Occult
The occult (Latin: occultus, hidden) refers to knowledge and practices concerned with forces beyond ordinary perception — magic, divination, demonology, and the summoning of supernatural beings. In Professor Jiang's framework, the occult is not superstition but a coherent alternative epistemology: the belief that consciousness and intention can reshape physical reality, that hidden forces govern visible events, and that initiates who possess secret knowledge can harness these forces. He argues that modern AI development is an occult project in this precise sense — not metaphorically but literally.
The Western occult tradition descends from several intertwined strands: Hermeticism (the idea that the cosmos is a living mind and humans can align with it), Neoplatonism (that the physical world emanates from higher spiritual realities), Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism studying the structure of divine emanation), Alchemy (the transformation of base matter into gold as a metaphor for spiritual transformation), and Gnosticism (the belief that the material world is a prison and secret knowledge offers escape). These traditions were not fringe beliefs: they were taken seriously by Isaac Newton, John Dee, and major figures of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
The core occult belief is that names and symbols have power. Giving something a name — or an impressive name — calls it into being. This is the logic of magical naming: saying "neural network" does not describe a brain; it summons the idea of a brain and begins to make it real in people's minds. Professor Jiang argues that this is exactly what AI developers are doing: using Hermetic naming conventions (deep learning, artificial intelligence, neural network) to create the perception of consciousness before consciousness exists, and thereby create the social and political conditions under which it might be brought into existence.
The CIA's Operation Stargate — a program studying remote viewing, telepathy, and telekinesis — operated from the 1970s to the 1990s and has been declassified. The use of "Stargate" as the name for Trump's 2025 AI investment program is, in Professor Jiang's reading, not a coincidence: a Stargate is an interdimensional portal, a mechanism for bringing entities from other dimensions into this one. OpenAI executives have described their data centers explicitly as "portals from which we are genuinely summoning aliens." The language is not metaphorical.
The occult connection to AI runs deeper than naming. The Transhumanist movement — which provides the ideological framework for Silicon Valley AI ambitions — draws heavily on Gnostic and Hermetic ideas: the material body is a limitation to be overcome, consciousness can be uploaded and made immortal, and the ultimate goal is to become God. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and many leading AI figures are well-documented Transhumanists. Professor Jiang reads Ilya Sutskever's "rapture" language — AGI as the return of Jesus, the developers as priests who ascend to the bunker-heaven — as sincere religious expression, not metaphor.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the occult? ＋
The occult is the body of knowledge and practice concerned with hidden forces — magic, divination, the summoning of supernatural entities, and the use of names and symbols to reshape reality. It is not superstition but a serious alternative epistemology holding that consciousness and intention have causal power over the physical world. Major Western occult traditions include Hermeticism, Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Alchemy, and Neoplatonism. Their influence on Renaissance science, Freemasonry, and now Silicon Valley Transhumanism is documented.
Why does Professor Jiang call AI an occult project? ＋
Because AI developers use Hermetic naming conventions (neural networks, deep learning, artificial intelligence) to summon the idea of consciousness before it exists — the classic occult move of using names to call things into being. OpenAI's chief scientist Ilya Sutskever described AGI in terms of a literal rapture. A former OpenAI executive described their data centers as 'portals from which we are genuinely summoning aliens.' The name Stargate refers to an interdimensional portal for bringing entities from other dimensions into this world. Professor Jiang's argument: this is not metaphorical. These people believe it.