Meme Magick and the Unseen Internet with Shira Chess

Ken sits down with Shira Chess, cultural scholar and author of The Unseen Internet, for a wide-ranging exploration of magic, myth, and belief in digital culture, examining how the internet has become an esoteric system in its own right — a space where technology, occult practice, conspiracy, and spiritual anxiety collapse into one another. Framed from the perspective of chapel perilous, the conversation traces how memes, algorithms, simulation theory, AI discourse, and techno-paganism function not metaphorically, but as active forces shaping belief, agency, and reality itself. This episode moves through the haunted edges of online life, from meme magic and technognosticism to AI demons, digital egregores, and the slow erosion of consensus reality — asking what responsibility, belief, and magic mean when nothing is true, and everything is permitted. This week: The internet as an esoteric and magical system, Chapel perilous as a method for studying belief online, Meme magic, chaos magic, and the Cult of Kek, The destruction of consensus reality and its consequences, Techno-paganism and the occult roots of internet culture, Simulation theory as modern Gnosticism, Algorithms, platforms, and digital spaces as egregores, AI, demons, and the mystification of technology, Belief, practice, and agency in online magical systems, and “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” as an internet condition 🔗 People, books, and concepts mentioned: Shira Chess – Cultural scholar and author https://shirachess.com The Unseen Internet – Technology, magic, and belief online https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=3… High Weirdness – Erik Davis on esotericism and modern culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_We… Technosis – Myth, magic, and mysticism in the age of information https://erikdavis.com/technosis Chaos Magic – Postmodern magical practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_m… Meme Magic / Cult of Kek – Internet irony and belief systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kek_(my…) Grant Morrison – Hypersigils and pop-culture magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_M… Simulation Theory – Digital Gnosticism and modern myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulat… Gnosticism – Secret knowledge and false reality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism AI and Demons – Non-corporeal entities in technological discourse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artific… Egregores – Collective thought-forms and group entities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore