Are there literally ghosts in our machines? Discover the bizarre, 150-year history of “Haunted Media” and the occult roots of modern telecommunications. Guest host Urban dives deep into the spiritual implications of our screens on this episode of Cause Before Symptom.
In this deep dive, we explore Jeffrey Sconce’s book Haunted Media to understand how society treats electronic presence as something sentient and alive. We unpack the chilling “trinity of electronic presence” (electricity, information, and consciousness), the historical connection between Samuel Morse’s telegraph and the Spiritualist movement, and why the CCRU described cyberspace as “The Crypt”. We also analyze Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and explore how the modern legal “strawman” mirrors ancient Mesopotamian concepts of ghosts trapped in a sub-zero existence. Is the internet an extension of human consciousness, or an algorithmic Leviathan consuming our reality?
Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.
Remember the Disintegration Loops?
“The origin story of The Disintegration Loops is near mythic: in September 2001, electronic composer William Basinski uncovered a series of tape loops of found sound he had recorded from an easy listening station in the 1980s and decided to preserve them as digital files. [1] Yet as each recording circulated through the spindle of Basinski’s recording machine on its way to being digitized, it slowly became clear that the tape was deteriorating in the process, shredding and splintering away as it was being transferred into bits and bytes, being physically consumed as it was being digitally reproduced. The resulting recordings became their own composition – not a digital copy of the analog original, but rather a kind of haunted simulacrum, a profoundly inexact copy that lacked an original precisely because it documented the original’s disappearance.”
Archival Time, Absent Time: On William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops
The Connections Between Technology & Magic (Clips Montage from May 31st Show)
Links & Resources
Haunted Media by Jeffrey Sconce: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/reading/haunted-media.html
Maxwell’s Demon: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/quantum/maxwells-demon.html
Internet Daemons: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/reading/internet-daemons.html
Surrogate Modeling & Digital Twin Modeling: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/quantum/surrogate-modeling.html
The Ccru (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit) & Nick Land:
CCRU Collected Writings (Notes): https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/quantum/ccru.html
NRX / Dark Enlightenment Imgur Images Album: https://imgur.com/a/nrx-dark-enlightenment-RYtislO
Gothic Materialism (Words & Terms): https://imgur.com/a/hsdcFmi
Digital Objects: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/reading/digital-objects.html
Flatline Constructs & Unlife: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/reading/flatline-constructs.html
Revolutionary Demonology: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/reading/revolutionary-demonology.html
An Introduction to Hyperreality: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/reading/hyperreality.html
![The Architecture of a Dead World: Hauntology, Cybernetics, and Spiritual Resistance [April 2nd, 2026]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!doKa!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-video.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fvideo_upload%2Fpost%2F193033595%2F472a13c5-19d6-4735-8fdf-75adb100b60d%2Ftranscoded-1775231624.png)
Animal Magnetism & Mesmerism
The topic of electronic presence and flow was first referred to as “Animal Magnetism” and/or “Mesmerism” named after Franz Mesmer who was an early researcher of this phenomenon.
Semiconductor Manufacturing is the Alchemical Great Work:
Notes: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/quantum/semiconductors.html
Semiconductor Demonology (Playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeZ164ZSzHezOW6RqIi65NjcAAujxqTln
Thomistic Philosophy (St. Thomas Aquinas):
Father Chad Ripperger (Exorcist, Very well studied on the nature of Preternatural influence)
Thomistic Psychology: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/bible/thomistic-psychology.html
Thomistic Cybernetics: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/quantum/thomistic-cybernetics.html
Summa Theologica (St. Thomas Aquinas)
Complete Translation of the Text: https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1225-1274,_Thomas_Aquinas,_Summa_Theologiae_%5B1%5D,_EN.pdf
Urban’s Notes: https://docs.urbanodyssey.xyz/bible/summa-theologica.html
St. Thomas Aquinas Offers the Missing Spiritual Component that Modern Cybernetics Lacks:
Where modern Cybernetics holds that man is purely material, a machine to be exploited no different than hacking a computer, I believe that Man is a “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (Gestalt) where, yes, the human body functions as a type of “Breath Engine,” but with a non-local component that comes only with the neshamah (נְשָׁמָה) which only God can create and ‘issue’.
The sole exception (based on Genesis 4:10-11) is revealed by the murder of Abel by Cain where God then says:
“Again he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me, from the earth. Now therefore thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thine hand.”
(Genesis 4:10-11, GNV)
It is possible that this is the mechanic that enables the almost transactional nature of blood sacrifice which has been practiced by every global empire in human history. Genesis 3:22 (322) reads:
“And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil. And now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever,”
~ Genesis 3:22 (GNV)
(Adam & Eve are removed from the Garden not because they disobeyed God, but because if they weren’t removed, they’d have began eating from the ‘Tree of Life’ by which they’d live forever. Could “eating from the Tree of Life” be akin to “Eating Death / Death Eaters / God Eaters / Breath Eaters”)
In other words, a type of debt, or perhaps you could look at it even as karmic retribution.
“When Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, the Lord told Adam, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3:19). Adam really had only one choice as to his life’s work—he “began to till the earth” (Moses 5:1). He clearly had some challenges, but his work environment had some advantages as well. Among others, he was able to set his own hours and approve his own sick leave and vacation time, and he could not be fired.
Because pride can exist only in an environment of competition and comparison, it was unknown to Adam. There was no temptation to keep up with neighbors. There was no coveting, jealousy, envy, selfishness, or any other sins that feed on pride.
In fact, Satan had little with which to work. The competition he so anxiously awaited could not take place until Adam and Eve began to multiply and replenish the earth. When competition finally did occur, it happened in the workplace and in the acquiring of material possessions. It was here that Satan claimed Cain as his first victim when Cain fell prey to the Master Mahan principle “that I may murder and get gain” (Moses 5:31).”
~ Making a Living, Making a Life; Elder Lynn G. Robbins
“Four Arguments Against the Elimination of Television” (Jerry Mander, 1978)
This extensive source, excerpted from Jerry Mander’s 1978 work, “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,” presents a multifaceted critique arguing that television is an inherently harmful, undemocratic technology that fundamentally replaces and colonizes direct human experience. Mander develops his arguments across several key themes, beginning with how advertising acts as a “standard-gauge railway” to create artificial consumer needs and centralize economic control, resulting in a false economic reality where benefits trickle up to the wealthy elite. The text then delves into the profound biological and psychological effects of television, asserting that continuous exposure to its artificial light and images makes the mind passive and receptive, suppressing imagination and leading viewers to unwittingly turn into their images by emulating fictional media constructs. Ultimately, Mander argues that the medium’s inherent biases—favoring spectacle, conflict, and simplified narratives over subtlety and process—filter out complex, vital information about the natural world and alternative realities, making television the perfect tool for autocratic control that standardizes and confines all human understanding.
Highly Recommend You Watch this Film by Truthstream Media
Metaverse Bubble
Charlie Kirk (Church of the Free Man) Memorial™ Ba’al Room
“Maitreya (My-tray-uh) has come to inaugurate the Age of Aquarius and show humanity the way forward. He is known to the world’s major religions as the Christ, the Buddha, Imam Mahdi, Bodhisattva, Krishna and the Messiah. He left His retreat in the Himalayas and returned to the everyday world, entering London, England on July 19, 1977. Hence, He fulfills the expectations of the world’s major religions for the return of a great Teacher.”
[..]
“Soon the world’s major media will invite Him to address the world: the Day of Declaration. Everyone will see Maitreya on TV, personal computers, and mobile devices. However, He will not speak but will be heard telepathically (inwardly) in one’s own language. Among other things He will clarify the choice before humanity: to continue in the competitive ways of the past and eventually destroy all life on Earth, or accept sharing, brotherhood and love as the way forward and know a brilliant future where humanity’s highest ideals are manifest. The end is known from the beginning. And Maitreya says He knows our answer and is glad.
The Day of Declaration is expected very soon, after a predicted collapse of the world’s stock markets takes place. This will help to free humanity from the enthrallment of materialism and reorient our priorities toward sharing and unity.”
https://lapostexaminer.com/maitreya-coming-according-reader/2017/07/15
Timestamps
00:00:00 Stream Starts
00:06:00 Introduction & Cause Before Symptom Updates
00:11:48 Jeffrey Sconce’s "Haunted Media" & Electronic Presence
00:22:20 The TV Assassin & Sentient Machines of the 1950s
00:33:09 Samuel Morse, The Telegraph & Spiritualism
00:40:05 The Disintegration Loops & Eerie Tech Timelines
00:50:03 The CCRU, Cyber Gothic, & "Flatlining" in the Crypt
01:00:51 The Cult of Computing: Why Data is Not Information
01:14:38 Pastiche, Mythology & Escaping the Simulation
01:25:02 Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
01:46:04 The Cyber Subject, Legal Strawman & The Hunger Games
