The CHAOS LEADS concept-net sprung out of a weedily elevated reëxamination of the Original Snub of Discordian (and Classical Greek) lore. ("The Classical Greeks were not influenced by the Classical Greeks."--Mal-2) The effect of the snub was to contain Eris' (i.e. Confusion's) influence over the Olympian revel to a metal fruit (the Golden Apple). This move can be seen as revolutionary if one grants, as I am inclined to, Berashith Discordia Regina. Even the metal fruit was capable of inspiring disharmony to the extent that the partying deities had to call up Paris to judge the affair.

[Note that the resort to justification based on "lower orders of being," as in this example of divine affairs being subject to the judgment of a human, is analogous to the function of logical positivism and Western philosophical materialism. Lacking consensus, the plurality reaches "down" to the objective nature of the disputed issues; as opposed to reaching "up" to the subjective capacity for value creation, which is the transcendental mode. The remaining option is to seek philosophical operators for plurality that require neither sort of totalization. I think the French theorist Lyotard may be making some inroads on this latter option in his work on the "differend."]

Paris accepted Aphrodite's offer of Helen, thus initiating the Trojan War. So, through the medium of the metal fruit, Eris is expelled from Olympus, but Discordia Regina once more, at the level of human affairs. Note, though, that the Olympians are drawn down to the level of human affairs through their continual involvement in said war.

[Isaac Newton, who was said to have discovered the natural laws of gravity by being struck on the head by a fruit, was one of the inventors of calculus. Ever since, calculus-headed modern society has attempted to abolish disorder by treating all systems as though they conformed to linear equations. In fact, no natural events follow linear functions, and the ever-present "imperfection" of the physical world is affirmed by every engineer. Through social engineering (the linear treatment of non-linear natural systems at the social level) more chaos has been created.]

Contemporary society has its own metal fruit in a variety of flavors. "To the fairest one" has been supplemented with "To the strongest one"--modern weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical, and 'conventional'; "To the smartest one"--the linear processing style of computers dominates human discourse, especially in the economic sphere; and even/especially "To the happiest one"--as people reap proportionally greater and greater quantities of sensory experience from television and other devices of "entertainment." It is not difficult to see Virtual Reality gadgetry as potentially the ultimate metal fruit.

There are no value judgments consciously intended here. I am trying to articulate a process which I suspect to be inevitable (although individual participation in it is likely a function of Love under Will). "Consciousness follows where Chaos leads." This arcanum appears to be a key to Austin Osman Spare's magic. It also fits in with my reading of Baudrillard's cultural theory. In a way, it is very Taoist (pun intended). In the Thelemic qabala, CHAOS is attributed to Chokmah or Wisdom, the second sephira, which precedes consciousness in the order of creation (the "divine lightning flash"). Consciousness is the Ruach, centered in Tiphareth or Beauty, the sixth sephira. Consciousness seeks Chaos, so the experience of Chaos is subsequent to the application of consciousness.

I formulated a division of the experience of the process as a graduated initiation into the mysteries of Chaos:

The sitting Chaos is the "Chaos as victim of order" encountered in the Babylonian account of Marduk's victory over Tiamat, or expressed as Hun Tun, the murdered Chaos King of Taoist fable.

The dancing Chaos is also Chaos on the march: the exuberant energy of nature, the prodigality of reality, sows madness and abandon. This phase of consciousness seduces and explodes, defying order and stasis.

Consciousness transcends then from dancing ecstasy to crawling ecstasy. In the dance, ex-stasis is the release from immobility, "without standing [still]." Crawling, it is the perspective from beyond the frame, "[still] standing without." The fecundity of symbol and the fluidity of perception become the ground for the new awareness.

Chaos crawls as Mercury, or Thoth, the god of magick and writing. Jacques Derrida sets the scenario out in "Plato's Pharmacy":

As the god of language second and linguistic difference, Thoth can become the god of the creative word only by metonymic substitution, by historical displacement, and sometimes by violent subversion. This type of substitution puts Thoth in Ra's place as the moon takes the place of the sun. The god of writing thus supplies the place of Ra, supplementing him and supplanting him in his absence and essential disappearance. Such is the origin of the moon as supplement to the sun, of night light as supplement to daylight. And writing as the supplement of speech.

It is the subversive character of Hermes-Anubis/Nyarlathotep that makes him the guide of the ka (the spiritual double or corporeal supplement) in the underworld wherein he crawls. And Mercury's crawling makes him the God of Thieves (since writing is always the theft of language).

Note also that as Thelemites ascribe CHAOS to Chokmah, they attribute BABALON to Binah or Understanding, the third sephira. Babalon is a name with reference to the Tower of Babel, the construction of which occasioned the confusion of linguistic difference, wherein the "original unity" (specious mythopoeia) of language was disintegrated into the seething plurality of tongues. Babalon is explicitly the bride of Chaos; she is "the Mother of Abominations that rideth upon the Beast."

Just as the apprehension of changes in the ebb and flow of Chaos magnifies Consciousness, so the apprehension of the changes in Consciousness engenders some further condition. Identification with that condition demands the surrender of consciousness in its rational, limited form. Here the initiate of Chaos must drain out his blood and life into the cup of Babalon, which is the Holy Graal. And the result of this operation is best defined in Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni:

And the end thereof is known not unto Our Lady or to the Beast whereon she rideth; nor unto the Virgin her daughter nor unto Chaos her lawful lord; but unto the Crowned Child is it known? It is not known if it be known.

In nomine KAOS Amen.