occult technologies?

[tyrsalvia]

I'm a part of the Temple of All Gods group that does ritual and occult networking at Burning Man and elsewhere. We had sort of a trial run at BM this year, and we have a lot of bigger plans for next year. One thing that came up in dicussion is the idea to have intent that is sort of beamed into the Man while it burns, as a way of distributing the

Comments

[vaxjedi]

Are you trying to collect energy from the Man while it burns, distribute that and collect it as it filters through the gathering? Or Are you just trying to gather energy from the gathering as a whole? If the latter, how about a bunch of prayer wheels, each hooked up to an odometer?

No, seriously.

Psychic energy often equates with attention. Collection devices would gain the most energy from people when they are paying attention to it, interacting with it. People could add to the energy by spinning the prayer wheel. And the odometer gives you a way to meausre the energy, by the mile (MPH = Miles per Hex?) ;)

Even if you don't dig prayer wheels, I think the principle is sound - to gather energy from a gathering, you need to attract their attention to something.

On a tangent, if you could get remenants of the Man itself, those might be the most effective talismans of the energy of the Burn - it's the signature event of the event, the zeitgeist as it were. It'd be like having a sliver of the True Cross - but less Messianic. ;)

[tyrsalvia]

I really like the idea of prayer wheels hooked to an odometer, that's a really neat idea. *ponder*

[kallisti]

You can make flames talk...seriously!

check out:

http://www.plasmatweeter.de/eng_plasma.htm

As for collecting the energy...Personally, I think it would be a tad unethical if people didn't know what you were doing. I mean it's one thing to ground out an excess energy that is floating around after a ritual becuase the people running it are not up to speed yet...but it's another to take that energy and do something that is no in the spirit in which the energy has been offered up.

Is you group more CM, or Neopagan?

ttyl

[tyrsalvia]

What I had more in mind than collecting energy in the "putting it in a bottle so no one can use it" sorta way is something more like setting out a crystal and letting it soak in the energy around it and pattern itself based on that, stuff along those lines. Charging and amplifying rather than stealing. I don't think that's unethical at all, because it doesn't involve taking. Also, what we're planning to do with it will be in the same general spirit as the event itself (using it to help event-related fundraising partyrituals, using it to power artwork, etc

[beautifulpyre]

Pfft. Ethics schmethics.

[arianadawnhawk]

That's an interesting idea.

My first thought was to include some crystals. Not terribly tech-y, but I tend to make jewelry if I want to soak up the energy of an event or a time. (Then again, my jewelry has been known to involve computer parts.) You could also maybe use an old hard drive, or usb drives put at the different areas you were accumulating energy. Or what about some raw silicon in there too? That stuff looks neat, and it seems like it would fit with your intent.