From the perspective of a Chaos Magician, Choronzon is not a literal, external demonic entity but a psychological construct representing the dissolution of the ego. It is the personification of chaos, dispersion, and meaninglessness that serves as the ultimate guardian of the Abyss—a metaphysical and psychological chasm that separates mundane consciousness from transpersonal illumination. To the Chaote, confronting Choronzon is a deliberate undertaking in radical self-destruction, a necessary ordeal to dismantle the false self and achieve a higher state of spiritual integration and personal development.
Here are some facts worth noting:
- Psychological Construct: Choronzon is viewed as an internal process or a complex within the psyche, not an objective demon.
- Guardian of the Abyss: It represents the final barrier before attaining transcendent states of consciousness, located at the conceptual sphere of Da’ath on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
- Function is Ego Death: Its primary role in magickal practice is to facilitate ego death, the complete annihilation of the magician’s mundane personality and sense of self.
- The Shadow Self: It is the ultimate manifestation of the Jungian Shadow, embodying all repressed thoughts, emotions, desires, and complexes.
- A Tool for Illumination: While dangerous, working with the Choronzonic current is a path for the advanced Chaos Mage to achieve personal integration, transcendence, and enlightenment by confronting and assimilating their own deepest chaos.
Etymology and Origins
The concept of Choronzon predates its adoption by modern occultism, originating in the 16th-century magickal system known as Enochian Magick. Its modern form, however, was heavily shaped and popularized by the occultist Aleister Crowley, whose work forms the foundation for its later interpretation of Choronzon within Chaos Magick.
John Dee and Enochian Magick
The entity known as Choronzon first appears in the private journals of Elizabethan occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley. During their Enochian workings from 1582 to 1589, Kelley’s scrying sessions documented communications concerning an entity named Coronzom. This entity was identified in Kelley’s scrying as a force of confusion and dispersion, residing in the metaphysical void known as the Abyss. In the 20th century, occultist Aleister Crowley elaborated on the concept in his mystical system of Thelema, where he explicitly named the “Dweller in the Abyss” Choronzon (with an added ‘h’ for Gematria purposes). While Kelley’s scrying was the original source of the name, Crowley’s interpretation and spelling significantly influenced modern occult understanding of the entity.
Aleister Crowley and Thelema
Aleister Crowley integrated the Enochian system into his own religion-philosophy of Thelema, elevating Choronzon to a central position in his model of spiritual attainment. Crowley defined Choronzon not merely as a demon but as the personification of the Abyss itself—a principle of nihilistic, incoherent chaos whose sole function is to destroy. For Crowley, Choronzon was the ultimate obstacle preventing an adept from crossing the Abyss and achieving the grade of Magister Templi (Master of the Temple).
Thelemic Conception
In Thelema, Choronzon is a pivotal figure representing the final test of the self before one can attain true spiritual knowledge. This conception is deeply tied to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, specifically the hidden sphere of Da’ath, and is famously illustrated in Crowley’s own magickal workings.
The Dweller in the Abyss
Crowley defines the Abyss as a great chasm of consciousness separating the phenomenal world of the lower seven Sephiroth from the supernal triad of Kether, Chokmah, and Binah on the Tree of Life. Choronzon is the “dweller” within this void. It is not a being with a coherent identity but is the very principle of disintegration. Its “name” is dispersion, and its nature is to reduce all things to a meaningless collection of unrelated parts, thereby preventing the magician from realizing the unity of existence that lies beyond the Abyss.
The Role of Da’ath
Choronzon is inextricably linked to Da’ath, the “hidden” or “false” sephirah on the Tree of Life. Da’ath, meaning Knowledge, is not a state of being but a transitional passage across the Abyss. It is the gateway through which the adept must pass. To enter Da’ath is to confront Choronzon directly. If the adept clings to any part of their ego, identity, or worldly knowledge, Choronzon will tear them apart, scattering their consciousness into the void. Success means the complete surrender and annihilation of the ego, allowing the adept to be reborn in the supernal triad.
The Summoning in the Sahara Desert
In 1909, Aleister Crowley, accompanied by his student Victor Neuburg, allegedly performed a ritual in the Sahara Desert to summon the entity known as Choronzon. Choronzon, also known as the Dweller in the Abyss, represented a force of chaos and dispersion. During the ritual, Choronzon threw sand over the magickal Triangle of Art in an attempt to disturb the coherence of the ceremony. The entity subsequently attacked Neuburg, manifesting itself “in the form of a naked savage”, forcing Neuburg to drive it back at the point of a dagger. Crowley’s account of this event has been criticized as unreliable because the relevant original pages are torn from the notebook in which the account was written.
Chaos Magick Interpretation
Chaos Magick, which emerged in the 1970s, takes a fundamentally different approach to entities like Choronzon, stripping away metaphysical dogma in favor of pragmatic, results-based, and psychological models. The Chaos Magician does not ask “Is Choronzon real?” but rather “What happens when I work with the Choronzon current?”
Rejection of Dogma
A core tenet of Chaos Magick is the rejection of the belief in objective, external spirits or deities. Instead, all such phenomena are treated as products of consciousness, whether individual or collective. From this standpoint, Choronzon is not an ancient demon to be feared, but a potent symbol set and psychological process that can be deliberately engaged with for specific purposes. The Chaote operates from a paradigm of “belief as a tool”, adopting and discarding belief systems as needed to produce magickal effects.
Choronzon as a Psychological Construct
Within the Chaos Magick framework, Choronzon is understood primarily as a psychological construct. It is the name given to the experience of total ego-dissolution and the confrontation with the raw, unstructured chaos of the unconscious mind. It is a symbol for the “Guardian of the Threshold” of the psyche, the point where the conscious mind breaks down in the face of the sheer vastness of what it has repressed and denied.
Psychological and Archetypal Parallels
To make the concept of Choronzon functional, Chaos Magicians often map it onto modern psychological and parapsychological models. This allows the practitioner to work with it as an internal force for profound self-transformation.
The Ego and Ego Death
The ego, in this context, is the self-concept—the narrative of “I” with its attachments, beliefs, memories, and limitations. Choronzon’s primary function in any practical working is to induce ego death. This is the forced, temporary, or permanent dissolution of this self-concept. For the Chaos Magician, this is not a negative event but a liberating one. It is the deconstruction of a limiting operating system, allowing for the installation of a new, more expansive consciousness.
The Jungian Shadow Archetype
Choronzon is a perfect (and extreme) representation of the Shadow archetype as described by Carl Jung. The Shadow is the repository for all the aspects of oneself that the conscious ego rejects or represses. It contains our fears, perceived weaknesses, socially unacceptable desires, and undeveloped potentials. The confrontation with Choronzon is a radical form of “shadow work”, where the magician must face and integrate the totality of their own darkness and chaos to achieve psychological wholeness, or individuation.
Repressed Thoughts, Emotions, and Desires
Expanding on the Shadow concept, Choronzon embodies the sum total of an individual’s repressed psychological content. It is the voice of every “I can’t”, the energy of every suppressed rage, the form of every denied desire, and the weight of every unacknowledged trauma. When evoked, it gives voice and form to this chaotic internal landscape, forcing the magician to acknowledge the parts of themselves they have hidden away.
Choronzon as a Thoughtform
In Chaos Magick, a thoughtform (or egregore) is a non-physical entity created and sustained by collective belief and focused attention. Choronzon can be viewed as an immensely powerful and ancient thoughtform, charged over centuries by the attention of occultists. A Chaos Mage can tap into this thoughtform, using its established symbolic power to catalyze the process of ego-dissolution within their own psyche.
The Role in Spiritual Development
The deliberate engagement with such a destructive and chaotic force is not undertaken lightly. For the advanced practitioner, the ordeal of Choronzon is a critical, albeit perilous, step in the path of spiritual development, leading to profound personal integration and illumination.
Confrontation and the Ordeal of the Abyss
The “Crossing of the Abyss” is a rite of passage in which the magician voluntarily submits to the complete dismantling of their reality and self. Choronzon is the agent of this dismantling. The ordeal involves facing absolute fear, meaninglessness, and the temptation to cling to the remnants of the ego. Success is not measured by defeating Choronzon, but by surrendering to the process of dissolution without being annihilated by it.
Personal Integration and Wholeness
The ultimate goal of the confrontation is integration. By facing the chaos, the magician learns that it is a part of them. The repressed energies and denied aspects of the self, once acknowledged, can be assimilated into a new, more resilient, and more complete personality. This leads to a state of psychological wholeness where one is no longer ruled by unconscious drives but can wield their full psychic potential.
Path to Illumination and Transcendence
Having crossed the Abyss and integrated the chaos of Choronzon, the magician’s consciousness is fundamentally transformed. Freed from the limitations of the ego, they can access states of gnosis and non-dual awareness. This is the path to illumination and transcendence—not as a final destination, but as a new mode of being, characterized by freedom, creativity, and the ability to enact one’s True Will upon the world without the interference of the false self.
In Practice and Ritual
Practical work with Choronzon is considered highly advanced and dangerous, suitable only for experienced magicians who have already achieved a high degree of self-awareness and psychological stability. The methods used are designed to systematically break down the psyche to allow for a controlled re-integration.
Methods of Evocation and Invocation
A Chaos Magician might approach Choronzon using a variety of techniques, unbound by any single tradition. This could include:
- Ceremonial Evocation: Similar to Crowley’s method, using a magick circle, a triangle of manifestation, and a scryer to give the force a contained, externalized form via magickal evocation.
- Pathworking and Invocation: Meditative techniques where the magician internally invokes the Choronzonic current, allowing it to rise within their own consciousness to identify and dismantle ego-structures directly.
- Psychodrama: Using intense, often physically and emotionally exhausting, ritual psychodrama to bypass the conscious mind and trigger a state of ego death.
The Goal of Ritual Work with Choronzon
Regardless of the method, the goal remains the same: to use the force of pure dispersion as a magickal tool. The Chaos Mage enters the Abyss not to be passively consumed, but to use its chaotic energies to shatter their own self-imposed limitations. The ritual is a controlled demolition of the psyche. The successful Chaos Magician emerges from the ordeal of Choronzon not as a master, but rather as a reconfigured being, having faced the ultimate chaos within and without, and having been reborn from it.