Can an atheist use chaos magick for psychological transformation?

In response to a comment on Reddit r/exmuslim talking about being interested in chaos magick after leaving Islam but not very serious about it:

Honestly, I think it’s healthy to not get *too* involved unless a healthy distance and skepticism can be maintained outside of the ritual. Otherwise it becomes just another delusional dogma, even if it’s a dogma that only you believe in.

I think it’s obvious that there are forces greater than humans (gravity for example!), so believing in something greater than humans is reasonable, but as soon as we make up stories about it, we get lost.

Also, humans have a great degree of power over our lives, but we are still also powerless in a lot of ways. For example, a cobalt slave in Congo or a sex slave in Thailand aren’t slaves because they have the wrong mental programming or a “slave mindset”. A person with schizophrenia or paraplegia is disabled, mostly permanently. A gay man or a woman can’t change how people treat them in a conservative society. This world is extremely, EXTREMELY effed up and there are even human systems and powers that are more powerful than an individual’s “free will” (if we even have that, which is seriously doubtful according to recent studies).

But we can learn to grow and transform within our own boundaries and limitations, which can in turn create a new reality for ourselves, and our limitations within that new reality may be different from our limitations right now. So there is no need for despair. However, unrealistic hope and expecations are as toxic as despair. Both lead nowhere.

And that’s why I’m exploring chaos magick ritual as a way to reprogram and transform my psyche as much as I can within the limits of the moment, and to not become a victim to the beliefs or rituals. Within the ritual (and only within the ritual), the magick is real and transforming the world and I’ll believe anything that’s necessary for that but only *within the ritual.*

So yeah, that’s all just to say that it’s honestly great to go slowly and not take it too seriously so it doesn’t consume your consciousness like Islam or other religious and spiritual systems do.