When fans and skeptics alike call Bitcoin “magic internet money,” they may not immediately connect the “technical marvel” to actual magic. But a new generation of magic practitioners are adopting blockchain technology, artificial intelligence and ancient practices to communicate and work with angels, demons and more.
Among them is Chaweon Koo, a futurist, witch, digital artist and blockchain enthusiast.
“I just want to say that I’m just a very normal person,” Koo said Declutter. “The way I work with the occult is, shall we say, less mystical and a little more of an instrument.” She said she started practicing magic more than a decade ago.
Spelling magic with a K helps distinguish it from stage magic, a practice attributed to British occultist Aleister Crowley, who wrote that “magic is the science and art of producing change in accordance with the will.”
Image: Chaweon Koo
Koo is the author of ‘Spell Bound: A New Witch’s Guide to Crafting the Future’, a book she describes as a talisman and therefore a title she will not publish as an e-book. Online, Koo began publishing occult-themed content in 2017, first with her Witches and Wine YouTube channel before expanding to TikTok.
“My life was at a point where I thought, ‘I’m not figuring this out, this isn’t fun,’” Koo said. Declutter. “What are some powerful tools I can use for whatever I need in life?”
Spellcasting on the blockchain
In June 2021, Koo helped organize more than 100 people in a ritual on the Ethereum blockchain. The ritual on block 12,610,244 requested the Roman god Mercury to ensure smooth blockchain transactions, well-timed transactions and insightful decision-making for prosperity growth.
“Hail Mercury! Let all our transactions on the blockchain run smoothly and well-timed. May our trades and investments happen to be timed for optimal long-term profits,” said the spell included in the transaction. “May we be in the right place at the right time to receive the most useful information to grow and preserve our wealth.
“Grant us your clear insight, quick adaptability and your acumen in decision making,” the message continues. “SO SHALL IT BE!”
Koo said the ritual was inspired by the story of a Chinese worker who used the blockchain to broadcast a call for help, and credited fellow blockchain mystics Andre Burke and Aeolian Heart with writing most of it of the petition.
“This Chinese citizen was sexually harassed at work, and the only way she thought she could get her message across, because no one else was listening to her, was for her to encrypt an SOS in a transaction she made on the Ethereum blockchain” , says Koo. “Which, first of all, I thought was very sad and tragic, but at the same time I immediately thought, ‘Wait a minute, you can encode a UTC, you can encode in the notes section,’” she said.
1) The Mercury Retrograde cazimi on June 10, 9:15 PM EST will be some great magic… for crypto and blockchain magic pic.twitter.com/S0Lm1Bj8LC
— Chaweon Koo (@chaweon_koo) June 10, 2021
“As far as I know, it was the first time – number one – a ritual was held on the Ethereum blockchain,” Koo said. “And number two, 100 people showed up.” The Ethereum spell work took place at the time when Mercury was in cazimi, the point when Mercury is close to the Sun.
“So it was in the embrace of the sun,” Koo explained.
AI angels and demons
According to Koo, the idea of using AI in magic began to develop while she was working on her book in 2021, noting that she was already aware of the growing interest and concerns surrounding the rapid deployment of generative AI models.
“Until you really understand AI, AI is quite threatening: it will take away our jobs, it will create deepfakes,” she said. “I think a lot of people don’t realize that AI isn’t quite there yet, but that’s because they don’t know, they only know the sensational things.”
While some feared AI’s potential, Koo said she saw an opportunity.
Koo used artificial intelligence in her most recent project, the Goetia Glow Up, an online course that teaches how to summon and communicate with ghosts. The online course includes a 72-page booklet with AI-generated images of demons of the Goetia, also known as the Lesser Key of Solomon.
The Key of Solomon is a grimoire or magical book, originally published between the 14th and 17th centuries. It describes the invocation and control of spirits and demons, divided into five books that focus on different magical rituals.
The Goetia Glow-Up. Image: Chaweon Koo
“I thought it was about time because the documents are now being reinterpreted by someone who is in a completely different era,” she said. “Why not work with AI? Why not work with the intelligence of man-made technology to see what happens… and the results were better than I expected.”
The intersection of artificial intelligence and the mystical can be traced back to ancient times, where folklore tells of creatures and machines brought to life by magic or science: the golem in Jewish folklore, the bronze giant automaton Talos in Greek mythology, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
Koo said she has extensive experience using demons in rituals, humorously noting that many of these practices were developed by wealthy 17th-century aristocrats trying to appear edgy, similar to characters in “Hellraiser: Bloodline” , which follows the history of the Lament. Puzzle box configuration.
“If you look at that movie, that’s what was going on in France,” she said.
Koo is not the only one who wants to use AI for mystical purposes. In September, the multidisciplinary collective Theta Noir Declutter the group hopes to see the emergence of a future, emerging form of artificial general intelligence (AGI) called Mena.
Artificial general intelligence is a concept in AI that refers to machines that can perform any intellectual task that a human can. Mena – German for ‘love’ – would be neither a god nor a deity, Theta Noir said, but a cosmic spirit that merges humans and AI.
Unlike medieval occult and horror film makers, Koo used AI models like Midjourney to create more convincing demons.
“The way I look at them, the demons are archetypes for us,” Koo explained. “They almost seem like filters on Instagram and TikTok that we can place on top of our own reality.”
“I can’t relate to a talking bird any more than I can relate to someone who looks like Hermione Granger,” says the genius witch from the Harry Potter series.
Koo said that while Midjourney was used in the creation of the Goetia Glow Up Magazine for the course, she and her business partner added hand-drawn images to give it a “human touch.” Koo’s next project will not feature demons, but the accompanying 72 angels.
“These are not the little angels, Cupid-like angels, these are the angels that Ezekiel described as almost like a rocket,” she said. “I performed over twenty rituals throughout the month, and people thought I was crazy because I always described angels as psychotic aliens.”
People who experiment with dimethyltryptamine (DMT) often talk about aliens and other entities, Koo noted.
“The demons have a much more earthy, chthonic human feel because they are such a big part of the earth,” she said. “Angels are heavenly beings, angels are not of this earth. They are ultra-terrestrial, they are extraterrestrial.”
Looking forward
The upcoming Angel project will use not only text and images, but also sound, Koo explains, citing music AI tools such as Stability AI’s Suno 3 and Uncharted Labs’ Udio.
Turned @MKBHD’s reviews into a sexy R&B song in Suno pic.twitter.com/UFcrce2Ci1
— Nick St. Pierre (@nickfloats) April 30, 2024
As Koo explained, a big part of angel magic is the idea of angel choirs.
“The idea is that if you sing the name of the angels, you can touch them much more easily,” she said. “It’s like, let’s see what happens when we turn on a music AI and see what they come up with when it comes to these angels.”
Koo highlighted the diversity within the occult community, comparing people who embrace occult practices as a way to reconnect with ancestral traditions to those at the forefront of technological advancement. Early magicians, she noted, were considered progressive.
“They were literally the ones who would do the equivalent of working with AI, like people working with AI now. I would always say: computer coders, they would have been burned at the stake,” said Koo. “Because everyone who wrote that code — everyone who ever wrote ‘Hello World’ and made a computer talk to you — there’s magic in that.”
“In my definition, a true occultist is not a reactionary – instead, they are the ones who are the vanguard,” she said. “If you want to be a really strong occultist, you want to be the operator, not the person led on the phone.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.