This old fox has been a gamer for almost as long as such digital fantasies existed. I muddled through with the ZX Spectrum. Marvelled at the graphics on the Nintendo NES. Sat in awe of the Sega Megadrive. Fell for the Sony Playstation. Used and abused the Sega Dreamcast. Lusted after the Playstation 2. Developed insomnia with the N64. Admired the original Microsoft Xbox. Hammered the hell out of the Gamecube. And ended my interest in console gaming with the frankly underwhelming Xbox 360. Disappointed by that platform I migrated to PC, where quickly growing modding communities assured I never looked back.

In certain open world games, such as the once brilliant but now increasingly flawed Elder Scrolls Franchise, it is almost impolite not to hack your character’s reality by adding in new items and side quests. Indeed I have spent many hours attentively tweaking the abilities of a certain sword or shield within an inch of their lives. But as those of you familiar with my blighted little corner of cyberspace will no doubt already be aware, The Accelerated Chaote does not deal in such mundane concerns. So you would be correct in suspecting a deeper reasoning behind such square-eyed reminiscences.

One of my most significant finds years ago now was a bootleg copy of the Cthonos Rite CD, a frankly brilliant piece of assisted astral magick allowing for the creation of an internalised imaginative space devoted to the successful completion of any of the more common types of ritual. It is essentially a totally virtual complex of tunnels and rooms inside the adept’s mindscape, thus discarding the need for the usual trappings of the art except for a comfy chair and a rough idea what you want to achieve. As seen in The Accelerated Necromancer, this was a major influence on my bone based Imagined Temple technique.

It is relatively advanced stuff, originally hailing from the fevered minds of the Illuminates of Thanateros, declassified for more general occult use via The Chaos Magick Audios released by The Original Falcon Press around 2008. So might be a bit beyond those who are not naturally gifted at visualisation. In my efforts to disseminate the most powerful magickal concepts that I can find among as many adepts as possible, regardless of experience, I came up with a way to make it easier to use. A mental mod to aid in the creation of such unreal spaces, and one that should feel all too natural to the gamers in the room too.

And thus we return to the humble PC as a tool of change. What I am essentially proposing is that anyone who is able to close their eyes and see scenes from one of their favourite games play out before them can also use such imagery to knit together a fully functioning internal world furnished with objects from those tall tales. Locational gnosis on a completely disposable, case by case basis. And yes, it really is that simple. I do it if I need to work quick and dirty, or at the end of a long day when the thought of concentrating for more than five minutes on creating something inside my own skull induces a stress headache.

The Elder Scrolls franchise lends itself admirably to such operations, being a visually alluring and naturally immersive experience seen through the actual eyes of your player character, though games that have an over the shoulder perspective can work too. All it takes is the ability to call to mind one of the dungeons or other buildings from a game that you have put enough hours in to know better than your own children, and the imagination to take those images and move them around in real time as ritual dictates. This will feel strange at first as those stolen snapshots rarely match up, but it really is worth persevering.

Even better, if the chosen video game has a map editor or other modding tools which allow for the creation of locations that can then be explored through quests then an actual space that your character is able to walk through can be created. A digital ritual complex designed to support the internalised visualisation with what can be seen on the screen. Guided meditation of a kind, though one involving a much richer level of visual detail than most. Again the available assets will never exactly correlate with their occult counterparts, but that is not a deal breaker. Some ingenuity should be enough.

Chests can become altars, trophies goddess statues, goblets reframed as chalices and plates for offering bowls. Before long you will have the necessary library of items to easily cope with whatever the task at hand asks for you to see. Be it a simple calm beach in the Bahamas, coconuts and all, or the magickal dungeons of The Cthonos Rite. Access to occult technologies is supposed to be all of our birthright, not the sole preserve of those with exceptional visualisation skills from the get go,  and as such I hope that this digital hack goes some way towards helping to bring everyone to the same level.