“It’s Only a Game, Isn’t it?”
Forging academic connections across the Pennines, last week took me to Manchester Metropolitan University for “Rituals of Play”. An international conference deftly combining gaming (in both digital and tabletop forms) with magick and the occult. This uniquely compelling focus for Manchester Game Centre’s annual Multiplatform symposium was ratified in conjunction with MMU’s Dark Arts Research Kollective, DVRK.
Bringing Ludology to Ludovico, the first day took place at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation just off campus. The show of horrors commenced with “Playful Occultism”, a fascinating keynote presented by Falmouth University’s Dr. Jeff Howard. Setting the tone immediately with the proposal that any sufficiently advanced simulation of ritual can function as ritual. Games have rules, and rites have structure. The Magic Circle becomes a place of play. A performance to an act apart.
Drawing from Kenneth Grant’s Tangential Tantra, the prospect of surprise synchronicities is offered by bringing play to occult practice. Both tangent and tantrum to break the rigid conformity of ceremonial work. A critical hit to stately decorum, and counter to the agnostic conflict of prior magickal doctrine.
Practitioners of all denominations can enter flow state through play, encouraging flexible pattern-matching to attain a form of gnosis and consider possibilities otherwise unimagined. A state-shifting perspective somewhat looser than traditional dogmatic approach. The widdershins whirl of the Sufi.
With that heady opener a feast of thought, the fast-paced schedule soon moved along to papers and panels delivered from across the world. Researchers, writers, and game designers took the podium or dialled in from overseas. Discussing how faith and history may be viewed through the lens of gaming, Chthonic conspiracies carve through fact and figment, and how tools for both chance and divination find new purpose.
A common theme emerged from myriad minds across both days, that both gaming and the occult reasserted themselves through the dark years of lockdown. A cultural wound still bleeds into the present even as possibility bleeds into the real. Those disconnected try to find bonds through their endeavours – be they playful or greater. Putting creative ritual practices into their creative work, artists coped internally in their confined domestic spaces. Seeking transformative experiences through mundane acts, offering a sense of control and fun through uncertain times.
The first day culminated with an immersive installation by Newcastle’s fractals co-op. The Museum of Lost Futures presented a shattered nexus of possibilities, past and future. Narrative spontaneously weaved around scattered artefacts and photographs, with each player guided towards introspective storytelling from what they could gather.
It is no surprise that the dehumanising spectre of state surveillance arose from yesteryear’s enforced confinement.
The second day in the University proper began with the real reason I chose to attend. A keynote by Berlin-based esoteric engineer, writer, industrial singer-songwriter and online acquaintance Karen Valis. I was first drawn to her work with Mercurial Minutes during my own dark-years dabbling in the occult aspects of AI and Machine Learning, and found her ‘Tarot of the Latent Spaces’ a parallel to my research.
“Simulation All The Way Down” presented the concept of Large Language Models (LLMs) as a feral entity, creating and collapsing the possibilities of branching reality. An unsupervised gestalt of all our stories – reflecting our narrative need for antagonist – and a shadow grimoire in dire demand of a warning label. Although these technologies can be fascinating toys, they are also terrifying in equal measure. But understand them we must for their potency to delude and destroy – lest they be weaponised against us.
Granting all a game of occultist bingo for the rest of the day, the chance to meet and converse off-schedule was eagerly indulged. Channelling Carroll with my own interpretations of Apophenia and Rumsfeld’s Paradox, I’m sure I filled a few lines by default.
Friendships were made and affirmed in these two short days. With post-lecture libations inspiring future cross-campus plans and a will to make things happen. Through the company of like-minded souls, I feel refreshed and reconnected with a specific wyrd long dormant.
Although I genuinely thought Disco Elysium was a rhythm game…
https://heathenstorm.com/2025/06/16/its-only-a-game-isnt-it/
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