Meta Paradigm vs Temporary Paradigm

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Cam Revillot
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Meta Paradigm vs Temporary Paradigm

Post by Cam Revillot »

One of the biggest causes of confusion I see most often is the distinction between the meta paradigm and the temporary paradigm with regards to "there are no rules" (making your own rules).

Imo that takes place in the temporary paradigms. If there weren't some overarching guidelines about what chaos magic (the meta paradigm) is we wouldn't have a thing called "chaos magick".

Where do YOU draw the line?
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Kath
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Re: Meta Paradigm vs Temporary Paradigm

Post by Kath »

I think therefore I am.
beyond that, certainty is a delusion I selectively allow.
even still, I'd reflexively react to danger, without pondering it's reality. it is useful to know that I don't really know, but the experience of reality is a more visceral and instinctive thing.

I think one of the key things in working with a paradigm, is to manifest it as a viscerally real thing in the mind.
So that you have an intuitive and gut-level connection with it.

The meta paradigm is still a paradigm. It's just a paradigm about paradigms.

Rules... are just these ideas about limitations someone made sometime. Limitations give me an eye twitch. Not to be confused with 'understandings', which are epiphanic knowledge of how something works, which is very useful. But "can't" is a terrible word to use in any sentence. So I would avoid making useful understandings into "rules". There's usually a lot of rules in ritual work, specifics of how to and not to do things. If such things are useful for helping to engender useful understandings... then great. If however they smell of dogmatism, then we'll just call them "suggestions", which I'll probably break.

I like to think of paradigms as "working models". People once believed that the earth was at the center of the solar system. This was factually false of course. However, long after we knew this was definitely incorrect, many astronomers still used the old wrong model to find objects in the sky in their telescopes ...because the math was simpler, and it would get you close enough to spot your target in a telescope. So the old solar system model was a good "working model", not literally true, but it worked surprisingly well anyway. Or at least that's what I've heard... personally I can find the planets in the sky with just dead reckoning geometric modeling in my head. Although it might take a couple nights of watching to calibrate, if I haven't looked up in a while.

But I digress. "Nothing is true. Everything is permissible." Chaos magick sometimes falls victim to it's own sales pitch a bit. If nothing is true, then there's at least one thing which is true, that nothing is true, but then there would be something true ...its kinda an oxymoron of a statement. Also, denying the realness of the sub-paradigms being used is I think unhelpful to working with them in a manner which has visceral "oomf".

I take it more like this: I am interested in multiple paradigms. From a starting point, I may not know in advance which are true, or to what extent. I am interested in them whether they are literally true, or are just a sound working model based on technically incorrect facts. If it works, I'm down. I also don't assume that just because something did not work "for me" that it is inherently a non-working model. I have plenty of hubris, but I try to keep it far away from the "make an assumption" button. Chaos Magick is a paradigm, which by and large echoes my own natural curiosity and interest. Insomuch as it provides insight into ways approaching multiple paradigms, I study and absorb it. And violate it as well. When it comes to esoteric questions about the semantic particulars of chaos magick, well for me that's more a branding thing, just not my focus. In the strictest possible sense, I'm not an adherent of chaos magick, I'm an adherent of reason & logic (even when working with unreason, I dance it through reason at some point), I approach it as a science, in a world where I have seen, felt, and done things which don't fit within the classroom-taught limits of science.

When I work with a model, I am IN that model. It's a sort of self induced neurosis. It is at that time not a potential working model, but a living thing, and I'm french kissing it, and I smell it's breath. Even if it's a one night stand, the windows will get very steamy. Later? sure, I may examine it coldly with an eye to efficacy, mechanics, potential flaws in it, etc. But not while working with it. Granted, I tend towards a passionate magical style. In some cases to the extent of frenzied-trance. I know some are more into paint by numbers and cross your fingers or trust in such-in-such. But I like to 'do' the magic, feel it, touch it, flow with it. Not that there's anything wrong with trusting in some X factor to work on your behalf. It's just less enjoyable, and I get this feeling like I'm being given a fish, instead of being taught how to fish. Although I'm VERY fond of working through an X factor to learn how to do something myself. Likewise with ritual format. I like to know what exactly I'm doing. what the parts all do and mean and how it all works. If i do ritual, I'm GOING to dissect it eventually, so I can feel how it works intuitively and viscerally. I do RTFM, I just don't always trust that the writer knew what he or she was doing, and I'm going to violate the hell out of the manual eventually, to really dig into what we're doing. I'm perfectly happy to ruin it entirely, if i learn something in the process.

Ultimately I end up with almalgamations of paradigm precepts put together on an operating table, and given life by lightning strikes of luck, inspiration, and determination. Although I don't have any tesla coils for ambiance.

I'm probably drifting off topic again. The topmost tenants of chaos magick are deliberately contradictory. This can be useful to guiding one into understanding dualities of concept, or it can create struggles for those who want explicit answers, and clearly defined parameters. Chaos Magick wants to be meta paradigm, and it is, but ultimately that is paradigm yes, so chaos magick resorts to discordian card tricks to disguise it's technically being another paradigm itself. And that's not meant as a scathing critique, I think it's rather artful. But you're kinda scratching at the spot where chaos magick is deliberately deflecting.

There are no rules in the sub-paradigm, and in the chaos magick paradigm, both. Or rather, there are rules in both... but breaking them is encouraged, in both. Ideally I think any paradigm or metaparadigm should be approached initially 'intact', to learn what you can from it before taking it down into the laboratory. But that's more an inclination than a rule.

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Re: Meta Paradigm vs Temporary Paradigm

Post by Amor »

>"Nothing is true. Everything is permissible."

How does the concept of trueness emerge without there being an external reference? E.g. a wall may be true to a plumbline

We dodge that by converting trueness into an abstract: truth. (This is called reification)

Since trueness is relative, truth as an abstract cannot exist. Hence we can use a logical fallacy to deny that we are relative to any being. It seems a very Western proposition.

But Is it a trap? Placed by what? For what reason?

For those interested in tradition:

Adonai asked me, “‘Amos, what do you see?” I answered, “A plumbline.” Then Adonai said, “I am going to put a plumbline in among my people Isra’el; I will never again overlook their offenses.

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