We talk about machine worship, like, a lot
Also, the biblically accurate O enshrined in Unicode
Here’s some forward sizzle: I’ve been working very hard on something I will be able to announce in this newsletter next week!
Or… if you wanted to join the Modern Relics Discord… I’ll be posting it there first. aha ha just kidding… unless? Or you could follow me on Twitter — I’ll be posting it there too.
Quick religion roundup:
Protests in Iran after woman dies for wearing ‘improper hijab’. The Pope wasn’t at the Queen’s funeral but a cardinal and several archbishops were. Oh also Catholic Cardinal Jozef De Kesel and Dutch-speaking bishops in Belgium approve liturgy for blessings of same-sex couples in defiance of the Vatican. I have no idea what’s going to happen now! Here we goooooooo!
What if the Queen came back from the dead in her lead-lined coffin
This is all I’m saying about the royal family this edition: The Queen’s funeral was this week and ITV put this unsettling phrase live to air:
I hear, “The death is irreversible, and the fact that she’s trapped…”
Makes me think about the Christian belief that everyone will be raised from the dead at the end of the world and how bad being raised in a lead-lined coffin would be.
Robotics witches, tech priests, AI seers
Every columnist I read and every person I subscribe to on Substack knows that if they use a religion-y metaphor in one of their posts, I’m going to talk about them here. Good! Those posts are nice and I like reading them! It’s a pleasure to highlight them in this newsletter!
This post in The Terminal is about the people who interface with AI using increasingly arcane text prompts to generate exactly the right kind of image, kind of like how a priest or monk or witch interfaces with the transcendent. Ryan Broderick and Luke Bailey also briefly spoke about this a few weeks ago in the Content Mines podcast (this part starts at 30:00).
And today I was listening to an interview with witchy anthropologist Emma Quilty on The Familiar Strange podcast. Part of Emma’s work is on the intersection of witchcraft and technology, and in the interview she and the hosts play with the idea that interacting with AI employs similar metaphors to magic, particularly around trust. I don’t want to verbal her, but my understanding is that for both magic and AI you don’t truly know or understand what you’re interacting with, yet here you are.
How come this is a framework we keep coming back to? I reckon it’s because the tech priest and machine worship have been tropes in science fiction for decades (the Tech-Priest in Warhammer 40,000 being the most front-of-mind example). This has gone on to inform how nerds think about how they interface with the technology they are using and developing. Secret knowledge, weird little guys tapping away at arcane things — it makes sense.
But like, this tech priest metaphor is based on ideas and assumptions about the role of a religious leader, and even about religion itself. Will it break down as Western, software-producing countries secularise? Or will it shift as newer Western spiritual practises emerge and countries with differing religious traditions continue to flex their workforce in the tech space?
Buddhist metaverse — or “Teraverse”, if you will
I came across this via Garbage Day’s weekend edition ($). The Institute for the Future of Society at Kyoto University is developing what it calls the “Teraverse” as a means to bring Buddhism into the modern world.
According to a press release image, temples of all shapes and sizes can be crafted in the Teraverse and visitors can fly all over and check them out…and apparently shoot lasers out of their faces too, which is pretty cool.
The Teraverse will also have a “Buddhabot” — an “AR Buddha powered by an AI trained on the Buddhist scriptures Sutta Nipata and Dhammapada using Google’s BERT machine learning algorithm.”
This is so extremely my shit lol
(I made a whole post about Christian video games, including the game advertised above, a while ago — it’s one of my favourite posts I’ve ever written.)
Depop confession
This tweet really struck a chord with a lot of people who read Modern Relics, many of whom sent it to me immediately.
Basically, Depop is a website that lets you buy and sell used clothing, but sometimes witches sell spellwork on there too (also on Etsy).
This innovative user has nailed product differentiation by selling… absolution? And/or Catholic ‘spells’? I’m calling the Pope! Or Martin Luther! Both!
Click through and read the responses they are amazing.
Biblically accurate O
This great tweet thread is two years old but I guess I saw it this week because Halloween is coming up. This glyph is called a Multiocular O and appears just once in all of written history, in a translation of the book of Psalms which, unsurprisingly, describes a seraphim in Old Church Slavonic.
The most interesting part for me is that the glyph is part of Unicode — ꙮ — just in case you ever feel like transcribing that particular sentence.
At the time the above tweet was published the Unicode Muliocular O had seven eyes (and still does in most fonts). Since then someone pointed out that the original one actually has ten, so it got updated.
The Weigh Down
This trend of making biopics aimed squarely at gay men about Christian problematic favs in huge wigs is so good.
Whenever you doubt yourself, C.U.M.
The @shirtsthatgohard Twitter account is such a gold mine for weird religion content.
Lastly, the keys to the Vatican
From Sylvester Stallone’s official Instagram:
Very rare and special moment. I was allowed to hold the KEYS that open EVERY single door in the entire Vatican city! Including rhe Sistine Chapel ! So glad we named our beautiful daughter this beautiful name., “Sistine”. … Of course they wouldn’t let me out of their sight with the KEYS … I don’t blame them!