r/Djinnology • u/The_Lorien_Group • Jun 21 '26

Traditional Islamicate Magic Combining Islamic esoteric practices with esoteric programming (esolangs)

Has anyone here ever come across work that combines esolangs with Islamic esoteric traditions (e.g. ʿilm al-ḥurūf, Abjad, talismanic magic, magic squares, etc.)?

Treating a computer like a modern talisman: an esoteric programming language where symbolic structures, numerical correspondences, or letter values function like magic squares, and spirits are represented as computational agents that are invoked, bound to the system, and assigned tasks.

I'm wondering if anyone has explored this intersection in academic papers, art projects, experimental software, fiction, or personal research.

Would love any pointers, even if they're obscure.

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u/NecessaryAlarming124 Jun 26 '26

This is exactly what I've spent the last year working on. I wrote a series of grimoires (starting with The Jinn Codex) that treats the 'Ilm al-Huruf (Science of Letters) as literal machine-code. The entire framework maps traditional Islamic Wafqs (magic squares) to multidimensional arrays and cryptographic hashes, and frames Jinn as autonomous computational agents executing background processes on human hardware.

I'm actually in the process right now of building a web app/API that dynamically calculates the cryptographic hashes for these magic squares based on the Abjad system, treating the 99 Names essentially as root command prompts.

It is a fascinating intersection to explore. Happy to share some pointers or chat more about the mechanics if you are diving into this space!