Welcome to Nuggets of Academic Knowledge with Dr Angela Puca, where we explore Religious Studies concepts that pertain to magic and Esotericism.
What is Techgnosis, technognosis or cybergnosis?
The short answer is the esoteric understanding of gnosis applied to cyberspace. But let’s go a bit deeper. In early Gnosticism, Gnosis was a higher form of knowledge derived from revelation and comprehensible only to those who acknowledged their spiritual nature. Later in the Western esoteric tradition, gnosis has been usually understood as ‘a saving knowledge accessible to those human beings who were in possession of a hidden key. This knowledge also involved an experiential component – a form of illumination – that differentiates it from purely abstract speculation or faith.
Gnosticism was also characterised by a dualistic view of reality that maintained a separation between the world and the divine, where the first needs to be abdicated in favour of the latter.
In cyberspace, the dualism is between the physical and the virtual and indeed the virtual space appears to be the most intriguing of the two for the techno-esotericists! TechGnosis or CyberGnosis is thus the experiential knowledge that can be gained by navigating through the different planes of virtual reality as well as the knowledge that can be acquired by diving into the immense pool of information offered by the internet, yet with the right key!
Because the internet may have democratised knowledge to an extent never seen before, but only through advanced insight and proper training one could access that arcane and transformative knowledge an occult practitioner may be longing for.
Don’t forget to check out the videography on my YouTube channel ANGELA’S SYMPOSIUM for more extensive Academic Fun!
Ciao.
REFERENCE Partridge, C. (2005) The Re-Enchantment of the West: Volume 2 Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture and Occulture. A&C Black, pp. 155-157 Get the book here: Volume 1 https://amzn.to/3mVKK7M Volume 2 https://amzn.to/3mTt2ll
First uploaded 22 Oct 2021