Arthur C. Clarke famously said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," a provocative statement to which Robert Anton Wilson brilliantly responded: "Any sufficiently advanced magick is indistinguishable from technology." Both have never been truer in today's age of artificial intelligence, the explosion in psychedelic therapy, and bizarre breakthroughs in physics that call into question the nature of reality. It's no surprise then that the mainstream is now embracing metaphors and language from magick, long familiar territory to many counterculture explorers. Ross Douthat in the New York Times:
It's not surprising, in this age of frustration and re-mystification, that our thoughts and efforts might turn back to the magician's art, in search of powers that might help us escape the limits of our island planet, our paltry life span, the crooked timber of our nature. But not simply back to the old magic of spells and incantations (though there is a lot of that these days as well). Instead in the U.F.O. fascination and the A.I. enthusiasm and the drug-enabled "psychonaut" explorations, we see attempts to link magic to science, or to deploy science to do magic, using telescopes or chemicals or vast computing powers to discover or create what the old magicians tried to conjure — namely, beings that can enlighten us, elevate us, serve us and usher in the Age of Aquarius, the Singularity or both.
