PB101: Hacking the Invisible

At the Intersection of Technology and Magic

with Peter Bebergal

This course starts November 20, 2025.

The occult magician and the hacker/inventor both attempt to break open conventional ways of working with the forces that shape our lives.

Peter Bebergal will take participants through the history of how human beings have attempted to interact with the otherworldly using technology to ‘hack’ the machine of the universe. Stemming from a class originally given at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, this presentation will cover The legend of the golem; automata and the uncanny valley; magic lanterns and natural magic; spirit photography; electronic voice phenomena; and the dreamachine. Belief in the supernatural is not a prerequisite to enchantment. Technology has long offered means through which we can engage with our occult imagination.

Format

The course consists of:

Three “Lecture Hall” sessions, each consisting of a 60-minute lecture and 30 minutes of discussion.
Weekly experimentation with techniques provided during lectures.
Three “Office Hours” sessions, where participants are encouraged to bring their questions about the material and discuss the results of their own experiments.

Schedule

The course begins Thursday, November 20, and ends Sunday, December 14. All meetings will take place over Zoom via the Weirdosphere platform and will be recorded.
PLEASE NOTE: The course will not meet the week of American Thanksgiving, Monday, November 24 – Sunday, November 30.

Lecture Hall sessions will take place on Thursday, Nov 20, Dec 4, and Dec 11 at 8 p.m. EST / 5 p.m. PST. The meetings are recorded to allow participants in more distant time zones to attend asynchronously.
Office Hours sessions will take place on Sunday, Nov 23, Dec 7, and Dec 14 at 3 p.m. EST / 12 p.m. PST. This time slot is chosen to allow participants from as many time zones as possible to attend live. Like the lectures, these sessions are recorded.

Recorded sessions will remain available to registered participants after the course is over, in video and audio format.

Homework

The key text for this course is Peter Bebergal’s Strange Frequencies, published by Tarcher in 2018. Reading this text is suggested but not required. Peter may also suggest essays, articles, and other media to enrich upcoming discussions. Whenever possible, these will be made available on the course platform. For copyright reasons, participants may need to access certain works on their own.

Why Take This Course?

Participants will get to:

Attend three lectures investigating the use of technology in historical religious practice and contemporary spiritualist traditions and DIY/Maker culture.
Meet Peter and participate in three weekly Office Hours discussions with him and other participants over Zoom.
Gain access to recordings of the lectures and discussions.
Post, share, discuss, and exchange direct messages with instructors and members on the Weirdosphere platform.
Become members of a growing learning community, with a permanent discount on future Weirdosphere classes.

Instructor Bio

Peter Bebergal writes widely on the speculative and slightly fringe. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement, Boing Boing, The Believer, and The Quietus. He is the author of Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural and Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, among others. Bebergal studied religion and culture at Harvard Divinity School. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.