Notable figures

Notable figures

• Peter J. Carroll 1953–
  Co-founder; principal early theorist

  English magician and writer whose Liber Null (1978) and Psychonaut (1981) are the founding texts of the current. Co-founder with Ray Sherwin of the Illuminates of Thanateros.

• Ray Sherwin 1952–
  Co-founder; publisher of the Morton Press

  English magician and small-press publisher who, with Peter Carroll, founded the IOT in 1978. His Morton Press distributed much of the early literature of the current.

• Phil Hine 1962–
  Writer and teacher

  English magician whose Condensed Chaos (1995) and Prime Chaos (1999) became standard introductions to the practice for the generation of practitioners reached through the small-press scene of the 1990s.

• Austin Osman Spare 1886–1956
  Influential predecessor (sigil method)

  English artist and occultist who developed the sigil method that chaos magick later took up as a central technique. Spare worked decades before the chaos-magic current and was not part of it, but his The Book of Pleasure (1913) is treated as a foundational source.