When I recently asked my Facebook group what questions they had about social media magic, because of a book I’m getting ready to write on the topic, it didn’t surprise me that some of the questions I received were skeptical ones that questioned if social media could even be used as a medium for magical work. I understand why that question is asked, because the prevalent image and associations of magic are all based around traditional perspectives of how magic ought to work, with traditional tools that don’t really touch on modern technology and using it for magical purposes.
Yet nonetheless modern technology has been used in conjunction with magic and is being used with magical workings in order to get results, by myself and many other people, because the simple fact is magic isn’t limited to a specific toolset or way of doing things. Those limitations are human imposed and say more about how we limit our understanding of magic and how it can be practiced and what can be done with it. If we recognize the limitation as self-imposed then we can let go of it and start exploring how to adapt social media or anything else toward magical work.
I’ve been experimenting with social media magic since the advent of social media in the 2000s because I’m always fascinated with how technology can be applied to social media. I’ve created hashtag sigils, used memetic magic, and explored how writing and images can be used with the specific aspects of social media that promote the sharing of that work. And of course there’s the simple fact that social media also draws in people’s attention and can be used to focus it.
We see this with how people are glued to their smart phones, using them all the time to check various apps and otherwise keep up with what other people are doing. It has resulted in shorter attention spans and yet it nonetheless has created a means of harnessing and drawing on that attention for magical purposes, if that’s something you want to do. Social media creates sounds bites, and the constant flow of information and all of that can be a potent tool. We see it in politics, advertisements, and we see it with magic, when a person posts a virtual altar or shares an image or writes something that prompts people to like, share, and comment.
Of course what makes this also work is if we are willing to change what we consider to be an operative example of a magical working. For instance if we consider that a magical working can be a chant that is said aloud, why can’t we also write that same chant out and treat it as a magical working when it is read by others or share a video reading it aloud? What must be understood is that a magical working isn’t defined by the form it comes in but by the construction of that form and the understanding of the principles involved in making that magical working be what it is. If we understand the principles of magic then we can create a magical working in any medium, drawing on the disciplines that best suit the permutation of that working. This applies as much to more traditional forms of magic as to something like social media magic, because older forms of magic draw on those principles as well. Magic is never the form…the form is just the conveyance and execution of the underlying principles of how magic works.
Can social media be an expression of magical work? It already is. There are already people utilizing social media and other modern technology in their magical work. The real question is why are you ignoring a potential medium for magical work that can be utilized to help you get results?
