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Paper short abstract:

‘Magic’ is mostly viewed as a practical endeavor, I argue that a contemporary example of ‘hyperstition’ as a ‘magical’ technology could be seen as an account of ‘theory practice’. Such theory practice could reveal the metareflective functionality inherent in the concept of ‘magic’ itself.

Paper long abstract:

From the inordinary Warwick university classes to the strange online experiments, the concept of ‘hyperstition’ was developed as a technology of fictioning reality. Offered neither as a literal nor as metaphorical truth, it is employed to mark a process of ideas becoming reality. Thus, it appears to function as a description of the ‘magical’ act in itself. ‘Hyperstition’ is understood to be primarily a divinational instrument because its purpose is to make a narrative about the future that could be capable to intervene into the present. Through the recombination of different cultural meanings, a new divinational scheme is produced (for example, Numogram - an equivalent of a quasi-Tree of Life – serves as one of its main apparatuses). While a clear-cut history of esoteric ‘hyperstitional’ practice is not easy to delineate (with a few exceptions of occult practitioners: Anders Aamodt, Neospare and Vexsys, Gruppo di Nun), I argue that the phenomenon of ‘hyperstition’ which partly belongs to the field of esotericism can be read as a rare account of ‘theory practice’. There, the transformational shift of a practitioner’s ontology happens through the theoretical reconceptualization. It could be seen as a counterintuitive claim, bearing in mind the traditional esotericists’ devaluation of theoretical approach towards esoteric knowledge and reality, however, I suggest that by treating the practice of ‘hyperstition’ seriously we could come upon the conceptual part of the case of ‘magic’. Even in dismissing the inherent element of conceptuality at the basis of ‘magical’ practice, one is forced to recognize the potentiality of its metareflective structure. This structure, I claim (through the analysis of an example of ‘hyperstition’), could be seen as a functional part (as a reconceptualization of a current ontology-enabling technology) of ‘magic’. In short, what outwardly happens in the ‘hyperstitional’ theory practice is an aspect of a hidden structure of the concept of ‘magic’.