inclinations are present in many other theme camps besides TOTEM. For example,
consider the Sacred Playground theme camp, which provides “a sacred, grounding
dome, sunset healing circles, and elemental rituals to give Burners the opportunity
to recharge their energy and come back to their centers.”^9
Just as the key definitions of Neo-Paganism stress its adaptation to modern
contexts, rather than dogmatically attempting to remain faithful to specific ancient
religions (Pike 2001:227), some contemporary pagan groups or adherents also
attempt to reinvent pagan traditions that utilize, to varying degrees, contemporary
technology. At Burning Man, it is easy to observe that the search for the sacred is
often colored by a blending of aboriginal sensibilities with the high-tech leanings of
Silicon Valley dotcommers. As in tales of old, stilted giants walk the Earth. As in the
Garden (and National Geographic pictures of authentic, distant cultures), nudity
beckons. A mountain of television screens showing digital art glows in the distance
like a midnight desert oasis. Trees made of bones shamble about on motorized bases.
Carefully coiffed and sun-screened people shove bones through their noses, and are
branded en masse. Computerized pyrotechnics explode a postmodern Wicker Man,
ending in fitful fire dancing, drumming and the wild shrieks of huddled digerati.
The cultural critic Erik Davis calls Burning Man an “avant-garde Neo-Pagan
flame-bake” (1997: unpaginated) but also captures the important distinction
between the event and more ecologically centered events like the Rainbow
Gathering or many Neo-Pagan festivals. ‘The tweaked video, the cellular modems
spitting digits to a router back in Gerlach [Nevada, the nearest permanent town to
Black Rock City], the fiber-optic special effects—out here they speak the truth of
our condition far more than any drum circle” (ibid.). Putting the rituals in context,
combining the drum circles with techno music, the body paint with digital art, is
what Davis suggests gives the Burning Man experience much of its originality and
(sub)cultural power. It speaks of a potent polytheism —a long-sought fusing and
collective embrace of techno-science, art, and the sacred. Bubbling in Burning
Man’s endlessly diverse cauldron (as in the subcultures of post-rave), the spirit of
shamanism and paganism is refracted by the cyborgasms of techno-fetishism and
digital lust.
Some participants and cultural observers, eager to identify and partake in new,
differentiating trends, have used the term “techno-pagan” to describe those Neo-
Pagan practitioners who embrace technology as a core element of their ritual life.
Dery defines techno-paganism as “the convergence of Neo-Paganism (the umbrella
term for a host of contemporary polytheistic nature religions) and the New Age with
digital technology and fringe computer culture” (1996:50). He considers techno-
paganism to be an existential response to the “widespread yearning to find a place for
the sacred in our ever more secular, technological society” (ibid.:50). These are very
similar motives indeed to those often ascribed to the growth of Neo-Paganism and
New Age groups and philosophies.
According to Dery, techno-paganism also “surfaces in the electro-bacchanalian
urges that animate raves” (ibid.:52), where social norms are suspended in the
context of dancing to loud, pounding techno music and psychedelics. The culture
294 ROBERT V.KOZINETS AND JOHN F.SHERRY, JR