Review: The Apophenion by Peter J Carroll
After writing my recent note concerning the 15 Books that I am most aware of having influenced me (not the same as my favourite 15 books incidentally), I have decided to write deeper reviews of some of those books, and to start with I have chosen The Apophenion: A Chaos Magic Paradigm by Peter J Carroll, mainly because I have just finished reading it.
I have to admit I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy this book, as I have found Carroll’s work a little too reductionist at times. On occasion I did find myself unhappy with this book for precisely this reason, a prominent example being his insistence that magic tends to be about enchantment and divination, with invocation, evocation and illumination only serving to aid these two goals. With these defined as obtaining information or encouraging events to happen ‘by non-ordinary means’, one could be tempted to reduce things further and define magic as the idea that one can get things by non-ordinary means (whether events, information or anything else), but this could imply a tendency to control. These abilities can cause disaster for an individual that fails to use them wisely.
Not that I’m implying such a lack of wisdom in Carroll, he has hinted at its importance in earlier works (such as the combined power-wisdom catastrophe charts in the back of Liber Kaos), just pointing out that he seems to take it as read in this work.
I didn’t find the balance between physics and magic problematic, indeed mostly inspirational, although I did find myself skimming one of the more science based appendices for lack of obvious application for such ideas in my present situation.
These minor criticisms aside I have found great inspiration from this book, to the extent I feel a renewed connection to the Chaos Magic current after having abandoned it for a few years. I once again understand things I had for a time forgotten or misunderstood. For example I had always identified with Carroll for favouring an ‘animist’ perspective over either a ‘materialist’ or ‘transcendental’ one, but during my disillusionment with Chaos Magic, tended to see it as ‘too materialist’. Carroll’s writings on Pan-psychism in this book have renewed the understanding and identification, and built upon them.
However the real gem for me, perhaps demonstrating a tendency of mine towards the Pantheistic end of the Magic spectrum (as opposed the to Science end), has been the discovery of the twin Goddesses of Apophenia and Pareidolia, the former of which gave her name to this book.
This work should appeal to all those in the chaos current that can stomach, understand or gloss over the science bits, but could enjoy broader appeal for those that practise magic of whatever label. Indeed I would include this work in a recommended reading list of how to practise magic if I chose to create one.
