PB101: Hacking the Invisible

At the Intersection of Technology and Magic

with Peter Bebergal

Originally scheduled to run in November 2025, this course was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

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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; and spirit photography and electronic voice phenomena. Belief in the supernatural is not a prerequisite to enchantment. Technology has long offered means through which we can engage with our occult imagination.

If we consider magic to be the ability to inhabit, manipulate, and eventually exteriorize one’s imagination, what was once called “magic,” the seed of all religious practice, we now call “technology” and use toward the same ultimate goal. Join Peter for philosophical experimentation and conjuration at the intersection of hacking, consciousness, and magic.

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. (If you’re still inclined for such)
Three “Office Hours” sessions, where participants are encouraged to bring their questions about the material and discuss the results of their own experiments.

As with all Weirdosphere offerings, the course includes a dedicated feed where registered participants can post thoughts, share links, and exchange ideas between lectures.

Homework

The key text for this course is Peter Bebergal’s Strange Frequencies, published by Tarcher/Penguin 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 Peter and members on the Weirdosphere platform.
Become members of a growing learning community, with a permanent discount on all future Weirdosphere classes by Phil Ford, J.F. Martel, and other thinkers of things strange and astonishing.

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.