Use This Weekend To Think
by Gordon • • Magic, News, Science • 9 Comments
Call it a seasonal thing. October drawing to a close and such. (“Seasonal” being a word that is allowed under VVF estimable All Hallow’s Challenge. Oh how I wish she had read this out at a mandatory UN meeting on the subject.)
Cat Vincent alerted me to a previous unpublished Alan Moore essay late last night. Which was just the most amazing thing to go to sleep reading as you’re coming out of ManFlu. (Glycon made an appearance in my dreams. It was neat.) Some parts of it reminded me of an essay by PJC on magical theory.
So let’s try an intellectual approach to marking this specific seasonal… Festival. (I have the post open in another tab so I don’t use any of the words. Especially ‘th*****g v**l’. Gaaah!) Call it part of the secular festival series.
Read the following essays. You can read them in any order you like but my recommendation is the following:
1. Orientation
Read the first part of PJC’s essay on Magical Theory. You can go for the whole thing if you like but it gets pretty science-y half way down. The part I want you to think on -the first part- is his truly amazing potted history of magical thinking.
Because…
2. The Main Event
Here it is! A never-before published Alan Moore essay on magic. It’s simply stunning. I’m disappointed that magic is still in the exact same quagmire as it was in 2002. If the last few paragraphs don’t make you squirm there is no hope for you.
You have read the first bit of PJC’s essay to contextualise the points Alan is making about nineteenth century occultism.
3. Evolution for dessert
What he is talking about is achievable. The entire biosphere is making it up as it goes along.
So should we.
Once it’s all sunk in, work out if it changes anything for you. And then act on those changes or otherwise they won’t actually stick.
Be sure to do this right
If you’re still at work or don’t care about printing costs I’d recommend printing them out. The weather’s cold in this hemisphere, the weekend is here. Light a fire or swing by a pub that already has one. Buy an ale and read and think.
Yes, you’ll feel really highbrow but I’m going to the Austin Osman Spare exhibit and then probably the documentary and talk immediately after and I figure… If I’m doing something highbrow then you have to as well.
Let me know what you thought of the essays… particularly Alan’s.
AOS exhibit? You lucky SOB! Clicking linkage to read…
(AOS exhibit… damn…)
Rose´s last [type] ..Dateline 2010
Damn right. This is why you live in London.
Cos it sure as shit isn’t for the weather.
Alan’s essay is the most inspiring thing I have read for a very long time. Thank you Gordon for bring it to my attention, it is a truly awesome piece of writing and call to arms
See, Moore’s essay is excellent. It really is. That said, there are tireless gits sitting in various places who admire Spare’s take on living magically enough to give up on chaos magic sigils and build their own machinery that works. Or they’ve given up on ‘magic’ and are sorcerers – they make things happen by *being* themselves.
They just aren’t very public about it. Some of us are even considering founding a kind of symposium on matters Moore and others have raised.
Snake deities are poking various people I know lately…
Loved Alan’s stuff, its what you come to expect of him, he wants to breath new life into this medium, just as he did with comics. and it’s well written too. I think its a “remember creativity?” essay? I work in the creative arts, i need to be creative to have money, but i really don’t feel creative, and his essay jolts that perception into me.
All the best
filipe
(same post, minus the typos)
I enjoyed Moore’s essay. His critique about Crowley echoes what I’ve said about him, which is that too many people dogmatically and mindlessly follow what Crowley says without really examining it and other works. Like Moore I have wanted to breath new life into magic and I think on some levels I have, because instead of sticking with tradition it is better to move to critique, explore, and discover. Thanks for sharing.
Taylor Ellwood´s last [type] ..Identity and Time
I disagree that the magic practiced in GD and in magical orders in general are a thing of a past with no relevance in today’s life. This is an absolutely ignorant comment to make – and I’m not supporting this because I practice ceremonial magic.
Anyone who practices a tradition (even in the most loose sense of the word) that actually has a depth and a worldview to offer, discovers that it comes alive within his life and time, linking him/herself with every practitioner in all times, backwards and forwards – as if in some weird time loop. And that isn’t even crackpot mysticism, it happens but in order for it to be something substantial, it takes time and devotion.
And as long as there will be people becoming truly empowered and liberated by their practice, discovering their truth and their light, what they do will be relevant – even if it is done in silly victorian costumes or in “wicca lineages” that don’t go back before the 60s, or reconstructed ancient pagan rites.
I dearly love Moore and his work and I think he is a genius but after 6 years of practicing my flavor and seeing what the fuck’s all about, I can’t no longer take him seriously.
I believe his lack of meaning of magic, can only reflect his practice.
Thank you so much for linking to that Moore article. What an inspiring manifesto and call to action.
For some time I have suspected that the greatest magicians of modern times may be the novelists, film makers and musicians who display their magical results in their art, and don’t necessarily advertise the fact that they use magic to attain visionary states.
Wind´s last [type] ..PKD’s Blueprint for Novels
Fu-uhhh-ck!
Moore is a monster. Talk about razing the citadel to the ground. He grabbed me with the second sentence, “…off mapping some unfalsifiable and thus completely valueless new universe,” and pinned me for the duration. For an artist, he has a pretty damn good understanding of how science happens.
I am currently undergoing a personal renaissance in magick and art (hell, science along with ‘em). This ideas in this essay are…well, fucking exactly what I’ve been exploring/ looking for. Thanks so much for pointing it out.
As a gift, since I can see your post is over a year old and Moore’s essay is 9 years old, here’s some words from Willie Nelson’s book “The Tao of Willie”:
“At this moment, my best is going toward getting these words right. It’s a nice coincidence that this moment of mine is coinciding with a moment in your life when you read them.Here we are – connected across time and space by the thoughts we share.And that is a thought that brings a smile to my face.How about you? I’m going to carry that smile with me until I stumble across the next one,and I hope you do the same. Connections to those around you,to the world around us all,and to the universe that stretches into the great beyond are the things that define us.”
cheers,
roh’nin