http://www.hotwired.com/Ren2.0/Twain/Rim/nat_spirits.html (The Risc Disc Volume 2, 10/1995)
N A T S P I R I T S
Information has its own "personality," based on whether we gather it
in newspapers, on computer screens, or during meditation. Throughout
Rim, primitive nature spirits - such as the Burmese "nats" -
provide a bridge to higher-consciousness information gathering, a tap
into the "electronic hive." As John Perry Barlow so aptly put it,
"Mind is at once continuous and inclusive of all individual
consciousness - wired or not" (Harper's, August 1994).
Entities such as Burmese "nats" or Japanese "kami" (unseen nature
gods) can be - and frequently are - employed as "natural avatars" by
various traditional as well as technologically advanced people (such
as the Japanese). Our lives provide the "software" on which these kami
run; they provide "technical support" to us on a higher plane of
consciousness. Eventually, these energies will be harnessed via some
neuro-electronic process similar to the sensual enhancements offered
by virutal reality.
This bull is composed of the letters of the Burmese alphabet. If
painted on a handkerchief and placed on the house alter, it will
protect the inhabitants from harm.
There are many signs today of burgeoning techno-animism, techno-Gnosticism, and techno-paganism movements. (Witness the growing popularity, especially among cyber-sensitive "crossovers," of the pagan Burning Man ritual in the Utah desert.)
The best source on Burmese folk religion and beliefs is the classic study on the subject, Burmese Supernaturalism by Melford E. Spiro (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1967).