Oddcast episode
June 20, 2025
Alan Moore on Magic
‘I don’t think it’s a matter of what magic can do for us; I think it’s a matter of what we might do for magic.’
A House with Many Rooms Interview 4
We are truly delighted to speak with Alan Moore on the subject of magic. This interview is a doozy. We discuss the publication of The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic (a collaboration between Alan and Steve Moore), perhaps the world’s first boy’s-own, practical grimoire. We also discuss magic and politics, magic and money, magic and technology, magic and deception, magic and art, and the Neopythagoreanism of Alexander of Abonuteichos, with a few matters in-between.
Interview Bio:
Alan Moore is a writer and magician. His most recent major work, with Steve Moore, is The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic (pictured above). Other than that, he has published widely and with tremendous creative audacity in such media as comics, full-length fiction-books, ‘zines, and more besides. Alan is an official inductee into the Living National Treasures of Britain Register (because I said so) and reigning Outer Head of the Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, an initiatory order of which you, gentle reader, may or may not yourself be a member.
Works Cited in this Episode:
A. Moore and E. Campbell, From Hell: Being a Melodrama in Sixteen Parts. Paddington, Australia: Eddie Campbell Comics, 1999.
A. Moore and S. Moore, The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic. London/Sherman Oaks, CA: Knockabout Press/Top Shelf, 2024.
Themes
Alan Moore, Alchemy, Austin Osman Spare, Chaos Magic, Glycon, House with Many Rooms, Illusion, Imagination, Initiation, Interview, John Dee, Magic, Neopythagoreanism, Shamanism, Spiritual Alchemy, Statues
Ian Wright
June 20, 2025
Beyond excited to listen to this!
Liam Harte
June 20, 2025
What an impressive “get” for the SHWEP! And Alan Moore was predictably wonderful as an interviewee. But I was left with a question: If, as he says, magic primarily transforms individuals internally, and only that way can change the external world, is it significantly different from other things that, arguably, pull off the same—dare I say it—trick? Religions, philosophies, or political ideologies spring to mind as examples; but such a view of magic might even be compared to the “rewiring” of the human mind that, Mr Moore also says, new technologies have wrought over the millennia. In this respect, just what distinguishes the Bolshevik from the Tungus shaman or the online influencer? If the interview dealt with this, I haven’t yet picked up on it, so perhaps someone who has could point me towards the relevant passage.
Jeff Anderson
June 20, 2025
Long Light on the solstice, indeed!
Ian Wright
June 21, 2025
Another fantastic episode. Thank you!
Moore’s essay, “Fossil Angels”, is hilarious and astute, and I recommended it for anyone who wants to dig deeper into his views on magic. https://fratersef.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/fossil-angels.pdf
Arguably, Moore is one of the foremost modern magicians, in the sense of having the power to manifest his imagination in reality. Just off the top of my head: think of all the “V for Vendetta” masks that people have adopted as a symbol of rebellion.
I get the impression that, for Moore, magic is a ultimately imagination (and, as he says, that’s more than sufficient) but that, perhaps, for you that’s insufficient and magic must be more than that?
The discussion on money as a form of magic is extremely important, and rarely discussed. It’s not merely rhetoric or analogy. E.g., Marx, in his famous chapter on “commodity fetishism” in volume 1 of Capital, proposes that market relations, mediated by money, imbue inanimate things (commodities) with magical, animate properties (that of having economic value) despite “not an atom” of value to be found within the physical body of the commodities (as he says, this is “spectral” or “ghostly”). A modern form of ancient statue animation. You might like this essay that riffs of Marx’s mention of Victorian table-turning to explain economic value:
https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2024/02/10/marx-faraday-and-the-spectral-objectivity-of-value-in-cosmonaut-magazine/
I was a bit nonplussed by the claim that Bolsheviks threw Shamans out of helicopters in the 20s when helicopters weren’t invented until the ~40s.
Thanks! Love your podcast!
Earl Fontainelle
June 23, 2025
Yeah, okay about the helicopters; I probably dated this one wrongly, but anyway, as I said in the interview, it might not be a real historical circumstance anyway, just one of those things you read about when ‘shamanism’ gets mentioned.
Thanks for the interesting links!