Feb 20, 2025 09:48 PM
"In recent times, virtually all aspects of human life have adapted to the digital environment. The technologization of existence has long followed a steady trajectory toward what the social theorist Zygmunt Bauman dubbed “liquid modernity”—that is, the “melting” of the steel structures that once upheld the “solid modernity” of the industrial revolution into a state of limitless liquidity that we witness in the unfettered global movement and communication through technologies that seemingly obviate the constraints of space and time. The omnipresence of cyberspace signifies the climactic summation of this trajectory, enabling the cross-continental dissemination of images and sounds at nature-defying speeds. This “liquefaction” is not only ontological but also ideological; imbued in the very notion of transcending the limitations of the “solid” world is a narrative of secular progress that also endeavors to melt the mores of the traditional social environment. Cyberspace, then, plays an important role in creating and magnifying the liquid or postmodern cultural climate that it is a key feature of, enabling a liberation from both geographical and ideological restraints. Indeed, contemporary sociologist David Lyon has called cyberspace both “a child and parent of the postmodern” in this respect.
The forms of spirituality that have emerged on the internet in recent years have also assumed the characteristic liquidity of all cyberspace phenomena; disjointed elements of belief systems are propelled through digital channels where they ebb, flow, and transmute in accordance with the personal dispositions of individuals. Severed from the confines of orthodoxy, these fragments of structured systems can be adopted (and abandoned) at will by the individual. As such, they represent the unmooring of spirituality from the foundational principles of traditional religion—an amplification of what the sociologist Grace Davie dubbed “believing without belonging,” whereby religious institutions are rendered irrelevant to the pursuit of spiritual belief and practice. The social media app TikTok has become the tributary from which many deinstitutionalized spiritual practices proceed, forming digital subcultures—bound tenuously by hashtags and mutual followers—such as WitchTok, an amorphous hybrid of Wicca and other neo-pagan beliefs, and “reality shifting,” a trend comprised of practices for inducing altered states of consciousness..."
https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/sp...dern-world
I feel like this emergent DIY kind of spirituality relates strongly to that of Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. Thinkers and writers in the past few centuries who I feel set the stage for this shift, and whose writings continue to influence thru cyberspace, include Rumi, William Blake, Carl Jung, James Joyce, Colin Wilson, Aleister Crowley, William Burroughs, Teilhard de Chardin, H.P. Lovecraft, John Keel, Jeffery Kripal, Charles Fort, Whitley Strieber, Jacques Vallee, Joseph Campbell, Robert Anton Wilson, Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castaneda, Terrence McKenna, Erik Davis, and Philip K Dick to mention a few.
The metanarratives that once corraled spirituality into the forms of institutionalized religions and ideological movements are now being questioned. Not only is the Enlightenment narrative of mankind's supreme reason wearing thin but its tangential "truth" of an independent objective reality where there are absolute truths and immutable facts is also being doubted. This trend falls neatly in line with the gnostic view of reality ultimately being a collective illusion foisted upon us by the dark forces of our culture and our materialistic regime. Here the encounter with the transcendental is no longer about having faith in historical narratives and dogmas nor of conforming to some law or creed.. The epistemic imperative of "knowing the truth" has become one of personal engagement and customized cosmicity, now being a matter of lived experience and openness to an immanent Other of "living information", or what Wallace Stevens called "the Interior Paramour", and the imaginal creativity of language itself--the Logos of ancient thought.. Hence the universally eclectic and heuristic nature of this non-narrative based numinous experience, as well as its deeply anarchal and revolutionary power, always flowing and mixing up and liquifying the cognitive and soporific constraints of our contemporary simulacrum.
![[Image: 87xjjiA.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/87xjjiA.jpeg)
The forms of spirituality that have emerged on the internet in recent years have also assumed the characteristic liquidity of all cyberspace phenomena; disjointed elements of belief systems are propelled through digital channels where they ebb, flow, and transmute in accordance with the personal dispositions of individuals. Severed from the confines of orthodoxy, these fragments of structured systems can be adopted (and abandoned) at will by the individual. As such, they represent the unmooring of spirituality from the foundational principles of traditional religion—an amplification of what the sociologist Grace Davie dubbed “believing without belonging,” whereby religious institutions are rendered irrelevant to the pursuit of spiritual belief and practice. The social media app TikTok has become the tributary from which many deinstitutionalized spiritual practices proceed, forming digital subcultures—bound tenuously by hashtags and mutual followers—such as WitchTok, an amorphous hybrid of Wicca and other neo-pagan beliefs, and “reality shifting,” a trend comprised of practices for inducing altered states of consciousness..."
https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/sp...dern-world
I feel like this emergent DIY kind of spirituality relates strongly to that of Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. Thinkers and writers in the past few centuries who I feel set the stage for this shift, and whose writings continue to influence thru cyberspace, include Rumi, William Blake, Carl Jung, James Joyce, Colin Wilson, Aleister Crowley, William Burroughs, Teilhard de Chardin, H.P. Lovecraft, John Keel, Jeffery Kripal, Charles Fort, Whitley Strieber, Jacques Vallee, Joseph Campbell, Robert Anton Wilson, Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castaneda, Terrence McKenna, Erik Davis, and Philip K Dick to mention a few.
The metanarratives that once corraled spirituality into the forms of institutionalized religions and ideological movements are now being questioned. Not only is the Enlightenment narrative of mankind's supreme reason wearing thin but its tangential "truth" of an independent objective reality where there are absolute truths and immutable facts is also being doubted. This trend falls neatly in line with the gnostic view of reality ultimately being a collective illusion foisted upon us by the dark forces of our culture and our materialistic regime. Here the encounter with the transcendental is no longer about having faith in historical narratives and dogmas nor of conforming to some law or creed.. The epistemic imperative of "knowing the truth" has become one of personal engagement and customized cosmicity, now being a matter of lived experience and openness to an immanent Other of "living information", or what Wallace Stevens called "the Interior Paramour", and the imaginal creativity of language itself--the Logos of ancient thought.. Hence the universally eclectic and heuristic nature of this non-narrative based numinous experience, as well as its deeply anarchal and revolutionary power, always flowing and mixing up and liquifying the cognitive and soporific constraints of our contemporary simulacrum.