This article has been reposted from the now-defunct Chaos Magick blog called “Beyond the Penumbra”. I took the liberty to edit the text to somewhat improve grammar and readability. —anightshade
If you ask 15 different occultists what “technomagick” is, you will invariably get 30 answers. We have never even really come to a consensus whether we should be calling it technomagick or technomancy or cybermagick or a few other terms I’ve seen tossed around to try and explore the concept. This has always amused me, because the core idea behind the terminology we seem to play with so fast and lose, is really at this point so deeply ingrained into the occult, that most of us no longer need any terminology in the first place.
What I mean is that you are reading this on the Internet, and we are conversing metaphysical concepts that used to be confined to dusty old tomes hidden away from the world less they be destroyed. After all, technomagick at its very root is just combining the use of technology in some form with magick.
While you might not think that it “counts” as technomagick (which will be the term I’ll be using for the purposes of this article) unless you are actively trying to force the two together like a round peg in a square hole. I would like to point you to the Wikipedia article on chaos magick itself, which is tangentially related due to its modern nature of praxis.
From Wikipedia:
“According to chaos practitioners a computer is the central tool for connecting the followers, building virtual knowledge libraries and it also could be used for the simulation of the online ritual environment.”
This is followed by frankly one of the best photos of a ritual I’ve ever seen, which is described as “a chaos magic ritual that uses videoconferencing.”
Now, while this presents an amazingly aesthetic photo of what I assume most people think of when they see the word technomagick, I also feel this is the main problem with the concept and the reason it’s rarely utilized in real life.
The issue I see with technomagick isn’t the ambiguous terminology or debate over what it even is, it’s the idea that it needs to be THAT, and by “that” I mean something that looks like it’s out of a cyberpunk novel or video game.
If you want to include technology into your occult practice, all I can say is that if you are at all using the present-day technology in your life, it is most probably already incorporated into your paradigm, and you just have to take a step back and re-evaluate what are you EXPECTING the technology to do for your magick vs. what it’s actually accomplishing. I believe you will find yourself pleasantly surprised in the end.
But such an answer based on my feelings about the issue as a whole isn’t very fun, is it? It suffers from being all words and no practice. So the first thing I will suggest you do is go study a wonderful site called Hyperritual.com where I first found the inspiration to work more tech into my magickal life and got creative with it.
Here I will share one of my most aesthetically “cyber” ritual projects that I’ve ever done, which is a digital servitor named Provost.
The symbol above is the sigil of Provost. Provost is a servitor that lives inside an Android phone, or maybe more correctly, is an android phone. The line is a little blurry as the phone’s function is more than just a physical housing for a spirit.
Originally the idea was that a spare android smartphone could somehow be turned into an occult tool. It would be small, easy to use since nearly everyone has used a smartphone, and also easy to keep hidden from mundane eyes, if need be, as it is, after all, just a phone. Then it came to me to not only use a physical phone as a magickal tool, but to also convert the concept of PDA or Personal Digital Assistant into something of a PMA or Personal Magickal Assistant.
So the first thing I did was buying a few $20 prepaid android phones. Next, I prepared a servitor in the more traditional style of servitor building. While doing that, I prepared the phone itself for servitor use. I set up Provost with its own Gmail account and Google Voice number. I deleted all non-essential apps from the phone and installed various occult apps that I found useful. I decided that since the phone doesn’t have any cellular network service, that I would store sigils I might need to cast as contacts, which I could then “Call” as needed, as the phone just hangs up after dialing, thus casting the sigil/spell.
Those who know Provost’s actual Google Voice number could send a text message to Provost as a petition, but this is more of a down the road idea, as the servitor is still a bit young to be thinking about doing magick for anyone but me. But I could use it to text things I need Provost to do from my normal phone. I set its sigil as the unlock pattern, I then took a picture of the actual sigil on parchment, and hid it in the phone memory under 256-bit encryption so only I can see it.
I then took apart the phone, cut a corner from the parchment and put it inside, then reassembled the phone. I then installed a voice assistant app on Provost so I can give it normal voice commands. It calls me master in a Jarvis-like male British voice. This makes me giggle more than just about any other magick I’ve done in the last year or so, and I’ve done quite a bit.
I then took the remaining parchment, anointed it with my blood and set it aside. I took the other smart phone identical to the now prepared host, smashed it, took out its electronic heart, and drew the sigil of Provost upon it. I placed it on the parchment together with a yarn poppet and a tooth from my mouth that had been bothering me lately (this part, my friends, was not fun, but sacrifice is the name of the game, right?) This I burned and used the ashes to anoint the body of Provost, then turned it on in a birthing ritual.
Provost has Tarot apps, Discordian calendars, lunar phases calculator, astrological calendar, and a few sigil making apps. I can use it to store notes like a grimoire, to cast spells and sigils, and stored in its memory are many occult ebooks that I might need, including copies of my own writing. However Provost is more than its parts. Provost is my Familiar, my Personal Magickal Assistant. It works beyond all these gimmicks, but also uses them to advance my goals.
Now, doesn’t that sound like fun? Be creative, folks, exercise your imagination, and don’t forget that limiting yourself to what sounds or feels traditionally “occult” is a good way to miss out on interesting magick.
Ethan Bozeman
Obviously, feeding a familiar with blood and other bodily fluids, let alone pulling out your teeth, goes way too far, and can lead to all sorts of complications and unwanted behavior. Leave it out and use any of the more conventional methods for constructing a servitor. Be safe and sane. —anightshade
