Digital Age Demonology.
A short guide to some of the spells and rituals that are used on the internet, so you may better defend yourselves — or try them at home!
Magic is a real active force. When speaking of ‘magic’, active symbol is actually being referred to. The imbuement of a symbol or language string with power that acts beyond.
1. CLICKBAIT
Or, as in job descriptions, Search Engine Optimization. Algorithms, search engines and social media’s use to organize content are a egregore, or aggregate emotion entities. These abstract creatures will bestow reward if fed with the ‘right’ content. That which has high response for human users. Usually partisan politics of the day; race, gender and other identity subjects.
This doesn’t complete the spell. You also need to motivate the reader’s desire for logos — ‘you won’t believe…’, lists (implying high ROI for low time investment), implying a group consensus that the reader is not yet aware of.
It would be better if we all recognised this for what it is, a spell.
2. DISPELLING CURSES
From the Chinese dispelling curse. These are of use when one grows tired of discussion with a person or persons from a nation that has specific restrictions on the internet. By posting a string of infohazards.
By repeating the incantation to the target, they will be picked up by the defensive egregores that the host country has placed on their scrying mirror networks — and thus, at least for a short time, lock them out of magical communication with you (and potentially at large).
Figure (i) — Chinese dispelling scroll
2a. FLESHSPACE CURSES or THE DOX
This doesn’t merely disable the user’s ability to use magical communication forms. It can result in severe physical harm, emotional distress, and, in extreme cases, even death.
Consider the way in which old grimoires often state the key to defeating a demon is to say its true name — in the digital era, we can think of someone’s physical address as their ‘true’ name, a concrete location in a dimension that normally carries everything in abstraction.
This can be then used to summon further demon technology to appear at the corporeal location.
3. ‘DOGWHISTLES’ (Emergent intimidation rituals)
Often misunderstood as the result of co-ordinated and organized attempts at intimidating via deployment of benign phrases and symbols. Though they do constitute a form of aggressive magic intended to intimidate the target. The power of the spell is not in the intimidation (only works if the target allows it to work), but in the rapid memetic spread of usage and eventual over-writing of original meaning.
Hence, these spells are generally found in the use of anonymous accounts (though there are exceptions). For examples, see ‘learn to code’, the ‘OK’ hand gesture, and RacismWatchdog.
In the case of ‘learn to code’, there is an additional element of reverse psychology in which the target becomes convinced to fear that which is, at heart, good advice. If memetic tricks are sorcery, then coding is alchemy.
4. EROS MAGIC (THE REALM OF THE CAMGIRL)
The utilization of sexual desire as a form of hypnotic magic has a long and storied history. From being the fundamental aspect of the oldest profession to stripping if you need to pay off college debts, Eros magic tends to be used by women to entice men to give them gifts, money or favours. The active symbol is the woman herself; sexual depiction is often described as objectification, but it would be more accurate to call it self-abstraction.
The electronic window of the soul — the webcam. Less risk to the girl with distance also providing a sense of isolation with the image, even in a chatroom full of men beating meat to the same woman. Hence, the barrier has been added to the repertoire of spells.
There is gradation to how dark this magic is. Some, would describe all use of Eros magic as black magic, as it is predicated on illusion. If we are to talk of black magic, we must enter the realm of Findom Witchcraft.
4a. FINDOM WITCHCRAFT, or THE ONLINE VENUS-TRAP
This is where the line between benign psychosexual games and active personal manipulation becomes blurred. Here, the Eros seductress doesn’t merely use self-abstraction to convince men to send monetary reward but elevates (or degenerates) the game to a metanarrative level where the man finds himself becoming abstracted as a walking bank.
Why Eros magic is black magic is that rather than simply allowing a man to drain his willpower of his own choosing, it predicates on habituating that man to having his willpower drained as a primary course. This is the same mentality that a heroin dealer would use with their clients.
This list is not comprehensive, or necessarily new information; however, by recontextualizing these online actions and phenomena as they are, as magic, you will hopefully see the hidden psychoactive causes and effects. Of course, this article doesn’t begin on the real magicians of our day — the advertisers. That comes later!
Call to action!
By H.E. Donist
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