A spiritual book, written by AI

I’ve been a fan of Damien Echols for years. Like many, I first learned of him through the Paradise Lost documentaries, and I was thrilled when the West Memphis Three were released. A few years later, I devoured his harrowing autobiography about those two decades on death row and how he discovered his spiritual depth there out of sheer necessity. A few years later still, I enjoyed his book High Magick.

So it was with great anticipation that I cracked open his new book, The Alchemy of the Broken Blade, this evening. The premise of combining the alchemical and kaizen spiritual traditions had me hooked. But within 2–3 paragraphs something felt off, and by the end of the brief introduction, there was no doubt in my mind. This book was straight up written by AI. I ran it through Pangram just to double check, and it came back as 100% AI generated.

I’m writing this missive a few minutes after shelving the book — because I feel viscerally incapable of reading it. Even though part of me really wants to read this thing, something deep in me, beyond the grasp of my rational mind, is like, “oh fuck no, absolutely not.” I’m frustrated and sad and confused. Can I take a book about navigating spiritual rot and shallowness seriously when it’s clearly written by a machine?

I don’t want to write Damien off, or declare his ideas as not for me, because he’s clearly lived through hell and emerged out the other end as a real human being. And for all I know, his other books might have been ghostwritten too. No shame in that. But something about this feels different in a way I can’t articulate.

I think that deep spiritual truths need to be communicated from soul to soul. That can absolutely happen through writing, and I came into this hoping to experience a piece of Damien’s soul, to encounter something real and deep and true in his words. But it’s just not there in this book. I don’t feel it at all. The depths in me don’t recognize depth here. When we let the machines write for us, something essential gets lost in translation.

On a meta note, I think it’s cool and a bit surprising that I chose to sit down and write this by hand instead of looking for another book to read. A core part of my spiritual journey is shifting from consuming to creating. Maybe that was the real lesson I needed from this encounter. To realize that I can always alchemize what I feel deep inside into something real, something handmade, something human. That’s how I want to show up in this life. And though I’m disappointed by this whole situation, I do feel more whole, and more grounded, as I sit here writing this. Onwards.