On Cyberlodges

By Aion

“But your holy place shall be untouched throughout the centuries, though with fire and sword it be burnt down & shattered, yet an invisible house there standeth, and shall stand until the fall of the Great Equinox.” - Liber Al Vel Legis, III, 34

For millennia, legends, myths and tales have told of a transcendent Spirit World that shadows and interpenetrates our own, a magickal realm to which those attuned to the otherworldly could tap into, receive spiritual information from and a realm where spirit journeys and spells and magickal meetings with eldrich entities could be consummated. We all know dozens of names for this ‘Spirit World’ and every culture has it, from the realm of the Faerie to Amenta to the Bardos, or the ‘Astral Plane,’ the point is that every magickal group and movement postulates some sort of ‘otherworld’ from which and through which magick can manifest. Often the Otherworld is either a different vibration level, the gateway or identified with the land of the Dead or the ghostly realm, but we will leave that to the side for now.

I knew in the early 1980s that the Internet was becoming became a significant tool for the spread of Gnosis or spiritual wisdom, but it wasn’t until about ten years later, when I was doing a radio show on “Global Ritualism” that I truly grasped that is was becoming more than just. I was blathering on about the universality of all ritual, how the archetypes were once again emerging and how rapid communication through the Internet and other telecommunications was erasing spiritual as well as physical barriers, creating an actual approximation of the ‘group mind.’. One caller, a computer engineer called in and expressed in very non-occult language how the planetary system (Gaia) was awakening as humans interconnected with eachother to an ever more frenetic degree. With our physical Internet systems we were laying the grid-matrix of a nervous system of Gaia. He felt we were literally creating a global neuro-circitry via modems and wires and computers. He did not mean this in a mystical way, it IS happening as we speak. I then wondered at the effect this would have on the Group unconscious mind, the real arena of myths, gods and the Otherworld. He postulated that it would bring the group unconscious mind to consciousness, in fact would become the method of manifestation for the group mind; the doors to Faerie would swing open. This is beginning to happen.

What I’m trying, in a fumbling manner to say, is that we are on our way towards creating a method for facing and awakening the group unconscious mind- the Internet is still in it’s infancy, it will be seen as a tonker toy in a few centuries, but primitive as it is, it forms a very real ‘Otherworld’ that , while not ‘being’ the Spirit World’ of myth and magick, serves as a very real greyzone where the two can more readily interface. Combined with emerging nanotechnology, we will in fact be able to ’cause change in accordance with Will’ in innumerable ways that are not even possible to contemplate now. We will be able to enter and leave the ‘Spirit World’ at will, and in fact create our own Zonules or Spheres of Reality, website are the very pale reflection of the full flowering of these ‘Temporary Autonomous Reality Zones’ in the Internet in decades to come. The beginnings, the seeds, of these Reality Zones, I’m convinced, are in the Circles, Orders, Lodges and Cabals of the Magickal scene today.

Cyberlodges

What is the Occult or Magickal path? For all of us, it is a unique experience. What few things we can all agree on focus on powers and entities that are part and parcel of the ‘Spirit World’. As the Internet and cybertechnology grows, so grows virtual reality. So grows our interface with the global matrix, so also, if this thinking is correct, we manifest the Spirit World here and Now. Thought travels across the world in a flash (You’ve got email!) bits and bytes become gold after being rearranged, into ‘software’ and sold. This is magick. And it is only he beginning. This Spirit World and emerging caldron of the Group Mind called ‘Cyberspace” is a wondrous playground. Knowledge (and crap) is spreading and becoming available faster than we can even think. Millions of new subscribers, websites, email, programs, flooding into this pool within which all of us who are “on line’ swim. Splash!

Throughout the ages, to accomplish our Great Work, alone or in groups, we use ritual, trance, altered states, all to reach transcendental state where communication with the spiritual becomes real, personal- Gnosis. To acquire this gnosis, we manipulate, open ourselves-to and enter the Spirit World. We get better at it, we lean more, we grow, or we don’t. If we continue on this path, again, we are pushed into teaching. Most Occultists realize at some point in their ritual work that after learning, they then must teach. The longer you are about this business of gathering and practicing magick, the more this becomes true. Knowledge incurs responsibility, awareness goads one to become further aware, to ‘know’ the divine (Gnosis) more and to share in communion with like minds. The farther we go, the more affect we have on others and on the world around us- don’t we? Aren’t all the great spiritual teachers and organizations (orders, sects, Lodges etc) judged by the quality and quantity of the effect their teachings have on helping members realize their True Wills? Aren’t the best of these imbued with spiritual and magickal manna directly manifested by the people who are holding/passing on this wisdom?

Yet, how has this been done in history? At first, by word of mouth and gesture and image, then by written word and drawn images, then by printed word and mass-reproduced images. Each of these modes of communication widened the circle of the impact of teaching and learning Gnosis or spiritual truth. Yet most every time a Mystery School or Order was truly established and working, it either remained very hidden, or was persecuted and destroyed,’ for the world’s established religions, with a few exceptions, will not brook the masses attaining Gnosis by other means than through their political apparatus.

During history, as Magical Orders and the passing on of Gnosis unfolded, the group-mind of the species was also growing. The Spirit World swelled with new gods, myths and symbols, and as cultures collided, so did various spirit worlds! Syncretism! Greek, Egyptian, African, Hindu.. Archetypes and rites interpenetrated, a thousand examples could be given, and as the spirit worlds and mythologies of the worlds various belief systems clashes, warred, merged and spawned new Gnostic hybrids, the Magickal Orders, Circles, Temples and Lodges were the center of these shifts and ever-widening rippling centers of magickal and mystical transformation. Yet, again, being physical gatherings in this very real world, they were subject to destruction and dispersion.

Now, the exchange of information has, suddenly and without conscious plan, leapt to a new level of being and belief; we have literally seen a New World come together before our eyes. This Cyberspace Spirit World is manifesting about us! Not wholly of Energy and clearly not wholly of Matter, in fact, it is a perfect interface place of receiving and transmitting the Gnosis. Why? Because for he first time anyone anywhere in the world (IF they are online) have access to the accumulated Gnosis of the planet, at least that which can be communicated in other than a physical manner. For now! The Cyber Circle or Cyber lodge thus has come into being, as a natural unfolding of all that has come to pass. I was lucky enough to help create what is at least one of the first cyber lodges, and I can attest to the fact that it was mostly and accident on my part! This indicates to me that it is a natural birthing, a creation that has come to be by the flow of this evolution and not by any great discovery. This, then, is a sort of proof that Cyberspace is manifesting the Spirit World, that , if you like, the veil between the worlds is being pierced with electrons and psychic software.

An Example

A group of magickians and witches, after much discussion and ritual work, founded the Horus/Maat Lodge through meeting and then performing powerful rituals that invoked eldrich powers to earth on this planet in order to further species evolution. Soon after it’s founding, it was more or less forgotten! Yet, over the years, a few others and I knew it was but hibernation. It was as if it had been born too soon, because the basic ideals of the lodge, the way it was to form a place for many different people to interact, simply made no sense in terms of the time.

Then PCs became common. Then the Internet exploded. 20 years later I felt an urge, from my Guardian Angel if you will, to place the HML materials online so that others could have access to them, those few mutants who might be interested. It seemed absurd, who would care? The HML was a lodge that didn’t exist! It was simply a handful of papers and this psychic..thing! I put this off for many years, it seemed silly. But I could not let it go and, with great help from Frater NE and Soror Nema, I got the stuff up on the web. Then kissed it goodbye and went off to do other things.

Then something happened. People began to come. People began to come and want to chat, discuss, do the rituals. People began to initiate themselves into the HML! We started a simple cc list, it grew. Fr. NE quickly hammered together an elist. Pow! We had 60 people on it. Then we started to synchronize rituals, something the HML still does. Cyber space became the template for us to interface on he Astral or Spirit World, something that continues today. Our magickal results were shared, one of us, Frater Aurora Conari, made a website for these, our magickal diary entries.

What has happened? Suddenly I’m on the elist an hour a day?!

The HML became a functioning Cyberlodge, a fully running magickal order, maybe the first, that is wholly centered in cyberspace. This is tremendous freedom, we are not tied to matter in any way as a Lodge! Our members are all over the world. Our conversations have no limit, except that English is the default language. Membership is open to all who just take a moment to see what we are about. Those who do not flow with the magickal work we do, simply leave. The real Temple or Lodge is the shared symbol and universe of the participants. The greatest part of this is that THIS has been our goal for centuries: to ‘earth’ the Lodge of Spirit in Matter.’ What classical authors called, the decent of Sophia (wisdom)..

So, where do we go from here? I certainly have no idea- I could not have even perceived of the current situation 30 years ago- and it is all doubling every seven years.the workings of a splintered unity becoming whole through every possible means is the guiding principle here, it is, in effect, the secret work of ALL Lodges. This is the birth of the Group Mind to consciousness, electrons it’s nascent nervous system. This is our Magnum Opus, and it is happening on all levels and, as it was before, the subtle levels affect manifestation on the grosser ones.

The work we accomplish in cyberspace will turn out to be pivot al in the evolution of Humanity, as long as it is accomplished with Love under Will and remains guided by Compassion.

The Will to Love is the Law to Live

Aion

Completed Full Moon in February 2000