Many have found Wicca, the modern worship of the nature goddess
in her many robes, based upon old European religions. Wicca does a very
good job of accepting what it means to be human, to be social, to be sexual,
to be a woman, or to be a man. Wicca makes few dogmatic claims, indeed,
it is a free-flow religion, with most formalities, if any, worked out by
local covens.
But there is a strong spirituality within many of us we cannot hide from
any more. It is as new as computers, but the force behind it is as old as
humanity itself. We, as humans, are tool-makers.
Magick has long been associated with the making of precision tools, axes, swords, goblets, fire.
But the new techno-magick is different...it no longer is simple, serving
us in the fields or in battle. It allows us to study the very nature,
the goddess, we come from. It has become meta-magick, a meta-mystery.
The force is great, and especially the programmers, laser jocks, scientists,
and silicon architects can feel it. The technology has a spirit of its own,
as valid as the spirit of any creature of the goddess. This is the spiritual
force we, those who are called technopagan, feel and must express.
Not suprisingly, we find ways of bringing technology into our worship.
Our grand challenge, though, is to balance our exploding technology with
the forces of nature. We must do as we will, but harm none.
Many of us already have our ceremonies...our Raves, our HamFests. But we
must seek further balance with the goddess...the Field Days, the Winnebiko,
and more worship which mixes the tech with the nature.
The shamanic worldview usually involves a belief in supernatural forces
that can be accessed to cause alterations in "external reality". These
supernatural forces are usually accessed through appeals to various
"spirits", which live in a "spirit world" that can be accessed through
dreams or other consciousness alteration methods (sweat lodges,
psychoactives, chanting, ecstatic dancing, etc.). These spirits are
amenable to interaction in the same way humans can be interacted with
- threats, bribes, appeals, etc.
The shaman employs a mode of operation known as "bricolage"
(from the French "bricoleur", "handyman"). Unlike the engineer,
who has some idea of "theoritical principles" which underly a given
"practical implementation", the bricoleur has a set of techniques from
which they pick and choose the appropriate "tool" to be used in the
situation at hand. It is not necessary to understand why something
works, only that it does work. The shaman's set of tools include a
set of symbolic associations to help determine how to affect certain
spirits. For example, eagle feathers would be useful in contacting the
archetypal Eagle.
Also important: shamans traditionally are associated with a community,
and serve as the community's healer/psychiatrist/miracle-worker.
When the community has a problem that "mundane" means cannot solve,
they go to the shaman for supernatural assistance. The shaman also
orchestrates the rituals which bind the community together.
The techno-shamanic worldview is an extension of this. It involves a
belief that humanity's technological infrastructure has become so
complex and vast that it cannot be entirely understood through use
of an engineering-type theoretical construct. However, this technological
infrastructure obviously has a direct impact on how we live our lives.
Thus, the techno-shaman serves the community by accessing the technological
infrastructure, not as a tool-user ordering their machine to do something,
but as one sentient being negotiating with another for the performance of
a service.
Drug use, ecstatic dancing, and trance music are well-established in
today's techno-shamanic subculture, as is their use in ritualistic events
to bind communities together. One can easily see a mapping between computer
networks and the spirit world, and between computers and the powerful
entities the traditional shaman interacts with.
An excellent example of techno-shamanism is seen in the AI-oriented
"voodoo" in Gibson's Count Zero. Something similar shows up in Shepard's
Life During Wartime, and in a more sophisticated form in Vinge's A Fire
Upon The Deep.
COURTESY OF
Erich Schneider
