Joined: Mar 10, 2004 Posts: 166 Location: Atlanta, GA
Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 8:05 pm Post subject: Hasan-i-Sabah, a chaote?
Interesting, I never would have imagined that Hasan-i-Sabah, the Old Man of the Mountain, the founder of the Assassins Sect was the individual who first said the oft repeated quote that is said to sum up Chaos Magick.
"I never fucked anybody over in my life didn't have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break them for no one." Tony Montana
Have you ever heard of Brion Gysin? There's a book out there called "Here To Go" that's pretty good. It's all about Hassan-I-Sabbah.
Weird stuff, though. Gysin was friends with William S. Burroughs (read "Ah! Pook Is Here!" by WSB, by the way...) and together they made the "cut up method" -- or actually, I think Gysin invented it-- and worked a form of magic that would have been described as "Chaos Magick" if the term existed back then.
Check out other books on Gysin, which examine his paintings (magickal alphabets?) and his philosophies. Gysin was obsessed with Hassan-I-Sabbah for the most part and even went on an extended retreat at the location of the Hanging Gardens and the cave thought to be Hassan's.
Very weird, interesting stuff. Only slightly offput by the fact that Gysin was a mysoginist and hated women for spiritual reasons.
Incidentally, ever read the Tao Te Ching? It says the same thing, practically, in slightly different words about the Subtle Force of the "Tao."
"34. The Tao is like a great flooding river. How can it be directed to the left or right? The myriad things rely on it for their life but do not distinguish it. It brings to completion but cannot be said to exist. It clothes and feeds all things without lording over them.
It is always desireless, so we call it "the small." The myriad things return to it and it doesn't exact lordship Thus it can be called "great." Till the end, it does not regard itself as Great.
Therefore it actualizes its greatness."
The book The Esoteric Tao Teh Ching makes this much clearer, but basically, The Force That Supports Everything allows EVERYTHING to exist, without judgement. Now that's love, if you think about it...
Wow all that is interesting..and I'll definitely have to look out for that book sometime...Seeing as my current knowledge of Hassan-I-Sabbah is largely based around a song lol....
Wow all that is interesting..and I'll definitely have to look out for that book sometime...Seeing as my current knowledge of Hassan-I-Sabbah is largely based around a song lol....
*wanders off singing Hawkwind*
A better book specifically about Gysin's philosophiy of magic, religion and art is his book called "The Process"
Joined: Jun 7, 2004 Posts: 79 Location: I'm Here Now
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 8:11 am Post subject:
Yeah, you're onto something with that Bud.
"Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted." - attributed to Hassan I Sabbah, but not proven he said it.
To me, this statement means a lot of different things but I will go with this one for now : "Nothing" is "Everything" in a state of potential and possibility, or a state of uncertainty. All else should be very obvious and make clear why it applies to Chaos Magick, so I won't go into details.
You could change it to "Chaos is True, Cosmos is Permitted."
In the Principia Discordia there is a page titled "Starbuck's Pebbles" that has some "pebbles" arranged the way you see them here.
The "truth" of these pebbles is that, outside of our perception of them, they are in a state of uncertainty or Chaos. When we "look" at them, we "order" them according to our prejudice. We make them into a pentagon or a pentagram, or "pebbles" for that matter. This is what is "permitted". Go to my link about these pebbles for another interesting explanation of this phenomenon. _________________ "I don't know if I know what you think I might know, all I know is stuff I know from doing it." - High Priestess of the Church of the SubPeepness
Joined: Jun 7, 2004 Posts: 79 Location: I'm Here Now
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 10:14 pm Post subject:
Here is something else you may find interesting - Secrets of the Assassins by Peter Lamborn Wilson _________________ "I don't know if I know what you think I might know, all I know is stuff I know from doing it." - High Priestess of the Church of the SubPeepness
Joined: Jun 7, 2004 Posts: 79 Location: I'm Here Now
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2004 7:00 pm Post subject:
I thought about this thread today upon reading some Sufi writings. I used to be heavily into Sufism. Among a few other things, Sufism was one of my inroads into Magick. The Ismailis (Assassins) sprang out of this tradition.
"Sufism is truth without form." - Ibn el-Jalai
That is a line that struck me. It seems a bit like the oft-quoted "Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted." Truth without form may be Chaos, the Nothing.
So, does anyone here, like me, actually incorporate Sufi teachings and practices into what they do Magickally? Is Sufism a "form" of Chaos Magick? Is Zen? _________________ "I don't know if I know what you think I might know, all I know is stuff I know from doing it." - High Priestess of the Church of the SubPeepness
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