Discover the pearls of wisdom from one of the greatest living writers.
For my 40th birthday, I bought a cake. Alan Moore threw an initiation party with all his friends and declared himself a magician.
His friends thought he was crazy (so did I).
How could the writer of V for Vendetta, John Constantine, Watchmen, the creator of my childhood heroes, have publicly declared that he was some sorcerer?
I went looking for answers and found an interview he did on YouTube.
In the interview, he said something that made my hair stand on end, “You have to be very careful what you say because if you certainly declare yourself to be a magician without any knowledge of what that entails, then one day you are likely to wake up and discover that that is what exactly what you are.”
It scared me, but I couldn’t stop researching.
I found an essay he wrote on magic entitled Fossil Angels, and it blew my mind.
Alan Moore was a magician. And probably so was I.
His theory made a lot of sense. So let me share three pearls I found reading that grimoire of modern magic called Fossil Angels.
On what it’s magic
“Magic is not science or religion. Magic is art. It is easy to imagine that music, performance, painting, singing, dancing, poetry and pantomime all come from the repertoire of magic tricks used by the shaman to transform minds.”— Alan Moore.
In the global village, shamans still exist. And their spells are pieces of art so powerful they can inspire generations and transform the world.
Art is the new alchemy. And it comes in different formats.
- Literature: The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (These books have transformed the world, inspiring people like Elon Musk.)
- Music: Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart (You only have to listen to the Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, or Pink Floyd to realize that they are not just musicians; they are shamans of this globalized and modern tribe we call humanity).
- Cinema: Matrix, Avatar, Back to the Future, Shindler’s List, Star Wars, Jurassic Park (today’s world could not be understood without the films of the Wachowski brothers, Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Hitchcock, Tarantino, Steven Spielberg or George Lucas).
The same goes for comic books; what would the world be without its Marvel superheroes?
That’s why artists are called content creators. Because they create, they create new realities from nothing, from the dimension of ideas.
On the power of magic
“The power of art is immediate, irrefutable and immense. It stirs the conscience ostensibly, both of the artist and of his audience. It can change the lives of men and thereby change history and society itself. It can inspire us to work prodigies or to commit horrors.” — Alan Moore
Art is the most powerful of magics. It can inspire hearts and feed souls with low passions or the noblest desires.
Art is also the way we understand what consciousness is: what our human frailty is.
As Alan Moore says, “Art represents our most convincing proof of the existence of other states and planes of being.”
You use it daily to motivate yourself when you watch Rocky III or self-torturing yourself by listening on loop to your Spotify playlist, “Bitter Songs to Cry About on Hangover Sundays.”
Politicians use art to get you to vote for them, private companies to get you to buy their products, and anyone who wants to seduce you with romantic intentions 🙂
Art is influential. The word is art. And this becomes very clear when you realize that spells are nothing more than poetry with catchy rhymes 🙂
Think of Christmas carols; they are magical “Right?”
Art changes our mood and can motivate us to do X or Y things. So it’s something authentic.
On the use of magic
“Art may not make the broom of straw strands come to life and multiply and go around cleaning your floor. But just conceiving that image must have already earned Walt Disney enough money to pay someone to do those same tasks for him.” — Alan Moore
Art can make you rich. That’s a fact. But as Spiderman’s uncle once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Art can inspire outstanding achievement or behavior that is anything but positive.
We see it in any artistic discipline: some books have harmed the world significantly, and music has incited substance abuse. Artists have a moral responsibility for their work, like engineers or teachers.
And the absence of this morality turns you into what I call a black magician. Someone who only wants to profit from his art, even if his art makes the world worse.
White magicians, on the other hand, are those artists who want to inspire us with their light.
After reading this essay by Alan Moore, I asked myself, “What kind of artist/magician am I?” And the following answer came to my mind like a dove delivering a message from an unknown world.
I write for those who get dirty, for the forgotten. I write for the expendable. I write for those not remembered in this life or the next, those who will find nothing but lint in their pockets when Charon wants to charge them a coin for the boat trip to Hades. I write for the man, and the woman that becomes a verb. The verb “to be born,” the verb “to work,” the verb “to suffer,” and the verb “to die.” I write for the unhappy, for the outcasts, for the banished. I write for the unrequited lovers. For the used and recycled, and for those who put the coffee in Starbucks. For those who prepare meals at McDonalds. For those who care for the parents of people with no time (or without desire). For the parts of the world’s assembly line and their children: the spare parts. I write for the damned, for the fiery souls who live the hells that hold the paradises of others. I write for you, the one who carries the cross in silence. For you, beautiful angel. For you, the light of the world.
And you… How do you use your magic?
A virtual hug
AG