The
Modern Occultist
Interview #10
THUMPER FORGE
Llewellyn Worldwide, 2026
MODERN OCCULTIST
The Chaos Apple opens with a scene that, to me,
perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the whole book: you're lying naked on a
massage table in LED goggles while your friend Chester performs biofield
tuning, and when you ask what you're doing, he says simply, “Chaos Magic.” It's
a wonderfully disarming entry point! But what strikes us at Modern Occultist
is how seriously you take Chaos Witchcraft beneath all the irreverence. For
readers who might falsely mistake assume from the playfulness (ie., the “Pringles
can curse”!), what would you say is the genuine intellectual and spiritual thesis
of the book?
THUMPER FORGE
I really want readers to understand that there is no right
or wrong when it comes to magical practice and belief: There’s only what works
for the individual. I tend to think about it in terms of theatre—like, a comedy
can only be successful when the actors take their roles seriously. And
different actors might interpret a given character in a variety of ways, which
means there isn’t one “correct” way to play the part. What’s much more
important is the ability to give an authentic and believable performance.
MO
To me, one of the most precise and useful distinctions in the
book is your differentiation between “Eclectic Witchcraft” and “Chaos
Witchcraft”: in Eclectic practice, you write, “practices are assembled
around belief,” whereas in Chaos Witchcraft, “beliefs are assembled
around practice.” That's an elegant formulation that cuts to something real,
especially in our magazine’s own stance. Can you walk us through what that
distinction looks like in actual day-to-day practice?
TF
In day-to-day practice, it’s basically just determining what goal I’m trying to accomplish, figuring out the nuts and bolts of how to accomplish it, and then adjusting my perspective to best align with the goal. For instance, I got interested in lithomancy at a time when I did not have any stones or crystals lying around the house. I didn’t feel like waiting until I could afford a trip to the local metaphysical shop, so I changed my personal understanding of what a “stone” actually is: Instead of defining it as a polished piece of mineral, I decided that a stone was any small object that could represent either one of the seven classical planets or an area of personal concern (home, life, love, luck, or news). It wasn’t hard at all to accept this definition, so once it was in place, I dug out some old marbles and started reading with them.
I eventually got hold of some legitimate stones to use for
lithomantic divination, but I still read with the marbles for fun.
MO
Discordianism (the modern worship of Eris, goddess of
discord) is central to the architecture of The Chaos Apple, and you
trace its origins from that legendary night in a bowling alley where Greg Hill
and Kerry Thornley encountered a talking chimpanzee with a scroll. What
fascinates us is your observation that Mal-2 himself didn't originally believe
in Eris, but came to describe her as “an authentic goddess” and “an old one”
through the sheer experience of working with her. You've been a closet Discordian
for close to two decades … What is your
own relationship with Eris—and what does it mean, practically speaking, to work
with a deity whose sacred text explicitly instructs you not to believe
what you read?
TF
I tend to refer to myself as a Discordian warlock, because I’ve literally signed contracts (both for The Chaos Apple and upcoming projects) at the behest of Eris, and our relationship remains pretty quid pro quo: I talk about her a lot, and in return, she keeps my life just weird enough to be manageably entertaining.
Whenever I have to deal with an unexpected inconvenience, someone inevitably says, “Well, that’s what you get for working with Eris.” The thing is, Eris isn’t the one throwing obstacles in my path or sending the nasties from Pandora’s box to rough me up or whatever. Instead, she’s the one who hides solutions in unexpected places and bizarre series of events.
Recently, I couldn’t get my car key out of the ignition, so I called an auto locksmith. The very polite receptionist who answered their phone asked me if the car was in park, at which point I realized that it was actually in neutral. So I went ahead and put it in park, and the key slid right out.
Eris did not get the key stuck, nor did she compel me to accidentally leave the car in the wrong gear. But when I told the receptionist that the key was free, she abandoned her inside voice and screamed, “I AM A GENIUS,” and that was 100% Eris.
MO
The concept of belief as a tool (“paradigm shifting”)—is
the defining hallmark of Chaos Magic, and you explore it with real depth
throughout the book. But you're careful to distinguish between casually saying “I
can believe whatever I want” and the disciplined, intentional practice of
adopting and discarding belief systems to unlock magical results. The example
of converting to Christianity for the duration of a folk magic working and then
returning to Paganism is striking in its audacity. (This was especially
fascinating to me.) How do you actually know, as a practitioner, when a
paradigm shift is genuinely working versus when you're just performing one? And
is there a paradigm you've shifted into that genuinely surprised you?
TF
The one paradigm shift that really caught me off guard
involved Catholic saints and Greek gods. I’ve always been fascinated with
saints whose patronages and iconographies seem to trace back to pre-Christian
worship, and I had this idea that if I prayed to one of those saints, the deity
from whom they evolved would answer. I was not raised Catholic, nor did I have
any real experience with Hellenic polytheism, but I ended up petitioning St.
Barbara to watch over a friend in the military, with the understanding that I
was secretly praying to Athena. And much to my surprise, the situation was
resolved quickly and efficiently, with very clear signs that Athena had
intervened. I’m still not Catholic or Hellenic, but I’ve kept emergency St.
Barbara candles around ever since.
MO
You're an initiate of both the Gardnerian tradition and the
Minoan Brotherhood—both deeply initiatory, structured, lineage-based
systems—and yet here you are writing a book about a magical approach that
prizes avoidance of dogma above almost everything else. You acknowledge this
with humor throughout the book (and, yes, there were times I laughed out from
your pointed observations), including a wonderful moment where you describe
Zarathud, the Apostle of Bureaucracy, as “the personification of ceremonial
magic, because if there's anything out there that epitomizes bureaucracy, it's
ceremonial magic.” How do you personally hold the tension between traditional
initiatory practice and the radical experimentalism of Chaos Witchcraft? Do
they inform each other, or do they live in separate rooms? (This may be
especially fascinating to the ceremonial magicians who read Modern Occultist…)
TF
I feel like it’s less that they live in separate rooms, and more that they live in separate areas of a loft apartment. Initiatory traditions are based on frameworks – for example, there’s a proscribed method of setting up a ritual circle – but within that framework, there’s plenty of space for experimentation, to see what new concepts or techniques might work well within the context of the tradition.
On the other hand, it’s easy to go through the motions of a
ceremonial practice, and do everything just because “that’s how it’s always
been done.” This is where the “what if” aspect of Chaos Magic comes in handy.
What if I ran a ritual without casting a circle? What if I used kitchen gadgets
as ritual weapons? Being willing to move away from the “because the book says
so” mindset and get a little irreverent is a good way to learn which parts of
ritual practice are
MO
You describe your own magical background as rooted firmly in initiatory
Wicca before your fateful biofield tuning session introduced you to Chaos
Magic. But the book gives the impression of someone who was always, in some
sense, a Chaos Witch—you just needed someone to point it out. Was there a
moment earlier in your practice, even before Chester and the LED goggles, where
you intuited that the strict recipe-following approach to magic wasn't quite
capturing everything? What first cracked the door—or, rather, lifted the
veil—for you?
TF
My early practice wasn’t really fueled by devotion or
reverence for nature or anything as much as it was by just wanting to see what
would happen. I remember pouring a cup of water off a balcony to see if that
would bring rain, and doodling sigils on my hands to see if I could influence
the behavior of anyone I happened to touch. I don’t recall ever being
particularly discouraged when a spell didn’t work, or didn’t work the way I
wanted it to – instead, it was more like, “Okay, so what will work?” In
a way, the spells that failed to launch were more incentivizing than the ones
that got spectacular results (like pouring water off a balcony).
MO
What is one practice or activity you recommend to all
practicing occultists—whether they're just beginning their journey or are
experienced practitioners looking to expand their daily system? (It doesn't
have to be Chaos-specific; we love a good universal recommendation!)
TF
Not to get all back-in-my-day, but I never see anyone on
social media discussing grounding and centering, which was… well, back in my
day, always the starting point for magical practice. Today, the focus seems to
be more on protection than anything else. And don’t get me wrong: protective
magic is important. But being able to recognize yourself, both within your own
body and within your greater environment, is not a skill that should be slept
on.
MO
What is one book—magic-influenced or otherwise—that you'd
recommend all occultists read as part of their path?
TF
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins. I read that book way back in the mid-nineties as I was just starting to explore Paganism and witchcraft, and its animistic themes had a profound effect on my (at the time) nebulous religious beliefs. It also changed the way I thought about tools and symbols: One of the main characters in the book is a sacred conch shell, and her journey in particular caused me to realize that any ritual implement or representation of the divine I might need could be found in the world around me.
I’m also going to add Bell Book and Murder by
Rosemary Edghill as a close second. It’s a detective novel set in the New York
Pagan community of the late 80s and early 90s, with characters based on key
real-world figures. It’s basically a literary time capsule with an engaging
plot and a whole lot of sarcasm.
MO
In your own philosophy, what does being an
"occultist" mean to you in today's world—and do you think the line
between practitioner and scholar is one worth maintaining?
TF
For me, being an occultist means maintaining a healthy
balance between practice and scholarship. I can’t personally imagine calling
myself a witch if I were only reading about witchcraft and not actually doing
it. But at the same time, the most grievous misinformation floating around out
there regarding witchcraft and Paganism is spread by people who don’t have any
workable knowledge of the history of the modern witchcraft revival. I’m always
going to emphasize practice over book-learnin’, but it’s also crucial that
we’re aware enough of our history not to repeat all the mistakes our
forebearers made.
MO
The Chaos Apple is explicitly accessible to
newcomers—you meet the reader where they are, whether that's someone who
discovered Chaos Witchcraft through WandaVision or someone already deep
in Peter Carroll. For someone who's never worked with Chaos Magic, but is
curious, what's the single most important thing to understand before
beginning—and what's the one misconception you most want them to leave behind?
TF
The one thing I want newcomers to understand is also the one misconception I want them to leave behind: Nothing bad will happen to you when you start to practice magic.
Online occult spaces can very quickly devolve into hotbeds of fear-mongering, especially when the subject of Chaos Magic comes up. But the Chaos in Chaos Magic is not random carnage and pandemonium—it’s just the potential to bring about change. So a spell is not going to backfire if you don’t follow the instructions correctly; the gods are not going to rain brimstone and heartbreak down upon you if you forget an offering; and the universe is not going to punish you for doing things the way you want to do them.
But it’s also important to understand that nothing at all
will happen if you don’t take those first steps and actually practice. It will
take some effort to start getting consistent results, but if it was easy from
the get-go, it wouldn’t be witchcraft.
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