Alright, I’m gonna ramble for a little bit about techno witchcraft again. Let’s talk about intent and programmed spells.
We say that a person can charge singular items, such as such as amulets, crystals, sigils, with intent. These things can be made of various materials, from paper to quartz, and they often have their own energies to contribute. Outside of the physical realm, one can charge words, dancing, art, song, and any number of representative actions with intent, and shielding can be seen as general energy being charged with a purpose.
Here’s my argument: computers are already by definition energetic systems. They’re complex machines run by electricity and logic. If one can call upon the wild energies of a thunderstorm, why couldn’t one harness the controlled energies of a computer or smart phone (and if you really get into it, you can literally control the controlled energies of machines)?*
Furthermore, specific to programming: by planning and creating a program, you are investing your own energy in it – you are investing a great deal of very focused energy into it, often for hours at a time.** Your intent is by nature crammed into that program already.
As for automation, long-lasting magic is something that exists already. If you weave a wreath that you hang over your door to protect your house from negative energy, how do you keep it there, a day, a week, a season? When was the last time you gave that old spell jar a shake? How long do your protective amulets last? What about that sigil you drew under your desk to reduce work anxiety? Often you can answer that with the question, how long did you mean for it to work?
Why can’t a spell you throw up in the cloud last for a while? If it didn’t, why couldn’t you check its magical pulse, so to speak, and charge it again? Or, why not make it a part of the spell to harness the energy generated by the server it’s on (remember, “The Cloud” is actually just tons of servers in a warehouse holding data)?
I’m still experimenting with all this myself (currently and always running tests on this to see what I can do), and these are just my thoughts based on my experience thus far. There’s certainly a lot more topics you can tackle branching from this: what implications do bugs and errors have on spells, which logical structures are best suited for which types of spells, is a spell best charged on completion or just before runtime***…the list goes on, all the more to explore!
* I’ve already said my piece on the natural vs unnatural argument. They’re not the same, of course, but they’re both certainly valid in their own applications.
** Granted, inevitable things like troubleshooting divert your attention for some amount of that time, so I generally charge it afterwards to pull the focus back together – kind of like centering, but for the spell itself.
*** I’ll go ahead and say just before runtime so you don’t send out your intent with buggy code and cause yourself trouble and frustration of either the magical or non-magical variety. Testing is your friend.
