>The third point is more subtle. Most versions of chaos magic teach that gods and spirits are simply hypersigils devised and empowered by old religious and magical traditions, rather than conscious nonphysical beings with their own intentions and powers. Many chaos magicians, in fact, treat the universe as a blank slate in which human beings are the only active presences. As a result, very few chaos magicians learn how to work safely with gods and spirits who aren’t products of human minds. That’s something that traditional occultists know how to do, and it informs many of the basic practices and teachings of traditional occultism, but these protections were among the things that the early chaos magicians discarded when they broke with traditional occultism.>>As a result, tens of thousands of young and angry outcasts who were part of the chans and a galaxy of similar online communities took up the intensive study and practice of basic magical workings without any sense of how to manage interactions with nonphysical beings—or, indeed, any notion that such interactions might need to be managed. That, in turn, pretty much guaranteed that if something other than human took an interest in the situation, a lot of the graduates of the chans’ magical boot camps were going to be swept up in something over which they had no control at all.">