Practitioners of chaos magick attempt to be outside of all categories - for them, worldviews, theories, beliefs, opinions, habits and even personalities are tools that may be chosen arbitrarily in order to understand or manipulate the world they see and create around themselves. Chaos magickians are frequently described as funny, extreme or very individualistic people. They also may consider themselves exceptionally tolerant, remarking that whatever one might disagree over is merely an opinion, and hence interchangeable, anyway.
While chaos magick has lost some of the popularity it had in the UK during the 1980s, it is still active and influential. Its ideas can be found to leak into modern shamanism in particular, and are common in occult Internet forums. Proponents assert that the growing individuality of occultism in informal, often Internet-based surroundings is a direct result of the success of chaos magick, while critics argue this informal occultism often lacks a well-developed understanding of gnosis and paradigm shifting and is therefore not rightfully called chaos magick.

Chaos magick is unique among magickal traditions in that it does not attribute significance to any particular symbol or deity. Wicca and Thelema, for example, could not be what they are without the Mother goddess and Horus, respectively. In contrast, chaos magickians may (or may not) pick any concept or set of concepts to worship, invoke or evoke.

Following the tenet that anything can have significance and hold magical power, chaos magick rituals have centered around symbols as diverse as the color Octarine, a single worn sock, or Harpo Marx. In some instances these uses have developed into temporary, but elaborate cults that may be seen as parodies of more fixed magickal traditions, or of fixedness in general.

Traditional deities associated with chaos, such as Tiamat, Eris, Loki and Hun Tun are also popular, as are the entities described in the Necronomicon.

The eight-pointed chaos star (or chaosphere), originally taken from the fantasy novels of Michael Moorcock is frequently used by chaos magickians. However, this preference is not shared by all and may be argued to root solely in the symbol's semi-official use by the Illuminates of Thanateros. Most chaos magickians routinely create magickal symbols for themselves - see Sigil.

Chaos magick has had name checks in such places as DC Comics, Marvel Comics (See: Scarlet Witch), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but beyond name-dropping, their actual practices had nothing in common with Chaos magick (some of the uses predating the usage described in this article). The name "Chaos" and the chaosphere are also used to represent the ever-present evil in Games Workshop's line of miniature games Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 (which resulted somewhat ironically in some chaotes adopting terminology from those games).

Real life chaote Grant Morrison has afforded the theories of chaos magickians and their practices a more accurate portrayal in his comic book epic The Invisibles.