The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer.
terence mckenna
Sometimes I go to the Hall of Asian Antiquities in the British Museum, sit on a bench, and think about the Kali Yuga. According to the Mahabharata, the great Hindu epic, this is the age in which we currently live. As a two-thousand-year-old description of the modern world, it is unsurpassed in its dismal accuracy. Spiritual teachers are mocked, rulers no longer see it as their duty to protect their citizens and become a danger to the whole world, dramatic climate shocks kill us by the thousands, millions die hungry. There are even descriptions of great metal birds bringing death that we assumed were airplanes but are probably, with the benefit of unenviable hindsight, military drones. According to the yuga system, to be born during the Kali Yuga is to have the most challenging incarnation possible. Yet here we are! Congratulations on your amazing timing.
The Asian Antiquities Hall is a particularly unloved corner of the British Museum and it shows. Its treasures are almost sheepishly displayed, under glass and with quiet little cards next to them, as if the last hundred years of cultural studies never happened. The hall has none of the inspiring confidence or wonderful bombast you see in the museum’s other wings. There are no touch screens or holographic projections here. These are relics not only from a culture that thought it would last forever and is now vanished but are also displayed by a culture that thought it had worked out how to avoid vanishing and is also now largely obliterated. Sitting on the first floor at the back of the museum where comparatively few people venture, there is something awkwardly hand-wringing about the collection. It reminds me of those alarmingly racist relics from a different era, like the inherited objet your family hides away in your grandmother’s attic—too controversial to put in the sitting room, too valuable to put on eBay.
To me, this says everything about the modern era. The British Museum is, without question, my favourite place on earth. It is free to enter. Millions pass through its doors each year. Past its three gift shops, two restaurants and up the back stairs are some profound objects hiding in plain view. No great quests into the Himalayas are required. These artefacts could not be more readily accessible to anyone who is interested. If you but take the time to just look and think then your life might just change forever. Few take that time.
You may be aware that the term samsāra refers to the continuous circle of incarnations through the various worlds for those that have not yet reached enlightenment. Its original etymology means “perpetual wandering.” Like visitors through a museum, we wander from gallery to gallery. I’ll be happy when I get that promotion. I’ll devote time to my spirituality when I have paid off my credit card. The Buddha’s solution is for us to give up attachment, to give up striving. This is sound advice in a world where you would stay a peasant if you were born a peasant. No amount of desire could turn you into a prince. But we live in a world where, at least in theory, one can accomplish great things regardless of their birth status. A new method of dealing with perpetual wandering is required in a world where there still may be even the slightest hope that you can accomplish great things with your incarnation.
Magic is always the tactic of last resort for those who refuse to give up hope. You do not summon Cthulhu to help you find the TV remote. You only visit the witch at the edge of the village when all other options have been explored, for she is the loan shark of the gods. It is only a certain kind of person who is willing to take the road we are about to walk. This book is written for that person. For the person who, when life gives them lemons, offers those lemons at the crossroads and go buys themselves a gin and lemonade simply because it is Tuesday. “Last resort” is just another way of saying “last drinks.” Even if this is the apocalypse, that is no call to avoid making things interesting.
The above attitude notwithstanding, there really is no way to sugarcoat this. We do live in a “last resort” world. A biosphere in crisis, a wealth gap not seen since the age of empires, levels of youth unemployment that have previously triggered revolutions, total surveillance and the erosion of civil liberties, robots competing for middle class jobs that were once safe for life, an unelected overclass rigging the game at our expense, a global economy built on criminal banking and continuous war.
The balance of probability suggests that if you are not already rich, you will almost certainly never be so. Modern civilisation’s fundamental promise will go unfulfilled in your lifetime. But so what? It’s time for a new promise. If your deepest desire is to live the life rappers pretend to have, then you are reading the wrong book. This is a book for people who realise they can only play the hand they are dealt and have every intention of doing so. This is a book for people who can disassociate personal meaningfulness with generating the wealth required to achieve it. This is a book for people who realise success is individually defined and individually delivered.
It may sound surprising to bring this up as early as the introduction, but I was and remain fairly unambitious. I did a film degree in Sydney, Australia. It did not even have examinations. I am not a banker, I am not some TV host, beaming through porcelain teeth, telling you to put your credit card in the freezer. Whisper it, but I actually find money to be a bit, well, boring. That’s why this is a success magic book rather than a money magic book. The general idea is that one inevitably follows the other.
In my early twenties, my “plan A” was to be a filmmaker; if not a famous one then at least one that can pay the rent. There really was no “plan B,” but I suppose it would have been some kind of retail sales if my student jobs were anything to go by. Fortunately for everyone involved—especially the cinema-going public—the universe appears to operate exclusively on “plan C.” Or, at least, it certainly did and continues to do so in my case. What I will tell you is that making peace with plan C, learning to roll with and adapt to it, has turned out really quite well for me (so far!). I have lived in multiple cities on both sides of the planet, seen much of the parts in-between and worked for some of the world’s largest and most-loved media companies. When one of these media companies made me redundant, as they are wont to do, I even managed to start a moderately popular chaos magic blog called Rune Soup, the maintenance of which has provided me with some lifelong magical friendships and led to the book you hold in your hands. Along the way I found love, a reasonable level of wealth and managed to absolutely smash through my bucket list.
Viewed over a longer timeline, what magic has always offered and what I hope to be able to impart in this book, a way to maximise plan C. Magic departs from mysticism because it proudly proclaims its unshakeable intention to do noteworthy things in this world, rather than seeking merely to transcend it. If you compare the Greek Magical Papyri of the first few centuries of the Common Era with the Neoplatonism of the same time period you see a view of the universe that is largely identical and two entirely separate ways of approaching that universe. The Greek Magical Papyri are filled with spells to end marriages, find treasure, cure livestock, banish demons, and find employment among the powerful. The magicians of the classical age lived through an era of zero social mobility and wide-ranging cultural collapse. With the assistance of the spirits, however, they were not going to let such trifling matters get in their way. One need not live permanently in this worldview but one must be willing to at least temporarily inhabit it. Graham Greene once wrote that all writers must have a splinter of ice in their hearts so that they can be involved in the world and also slightly removed, making observations. The hearts of modern magicians living through the Kali Yuga must contain glaciers.
This is where adopting a chaos magical perspective may become helpful. We have about seventy years of psychological research that demonstrates keeping a positive attitude despite the prevailing challenges is associated with eventual success or goal achievement. At this point in time it is pretty hard to argue a contrary case. Stay positive, keep your head in the game, and don’t give up. We may as well pin a badge saying “full-blown science” on this statement.
To borrow a term from mathematics, such “full blown science” is “necessary but not sufficient.” A cold, unblinking stare into the reality of our situation, however grim, is an essential first step, lest we run the risk of descending into fantasy and escapism. Cognitive dissonance has scuppered many magicians’ ships before they have even left the harbour. It is for this reason that the opening chapter of the book you are holding is—putting it politely—stark. And if much of the information is new to you, then it will feel stark like a nuclear winter. I make no apologies for this. The good news, the hacks, the optimisation strategies, all follow in the subsequent chapters. If any of them strike you as particularly extreme, go back and read the first chapter again and remind yourself we are undergoing a once-in-a-civilisation economic event.
Chaos magic is not tied to a fixed model of reality or, more specifically, it need not be. It merely offers a toolkit of ideas and practices that you
can use to effect change in your material circumstances. Chaos magic is largely interoperable with whatever belief system you most regularly inhabit, even if that happens to be stringent materialism. There are no mandatory interventionary divine beings, the destruction of the American middle class is not “God’s will,” and the last thirty years of wealth harvesting by the rich do not have anything to do with seasonal calendars or karma. You may consider chaos magic as a sort of management consultancy exercise. The book is written from a chaos magic perspective because it is probably the most useful worldview for anyone of a spiritual bent to optimise the reality of their situation given the prevailing economic headwinds. It provides us with the opportunity to examine the interplay of magic and opportunity without having to fold it back into an explanatory framework.
First and foremost, you are required to at least temporarily adopt a chaos magic headspace: Reality must be approached more from a pirate angle than a naval one. As we shall soon see, the rules of this world were simply not built for your benefit. And in an era of extreme economic change whose only corollary is the first Industrial Revolution, there are no safe harbours left, only the comparative safety of the open ocean. Your goal is not to find a quiet, secure job somewhere near an affordable suburb, settle down and then wait for death. The economy that supported such unambitious goals is ending. The developed world is now in a state of permanent structural instability. Seeking after stability is a recipe for homelessness in your late middle age years. In today’s world, security only comes from embracing opportunity. And opportunity is not randomly distributed in either space or time. It must be pursued and seized.
Enter magic. There is a very specific bravery that comes with marshalling the forces of the universe to achieve meaningfulness and prosperity in your life. It is a bravery you must find. Magic’s only other requirement is that you always put a question mark after the word “reality” and truly own the responsibility that comes with doing so.
If there is one upside to living in the Kali Yuga, it is this. According to Hindu belief, because the world has fallen so far from its original, elevated state, you need only chant Lord Krishna’s name once to eventually achieve salvation. The gap between a person and that first mantra is greater than the gap between the second and the ten millionth mantra. Adapting this belief to a magical worldview, the gap between never having performed a practical enchantment and performing your first practical enchantment is greater than the gap between that first enchantment and achieving the status of Magus. Your results will also reflect the comparative size of these gaps. Fully engaging with the world as it is, on both a material and spiritual level, will quickly show you just how flimsy consensus reality actually is. One little push and materialism falls away like spring snow sliding off a roof. So there is an inherent paradox in using the spiritual to accomplish the material. Incorporating the magical world into your physical world will quickly show you which one is real and which one is delusion. And that realisation is more valuable than all the riches of the earth.