Reconstructing Chaos Magick as Hypnosis

For those willing to work through the obtuse language, Chaos Magick include a lot of nice hypnotic tricks.

For instance, at random, I picked the DNA Scry ritual, by Denny Sargent. I've turned the original bold, and added my own comments in normal face.

0. The aspirant shall mentally, physically and spiritually prepare him/her self to come "unstuck" in time and space. This means anticipating the form major ego anxiety attacks will take and making peace with all aspects of his/her life as is possible, according to Love & Will.
   

   
   Introduction, going for self-examination. Do a setup for an induction by making the aspirant (person doing the ritual) believe a lot of things will happen (social compliance), and follow with a commitment/consistency. The setup of going through all aspects of life also prepares for the next stage.
   

   
   

1. The aspirant will secure a warm room and bathroom and make sure that he/she shall remained undisturbed for at least 12 hours. An altar representing the universe of aspirant with a mirror thereon shall be present in the room as well as a pad, pen, simple bowl of water and a quantity of sea salt.

   
   Some parts that are just complexities, again using commitment/consistency by making this complex and extra work. Warm room sets up for relaxation, which is important for the next part.
   

   
   

2. The temple shall be made pure, the Self shall be centered. Sacraments of his/her mystery shall be accepted/used to energize the rite. The circle shall be cast to encompass the bath & ritual area. The circle is the Body of the Mother, the bath is the Womb of the Mother.

   
   "Do the things you usually do before starting a ritual, effectively putting yourself into trance." For us garden variety hypnotists, this would just read "Go into trance using your favourite means."
   

   
   

3. The meditation shall begin. The aspirant shall dispassionately
   examine his/her entire life, specifically noting those things that caused particular emotional attachment; desire or repulsion. Each of these Key Attachments shall be noted on the paper at hand in either written or sigil form. The more automatic the better. As the chain is followed back and back, more will appear. One should go back as far as possible to the earliest conscious memory.
   
   Then darkness.

   
   Systematically do a mind-map over all significant memories. "Sigil form" means that you can use a symbol you've anchored the relevant feeling to instead of words. Scan back over what you write, and find more things connected to it, following backwards for each piece. Continue until you've anchored all memories you can find into the paper you are writing on, so the paper becomes one big giant symbol of all the things that form emotional attachments for you.
   

   
   

4. Repeating the Mantra MA the bath shall be filled with hot water and the sea salt shall be added.

   
   Do some ritual actions to make the bath seem significant, making that too a symbol.
   

   
   

5. With Mantras and Actions that come spontaneously, the paper shall be empowered and burnt. The ashes shall be dropped into the bowl of water. He/she shall see the attachments and the life so released as the illusion it was. Does Not Matter, Need Not Be. The aspirant shall have no name, desires, fears, memories or being.

   
   A metaphorical process, using the burning of the paper as a metaphor for weakening the emotional power from those memories. This is quite similar to what we do in metaphor therapy.
   

   
   

6. The only light shall be extinguished and the aspirant shall stand before the bath. He/she shall pour the contents of the bowl into the water and with it his consciousness.

   
   Continued metaphor use. This action would also deepen the trance.
   

   
   

7. He/she shall enter the bath-womb of the Mother. He/she shall remain there in foetal position. So the Work begins.

   
   
   Find the Point of Light.
   
   Enter it.
   
   Find the double helix of the DNA
   
   Enter it. You are now the Messenger; RNA.
   
   Experiment and Play; all memories are here.
   
   Find the Keys and Regress.
   
   Mammal-form
   
   Bird-form
   
   
   Reptile-form
   
   Amphibian-form
   
   Fish-form
   
   Invertebrate-form
   
   Single Cell.

   
   
   (Consciousness must be kept in the DNA during this; to identify too closely with a form that attracts or repels merely replaces previous attachments with new ones and halts the work. It could be dangerous. Once begun, one MUST go to the end, at least the first time.)

   
   
   One Cell. United. Not split; whole.
   
   Activate the final Keys in the DNA; they will be obvious.
   
   
   The entire strand shall unravel and dissolve into 4 basic amino-acids.
   
   There shall be light.
   
   This is THE BORNLESS ONE.
   
   ....

   
   Guided imagery, very metaphorical, can be associated with more or less anything. The compulsion to go through to the end suggests powerful belief, and uses a presupposition that this is real. The overall effect is a hypnotic regression done through a guided imagery based metaphor; sweet work!
   

   
   

8. At a certain time one shall emerge, grasping certain non-verbal things. Reverse the process. Reform as a foetus. Go through the phases of evolution/body formation. Choose your new incarnation. Emerge from the womb of your Mother with a Cry.

   
   
   Notice the use of artfully vague language, Ericksson style: At a certain time (any choice fit the prediction) one shall emerge (implication: You've been in a trance) grasping certain non-verbal things (in other words, 'something' that the aspirant cannot describe, even to him/her self - anything will fit). Reverse the process. Reform as a foetus. Go through the phases of evolution/body formation [Metaphorically, go out of the regression and forward) Choose your new incarnation (Implication: You can do change through this metaphor, chosing how you want things to turn out) Emerge from the womb of your Mother with a Cry.
   (finish the trance, tracking the metaphor)
   

9. Dry quickly and retire to the altar. Wrap the body in blankets. Rest. Explore this new world in silence. Record in any form those few hints or names that are necessary. In silence thank the powers for the body and mind that contain all necessary for the Work. Close your circle in silence. Sleep.

   
   Presuppositions of effectiveness, subconscious finding of what's important and recording of same (can be used as symbol later), sensory system supression to lead to kinestetic/visual focus during exploration, continuing of the metaphor of a new world.
   

10. Later; pour some of the "womb" water onto the Earth or into a stream or, better yet, an ocean. All is one, the One is None. Give thanks for now holding one of the keys to this.

    Presupposition of change, continued metaphor, fractination (by going back to things later)

    
    

11. Use what you have received.

    Presupposition.

Looking over the ritual that way, it would surprise me a lot if it didn't work. Brief recap of the ritual: Use symbols/metaphor to disconnect (reduce) all emtional influences in the present. Go through the reverse evolution/DNA metaphor to do a regression, then do your change in the metaphorical past, then go forward, metaphorical rebirth, the "reconnect" to the present world. To strengthen all of this, the ritual represent as many of the metaphors as possible physically, and have the person associated in all visualization.

The problem I see with this (and much of the other "magick" I've seen) is the non-directed nature of the work. Basically, we're hoping that the person is able to do the ecology checks etc implictly. Also, this mix up several processes.

If I were to adapt this for direct use in hypnotherapy, I'd replace the write down metaphor with something else (maybe visualizing a bunch of strings pulling in all directions, and cutting the strings), I'd look to what specifically to modify with the regression work, and I'd do a script where I ran the person through each of the senses while doing the metaphorical regression.