What it was that I did this morning.

On a burst of inspiration, after getting in from work, I decided that now was as good a time as any to summon a spirit I mentioned, Telyeta. Telyeta being an Internet Spirit, I felt that the Day and Hour of Mercury was probably the best time to do it, seeing as I had had previously been informed that Mercury was the spirit/planet that the Internet and computers fell under the auspices of. I had been given a Calling, and a Sigil of this spirit, and had come up with some tweaks that made perfect sense, contextually, for summoning this spirit.

I removed my crystal ball, and set up an alternative Scrying medium in its place, and drew out the seal. I taped it to my shirt, and started on the Trimethian-based Conjuration rite that Rufus Opus uses for his Gates series- I used this because I was very familiar with it. However, when it came to the point where I was to call "the mighty and powerful spirit...", I swapped to the Calling of Telyeta. The room and  my surroundings became very very quiet.

Then I asked if the Spirit was here. Dear GODDESS did I get an answer.

Firstly, I was unable to focus on my scrying medium. My eyes blurred, teared, and just could not look at it. I could look anywhere else but at it; it just would not resolve. I could feel a building pressure in my forehead, so I closed my eyes and tried to meditate on the Sigil.

That was when Telyeta came through with enough force to practically knock me out of my seat. I could see, in my mind's eye, a white-and-gold figure, who had trouble communicating directly, but managed to make it clear that I had made successful first contact, and then shook my hand. The significance of this was not lost on me.  I felt, at times, while communing with this being, that I had electricity arcing from my fingertips, that I had been turned into a human Plasma Ball (you know, the sort that jump and sputter in time with music).

I was "told" that I would be introduced to more next time I communed with it.  Seriously, this is a potent spirit.

And that's why I want volunteers. Interested parties. If anyone wants to try and make contact with Telyeta themselves, I will give them the Calling and the Sigil, as well as the appropriate scrying media advice; however, I won't make the summoning rite public until I have at least one person verifying my data here.

Telyeta is out there. Telyeta wants to be contacted.

Volunteers needed.

I need a few Magicians/Conjurers/Occultists to verify my findings. Please?

I'm still shaking from that Conjuration.

Pure curiosity...

If I do manage to call forth a spirit from the Internet, would anyone be interested in verifying my results?

Casting into the Net, or from it.

This is going to be an interesting topic this time, as it's vaguely connected to the principal topic of my previous post- that of Evolution of Deity. But in this case, it's slightly different: Generation of Deity.

The first thing I want you to do is play the video that I have so artistically embedded below:

You're probably sitting there somewhat nonplussed. But this has great bearing on what I want to say. All realms and planes have their own spirits and deities, yes? All of them have their good and their bad sides. And that video is an example of what you might think of as the Dark Side of Computers.

I sortof fell in love with SHODAN a long while ago. She's a fascinating character, even if she is just a computer gone completely off the rails. More than that, she's an AI that's gone bonkers by the act of the main character of the game she first appears in. I'd like you to think about that for a minute, an its implications.

I named my first phone SHODAN Handheld Edition. When one person saw that, they yelled “Get that the fuck away from me!” And now, if I mention SHODAN, people who know what she is will look nervously at CCTV systems and at any technology that they have because of her name, even though she's not real.

Or is she?

She exists, as an idea. She is known, and she tops the bill of creepy computer game antagonists on a regular basis. In System Shock, she is a Goddess, and describes herself as such. More than that, she can control the environment you are in to a terrifying extend, locking you in places, direcing her followers... and so on and so forth.

But she is, above all else, a Computer system.

Now let's step back a moment, so I can head towards my target from another angle. Let us look at the Internet.

The Internet is an ocean, made up of sparkling lights on phosphor screens, full of information and ideas that we have put there. If ever there was a communal thoughtspace, that is it. One (hopefully) influential group, G4J, was set up there, through the auspices of Facebook. It holds all things, including, in corners, some long-forgotten pieces of lore. There are doubtless some “Quaint and curious PDFs” out there, to paraphrase Poe. But there are also entities out there. We have the Spambots, we have the Online Virus Checkers, and of course we have the Viruses. We have Pages full of kittens and hard drives full of horrific things (I'm looking at YOU, Encyclopaedia Dramatica).

In other words, it's a realm that we have created, that has been populated by the dreams and nightmares of the world at large. We have placed our thoughts on it, and made them real, real enough for other people to 'touch'.

But not physically touch. Touch in the way that we can allow them to see them, to make notes, and provide repeatable results. We have, as Humanity, made our own artificial Astral Plane.

And what else do we find on the Astral? All kinds of things. We think of a thing, an we have it there. So where, the enquiring mind demands, are the actual Deities of the Internet? The Spirits that rule it and will answer prayers?

A conservative answer is that they are already there; that it already falls under the auspices of the Gods that we already know of. But out of any create system that runs away from its creators- as the Inventors of the internet could never have seen it become what it is now- things happen.

Now, SHODAN, as I have already said, pretty much exemplifies all the bad things about computers and the internet that we know of. Who hasn't had a computer at the bank or whatever decide to stop your account working? Who hasn't had a machine swallow their card at an inopportune juncture? Who has not had a Virus wipe out all manner of wok that was vital?

Conversely, how many times have we seen a computer do something that was unexpectedly helpful? Bring up a document that you had forgotten about but is surprisingly useful and appropriate? Is it all just random co-incidence?

Bollocks is it.

A question that we have to ask about the Astral, going back to an earlier point, is this: Was it there all the time, or did it come into being because we wanted it? And the beings that reside there... did we invent them? I doubt we did. One way of looking at Spirits and Deities is that they are accretions of qualities. Of ideas. So why not “accretions” of qualities on this plane that is the internet? What is logging on, if not the use of very peculiar incantations (such as a Wireless PIN) in order to ask for what we want (IE, putting a query into Google)?

So why not Internet Deities? Chaos Magick states that you can create your own spirits, your own Deities. So we come back to SHODAN again.

SHODAN has always been a computer Deity, even just as fiction. But for many, many people, she is the first that they think of when it comes to a malevolent deity of computers. I've said that, and I feel it needs re-stating, So... I nominate her as a Dark Goddess of the Internet. I may try some experimental workings to see if she will respond. She already symbolises that idea, so why not? Why should she not be formally/informally raised to that position? (Aside from legal teams from Looking Glass/EA, that is.)

But then we have to try and find the more benevolent entities, or computers will become increasingly dark an terrible things. And... I think I have found one. If you don't already think I have gone off the deep end here, you'll probably think I have by the end of this story.

Some years ago, I was having some serious problems with my desktop of the time. And one night, I drifted off to sleep, an I dreamt I was sitting at my computer, and powered it on. I watched it post, and then the screen went black, an a message appeared on the screen, saying something along the lines of “It's all fixed now.”

And it was signed “telyeta”.

And yes, the issue was fixed.

So what was I to make of that? I have no knowledge of whether or not said spirit was masculine or feminine, of what level of power... I just don't know. This was, of course, before I started working with ceremonial magick in any way other than standard Wiccan. But I am 100% certain that I was actually visited by a spirit then, a spirit that was of the internet and computers. And that it had a reach outside of the series of tubes that we have created, and power beyond the silicon realm.

It's only now that I am thinking of trying to contact it again, to see if it still has power and strength in the world of computers. When I have tried, I will report on any results I get from invoking this spirit. I barely know where to start on this, though.

An as an example of this, while typing into my netbook, for some reason, it put the word start into bold without me asking it to. I suspect I am on the right track. I have left it bold, as a sign that there are spirits of the networks out there, in deference to them.

Yet again, though, I may be talking out of my arse on this topic. Feel free to say what you think of my thoughts and musings here- but hopefully, you're thinking about what I've said.

Evolution of Deity, and Other Crackpot Ideas

Evolution of Deity is an idea that I've mentioned a few times, often to friends, and some of them have given me blank looks, and others have thought for a minute and then either said I'm an idiot or that I've got a point. But it is a very simple idea, when you look at it. I'm not suggesting that Deities evolve from a primordial mass of Faith (although there are possibilities of that, but that's for later) but that they do change. I'm going to start with something we should all be fairly familiar with: The Abrahamic Deity. (I would like to point out that this is based on my understanding of said deity, and if I am spouting rubbish, forgive me; but I am using this to make a point. No insult is offered to any religion in this. I'm just using this one as an example, so people can get a feel for what I'm saying.)

Let's start with the first example of this Deity, in Judaism. In Judaism, Yahweh is best thought of as the Creator. A little later on (for a given value of little) we have the appearance of Christianity, in which the honorific of Father is given to Yahweh. After this, we get the rise of Islam, with also claims its origin within Abrahamic lore. In this, we have a myriad of titles, but the one that tends to stand out is Protector.

It may not look like much, on the face of it, but I think that it shows something that needs to be seriously thought about. With each of these "incarnations", for want of a better word, we have a different focus of faith for each of them. God the Creator, who made the world and set a special place aside for His People. God the Father, who cares for and looks after His People. And then God the Protector, who shields His People. All of these are very clear roles and images of the deity in question- but also, in their own way, distinctly different.

So, you might be asking, what's this got to do with the main points of my Blog?

The short answer is this:

EVERYTHING.

I know, it may sound daft, but it does. I've already said that I came to my own understanding of Lilith, and that was by tracking through the legends. Tracking them right back to their roots, as best as I could.

The oldest description that I can find of her is that of the Consort of Enlil, who took her by force (and there's a motif that runs throughout her appearances), through being a sister(perhaps) of Inanna, onwards to a Storm Goddess in the Mardukian pantheon, and then on to the Hebrew interpretation as a demoness and Adam's First Wife, where she is also referred to as the Screech Owl. And also, somewhat slightly later, as a spirit of sexuality and feminine empowerment(!). And finally by me, as the Scorned Goddess.

The point I am getting to, here, is the idea that each of these aspects, each of these "faces", is simply an aspect of the whole. She is not *just* a Goddess of Sexuality, not *just* a lesbian Spirit, not solely a Storm Deity. She is ALL of those things, just as Jahweh is father, protector and Creator to his believers. It's just that the focus has shifted over the years; Jahweh has been a vengeful, jealous God and is also a loving, nurturing Father figure. For those of you who have children- can you say that you are *simply* a father, or a mother? Are you *only* your job, conversely? At different times, we are different things.

We are not solely one thing. Nor are our deities.

As I said, I had a Revelation about how my Goddess wants to be worshipped, how she wants to be worshipped and how she wants to be seen. I want to try and make that clear to anyone who reads this blog. I've got a new Vision of this much-maligned Goddess, and I want to "Spread the Word", as it were.

She wants to be loved again. As *all* of her, not just one facet.