I find social media to be a fascinating tool, as a writer, because of how it has become a journaling tool for people. Each day I’ll read updates where people share fascinating notes about their lives, as well as their various interests. Something which has always stood out to me about social media is that it’s a space where people are rewriting the narratives of their lives through the content they generate and the live interactions they have with other people.
One of the ways that I experiment with social media as a magical practice involves creating a distinct narrative of my life that I want to manifest. I consider social media to be a hypersigil, but instead of creating a character to represent myself, I simply use the medium of social media as a representation of my life as it is happening. The writing and reading of events can create a compelling narrative the speaks to the reality of the person doing the writing, as well as those doing the reading.
As a a writer I become the reader of my life, both in terms of responding to other people’s comments on what I’ve shared but also reviewing the memories of my experiences that are on the social media sites. We are co-creating an interactive dialogue that shapes the narrative between us in written and sometimes graphical form.
From a magical perspective the approach I take is that social media allows me to create a narrative of my life fused with a specific intent that is embedded in the writing. What I choose to write and share is reflective of that intent. One consideration is that the intent is filtered because social media and writing in general is filtered by the subjective biases we bring, but that’s also a strength from a magical perspective, because that subjective bias becomes a magical tool for the writing. Your subjective bias has all the personal attachments connected with it and that fuels the writing and crafts the experience of the narrative.
In my upcoming class the Practical Magic of Writing, we’re exploring how to create a narrative of your life, using hypersigils. Social media can be one of the mediums you use for this kind of magical work, especially when you integrate other elements such as pictures and videos. I have used Facebook to create manufactured memories and on Instagram I’ve been developing some reels and videos as well as stories told through pictures. The stories I tell become part of the magic of my life and shape the manifestation of that life into reality.
