The Pact 

                           by Pete Carrol


Most occult traditions have complex and highly ordered otherworld
cosmologies and metaphysical theories. Yet their accompanying
techniques are frequently a shambles. In contradiction to all this,
one of the fundamental insights of Chaos Magic is that if magical
technique is sharply delineated it will work because the universe
itself is more of a shambles than it appears. Or perhaps I should
more respectfully say that it has the magical property of confirming
most of the interpretations placed upon it. Thus a wide variety of
metaphysical paradigms can be made to fit, even if mutually
exclusive.

So when selecting from the Supermarket of Belief, the critical
question for the Chaoist is: how effective are the accompanying
magical techniques? Hence Chaoist magic is characterised by its
cavalier attitude to metaphysics and its puritanical devotion to
empirical techniques.

For some time Chaoist orthodoxy has had it that cavalier metaphysics
and mythology are incompatible with the formal structure of a
magical teaching order. However, this need not be so if it is only
technique that is being taught and practised. Experience has shown
that people can come together and engage in highly productive
exchanges of practical expertise, and that a formal structure and a
division of labour encourage this.

The Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros, or the Pact for
short, is an organisational structure for those wishing to perform
Chaos type magic in company with others of like mind. The Pact
exploits the device of a graded hierarchy, with certain checks and
balances, and is delighted to admit candidates with the drive and
initiative to rise rapidly through its structure.

Every occult revival begets a magical child or two and Chaoist Magic
is the major synthesis to emerge from the occult renaissance of the
last twenty years. The Pact is amongst the prime vehicles designed
to develop and carry forward that synthesis well into the next
millenium. It is likely that the Pact will be to the end of this
century and to the beginning of the next, rather more than what the
G.D. was in its time, a century ago.

In practice a number of the formal devices of the Pact are treated
somewhat more lightly than the written conventions might leed one to
suppose, with members styling themselves with such oddities as
Frater Vacuity or Soror Impropriety and so on, in deliberate parody
of tradition. The prime functions of the grade structure are to
provide a mechasnism for the exclusion of certain psychotic
misanthropes and neurotic creeps who are sometimes attracted to such
enterprises and to ensure that that which needs organisation is duly
attended to.

Persons who, having read and carefully considered the accompanying
information and conventions of the Pact, are interested in
contributing to its activities may submit an extensive letter of
application to:


     OBLIVION, P.O.Box 18514, Encino, CA 91416-8514, USA