Reflections on Chaos

Ersatz Gods

Illustration for "The Masque of the Red Death" by Harry Clarke, 1919

Recently, I had a chance to re-watch Sam Dunn's "Metal - a Headbanger's Journey". It's not a bad film but it doesn't offer anything groundbreakingly new for an old-time headbanger such as myself. And yet it was nostalgia that brought me back – only to prompt a series of reflections. Some of which concerns the ideas behind a single from my upcoming release.

In this film, Sam set out to find out why of all music genres, metal and its fans were repetitively subjected to marginalization and ridicule. After a lengthy exploration of many different subgenres of metal, including interviews with prominent founding figures within the genre, Sam reaches a conclusion that goes something along the lines of "metal is marginalized since it deals with aspects of life which most of us refuse to acknowledge or deal with".

I suppose some of this refusal stems out of not entirely unjustified social taboos. However, most of it seems to be a product of the sheer discomfort of looking in the eyes of the metaphorical beast. A discomfort we do not hasten to forfeit, even at the cost of inviting insidious effects upon our spirit and consequently upon the society of our times, which I will describe later.

One especially poignant part of the film was author Gavin Baddeley's comments regarding Death Metal's fascination with the possibilities of death and the body. In one of his interviews, Baddeley points out a connection between the acquaintance we hold with our own mortality and our willingness to witness mortality and death expressed in art and culture.

According to Baddeley, previous generations were more acquainted with their mortality through death of siblings and close family members, which up until the mid-20^th century were a more frequent affair. People were also exposed to death on a day to day level merely by the fact that the meat on their plate might have come from an animal butchered earlier by their own hands. They knew that death was part of the very essence of life. And as this very essential part of our lives was gradually banned out of our existence as a result of materialistic progress, people increasingly craved images of death and fear – as is commonly the case with Death Metal.

I believe Baddeley's comment is an invitation to even deeper reflection upon subjects which transcend the scope of a mere motivation behind a specific style of music.

Our collective denial of death as presented by Baddeley and its dire effects on our spirit is also described by what I perceive as the allegory behind Poe's "Masque of the red death".

The story, which among other things also inspired my "Rhyme of the Plague", revolves around a prince and his court who lock themselves up in a castle. Having welded the doors shut, they seek to await the end of the "Red Death" plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their seemingly secure refuge. Yet despite their meticulous efforts, Red Death makes a grandiose entrance at the night of a masquerade, subjecting the prince and his court to the nightmarish consequences of a deadly plague erupting within inescapable confines.

A less dramatic manifestation of this can be found in the carefully sheltered refuge of modern-day existence. Many things we despair to avoid eventually find their way back into our lives as uglier, enhanced versions of their original form. Such is the case with unacknowledged passions which come back at us as perversion and obsession and unacknowledged and undealt with sadness and anger which go on to become potentially contagious maladies of the spirit.

Yet worst of all denials and perhaps the mother of all sorrows is the collective denial of our finite nature – perhaps in a futile attempt to gain an almost godlike control upon our world. However, we cannot become ersatz gods without slaying the true gods of this world, and to this there is a reason. Denying our limits in time and in the physical realm shades the eternal from our gaze, leaving us stranded in a godless world, in which said maladies of the spirit flourish like poisonous fungi. In this marooned state, no transhumanist aspiration, nor any immortality project in the world will do to cure us of our misery.

Eight Arrows

Project banner, based on the symbol of chaos.Design by N.Khaos. Laurel vectors by Vecteezy.com

A lot can be gleaned about man and the world through his symbols. In this regard, the symbol of chaos is no exception. Despite being a modern symbol, initially conceived within pop culture, several contemporary philosophers and occultists were quick to adopt it as a visual representation to their ideas. I believe it is so since the shape of this symbol is a very accurate testimony to the nature of chaos and its relation to order. The arrows of the eight-pointed star point toward all directions, seemingly indicating the absence of a preferred path. However, upon close observation one may notice the symmetry, as each arrow is balanced by its opposing counterpart: an upward pull exerted by the northern arrow is balanced southward, west balances east and so forth, in all eight directions.

Thus, in its center, in the churning the eye of the storm at the meeting point of contradicting directions, there is Balance. And much like in basic mechanics, the further one strays from this center, the further he is from equilibrium, since he is affected more by the pull of the arrows in his proximity.

Here one can make a few interesting observations:

Just as the eternal remains unheeded if not for the finite, Balance can only manifest itself against the coexistence of opposing poles which characterize chaos. One can even go further and claim that Balance is born out of the opposing forces that make up chaos herself. At first there was chaos – from which balance and order emerged. Willing order by walling out chaos topples life out of balance. The many diseases of the modern world are a testimony to that.

In his excellent article on the code of conduct for the higher man, Traditionalist author Collin Cleary describes Italian philosopher Julius Evola's "differentiated man" as "Existing in the world in a physical sense, even playing some role (or roles) in that world, yet at the same time living wholly apart from it at a spiritual sense". According to Cleary, this differentiation is the fruit of "overcoming of the world and of the ego… whether it is objective (“out there”) or subjective (“in here”)".

Cleary further elaborates on the overcoming of the subjective world when describing the superior man as one who, as with his passions, "learns to see his moods as if they were the weather – or, better yet, as if they were minor demons besetting him: external mischief makers, to whom he has the power to say “yes” or “no”".

With regard to ideas presented earlier, I believe this work of overcoming is the proper attitude toward chaos. One should address chaos not by repression and denial, but by finding the balance amid her churning vortex through disidentified acknowledgement. The "witnessing consciousness" mentioned in the doctrine of Vedanta is the perspective of the unmoved one amid the eye of the storm, the circle of balance amid eight arrows.

Finally, let us return once more to the symbol of chaos. This time let us observe it from a slightly different perspective, where the symbol itself serves to describe a microcosmos, with arrows describing opposing yet coexisting powers. Such powers can be death, life, pleasure, health, illness, pain, peace, struggle and so on. The removal of a certain element from this microcosmos is represented by the removal of an arrow from the symbol. Given the balance described by the relationship between the arrows, which in turn represent the relationship between coexisting forces in the world, the removal of a single arrow upsets the balance within our microcosmos. Furthermore, it might obliterate the potential of balance ever being reborn amid the remaining poles of power, since that very force we have removed might have been an irreplaceable means of maintaining equilibrium.

Chaos can manifest herself in the world as a multipolarity of opposing yet ultimately mutually balanced powers. Any attempt to rid the world of the many poles of chaos is akin to unleashing her destructive force upon the world.

(25.11.2023 N.Khaos)