theMeansofInformation

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6th-Aug-2007 01:29 pm - on the making of Lost Girls

	http://www.sextelevision.net/videoplayer/?segmentID=538&n=1 a video interview of the quite wizard-ish looking Alan Moore regarding his Lost Girls graphic novel, which vividly recounts Dorothy (Oz), Alice (Wonderland) and Wendy's (Never Never Land) scandalously taboo erotic adventures. Tags:alan moore
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16th-Jul-2007 11:54 am - neurocomix

http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=647

a discussion about contemporary esoteric comic books, namely Leary's Neurocomics and Moore's Promethea. along with the discussion, there are torrent links to both complete works.

This work, while in black and white, was years ahead of the modern pop art comic of the time. The black and white line drawings and illustrations are easy to digest and allowed the amazing depth of information Dr. Leary had synthesized to be delivered in 33 pages of psychedelic imagery and concise language. Other than Timothy Leary, the creative talent involved included Pete Von Sholly, Tim Kummero, S. Riley, L. Ochi, B. Clark, and George DiCaprio. (George DiCaprio is, of course, the father of film star Leonardo, who just happens to be scheduled to play Dr. Leary in an upcoming pic. It all fits together in an acid sort of way.)

Anyway, as I was reading this work, I was struck by how similar the work is to that of Alan Moore, specifically Promethea. Not simply the psychedelic nature of the work, but the way in which both of these works were about the underlying philosophical and metaphysical beliefs of the authors, and both presented in the most holistic way possible. They’re more like modern alchemical texts, grimoires for the psychonaut, without the layers of metaphor that Mike Carey might throw in or the allegories Chris Claremont developed to spread occultic ideas through more mainstream comics.

Promethea is a survey and summation of western occultism through a very self-conscious and post-modern lens, and the techniques that Alan Moore and the artists he works with throughout the Promethea run appear in somewhat abbreviated form in Neurocomics, but they are there. I would not be surprised if Mr. Moore was at least aware of this particular work, as the delivery of highly symbolic and succinct chunks of information in Promethea and the delivery of psychological models through astrological contexts are remarkably similar. But where the 8 stages of evolution and the astrological model of personality types are condensed into a few short pages in Neurocomics, Alan Moore tackles the whole foundation of the occult tradition of the West.

Tags:alan moore, timothy leary

15th-May-2007 11:20 am - on the spiritual descendents of the gnostic shamanic tradition

http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1815

comic creator Alan Moore gives an interview on the relationship between art and magic, among other things. i concur with the ideas in this passage 100% [via].

Magic is a language but perhaps a better analogy is to say: Each religion is a language, and magic is linguistics. In the sense that, if you are a linguist, there’s no such thing as a “false language.” It’s not like, “Oh yeah French is real, but Russian is not a real language.” So if you’re a magician, you have to accept ALL of those religions as being…they’re all true languages! So, you get a different array of concepts, a different worldview in each of the religions. To some degree I take the quantum position that ALL of them are right, in a sense. In order to see truth, you have to consider a lot of different possible positions and hold them all to be true in some mysterious way. Magic, in this sense, is moving between those different positions, studying them, seeing what information there is to be gleaned from each of them, seeing how they connect up. How, for example, a story in the New Testament of the Bible seems to connect up with an ancient Egyptian legend from the Parari Anu. And how this in turn relates to one of the Tarot cards. Which gives it a certain position on the Tree of Life in the Kabbalah. And you follow through these chains of ideas. You do that long enough, you start to get a different set of synaptic connections in your brain, different pathways. And you start to see things in a different way. You start to put things together differently.

Faith is for sissies who daren’t go and look for themselves. That’s my basic position. Magic is based upon gnosis. Direct knowledge. It’s a kind of “I’m from Missouri. Show me” approach, if you like. I think that gnosis it’s probably the original form of spirituality in mankind. If you look back at the old Gnostic religions that proceeded Christianity, what they depended on was direct knowledge of the Mysteries, or the ideas being talked about. If you look at the early Christians, the people that were allegedly around Jesus, then you can’t get much gnostic than St. Thomas. He has to stick his hand in the wound before he was convinced! Or you’ve got the Essenes, with John the Baptist – they were certainly gnostics. Back then, everybody formed their own relationship to the godhead, which was seen as being inside them, as much as anything.

This is true of the old shamanic religions, that were the forebears of all kind of spiritual and religious thinking. The shaman didn’t so much act as a middleman between people and the gods; he showed them how to get there. He told them how to make their own journeys into the Underworld. I get the impression that the shaman in an ancient tribe would have had the same sort of position as a plumber or an electrician. A plumber is a guy who just knows about plumbing and doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty when he’s unblocking your S-bend or whatever. A shaman is a guy who knows about traveling to the spirit world and doesn’t mind vomiting because he’s taking poisonous drugs, or getting the horrors of going to hell. It’s a community thing.

The later idea of magic, which probably sprung up when people started burning witches and magicians, when it became dangerous to be a magician. Which would probably have been around the ooo, what, the 3rd century, 4th century? When Christian mobs started putting Gnostics and hermetic scholars to death, Around that time there were Christian mobs that were putting to death hermetic scholars like Hypatea. We mention her in the first issue of Promethea. She was real. She was, I think, skinned alive by Christians. And so at that point, this is where you start to get the thing of secrecy and magic, which carries on from that point up to the present day. “If you’re a magician, don’t tell anybody. Don’t tell them and don’t tell them any of the visions you’ve had or give them any of the information that you struggled so long to accrue. Keep it to yourself." And that seems very elitist to me. I’d rather disseminate any information I’m getting by one of the means that are open to me. And I’m lucky in that I have several quite excellent means to disseminate information that are open to me. Comic books, CDs, things like that.

Tags:alan moore, art, gnosticism, hermeticism, magic, shamanism

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