Magic in the Wires

“Most people have this assumption that magick is all about some kind of ‘hocus pocus’ or ‘eye of newt, tongue of toad’ thing or the sort of ‘incense and affirmations’ school of thought that a lot of New Agers and Wiccans are into. I don’t see it that way. When I was a teenager, I read in one of the RE/Search books that a modern magician uses the tools of their time. It was Genesis P-Orridge, the rock star, who said that, and it made a major impression on me. He meant that a modern day “sorcerer” would employ video cameras, printing presses, television, electronic instruments, the Internet and so forth to work their magick and since so much of magick is about INTENT, then it stands to reason that something like the Internet can have magical uses. Advertising, too, is a magical act and so is PR, basically. Advertising allows these big corporations to create a desire in the center of your head that you should run out and buy things you don’t need! That is magick, right? Right.” — Richard Metzger, via BoingBoing

Technomages are no secret, except maybe to those who aren’t aware of them or aren’t inclined to consider the possibility. I’m not inclined to look at it so much from the scientific viewpoint as I am the metaphysical viewpoint, although I sometimes step over towards science, especially when discussing such things as quantum physics. I’m no expert at such things, but I have read a fair number of articles about its theories, and I do find the topic fairly interesting. Several years ago, in the earlier days of the internet, it occurred to me that the Web is a gigantic network of exchanged energies (in the form of both electricity and the flow of information in ones and zeroes) across the wires.

A friend of mine is currently reading Spirits in the Wires by Charles DeLint, a book I haven’t read yet (it’s on my wishlist), though I have read the reviews at Amazon and also some excerpts at DeLint’s site. Charles DeLint is my favorite author, and has been for about the last five years or so. This is the first novel of his which focuses on the question of magic on and through the internet. It came out in August, 2003, and is currently not in paperback yet, though I expect next year we’ll see a paperback edition. Do read the excerpt linked from his site above. His other books are filled with stories about magic, some urban, some desert, some Celtic, but all of the ones I’ve read have been compellingly good reads.

But anyway, if you consider such things as positive and negative energies having some effect on reality, it’s not a far stretch even to start looking at ones and zeroes as positives and negatives. Are we, unknowingly, creating more negatives than positives in the translations of our words across the wires into ones and zeroes? Can such energy be directed with intent? Good questions to ponder on a cold winter’s night with the fire blazing nearby.