"Fascination is always the result of impressiveness. When fascination is not achieved by falsehood, it is always brought about by some piece of impressive staging." - Eliphas Levi.

"To put it another way, the artist exists only if he is known. Consequently, one can envisage the existence of a hundred thousand geniuses who are suicides, who kill themselves, who disappear, because they didn't know what to do to make themselves known, to push themselves, and to become famous." _ Marcel Duchamp.

"Of course it takes courage and imagination and discipline to develop the beliefs and intents to change a situation, but of all these, imagination needs enticement and encouragement first in the quest for personal empowerment. Thus whilst Neopantheists recognise belief as a tool rather than as an end in itself (faith) they may nevertheless select beliefs which appeal to their imagination and stimulate it further, ritualistically acting out the belief 'as if' true." - Peter J Carroll.

The effectiveness of any act, be it the execution of a piece of artwork, political activism, or ritual enchantment may be put down to several factors including timing, preparation, mindset and the random factor. As initiates, artists, sorcerers, and chaoists, it has always been our way to seek the favour of the random factor through sympathy, placation, sacrifice and even threat, acts going back to the ancient shaman at the dawn of the human mind, through the witchcraft of the middle ages and the alchemy and hermetics of the post-enlightenment, to the present post-apocalypse of the senses where a dissolving of boundaries and fornication of ideas together with the promiscuity of information give way to new forms of expression for both the forces of stasis and mediocrity, and their various enemies.  As enemies of stasis and mediocrity of whatever stripe, we have chosen to dedicate our time and energy toward the study of the random factor and the expression of our findings, musings and inspiration through the act of either art, magic, or activism. The overlap between these various expressions of will may give us some insight into how to be more creative, imaginative, more effective. In order to lay the foundations as best we can, careful attention must be payed to timing, preparation and mindset in order to hurdle the random factor and achieve success. Timing we can do away with for the moment as it will be something more specific in each separate case, and all aspects of preparation that pertain to these specifics. Instead we will keep our focus mainly on preparation and its relation to  mindset. An esoterrorist aiming for optimum effect will train as rigorously as befits their physical, mental and emotional means. In the same way that crack martial troops drill with repetition their set pieces and combinations, movements and stretches to stay limber and ready for the fight, so the esoterrorist will dedicate the  body and mind as a temple in which to hone and refine the art. Training also involves privations and self-overcoming, a sacrifice of the individual ego to the collective in the form of the regiment for the soldier. Chaopolitical esoterrorists strive to overcome the reliance on abstractions like collective/individual, set up as they are as false goal posts to distract and further divide all who wish to bring about real change as catalysts in the metapolitical culture war. For us a different set of principles must arise, based on experience, not hearsay and smooth talk, sound judgement, not impulsive reaction. The fundamentals that each person protects and defends may be different to the next according to their life experiences and cultural scaffolding, but all can benefit from the stepping outside of accepted parameters that chaopolitics affords. 

As to the practical realities of training, preparation and mindset, a variety of techniques are available from a plethora of resources, some of which I will list at the end. Here we will talk about an approach that has manifested by varying degrees in the practices of chaos magicians and postmodern esoteric cults, right up to the "insight roles" of the infamous ONA. I'm talking about, of course, the practice of adopting a belief and identifying with it as intensely and authentically as is possible in order for that belief to become "true" to the psychic sensor (the filter mechanism that mediates between the conscious and subconscious mind, it regulates the laws of accepted reality). In the extreme form this is done for a long period of time as the initiate is drawn deeper and deeper into the paradigm and mindset he/she is using (the chosen paradigm is usually selected to challenge or oppose the fundamental principles and/or prejudices of the initiate) until a complete assimilation has taken place, complete except for the thread which attaches the initiate to his/her work and to a transcendent set of magical principles that allows for a resetting to base chaos once the cycle is complete. This base chaos is not the same as it was when the initiate embarked, due to a wealth of experience and insight gained through strict dedication and detached commitment a state, not only of greater empathy, but also of greater personal power has been achieved. On a less intense scale we can look at the practices adopted and developed by the burgeoning chaos magic current in the 80's and early 90's, among them, Pete Carroll was a leading light and I have opened this final installment of our topic with one of his more accessible quotes above. The ideal of all chaos magicians is to step outside of the limiting scope of enclosed paradigms and to adopt a more utilitarian approach toward belief as a tool, rather than an end in itself. The baseline must be the Null-zone of chaos in order to enable the non-attachment necessary to the execution of what Carroll terms "Random Belief". In his seminal work, Liber Null, he sets out some very practical and engaging practices intended to develop the faculty of this "chaoist" mindset. He suggests trying out a different belief system/reality tunnel each week, covering: 1) Paganism, 2)Monotheism, 3)Atheism, 4)Nihilism (Late Atheism), 5)Chaoism, and 6)Superstition (Low Chaoism), each following sequentially, one after the other, until Superstition leads back towards Paganism. Further to this the initiate is then encouraged to use the roll of a dice to select by random chance the belief system that dictates and underpins his consequent actions. This is just a brief description of a type of mental training and discipline that can prove most effective for anyone wishing to engage in the surreal world of shifting image and form that has become the battleground of the (post-)postmodern apocalypse. Imagine what can be done by applying the same approach to the political compass. well, as it turns out, a similar approach has been applied in the realm of political theory, by a Russian author and theorist, whom I have quoted in parts 1 & 2 of this meandering monologue. In his book entitled " The Fourth Political Theory", Alexander Dugin (who, if we are wont to believe such things, has the ear of none other than Mr Vladimir Putin) sets out an exercise intended to aid those whom he invites to take part in the ongoing formation of this 4PT (4th Political Theory) to gain better insights when searching for political solutions to their current dilemmas, or current political "project". We are not interested here in the development of a political theory though. What interests us is the suggested practice, which is simply to read through political books, papers and manifestos while maintaining a particular mindset for the duration of the entire piece which negatively mirrors the political thrust of the content. For example, you would read say, Marx or Adorno whilst maintaining a positive rather than negative right-wing viewpoint in order to pick out nuances in the work that can be applied and expanded on within another framework or narrative, then you might read Evola or Bowden whilst maintaining a positive left-wing viewpoint and so on. Although lacking the eclecticism and extreme relativism that seem to underpin chaos magic in the general use of the term, it appears that the author here has indeed delved into the twilight realms of magic and sorcery (his blatant use of a chaos-sphere/chaos-star on the book jacket of the title just mentioned kind of screams a bit.) Both of these exercises that I have mentioned can be read in context and in their entirety by researching the books mentioned, which will be listed at the end. They can be applied literally, but they can also perhaps spark the imagination to invent new ways of extracting insight and inspiration from areas that would normally lie beyond the reach of the aforementioned psychic sensor. 

Now for the motivational closing section...

When I was fifteen, sixteen years old I wasn't really doing school properly, I wasn't doing home-life that well either, in fact I wasn't doing a lot of things the way they should be done if you want to get on in life. Thankfully though, I had learned to make use my talents to express myself to myself and remain relatively sane throughout the chaotic period of my life, which had begun to emerge and would remain for several decades. This expression of self to self is what led me to develop an interest in chaos magic and related works including those of the late William S Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson and others... I also devoured Crowley and LaVey and their related influences with gusto, but nothing would sustain me for long, even though I retain an interest in many of the books I read and owned then, they seem like footnotes now, in the ongoing journey I started long, long ago. It was at the same age that I had begun to take a real interest in the work of the artist, Marcel Duchamp. I'm not an art critic, and my art history is a little shady at best, but his work always struck a chord of resonance within my struggling soul. I fell in love with "nude descending a staircase" and when I learned about his change of direction and decision to quit painting forever, I was struck by something unexplainable, it hit me on a deep level and rebounded with my adolescent, egocentric worldview, becoming part of the fuel for an inexplicable fire. I work to this day to contain and channel this fire to where it may benefit myself and others. This is why I chose the quote by Duchamp at the top of this final installment of our trilloblog/ue. At first I wanted to find something that would fit in with the shock tactics of esoterrorism, and so I homed in on the quote, "A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting." It was repeated by the interviewer in the article I was looking at and Duchamp responded with a kind of rejoinder where he explained in more detail about the reasons that art gets noticed and the struggle that most artists have to endure if they are to maintain their authenticity and from that, the ability to cause shock, though he also admits that artists who become successful and comfortable tend to produce a lot of shit art (my words). For us here and now, the interest lies in not art for art's sake, but in the overlap between magic, art and life/politics. I can't wait for the day when we no longer need to rely on these strange abstractions  to conduct normal life, but as I have a somewhat dim view of our ability as a species to evolve to that point within my own life time, or any time soon for that matter, I remain more than skeptical. We need to apply our Connexion to nature, our nature, to the situation at hand. Our nature is something that stems from Mother Nature, it reaches out into everything we do, in our loves and our struggles and conflicts it shows through and gives our journey a meaning, a persona and an identity that we may share, but is known only in its entirety by our inmost selves. It is in this nature that the question of identity arises and simultaneously nullifies and reconciles the liberty/authority, or, individual/collective dichotomies which were phantasms to begin with... useful ghosts. Our nature, more real, more vital is the key we must grasp with both hands in the thick of the fray or in the passion of carnal desire. Life goes on and we wake up with the same struggles and passions and hopes and anxieties, we do enough to keep going and are exhausted at the effort, yet somehow we still feel the fire. Damaged, but unbroken we forge onward, and when we feel the moldy breath of the tyrants of mediocrity upon our necks we shall seize the hour to redouble our zeal, for as long as nature is desecrated by parasites and the gentrification of every aspect of life fixes the price of the currency we are forced to use, and the enemy looks on from an ivory tower, licking its lips and salivating at the thought of total victory, we shall remain to fight, in Love and Light. Namaste, Motherfuckers!

Books mentioned or otherwise suggested:

Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp [With an appreciation by Jasper Johns]  Da Capo 1979.

Speed and politics by Paul Virilio. Semiotext(e) 2006.

*The Fourth Political Theory by Alexander Dugin. Arktos media 2012.

*Liber Null & Psychonaut by Peter J Carrol. Weiser 1987.

Fragments by Jean Baudrillard. Verso 1997.