Intent and Purpose

Welcome to ...


To explain the intent and purpose of this site, let me start by saying that I am a student of magic, chaos and the self. I consider myself a chaos magician and a shaman of sorts. This site is about my experiences in a sense. More than anything, this is my unique copy of the same book that so many mages have written which explains what they see. While others have written their experiences before, it is my hope that adding to the many accounts adds something unique and useful to others.

That said... Let me begin with an explanation of the title of this blog.

Liber LOL

It sounds almost like parody or a joke, but it is not. Well, it is, but it also is not. Paradox... I know.


I have a great love for the Internet culture and the sense of humor I find within it. What's true is that any community of people given to a certain environment will develop a culture that is unique, distinct and defined by its art and to another degree, its sense of humor. The Internet is no different.


Internet Culture
I see the Internet as a place more than anything. It is, in a metaphysical sense, very like unto a separate dimension. One can project their persona into that world and exist there in a way that is neither physical nor necessarily reflecting back upon one's material existence. This world is separate from our material existence in so much as we have a short-hand for referring back to the world in which our life happens (IRL).
"Real-life" or so we call it, is distinguished from our "virtual life", mainly because in the virtual world of the Internet, we have powers we lack in our material world. We can appear however we want, hold confidence we would never have in person, divest ourselves entirely of responsibility for all things, become a master spy or infiltrator, a man of a thousand faces, or even immerse ourselves in a fantasy that becomes very real to our minds. In this place, this plane, this world we call the Internet, we have many communities within a larger community that is akin to our kingdom or country. We have a large over-arching culture, and within that, many sub-cultures.

The most universal culture of the Internet, in my opinion is the culture of LOL. LOL (pronounced: LOHL) is a phenomenon in which humor is the main pursuit, and one's degree of seriousness is often abandoned entirely due to the freedom of anonymity. In the Internet culture of LOL, we can find childish things silly, repeat the same jokes over and over and still laugh at them, and be completely free from giving a single damn if someone is offended or doesn't find our sense of humor funny or acceptable. We have confidence in our enjoyment and we enjoy freely. One of the major themes of the Internet is just that: Freedom.

What it means:
So we have Humor, Freedom, Anonymity and a boundless world of possibilities which is creatable and programmable. More than that it's also escapable. We can walk away at any time. We can leave that world behind if it bothers us, or if we bother it, we can even re-write ourselves as we exist within that world, choosing whatever new traits we desire. The Internet is a virtual dream-world. A world of magic.

A Little History:
And I have grown up as a child of this age of Intellect, and have been privy to the birth and early life of The Internet. I have watched it grow from infancy (the days of AOL and chat rooms were all the rage) into childhood and teen years and finally begin to truly mature into an adult form. I feel that I grew up with the Internet very literally as I was born in 1985, one year before the National Science Foundation funded NSFNet as a cross country 56 Kbps backbone for the Internet. When I was just old enough to tinker with the web (around Age 10), there were chatrooms available on Nickelodeon's website where I rode my training wheels on the web. At that point there were very vague Yahoo searches, chat rooms and shared images. Email was something for adults that I had no use for anyway as the only few people who really hung around on the chat rooms were there every chance they got anyway. (This was back when you had to refresh constantly to get any replies from a chat room as well!)

As I grew into a teen, the Internet was becoming more and more useful. Email became prevalent and I still recall my first yahoo address tho I'm not in a mood to share it now. :)
I remember making my first website. I forged a land of my own. I owned this land, and I decided what existed there. It was playing god with a fantasy world in which I was all-powerful (or at least as long as I had my html and javascript cheat-sheets handy!) and my imagination was the horizon of the world.

By the time I was 19, I was a major Internet user, now a long-time member of many types of community. While in the real world I had a small handful of friends who shared some of my interests, but in no case all of them, on the Internet, I was a god. I was a powerful being with a ton of confidence, happy and free with no worries or cares. I could do anything I wanted. I was an artist and a world-crafter

The hilariousness of a chunky geek glued to a desk being fawned over by so many people doesn't escape me in retrospect.

How did that work out for ya?
But that said... In the years that followed my eventual realization that I spent way too much time on the Internet, I still found immense use for it, even after breaking away from dozens of personas and simply deciding, for all future intents and purposes, to be myself. Now I was using the Internet as a source of knowledge. I had well begun my spiritual path and had begun seeking information. I read countless pagan websites, joined dozens of yahoo groups devoted to magic and knowledge of the unknown. I even finally got to know the local pagan scene through their forum.

And this relates to my path...
Ultimately, the Internet has always been a home to me. Even while I've matured and grown, this world has, in one way, been my only window to the magical community I sought out. Especially after finding my way to paths of self-transformation, the Rune Gild and with that, true sages of this modern age (so very unlike the thousands of pretenders and fluffy pagans seeking a group alternative to Christianity). Without the world of the Internet, I would never have found these people who live no where near myself and who have helped me find myself where I am now.

Which is where?

I have studied myself and the mysteries with the guidance of Waldo Thompson and other great minds of the Rune Gild (definitively including the writings of Edred Thorsson and Ian Read) for nearly two years. For at least a year before that, I was working on finding my way to that path by studying through the path of my Germanic roots (Heathenry) and before that, a very winding path indeed which lead me through periods of agnosticism, atheism, generalized paganism, Taoism and finally to the Troth. During the last year, while still studying the Odian path of transformation, I came across writings I'd been introduced to by a friend prior to my finding the Rune Gild (right at the start of my journey into the Troth faith). These were the writings of Peter Carrol. Chaos magic. Also during the past couple of years, I learned of Discordia.

Enter, Chaos:
And now, I'm finding myself drawn to Chaos magic theory. For the past several months I've been unable to defeat my own interest in chaos magic theory despite trying very hard to tell myself that I wanted to stay the course of the Rune mage and that this was not for me. Turns out, it very much is for me and I'm incredibly stubborn. The issue in that comes from the very magic of the Internet that I wrote of above: Because I can choose here to be anyone I want... it is decidedly DIFFICULT to show anyone the real me. So I feared that if there was any perceived "sudden change" that those who have come to know me (in the community of mages I have acquainted myself with ) would believe my originally portrayed appearance was false. This was a fear of my own making. Any of us seeking a path of transformation must know that transformation implies change. And I should never have been so afraid of the reactions of my peers that I would stifle my own path. It is a hard balance sometimes to strike, especially when one does not wish to walk alone, between asserting ones intentions in the eyes of others, and just not giving a damn what anyone else thinks (so as to do what is true to one's own needs).

What does this mean?

I am who I am. I am a serious student of self-transformation and real magic. I have done serious studies into Odian ways of magic and transformation and I have done serious studies into chaos magic theory. I'm currently finding myself drawn to chaos magic theory and its all-inclusive structure.
Nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted.

This fits me as an individual more than anything else. I also don't have a need for validation to my beliefs or my path.
I just really don't want anyone to think I was not serious from the start. I have been very seriously dedicated to myself as a magician over the past two years and I have grown by leaps and bounds.

This blog is my story, my chapter in the greater book that all we magicians are working on writing. This is real magic. This is the path to finding real magic.

Liber LOL
And why do we keep calling them "Libers" guys? I see so many "Liber This" and "Liber That" especially in chaos magic books that I had the idea for a title of my own: Liber LOL
It fits me. I'll be able to explain more as time goes on.

And the title itself is a great rune. Think on that one for a bit and enjoy the paradox.

Arsh