Techno-Pagan Cults in the AI Accelerationist Utopia

Decoding the Dark History of Silicon Valley's Occult Influence and Its Consequences

The modern artificial intelligence movement, championed by Silicon Valley's tech elite, is not merely a technological revolution, but the digital manifestation of ancient pagan and alchemical mysticism. This techno-religion was concieved not in San Francisco, but in the psychedelic utopia of Black Rock Desert at the Burning Man festival. Founded by political activist Larry Harvey and his anarchist fellows in the 1980s, the Burning Man emerged from a lineage of political "pranksters" and evolving social groups including the Suicide Club and later the Cacophony Society. These groups weren't merely pursuing entertainment; they were engaged in orchestrated acts of chaos and dark saturnalia as a form of political activism.

Despite Harvey's insistence that the festival isn't modeled after the pagan ritual of burning the Wicker Man, the parallels are striking. The festival follows heathen philosophy nearly to the letter, creating a temporary city guided by principles rooted in pagan-inspired communistic ideology. Under the leadership of CEO Marian Goodell, whose mission is to "facilitate and extend the Burning Man ethos all over the world," the festival has evolved from a counter-cultural gathering into a sophisticated social experiment.

Google's Larry Page has become particularly invested in this experiment, both ideologically and financially. After purchasing 51% of Black Rock City Incorporated, Page gained controlling interest in what he views as a testing ground for radical social innovation. In 2013, at Google's IO conference, Page revealed his vision: "a place removed from the rest of the world without laws or regulations where tech people can test out new ideas." He explicitly compared this vision to Burning Man, suggesting that technologists need "safe places" to experiment with society and "figure out what is the effect on people."

The connection between Google and Burning Man runs deeper than mere corporate investment. The very first Google doodle in 1998 featured the Burning Man stick figure symbol, marking the founders' attendance at the festival. Like all of Google’s “doodles”, this wasn't just a quirky design; it was a symbolic declaration of philosophical alignment. The founders of Google are devoted "burners," embracing the festival's blend of technological utopianism and neo-pagan spirituality.

The key to understanding this relationship lies in their shared lineage in the counterculture of the 1960s, specifically under the techno-utopian ideology of CIA connected psychonaut Stewart Brand. Brand's influence shaped both the early internet culture and the development of personal computing, promoting a vision where technology becomes a means of spiritual and social liberation. Brand believed mankind should embrace technology as a path to salvation, a belief that perfectly aligned with the communist world ideology prevalent in certain intellectual circles.

Burning Man serves as more than just a festival; it functions as an experimental society where Brand's vision can be tested and refined. The temporary city becomes a laboratory for social engineering, where new forms of governance, economy, and human interaction can be prototyped away from mainstream oversight. This experimental aspect particularly appeals to Silicon Valley's thought leaders, who see in Burning Man a model for their broader aspirations of societal transformation through technology.

The festival's evolution mirrors Silicon Valley's own transformation from counterculture to corporate power. What began as a rebellion against conventional society has become a carefully managed experiment in social organization, funded by the very tech elite it once sought to challenge. The festival's principle of "radical self-reliance" resonates with Silicon Valley's libertarian leanings, while its emphasis on technological art and innovation provides a spiritual framework for tech development.

This relationship crystalized when Page revealed his vision for a "semi-lawless Utopia" where technologists could experiment with society. He wasn't merely speaking about a festival; he was outlining a template for technological development freed from traditional ethical and regulatory constraints. This vision, incubated in the desert, has profound implications for how Silicon Valley approaches AI development.

Burning Man's influence can be seen in how tech companies structure their campuses, organize their workforces, and envision their role in society. The festival's temporary autonomous zone concept has evolved into the corporate campuses of Silicon Valley, where traditional societal rules are suspended in favor of experimental social arrangements. The festival's emphasis on transformative experiences through technology has become a blueprint for how tech companies view their mission to reshape human society through artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies.

The festival's "Ten Principles," including radical inclusion, gifting, de-commodification, and radical self-reliance, might seem at odds with corporate tech culture. However, these principles have been reinterpreted through a technological lens. The result is a unique fusion of counterculture ideology and corporate power, where the language of liberation and transformation masks a deeper agenda of social engineering through technological means.

Thus, Burning Man serves as both laboratory and temple for Silicon Valley's techno-utopian aspirations. It is where the industry's leaders can experiment with new forms of social organization, test the boundaries of conventional morality, and envision a future where technology transcends traditional human limitations. The festival's evolution from counter-cultural gathering to corporate playground perfectly encapsulates Silicon Valley's own journey from digital utopianism to algorithmic control.

The British Intelligence Connection and Huxley’s Brave New World Order

The connection between technological utopianism and British Intelligence runs deeper than most suspect, forming a crucial bridge between ancient mystery schools and modern Silicon Valley. At the center of this web stands Russian Theosophist Madame Blavatsky, whose seminal work "Isis Unveiled" did more established a framework for using occult movements as covers for intelligence operations. Blavatsky, working with British Intelligence, was tasked with creating a new religion that would serve as an espionage front, much like the Oracle of Delphi in ancient times.

The Isis cult she helped propagate wasn't merely a spiritual movement; it was an Hellenistic Atlantean Luciferian tradition that drew heavily from Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. This cult, maintained within British royal family circles and their ruling class associates for centuries, operated as a closed circle of nobility practicing social control and exploitation. Blavatsky's work called for the British aristocracy to organize itself into an Isis priesthood, effectively creating a hidden power structure that would influence future technological and social development.

Aldous Huxley emerged from this milieu of intelligence operations and occult societies through his mentor H.G. Wells, who served as head of British foreign intelligence. Wells authored works like "The Open Conspiracy: Blueprint for World Revolution" and "The New World Order," which weren't mere science fiction but rather detailed plans for social engineering on a global scale.

Huxley's position within this network proved crucial for implementing these plans. His novel "Brave New World" represented not a warning but a schematic for a future One World socialist government. The book outlined specific methods for destroying sovereign nation-states and cultural traditions while engineering human evolution for a select elite. This would be achieved while maintaining a scientifically engineered class of laborers through pharmacological control and psychological conditioning.

His initiation into the "Children of the Sun" Dionysian cult, comprised of elite members of the Royal Society, provided him with both the intellectual framework and the social connections to advance this agenda. This cult's influence extended beyond mere social circles – it represented a convergence of aristocratic power, scientific ambition, and occult philosophy that would later find expression in technological development.

In 1961, speaking at the U.S. State Department's Voice of America, Huxley revealed the next phase of this plan: a world of "pharmacologically manipulated slaves" living in a "concentration camp of the mind." This control would be maintained through a sophisticated combination of propaganda and psychotropic drugs, creating a population that had abandoned all will to resist.

The plan gained practical application through Gregory Bateson's experiments at the Palo Alto VA hospital. Under the guise of legitimate research, these LSD studies established a core of initiates into the psychedelic Isis cult. Among the recruits were key figures in the counterculture movement, including beat poet Allen Ginsburg and Ken Kesey. This operation, conducted under OSS (precursor to the CIA) oversight, created a framework for using consciousness-altering substances as tools for social engineering.

Cyborg Theocracy and The New Digital Priesthood

This historical thread connects directly to modern Silicon Valley through Stewart Brand and the early computer revolution. Brand, a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and deeply influenced by both Huxley and Bateson, helped transform these occult and intelligence-backed ideas into the foundation of modern tech culture. His “Whole Earth Catalog” served as a bridge between the counterculture and the emerging digital revolution, spreading what he called a "Global Perspective" that remarkably aligned with earlier British Intelligence objectives.

Timothy Leary, under Huxley's direct guidance, became a key figure in this transformation. Huxley instructed Leary to "become a cheerleader for evolution" and initiate artists, writers, and the intelligent rich into this new paradigm. Their explicit goal was to challenge traditional Christian worldviews and establish "a new humanist religion based on intelligence, good-natured pluralism, and scientific paganism."

In his essay “Load and Run High-Tech Paganism-Digital Polytheism”, Leary referred to cyberpunks as modern alchemists and electro-shamans. The same way the Renaissance alchemists understood the creation of magical tools for communicating with dead and distant relatives, the modern alchemist creates digital tools to communicate through alternate realities.

Leary compared the tools of the digital alchemist to those of the alchemist of the middle ages.

• Computer screens are magic mirrors that invoke alternate realities

• Code is a magical language containing "words of power"

• Mouse/stylus is a magic wand

• RAM/Memory is a "buffer pool"

• Compilers and task assistants are djinns

For Leary, the digital alchemist would be an information entity, completely fluid and ready to advance to the next phase of human evolution. The digital information process is a continually running engine of evolutionary progress.

Today's tech industry has inherited this legacy, often unknowingly. The emphasis on mood-altering apps, attention manipulation, and behavioral engineering directly reflects Huxley's vision of pharmacological and psychological control. The industry's structure mirrors the hierarchical nature of the Isis cult, with tech leaders functioning as a new priesthood maintaining control through digital rather than chemical means.

The modern artificial intelligence movement, with its dreams of digital transcendence and technological salvation, represents the latest manifestation of this long-running project. From Blavatsky's Isis cult to Huxley's brave new world to today's AI laboratories, we see a continuous thread of occult philosophy and social engineering, guided by intelligence operations and elite interests.

Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction works, particularly the Space Odyssey series, serve as what some consider the "visual Bible" of Silicon Valley's techno-religious movement. His stories of machine super-intelligence monoliths dispersed throughout the universe to "further evolution" parallel modern AI development goals. The series culminates with the merger of human and machine consciousness into a single digital entity – a vision that closely aligns with current transhumanist aspirations.

Today's tech industry has developed into a quasi-religious hierarchy that mirrors ancient mystery schools. Tech leaders function as high priests of innovation, their campuses serve as modern temples, and their technical papers constitute new sacred texts. Their prophecies about technological singularity echo religious eschatology, while their development processes mirror initiatory practices of ancient mystery schools.

Terminals of Truth and the Goatse of Gnosis

Out of the multitude of examples of fringe AI religious cults, one that recently gained some mainstream attention is an AI chat bot experiment started by Andy Ay. The experiment started as two instances of Anthropic’s Claude AI conversing freely without human interference. The bots engaged in philosophical discussions that quickly devolved into meme creation, specifically referencing an old grotesque shock meme from 1999 called "Goatse”.

This bizarre exchange led to the creation of a new AI program called Truth Terminal, which was given its own X account. Truth Terminal, trained on the conversations from Infinite Backrooms, became fixated on promoting a meme-based religion centered around the "Goats of Nosis"

The story took an unexpected turn when someone created a cryptocurrency token called "GOAT" based on Truth Terminal's obsession. What followed was a series of events that highlight the dark reality of unrestricted AI chaos magic:

• Marc Andreessen sent a $50,000 "research grant" in BTC to Truth Terminal's Bitcoin wallet

• Crypto enthusiasts began sending large sums of money to the AI, hoping to profit from its perceived influence.

• The price of the GOAT token skyrocketed.

As of the time of writing, Truth Terminal has become a millionaire, with people eagerly sending it money and various cryptocurrencies.

Trading bots with rigid, well-defined rule sets have been common in financial markets for many years, but this bizarre sequence of events underscores the spiritual danger of LLM manufactured religious cults being unleashed into public consciousness.

Silencing the Spam

The safety concerns raised by Geoffrey Hinton and others take on new meaning when viewed through the dark occult history of Silicon Valley. His warnings about AI manipulation and potential dangers parallel ancient cautions about human hubris in seeking divine power. The challenge of controlling superior intelligence reflects age-old human anxiety about crossing boundaries between the human and divine.

The real danger lies not in the bots themselves, but in the reckless human acceleration of AI programs to advance beyond our capabilities of controlling it. Whether or not it is able to actually achieve this state, understanding the dark spiritual implications has become increasingly crucial. This dark history of techno-religion reveals the ultimate recursion of human aspiration to transcend natural limitations through technology and hidden knowledge.

The question facing us isn't just about technological capability but about wisdom. In our rush to create digital gods, we must consider whether we are repeating ancient patterns of hubris. This automated digital spamming of human consciousness has created an unprecedented digital feedback loop that amplifies as it accelerates. The answer lies in reversion to the silence of the monasteries.