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13:37

(In »Participatory culture, religious rituals and psychedelic practices«)

The syntheist liturgy at the dawn of the Internet age is very much about desecularisation, a historically necessary ambition to sacralise late capitalist Man’s radically secularised lifeworld. For this reason, the syntheist liturgy has developed a nucleus consisting of two dividual components – a kind of spiritual lecture that is called a homily, and an often deeply personal testimony; as well as four collective components – a collective sound-making in order to manifest the affinity of the physical bodies present, a quiet phase of contemplation and meditation, a listening to carefully selected music which often is related to the theme of the current homily, and finally a closing peace salutation where all those agents in the community who are present wish each other well. A less liturgical gathering is called an act of worship, and a large liturgical gathering is called a mass. The liturgy is led by a master of ceremonies, who is complemented by a lecturer and one or more personal witnesses, where the homily has a collectively consolidating and universally valid subject while the testimonies are particular in nature. The syntheist liturgy is of course not bound to a physical space: it can just as well be carried out as a virtual ceremony.