Last night I attended a talk entitled Is nothing sacred?: Radical and Transgressive Frontiers in Chaos Magic at Treadwell's Bookshop given by Dr Patricia MacCormack of Anglia Ruskin University and Alexey Unku of Birkbeck, University of London. Taking turns to speak, they spoke on various topics including feminist interpretations and approaches to magick and topics such as fractal geometry and Nietzschean philosophy.

Chaos magic is a modern magical tradition that works to create new and unorthodox methods through the use of other belief systems and approaches with a central principle that belief itself is a tool. Chaotes - or practitioners of chaos magic - use many sources of inspiration including scientific theories, traditional ceremonial magic, philosophy and science fiction writing from authors such as a favourite of mine; H.P. Lovecraft. Chaos magic also uses sigil magic which are symbols created for a magical purpose with a specific intent. It has often been said that chaos magic is heavily phallocentric in terms of its male-domination and it's often criticized for it's 'capitalist', results-oriented approach. Interestingly, both Patricia and Alexey talked about a alternative approach that the are exploring which is based on the experiential as much as the result and Patricia also went on to expand on her use of queer theory in chaos magic too, which was a very inspiring part of the talk. There are quite a few magical workers that are exploring queer deities and approaches that I know of and it's an exciting time; re-discovering this information I feel sure that was well-known but suppressed. Patricia presented a discussion of Solomeic (associated with King Solomon) and Thelemic magic (associated with Aleister Crowley) and explored the representation of women in these two religions which I found particularly interesting as often women are represented as fetishistic objects or something that draws or reduces power — very much of interest for a woman exploring her place in magic with an emphasis on Norse magic; an area often considered male-dominated (although my own feeling is that this has a lot to do with out contemporary interpretations and in fact female workers, queer and gender-fluid workers all had power).

While much of the content and many of the concepts were complex, I found the talk absolutely spellbinding (pardon the pun). Afterwards, during the customary wine, chat and catching-up with people there were some that expressed a feeling that it was hard to understand lots of the talk. This made me think about something Patricia had mentioned that you do not need to understand everything; and in fact in many instances, such as reading Nietzschean philosophy etc, you'll not understand it all. But that's ok; it's about having an experience with it and letting it permeate you. It struck me that often we're so focused on goals that we need to have some tangible result from every encounter and we forget to just experience and experiment.