Creating a paradigm

[Chaoswhitt]

Hello fellow chaotes,
Can anyone help me with creating a paradigm.
I have searched for a basic layout to help guide me in creating one for myself.
Any tips, ideas, or experience will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.
chaoswhitt

[Skeptismo118]

First track down what you can on Thomas Kuhn. You'll figure out pretty quickly that paradigms aren't something that you set out to create but are rather the result of the methods you utilize.

Focus on technique and method. World-views will develop from there.

[isis]

i have naver heard of Thomas Kuhn but i am going to look him up think you for the name..

[Chaoswhitt]

i researched Thomas Kuhn and what he had to say made a lot of sense.
I have questions on basing a paradigm around sigils.

[Skeptismo118]

Try it the other way.

Start doing Sigil magic and see what kinds of beliefs and worldviews, both that you develop and that you take interest in, arise as a result.

[Reinga]

Try it the other way.

Start doing Sigil magic and see what kinds of beliefs and worldviews, both that you develop and that you take interest in, arise as a result.

No more needs to be said.

[Skeptismo118]

Worth reading to help clean up the usage of "paradigm"

Paradigm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm)

[Skeptismo118]

i think the free and easy usage of the word embodies Chaos in this context, don't you?

It's a rather good representative of what went wrong with Chaos Magic. Something that was created to do away with soggy thinking and practice in the field of magic by getting to the meta-mechanism behind magical technologies has become the ultimate excuse for many to justify whatever brand of b.s. they find themselves enthused by at the moment.

There are a few who simply do not give a crap about the later category of usage and try nudging people towards the original intent. Not for any particular reason of dogma or even because anything of value is expected in doing it. It is simply that far more interesting results happen along those lines and you end up angering the folks who are simply interested in self-justification.

[seeker]

Indeed reality is completely subjective. Everything you experience is a product of YOUR Being. However you choose to identify with reality (be it the spirit model where beings that are "not you" exist "out there" or the cybernetic model where it's all just various pools of information communicating with other information in one large brain), either way... it's all You. Just You.

That being said, keep in mind that the current frame of mind in which you find yourself (the current values, beliefs, and ideas you hold on to) are based on a foundation. Learn to understand how you've come to see the world as you currently do and, in doing so, identify YOUR pathways to changing it.

Free-associate concepts and symbols to really plumb your psyche for what they mean to YOU. Learn what Your inner landscape is like. Perhaps you picked up a fondness for associating Love with light and maybe the color blue. Well, when you choose to work with love, visualize blue light. It's all about what image/feeling/word you've chosen to bond yourself with. If the pentagram evokes a sense of power or mysteriousness for you, then it's a good symbol to work with. If it is meaningless, why use it? You've given it no power (by belief/connection) thus it has no power to aid you with.

Now, you can of course ALTER these associations. Reprogram your foundation/world-view, if you will. But ultimately the only thing that's going to "work" and get "results" is what convinces the Ultimate YOU that the desired reality is/will/has manifest.

Reality is Belief. Belief is Reality.

[Mirfalan]

I highly agree with the last two posts. I for one, was interested in Chaos Magic at one point. Unfortunately, I was deterred from it because the most vocal parts of the community, the most respected, seemed to try to make me feel that if I did not masturbate on the proper sigil at the right time, that I was doing it wrong. This greatly offended me because Chaos Magic is not supposed to be rigid and dogmatic. It is chaotic and individualistic.

But, I can just ignore those people. Chaos Magic is really the only place I belong, what with my mixture of LaVeyan Satanism, general Paganism, and my own unique spritual philosphy that I am currently crafting.

Whatever you do as a chaos mage, do not submit to anyone else's ideas, unless you want to. Even then, twist them until they fit you like a glove, if they do not already. Still, do not get lazy and stop learning. Always keep learning. Even if you have a method that works, you might find one that works better.

[aim]

experience that came from the way you saw the world can be traced back to a single idea, that is the paradigm.

imagine a man entering a shop thinking that stealing is bad, and thinking of himself as a good man. that is an example of the type of man that call them selves, honest. whatever that means. what would that man thought of you if he had caught you stealing that votka. he would thought of you as a bad man, he would judge you. he would hate you, for he wants that votka but he's wife wont let him have it. he obeys his wife, because he wants to be a good husband. he hates her for that. but he must be good to go to heaven. and he made up his mind about whats good and whats bad, found that in the commandments, and decided to do only what is good. he then started judging and hating, those who were not doing his good, for he doubted that there is a haven. if he didn't had doubt he would not judge, he would not hate, he would forgive truly, for he would "know" that he is doing the right thing, and wouldn't feel sad about the fun he's missing, because of the eternal salvation he'll get from suffering as a slave to the good. but why was he a slave to the good? to get to heaven, and not to hell. what is the difference between the two?
heaven is eternal orgasm, hell is eternal pain. he wants to feel good for a long fucking time.
his paradigm is obey god, and act like his son, and don't **** with the holy spirit? or not?

[Logxi]

It's funny how everyone seems to be forgetting the concept of shifting paradigms. If you can shift from paradigm to paradigm at will, this means that it is not necessarily created by conclusions based on experiences throughout time, but your set of beliefs can actually be changed at any time, should the magician so feel inclined.

(Btw, I'm not referring to just eclectically changing some approaches here and there, but to the actual idea of a complete 'paradigm', that is, a set of beliefs.)

[Jarhog]

I think the reason that I labeled myself as a chaotist is that I hate it when people tell me I am doing this or that wrong and theirs is the only way. I think as part of my personal paradigm I can do rituals from other systems and I only need belief and intent in that system for as long as the ritual lasts. I don't think I, speaking for me only, could switch paradigms completely at will. I think if you construct your paradigm in such a way that it incorporates this flexibility the need to completely shift your paradigm is moot.

I think I will try to explain a bit of my paradigm and maybe ya'll can see what I mean. I take as my starting point that chaos is not necessarily a bad thing. One can have chaos that brings freedom or imprisonment of the mind and body and either one could be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. I also embrace the "there is no spoon" concept as I call it. To me that says like in the Matrix movies that we have no real physical bodies and therefore can't be harmed by others or our actions outside our physical bodies. The god forms that I work with the most complement this because they can reweave reality. I have also incorporated the concepts of authors like Maurice Cotterell, Jose Arguelles, Richard C. Hogland, and Gregg Braden. These people don't talk about majick per se but they do show how things work according to the laws of physics which is the basis of all majick whether practitioners want to admit it or not. To me having the concept of how things work is the first step to changing the world. With this knowledge I can see how majickal systems work so I can work within them. That is where the flexibility comes in.

I think the bottom line of what I am trying to say is that majickal texts are and should not me the only basis for forming a paradigm. Please, all who read this step out of the box of thinking this tome or that grimoire will give you all the answers and study how things work. Sometimes those not majickly inclined have volumes to say on majick if you have ears to hear them.

[devakxes]

I'm currently in the process of going and creating a sort of paradigm. A new way to look at magick that is original ( so far as I have gone ) in its' creation. A new kind of magick. I'm currently trying to find a way to .... '' frame'' it into a kind of path. Anyone got any information/suggestions on the structure of most magickal paths then I'd appreciate hearing them.

[zero]

the thing about paradigm change is that one must be a blank slate, you enter the new paradign as a noob so to speak, or a fool.
to create ones own paradigm one must have a base concept. a paradigm can be a way of life no is a way of life, when we are children we are receptive more so than we are when we have found our ground in the world, what tolka said I agree with completely, everything we believe is based on something.
paradigm shifting is a way of getting that grounding, to learn what is; is to pave the way to the future.

my advise would be to find the concept that all beliefs share and build from there.

[devakxes]

Part of the paradigm I am making involves working with a kind of energy that gets rid of the conditioning of the psyche. So the blank slate is already in place.

I guess that makes sense though. Most forms of magick have some kind of initiation ritual to immerse the mind/soul in the ''current'' of the paradigm in order to erase the identity of the person and make the new paradigm the identity.