The Neognostic Myth in Cyberspace

Pozharov Alexey ORCID: 0000-0003-0341-9248 PhD in Cultural Studies Associate Professor, Department of Sound Engineering and Musical Art, Institute of Cinema and Television (GITR) 125284, Russia, Moscow, Khoroshevskoe highway, 32A soundman.alex@gmail.com

Introduction

The metamodern perception of the surrounding world determines the differentiation of aspects of rationality. In part, this process is similar to the formation of Gnostic discursive practice, when the founders of Gnostic sects created complex mythological systems that did not agree well with each other, and emphasized different aspects of Gnostic doctrine, nevertheless defining themselves and self-defining themselves as Gnostics ^{[1, p. 10]}.

The problem is that gnosticism should be considered not only and not so much as a myth with a narrative, structure and plots, but as a way of functioning of syncretic culture, which has always been present in the European cultural and philosophical space and is especially strongly actualized in moments of uncertainty and change.

Within the framework of the Gnostic myth, there is a rethinking of the image of the hero and the opposition of Evil and Good. In media culture, the image of the hero is deconstructed ^{[2, p. 171]}, but the hero, along with those considered, acquires features characteristic of the Gnostic myth, which include initiations or revelations that become the point of formation of the hero.

As O.V. Stroeva notes, the image of the hero of the modern neo-mythological field of the mass screen industry synthesizes the main features of the "hero archetype" and the main functions that make up this concept. The images of neo-mythological heroes of our time must be analyzed, first of all, using examples of mass and author's cinema ^{[2, p. 172]}.

The study of the functioning of the neognostic myth in cyberspace requires a comprehensive and systematizing approach that summarizes the experience of representation in modern media culture. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the research is the basis for the formation of a clear conceptual understanding of the phenomenon of the neognostic myth in its visual form (as opposed to verbal) as a dynamic cultural model generated by digital art strategies and implemented today in media culture.

The purpose of the study is to describe the functioning of the neognostic myth in cyberspace.

The set goal determined the need to solve the following tasks:

- consider the neo-Gnostic myth and postmodern aesthetics (deconstruction of the Gnostic myth);

- to study the neognostic myth in cyberspace.

Gnostic epistemology as the basis of cyberspace

With the help of an archaeological approach to technical media, it is possible to identify the deep moments of the digital, showing that a technological mystique is at stake, depending on a specific materiality. Every technical means, such as telegraphy, photography or television, video and video content, is also a means of the sacred, capable of generating a specific mystical imagination. Thus, digital mysticism is a modern stage of technological sacredness, characterized by gaps and continuity. To approach this digital mysticism, we can contrast two modes of the imaginary, provoked by two material ecologies. Firstly, in the era of PCs and computer interfaces, there was the emergence of a transcendent mystical imaginary, crystallized in the image of cyberspace and characterized by a new angelism. Then, with the advent of wireless networks and mobile devices, the image of an animistic mesh environment close to New Age spirituality was strengthened, characterized by the return of paganism, which meant an undeniable re-fascination of the world ^{[3, p. 20]}.

In the epistemological horizon, technology defines our situation not because its material arrangement necessarily produces certain effects, in linear logic, but because technology reveals the environment in which we live. Thus, we are completely immersed in this atmosphere, where a technical object makes up our social space and where, as a result, it imposes restrictions on us and frames our existence, as well as determines our attitude to the sacred. As Gilbert Simondon reminds us, there is no real opposition between sacredness and technicality, since the true nature of technical objects is not their only use. Thus, in every hierophany, that is, in all manifestations of the sacred, objects, including technical ones, play a significant role. According to Simondon, "... Techniques are not neutral in the face of sacredness: they are either points of intersection of sacredness, or objects of exclusion and rejection ^{[4, p. 67]}.

As Mircea Eliade reminds us, the sacred always manifests itself in an object in the profane world, and any object can be sacred: "An object becomes sacred to the extent that it includes (i.e. reveals) "something other than himself" ^{[5, p. 2]}. From the sacredness of stones and the body to digital sacredness, there are always carriers of the sacred, so that sacredness is conditioned by materiality. Technical objects, a priori rational objects, can also be sacralized and generate mystical imaginations. That's why we find the archaeological approach interesting, to avoid contrasting the new with the old. On the contrary, it is necessary to place the so-called new media in a longer genealogy in order to look at the old forms and identify the gaps and continuity of the new ones in relation to the past. A new technique generates a new phantasmagoria, a fluid mental zone where new fantasies and new conflicts are constructed. According to this approach, media cultures or ecosystems are viewed as deposited in different layers, according to the folds of time and materiality, in which the past can suddenly be rediscovered in a new way.

It is from the receptivity and extraction from the long duration of media culture that the mystery and sacredness associated with technical objects and the imagination that accompanies them can be determined. This is an essential approach, the transition from utilitarianism to the excavation of phantasmagoria and the disclosure of a network of material practices in which mystical images arise. Therefore, technological sanctity is not a digital novelty. Every environment, when it appears, is perceived as something supernatural. The appearance of new devices based on modern electricity and mechanics since the 19th century testified to the emergence of a mystical imagination characterized by the disclosure of spectra: the subject of a photographic image or sound recording could die, but his image or voice remained eternally reproducible. The written word thus proved the immortality of the soul. The deceased continued to live among the living, not only by the outline of his ideas, but also by his face and the word he uttered.

Gnostic epistemology undoubtedly underlies the imagination of cyberspace. Moreover, there is a constant in the history of the West that Eric Davis calls "techno-gnosis." In this regard, cybergnosis would be only the latest incarnation of a profound phenomenon. In the world of cyberculture, technognosis manifests itself in hacker ethics, cyberpunk literature, science fiction films and video games. An example is a network within the framework of computer interaction, which qualifies attempts to establish censorship as corruption and bypasses them. The web is a simulacrum of a hypothetical libertarian world: an unregulated abundance where technological wizardry and pure hack can overcome the inertia of embodied history.

According to J. Watts, D. Houtman, cybergnosis should be understood as an evolutionary process in which the technical space has developed so much that it can become a space of struggle against the dominant Western white man on Earth ^{[6, p. 439]}. This is salvation available to everyone through mutual hallucination, as suggested by W. Gibson; imagination associated with experience, because in order to achieve salvation you need to immerse yourself in this other world. Thus, the authors reveal a clear selective affinity between digital technologies and modern gnosis.

Every imagination has its extremes. The extreme fantasy of the Gnostic cybercultural imagination is to get rid of the body and enter another world, which will serve as a direct and immediate experience with all the information. Nothing embodies this cybernetic desire more than the image of downloading and accessing cyberbullying. Even more radical is the idea of cyberbullying, an idea designed to crystallize the image of reconstruction in cyberspace of people who have already died: "What we have here, with these visions of cyberbullying and cyberbullying, is an attempt to rethink the soul in digital form. The idea that the essence of a person can be separated from his or her body and transformed into ephemeral media of computer code is a clear rejection of the materialistic view that man consists only of matter" ^{[6, p. 440]}.

Some critics of cyberculture have widely emphasized this aspect of the concept of cyberspace. David Le Breton notes in this regard that cyberculture has turned the body into an artifact, even into meat ^{[7, p. 81]}. For him, browsing the Internet gave rise to this kind of fantasy, creating the impression that the body is something cumbersome and useless; the idea that digital technology would finally become completely independent of material support fueled the ancient dream of freeing the physical.

Cyberspace eventually becomes the realization of an ancient, gnostic dream, symbolized by the realization that man is alien to this world, characterized by necessity: "Cyberspace may one day become a gnostic paradise of a world without bodies and without borders" ^{[8, p. 266]}. There is clearly a hidden mystical experience in the cybercultural experience, especially the Gnostic one, because it is an experience that reveals this dualism and also reveals the promise of salvation.

Of course, if these images seem outdated today, since the opposite image is being formed - praising the body on social networks, but in fact there was contempt for the body. The power of this imagination can also be observed in social experience. The most radical example was given by the American sect "Gates of Paradise": in 1997, 39 members, including the leader, planned a trip to another world, but for its implementation it was necessary to get rid of the body. The result was a mass suicide. For someone like Paul Virilio, this is infantilism, characteristic of cyberspace and testifying against Internet apologists: "Thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate cybersect left their decomposed remains in their luxurious residence at Rancho Santa Fe, these bodies that they had long ago lost the habit of using" ^{[9, p. 58]}.

Thus, the connection between these two areas, gnosticism and cyberspace, is clear: there is discomfort from being trapped in this world in the body, and therefore we must strive for salvation. This is always achieved through knowledge. In a cosmology consisting of two parallel worlds, we must leave the physical world marked by entropy and gain access to another world, the world of information.

On the horizon of cyberspace, that is, dreams of the virtual, technological Platonism and gnosticism, a strong image arises: a being without a body that enters another world: "Cyberspace is Platonism as a working product. The cybernaut sitting in front of us, tied to touch input devices, seems to be really lost to this world. Suspended in a computer space, a cybernaut leaves the prison of the body and enters the world of digital sensations" ^{[10, p. 29]}. Without bodily limitations, a being could finally realize the dream of perfect communication, communication without angelic matter, unification of consciousnesses without the mediation of language or technology. This is how we can summarize the entire imaginary integrity of the early days of the Internet: an angelic cybernaut, a modern relay of a medieval angel, this symbolic figure without matter, capable of establishing a real communication process.

In addition to the cybernaut, there is another very powerful image in our time, which today seems to us to be a more relevant metaphor, while the first one is becoming weaker and weaker - the cyborg. This is an image that is very common in cinema and popularized in the theoretical field by the American philosopher Donna Haraway. Cyborg symbolizes the unprecedented collaboration of man and technology; a rich metaphorical and material arrangement over which one can reflect on being in the modern world. In many ways, this is a philosopher's reinterpretation of the term originally created by two scientists, Manfred Klines and Nathan Kline, who in 1960 linked cybernetics and the organism. In this early understanding of cyborg, it was a scientific attempt to technologically shape the bodies of astronauts so that they could naturally inhabit stellar space: an improved human being capable of surviving in an extraterrestrial environment ^{[11, p. 13]}.

In the case of Haraway, the term takes on a different meaning. Cyborg should not be understood as something semi- or completely artificial, but as a recognition that the relationship between technology and man is so intertwined that they cannot be distinguished; so that from cyborg we can consider another look at technology. This is a revolution in the image of the classic movie Cyborg. In films such as Robocop or Terminator, the cyborg appears with misogynistic and militant overtones: the cyborg is in some way a phallic image or symbol. However, in a world where masculinity is traditionally associated with rationality, science and technology, the cyborg man does not violate the traditional relationship between man and technology. On the other hand, a cyborg woman, within the limits of common sense, simultaneously challenges the dynamics of the relationship between man and technology. Thus, the cyborg is equally metaphorical and concrete; it is both material and semiotic, found in science fiction, modern medicine, as well as in video games.

A. S. Vetushinsky refuses the classic dilemma: whether a person controls his machines or machines dominate a person. People and a machine mutually constitute each other: "A machine is not designed to be animated, worshipped and dominated. The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for the machines; they don't dominate us or threaten us. We are responsible for borders; we are them" ^{[12, p. 14]}. Instead of describing a unified, totalitarian approach to technology, A. S. Vetushinsky suggests recognizing the power of technology, despite its ties to the patriarchy and the military, as a tactical – theoretical and imaginary – way to undermine tradition, resist heroism and masculinity, and the characteristics of technoscience. Cyborg is never complete, he is always on the move.

Of course, there is a certain influence of the cybercultural atmosphere, there is even a utopia of a world without genres. However, final salvation is out of the question here. The cyborg world is a world without origin, as well as a world without end: "The incarnation of a cyborg is outside the history of salvation" ^{[13, p. 41]}. The approaches, therefore, are very different from the dreams of cyberspace; the cyborg does not want to establish either a new Jerusalem on earth or a return to the Garden of Eden: "The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden, he is not made of dirt and cannot dream of returning to dust" ^{[13, p. 44]}.

This is not a technological escape to another world after the destruction of the body, but rather a new ontology, which is not dominated by the concept of generic man. The cyborg finds himself at the junction of material reality and imagination. In this new ontology, the cyborg, as something beyond the generic man, is a hybrid being not only between man and machine, but also between material and imaginary reality: "A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of a machine and an organism, a being of social reality, as well as a being of fiction" ^{[13, p. 42]}.

It is a strategic metaphor, an imaginary resource that opens up to other narratives about people, nature, science, and living beings. Obviously, manipulating the boundary between human and non-human remains a major project of the natural sciences and humanities. Thus, the separation of the mechanism and the organism is the state in which the cyborg arises. The cyborg, which awakens the connection between the organic and the technical, is a powerful metaphor for describing the worlds and representing postmodern times, while simultaneously embodying the state of a concrete life of being.

First of all, it is indeed a creature born as a result of the combination of science and fiction, and that as a result, the cyborg is able to push us to the imagination. Thus, this new form of being in the world allows us to break the modern boundaries, considered as optical illusions, especially between man and animal, between mechanism and organism and, finally, between the physical and the non-physical. Miniaturization technologies such as silicon chips, nanotechnology, quantum mechanics, and genetics are examples of how it is becoming increasingly difficult to operate while at these old boundaries. With every technical change in modern culture and every breaking of boundaries, the inappropriateness of dualistic and binary models is revealed. We find ourselves in a much more complex web of meanings.

The manifestation of the neognostic paradigm in cyberspace

The relevance of gnosticism in cyberspace is emphasized in a number of sources. For example, I.V. Tsukanova, K.S. Ivanova write that the film "The Matrix" is a typical ideological simulation, in which the gnostic semantic complex comes into conflict with the orthodox Christian and even Buddhist ^{[14, p. 214]}. The film can be attributed to the Gnostic concept on the basis of the presence of two realities. Such a sign of gnosticism as the doubling of reality in modern culture is the most representative. The first true reality is the Matrix; the second is an imaginary reality, which is a kind of world to hide the truth. Secondly, the presence of an analogue of Yaldabaof himself, the Architect who created the aforementioned multi–tiered virtual reality. Thirdly, the presence of several types of people: ordinary people (giliki), residents of Zion who rebelled against the Matrix (analog of the psyche), possessing certain potentials and guessing about the truth (Pythia, Morpheus) and holders of higher abilities (analog of pneumatics) – Neo and other chosen ones with full knowledge of reality. Also, as a marker of the gnostic affiliation of the film "The Matrix" is a clear indication of the commitment of the filmmakers to the ideas of J. Baudrillard is an adept of gnosticism (in the first scene of the film there is a frame with the cover of his book "Simulacra and Simulations") ^{[14, p. 215]}.

Shakirov A. I. and Simkacheva M. V. emphasize that the gaming industry, until recently perceived as a household entertainment and an idle activity, has acquired the functions of a driver of modern media culture, a conductor of newly formed meanings, images and narratives, a source of myth–making in modern reification, which allows us to talk about the emergence of a new phenomenon - digital (gaming) identities, to A considerable part of active gamers explicitly and implicitly consider themselves to be ^{[15, p. 227]}.

Buryak N.Yu. says that due to the specific capabilities of the computer, the influence on the personality and mental component of a person increases ^{[16, p. 91]}. Through the translation of subcultural values into the external environment, cyberspace is transformed into a socially recognized form of leisure. Cyberspace is perceived as a place of self-realization and self-actualization, and the formation of subpersonalities takes place ^{[16, p. 92]}.

Belachev M. T., Danilenko G. E. note that participation in cyberculture forces people to constantly change their identity, and new technologies in the field of genetics and bioengineering break the existing limitations of the body. The processes of perception, memory, reasoning and conclusions are no longer performed exclusively in our brain, but are distributed between human and non-human technological networks ^{[17, p. 28]}.

C. Forsif explores the spiritual potential of the digital world, considering cyberspace as a cyber religion ^{[18, p. 27]}. He considers events in cyberspace as a techno-religious phenomenon, through which cyberspace for many becomes a new form of spiritual space. Digital presence does not take individuals away from bodies, it only creates the illusion of infinite time and space, so that people are momentarily freed from the painful bondage of the body. Here it is traced to escape from the limitations of reality, to find a digital escape from a world that offers bodily finiteness and disappointments. If there are few thrills outside cyberspace, you can anonymously enjoy your desires and simulated reality ^{[18, p. 30]}.

The development of techniques – in particular, communication – has always been part of the social imagination, aimed at reducing the distances and boundaries between the object and the material here below, and the afterlife, built on religious beliefs and models of organic communication. Thus, while technical devices such as the telegraph, radio, or television were directly associated with the sublime, digital technology, for its part, also pushed the imagination to new fantasies, myths, and representations, both new and inscribed in this ingrained continuum. Like any new medium, the digital environment evokes a sense of wonder and mystery.

The first fantasies associated with the development of digital technologies crystallized in the idea of cyberspace – a virtual online space that differs from physical and offline space - and the resulting cyberculture.

All these discussions about virtual reality and cyberspace appeared as a step beyond the metaphysics of the electronic environment, which began with the telegraph. In this new "cyber" world, we have the impression that we live in a programmed environment where everyone plays in an environment that will be a copy of the so-called real world. Cyberspace thus appears to be the last and most transcendent of electronic spaces. All miracles, desires and hopes have been transferred to computers and other digital objects. The fantastic narratives of liberation from the body and transcendent emancipation, which were part of the spiritualist imagination of the nineteenth century, continued to inspire some narratives about cyberspace.

Cyberspace in video games absorbs and generates important myths of our time; for more than thirty years, scientific, artistic, journalistic and cinematic reports have said that through the use of computers integrated into a large planetary network, we will become contemporaries of an unprecedented transformation of the human experience. In many ways, this network would be so powerful that we could transcend time, space, and power. These various abuses of digital technologies will mean the end of history, geography and politics ^{[19, p. 180]}.

If at the peak of modernity, technologies were focused on the image of an industrial machine with its gears and panels, which formed the Promethean imagination, then in the digital space, technologies are focused on the image of the virtual. Of course, cyberspace consists of both physical and technical characteristics. However, as an imaginary space, it is not a space in the modern sense of the word, that is, a space that obeys the laws of physics, since the ontological basis of cyberspace is virtuality, information and data. Paradoxically, this intangible network has become possible thanks to specific products of technoscience, such as silicon chips, optical fibers, satellites and even electricity.

In any case, cyberspace is not limited to all these attributes. The cyberspace of video games is, first of all, a mythical space or, why not, a sacred space, since it is a repository of the transcendent. The monotheistic religious root present in the modern technological project, described by David Noble, extends to the digital world as a new tool of salvation, and, in particular, in the representation of cyberspace ^{[20, p. 121]}. From this new myth, the imaginary possibility of overcoming organic, bodily and human extremity with the help of new technologies has gained new strength.

According to Noble, the delineation of cyberspace is close to the delineation of the Holy Spirit, which is considered an invisible medium that allows us to connect with the spirit of God, since disembodied information mechanisms, as well as environments, offer our spirit a new opportunity to imagine itself outside the body, in another virtual world ^{[20, p. 97]}. It is worth noting the importance of metaphors of religious and mythical origin in the discourse on cyberculture, which shows that within a new culture that has arisen thanks to new technologies, there are old elements, even the permanence of the irrational.

For example, the Internet space can be compared to a jungle that has spread over the entire Earth's surface (which very successfully replaces the rapidly shrinking space of the real jungle and its inhabitants). In this jungle, trajectories are laid out spontaneously. The traveler is constantly being diverted from his intended path by new opportunities that immerse him in more and more bizarre worlds. From the point of view of the structure of its space, the Internet is a vivid manifestation of postmodern culture, dominated by the rhizome, which replaced the traditional metaphor of the tree as the principle of the structure and development of culture. Instead of a tree with its roots and its vertical unity, which has long been a favorite picture of the hierarchical organization of knowledge and patriarchal power, cyberculture has adopted the image of a rhizome.

 Computer technologies have activated the almost medieval division between the material and the spiritual: even if this is the technology of the twentieth century, the material world is marked, again, by the degradation inherent in matter, and cyberspace offers a cosmos in which the psyche can live without suffering ^{[21, p. 97]}.

In this regard, Margaret Wertheim compares the fascination with cyberspace with early Christianity and the image of the heavenly New Jerusalem ^{[22, p. 189]}. Cyberspace awakens this promise of ultimate reward: a place of eternal peace, peace, beauty and harmony for people of different cultures, in addition to the difficulties of the material world. Finally, cyberculture is the fulfillment of the primordial dream of mankind, that is, overcoming human limitations, manipulating reality turned into information, and the absolute conquest of nature and space, based on the hierarchy of the spirit and flesh of Judeo-Christian culture.

Closely related to this transcendental and metaphysical concept of cyberspace is the emergence of mysticism, which can be described as a technological reinterpretation of modern gnosticism or, more simply, cybernosis. The Gnostic spirit has revitalized the development of digital technologies, just as these new attributes have contributed to the emergence of new forms of gnosticism. Being a spiritual space of intangible networks, cyberspace is a digital environment of religious vision, a kind of postmodern syncretism mixing the ideology of the New Age and the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin. The salvation of the New Age presupposes the full realization of the principles of self-spirituality and holism; the full realization of one's inner spiritual potential and progress towards greater and greater wholeness. While in Christian cosmology salvation occurs only after a person's death, in New Age philosophy salvation is thought of in terms of spiritual evolution, a process that may occur during a person's lifetime, but may continue after death; it may span several generations or even centuries. The term "evolution" here refers to the movement towards the "original" state of reality or to the "original state of perfection". New Age "self-development" groups refer to this idea by helping the "individual self open up" or actualize, allowing people to achieve salvation by becoming what they already "are by nature." It also implies an optimistic belief that "the whole world will be transported to a higher octave" by gradually moving towards a New Age of ever greater wholeness. Against this background, asceticism reanimates all half-humans, half-machines, cyborgs and other cybionts, or, more prosaically, new forms of angelism.

According to E. Davis, it was the Gnostic myth that anticipated fantasies about virtual and cyberspace ^{[21, p. 97]}. In other words, libertarian aspiration, self-deification, and the dualistic projection between matter and the disembodied possibilities of mind are already present in the Gnostic forma mentis. Gnostic epistemology undoubtedly underlies the imaginary cyberspace. In fact, this is a constant in the history of the West, which Davis calls "techno-gnosis." In this regard, cyber-gnosis would be only the latest incarnation of a profound phenomenon.

It should be noted that in this horizon of cyberspace, a strong image of an incorporeal being entering another world arises. Without bodily limitations, the being would finally be able to realize the dream of perfect communication, of the immaterial communication of angels, of the union of consciousnesses without mediation, language or technology. This is how we can characterize the imaginary ensemble of the early days of the Internet: an angelic cybernaut, a modern translation of a medieval angel, this iconic figure without matter, capable of establishing a true communicative process. For example, many references to the neognostic myth are present in the stories of the inhabitants of the world of the future against the background of the "awakening" and the development of the Matrix — a single global cyberspace that unites all the knowledge of mankind. One of the most striking abilities of this awakened Matrix is the ability to "load" people's consciousnesses into themselves, giving them immortality at the same time. It is to immortality that negative characters strive, in many ways resembling the evil Demiurge of the Gnostic doctrine: possessing absolute power in the "sublunar" world, they desperately strive to conquer others or, if this fails, to prevent anyone from entering the "supralunar" world, invariably suffering defeat.

Without contrasting imagination and materiality, we can argue that this mystical notion of cyberspace is the result of a specific hardware configuration: Web 1.0, hypertextual, from the so-called "PC era", a time when the act of connecting to networks was ritualistic. A large PC machine required a presence in front of these interfaces, which clearly marked the boundaries between the worlds. When someone entered this cyberspace, the body remained on the chair, but one aspect of the cybernaut traveled to another reality. There was an act requirement to connect and access the virtual world. Internet access was provided via a public telephone network. An Internet user connected via a modem connected to a computer as a device and connected to a telephone line to dial the provider's number and establish a point-to-point connection, which was then routed to the Internet. This process was accompanied by specific sounds that made us all dream.

However, all this technical materiality is now part of the archaeology of the digital world. There is no longer a ritual marking access to another immaterial realm, juxtaposed with the world of the material realm.

A new fusion of religiosity and technology is becoming possible. Networks, by allowing different ideas about the sacred to spread very easily, promote religious mixing and stimulate the emergence of experiences that take on new forms of syncretism. As Simondon reminds us: "The use of network techniques determines the directions of actions and measurements that give a relativizing perception of human reality and sacredness" ^{[4, p. 71]}. As a result, networks contribute to the constant construction and transient actualization of various ideas about the sacred, which is extremely close to New Age spirituality.

It should be remembered that one of the favorite images of mysticism  New Age is the transformation of the physical world into a large virtual space that can be manipulated. Thus, the idea of nature as information arises, as if there were a universal information code that constitutes everything that exists. For New Age adherents, it is clear that this fantasy is becoming more and more possible and plausible due to the so-called digitization of the world. We are practically transforming the world, we need to make it concrete. In the modern experience of digital networks, especially mystical ones, there is no longer something virtual that would be opposed to reality, but there are shifts to other dimensions that are quite immanent, characterized by a connection between various objects, people and other ways of existence, such as the essence of nature. In this mysticism, connection is important, connection with others, with the earth and the spiritual world. There is no final salvation or distant God, but there is reconciliation with the present. We are contemporaries of the revitalization of the sacred, in which new digital technologies play an essential role: they are responsible for the emergence of a new imaginary, rather mystical than religious, result of the combination of archaic and technology.

Digital networks, as techniques of the imaginary, spread mysticism, which combines elements displaced by modernity and monotheism, such as animism, paganism and mystery, with a technological element. We are moving from the experience of the sacred, essentially connected with its inaccessibility, to another experience characterized by its constant accessibility. It should be noted that the overthrow and rejection of the utilitarian dimension of technical objects seems to us to be more intense. Experiences defined by religious content are no longer the starting point of experiencing the sacred, but are in themselves a medium. In this regard, the phenomenon of technolanguage is one of those examples in which technology is part of a magical ritual.

Techno–paganism is a transmutation of neo-paganism, which, like the New Age, appeared in the 1960s, inspired by Eastern mysticism, occultism, astrology, Tarot, magic, etc. ^{[23, p. 82]}. In technolanguage, the technical element, originally considered a simple tool of the mind, an Apollonian device, becomes something magical. PCs, networks, and other techniques are incorporated into neo-pagan rituals or magical practices. Magic is technique, and technique is magic. It should be noted that in techno-linguistics there is a clear tendency to place the sacred in the technosphere. What we see in technolanguage is a connection, even a synergy, between magic, the sacred and the computer.

We could point to the cyborg as the essential image of the cult of techno-pagan religiosity. Cyborg is an epiphany of the body with a different technique, a celebration of this magical connection. We understand it as an archetype that is fundamentally multidimensional and invites us to take a fresh look at modern culture and spirituality, for example, at the union between the desire for repeated charm and the sacralization of nature through technological attributes. Technology and spirituality, after all, are glorified in the same circle. In unison with technolanguage, cyborg symbolizes a rethinking of the relationship between man and technology beyond dualism and humanism, as well as a different understanding of free will and existence ^{[23, p. 84]}. Starting with cyborg, one can see that in the imaginary technolanguage there is no longer a cult of transcendent and abstract figures, so dear to the Judeo-Christian tradition or even modernity. Cyborg simultaneously reflects the posthuman, organic and mechanical state, increased technical interaction, biological changes and invasion. All this decenerates and deconstructs the individual self. Cyborg is, ultimately, the revelation of our hybrid state.

Some neo-pagan traditions call for earth goddesses who can be deeply rooted, so to speak, in the garden of nature. Techno-linguists, unlike naturalists, also appeal to the mixed origin of the cyborg; because the techno-linguist is ontologically inclined to honor and respect the contexts in which "nature" and "technology" coexist. In the techno-pagan imagination there is no disjunction between the organic and the mechanical, rather there is a vision of nature in a machine and vice versa. Techno-linguistics arises from the combination of naturalistic spirituality and digital technologies. The techno-pagan is positioned here in harmony with the cyborg, also hybrid, posthuman, postgender, generated by networks of connections.

Conclusion

If the transition from institutional religion to the digital environment is not neutral, in the sense that a true digital religion is emerging, then it is also true that digital religion is part of the technological sanctity that has accompanied modern culture, at least since the days of the telegraph. A sacredness in which the medium itself is something supernatural. In this sense, the digital mystical imagination is layered into several layers, and the various materiality that make up this network reveal some elements that are part of this sedimentation, while at the same time obscuring others ^{[24, p. 10]}.

This is a paradigm shift taking place in our modernity, a transition from mystical imagination that goes beyond the so-called virtual world, due to physical media such as a computer and its on-screen interfaces, and refers to a scheme of verticality induced by cyberspace, to an immanent, pagan, animistic mystical imagination that depends on a scheme of horizontality derived from the reticular perspectives of communication and rhizomatic structure of connections outside the network and mobile devices. There is nothing else that marks the boundaries between realities. Due to the increasingly obvious environmental crisis, the conditions of our existence in this devastated world of this world are actually changing. It is in this new atmosphere, in this climate change, that new ways of experiencing the sacred are emerging. That is, starting from the materiality of digital technologies and under the pressure of the environmental crisis, which reminds us that there is no alternative planet, but only one Earth, that other forms of associations and behavior are emerging. Instead of religion, we can experience mystical communication, religiosity in the digital environment, all this can happen in the world of video games.

The vague religiosity of modernity is not individualistic, on the contrary, the sense of the sacred is becoming more and more a collective and collaborative construction. Man is entering the era of the sacred renaissance, in which new digital technologies play an important role: they are responsible for the emergence of a new imagination, more mystical than religious, the result of combining the archaic and technology. Digital networks, as methods of imagination, spread a mystical component that combines elements surpassed by modernity and monotheism, such as animism, paganism and mystery, with a technological and communicative element. An individual in cyberspace moves from the sacred experience, which is essentially connected with its inaccessibility, to another experience characterized by its constant accessibility.