Chaos & Sorcery, Chaos & Sorcery

Preface of Peter J. Carroll: The Chaos Current has recentlyspawned a number of excellent grimoires by practical sorcerers who write fromhardwon experience. This book must rank amongst the best of them.I have had the honour of knowing and working with Nick Hall for some years and Ihave seen him perform many of the acts of sorcery that he writes of in thisbook. The results are often as awesome as is the presence of the man himself.Having conjured with Nick on many occasions, I would not relish the prospect ofconjuring against him.Rather than invest belief in abstruse metaphysical theory, Nick has chosen hereto build a system from an eclectic range of practical procedures culled frommany cultures. Informing the whole treatise however is the chaoist meta-beliefthat belief structures reality. This is pragmatic magick at its best. Devise ordiscover a technique that seems worth investing belief in, and if you canvalidate it, include it in your grimoire, without worrying how or why it works.Many times in the course of reading this text I stopped to make a note ofsomething that seemed well worth trying out. That, I think, is the mark of auseful book.Unless the vast majority of magicians work in complete isolation from their morepublic peers, then the ratio of civilians who merely collect magic books toactual working magicians may be estimated at ninety nine to one. This is a bookfor the one-percenters, although it may inspire a few of the rest to actuallypick up a wand for a change. All it takes is guts and imagination, not muchspecialist knowledge is required.