give it a few stars. It's certainly not deserving four or five stars. If you think it does, my suggestion is to read more, for better comparison.

A Foundational Work
This is a foundational work for anyone looking to become a practitioner of the occult arts. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars for the terse education contained within it. It's missing one star because the book is just a beginning primer and isn't necessarily inclusive of all stages of developement and different training practices (Such as Initiation into Hermetics by Franz Bardon, which lacks detail). Good work all the same though and should be bought.