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Chaos

state of absence of order

Chaos originally referred to the unordered state of matter in classical accounts of cosmogony. It has since come to mean any state of disorder, or any confused or amorphous mixture or conglomeration.

Quotes

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Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • [Varys:] What do we have left once we abandon the lie? Chaos, a gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.
    [Petyr Baelish:] Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real; the climb is all there is.
    • David Benioff & D. B. Weiss, screenwriters for the episode The Climb (2013, S03E06) in the fantasy television show Game of Thrones, through the character Petyr Baelish
  • The world was void,
    The populous and the powerful was a lump,
    Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
    A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
  • The chaos of events.
    • Lord Byron, Prophecy of Dante, Canto II, line 6; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 97.
  • Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos.
    • Dwight D. Eisenhower, Address at the Cow Palace on Accepting the Nomination of the Republican National Convention (August 23, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived from the original on January 25, 2021.
  • The classic example of chaos at work is in the weather. If you could measure the positions and motions of all the atoms in the air at once, you could predict the weather perfectly. But computer simulations show that tiny differences in starting conditions build up over about a week to give wildly different forecasts. So weather predicting will never be any good for forecasts more than a few days ahead, no matter how big (in terms of memory) and fast computers get to be in the future. The only computer that can simulate the weather is the weather; and the only computer that can simulate the Universe is the Universe.
  • In the higher degrees of Scottish Freemasonry, there are two mottos whose meaning is related to some of the considerations we have outlined above: one is Post Tenebras Lux and the other Ordo ab Chao; and in truth their meanings are so closely connected as to be almost identical, although Ordo ab Chao is perhaps susceptible to a broader application. In fact, they both refer to initiatory "enlightenment", the first directly and the second consequentially, since it is the original vibration of Fiat Lux that determines the beginning of the cosmogonic process as a result of which "chaos" will be ordered to become the "cosmos". In traditional symbolism, darkness always represents the state of undeveloped potentialities that constitute chaos; and correlatively, light is related to the manifested world, in which these potentialities will be actualised, that is, to the “cosmos”, an actualisation that is determined or measured, at each moment of the process of manifestation, by the extension of the “sun's rays” that depart from the central point where the initial Fiat Lux was uttered. Light is therefore effectively “after darkness”, not only from a "macrocosmic" point of view, but also from a "microcosmic" point of view which is that of initiation, since, from this point of view, darkness represents the profane world from which the recipient comes, or the profane state in which he initially finds himself, until the precise moment when he becomes initiated by “receiving the light”. Through initiation, the being therefore passes “from darkness to light”, just as the world, at its origin (and the symbolism of “birth” is equally applicable in both cases), passed “from darkness to light” by virtue of the act of the creative and ordering Word; and consequently initiation is truly, according to a very general characteristic of traditional rites, an image of “what was done in the beginning”.
    • Negli alti gradi della Massoneria Scozzese esistono due motti il cui senso ha un rapporto con alcune delle considerazioni da noi esposte in precedenza: uno è Post Tenebras Lux e l’altro Ordo ab Chao; e a dire il vero il loro significato è così strettamente connesso da essere pressoché identico, anche se Ordo ab Chao è forse suscettibile di un’applicazione più ampia. In effetti essi si riferiscono entrambi all'”illuminazione” iniziatica, il primo direttamente e il secondo in via consequenziale, dato che è la vibrazione originaria del Fiat Lux a determinare l’inizio del processo cosmogonico in conseguenza del quale il “caos” sarà ordinato per diventare il “cosmo”. Le tenebre rappresentano sempre, nel simbolismo tradizionale, lo stato delle potenzialità non sviluppate che costituiscono il caos; e correlativamente, la luce è messa in rapporto con il mondo manifestato, nel quale queste potenzialità saranno rese attuali, vale a dire con il “cosmo”, attualizzazione che è determinata o misurata, in ciascun momento del processo di manifestazione, dall’estensione dei “raggi solari” partiti dal punto centrale in cui è stato proferito il Fiat Lux iniziale.
La luce è perciò effettivamente “dopo le tenebre”, e ciò non soltanto dal punto di vista “macrocosmico”, ma altresì dal punto di vista “microcosmico” che è quello dell’iniziazione, giacché, sotto questo profilo, le tenebre rappresentano il mondo profano dal quale proviene il recipiendario, ovvero lo stato profano in cui questi si trova inizialmente, fino al momento preciso in cui diventerà iniziato col “ricevere la luce”. Mediante l’iniziazione l’essere passa perciò “dalle tenebre alla luce”, così come il mondo, alla sua origine (e il simbolismo della “nascita” è ugualmente applicabile in entrambi i casi), è passato “dalle tenebre alla luce” in virtù dell’atto del Verbo creatore e ordinatore; e di conseguenza l’iniziazione è veramente, del resto secondo un carattere molto generale dei riti tradizionali, un’immagine di “ciò che fu fatto all’inizio”.
  • Chaos, that reigns here
    In double night of darkness and of shades.
  • Fate shall yield
    To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife.
  • The Joker: Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!
  • Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
    To blot out order and extinguish light.
  • Lo: thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored;
    Light dies before thy uncreating word:
    Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
    And universal darkness buries all.
  • ...there is a perpetual struggle between manifested chaos and the unmanifested. It is the struggle of the Forces of Light with the dark forces. Christ Himself actively resisted evil... he drove the merchants from the Temple, and all his severe accusations against the scribes and Pharisees... If we try to read objectively the words... attributed to Christ, we shall see a Teaching which is severe in its mercy. Therefore, the words "resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also... If this law of Karma, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," is inevitable and exact justice, it by no means follows that we ourselves, personally, should attempt to fulfil it in this way. If we do so, we shall never emerge from the magic circle of karma. Indeed, we must forgive our personal enemies, as who knows but that the blow one receives is a return blow, well-deserved under the law of Karma? By returning such a blow with another and with a feeling of revenge in our heart, we do not outlive this karma, but we continue and even intensify it in the worst way for ourselves. Moreover, by forgiving our enemies we decrease the amount of evil in space and become immune against many blows. Similarly, let us understand the words "Love thine enemies." However, with all this, we must resist evil, if we do not want to be entirely overwhelmed by it. (26 May 1934)
  • Nay, had I power, I should
    Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
    Uproar the universal peace, confound
    All unity on earth.
  • Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.
  • When Shaw is read in the light of the existentialist thinkers, a new philosophical position arises from his works as a whole, a position of he himself was probably unconscious. It is this: that although the ultimate reality may be irrational, yet man's relation to it is not. Existentialism means the recognition that life is a tiny corner of casual order in a universe of chaos. All men are aware of that chaos; but some insulate themselves from it and refuse to face it. These are the Insiders, and they make up the overwhelming majority of the human race. The Outsider is the man who has faced chaos. If he is an abstract philosopher — like Hegel — he will try to demonstrate that chaos is not really chaos, but that underlying it is an order of which we are unaware. If he is an existentialist, he acknowledges that chaos is chaos, a denial of life — or rather, of the conditions under which life are possible. If there is nothing but life and chaos, then life is permanently helpless — as Sartre and Camus think it is. But if a rational relation can somehow exist between them, ultimate pessimism is avoided, as it must be avoided if the Outsider is to live at all. It is this contribution which makes Shaw the key figure of existentialist thought.
  • The motto ‘Ordo ab Chao’ is an extremely important expression within Freemasonry and is known by Masons as the motto of the 33rd degree. The motto can be found on the splendid decorations of the Order of Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, which is one of the highest distinctions that can be awarded to a Mason.
    • La devise « Ordo ab Chao » est une expression extrêmement importante au sein de la franc-maçonnerie et est connue par les maçons comme la devise du 33ème degré . La devise se retrouve sur les splendides décorations de l’Ordre des Souverains Grands Inspecteurs Généraux, qui est l’une des plus hautes distinctions pouvant être accordées à un Maçon.
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