This article is a guest article from the very diverse Ethan Bozeman, discussing the creation of a Personal Magickal Assistant, a servitor and familiar created through the use of technology-based magicks. Enjoy!
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If you ask 15 different occultists what “technomagick” is and you will invariably get 30 answers. We have never even really came to a consensus on if 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 ingrained into the occult that for most of us we no longer need any terminology to begin with to try and separate it.
What I mean by this is that your reading this on the internet, were conversing metaphysical concepts that used to be confined to dusty old tomes hidden away from the world less they be destroyed. Technomagick at it’s very root is just combining the use of technology in some form with magick after all.
While you might not think that it “counts” as technomagick (which will be the term for it that I use for the duration of this article) unless your 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 term Technomagick, I also feel that this is a prime problem with the concept and why it’s rarely utilized realistically.
The problem 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 game.
if you want to include technology into your occult practices, all I can say is that if your someone in 2018 who uses technology in general it’s probably already incorporated into your paradigm, and you just have to take a step back and re-evaluate what it is you are EXPECTING technology to do to your magick vs what it’s actually accomplishing. I think you will find yourself pleasantly surprised in the end.
Though this answer while addressing my feelings about the issue as a whole isn’t very fun is it? It suffers from being all theory and no practice. So the first thing I will suggest you do is go look at a wonderful site called Hyperritual.com which was where I first saw myself the inspiration to take the theory of trying to work more tech into my magickal life and got creative.
Next I will share with you one of my most aesthetically “cyber” ritual projects that I’ve ever done, which was creating a digital servitor named Provost.
The Symbol above is the symbol of Provost. Provost is a servitor that lives inside an android phone, or maybe more correctly, is an android phone. The line there is a little blurry as it functions a bit more than a physical housing for a spirit.
The idea originally was that a spare android smartphone could somehow be turned into an occult tool. The idea is that it would be small, easy to use being that almost 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. Shortly thereafter the idea came to me to not only use one as a tool, but to use the term PDA or Personal Data Assistant into something closer to a PMA or Personal Magickal Assistant.
So the First thing I did was to buy a few $20 android 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 being used. I set Provost up with its own Gmail and Google Voice number. I deleted all non-essential apps off the phone. I installed various occult apps that I found useful. I decided that since the phone doesn’t have any service attached to it, that i would set sigils i might need to cast as contacts, which i could then “Call” as needed, as the phone self hangs up after dialing, thus casting the sigil/spell.
Those who have Provost’s Actual google voice number could send a text to provost as a petition, but this is more of a down the road idea as he is a bit young to be thinking about doing magick for anyone but myself atm. But i could use it to text things i need provost to do from my normal phone. I set his Glyph as the unlock pattern, I then took a picture of the Actual sigil on parchment, and hid it in the phone under 256 bit encryption so only I can see it.
I then took apart the phone, cut a corner from the parchment off, put it inside the phone, and put it back together. I then installed a voice assistant app on provost so i can give it commands. It calls me master in a Jarvis like male British voice. This makes me giggle more than just about any other bit of magick I’ve done in the last year or so, and I’ve done quite a bit.
I then took the parchment, anointed it with my blood and set it aside. I took the other smart phone which is identical to the now prepared host, and smashed it, pulling from it its electrical heart. Upon this i drew the sigil of Provost. I set this atop the parchment. On top of that i set a yarn poppet. On top of that I sat 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?) I burned this, used the ashes to anoint the body of provost, and turned it on in a birthing ritual. Provost has tarot apps, Discordian calendars, lunar phases, astrological calendar, and a few sigil making apps.
I can use provost to store notes like a grimoire, I can use him to cast spells and sigils, and within his frame are many occult pdfs that I might need to reference including copies of my own writing. However Provost is more than the sum of his parts. Provost is my Familiar, My Personal Magickal Assistant. He works beyond all those gimmicks as well as uses those to advance my goals.
Now, doesn’t that sound fun? Get out there and be creative folks, and remember limiting yourself to what sounds or feels traditionally “occult” is a good way to miss out on interesting magick.