When Austin Osman Spare (see FT144: 34-40) stripped ritualised magic down to its bare bones with his sigilbased 'alphabet of desire' he probably didn't realise that he was laying the foundations of a magical system that would still be thriving in the 21st century. Some 20 years after Spare's death in 1956, these simple, letterbased spells formed the basis of modern Chaos Magic.

At that time, Peter Carroll and Ray Sherwin set up the Illuminates of Thanateros (aka 'The Pact'), a Chaos Magic group that now has lodges, known as Sections, in the UK, North America and Europe, as well as temples and working groups all over the globe.