Moral and financial economics of ‘digital magic’: Explorations of an opening field

Abstract

The relationship between religion and the Internet has been attracting more attention by researchers in recent years. Magic, however, is still relatively overlooked in this area, and has not given rise to influential studies in the field. Based on investigations on the Internet, other new information and communication technologies, and a survey of the scientific literature, this article intends to lay the groundwork for a consideration of magic and new information technology, and to highlight the specificity of a perspective in terms of digital magic, distinct from that of one exclusively focused on digital religion.

A sacred magic 2.0?

In the third millennium, surfing on the Internet is an easy, fast and rather cheap way to access messages, scriptural sources and symbolic supplies from religious organizations; to obtain practical resources and advice from clerical personnel; or to discuss issues relating to religion (see, for instance, Campbell, 2013b). The Internet is also replete with digital services offering cartomancy, divination, spells, remedies (one among hundreds: https://www.online-fortune-telling.com/#) while new traditions of magic and witchcraft, like Wicca, nowadays manage to have their own websites and provide services, courses and training sessions (Telesco and Knight, 2001).

What is nowadays known as the ‘digital revolution’, a rather controversial slogan thought, is accountable for major transformations in societies and cultures that are under the quick and ever-increasing influence of information and communication technologies (hereafter ICT). In less than half a century, ICT have indeed practically colonized all dimensions of social and cultural life, from work to ordinary interpersonal communication, starting in highly developed Western countries (Fogel and Patino, 2013) but soon on the five continents and expanding in every compartment of social, economic and cultural life (see Muroyama and Stever, 1988). It is almost a truism to say that scientific research has quickly followed what looks like another paradigmatic shift (a ‘digital turn’) and has given rise to new fields of knowledge and to renewed perspectives about Social Sciences and Humanities (hereafter SSH) in the context of networked, connected and highly digitalized societies (Castells, 1996). The societal impact of the massive expansion of ICT has long been a topic of inquiry in the SSH, and especially sociology for rising interest in new social relationships and communication by means of mediated apparatus (the subject-matter of computational sociology) and the rise of cybercultures or digitalized cultures (Bollmer, 2018).

Religious studies are among the latest disciplinary field to jump into the debate, looking at how ICT have transformed both the lives and habits of believers and the forms and dynamics of religious institutions, that is, loyalty to a tradition, the nature of faith, the relationships to objects of beliefs, and modes of communication with the sacred or the invisible world (Campbell, 2006). Among the different approaches, a salient line of discussion (although not the only one) deals with ‘religions online’ (i.e. when religions use digital technologies to spread on the Internet), whose thematic developments are fueling a wider theoretical debate on the relationships between societies/cultures, and ICT/Internet: the relocation ‘online’ of the forms of social and religious life is considered to be mirroring these global changes in the background of contemporary societies (Campbell, 2013a). The relationship between the Internet and religion is however reciprocal and has been defined as such since ‘religions online’ (the expansion of traditional religions on the Internet) cannot be confused with ‘online religions’ (when new forms of religious expressions natively online; Helland, 2000). Similarly, Krueger asserted that Internet acts ‘as distributor and mirror of religious and ritual knowledge’ (Krueger, 2004). To put it another way, these two different modes characterize the dual nature of Internet, which is both a reflection of the transformations affecting religions, and the technological operator of these transformations. Furthermore, at the back of these transformations, recorded at the level of social and technological practices, a much broader issue is raised, under the form of a reversible slogan: should we consider more generally religion or the sacred in the Digital Age (Derrida, 2000), or, from the opposite side of the spyglass, digital media in the time of a global religious revival? (Douyère et al., 2014). Moreover, the relationship between religions and these new technologies – Internet in particular – seems to generate two contrasted archetypal attitudes: technophilia (i.e. confidence in ICT and their appropriation) versus technophobia (i.e. the rejection of ICT accused of being a source of ‘sin’, or ‘pollution’ despite the massive presence of traditional organizations online; Howard, 2011). To a certain extent, this difference coincides with the opposition between magic and religion in their relationships to technologies. Surprisingly, however, the term ‘magic’ is rather absent from contemporary reflections and studies, except when this article precisely aims to portray the emergence of a new field of inquiry dedicated to ‘digital magic’. It accordingly intends to circumscribe the apparently empirical and epistemological vagueness of the concept, by indicating the ways that the notion of (moral and financial) economies forms a relevant and powerful tool for shaping the conceptual frame of ‘digital magic’, beyond the common sociotechnical aspects of the context. Finally, and at the end of this first attempt to map the space for reflection of digital magic, we will question the extent to which it is possible to renew the approaches of magic and contribute, in quite a particular way, to the advances in the field of ‘religion and Internet’ Studies. This article therefore aims at delineating some outlines of a scientific discussion on magic in digital context, and carrying out a preliminary discussion on the relevance of digital magic as a potential key concept for an opening field of study. It therefore mainly focuses on the lexical and practical extension of the reference to magic in digital environments.

An emerging field?

Although quite recent, the relationships between religion and new ICT are only beginning to be fairly well chartered. Walter Ong (1967) is undoubtedly a pioneer in the domain when he paid careful attention to the sociological transformations in the background of the ‘engagement’ of diverse religions with different media, in the late 1960s. Three decades later, O’Leary (1996) paved the way to the exploration of the relationships between religion and the Internet, and followers like Hackett tracked the diverse impacts of multimodal and multifunctional ICT on religions (Hackett, 2005). Since the early 2000, Heidi Campbell (2012) has significantly broadened the scope in the United States, tackling, for instance, the issue of the appropriation of the Internet by religious organizations. In the same decade, Helland (2000) drew the famous opposition between ‘online religion’ (religions born and existing mainly in a digital context) and ‘religion online’ (i.e. religions spreading by means of ICT). In France, Douyère (2018) has focused on the adaptations of the messages produced by religious organizations and of communication strategies encouraged by the use of the new ICT. Likewise, Jeremy Stolow (2010) explored the changing dynamics and morphology of religion in an ‘e-environment’, where sacred traditions have gained a new and significant visibility.

A fertile field has been opened by Adam Possamai and his ‘hyperreal religions’ (Possamai, 2016) that investigates the reshaping of collective imagination and the creative horizon of virtuality in the context of a hypermediatized ‘Société du Spectacle’ (after Guy Debord). Already first attempts to delineate the contours of research in communication studies relating to religion, Heidi Campbell also recently added to the discussion a significant cultural and regional inflection into the analytical viewpoint (Shengju and Campbell, 2018).

As it has been repeatedly pointed out, the digital revolution was launched in the context of the 1960s Western counterculture, enriched by Eastern (Asian) and spiritual influences parallel or substitute to those of mainstream religions (Cardon, 1992). The New Age movement, in particular, has been an incentive for research, since the alternative spiritualities that form its substance have proved to be particularly active on the Internet (Mayer, 2008), and is among the most recent and the most innovative approaches that may open new horizons in a genre already at risk of conceptual circularity (from ‘religion online’ to ‘online religion’, and reciprocally).

In these quickly developing fields of knowledge relating to ICT and the sacred or ICT and belief, so far, the issue of magic has not been intellectually captured enough, given the prominence of religious-oriented approaches in the field. Similarly, the transformations of religion(s) in the context of modernity and of globalization received much attention in the last five decades, focusing on the ‘flux’ and ‘reflux’, ‘loss’ and ‘revival’, ‘secularization’ and ‘desecularization’ (see, for instance, Clarke, 2011), and the context of digitization has compelled religions to adapt and accelerate in parallel the new religious movements. As for Magic, it was supposed to be superseded by religion and by science according to Frazer (2009 [1890]), replaced with profane illusionism and prestidigitation (Christopher and Christopher, 1996), and finally reconditioned under the form of an aesthetic object in media cultures. The ongoing intellectual and cultural marginalization of magic deplored by De Martino (1948) and followers seems to be undergoing in digitalized societies, but this lack of visibility is not synonymous with a lack of reality of magic, quite the reverse. New technologies and the Internet happen to provide fertile grounds for a redeployment of magic in culture and society.

On the possible meanings of the electronic expansion of magic

Bailey (2006) recalled that the category of magic is fluctuating by nature and seems very difficult to establish a common definition for scholars, since it can be used in very different manners among scholars, especially anthropologists (Keck, 2002). It refers to non-institutionalized sacred (Mauss and Hubert, 1950) or not necessarily associated with the sacred (Frazer, 2009 [1890]) beliefs established on mental associations in reference to symbolic things. They framed a certain model of constructing reality, in opposition with religion, a term referring to a more institutionalized, bureaucratic and routinized relationship to gods, supernatural spirits (Spiro, 1972; Tylor, 1871). Claude Lévi-Strauss (1950) had previously emphasized the malleability of magic, whose main ‘force’, the mana, was a ‘zero meaning signifier’ engaging a process of signification – the notion and this theory still discussed today (Crépeau and Laugrand, 2017) – while another Bronisław Malinowski (1948) insisted on the ‘empirical efficience’ of magical acts. Historical researches have preferred transhistorical to transcultural perspectives and explored the rise and (alleged) fall of magic in Western context (Copenhaver, 2015), while psychology and cognitive science attempted to design a transcultural theory of magical thinking and action (Sørensen, 2007). To what extent one of the above-mentioned definitions of magic, established on the study of ‘primitive’ societies or culture, is relevant in the context of modern technologically driven social and cultural change? Cubitt (2000) considers that the context of modern highly technologized environments contribute to the perpetuation of ancient forms of magic while Davis (2015) supports the idea that the former offers fertile grounds for the resurgence of the latter.

Moreover, since the study of digital technology and the sacred has been fashioned according to religious issues, what could be the scope and aims of a reflection on magic, if ever one is distinct from the discussions on religions and ICT, and its contribution to the understanding of beliefs and practices systems in the context of technological globalization?

In this article, I will champion the idea that the study of ICT and magic offers the opportunity for an alternative approach to the sacred, introducing a shift in the already hegemonic religious-centered perspectives in the field, and the already delimited framework of ‘religious uses of the Internet’. The development of new ICT seems to be an ‘opportunity’ for three categories of beliefs systems, but for rather different reasons: established historical traditions that are expanding their activities online; the ‘new religions’, like jediism (‘the religion of the jedi’ inspired by Star Wars movies) or more technologically oriented copimism (the ‘religion’ of the ‘copy-paste’ ritual), both of them originating from the digital revolution and the dissemination of a global popular culture, and are perfect illustrations of the ‘online religions’. In a somewhat unexpected manner, activist atheists are the third group. The fascinating case of the fake cult Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that started as an online joke told by a group of American scientists, and continued as a worldwide organization setting up happenings, blurs the limits between online religion and religion online (Obadia, 2015). It also unveils the metaphorical and critical uses of the term ‘religion’ referring to the ways users literally ‘worship’ the Internet (and a diffuse sarcastic Bible-like images reflecting this critical stance) (Breton, 2000). On the basis of these three examples, one can identify three relationships, after Helland’s (2000) dichotomy: religions on the Internet, religions of the Internet and religions about the Internet. But if this is relevant for what is religion, is it the same for magic?

You said ‘magic’?

Rather than restricting magic (and religion) to a stable, ultimate, and firm definition, a yardstick to evaluate the transformations of belief in history, this article considers magic as a labile concept, whose corresponding semantic field is flexible, even if all the definitions converge on the manipulation of supernatural powers or objects by an individual (from Frazer, 2009 [1890], to Davis, 2015). The starting point of this discussion is the observation that the substantive ‘magic’, the adjective ‘magical’ and the corresponding lexicon are widely used on digital media (when the reference to the term or the idea of magic is explicitly expressed in hypertexts or mediated discourses) or about digital devices when these technologies are objects of belief. If a formal definition must be drafted, by ‘magic’, we mean human beliefs and practices related to a certain sense of the superhuman (be it sacred or invisible) that are more instrumental than existential (and therefore differ from definitions of the ‘religious’ sacred), since they are expected to have a direct (but not always efficient) impact on the way people life. I therefore, and accordingly, refer to magic as, broadly speaking, uses of supernatural resources in order to inflect the course of natural world. It can assume positive (‘white’) or negative (‘black’) forms, different from religion (relating oneself to an institutionalized system of sacred beliefs and rituals) or spirituality (a more subjective, individualized, relationship to the meaning of life and the sacred) (Obadia, 2013b).

Contrary to the case of religion, the vast realm of magic online, whether the reference is made to existing traditions or to new approaches to the use of supernatural symbols and powers, remains to be explored, despite attempts like Davis’ (2015) TechGnosis from whom all the ancient expressions of symbolism and beliefs (myth, mysticism and magic) can be recorded under digital forms. Hundreds of websites offer descriptions of rituals, remedies, divination techniques, sources for the study of magical symbolism, but they have since them not been systematically explored. Why is magic so discreet in the emerging ‘digital religion studies’? Is the condition of magic online could be more or less similar to the one it assumes in the ‘real’ (social and physical) world, that is, as symbols, rituals and beliefs previously hidden – because subjugated – by the hegemonic position of religion in society and in the academy? A study of magic, and the ways it is expressed through new ICT raises another question: are magic and religion embarked altogether in a same historical movement (modernization and/or globalization), and are they affected by similar impacts in the new global social and technological conditions? If ‘Global conditions’ are considered to be more or less the same everywhere around the world (Giddens, 1990), they do not necessarily produce similar outcomes, and the analysis should avoid any a priori equivalence in effects, dynamics and in transformations between the two systems of thought and practices, magic and religion, respectively.

To mention only one example, religions indeed have an ambivalent relationship with ICT, especially because the latter can address moral issues regarding religions: in monotheisms, the use of the Internet can raise ethical issues, since Internet can be seen as a source of symbolic ‘pollution’ (for orthodox Judaism, see Cohen, 2017), being held responsible for disbelief or atheism (in the USA, see https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/04/04/13684/how-the-internet-is-taking-away-americas-religion/), or the source of excessive belief in the case of radicalization processes (Roy, 2002). Albeit technologies are, on principle, supposed to be ‘neutral’ (Escobar, 1994), the way they are used can have a direct impact on religions and religious organizations. In the late nineteenth century, the first generations of anthropologists were, however, convinced that magic, as a kind of ‘primitive religion’ with which it is often mistaken, was devoid of morality and senses of guilt. On this premise, there are logically and virtually no obstacles (contrary to religion) for magic to align on the technological and social transformations of the digital revolution, yet in a more discreet manner than for religion. This could explain why electronic virtual environment is new sites for ‘magical experience’ (Hume and Drury, 2013).

Not surprisingly, then, references to magic are already widespread in the mediatized discourses on technology. Stahl (1995), for instance, demonstrated that, on the grounds of substantial amount of cases, ‘Magical discourse seems to be alive and well in industrialized North America’ (1995: 235). This is also the case outside North America where magic is a fashionable cultural item (Meyer and Pels, 2003) but as well repulsive reference when it is used as a critical tantamount of irrationality and of naïve beliefs held by ‘common people’ about technologies (Rodhain, 2019: 15).

Discourses on technologies that include references to magic have a structuring effect on the ICT uses: both of them are based upon a similar anthropomorphic projection, the same desire for power and to control realities, and of an individualism which characterizes a ‘magic profile’ (Stahl, 1995). Stahl’s perspective is of specific interest since it attempts to map the references to magic in the media-covered discourses in different media. However, his insights into the influence of magic (as belief) are a little less convincing. Yet, some online publications in particular argued that the use of digital ICT can be surrounded with a ‘magical halo’, in reference to a kind of ‘mystery’ of technological efficiency when people assign an (super)human-like intentionality to the machines (Davis, 2015). According to this line of reasoning, most of the users of ICT simply lack the basic technological knowledge to understand why their screen can produce images and words. This problem is solved in terms of anthropocentric projections since the human mind not only creates gods, spirits, and supernatural agents but uses them to fill the gap of meaning when a situation is not plausible (Boyer, 1994): in this perspective, there exists something like a ‘spirit in the machine’, whose expressions can be recorded on the screens of computers or cellphones (Nova, 2019).

Digital technologies have also a very practical and instrumental dimension that they share with magic, at least in the classical conception of magic, which is instrumental in aim, scope, and results (Malinowski, 1948; Mauss and Hubert, 1950). Few authors have until now explored this comparison in depth, except Sara Kimball who compared (at the risk of oversimplification) the magic uses of writing among the Hittites and the Greeks, and writing in a regime of ICT and hypertextuality, as if both practices were naturally equivalent (Kimball, 1997). This example is inspiring but does not account for the many possibilities offered by the comparison between technological and religious instrumentalism. Furthermore, a focus on magic could indeed shed another light on the dynamics and logics of social and technological transformations, than those framed against beliefs in the religious sacred, and adaptations approved by historical religions like in Roman Catholicism (Jonveaux, 2013), Protestantism (O’Leary, 1996), or by New Religious Movements (Mayer, 2008). The main problem is to map a phenomenon difficult to define, size, and record.

Absence, discretion, ambiguous visibility

This not exhaustive overview of literature seems to confirm that the issues raised by this digital magic are not exactly similar to those of religion: magic seems indeed more discreet, volatile, and diffuse than religion, surfacing here and there on the Internet, where religion has a wider visibility. One can wonder to what extent we are witnessing a replication in the so-called ‘revolution 4.0’ of what happened in the ‘real’ historical world, that is, the domination of magic by religion, and the marginalization of the former by the latter (Hunter, 2020). The tracking of the occurrences of magic online presupposes, once again, to delineate a minima its theoretical and empirical boundaries.

The above-mentioned definition of magic is assuming the traditional form of systems or practices identifiable by the distinctive traits they assume offline and online: esoteric movements, hermetic magic, occult groups, and new post-Gardnerian witchcraft. Yet, if esotericism is full of magic, not all magic can be reduced to esotericism (Riffard, 1990). These forms can also partake in what Adam Possamai (2019) has described as the requalification of popular traditional magic in modern elite and urban spirituality. The circumscription of magic in purely academic categories is however not entirely satisfactory here. As a technological ecosystem, the Internet favors the expression of individual voices in social networks where belief systems and frames of imagination are being reinvented. Henceforth, one must take into consideration not only the traditions of magic, but above all the claims and promotional strategies of passionate web users who epitomize, like their nineteenth-century predecessors, a new generation of magicians, masters of a virtual reality distinct from illusionism, or from the esoteric rituality embodied by Eliphas Levi (aka Alphonse-Louis Constant, 1810–1875). As Mauss and Hubert (1950) stated, ‘magic is the magician’ and these netsurfers reinvent magic on the Internet. Furthermore, if forms of magic appear in the heart of the Digital revolution, they also disclose a wide set of manifestations, beyond the extent of what the World Wide Web has to offer. In addition, there are many other technologies through which religion is being reinvented, and so is magic: Internet of objects, Virtual Reality Technologies, and, of course, mobile telephony which spreads and transforms symbols and supports beliefs. By no means, then, might the analysis be limited to the exploration of the Internet in search of ‘ancient’ magic symbols or suggestions for practice, transposed in this new technological environment. The transformative potential of magic in and on technological settings must also relate to the wide-scale mutations subsumed under the label of ‘modernity’ (Meyer and Pels, 2003).

Magic and ‘modernity/ies’

When related to the global context of ‘modernity’, the dynamics of renewal and reinvention of magic can, on the one hand, resemble those of religion in the same context, that is, similar global economic, ideological and social forces that characterizes modernity (Heller, 1999), while, on the other hand, prove to be somewhat specific to magic itself. Magic indeed seems to have become a persistent and discreet, and lately more visible component that is reshaping the sacred in an ever more digitalized and connected world. Its forms and their possible meanings can also widely vary. Magic can take the shape of ‘new magical movements’, similar in form and dynamics to the ‘new religious movements’ that, according to the Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne (1990), exemplify an extensive ‘return of magic’, started in the nineteenth century. The French philosopher Régis Debray considers ‘cybermagic’ (‘cybermagie’, or magic online) as a by-product of modernity and the source of alteration of ‘genuine’ forms of magic, on the back of a global process of deterioration of the sacred under the forces of technological modernization and globalization (Debray, 2001). For the sociologist Vincenzo Susca, in societies almost entirely colonized and reshaped by ICT, magic is more than cybermagic: it assumes the form of a ‘technomagic’ (‘technomagie’) which is not only the latest translation of magical thinking in modern words and images but also the metaphorical representation of culture and symbolic systems in a regime of hypermodernity and hypertechnicity (Susca, 2016).

As for the concept of digital or digitalized magic, the term remains unclear, because it has not yet received the theoretical attention it deserves, though not totally absent from recent works and discussions about the relationships between ICT and the sacred. The idea is, however, dispersed in a series of oblique linguistic references, like those that can be found en passant, for instance, in the introductory chapter of Dawson and Cowan’s (2004) Finding faith on the Internet or in the last chapter of The varieties of magical experience (Hume and Drury, 2013). At times, it can be more explicit like in the works of the Olivier Krueger, for whom ‘technosymbolic environments’ are both spaces for the transformation of sacred traditions and sites where hybridization of traditions, technocultures and magical cultures (but in this case, the case under examination is a self-defined magical tradition, namely the modern Wicca) is occurring (Krueger, 2004). Magic, like religion, seems to undertake a process of ‘euphemization’, that is, a loss of ontological density and of signification (see Hourmant, 1995). It has become an aesthetic object in the globalization of popular cultures and beliefs through mass media (Chidester, 2005). In many movies, TV shows, videos on online platforms, Internet multiplayer games, an all-embracing aesthetic of magic is expressed through the taste for ‘fantasy’ and ‘Marvel’, from Harry Potter© to Supernatural©, from Charmed© to Merlin©, just to mention a few. In these productions, magic is often ‘white’, personified by harmless and nice magicians fighting for Good against evil forces or black magic. In his reflections on the mediatization and metamorphosis of the sacred, Chidester (2005) maintained that mass cultural industries can bring about a shift in the relationship to the religious sacred (less authoritarian, more instrumental, then), and, beyond, the integration of magic within broadcast media. Hypermediatized popular culture can thus generate original forms of the sacred, filled with imagination and fiction closer to the ‘savage sacred’, wild and creative (as magic is), than to the ‘canned sacred’, encapsulated in Bastide (1975).

Elements for a method

Still, digital magic is all but easy to find, even on the Internet. One challenge lies in the lexical surface of the term magic, and its paradoxical associated effects: saturation (the term is quickly expanding on the web, according to websearch quantitative tools such as Google Trends©) along with dispersal (since the occurrence of ‘magic’ is increasing in numbers, the lexical extension of the term being proportional to a loss of meaning while ‘classical’ magic is dissolving in a series of references). It is therefore necessary to combine a mapping of the forms that magic assumes online (on the basis of the word ‘magic’ and derived adjectives such as ‘magical’), with a study of the distribution of the (discursive, esthetical, symbolic, praxeological) expressions of traditions of magic. As for the latter, an Internet scan, via the most famous search engines, reveals that one can find websites specifically devoted to magic, that aim to inform the reader along with a hidden activist goal: they display symbols, documentary sources, and interpretations of magic that often align on conventional narratives of the history of magic (a philosophia perrenis ‘as ancient as Antiquity’; see https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/magic-ancients-five-incredible-texts-spells-curses-and-incantations-020408).

Others can convey more individualized visions, blending magic and science fiction or modern heroic fantasy. The Internet is full of magic networks and circles, whose shape seems to reproduce the pattern of esoteric groups (small number of people strongly committed to the topic, with the corresponding erudition), in the direction of individuals who connect to them, motivated by practical aspirations, that is, gaining ‘power’ or expanding/sharing their knowledge on magic. Less frequent online, yet an interesting other side of the coin are the more or less institutionalized forms ‘schools of magic’, like the Belgian movement AETHER (http://www.aether.be/), have a twofold (virtual and real) regime of existence: they materialize as social groups and as online circles. Discussion forums are of course plentiful: they talk about magic and facilitate the sharing of views on this topic, but their role and impact on digital magic has not been yet fully examined.

It can be seen as the modern form, mutatis mutandis, of the ancient practice of selling curses and talismans, or as an absorption of magic in global capitalist economy and culture, and a ‘merchandising’ of magic goods. If we are inclined to think in terms of continuities between ancient and modern commitment between magic and economy (Obadia, 2013a), it is also true that these new forms of magic are resolutely embedded in globalization and shaped by it, and that ICT and the Internet provide a ‘new theatre’ for magic, as scene for aesthetic performance and as a military metaphor for the strategies of visibility/invisibility. In an open economy of the sacred, magic provides resources for meaning and practices, sacred goods and services. In the context digitization of social life, (institutionalized) magic contributes to these new regimes of mediated social engagement, namely, a sociability 2.0. Indeed, Internet challenges the traditionally established relationships to gods and in between humans (Campbell, 2011), and it generates new attitudes and strategies of ‘using’, ‘consuming’, ‘sharing’ ‘connecting’ ‘spreading’ online (Stout, 2012). In the case of magic, the increase in numbers of pay-portals offering magic services confirms the embeddedness of modern magic in trading economy (see: https://whitemagic.online/ also both a social group and an online network providing magical services).

Virtuality and digitalization of the supernatural: a specificity of Magic?

Again, magic has to cope with the new and changing conditions of living, in the following areas: technology, economy, and sociology. As it is the case for religion, it is subjected to logics of continuity and rupture. In the context of a widely extended gamification of social practices, a new thinking arises, the ‘magic of the game’ when play activities are concerned by magic thought or magic efficiency. But as well, and/or the ‘games of magic’ in the case of online/digital games in which narrative, symbolic or aesthetic references to magic surround or mold the universe of the game (like in World of Warcraft©). The field is quickly developing in the case of religion (Servais, 2017) and it is now extending to magic. For Calleja (2015), it is a certain way to recompose, with the help of ICT, what philosopher Johannes Huizinga called the ‘magic circle of the game’ (by means of the spatial and temporal suspension of social norms in the game) but in the case of games with a magic theme. According to Aupers, the growth of magical themes and symbols in these new technical and ludic ecosystems can be explained in similar terms than those that apply to religion: ‘playing with magic’ online is nothing else than a romantic response to the modern disenchantment (Aupers, 2015). It is also possible to consider these games as an extension, in the context of technological modernity, of the creative and almost playful relationship to the ‘other’ reality produced by magical thought (De Martino, 1948).

Finally, the recently coined term ‘technopaganism’, directly connected to magic, reawakens the already ancient association between magic and ‘primitive religions’, since it bears a resemblance to the resurgence of ‘tribal’ traditions in the context of modern society and digital culture. Technopaganism, sometimes called technoshamanism, are so-called ‘primal’ traditions reinvented by the fertilization between a layer of allegedly ‘archaic’ and naturalist thoughts and practices, and hypermodern, somewhat rationalist, ways of life and ideologies (see Cowan, 2004). Empirically speaking, the actors of technopaganism are ravers (scattered across the world), the British movement of modern nomads (formerly an urban idle class nowadays itinerant ‘tribes’) or the participants in the Burning man festival in the United States (Kozinets and Sherry, 2004), not to mention other ‘communities’ of cyberpunks . . . That new ‘tribal magic’ and its social and online expression remain nevertheless dispersed and nebulous. This last cosmological metaphor has already proved to be fruitful by underscoring the difficulties to map the fluid and moving world of new religious movements (Champion, 1989). Furthermore, the idea of a community of neo-magicians with rather vague identifiable and distinctive features resembles the imagined community of magicians/witches who were hunted during the European Renaissance (Cohn, 1975). There again, the comparison, though relevant, is brought to the epistemological end of the difference of contexts. Magic and witchcraft still exist under traditional forms and are in certain countries under the control of State religions, and they are, however, far to experience the same violence: the ‘occult markets’ of spells and remedies of the past are available online or in technological networks, fully accessible and even trendy.

Consuming magic: between trading and moral economies

Magic to be found online is notably visible under the form of services and ‘products’ to be sold, objects used for rituals, chance, curses, exorcism, candles, runes, incense, crystals, Tarot Cards, infuse oils . . . and, in a broader manner, the analysis of digital magic can add a layer of economic factors, in addition to historical or technological ones. The choice of an economic perspective rather than a sociological or anthropological one can be justified by the importance of economic aspects of social and cultural life in the context of late capitalism (Tomlinson, 1999) and the rise of a digital capitalism (Possamai, 2018) as well as by the heuristic power of economics as a conceptual tool to explain contemporary religious dynamics (Obadia, 2013a). Magic, like religion, can be understood through the lens of moral, technological, and symbolic economies, conceived as a certain relationship to symbolic resources and uses of ICT-mediated magic. As said previously, these symbolic economies (understood as production, exchange and use of symbolic or sacred goods) add to trading economies, relating to the benefits generated by online services and retailing: the modern trading of magic is indeed lucrative and has been constituted as a truly ‘professional’ sector (only for France, the estimated gains would amount to three billions euros a year). Time and again, magic, contrary to religion, is concerned by materiality and instrumentalism, in the context of globalized capitalism. This ‘mercantile’ side of magic is torn between the modern ‘branding’ of religion which is affecting the whole landscape of religion (Usunier and Stolz, 2014), and the ongoing person-to-person ancient tradition for individual magicians to sell their services, by setting up a client base, exchanging symbolic goods between human and superhuman forces, and the exchange of material goods between humans. At the risk of repeating myself, and to the exclusion of the technological factor, these are clearly features of magic as defined by the anthropological tradition (Mauss and Hubert, 1950).

Moreover, the weight of economic factors must also be relativized. More than providing only payoff services and things, the Internet is also the site of magic practices, far to be reduced to ‘consumer commodities’: concerning the broadcasting and viewing of cinematographic and TV products online and their impact on the audience digitally, more and more convinced of the reality of magic and Audrey Tuaillon Demésy (2017) considers the path of modern magic as characterized by a shift from ‘consumption to participation’. While mainstream theories in sociology postulate a major shift from a social to an economic model of religious behavior in the context of a ‘consumer culture’ (Gauthier, 2017), the situation doesn’t seem so simple as for the case of magic.

Online magic: consumption or socialization?

Despite the digitalization of symbols and practices, and the online dissemination channels (wide open, then), this magic still arouses a sense of initiation processes and secret, and as such, partakes of a closed economy: certain websites are only targeting connoisseurs and insiders, or aim at widening their audience, but with the intention of seducing them into the ‘real’ world of face-to-face relationships. There are many websites where it is possible to find full rituals (as written descriptions or ‘tutorial’ videos on online videos platforms like YouTube©) but, in certain cases, patently targeting a community of followers online, be they looking for magical resources, be they adherents of online schools of magic. Indeed, some schools of magic only operate on the web (https://www.quareia.com/#main), while others exist in material life, and have built digital extensions, web portals, online services, distance learning centers (https://www.centreofexcellence.com/), in addition to face-to-face services.

Hence, in the first case, one can talk about a digital magic as a natively dematerialized magic while, in the second case, one is dealing with a digitalized magic, since ICT are used by and for an existing social organization. Are we witnessing, once again, a distinctive feature of magic, that is, its capacity to incorporate elements from other systems? Indeed, it seems to be the case: not only the integration of techniques into the stock of magical beliefs and practices but also the integration of different symbols and practices borrowed from other traditions. Modern and well-established schools of magic, like the Wicca, explicitly display the assimilation of Eastern traditions in their practices (https://wicca.org/course-category/online-courses/) and consider that these symbols belong to the same and unique magical transcultural matrix, exemplifying the hybridization process operating in great religions as well as in ‘oral’ traditions (Luca, 1999). What is interesting to note, however, is that Wicca is inspired by forms of Yoga, visualization techniques, cosmic symbols coming from Buddhism and Hinduism, and therefore borrows from ascetic rather than magic Asian traditions. We can hence state that we are witnessing an extension of the scope and the area of magic, and that renowned traditions (ancient, middle-ages and non-western contemporary traditions) clearly benefit from the Internet. Other technologies favor, in parallel, the revitalization of more modest traditions and induce a return of ‘small’ (popular) magic: smartphone apps (like white magic spells and rituals@, available on Google Play@ downloaded more than a million times in 2020) provide gestures, words, symbols, receipts, responding to very mundane demands (in the realm of chance or well-being) aiming to inflect the order of the world for human needs, and are socially accepted and fully incorporated in the familiar technological environment of people inclined to use them (see: https://otherworldlyoracle.com/technopaganism-best-free-witchy-apps-android/).

Magical techniques become ordinary by means of technologies: but does it make them harmless? Apparently neutralized by modern technologies and by global capitalist economy, magic has not however lost its potential malevolence. It is the case for a last category that has recently been framed online, namely, technomancy defined as Magic or sorcery that involves machines and technology in its use or effects. Common uses include making something that was irreparably damaged continue to work properly or boosting a machine’s efficiency and performance to past its technical limits (see: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=technomancy).

The emerging geomancy 1.0 born on the Web 2.0 calls for a new discussion on the issue of economy: in other words, we should address, first, the morality of new online economies, and the ethics of retailing occult services or objects, that can be offensive (for the believers) – it is easy to find online receipts or objects meant to harm others by magical means – and, second, the ethical economies, this time (when it is about searching for magical meaning or power online) in a demand-and-supply exchange system. Indeed, the expansion of digital magic discloses the emergence of a marketplace for supernatural goods (not necessarily sacred ones in the Weberian sense of the term), under suspicion of inauthenticity and charlatanism, two common accusations that are as old as magic itself (Lundskow, 2004). In order to survive, magic has always been compelled to adapt to contexts and ideas with which they were competing, and especially secular ideologies with which digital magic is nowadays blending. To what extent can these hybridizations then be called ‘modern’?

Continuities and ruptures

The semantic field relating to magic in digital environment is already quite extensive, but there is another broader concept, namely, cybermagic, which is large enough to encompass the whole manifestations of the supernatural in the context of the quick and massive technological development of contemporary societies. But as others, this concept is mainly used in a metaphorical sense, and this repertoire has become more and more common. Few of them (if they ever do) propose an explicit definition of the term: the vagueness of the term, however, facilitates its extension and a series of semantic associations to technologies. Websites mentioning cybermagic, for instance, abundantly mention Arthur C. Clark’s ‘third law’: ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’, as a justification for the ongoing presence of magic in the depth of ICT. Yet, the complex question of the location and regime of existence of magic, wavering between metaphor and ontology, is still opened. An elegant, though tautological solution, is to refer to magic to explain . . . magic, like the artist Tobias Revell does when he describes computers as ‘haunted machines’ (https://hauntedmachines.com/).

The problem of digital or cybermagic seems to be a semantic issue: the vocable magic is alternatively an agent of ICT (ICT is also made of ‘magic’) or a component of ICT (there is magic in ICT) or, quite the reverse, an actor/operator of technologies (magic is circulating by means of ICT and the adoption of ICT is facilitated by magical thinking). Considering these rather opposed views, the theoretical scope is rather difficult to circumscribe, and the exact role and even nature of magic hard to clearly identify. It can be attributed the specific symbolic and praxeologic space of online or hyperreal religions, or, with the example of technomancy, being allocated a peculiar status, a deterritorialized magic but more or less morphologically similar to its initial social and material forms – and as such, not anymore subordinated to religious shapes and issues. Anthropological theories have already demonstrated that past forms of magic were characterized by the stability of the structure of magical thought, and by the elasticity of the utterances of magical discourses (Keck, 2002), and the context of highly digitalized society seems to prolong this dialectical tension.

One last but recurring question must be addressed, following the previous thoughts, evidences, and discussions: to what extent is magic really affected by ICT? Following O’Leary (1996), cyberspace is a laboratory for new cultural experiences, social forms and religious beliefs. The academic obsession for the ‘New’ or the ‘Modern’ nevertheless can hide formal continuities and perennial forms of belief in sacred or supernatural things (Davis, 2015). Apparently, the expansion of magic in new communication networks and channels results in two phenomena: the dispersion of symbols and reinvention of practices, on the one hand, and the reproduction of systems (traditions), forms (rituals) and functions (providing meanings and resources for action in the world) on the other. According to Krueger (2004), the technological and cultural environment of Internet is resolutely structuring for belief communities in search of consolidation, for the benefits of the more fluid spiritual movements, including, of course, magical ones. In parallel, magic is aligning with the logics of open economy, and services are distributed online (like in the portal https://www.fiverr.com/gigs/magic-spell) partaking on an individualization, marketization, and fragmentation of the traditions these symbols and practices belong to. Yet again, the adaptation of magic in a time of colonization of society, culture, and religion by ICT seems to confirm a certain flexibility of the notion of magic (and the extensive repertoire of empirical referents it applies to); the diversity of meanings attributed to it, be they allegoric (figurative magic) or ontological (literally magic); and finally, the paradoxical dynamics of continuity and ruptures, of reorganization of traditions and of dispersion of elements of these magical traditions.

As a conclusion

After this first outline of the pathways to research on something that could be labeled ‘digital magic’, what are the promises (and perils) of this work-in-progress toward what could look like an emerging genre, or at least, an emerging field of study? The material, although scattered, is all but scarce and as such, the field proves relevant on the empirical level. The issue of theoretical foundations is somewhat convoluted since the key concept of ‘digital magic’ needs clarification of both its definition and empirical grounds. This article attempted to demonstrate that the relevance of digital magic is not questionable, but one must take into account the fluidity of the forms it assumes and the very nature of the transformations it is compelled to by social and technological changes. In so doing, a classical theory of magic proves both appropriate and too narrow to understand the plasticity and extension of discursive, symbolic, aesthetical, and practical references to magic. The discussion has just started, yet some outlines are already paving the way to the circumscription of a field of knowledge dedicated to magic in digital contexts. Erik Davis’ (2015) TechGnosis is undoubtedly a pioneering masterpiece paving the way for future research. Still, there are many paths to take.

Heidi Campbell (2011) recalled that the recent foundation of the field of Internet and Religion, in the mid-1990s, has already witnessed three waves: the first one was characterized by a fascination with the brand new technological and social environment of the Internet; the second one was a time of elaborating the first robust methodologies to study religion online, before a growing interest in forms of digital socialization (under the forms of ‘online religious communities’). The third corresponds to the ‘theoretical turn’, when scholars establish solid and diversified conceptual frameworks to capture the importance of the topic and the field. Her paper deals with the questions of game and of paganism but mainly describes the path of religion in digital studies or digital issues in religious studies. The ever-increasing body of literature on these topics has not yet given adequate attention to magic, but the field is emerging, while yet still diffuse. The research potential of interactions between magic (as seen from symbolic and practical angles) and ICT is rich and manifold, overlapping occasionally with the field of digital religious studies: relationships between technologies and beliefs, transformations of the idea and form of the sacred, supply and demand of services and goods on the Internet, digitalization of sources, individualization of beliefs and views on magical sacred, networking for groups or associations, reinventions of magic, online ritual, and so on.

All these elements constitute a complex ecosystem that is still hard to delineate and to circumscribe. This is because of the extreme dispersion and lack of organization of magical productions diffused through ICT. However, similarly to what is happening for religion, and following the distinction between ‘religion online’ and ‘online religion’ (after Helland, 2000), a first attempt to map the forms of magic online leads us to the idea that the relevant distinction to draw here is between digitalized and digital magic, corresponding more or less to Helland’s one.

A study of digital or digitalized magic is however not entirely subordinated to research on religion and ICT. Nevertheless, it is grounded on the same intersection between channels, contents, actors, representations of the supernatural, and practices. The use of supernatural resources, the references to ancient traditions, individualism, clientelism, sense of secrecy, ritual creativity and hybridization and so on are commonly observed aspects of magic from Ancient times up to now. Electronic networking, dissemination through mass media, and digitalization epitomize innovations in the domain. Discussing magic and ICT opens a wide and complex debate. First, it questions the use of ‘magic’ signifier and signified, and the extension of the notion of magic that has long been associated, by default, to religion and, by excess, to witchcraft and occult traditions. Second, it raises another question that of the degree of reciprocal adaptation between magic and technology, and reinjects the problem of the alleged ‘irrationality’ of the magical world (deconstructed by De Martino, 1948) or the ‘concrete science’ of magical thought for Lévi-Strauss (1962), based on an already sketched out affinity between instrumental rationality and magic (as for Malinowski, 1948). Finally, ICT are driving forces for transformations (be they labeled as ‘alterations’, ‘revival’, ‘reinvention’) of magic and reciprocally: the whole field of new imaginary horizons for symbolism intersects with the one of new social uses of communication technologies for magical purposes . . . Overall, this area of investigation is likely to produce interesting developments, and promises the emergence of a domain of investigation, relatively autonomous from the already well-established ‘Internet and religion’ field of study.