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 a tool
.
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