05.09. Chaos Star?
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This article is from the Magick-Chaos FAQ, by AShdeamoNium ashton@netcom.com with numerous contributions by others.
05.09. Chaos Star?
"In the distance, he saw the banners of Law and of Chaos raised,
side by side, the one bearing the eight radiating arrows, the
other bearing the single straight arrow of Law. And over all this
hung a huge balance in perfect equilibrium. ... The balance
sometimes tips. It must be righted. And that is the power of
mortals, to adjust the balance."
-- from _The Knight of the Swords_ by Michael Moorcock.
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From: jbbell@tiguex.cs.unm.edu (Rev. J. B. Bell)
I know at least three Chaos symbols. The most well-known one in less
specialized circles than Chaos Magick is the simple eight arrows
radiating from a single center. Moorcock appears to have invented
this one, but it's possible it comes from the U.S. military.
The next popular one I know of consists of eight rays whose endpoints
define a square, with a cirle more or less bisecting the longer rays.
This is a trademarked symbol from Chaosium Games, which among other
games publishes an Elric role-playing game.
Finally we have the Star of Chaos that appears to be designed by Peter
J. Carroll. It is the familiar eight rays, but the center is obscured
by an opaque, pregnant-looking circle.
My symbological interpretation of these: the first seems to emphasize
simple dispersion or ordinary material chaos. The second is more
about breaking out of boundaries. The third stresses Chaos as the
origin of being, and the mystery at its center.
I ripped off my personal chaos symbol from Grant Morrison, writer of
excellent comics like _Kid Eternity_ and _The Invisibles_. His is
more of a black sun than a star--simply a circle, surrounded by eight
triangles. I find the black sun associations quite pleasing,
particularly when I found much mention of it in music (most recently
"Black Hole Sun") and alchemy. It is perhaps symbolically more
mystical, with a "leap of faith" or intuition, or Gnosis, between the
original mystery and the radiated points.
In the section on Yantras, in a diagram on p. 52 of
_Tools for Tantra_ by Harish Johari, which I admit is a somewhat
cheesy book, we have a couple of possibilities: one, a set of eight
equidistant lines, not arrows. The header says "Expression. Dynamic."
Then the aforementioned circle with radiating arrows. That says
"Expansion." Not a perfect match, but close enough to be interesting.
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From: v306zj7w@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Frater ABZU)
The eight sided star appears to be relatively old, - for in the book
Symbols of Prehistoric Mesopotamia by B.L.Goff, fig.45 shows one
quite plailnly, belonging to the Hassunah period (7000=+ B.C.E.).
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From: pali151@netcom.com (Sri Palindrome.151)
The Chaostar, is, in fact, the eight rays as you indicate. The
symbol is sometimes used in physics to represent the four
dimensions of matter (length, width, depth, time), and thus also
represents the extension of a point to a line, square, cube, and
tesseract ... by the formula:
point "Xiqual Udinbak"
line "Xiqual Uzarfe, D'kyeng"
square "Xiqual Kudex, Eacht"
cube "Xiqual Ashara, Dijow"
tesseract "Xiqual Thaldoma, Nobo"
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