once again I have too many thoughts |
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pre-s: I have a really exciting announcement regarding the Chaos and Cunning podcast! Read to the end for more.
I originally began writing this newsletter last summer, but put it down for a variety of reasons. It's definitely still relevant, but has taken a turn with the developments in technology.
Hello there:
I don't know how and why occultists keep doing this, but we keep falling into the pit of believing that the most badass, effective magic came from Ye Olde Times.
I find myself falling into this sometimes too. I have a robust ancestor practice, I love learning about history, and I'm a slut for vintage aesthetics. But the most effective spells I've ever cast have been spells that I created, that came forward to the forefront of my mind, built on my entire life's experience to that point. And of course through ancestor work I've been exposed to a lot of traditional knowledge that now helps to shape these spells as they come forward. Of course I build on the knowledge that I learn from studying ancestral ways and communicating with them directly.
AND - my magic is fully inspired by my own context, and that is as a queer leftist living in the 21st century!
The Wyrd Wide Web
The internet is a crazy thing. We take it for granted now, which is honestly a little wild to me considering what our relationship with the internet was like when I was a child. I don't think I had internet at home until I was nine or ten. I was one of the Weird Kids who kept a LiveJournal and I was an early adopter of almost all social media out there (I was team LiveJournal but eventually all of my friends migrated to Facebook and stopped updating their journals). I was diligent in my LiveJournal, and I wish I could access it to reference some things that happened back then - like the feelings I had upon joining a coven, or other big things that were on my mind.
Now my relationship to the internet is completely different, in that I want to get away from it as much as possible.
I carry a device in my pocket that can contact anyone, that sends letters instantaneously, that can not only play music but be used to record and edit radio shows. I have an endless library of books, a full art studio, and I could shoot an entire movie on my phone if I wanted to.
What's not magical about that?!
And at the same time, in 2025 the internet doesn't feel like a very safe place to be. Phone addiction is very real, with people spending hours a day scrolling. I challenge myself to be away from my phone for longer and longer periods of time by leaving it at home and going for a walk, or turning it off and putting it in another room so that I can focus on what I need (or want) to do.
I truly think of my phone as a neutral technology, and what matters the most to me is how I use it. And I can definitely do magic utilizing technology. For some reason, technomancy can get a bad reputation and I'm not entirely sure why. I think a part of it is that we associate technology so much with the dis-enchanted world, that we spend so much time answering emails on our phones and avoiding the dreaded Microsoft Teams calls that the fact that there is the possibility for magic in technology can get lost.
One of the reasons I love folk magic is that it encourages you to work with what you've got, and in 2025 we all have an intense relationship with the internet - for better or worse.
But magic, the spirit world, and technology have coincided for centuries, and I was recently reminded of how connected they really are.
You all know I love podcasts, and You're Wrong About has long been one of my absolute favorites. When I think about technomancy, I think about this episode about the rise of Spiritualism in the 19th Century. The host made a really good point about how when the telephone was invented people were blown away. They couldn't believe that they could hear someone's voice from across the country - so much so that it felt like anything was possible. After all, if you could communicate beyond the limits of space, why not be able to speak through the veil? Thomas Edison was referred to as the Wizard of Menlo Park because he made the impossible possible - people thought it was magic.
Today, things feel a little darker. The looming threat of AI permeates most online spaces, and we interact with bots so much more often than we interact with other people.
Now it doesn't feel like it's as much about utilizing technology to connect with one another - in fact many people use the internet specifically to talk to ChatGPT. We aren't getting reliable information when we use the internet for research - we have to carefully separate the AI search responses from the legitimate sources. The very idea of a shared truth is under attack: If we're all getting information that isn't reliable, if that information is based on our own algorithm of what the big tech companies think we want to see, how can we possibly continue to connect online in an authentic way?
And this is why I think that technomancy is actually incredibly important to do right now. Casting spells so that you can more easily recognize false information, creating sigils and then layering them under your avatars online to enhance your security, appealing to Mercury to help your technology run more smoothly - yes, these are all examples of technomancy but they are also examples of 21st-Century Folk Magic.
Which brings me to a big question: does my 21st century magic include AI?
The answer is an emphatic no.
My books have actually been fed to the AI models, and I'm very unhappy about that. AI datacenters are taking up massive resources in a time of climate crisis. I personally don't trust the security of the information that AI takes - I shut it off or opt out anywhere I can. I can't in good conscience use AI for anything, let alone in my magical practice.
The folk magician and the chaos magician both prioritize results, and they are also imminently practical magical philosophies. Work with what you have - and most of us have a powerful supercomputer in our pockets. And as an animist, it's also interesting to consider the role of technology in our lives because if we believe that there is a spark or a spirit in everything ... why not in our technology? That is not to say that I believe there is a literal animating force behind things like ChatGPT, but that the spirit world is weird and it adapts to new technologies just like we do. But do I want to engage with this spirit?
Looking at an internet that is increasingly built on these large language learning models, AI slop, and bots is like staring into the mouth of empire itself. Tech giants have thoroughly colonized the internet. Now we are left with a tool that felt very personable and focused on connection that now feels like an endless stream of ads and productivity models.
Where is the heart in that? Is that really what I want to enchant? Is this how I want to spend my life?
Wyrd Wide Web
The internet, a computer, your phone, social media ... all of these are what you make them.
Tech giants seek to control the means of production - but what is the product? YOU.
Somewhere along the line, we forgot to treat these things like the tools that they are and started treating them like the bounds of our reality.
It's time to dismantle the illusion and make the internet ... weirder. Wilder. It's time to use it on our own terms.
There are two major trends that I'm noticing in my daily life: people leaning in even more to enmeshing technology with their lives, and other people who are radically reducing their online lives. AI girlfriends are really popular, Chat bots feel more real to some people than their IRL friends, and many jobs make it impossible to work without a smart phone. At the same time, many people are deleting their social media accounts entirely and swapping their smart phones for dumb phones.
Throughout the course of writing this newsletter I realized that this is actually several different essays in a trenchcoat (my favorite!). I want to talk about the animism of it all - the connections, spirit attachments, and other ways that we relate to technology. I also want to talk about technomancy and ways to shield yourself magically online. But I also want to talk about the environmental impacts of tech culture, and how that intersects with animism. And even still, I want to tackle technomancy - why it gives people the ick, what kinds of technomancy are useful for more people to adopt.
But I also want to write about more than just magic. I want to write about what it feels like to be living in a time that science fiction writers have been warning us about. I want to write about AI cults and how those impact real people. I want to write about my own journey with technology, and how I am doing it differently (including possibly even going full dumb phone).
I can't do all of that in this one email. No one wants that.
So I'm going to be writing smaller essays on all of these topics. It's likely that this will turn into a series on the newsletter that I'm calling the "Wyrd Wide Web." When I'm finished, I might even compile these essays into a short zine.
There are so many other aspects of modern life that I want to talk about in terms of magic as well, which is also why ...
I'm relaunching the Chaos and Cunning podcast, this time with Cassandra Snow as a co-host!
I am so so so pleased to be making this announcement! I love podcasting, and I've been wanting to get back to it, but I have been realizing I don't want to do it alone. So I was pondering exactly how to do that, and I thought of reaching out to my best witch and co-author of "Lessons from the Empress."
And then they reached out to me. So you KNOW it was meant to be!
We are relaunching the podcast as a co-hosted podcast later this autumn! Chaos and Cunning: A DIY Witchcraft podcast at the Crossroads of Magic and Real Life will follow many of the same themes that I had originally been focusing on, but this time you will get the perspective of two professional witches and occult authors.
In our first season we're focusing on a lot of the building blocks of magical life, and how we work with both chaos magic and folk magic to craft our own practices.
More information about the podcast - including launch dates - coming soon!
This Week's Top Three:
+ I placed my order for my Hobonichi Cousin! Very excited about the Moomin collab especially.
+ Revolutionary Girl Utena
+ I'm reading "A Storm of Swords" by George RR Martin and the Red Wedding is about to happen and I am not ready.
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I'll be at Pagan Pride this weekend!
I'm SO happy to be back at Pagan Pride this year! This is a huge community event held at Minnehaha Falls. Come see me from 10am - 6pm on Saturday, September 6th.
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