the map is the territory

With this next step, we move from simple commands to spell work. With the command line, as in any magical practice, we are listening to the flow of energy and directing it to our will. Commands, like all words, are streams of energy.

To show this we will craft a blessing to leave in our altar.

Think of something you’d like to remember. A nice word or phrase, some message to yourself and this space.

When ready, echo it into your computer. Type:
$: echo "welcome to my altar!"

It returns:
welcome to my altar!

As expected, it repeats this blessing below the prompt. To be more specific, though, echo took the blessing and sent it whichever direction we asked. Since we gave it no direction, it echoed it to the terminal screen.

Hit the up arrow (to go back to our previous echo command) and let’s add direction to the end of these words:
$: echo "welcome to my altar!" >> blessing

This time, the message is not printed below. The sigil >> directs the output given by a command and writes it to the end of whatever file you name^▣. If that file does not exit, it will manifest it.

To see, type:
$: ls

And you will now see:
blessing

your altar has a blessing :)^▣.

We can read our blessing with the trusty, flexible command cat.

In your terminal type:
$: cat blessing

For myself, i see:
welcome to my altar!

If you feel so moved, extend the blessing with another nice phrase.
type;
$: echo "the internet is animist" >> blessing
and then
$: cat blessing

For me, I see:
welcome to my altar!
the internet is animist

Your nice note grows with each directed echo. I find this very cool!

Footnotes