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Author Topic: Moore evidence for the death of occultism  (Read 9002 times)

PetitAlbert

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Re: Moore evidence for the death of occultism
« Reply #15 on: October 03, 2015, 01:55:50 pm »
Quote from: Jabberwocky;43384
A free copy of the article (reposted with Moore's permission) is here.  And yes, I think there's at least an element of Conner going "look everyone, Alan Moore vaguely said some of the same things that I think and that makes me really cool and clever and girls should sleep with me!"

Couple of bits of background to this that may be useful if people are unaware of them.  

1.  Alan Moore worships the snake god, Glycon and has done for years.  This is despite the fact Glycon is almost certainly a fraud; quite possibly a hand puppet.  Moore cheerfully admits all of these, which makes it a bit silly for Conner to be putting him up as a poster child for some kind of ultra-serious return to ceremonial magick.

2.  This article should be seen in the wider context of the long-standing feud between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.  There's a couple of points in the article that I'm pretty sure are Alan having a crafty dig at Grant.  I don't begrudge him that, frankly, most of the insults have been coming the other way over the years.  Grant has never quite forgiven Alan for being a better comics writer than him.

Some thoughts on the article itself.

I think Moore has got a point about how occultism has no relevance to humanity as a whole at the moment. However, I don't think he's as good at coming up with a viable solution to that.

This made me laugh heartily:



I'm all in favour of taking potshots at some of occultism's sacred cows.  Because, actually, while there is a hell of a lot of value in cuddly Uncle Al's work, you can't deny he was an incorrigible self-publicist.  As well as being an utter cock to those closest to him.

Moore's call for a scorched earth policy is overly dramatic, but I suspect it's as much polemic as it is literal.

He's got a point about people using magick for things that would be better solved by non-magickal means.  I'm sure a lot of us have come across people wanting love/lust spells where what they actually need is to work on their confidence.  Or possibly bathe more often.  But this is where I disagree with him strongly.  I think other people are quite right to point out the privilege of this position.  Independently wealthy occultists aren't going to do money spells, but that's not because they're 'deeper'.  Also, I think he's inconsistent.  If you want occultism to become relevant again, the worst thing you can do is abandon everyday life for a 'higher' approach.  It turns the occultist into someone apart from society, not a part of it.  I don't want to see more magicians.  I want to see more dilettantes.  

I agree totally that science is not applicable to the practise of magick.  It's not that the two are contradictory, it's that they don't cover the same area.  There's not one of us that could categorically prove our belief system in laboratory conditions.

I do think that Moore falls into "Art and Literature is better than Science!" stuff.  I lean that way myself, but I'm aware that's "person thinks their field is cooler than people who lean towards a different field".  And I'm not convinced Moore is.  That's an old rivalry, played out in universities across the world every day.  And, at the end of the day, it's all a bit silly, even if I enjoy it.

All in all though, I think it's a good article and the review really doesn't do it credit.  There's loads in it to disagree with, but I'd rather we had people putting opinions like this out there to be argued over and doing so strongly.  Better that then the "you cannot be critical of anything within occultism because if you do you are a big meanie and we are one big happy coca-cola advert" that permeates far too much discussion nowadays.

 
Thank you for this - it's good to know more background :) Interesting topic.
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Emma Eldritch

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Re: Moore evidence for the death of occultism
« Reply #16 on: October 04, 2015, 01:17:15 am »
Quote from: Jabberwocky;43384
And yes, I think there's at least an element of Conner going "look everyone, Alan Moore vaguely said some of the same things that I think and that makes me really cool and clever and girls should sleep with me!"

 
Welp. Choked on my wine.

And thank you for posting the article. I am fond of Moore if only because he seems to hate literally fucking everything, and it was good to read it even if I don't agree with him entirely. As usual.

I did like the phrase "sorcerous karaoke" quite a bit, though.

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