Magic and the Internet: Chaos Magick, Memes and Online Occultism

The internet has transformed magic more than any development since printing. From the bulletin boards and Usenet groups of the 1980s and 1990s to today's video platforms, it has made rare texts freely available, allowed solitary practitioners to form global communities, and created new forms of practice such as "meme magic" and viral witchcraft. Chaos magick, with its emphasis on experiment and its lack of central authority, was among the first traditions to flourish online.

Before the Web: Bulletin Boards, Usenet and Mailing Lists§

The first online occult communities appeared well before the World Wide Web. In the 1980s hobbyists ran dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs), some devoted to Paganism, witchcraft and ceremonial magic, where users exchanged messages, rituals and files. Networks such as FidoNet allowed messages to pass between boards. By the early 1990s Usenet, the distributed discussion system of the academic internet, carried groups such as alt.pagan and alt.magick, in which Wiccans, Thelemites, chaos magicians and sceptics argued at length.

These early forums had several lasting effects. Texts that had been hard to obtain, from Golden Dawn rituals to the writings of Aleister Crowley, were typed up and shared, often amid disputes over copyright and secrecy. Practitioners in isolated places found others like them. And the conversational, argumentative culture of the forums favoured exactly the kind of eclectic, experimental approach that chaos magick represented.

Technopagans and Cyber-Occultism in the 1990s§

In the 1990s the internet itself became a subject of magical speculation. Journalists and practitioners wrote of "technopagans", programmers and engineers who practised Paganism or magic and saw affinities between code and spell, network and astral plane. Erik Davis's essay on technopaganism in Wired in 1995, and his book TechGnosis (1998), traced a long history of linking communication technologies with spiritual ideas, from Hermes, god of messages, to the telegraph and radio, and argued that the digital age was reviving Gnostic and Hermetic dreams of disembodied mind and secret knowledge.

Scholars of religion also began to study online religion. Stephen O'Leary, Brenda Brasher and others asked whether rituals performed in chat rooms or virtual worlds were real rituals, and Douglas Cowan's Cyberhenge (2005) examined how modern Pagans used the internet to build identities and communities. Their research showed that, for many practitioners, online and offline practice were not separate worlds but continuous parts of one religious life.

Chaos Magick Online: Free Texts, Forums and Virtual Schools§

Chaos magick was particularly well suited to the internet. It had no central authority to control publication, its techniques were simple enough to describe in a few pages, and its emphasis on personal experiment encouraged practitioners to post reports and compare results. Phil Hine's short introduction Oven-Ready Chaos was distributed freely in digital form, and essays, rituals and sigil methods circulated through newsgroups, personal websites and, later, forums and blogs.

The result was a shift in how people became chaos magicians. Where earlier practitioners had joined the Illuminates of Thanateros or met through magazines such as Chaos International, most newcomers from the late 1990s onward learned from websites and online discussion. In the 2000s Peter J. Carroll helped to establish Arcanorium College, an online school offering courses and discussion. The movement's ideas also flowed into the broader online occult scene, where "belief as a tool", servitors and sigils became common vocabulary even among practitioners who did not call themselves chaotes; see Servitors and Egregores.

Digital technology also changed what magic could look like. Practitioners experimented with digital sigils, randomised sigil generators, animated or "viral" images intended to be charged by the attention of many viewers, and divination performed with software. Some of these practices draw on Grant Morrison's concept of the hypersigil, a work of media designed to act as a magical operation.

Social Media, WitchTok and the Visual Turn§

The rise of social media from the late 2000s brought magic to a far larger and younger audience. On Tumblr in the early 2010s, the "witchblr" community shared spells, altar photographs and debates about practice; Instagram gave witchcraft, tarot and astrology a strongly visual, aesthetic presence; and from around 2020 videos tagged WitchTok on TikTok accumulated billions of views. Astrology apps and online tarot readers reached people with no connection to any occult tradition.

This visibility has been accompanied by striking changes in style. Online witchcraft is predominantly solitary and eclectic, often expressed in the language of self-care, empowerment and identity, and is especially popular among young women and LGBTQ+ people, as discussed in What Is Witchcraft? and The Occult Today. The brevity of short-video formats rewards simple, striking practices such as sigils, jar spells and manifestation scripts, and older currents like the law of attraction have found new life. Widely reported controversies, some of them exaggerated by the press, about groups of online witches attempting to "hex" celestial bodies or folkloric beings, illustrated how quickly online magical culture can turn into spectacle.

Meme Magic and Political Sorcery§

The most controversial online development has been the use of magical language in politics. During the 2016 US presidential campaign, users of anonymous imageboards began to speak, half ironically, of "meme magic": the idea that endlessly repeated images and slogans could shape events, as chaos magicians claimed sigils could. Some adopted Kek, a frog-headed deity of the ancient Egyptian Ogdoad, as a joking patron, connecting it with a popular cartoon frog. The writer Gary Lachman, in Dark Star Rising (2018), examined these episodes alongside the older history of positive thinking and occult politics, and argued that ideas from chaos magick and New Thought had been absorbed, often in distorted form, into internet political culture.

From 2017 practitioners opposed to President Trump organised public "binding" rituals coordinated online, and the writer Michael M. Hughes later published Magic for the Resistance (2018). Some Christian groups responded with organised prayer against the spells. Within occult communities these events provoked debate over whether magic should be used for political ends, whether public hexing is ethical, and whether such rituals are best understood as protest, performance or genuine sorcery. These debates echo much older arguments about curses and protective magic. This article describes them historically and takes no side.

Scholarship, Authenticity and Ethics in Digital Occultism§

The internet has also transformed the scholarly study of magic. Libraries and archives have digitised medieval and early modern manuscripts of grimoires, charms and astrological texts, allowing researchers and practitioners alike to read sources that once required a journey to a reading room. Online access has encouraged a "grimoire revival" in which practitioners work directly from historical texts such as the Key of Solomon, often with the help of academic editions.

At the same time, online occultism raises persistent problems. Information circulates without context, so that invented histories and false attributions spread as easily as accurate ones. Members of living traditions, including Indigenous communities and practitioners of Vodou, hoodoo and other African diasporic religions, have objected to the online commodification of their practices. Paid courses, readings and spell services blur the line between spirituality and commerce, and vulnerable people may seek magical solutions to problems that need medical, legal or financial help. Magic is no substitute for such help. Practitioners and scholars increasingly discuss these issues openly, and many online communities now emphasise sourcing, respect for closed traditions and caution about claims of results.

Frequently asked questions§

How did the internet change occultism?§

It made rare texts widely available, allowed solitary practitioners to find each other, and shifted learning from orders and books to forums, websites and social media. It also produced new practices, such as digital sigils and viral rituals, and new controversies.

What is meme magic?§

Meme magic is a term that emerged on internet imageboards around 2015–2016 for the idea that repeated images and slogans could influence events, by analogy with chaos magick sigils. It was used partly as a joke and became associated with political online subcultures.

What is WitchTok?§

WitchTok is the name for witchcraft-related content on the video platform TikTok, which grew rapidly from around 2020. It features spells, tarot, crystals and discussion of witchcraft as identity, and has introduced many young people to magical practice.

Was chaos magick popular online?§

Yes. Chaos magick had no central authority and simple, experimental techniques, which made it well suited to forums and websites. From the 1990s most new chaos magicians learned online rather than through orders.

Sources and further reading§

• TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information — Erik Davis, 1998
• Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet — Douglas E. Cowan, 2005
• Give Me That Online Religion — Brenda E. Brasher, 2001
• Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet — Lorne L. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan (eds.), 2004
• Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump — Gary Lachman, 2018
• Magic for the Resistance: Rituals and Spells for Change — Michael M. Hughes, 2018
• The Re-Enchantment of the West — Christopher Partridge, 2004