Read moreThe more conservative the magical tradition, the more answers it seems to have. Experience a profound sync? That’s your Yetzirah blah blah HGA. I find this leap to explanation hugely, hugely annoying, especially when it emanates from worldviews that have leapfrogged the discovery of antibiotics, nuclear power, commercial space travel, the rise of quantum physics and the formation of a global mobile network of more than two billion human beings with minimal intervening change.
You could make the case that a magical persona is itself a skeuomorph. And, actually, there is merit in such an approach. Adopting a culturally familiar identity makes for easier onboarding as long as it is with the intention of assessing or engaging with data over a wider spectrum. Here is where the road forks between genuine enquiry and LARPing. In light of the intervening 120 years of astronomy and space science, there is no getting around the observation that core magical texts are riddled not only with blatant astrotheology but also encounters with Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. This provides fertile ground for magical experimentation that is rarely sewn. Be the skeuomorph, do not live the skeuomorph.
hyperreality
Read moreScience fiction has always built our culture powerful frameworks for thinking about the future. Computer sensors, “electronic paper,” digital newspapers, biological cloning, interactive television, robots, remote operation, and even the Walkman each appeared in fiction before they breached our physical reality. Has there been any major technological advancement that wasn’t dreamt up first in man’s imagination? Simon Lake – American mechanical engineer, naval architect, and perhaps the most important mind behind the development of the submarine – said of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, “Jules Verne was in a sense the director-general of my life.” This was a man who created space travel in the pages of fiction decades before Sputnik, while Arthur C. Clarke imagined satellite communication into existence in 1945, a full 12 years before the Russians fired the first shots of the Space Race. Who invented the cell phone, Martin Cooper or Gene Roddenberry? Who invented the earliest iteration of the computer, Charles Babbage or Jonathan Swift? And the list goes on. Either art is imitating life, or science fiction writers have been pointing to the future for over a century.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 