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.