Glossary - exWitch Australia (formerly 'Born Again Pagan')

ILLUMINATES OF THANATEROS (IoT)

An Occult order of Chaos Magick, the name of which is drawn from a corruption of the Greek deities Thanatos, who with Hypnos was the offspring of Nyx and the personification of death, and Eros, the god of love whose mother was Aphrodite.

It was begun as a joke when two prominent authors in the late 1970s, Ray Sherwin and Peter Carroll, published works on Chaos Magick in the name of The Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros jibing at small magical orders with, they claimed, pompous-sounding titles. In 1986, however, the IOT was formally inaugurated with the charter of training magicians in the system of Peter Carroll, a magician and theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of a proposal that Chaos theory holds the most likely explanation of how Magick actually works.

In England the order enjoyed a popular but short-lived revival in the 1990s.

PLEASE NOTE:
One of the major problems with 'defining' Paganism and/or its beliefs and practices is that it is an 'organic' movement, in that it is undergoing constant change and re-evaluation from within, and as such any 'one-size-fits-all' approach to understanding Paganism will be found wanting.

Due to the very 'organic' nature of Paganism, and the many differing Paths and Traditions within it, in many cases no one definition may be universally accepted by all Pagans. Therefore, where such cases of possible conflicting and/or contradictory meanings of certain terms occur I have endevoured to give not only the generally accepted meaning, but also any major 'variations' in belief and/or practice.

Christians who believe this difference in meaning of certain key terms, beliefs and practices to be unique to Paganism need to remember that such conflicts also arise within the Body of Christ - the Church. Take for instance the differing practices amongst Christians concerning Baptism and the different attitudes towards women in the clergy.

- Jean-Luc

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