Digital PolytheismBy Timothy Leary and Eric GullichsenA UNIVERSE OF BITS AND BYTESMajor historical accomplishments of the 20th century included the personalizationand popularization of Quantum Physics, an acceptance of self-reference andcircular causality in systems of mathematics and psychology, and the resultingdevelopment of cybernetic society.This philosophic achievement, which has dominated the culture of the 20th century,was based on a discovery by nuclear and quantum physicists around 1900, thatvisible-tangible realities are written in a digital assembly language we couldaccurately call "basic."It turns out that we inhabit a universe made up of a small number of elements-particles-bits which cluster together in geometrically-logical, temporaryconfigurations.The solid Newtonian Universe rested upon such immutable General-Motors concepts asmass, force, momentum, and inertia, cast into a Manichaean drama involving equalreactions of good vs. evil, gravity vs. levity, entropy vs. evolution and coercedby such pious Bank-of-England notions as conservation of energy. This dependable,static, predictable, universe suddenly, in the minds of Planck/Heisenberg becamedigitized, transformed into shimmering quantum screens of electronicprobabilities.Up here in 1988, we are learning to experience what Nils Bohr and WernerHeisenberg could only dream of. The universe, according to their cyberdelicequations, is best described as a digital information process with sub-programsand temporary ROM states, megas called galaxies, maxis called stars, minis calledplanets, micros called organisms, and nanos known as molecules, atoms, particles.All of these programs are perpetually in states of evolution, i.e., continually"running."It seems to follow that the great intellectual challenge of the 20th century wasto make this universe "user friendly," to prepare individual human beings todecode, digitize, store, process and reflect the sub-programs which make uphis/her own personal realities.NOBODY KNEW WHAT THESE GUYS WERE TALKING ABOUTThe chain of events that elevated us to this new genetic status, HOMO SAPIENSCYBERNETICUS, began around the turn of the century.Physicists, we recall, are traditionally assigned the task of sorting out thenature of reality. So it was the quantum philosophers who figured out that unitsof energy/matter were sub-atomic bits of programmed information that zoom aroundin clouds of ever-changing, if/then, start/stop, off/on, 0/1, yin/yangprobabilities in clusters of pixels, up-and-down recurring stairways of paradox.When they started out, no one understood what these guys were talking about. Theyexpressed their unsettling theories in complex equations written on blackboardswith chalk. Believe it or not, these great physicists thought and communicatedwith a neolithic tool -- chalk-marks on the wall of the cave. The irony was this:Einstein and his brilliant colleagues could not experience or operate orcommunicate at a quantum-electronic level.Imagine if Max Planck pottering around in his mathematical chalk-board had accessto a video-arcade game! He'd see right away that the blips on Centipede and thezaps of Space Invaders could represent the movement of the very particles that hetried to describe in the dusty symbols of his blackboard.A WILD AND SCARY HALLUCINOGENIQUENow let us reflect on the head-bursting adjustment required here. The relativisticuniverse described by Einstein and the nuclear physicists IS alien and terrifying.Quantum physics is quite literally a wild, confusing psyberdelic trip. Itpostulates an Alice-in-Wonderland, Sartrean universe in which everything ischanging. As Heisenberg implied: nothing is certain except uncertainty. Matter isenergy. Energy and matter are temporary states of info-bits, frozen at various
forms of acceleration.This digital universe is not user-friendly when approached with a Newtonian mind.We are just now beginning to write a manual of operations for the brain and theuniverse, both of which, it turns out, are digital galaxies with amazingsimilarities.People living in the solid, mechanical world of 1901 simply could not understandor experience a quantum universe. Dear sweet old Einstein, who couldn't accept hisown unsettling equations, was denounced as evil and immoral by Catholic bishopsand sober theologians who sensed how unsettling and revolutionary these new ideascould be. Ethical relativity is still the mortal sin of religious fundamentalists.THE CYBERPUNK AS MODERN ALCHEMISTThe baby boom generation has grown up in an electronic world of TV and personalcomputing screens. The cyberpunks offer metaphors, rituals, life styles fordealing with the universe of information. More and more of us are becomingelectro-shamans, modern alchemists.Alchemists of the Middle Ages described the construction of magical appliances forviewing future events, or speaking to friends distant or dead. Writings ofParacelsus describe a mirror of ELECTRUM MAGICUM with telegenic properties, andcrystal scrying was in its heyday.Today, digital alchemists have at their command tools of a precision and powerunimagined by their predecessors. Computer screens ARE magical mirrors, presentingalternate realities at varying degrees of abstraction on command (invocation).Aleister Crowley defined magick as "the art and science of causing change to occurin conformity with our will," and to this end the computer is the universal levelof Archimedes.The parallels between the culture of the alchemists and that of cyberpunk computeradepts are inescapable. Both employ knowledge of an occult arcanum unknown to thepopulation at large, with secret symbols and words of power. The "secret symbols"comprise the languages of computers and mathematics, and the "words of power"instruct computer operating systems to complete Herculean tasks. Knowing theprecise code name of a digital program permits it to be conjured into existence,transcending the labor of muscular or mechanical search or manufacture.Rites of initiation or apprenticeship are common to both. "Psychic feats" oftelepathy and action-at-a-distance are achieved by selection of the menu option.CLASSICAL MAGICKAL CORRESPONDENCESAlchemists of the Middle Ages believed quite correctly that their cosmos wascomposed of four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Although today our periodictable sports more than 100 chemical elements, the four universal elements stillcan be identified as the constituents of some processes in the external reality,and within the inner psychological world of humankind.Each of the four elements is an archetype and a metaphor, a convenient andappropriate name for a universally identified quality. The four are echoed in theorganization of both the four suits and the four "court cards" of each suit of theTarot, inherited from the Egyptians and its symbolism preserved in ordinaryWestern playing cards. The four also correspond to the four principal tools of theclassical practitioner of ceremonial magick.The wand of the magician represents the phallic male creative force, fire. The cupstands for the female receptive force, and, obviously enough, is associated withwater. The sword is the incisive intellect, moving and severing the air, the
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abstraction in which it moves. Finally, the pantacle (disk) is the grounding inearth (magnetic material), the stored algorithms. (We use Crowley's spelling ofpentacle, which communicates the sense of "all and everything," advisedly.)These classical instruments of magick exist in modern cyber technology: The mouseor pen of the digitizing tablet is the wand, controlling the fire of the CRTdisplay and harnessing the creative force of the programmer. It is used in allinvocations and ritual as a tool of command. Spinning disk drives are thepantacles, inscribed with complex symbols, earthen tablets to receive the input of"air," the crackling dynamic ethereal intellectual electricity of the processor
chip circuitry programming results. The RAM chips are, literally, the buffers("buffer pools"), the water, the passive element capable of only receivingimpressions and re-transmitting, reflecting.Iconic visual programming languages are a Tarot, the pictorial summation of allpossibilities, activated for the purpose of divination by juxtaposition and mutualinfluence. A periodic table of possibilities, the Western form of the Eastern IChing. Traditional word-oriented programming languages, FORTRAN, COBOL, and therest, are a degenerate form of these universal systems, grimoires of profit-oriented corporations.Detailed database logs of the activity of operating systems from the Akashicrecords on a microscale. At a macroscopic level, this is the "world net" knowledgebase, the "knoesphere," the world-wide online hypertext network of informationsoon to be realized by the storage capacity of CD ROM and the data transmissioncapability of optical fiber. William Gibson's cyberspace matrix.Banishing rituals debug programs, and friendly djinn are invoked for compiling,searching, and other mundane tasks. When the magic circle is broken (segmentationviolation), the system collapses. Personal transmutation (the ecstasy of the"ultimate hack") is a veiled goal of both systems. The satori of harmonious human-computer communication resulting from the infinite regress into meta-levels ofreflection of self is the reward for immaculate conceptualization and execution ofideas.The universality of 0 and 1 throughout magic and religion: yin and yang, yoni andlingam, cup and wand, are manifested today in digital signals, the two bitsunderlying the implementation of all digital programs in the world, in our brainsand in our operating systems. Stretching it a bit, even the monad, symbol ofchange and the Tao, visually resembles a superimposed 0 and 1 when its curvingcentral line is stretched through the action of centrifugal force from the ever-increasing speed of the monad's rotation.CYBER RELIGION OF THE BABY BOOMERSBy the year 2000, Aleister Crowley, William Gibson, and Edward Fredkin could wellreplace Benjamin Spock as a Baby Boom navigator. Why? Because, by then theconcerns of the baby boom generation will be digital. (Or, to use the oldparadigms, philosophic-spiritual.)During their childhood they were Mouseketeers. In their teens the Cybers went onan adolescent spiritual binge unequalled since the Children's Crusade. In theirrevolt against the factory culture they re-invented and updated their tribal-paganroots and experimented with Hinduism, Haight-Ashbury Buddhism, American Indianism,Magic, Witchcraft, Ann Arbor Voo Doo, Esalen Yoga, Computerized I Ching Taoism, 3-D Reincarnation, Fluid Druidism. St. Stephen Jobs to the Ashram!Born-again Paganism! Pan-Dionysius on audio-visual cassettes. Mick Jagger had themsympathizing with the devil. The Beatles had them floating upstream on the Ganges.Jimi Hendrix taught them how to be a voodoo child. Is there one pre-Christian orthird world metaphor for divinity that some rock group has not yet celebrated onan album cover?ONTOLOGY RECAPITULATES THEOLOGYThe Boomers in the evolving life-cycle seem to have recapitulated the theologicalhistory of our species. Just as monotheism emerged to unify pagan tribes intonations, so did the Boomers re-discover fundamentalist Judaism and Christianity intheir young adulthood.Even far-away Islam attracted gourmet Blacks and ex-hippies such as Cat Stevens.Bob Dylan nicely exemplifies the consumer approach to religion. For 25 years Bob(ne Zimmerman) has continued to browse through the spiritual boutiques dabbing ona dash of Baptist "born-again," nibbling at Hassidism before returning to his ole-time faith of sardonic reformed humanism.We can laugh at this trendy shopping around for the custom-tailored designer god,but behind the faddism we find a powerful clue.Notice how Dylan, for example, preserves his options and tries to avoid shoddy oroff-the-rack soul-ware. No "plastic christs that glow in the dark" for Bob! The
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Timothy Leary - Digital Polytheism
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Like the writings of John Cunningham Lilly, M.D., Leary's writing is eminently buzzword-compliant, even if a bit myopic and lacking in epistemological rigour. Both are interesting reads, as belief systems - just don't forget to take off the belief system and stand outside prior to starting analysis.
Thank!!! Excellent!