alan moore on magic

[Insaneagram]

hmm, see I think everything comes from something, ideas are inspired by something else etc. Cause and effect...

[alexandrepiedade]

@Insaneagram That's like saying the wind produces effects on water, therefore water originates in wind. "Cause and effect" is not a good system to contain Ideas.

[Insaneagram]

@alexandrepiedade I probably didn't word what I said right at all... But I essentially mean, that ideas are inspired form something else, based off something else. They never just occur, uniquely, I mean look at everything, it's always similar to something and people's idea's are influenced by their life, and other's lives.

[rayblack2004]

magic is also a sexual fetish

[GavinS1965]

Its quite amazing how you can make stuff from whats around you.What you do with that stuff is another matter.

[dekippiesip]

I don't agree with his definition of magic. I would consider magic as an event that contradicts the laws of physics, not a creation that came into being in a way that is consistent with the laws of physics. If you see magic as any creation, magic is very widespread and scientiffically explainable. The word magic would be worth less if you define it in this way. So I think there is no real magic according to the definition I gave.

[aneeley]

@dekippiesip magic never violates laws of nature. not possible. when Einstein spontaneously conceived of the theory of relativity, that's the kind of magic Moore is talking about. Magick is about consciousness connecting with the transcendent and bringing that insight down unto the physical plane. magick isn't just any creation--it must be a full creation, from idea to form to materialization. In 99% of contexts, scribbling on a paper is not art. Because there's no idea or form.

[gusanotaylor]

Paging Robert Plant. Paging Robert Plant. Malkovich, Malkowitch, Malkovitch. Stanley Kubrick coming through. Stanley Kubrick I see you. Jerry Garcia can you hear me? Roger Waters do you revere me? Thank you Jesus.

[judy3437]

Some art historians are even talking about the viewer's interaction with the artwork being most important. So sadly Alan Moore, should really stop using a piece of art as an example as it's idea is evolved from the artist, the artist's society, and how audiences now, and in the past, interpreted it. An artwork's meaning evolves. Basically Alan Moore is wrong. On this account at least.

[judy3437]

Art history nerd here, Moore interestingly talked about a work of art being created by an idea. He reminds me so much of Bellori and that school's focus on the artist being sole creator of an artwork. However I think more art historians now discuss artwork in relation to the artist and the artist's society, Clarke's arguments for socio-historical analysis for example. Artworks are created by the artist, but that artist is influenced by their context.

[binarynightmare]

Fuck it, Alan Moore should rule the world.

[kungfuhustler84]

demonstrably

[connerjd]

If there really is magic, I don't believe it is the supernatural kind or whatever.

[c225b]

Alan Moore: Somehow both mad as a hatter, and the sanest man in the world today.

[fallingrateofprofit]

ideas formed from the correlation of past experience?

[binarynightmare]

@fallingrateofprofit

Sometimes, but not always. Like an idea popping into your head from no reasonable source. The bulk of the idea, at least. Not necessarily the whole thing.

[JasonDamisch]

There is very little real magic in the modern world. There is almost no healing magic. Civilization, as one of it's functions, the destruction of healing magic. That makes us all more controllable. Magic has something to do with the imagination. We all get our imagination from the system, from television and the state educational system. Alan Moore, I distrust you as I distrust anyone who has been allowed to inform me.

[Samuelthemule]

@JasonDamisch very good, do you trust anyone though?

please share :)



[boomptyboompty]

@JasonDamisch

you poor guy, there's no reason to waste your life being so suspicous of others. We can only ever learn from each other.

Its also a shame that you believe your imagination is a construct created by 3rd parties, it seems to me with the statement you've just told the world that your imagination is ticking along quite nicely on its own.

[SirWinstonChurchill]

@JasonDamisch

Nature is pure war with every man against another. Fear of death is the only way to keep the peace, so man is civilized by the threat of violence against him for transgressions upon his neighbor.

Nature does not care. Nature does not need human permission. Nature is the only eternal victor. Nature kills everything.

Human dissatisfaction with mortality drives the ignorant to reach out for an eternal ideal and "magic." (or magick)

Moore will surely die like the rest of us.

[LEOSAYSAYS]

@SirWinstonChurchill Nature doesn't intend to kill? it doesn't set out conciously to make everything shit. If that was the case why is it possible that we are even in existance. There is no war between man and nature or man and man, least not in the sense you describe.

[SirWinstonChurchill]

@LEOSAYSAYS

Everything dies. There is no eternal life. There is no eternal earth... Nature kills everything... Nature is chaos... Nature is war...

Darkness exists independently of all else in the universe. Without darkness, there is no light and no time. Within the darkness is chaos, which is also nature, matter, antimatter and motion, which is also time.

Everything is in motion except for darkness, because darkness exists with or without anything else and in all places it seems to be.

[LEOSAYSAYS]

@SirWinstonChurchill What I am saying is that nature doesn't conciously set out to kill, it may well do, but it also creates in the same way it "kills". On the subject of matter and energy then yes eternal Earth and life does exist because the matter of what was will be recycled for something else eventually. You haven't reached the ultimate conclusion for everyone, youve chosen that conclusion for yourself. Which is fine, but it doesn't necessarily apply beyond your own personal dogmas.

[phishwithextracheese]

I created poop. Tada!

[scag15]

Save the magic.

[natmanprime]

If you choose to see the universe as chaotic, then you can logically accept the notion of your own being, rationalising the irrational chaos that goes on forever.

If you see the universe as the absolute/quantum vacuum that goes on forever, then you logically undermine your own being.

Either are 100% true, but cannot be part of the same reality, they directly imply, define, or counterbalance, each other.

Your choice employs magical thinking: just decide and it is so.

It all hangs in the balance!

[natmanprime]

majic is at the edge of perception.

The issue is what you consider 'something' and what you consider 'nothing'.

'nothing' is just something that's beyond your perception, like atoms in the air, etc.

space is subatomic chaos.

chaos is what's beyond one's understanding.

the quantum vacuum is the absolute, the counterbalance to chaos, directly implying.

Given that 'something' and 'nothing' are a matter of perception, the subjective point at which something is brought into being from chaos is magic.

[SaintHierophant]

WOW Alan Moore is stupid.

[enjoypolydor]

You are incorrect

[ValentineDelatour]

Read Watchmen first. We'll talk of that after.

[baysidekidd]

haha Allan Moore is amazing.

[zzzyax]

He is clearly stoned :P

[Sinthetic1230]

@zzzyax

Impossible, his beard would not allow it.

[retrodarth]

Just ask to spanish civil war anarchists veterans about their feelings to U.S.S.R., Stalin and dogmatic marxists...

[retrodarth]

Buenaventura Durruti was killed by the stalinist intelligence and that kind of socialist regimen was a totalitarian regimen just as a fascist regimen is.

[retrodarth]

We the anarchists with historical memory know about all the rethoric methods of the "democratic" republics and their lefts and rights, whom just wants to mantain the political and economical control no matter the cost: breaking human rigths.- work, education, security, etc.

[raunchbear]

I love the people you can find when watching crazy videos on Youtube. Yesterday, I found a guy who believes North Korea is a paradise. Another time I found a guy who spends all his free time covertly filming women's feet.

[kid29a]

creativity he's talking about is not creating something from nothing - it's just changing what already is, mixing, putting in other context and so on.

magic is like:

- how did you do it? it's great

- i don't know... magic

which means - i don't know - i can't reproduce the result because I've got no idea how it happened (lost of so called inspiration).

it would be better to know and calling it magic really doesn't make it easier

I do like to disagree with people :P

[natmanprime]

i was gonna type that but you beat me to it

you are quite right

Alan is wrong

[DrCruel]

The anarchists I saw in DC were suited up, and were preparing to trash local shops later that evening. They were (of course) being sheltered by, and talking amicably with, Bolshevik ISO organisers of the ANSWER protest group there.

But you know better, of course, because of your enthusiastic swearing.

Did I mention that many anarchists I've met also tend to be accomplished liars? Wouldn't want to leave that out.

[DrCruel]

Liked the movie, hated the comic. For similar reasons to why Moore loved his comic and hated the movie adaptation. The sequence I have up is a perfect example - that film clip is well above and beyond what the comic itself presents.

I dunno. Maybe I finally got sick of listening to this Leftist nutter's prattle after almost thirty-odd years of it. Maybe the sudden renewed interest has pushed my ire over the limit. Don't see how this is "lame", but you're entitled to your own opinion.

[retrodarth]

An anarchist is never a leftist you mofo!

we don´t see left or right but over and below. ASSHOLE DR CUNT

[wid85]

From a historical perspective this is incorrect. The idea that anarchists are anything other than hard left is very new, probably no more than 30 years old, and as a popular idea much, much younger. Anarchists and other socialists have always worked together and the mainstream of anarchism now is still strongly leftist in affiliation the world over.

[retrodarth]

Just ask to spanish civil war anarchists veterans about their feelings to U.S.S.R., Stalin and dogmatic marxists... Buenaventura Durruti was killed by the stalinist intelligence and that kind of socialist regimen was a totalitarian regimen just as a facist regimen.

[wid85]

Stalin and his followers were called, at the time, the right wing of the Bolshevic party. Left Marxism is an old term to refer to those followers of Marx, like Rosa Luxemburg, who remained politically leftist whilst still being communists. These are the traditional allies of the anarchists, as organisations wuch as the IWW demonstrate.

[Jcolinsol]

Well, Anarchy is akin to science, to Darwin's evolution, to emergence theory, it is the way the world functions, the way biology evolved over time.

Liberalism and conservatism are an illusion, they are the result of the chemical composition of the brain.

In the absence of the state there will be liberals and there will be conservatives, and they will both pursue their own interests.

To suggest that liberty is one ideology or another is impotent dogmatism.

[DrCruel]

I throw rocks at Alan Moore's feeble world.

[StevenErnest]

Were you born lame, or do you have to work at it?

[StevenErnest]

But I see you have a scene from Watchmen on your channel, so perhaps I misunderstood you?

[thecomposer1962]

Alan Moore ROCKS YOUR FEEBLE WORLD.

[falsedeal]

I think i generally like this guy and his character, but he provides no argument for his claim that a thought comes from nothing.

[earthheavenharmonics]

Then where does it come from? 

If not the dark nothingness of a transdimensional vacuum ... then where?

Experience?

Where does experience come from - birth?

Who designed the human seed?

What created the planet?

What created the big bang?

Where did that energy come from?

"no-thing"

[Billcot1]

did the big bang really happen, or is that just the most logical explanation we can currently come up with, with our feeble unevolved human minds? Maybe the universe is constructed in such a way it is much to complex and possibly even contradictory to our current perception of reality the we can't even comprehend the truth at this stage in our evolution.

[13thfloor18]

Yes I agree. Us being here is a mystery

that we cannot even begin to comprehend unless we realise that we need to experience all that there is and say what we feel of it. No passivity or blind choice in idealogies and prescribed destinies but a world of vision and individual freedom in which we can fathom the dark mines of hell and the golden valleys of highest heaven and bring back what we learn along the way.

To move us towards a greater understanding of human experience and the imagination.

[karlschultz87]

the origins of ideas can be traced

[blind51de]

A pint IS a magical act, isn't it?

[quitejaded]

He is right. By definition of magic, making your thoughts and desires a reality is technically... MAGIC! :D

[duncan36]

Magic splits things up. Its kind of the weak way forward. Theres a better way.

[thecomposer1962]

I have identified several instances of Occult symbolism in 'Watchmen'.

Google WATCHMEN UNMASKED.

[StevenErnest]

Would you care to give a couple examples? Sounds interesting.

[thecomposer1962]

Google WATCHMEN UNMASKED!

I'll give plenty.

[nofix3]

most if not all of his work is loaded with occult symbolism. he's an occultist, that's nothing new.

[thecomposer1962]

Well, you've obviously read him, you're really not who I am addressing. Did you see that awful Watchmen movie ?

Moloch, Pandemonium and The Spear are all completely excised from it.

Just trying to hep up the kidz who don't get what the Squid is.

[StevenErnest]

Imho, I think you should give the Watchmen movie a second chance. I'm a big fan of the comic, and I don't think a better version could realistically be done.

Moloch was in it, played by Matt Frewer/Max Headroom.

Of course things had to be cut for a movie version. A mini-series, 3 part movie would have been great, but was not financially feasible.

I have a few nitpicks of course, but I thought it was wonderful.

[TheBiggestWolf]

We are creative beings, its our nature! Religion takes this away, thus most mainstream religions are not natural.

[AnarchistCommunity]

well no religion is really natural, its man made thus cannot be natural.

[KosmicCitizen]

There is no such thing as an "unnatural" act. The whole natural/supernatural divide is also daffy.

[JSBlanch77]

Religion is nothing more of an outward projection of the human dualistic mind and the ego's attempt to disect the self and understand it while prisoned in our unenlightened state of being. The kingdom is within. Peace.

[ilovethepighat]

Religion is mostly a set of practices where people get together and compare clothes.

[timetochilli]

thanks george carlin!

[RossKilgariff]

Are man not of nature?

[WearWolfeAssassin]

Not if you are a christian.

[1640george]

HE LOOKS LIKE ROB ZOMBIE

[Michael1984360]

Eat shite and die

[Michael1984360]

Celtic 4 Hamilton Accies 0

I hate Hamilton Accies (rhyming slang)

[Eldritchard]

WTF is that to do with anything, away an take a fuck tae yersel

[MrWednesday101]

Don't use my football team in the same line as your racism you scum.

[brainshiver81]

i some times go to a place in wales they call it the farm but its not a farm in the sense of animals running around every where its a kind of retreat for hippys,he owns the land and property there,i would go there to see friends who live on the farm and would pick magic mushrooms from the hills that surround the place.he also lives just up the road from me.

[wordforge]

I really admire Mr Moore's work. Does anyone on here know him personally?

[mayreal13]

the bible says magic is not good. to not listen to astrolgy, or alchemy..because whatever is created ...not in the truth is a lie.

[RnFR4L]

shut up and go read the bible.

[elioraceit]

booooring.

why are you even here?

[Marinkorpse]

Respect others opinions, I read the Bible and I do magic. I don't buy anything from the Christian, just another solar cult in my opinion. Watch Zeitgeist my friend

[FuttBucker667]

Zeitgeist is bullshit, watching it is really just a waste of time.

[riotone38]

The bible reads like a book of magic. If your God wanted us to obey certain guidelines, it would read like a law book. So loosen up.

What Bible do you want him to read anyway? There are variations. "the" doesn't point him in any particular direction.

[KazuoKiriyama666]

I can imagine that he is. Just by watching his interviews, he comes across very positively to me.

[rufeelinme1234]

no substance... utter gibberish

[Eldritchard]

plenty substance to those who can think outside the box. gibberish to the unitiated maybe, but not likey..........

[captainjackie]

I wish he was my grandpa

[wookie72]

Apparently he's a real sweetheart in person.

[comicbookspotlight]

yeah. he's probably really cool.

[Taors]

I love Alan Moore!

[Khenghis]

Magic is simply what you choose to make of it;

'in the space of the mind is the place of no fear'.

[guygaunt]

I think that Alan Moore is explain a very complex spiritual idea about the Word becoming reality in a vry simplistic fashion. This ties fully in with qabalistic thought.

[StevenErnest]

Alan Moore turned me on to mysticism with the long interview in Arthur magazine in 2003, "Magic Is Afoot."

Thanks for uploading this!!! ^_^

[darkviewman]

magic ;-)

[yoyoinfl]

Have you noticed a lot of magic influenced writers in comics? Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, etc. Any thoughts on why this might be?

[wookie72]

I think it's most likely because they are all from Great Britain (Morrison is from Scotland, the other two are from England). In Great Britain, fantasy literature and comic books are much more tied up with faerie stories than they are in North America. Plus, Gaiman and Moore know each other personally.

[KazuoKiriyama666]

Don't forget about Warren Ellis. Moore and Ellis are good friends too.

[wookie72]

Didn't know that, but I'm not surprised. Of course, some would argue that they're all barking mad.

[wookie72]

Not that there's anything wrong with being barking mad, of course.

[wookie72]

He sounds a heck of a lot like Steve Coogan as Tommy Saxondale, and I checked on wiki and both Moore and the Saxondale character are from the East Midlands... wild!

[drunkdonutboy]

Man, this guy speaks to me.

[forwardmarch]

He's a great writer! As far as the magic stuff goes, he's just repeating the same ideas, but it's very cool he's doing it on such a massive scale and is not afraid to look "ignorant" to the ignorant. All anyone has to do is TRY magic, to see that it works. A Qabalistic pathworking, for instance. The fact that it is REAL is why people don't care if they're disbelieved. The smartest men have always been into magic.

[CHARROMISTERIO]

Alan Moore is a True Master Storyteller.

Watchmen, V of Vendetta, Swamp Thing, The Killing Joke..

The True Founder of Mature Reading Comics..

Al Moore is a Living Legend!

[Vampirith]

If some one can call Alan Moore and Idiot, then he should fill the rest of in on how the world really works.

[psnapplebee]

No, he's not.

Alan Moore is experimenting with different lenses of perception. He is an obvious polymath, a creative juggernaut, and you are an unimaginative fool.

[billycarr]

the man is a genius

[theheathyfella]

Probably the most talent writer working in any media today.

[DarkAlewhiskers]

This man is not an idiot...I think the word you're looking for is 'amazing' as he is one, if not the greatist comic writers of his generation and probably has more spectaculer thoughts every few minutes than some people have in a whole lifetime.

[apocalogy1]

how can such a talented person be so ignorant... my heart aches...

[a4u7g1e]

probably angina

[psnapplebee]

Alan Moore is not ignorant. Have you read his interviews? You are a fool. Please educate yourself further.

[danielamin]

I may disagree with him at some points, but one thing he is NOT is an idiot.