It seems that we do use a lot of technology in our modern magic, both physical machine technology, and digital technology congruent with our dark ages approaches.
Common recognition is a tool to build trust. It’s basic marketing. It’s why large golden arch sigils are effective to evoke a sense of fun and comfort for the hungry, but it’s also why daily sigil meditation is effective to invoke the attributes of an entity. So familiarity breeds a sense of trust, and so does experience.
While printing out a sigil is wonderful and quick, there is also the tactile experience of creating and painting one’s own sigil that will provide a personal and tactile touch even more so than using digital Photoshop or Illustrator to design a pristine and linearly perfect one. Until there is a way to sign a holograph in blood, I’m relegated to the physical paper.
I wonder if a lot of us remain closer to the dark ages with regard to the miracles of digital technology because they still provide a bit of an impersonal barrier between the spiritual and the human.
Some of us are on board using our computerized devices for meditation, like YouTube for binaural beats, shamanic drumming, chakra mantras. Others feel more in tune spiritually using actual drums, didgeridoos, meditation beads, or chanting circles.
We are gradually modernizing into digital technology; now we can find correct pronunciations, timing, and melodies for mantras online; we can save our experiences in online grimoires, and print, edit and cross-reference them at our leisure with pdfs and the cloud. We can instantly photograph flames and smoke when we see our entity appear, and we can splat it all over social media, creating more recognition and de-occultifying the occult.
As the prices on complex audio and studio software go down with the amount of finesse and detail capture on the increase, more of us will be able to share our experiences with a critical audience at the same education level.
As an artist, I have used huge projectors (borrowed) to beam an image onto a surface…so I could save time and paint it onto the surface. Why not purchase the projector? I don’t want one; for the price it wouldn’t get used often enough, it requires electricity, not as helpful in a forest, cave, or bright light. I don’t need batteries for my painting, or my fabric magic circle (that I can order with a few taps online).
Biofeedback machines are effective and astronomically priced, as are many of the photographic machines (x-rays, MRIs, etc). We don’t yet have reasonable access to an EEG machine to absolutely verify if we ARE in a theta brain wave state during our meditations and evocations, let Alone ensure that we ARE experiencing synchronous gamma spikes rather than simply running on our delusions and hallucinations. If they made cellphones with that capability, however…
The use of technology is really about the bottom line: what can we afford, what is most convenient, what are we willing to pay for? Electricity is great…until I cannot access it. When my GPS dies, I’m fucked without a hard copy map, but the stars are marginally useful. Until digital technology gives me free and unlimited access to electricity, I’ll remain partial to the physical world of technology and use digital technology as a backup because I don’t trust it in the same way for the price. Then again, I’m not a millennial.