Technopaganism/Digital Magic
I was recently reminded of previous concepts of technopaganism after reading a piece from Magic and Witchcraft, by Neville Drury, specifically, chapter 13, entitled Technopaganism and Digital Magic. He outlines the transcendentalist movement, part and parcel to the psychadelism of the sixties, which gave birth to the prevailing notions among the generations which followed in support of the technical and the mystical. I’ve never given much thought to the history of it. But in the world in which I have come of age I have seen vinyl replaced by cds, cassette players replaced with ipods. Pagers replaced with texting cell phones, Bulletin Board Systems replaced by the internet.
I’ve been exposed to so many different genres of music through relatives and friends, and discovered that I was as attracted to classic rock as I was to darkwave and synthpop. Although I can be as rational as I am magical, I tend to not be as versed in programming languages or hardware repair as my significant other. Yet somehow have embraced hardware and the digital world into the way I develop artistic expressions of my spirituality. It isn’t difficult for people like me to perceive the inherent elements of imprisonment which appear in cyber or digital art. It isn’t technology that diminishes the human spirit as much as an existence inside of a shallow and baseless modern world.
It has always been fascinating to me how some members of the Pagan community view technology as the enemy of nature spirituality, assuming somehow that technology being the invention of man, possesses no energy in and of itself. They seemed to have missed the point that we are constantly in a state of creation synthesis. Despite the fact that I tend to criticize urban magic, it would be disingenuous to ignore the fact that energy is stirred up from feeling and action regardless of region or intent.Therefore it seems wholly logical to embrace nature spirituality as well as the progressive development of technology
I think whenever a person is stuck critically on a view it only depletes overall creativity. With any directive force whether it’s spiritual or technological – when we don’t utilize balance we will beget the negative potential of anything.
Karen Elleise
Canton says : I absolutely agree with this !