"It's a discipline to keep your emotions in check – to keep certain archetypical images in my mind. I have to keep them because they're doorways, and if I don't have those doorways positioned correctly, they could lead me to a place that I wouldn't want to be. It's like a puzzle or a maze and I could get lost. Magic is a dangerous thing. There's a new age belief that you can never get hurt; that's not true. You can get hurt very bad. Not everybody should do magic. Even those of us who are made to do it, we fuck up quite a bit. I fuck up quite a bit.''
While a computer hacker who ventures into the wrong system might find the Secret Service knocking at his door, a witch who ventures into the wrong dimension risks psychological or spiritual damage. But just as the most aggressive cyberian hackers make sacramental use of psychedelics to augment their computer skills, adventurous witches make use of the computer net to keep informed of pagan technologies. The communications and computer networks are a self-similar extension of the pagan need for a map to hyperspace.
Green Fire's journeys through the multidimensional ''net'' are also reflected in the way he conducts business through the communications net on earth. Most of his income is generated through a national psychic phone service, Ultraviolet Visions, which offers psychic readings, astrology, tarot card analysis and other psychic services through a 900 number. The office in which the psychics operate is decorated in what Earth Girl likes to call "New Delphic Revival'' – twenty-two stations around a big glass table with pillars, each station corresponding to one of the twenty-two cards of the tarot's major arcana. Of course, the billing is handled by computer through the phone company.
Chapter 12
Gardeners Ov Thee Abyss
The strength of any magic in Cyberia is directly proportional to that magic's ability to permeate the network. Like cultural viruses, the techniques of magic are thought to gain strength as they gain acceptance by larger groups of people. Computer technology fits in to cyberian spirituality in two ways: as a way to spread magic, and as a magic itself.
Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth is a nett-work for the dissemination of majick (their spellings) through the culture for the purpose of human emancipation. TOPY (rhymes with soapy) began as a fan club and ideological forum for Genesis P. Orridge, founder of industrial band Throbbing Gristle and its house spin-off Psychic TV, but soon developed into a massive cultish web of majick practitioners and datasphere enthusiasts. They are the most severe example of technopaganism, consciously stretching backward through medievalism to ancient pagan spirituality and up through computer technology to the creation of a global, informational being. They predate and maybe even spawned House culture, but have remained pretty separate from the lovey-dovey, soft and squishy Ecstasy crowd.
All male initiates to TOPY take the name Coyote, and all women Kali. The name is followed by a number so that members can identify one another. Kali is the name of a female sex goddess known as ''the destroyer''; the coyote is found in many mythologies, usually symbolizing wisdom and an adventurous nature.
The nett-work consists of access points, or stations, which are post office boxes, fax machines, computer modems, or 800 phone numbers. Each access point gathers information from places off the web, then distributes it throughout the network, and in turn takes information from the web and makes it available to local members. As one initiate explains: ''The main memory can be accessed from the stations, then downloaded via correspondents through Xeroxes.'' Or, in English, someone reads his mail or plays his message machine, then types it up and gives copies to his friends. "The main memory'' refers to the TOPY idea that all its members compose a single, informational being.
The information passed about consists of ''majickal techniques'' from drugs and incantations to computer hardware and engineering tricks, as well as general TOPY philosophy. In some ways, the entire TOPY network is really just an elaborate metaphor for the postmodern Gaian brain. The information they pass around is much less important than the way in which it is passed. TOPY documents are immediately recognizable because they spell words in obsolete or newly made-up ways. This is seen as a way of retaking control of language, which has been used and abused for so long by the illegitimate power mongers of Western culture, which are directing the planet toward certain doom.
However well TOPY has permeated the net, its members rarely peep up out of the underground into the light of day and consensus reality. For all their 800-number accessibility, very few cyberians regularly socialize with flesh-and-blood TOPY members. It's almost as if their presence as human beings is less important than their presence as a cultural virus or informational entity.
All on the Same Side
Today, Diana is on Haight Street, distributing fliers for the next Toon Town. Unlike most promoters, who target ''likely'' clubgoers – kids with house-style clothes, computer-hippies, college cliques – Diana is dedicated to spreading the house phenomenon to the uninitiated. A freespirited club girl with a slight Mother Theresa complex, Diana is the female, emotional, caring counter to Toon Town's otherwise heady patriarchy, especially now that Earth Girl works at Big Heart City. Each human to whom she hands a flier is a potential link to dozens more. The more people brought in to the scene, she reasons, the more it grows, the more they grow, the further enlightened and loving the world is. This is the philosophy that got Diana to leave protective campus life at Berkeley and move into the city to promote Toon Town full-time.
When Diana approaches an unlikely cluster of young men clad in leather and army fatigues and smoking a joint in front of a record store, she unwittingly hits the networking jackpot. Her Toon Town promotional bill is grabbed up by the trio, who exchange it for a leaflet of their own, ''The Wheel of Torture,'' a poem by Coyote 107:
EYE WAS ON THEE WHEEL OV TORTURE
ON THAT TABLE, I WAS SPUN LIKE AZ A VORTICE. IN AN ACT OV ATTRACTING VIOLENCE TO MY BEING. THEE VIOLENCE WAS EXPRESSED THROUGH TORTURE, WHICH BECAME AN ACT OV ALCHEMICAL PROCESS. MY SENSES WERE BEING PULVERIZED. THROWN INTO SHOCK. PULVERIZATION WAS BEING SHOVED DOWN MY THROAT. EVERY OUNCE OV MY EMOTION WAS NULLIFIED. STEPPED ON AND SPIT ON. TOTAL APPLICATION OV NEGATION. TOTAL ACT OV NON SERVITUDE. REJECTING MY OWN PERSONALITY. NOT LETTING MY EGO TAKE KONTROL. VIOLATING MY OWN EGO IZ AN ACT OV KONTROL OVER IT. A REBELLION AND A REJECTION. HOPING FOR COMPLETE REVOLUTION WITHIN MYSELF AND NOT WAITING FOR THEE GENERATIONZ TO CATCH UP. (FUCK THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS! WHEN THINGS NEED TO CHANGE THEY WILL; THROUGH WILL.) THIS TYPE OV NULLIFICATION IZ THEE PROCESS OV PURIFICATION THROUGH PULVERIZATION. AN INITIATION INTO THE SELF. THE TRUE SELF. NOT THEE ILLUZION OUR EGO FEEDZ US. LOSS OV EGO IZ PART OV THEE AWAKENING PROCCESS. THEE LIBERATION PROCESS. TO LIBERATE YOURSELF IZ TO NEGATE AND NULLIFY THAT WHICH RESTRICTS YOU. WHAT RESTRICTS YOU FROM EXPRESSION AND EXPLORATION. EXPLORE YOURSELF AND BE READY. BE ABLE AND CAPABLE. TRANZFORM AND COMMUNICATE. TRUE COMMUNICATION ONLY HAPPENZ BETWEEN EQUALS. YOU MUST MUTATE TO COMMUNICATE. YOU MUST SHARE VIBRATIONAL FREQUENCY, WHICH IZ WHAT YOU ARE. ALL LIFE IZ VIBRATION AND MOVEMENT. NOTHING IZ IN A FIXED POSITION. FIXED POSITIONS ARE ONLY TEMPORARY. TRUE STATES ARE TEMPORAL BECAUSE CHANGE IZ INEVITABLE. CHANGE MAKES BALANCE. CHANGE IZ MOVEMENT. MOVEMENT IZ UNIVERSAL YET DEPENDENT AND DEFINABLE. MOVEMENT HAS VELOCITY AND DIRECTION. MOVEMENT IZ MAJICK. MAJICK IS SETTING FORTH THEE WILL INTO MOTION TOWARDS A GOAL. ALLEGORY IZ THEE VEHICAL. LEARN TO KONTROL THEE VEHICAL. GET BEHIND THE WHEEL. STEER YOUR LIFE IN THEE DIRECTION YOU CHOOSE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAKE PIT-STOPS FOR YOUR EGO.PULVERIZE & PURIFY.