© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2011, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffied S3 8AF International Journal for the Study of New Religions 2.1 (2011) 125–145 ISSN 2041-9511 (print) ISSN 2041-952X (online) doi:10.1558/ijsnr.v2i1.125 Discordian Magic: Paganism, the Chaos Paradigm and the Power of Imagination Carole M. Cusack University of Sydney carole.cusack@sydney.edu.au Abstract Discordianism, founded in 1957 and generally regarded as a “parody reli- gion,” has only recently received scholarly consideration as a valid religious expression within modern Paganism (Cusack 2010). Yet ritual practice within Discordianism remains largely unexamined; Hugh Urban’s brief dis- cussion of Discordian magical workings as a sub-category of Chaos Magic is the extent of academic discussion of the subject to date (Urban 2006). his article elaborates on Urban’s tantalising classiication of Discordian magic. A brief history of Discordianism is sketched; then ritual and magic in the Dis- cordian tradition is explored through an examination of key texts, including Malaclypse the Younger’s Principia Discordia (1965), and Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975). Similarities between Chaos Magic and Discordianism are noted, and an analysis of hee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), a magical order founded by British perform- ance artist Genesis P-Orridge and others in 1981, elucidates the relationship between Chaos Magic and Discordian magic. It is argued that the essentially unorganised nature of Chaos Magic and Discordianism, and the trenchant resistance of both to any form of “orthodoxy,” justiies classifying Discordian magic as a form of Chaos Magic. Chaos magicians and Discordians both have a deconstructive and monistic worldview, in which binary oppositions collapse into undiferentiated oneness, and neither conformity of belief nor unity of practice is required to be an “authentic” Discordian or Chaote. Keywords Discordianism, Chaos magic, iction-based religions, Hugh B. Urban