The Butterfly Dictum

Cause and effect. Seemingly irrelevant choices or accidents may have dramatic results in the end. The Butterfly Dictum is a set of chaos-magic disciplines encompassing this concept, setting into being a chain of events resulting in the magician’s will being done. This phenomenon is best known to non-occultists as the “Butterfly Effect” after Edward Lorenz’s paper “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?” presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972. Interestingly enough, in a 1963 paper, Lorenz used the flap of a seagull’s wing as the basis for this theory; some magicians believe his interest in the concept brought him into contact with the Butterfly Dictum and led him to change his example.
The butterfly has, throughout many cultures, been seen as a strange otherworldly thing, transient and only partially of this world. The Butterfly Dictum has roots in several ancient practices, most notably among the Haida (where Butterfly is the dreamer companion of the trickster Raven), the Japanese (where the butterfly is unattainable beauty and whimsy), and the Aztec (for whom the butterfly always played a strange, otherworldly role). Masters describing this form of magic have always used the butterfly or moth as a symbol of the way a magician must approach the world—lightly flitting from one endeavor or topic to the next, resting overlong on none of them, the way a butterfly flits from spot to spot.
The Butterfly Dictum itself is also unusual because the original text—written on a manual typewriter from the look of it—is missing. It exists only as collections of photocopied pages and, presently, scanned graphics files. The book also has a tendency to find its way into the hands of those able to use it, although not always to use it well. It leaves them just as easily when the time comes.
The ideas and practices contained in the Butterfly Dictum primarily relate to chaos magic as a means of influencing luck and probability. Casual understanding shows the potential for lucky breaks and winning streaks, but a deeper reading opens up virtually limitless possibilities, since influence over the possible and the improbable is what the text is all about.