The Chaos Protocols: Magical Techniques for Navigating the New Economic Reality Paperback – April 8, 2016

The Chaos Protocols- Gordon White

The short form: This is a really, really good book. Highly recommended.

What makes it a good book (and particularly a good chaos magic book) are a number of things.

1. Context. The context in which we work now is different from the one in which I first came in contact with chaos magic. Gordon References Stephen Mace’s Stealing the Fire from Heaven which was an early influence on my own work. I bought my copy after reading some of Mace’s article in Chaos International, sending cash to Mr. Mace who sent me what I think I recall as a velo bound book obviously hand typed with illustrations hand set & then photocopied. I think the process took about six weeks in total. A very different time! Consider this again when we look at Crowley, Carroll, Levi, etc. Things change fast. We live & work in a different setting, and our work should reflect that while not rejecting what is effective from the past, which this book does in spades.

Whether you agree 100% with Gordon’s assessment of the current state of the world (I’m probably in the high 90’s personally), this is a damn good thing for most anyone with a magical worldview to read. More important than the technical aspects in most cases.

2. Focus. The book is focused on ‘success’ in a particularly weird economic time, the work & working contained are very much pointed in this direction, in appropriately lateral ways. At the same time, it is a good generalist work, as really all work ‘should’ be pointed towards success, yes? We are not enchanting to fail, right?

3. Technical approaches. In a nice variation from a lot of views on chaos magic, much of the ‘ritual’ bits are modifications of or use parts from VERY old texts, from the PGM, Treatise of Solomon, and Orphic Hymns. These things just work, and to me chaos magic has always been about using what works. Also no fear of of using Judeo-Christian bits, and correcting some of the whack around that.

4. Actual ritual bits. These are well devised, and will certainly work if applied intelligently. A nice section on sigils that while mostly available on the Rune Soup blog would have been an error to leave from the book. This stuff works if you work with it, and this is a nice, simple, wank-free approach. Good stuff. If you aren’t already using Gordon’s shoaling & robofish methods, perhaps this will get you to try them. They work.

5. Probability. This is one of the cornerstones that often gets ignored and causes folk’s metaphorical houses to get all wonky and dropped pens to roll from the living room off into the garage where they are swallowed by a giant crack never to be seen again. Metaphorically speaking.

In closing, the strategic approaches and explanation of working with probabilities, luck generation, and Becoming Invincible are all gold. The ritual and technical bits are very good, and give a nice, compact tool set to do nearly anything that one would want to approach from a magical perspective. Some of these will be brought into my own work to see how they play with what I already do, and that really almost never happens, and that is about the highest praise I can give a book.

This one gets added to Visual Magick: A Manual of Freestyle Shamanism by Jan Fries, The Oracle Travels Light by Camelia Elias, and Protection and Reversal Magic by Jason Miller, and Draja Mickaharics books as my top suggestions for general books on magic as I see it in practice.

Aidan Wachter, April 4, 2016

How do you follow up one of the great books of magical re-contextualization? With a fantastic book of praxis. Gordon White, creator of the fantastic Rune Soup blog, podcast, etc. follows up his brilliant Star.Ships (available directly through Scarlet Imprint Publishing) with the first great book of practical chaos magic released this millennium. Our world is in chaos. What we once thought of as a stable world has been riven by mismanagement and greed. What are our weapons in the battle for a good, fulfilling, and valuable life? The same ones we've always had: spirits, ritual, and guts. Gordon White lays out the truth of our current situation, and offers a number of practical hints on creating our best world. More than just another book of spells, The Chaos Protocols is a map to navigate the coming...interesting...times. Build an army of the dead. Forecast the troubles, and change your probabilities. Shoal your sigils, and let them loose with robofish. Talk to the neighbors. Most importantly, live a delicious life. Highly recommended.

Excellent writing, excellent information, and excellent strategies. Though some of the facts were distressing to read, the writing style was very enjoyable. Once you get past the intro and first chapter, it's a much more pleasant book. As for the unpleasant part, it's a series of truths that need to be understood to function in today's financial landscape. The book would be worth buying just for that first chapter alone.

My only critique is that I'd have liked to see more examples of how to think in terms of chaos magic strategies. While I understood it fine, and give it five stars personally, I'd wonder if it would make much sense to people who weren't already familiar with the subject. I'd still recommend the book to them, but I'd first recommend a more beginner-friendly book.

Before reading this book, I highly suggest you read at least Advanced Magick for Beginners by Alan Chapman or Condensed Chaos by Phil Hine.

I'm going to be honest, the first chapter or two are very economics heavy, and it honestly can be a bit of a bore, but once you get through it, it ties into the magick section quite nicely. This is a great book with techniques tailored more for our modern economic era. To me and my area of the world, the economy is doing a lot better than the borderline doom and gloom economic landscape White portrays, but a lot of this information helped me rethink about what I want and why I want it. Whether something was what society decided that I wanted, or if I from my own free will decided that I wanted.

The methods and techniques are pretty solid once you get to them. I've received positive results from the Headless Ritual, and major life changes from his Shoaling technique. In fact, this book is worth the money just for the Shoaling technique alone.

All in all, if you're at least familiar with the occult and/or chaos magick, I'd definitely recommend this book.

Gordon once again knocks one over the fence, presenting us with a spell book that dares to treat the readers like intelligent adults. It starts us off not with any New Age claptrap but a dash of cold water in the face, in the form of some sober economic observations. He follows up his dark grey forecast with a mix of sound economic advice and some practical magic designed to pull the odds in your favor. This is no get-rich-quick screed, but a level-headed approach to survive some major economic changes coming in the near future, if not already here.