Escape Velocity (9 page)

56 Mark Dery

Sure, it's just a tailored hallucination we all agreed to have, cyberspace, but anybody who jacks in knows, fucking knows it's a whole universe."'

Even now, some glimpse ghosts in the machine. In his essay "Techgnosis: Magic, Memory, and the Angels of Information," Erik Davis vs^rites, "Far beyond Palo Alto and MIT, in the margins and on the nets, phantasms hover over the technologically mediated information processing that increasingly constitutes our experience."''^ Information, he asserts, "crackles wdth energy, drawing to itself mythologies, metaphysics, hints of arcane magic.""^

For real-life technopagans, Gibson's voodoo electronics is more than science fiction. Maxwell X. Delysid, an active TOPYite who "accepts the Internet as a spiritual tool" and is investigating "what magick can be done wdth it," read Count Zero and was galvanized by the notion of voodoo spirits lurking in the Net. ^'[Count Zero] blew my mind," he writes, in an E-mail interview.

I began to think, 'Here we have this worldwide network set up, just like [Gibson's] cyberspace, and there very well could be loa living in the Internet >now<. What would they be like? Would they be Haitian (as in the book) or would they be more a product of the [American] culture that CREATED the Net? What would their religion be? What would their purpose be? Would they even WANT us to know that they existed? I haven't found any, as such, yet."'*

Faint echoes of this notion are audible in popular culture: In BBS Callers Digest, a columnist describes the staticky squall emitted by a user's computer when it connects to a BBS-the sound of digital data being converted into analog waves by the user's modem so that it can be piped over the phone lines-as "the high electronic scream of BBS angels.""^ Stewart Brand asserts that "when you communicate through a computer, you communicate like an angel," by which he means that participants in electronic conferences "communicate as these disembodied intelligences of great intimacy."''^ And John Perry Barlow believes that humankind's age-old

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desire to inhabit the Spiritual" will be fulfilled in cyberculture. A convocation of disembodied minds who appear to each other on a BBS as screenfuls of typed conversation is "the flesh made word," he puns.

The growing tendency to conceive of computer-mediated interaction in spiritual as well as spatial terms revives the Teilhard de Chardinian dream of reconciling metaphysics and materialism in a science "tinged with mysticism and charged with faith."''^ It is paralleled, among techno-pagans and New Age technophiles, by the practice of couching metaphysical convictions in scientific terms, and of seeking plug-in solutions to spiritual needs.

New Age discourse in particular is woven from scientific-sounding theories of auras, etheric energies, vibrational fields, biomagnetism, tachyon energy, and "biological electrons" ("pure, bio-available energy" supposed to exist in light)."^ In the wake of seventies New Age classics such as Fritjof Capra's The Too of Physics and Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu-Li Masters, which draw connections between the new physics and Eastern mysticism, the language of physics and the theoretical musings of physicists have been used to buttress New Age thought. In Bridging Science and Spirit: Common Elements in David Bohm's Physics, the Perennial Philosophy, and Seth, Norman Friedman strikes a delicate balance between the quantum physics of Bohm-best known for his theory that the brain replicates, in microcosm, the structure of the universe-and the teachings of Seth, the channeled "energy personality essence" whose revelations about the nature of time, space, and the self-creation of reality comprise Jane Roberts's The Seth Material.

Furthermore, New Age dreams of self-actualization are increasingly tethered to transformational technologies such as the mind machines, smart drugs, and other "tools for the expansion of consciousness" mentioned earlier. The catalogues of New Age direct mail marketers such as Tools for Exploration ('*your guide to adventures in consciousness") offer a variety of "consciousness technologies" that harness advances from "the cutting edges of neuroscience and electronics" in the service of a vision of human potential that partakes of self-help, corporate motivational psychology, and New Age mysticism.

The copy in such catalogues keeps the reader mindful of the fact that such appliances are high-tech upgrades of pretechnological traditions. A mind machine sold in a 1993 ToolsJor Exploration catalogue is marketed as the "new

shamanic technology," an information-age upgrade of the hypnotic campfire and ritual drumming used in primitive cultures to induce shamanic trances: "Goggles with flickering solid-state lights provide the 'firelight,' and digital stereo synthesized sounds create the 'drumming.'"••^ Such a device represents the best of archaic and future worlds, it is implied, reconnecting the user to a mythic, holistic past even as it incorporates what we are told are the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience and microelectronics.

In one of his catalogues, Terry Patten, the founder of Tools for Exploration, relates a New Age parable that neatly encapsulates the resolution of mysticism and materialism in cyberculture. After recounting how he and his wdfe had "sold everything: the house, the cars, the furniture" (a ritual renunciation of the secular world familiar from Christian and Eastern mysticism) and traveled extensively, he notes the psychic dislocation he experienced on returning to his former life, that of "a 3-piece suit professional":

My wife . . . and I had realized that, too often, we become alienated by the very technology designed to make our lives easier. So we went on to uncover a new kind of technology-one created to connect us more deeply to our bodies, minds, emotions and souls. We call it Consciousness Technology, and from this discovery. Tools For Exploration was born.'^°

Patten offers a holistic vision of technology that integrates rather than alienates. In its power to repair our fractured inner selves and help us realize our "unlimited capacity for positive growth and change" (Patten), it is almost godlike. But despite its desire to make room for the sacred in the technosphere. Patten's high-tech theology has the paradoxical effect of secularizing the Spiritual; the higher powers have dissipated into impersonal, pseudoscientific energy fields, accessible through microcircuitry. The focus, as in the human potential movement to which the "mind tech" wing of the New Age owes so much, is on the perfectible self; pilgrim's progress has given way to personal power.

In Mega Brain Power: Transform Your Life with Mind Machines and Brain Nutrients, Michael Hutchison elevates "Consciousness Technology" to the status of a divine agency, a saving grace capable of lifting humanity out of the human condition. "To some it may seem odd and paradoxical that

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machines-the synthetic, hard, material devices of this electronic temporal reality-may serve as gateways to the spirit, tools of transcendence," writes Hutchison. "But in fact this fusion of spirituality, or the 'inner quest,' and science, the 'external quest,' is the central force of the emerging new paradigm."'-^'

Of course, neopagan and New Age attempts to validate their beliefs through the use of tools, terms, and conceptual models appropriated from the scientific and technological communities are a pact with the Devil. Such a strategy reaffirms the cultural superiority of empirical science and inductive reasoning as the arbiters of what is admitted into the mainstream and what is banished to the fringes.

But as technopaganism makes clear, there is more to this story than the desire for cultural accreditation. For those in neopagan or New Age subcultures who reject the antitechnology bias traditionally associated with such beliefs, their relationship to science and technology has less to do with a longing for legitimation and more to do with William Gibson's maxim "the street finds its own uses for things." Their v^llful "misuse" of scientific concepts and digital technology in the service of the spiritual, the intuitive, and the irrational parallels, to a degree, the subversions of the outlaw hacker. (Tellingly, one Tools for Exploration catalogue refers to mind machine users as "consciousness hackers.")

At the same time, the New Age/neopagan redirection of science and technology to wholly unscientific ends-attaining mystical states, mending the mind/body rupture, reweaving the alienated modern psyche into the fabric of the universe-speaks to the need to make New Age/neopagan beliefs relevant to a technological society whose model of reality is held together by scientific theories. Too, it mirrors the vision, handed down from Teilhard de Chardin to Hutchison, of the holistic healing of the breach between religion and science, the sacred and the mundane.

These impulses are at the heart of technopaganism. To inaugurate "Cybermage," an echomail topic devoted to the relationship between technology and neopaganism, Tony Lane posted an introduction worth quoting at length:

For too long magick has looked backward. So often I hear about "traditional" Native American this and authentic Egyptian/

60 Mark Dery

Celtic/Hunan that. Sorry folks-there are very few "authentic" magickal items/rituals/practices out there. . . . Something might SEEM stronger if it is wrapped in the mystique of. . . bear clan tribal blood, blah blah blah. I have no doubt that this WAS a very powerful spell (and might still be one) for a member of the bear clan. If you are a CPA from Burbank I doubt that there is much there for you. ... I feel there is a better way. . . . [T]he central idea of CYBERMAGE [is]: MAGICK that uses the current world is more powerful because it is more personal to the magician. In many of the magickal ancient cultures magick and science were often the same thing. Imagine if they could see what our science today can do! They would worship us as GODS. ... If in our work we could meld science and magick we could [work] wonders. We could cure and create and build things man has never seen nor dreamed of But first we have to turn away from the . . . traditional ways and branch out into new areas, [exploring] . . . the parallels between a magickal spell and a computer program and the possibility of having an electrical familiar.'"^

A "familiar," according to The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft ScDemonol-ogy, is "a low^-ranking demon in the shape of a small domestic animal to advise and perform small malicious errands."'^^ Fittingly, the dormant computer programs which, when triggered, engage in low-level decision making and information gathering on many BBSs are called demons. Similarly, "knowbots," or knowledge robots-information-gathering computer programs currently in development-realize Tony Lane's dream of an "electrical familiar." The computer journalist John MarkofF, who defines knowbots as "protoartificially intelligent creatures .-. . that have the capacity to relentlessly prowl the [Internet] looking for information morsels," has compared them to sorcerer's apprentices.'^'*

A long and winding discussion between BBSers all over the States spiraled off of Lane's initial message, or "post." Aga Windwalker (aka J. Palmer) recounted a venture into "CyberCraft" that involved casting a healing spell over phone lines when a friend suffered a grand mal seizure:

One day, I was chatting with [my friend's] boyfriend [on a BBS] when he suddenly typed "GM" (which meant that the girl was

going into a seizure and he had to go to her). [TJouching my monitor, [I] started channeUng energy. Through the monitor, down the cable, through the PC, into the modem, across the phone hnes, and into her computer. I visuahzed it surrounding her, helping her. According to both of them, something DID happen. The boyfriend said he heard a sound from the computer, but couldn't figure what it was. About that same moment, the girl stopped shuddering and called out my name. It wasn't a statement, it was almost a confused question. . . . After a few moments . . . she was all right. As she opened her eyes she said she saw me hovering over her, and that I simply faded INTO her computer monitor and disappeared.'"^^

Windwalker's spontaneous CyberCraft is an eyebrow-raising example of the magickal use of the computer mentioned earlier, a "user application" undreamed of by PC manufacturers. Less dramatically, technopagans such as Maxwell X. Delysid use computers and computer networks as an integral part of their "ritual work." A self-styled "computer geek," Delysid has experimented with computer applications for the cabala, using his PC "to process cabala inquiries, making connections between phrases."'^^

Though still not seduced by the computer. Genesis P-Orridge has made his peace with the machine by investing it with an animistic aura. He speaks to his PC before switching it on and keeps it swaddled in fur, which he believes maintains its "contact with the animal spirit kingdom." He and other TOPY members have also dabbled in TV magick, converting the glass teat into a crystal ball by tuning it to an empty channel late at night, with the brightness and contrast turned all the way up-transforming an ordinary set, in effect, into a psychic TV. "[G]et close to the screen, switch off all other light sources and stare at the screen," instructs P-Orridge.

First try [to] focus on the tiny dots that will be careering about the screen like microorganisms. . . . Suddenly time will alter along with your perceptions and you will hit a period of trance where the conscious and subconscious mind are triggered in unison by the mantric vibrations of the myriad dots. It's quite possible that the frequency and pulse rates of the TV "snow" are

similar to certain ones generated by other rituals (e.g. Dervish dances, Tibetan magick, etc.). What we have here is a contemporary magickal ritual using the medium, in all senses of the word, of television.'^''

Staring fixedly into a crystal ball, mirror, or any reflective surface as a means of inducing an autohypnotic trance-and, it is believed, precogni-tive visions-is known as "scrying." As Erik Davis notes, P-Orridge's use of the idiot box as a scrying screen is at once goofily banal, eminently practical, and triumphantly redemptive. "On one hand, you think, 'That's so flaky, so pathetic, trying to take this stupid detritus from modern civilization and make magic with it,' " says Davis, "but on the other it doesn't matter because from a practical perspective-practical in the sense of magical practical, spiritually pragmatic-it doesn't really matter. John Dee used a crystal ball to channel the Enochian language [the purported language of the angels] and [scrying] is what TV magick comes out of."