Robert Anton Wilson blended anarchist, psychedelic, and occult themes into a pluralistic view of reality that combined pragmatic skepticism with an esoteric embrace of altered states of consciousness. His 1975 Illuminatus! trilogy, co-written with Robert Shea, wove these elements into a satirical conspiracy fiction. Wilson's personal experiments with psychedelic drugs and sexual magic, described in his 1977 book Cosmic Trigger, led him to develop a self-reflexive theory of visionary practice that offered a deconstructive and libertarian vision of gnosis. The essay contextualizes Wilson's visionary pragmatism using Foucault's concept of "technologies of self" and Sloterdijk's "anthropotechnics," and traces his debts to Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, and John Lilly.
Computer interfaces, like allegory, blend mimetic symbols with magical ones that open onto operations or information. Early virtual spaces such as the text-based fantasy game Adventure exemplify this allegorical mode, encoding abstract functions within magical imagery. This magical metaphor persists in later virtual environments like MUDs and Vernor Vinge's Other Plane, where magic jargon serves as a natural way to manipulate data space. The allegorical fusion of imagination and systematic coding also connects to cryptography, as secret codes and encryption schemes echo hermetic traditions like Gematria and Temurah, where power resides in hidden codes rather than mere knowledge.