Free Escape Velocity by Mark Dery Page B

technology is magick. According to "Lurker Below (ashton)," a technopagan posting an electronic message in one of the WELL's discussion groups, "Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth . . . [is] dedicated [to] thee establishment ov a functional system ov magick and a modern pagan philosophy without recourse to mystification, gods, or demons"; it relies, instead, on "thee implicit powers ov thee human brain" in its explorations of "neuro-mancy, cybershamanism, information theory, or magick."'^' (The idiosyncratic spellings are a TOPY convention.)
    Technopaganism also surfaces in the electro-bacchanalian urges that animate raves, where conventions are momentarily suspended in the social centrifuge whipped up by sweaty, seething dancers; punishingly loud, unrelentingly rhythmic "house" or "techno" electronic dance music; and the drug ecstasy, widely regarded as an aphrodisiac. Cultured in the British techno-hippie musical genre known as "acid house" in the summer of 1989 (dubbed the second "Summer of Love" by British journalists), the rave scene soon spread to California. In San Francisco, the traditions represented by Haight-Ashbury and Silicon Valley were intermixed by the rave phenomenon, creating what the Psychic TV frontman Genesis P-Orridge calls "hyperdelic" culture. Its sound track, says P-Orridge, is high-tech
    trance music, where people shake and spin until they reach a state of hyperventilation and psychedelic alpha-wave experience. . . . They get completely tranced-out. . . from that primal and physical excess. So there's this whole pagan energizing thing going on as a result of this free-form dancing to this high-tech shamanism.'°2
    On their record Boss Drum (1992), the English techno-trance/ cyberpop duo the Shamen fashion an archaic futurism from rapped vocals, fizzing synthesizers, hyperactive drum machine, and the ruminations of Terence McKenna, whose eschatological humor goes over big with

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    those whose neurons have been permanently cross-wired by psychoactive substances. In the song "Re: Evolution," which features his overdubbed remarks as its vocal track, McKenna offers an illuminating reading of rave culture:
    The emphasis in . . . rave culture on physiologically compatible rhythms is really the rediscovery of the art of natural magic with sound, [the realization] that sound-especially percussive sound-can actually change neurological states. Large groups of people getting together in the presence of this kind of music are creating a telepathic community ... an end-of-the-millennium culture that is actually summing up Western civilization and pointing us in an entirely different direction. We're going to arrive in the third millennium in the middle of an archaic revival, which will mean ... a new art, a new social vision, a new relationship to nature and to ego.
    Many raves feature "chill-out" rooms where revelers exhausted by the "psychedelic alpha-wave experience" can relax, cocooned in the gauzy, billowing synthesizers of "ambient" electronic instrumental music. Much of this music exudes a technopagan aura: Ritual Ground (1993), by Solitaire, features moody instrumentals-waves of shimmering synthesizer washing over didgeridoo and ethnic percussion-with names like "Runes" and "In the Forest of Ancient Light"; Mystery School (1994) by the Ambient Temple of Imagination features a booklet covered with flying saucers, illustrations from the Crowley Thoth tarot deck, and songs whose titles-"Magickal Child," "Thelema"-refer to Crowley's teachings. The liner notes, which include references to magick, shamanism, and alchemy, end with the somewhat Star Trekian prediction that "humanity is destined to join the interdimensional Galactic Federation as our planet evolves to a higher level ofbeing."'^^
    Technopaganism leaves its stamp on cyber-rock and "industrial" music, too. Cyberpunx (1989), by Rodney Orpheus's band the Cassandra Complex, is technopagan cyber-rock. On one hand, Orpheus conjures Crowley's