Product Description

Magic is a doorway through which we step into mystery, wildness, and immanence. We live in a world subject to extensive and seemingly, all-embracing systems of social and personal control that continually feed us the lie that we are each alone, helpless, and powerless to effect change. Magic is about change. Changing your circumstances so that you strive to live according to a developing sense of personal responsibility; that you can effect change around you if you choose; that we are not helpless cogs in some clockwork universe. All acts of personal/collective liberation are magical acts. Magic leads us into exhilaration and ecstasy; into insight and understanding; into changing ourselves and the world in which we participate. Through magic we may come to explore the possibilities of freedom.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35942 in Books
• Published on: 1995-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
"Most modern books on magic are not worth reading. To his credit, Phil Hine has produced a tour de force which should be studied." -- Ian Read, Editor, Chaos International

"Phil Hine is one of the leading exponents of what is likely the fastest growing school of thaumaturgy: Chaos Magick." -- James Martin, Abrasax Magazine

"Phil Hine shows himself to be one of the leading thinkers in the field, and one of the least dogmatic." -- Steve Moore, Fortean Times

"Phil Hine's book is the most concise statement...of the logic of modern magic. Magic, in the light of modern physics, quantum theory and probability theory is now approaching science. We hope that a result of this will be a synthesis so that science will become more magical and magic more scientific." -- William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch

"The author is one of the rising stars of Chaos Magic." -- Peter J. Carroll, author of Liber Kaos and PsyberMagick

About the Author
Phil Hine is a former editor of the internationally acclaimed magazine Chaos International. He divides his time among doing magic, recovering and then writing about it afterwards. He has facilitated workshops and seminars on modern magical practice in America and Europe. He is the author of Prime Chaos, The Pseudonomicon, and Chaos Servitors: A Users Guide. He lives in London, England.

Customer Reviews

Excellent book to clear up doubts about Chaos Magick
I started reading and practicing chaos magick around 3 years ago, and there were things that were unclear for me, finally with this book I was able to understand and learn from a different standpoint other than Peter Carroll or Frater UD how to approach the system and apply it better.

Highly recommended..

Good material put together badly
Phil Hine knows his stuff and has a lot of tips here that will help the working magician. However, the information is not organised into any coherent structure and the book suffers from repitition, gaps and a lack of overall structure.

His outline on how to create servitors will be helpful to any chaos magician, though it lacks detail.

Much of this book is dedicated to understanding and maturely assessing your desires, rather than just chasing after every whim and obsession. This is vitally important and sadly absent from much other work on chaos magic. The poor editing of this book is again apparent here, as the various methods of analyzing a desire are peppered throughout different parts of the book.

The chapter on ego magic has a lot of wise and practical advice on deconditioning.

The chapter on invocation has its strengths and weaknesses. It discusses the purposes and application of invocation very well, but fails to give a workable description of any effective technique to acheive invocation. Instead, it focuses on the theatrical elements of invocation. These theatrical elements are useful, but only as a complement to an invocation ritual - which this book will not tell you how to do.

The pamphlet that became 'Condensed Chaos' - Oven-Ready Chaos - has much of the best material contained in 'Condensed Chaos', and is available on Phil Hine's website. Still, if you're serious about chaos magic, you should buy this book.

GreaterChaos
This is a great introduction into chaos magic. It has excellent information and is an easy read no pausing and thinking what the author meant. Highly recommend