{"id":99,"date":"2026-04-28T18:58:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T17:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/?p=99"},"modified":"2026-04-28T18:58:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T17:58:54","slug":"peter-j-carroll-1953-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/28\/peter-j-carroll-1953-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter J. Carroll (1953-2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The only time I ever spoke to Pete Carroll, you could hardly call it a conversation. It was thirty-mumble years ago, when I worked in a bookshop in Bristol and he rang up to place an order. When he gave his name, I asked, \u201cOh, did you write Psychonaut?\u201d and he, sounding surprised, asked how I knew. I told him I\u2019d studied the subject a couple of years back, but then I noticed my manager giving me a suspicious look – I think she\u2019d heard the word \u201cpsychonaut\u201d and assumed I was talking about mind-altering drugs – so I went back to boring and professional again, and that was the end of that. I was buying a lot of supplies from his shop Amphora Aromatics back then, for my experiments in making and using Hoodoo and Hoodoo-influenced incenses and condition oils. I didn\u2019t realise at the time that it was <\/em>his shop, or maybe we\u2019d have already met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve told you before how \u201cThe Satanic Bible\u201d was a bit of a disappointment to me as an angsty wayward young\u2019un, but Julian Wilde\u2019s \u201cGrimoire of Chaos Magick\u201d was another matter. It wasn\u2019t so much the material, interesting though a lot of it was, but the approach. Up to that time, any books on magic (with or without a -k) I\u2019d looked at were coming from a place of \u201cThis is a bit about how we do it, and how it must be done\u201d – and the \u201cwe\u201d in that sentence was definitely what a linguist would call the \u201cexclusive first person plural\u201d; if your name wasn\u2019t on the list, you weren\u2019t getting in. With the Grimoire the message was more, \u201cThis is a bit about how I <\/em>do it, but how do you <\/em>do it?\u201d It didn\u2019t so much give you permission as point out that you didn\u2019t need permission in the first place. In Mr Wilde\u2019s practice, elements of Wicca and Tibetan Vajrayana rubbed shoulders with entities taken from or inspired by the works of Lovecraft and Moorcock, with oral sex used in circle as a means of raising energy (\u201cif desired\u201d) and Hawkwind records playing in the background for atmosphere, and it was all perfectly fine if it got results. I don\u2019t think I ever attempted any of the rituals he described, even with the adaptations any kid would have to make if he was intending to work alone in his bedroom and remain unrumbled, but what it did was get me thinking, \u201cOK, I can see what you\u2019re doing here, and the logic behind how you\u2019re doing it. Now, how would I <\/em>go about it\u2026?\u201d And that approach, in fact, has served me well ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I came to Pete Carroll\u2019s books some years later – \u201cPsychonaut\u201d, \u201cLiber Null\u201d, \u201cLiber Kaos\u201d and \u201cPsyberMagick\u201d. They weren\u2019t as exuberant in style or range as Mr Wilde\u2019s Grimoire, but they were easily recognisable as of a similar bloodline, with influences drawn from Crowley and Spare, and more than a tip of the fedora to Terry Pratchett. This time, though, it was like being given the grammar of a language, rather than a phrasebook. Instead of specific rituals, he gave you the underpinning of his system for understanding the magical world, and then left you to work with that in your own way, with your own knowledge and what you\u2019d learned (and would learn) from your own studies – and, crucially, he gave the facts without the sermon. Things are very different these days, when virtually any description of magic you read comes with the writer\u2019s political and ethical positions and neuroses welded onto it as if they were an intrinsic part of the system, or even (if the writer\u2019s particularly arrogant) of magic itself; but back then, what characterised writing on Chaos Magic specifically was the implicit understanding that the reader was an adult and could be addressed like one, able to make his own ethical decisions about his use of magic and take responsibility for his actions and the potential results. That\u2019s empowerment. It\u2019s not \u201ckiddy-safe\u201d, but it is empowerment. Keeping everything at a \u201ckiddy-safe\u201d level, when you\u2019re supposed to be writing for adults, isn\u2019t empowering in any way – it\u2019s infantilisation. I\u2019ll stick with Pete\u2019s approach, thanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My feeling is that Chaos Magic was to mainstream magic what punk was to mainstream music and art. Obviously I can\u2019t speak with any personal knowledge of punk because I was only a kid when it happened, but from how I think of it I\u2019d say there\u2019s a definite, easily recognisable likeness. No need to give an account of yourself to the \u201cestablished authorities\u201d in the field; no need for any traditional training as such; just use your energy (\u201cAnger is an energy!\u201d) and get stuck in with what you\u2019ve got, where you are. And, inevitably perhaps, it couldn\u2019t last long, because pretty soon people decided that the way to be a punk was to copy other punks, which was missing the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think Chaos Magic was rather like that. It happened, it needed to happen, and when it had happened, that was it. Keeping it going in the same form was not something it was able to lend itself to, because its spontaneity became laboured. That didn\u2019t mean it had \u201cfailed\u201d. It was a catalyst; it did what it needed to do and then largely disappeared from sight. It was supposed to be about stirring things up and kicking the odd sacred cow, releasing creativity by knocking down accepted barriers, and was never intended to become an establishment in its own right. The opening up of magic, freeing it up to be available again to those of us outside of orthodoxy and hidebound tradition, who have always felt the undeniable pull towards our place with it – that\u2019s been its gift, and it\u2019s Pete Carroll, as one of the current\u2019s originators, that we have to thank for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now he\u2019s gone – back home to the Land under the Hill, where I like to think he\u2019s made friends with Marianne Faithfull, and the two of them have fun together teasing Kenneth Anger. (I would.) I\u2019m not going to be a sentimental twit and start chuntering \u201cWe shall never see his like again\u201d, because everything\u2019s moved on since Chaos Magic first appeared on the scene, and I\u2019d say what we really need is someone who\u2019ll kick over the table as it is today,<\/em> with the ever-increasing wankification and ideological asset-stripping of modern magic. Perhaps that person will make his appearance soon; I certainly hope so. I can\u2019t reasonably be expected to do everything <\/em>myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The only time I ever spoke to Pete Carroll, you could hardly call it a conversation. It was thirty-mumble years ago, when I worked in a bookshop in Bristol and he rang up to place an order. When he gave his name, I asked, \u201cOh, did you write Psychonaut?\u201d and he, sounding surprised, asked how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}