Nicholas Chapel is a Minneapolis-based ceremonial magician and professional hacker. He has been practicing magic for more than 20 years. While he graduated with a major in religious studies and a minor in philosophy, academia did not keep him; he landed instead in the world of IT, ultimately becoming a professional hacker on a cybersecurity red team.
If his name seems familiar, it may be because he is the author of the well-known 2013 paper, “The Kybalion’s New Clothes: An Early 20th Century Text’s Dubious Association with Hermeticism,” which served as important source material for both Sam Block and me when writing our articles about the Kybalion. However, like the rest of us, Nicholas Chapel is not here to discuss the Kybalion; we are here to talk about real occultism.
In this episode, we discuss the parallels between hacking and magic in several contexts. First, we look at the nature of hacking, malware, and information security from a magical context. Then, we dive into information in the occult, and how Trithemius, Agrippa, and other early modern magicians used cryptography and steganography in their work.
Links
- Hermeticulture Blog
- Twin Cities Ceremonial Magic Discussion Group on Facebook
- The story of the Morris Worm
- What is malware?
- What is a computer virus?
- Drawing Spirits into Crystals
- Familiar Shapes with Heather D. Freeman
A special note: please check out the Moonlit Hermit Tarot Kickstarter!
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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Chartable – https://chartable.com/privacy