Bob Cluness
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Iceland
Step into the Pandemonium: On Breathing Life into the CCRU's Invented Magical Traditions
This presentation examines invented traditions & contemporary esotericism, in particular the “invented” myths & systems of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), & how their work has been taken up as an actual tradition within online esoteric discourse. Key to their work were their “hyperstitional” myths of an inhuman AI from the future instantiating itself in the past to change events in the present, & a specialized “occult system” consisting of the Numogram, a “time-map” laying out the structural relations to their digital “grimoire” - The Matrix.
As academics external to occult groups, their work wasn’t explored in any depth as a concrete occult system from an emic perspective. But as their writings proliferated across social media, groups of people from diverse esoteric backgrounds have started to explore the CCRU’s work, not only as a source of esoteric inspiration but as a concrete system for divination & sorcery, thereby instantiating the Numogram as an actual “tradition.”