When followers and skeptics alike confer with Bitcoin as “magic web cash,” they might not instantly join the “technical marvel” to precise magic. However a brand new era of magick practitioners is adopting blockchain know-how, synthetic intelligence, and historical practices to commune and work with angels, demons, and extra.
Amongst them is Chaweon Koo, a futurist, witch, digital artist, and blockchain fanatic.
“I simply need to say that I am only a very, regular particular person,” Koo informed Decrypt. “The way in which that I work with the occult is, as an instance, much less mystical and a little bit bit extra like an instrument.” She mentioned she started training magick over a decade in the past.
Spelling magick with a Okay helps differentiate it from stage magic, a follow attributed to British occultist Aleister Crowley, who wrote that “magick is the science and artwork of inflicting change to happen in conformity with will.”
Picture: Chaweon Koo
Koo is the creator of “Spell Sure: A New Witch’s Information to Crafting the Future,” a e book that she describes as a talisman and thus a title that she is not going to challenge as an book. On-line, Koo started publishing occult-themed content material in 2017, first together with her Witches and Wine YouTube channel earlier than increasing to TikTok.
“My life was at some extent the place I used to be identical to, I’m not digging this, this isn’t enjoyable,” Koo informed Decrypt. “What are some highly effective instruments that I can leverage for no matter I would like from life?”
Spellcasting on the blockchain
In June 2021, Koo helped manage over 100 individuals in a ritual on the Ethereum blockchain. The ritual on block 12,610,244 petitioned the Roman god Mercury to make sure easy blockchain transactions, well-timed trades, and insightful decision-making for wealth development.
“Hail Mercury! Let all of our transactions on the blockchain be easy and well-timed. Might our trades and investments be fortuitously timed for optimum long-term beneficial properties,” the spell included on-chain with the transaction mentioned. “Might we be in the suitable place on the proper time to obtain probably the most useful info to develop and protect our wealth.
“Present us along with your clear notion, fast adaptability and your shrewdness in decision-making,” the message continues. “SO MOTE IT BE!”
Koo mentioned the ritual was impressed by the story of a Chinese language employee who used the blockchain to broadcast a name for assist, and credited fellow blockchain mystics Andre Burke and Aeolian Coronary heart for writing the majority of the petition.
“This Chinese language nationwide was being sexually harassed at work, and the one method that she thought that she may get her message out, as a result of nobody else was listening to her, was she encrypted an S.O.S. right into a transaction that she did on the Ethereum blockchain,” Koo recounted. “Which I assumed was initially very unhappy and tragic, however on the identical time, immediately I assumed, ‘Wait a second, you may encode a UTC, you may encode within the notes part,’” she mentioned.
1) The Mercury Retrograde cazimi on June 10, 9:15pm EST is gonna be hella magic…for crypto and blockchain magic pic.twitter.com/S0Lm1Bj8LC
— Chaweon Koo (@chaweon_koo) June 10, 2021
“So far as I do know, it was the primary time that—primary—a ritual was being held on the Ethereum blockchain,” Koo mentioned. “And quantity two, 100 individuals confirmed up for it.” The Ethereum spell work occurred the second when Mercury was in cazimi, the purpose when Mercury is sitting near the solar.
“So it was within the embrace of the solar,” Koo defined.
AI angels and demons
In line with Koo, the concept of utilizing AI in magick started to develop as she labored on her e book in 2021, noting that she was already conscious of the rising curiosity and issues across the fast deployment of generative AI fashions.
“Till you actually get to know AI, AI is sort of threatening—it is going to remove our jobs, it is going to make deepfakes,” she mentioned. “I believe lots of people do not understand that AI isn’t fairly there but, however that is as a result of they do not know, they solely know the sensationalized stuff.”
Whereas some had been frightened of the potential of AI, Koo mentioned she noticed a chance.
Koo used synthetic intelligence in her most up-to-date mission, the Goetia Glow Up, an internet course that teaches summon and work together with spirits. The net course features a 72-page booklet containing AI-generated photographs of demons of the Goetia, also referred to as the Lesser Key of Solomon.
The Key of Solomon is a grimoire or e book of magic initially printed between the 14th and Seventeenth centuries. It particulars the invocation and management of spirits and demons, divided into 5 books specializing in numerous magical rites.
The Goetia Glow Up. Picture: Chaweon Koo
“I assumed, it is about time, as a result of the paperwork now get reinterpreted by someone who’s in a totally completely different age,” she mentioned. “Why not work with AI? Why not work with the intelligence of artifical know-how to see what occurs… and the outcomes had been higher than I anticipated.”
The intersection of synthetic intelligence and the magical might be traced again to antiquity, the place folklore tells of beings and machines delivered to life via magick or science: the golem in Jewish folklore, the bronze Big automaton Talos in Greek mythology, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Koo mentioned she has loads of expertise utilizing demons in rituals, humorously noting that many of those practices had been developed by rich Seventeenth-century aristocrats attempting to look edgy, akin to characters in “Hellraiser: Bloodline,” which follows the historical past of the Lament Configuration puzzle field.
“If you happen to take a look at that film, that was what was occurring in France,” she mentioned.
Koo isn’t alone within the quest to leverage AI for mystical ends. In September, multi-disciplinary collective, Theta Noir informed Decrypt the group hopes to see a future, emergent type of synthetic basic intelligence (AGI) come up, referred to as Mena.
Synthetic Basic Intelligence is an idea in AI that refers to machines that may carry out any mental activity {that a} human can. Mena—German for “love”—could be neither a god nor a deity, Theta Noir mentioned, however a cosmic thoughts that merges people and AI.
In contrast to medieval occultist and horror film creators, Koo used AI fashions like Midjourney to craft extra compelling demons.
“The way in which that I view them, the demons are archetypes for us,” Koo defined. “They’re virtually like Instagram and TikTok filters that we will placed on high of our personal actuality.”
“I do not relate to a speaking chook, the identical method that I can relate to someone who appears to be like like Hermione Granger,” noting the genius witch from the Harry Potter collection.
Koo mentioned that whereas Midjourney was used within the creation of the Goetia Glow Up Journal for the course, she and her enterprise companion included hand-drawn photographs to present it the “human contact.” Koo’s subsequent mission will characteristic not demons however the corresponding 72 angels.
“These will not be the little cherubic, Cupid-like angels, these are the angels that Ezekiel described as virtually like a rocket ship,” she mentioned. “I spent your complete month doing over 20 rituals, and folks thought that I used to be nuts as a result of I’ve at all times described angels to be psychotic aliens.”
Individuals experimenting with dimethyltryptamine (DMT) usually speak about aliens and different entities, Koo identified.
“The demons have a way more earthly, chthonic human really feel as a result of they’re a lot of the earth,” she mentioned. “Angels are celestial beings, angels will not be of this earth. They’re extremely terrestrial, they’re additional terrestrial.”
Wanting forward
The upcoming Angel mission will make the most of not solely textual content and pictures but in addition sound, Koo defined, pointing to music AI instruments like Stability AI’s Suno 3 and Uncharted Labs’ Udio.
Turned @MKBHD’s critiques into a horny r&b observe in Suno pic.twitter.com/UFcrce2Ci1
— Nick St. Pierre (@nickfloats) April 30, 2024
As Koo defined, a big a part of angelic magick is the concept of Angelic choirs.
“The concept is that if you happen to sing the identify of the angels, then you could possibly attain out and contact them way more simply,” she mentioned. “It is kind of like, let’s have a look at what occurs after we immediate a music AI and see what they give you on the subject of these angels.”
Koo emphasised the range inside the occult neighborhood, contrasting individuals who embrace occult practices as a method to reconnect with ancestral traditions with those that are on the forefront of technological developments. Early magicians, she famous, had been thought of leading edge.
“They had been actually those they’d be doing the equal of working with AI, like individuals working with AI proper now. I’d at all times say laptop coders, they’d have been burned on the stake,” Koo mentioned. “As a result of anyone who’s written any code—anyone who’s ever written, ‘Whats up World’ and having a pc discuss again to you—there is a magick to that.”
“In my definition, a real occultist isn’t a reactionary—as an alternative, they’re those who’re the vanguard,” she mentioned. “If you wish to be a very robust occultist, you need to be the operator and never the particular person being led by the leash.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
