Chaos Magic

Alignment & Magic
The White Box groups PCs, NPCs and monsters according to three alignments, Law, Chaos and Neutrality. I personally find this a useful gaming mechanism for determining friends and foes, if for no other purpose. Alignment is often used as a primitive form of guardrails for roleplaying the PC. Playing one's alignment can help define the character and differentiate the behavior of a PC group from that of the monsters. When examining the literary roots of the alignment system, it suddenly becomes much more, however.
Authors Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson have written fantasy novels which explore the dichotomy of law verses chaos. Law is stability, predictability, stasis, and chaos is instability, unpredictability, change. Law can be rigid and stifling at its worst and chaos can add variety and progressive change at its best. Law can be thought of as scientific, chaos is more magical. Our own real world seems more scientific today, although it retains a bit of magic, I would argue.
In white box there is no real discussion of magic in terms of alignment. Some game material including many simulacrums, discuss magic as being more a force of chaos, at least as it is practiced by magic users.  Divine magic may take on the alignment of the deity from which it originates, or reveal its alignment through the use it is put to. White box classifies certain spells as evil, which can be similar to chaos in some milieux.
While I am not sold on the idea that all magic users are inherently chaotic in alignment, I do like the idea that magic is generally a chaotic influence. Changing things through manipulation of energies, making things happen that "normally" would not, just seems to contain a bit of chaos. I am not willing to argue that laws cannot be applied to magic and the way magic works out-of-the-box (White Box) is pretty predictable, reliable and consistent. If the referee introduces rules for spell failure (which are in Chainmail, btw), and especially a mishap table, then the nature of magic seems to change dramatically toward chaos.
Thinking of magic from the point of view of many sword and sorcery (S&S) stories, magic is often portrayed as dangerous, potentially damaging to the practitioner, and not being something mankind was meant to mess with. Returning to White Box, chaos is the alignment of monsters and bad guys, and the quasi evil chaos of S&S seems to fit this interpretation of magic.  The white box has always incorporated elements from many sources, including sword & sorcery literature therefore I think this interpretation can be a valid one for the game.
On a more abstract level the game itself may represent both a bit of real life magic and chaos...strictly in a good way of course! The fantastic is always a bit magical and invariably contains a bit of chaos as well. A really exciting game can leave the players with a feeling of having experienced both. Ultimately how much chaos is in your magic is a referee decision. Regardless of the chaos or lack thereof, I'm guessing  we all look for a bit of magic in our gaming!