"He has one thing you haven't got: a great big bushy beard!"

Alan Moore: most people know him as the comics writer who gave the world the likes of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and From Hell, some of the most popular and influential titles in the medium. He is the mind behind the character John Constantine, a working class magician and power junkie who is worlds more interesting on the page than Keanu Reeves could possibly make him on the big screen, of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer fame. Few are also aware, though, that Moore himself is intimately familiar with the workings of magic.

Luckily for all, YouTube has yielded this fascinating if brief interview conducted by comedian Stewart Lee:



Alan Moore also provides this great, very sensible explanation of how he perceives magic, as well as the difference between magic and the sort of unrefined madness that could land you with a full-time membership at the Rubber Room Club, in this interview:

Another way of looking at this is to say that every human being has their window onto the world, the window of their senses. You've got your mind and your senses. Your perceptions. That is your window onto the world. Now just as we look out the windows of our rooms and houses and Yeah we can't see the whole of reality outside. We can see the houses across the street, a bit of sky above them, whatever. We understand that there is a much wider world out there, but we can only see this little bit of it. Now, using this metaphorical window, a magician is trying to, perhaps, change the angle of elevation of the window. Or widen it. But change what that window can look at. At will. He's trying to tilt the window so it'll see higher realms, or lower ones. That's a magician. What's happened to a lunatic is that their window has been kicked in. So: they've both got the same flood of perceptions rushing in, but the magician has got a framework into which to fit those perceptions. The magician has got a little filing system called "Magic," in which he can put these various things into the drawers of it, and not be overwhelmed by them. The schizophrenic has just got cats with human faces talking to him, and strange shapes floating around the room, and voices in their heads and no idea where they’re coming from. That’s the difference between madness and magic.

Now to some degree, by its very definition, magic has to be kind of transrational. You have to go beyond the rational to take your first step in magic. So, they're both talking about the same territory. You have to be mad to be a magician, but you have to be mad in a controlled way. You have to be...deliberately mad. It's no good going crazy by accident! By then it'll be too late. Go crazy on purpose, in a controlled way, and you might find that you're getting somewhere.

And just for kicks, have a Something Positive comic featuring Moore.


Photos courtesy of Comic Vine.