‘Dualities’? No. There are no dualities. Only symmetries.” Writes Grant Morrison in Final Crisis: Superman Beyond.

In previous episodes, we have covered Chaos Magick, sigils and Spare’s theory of “sigilisation”.
Now we can venture to wonder, can you create a hyper Sigil that wills your imagined scenarios into existence through your art… and more specifically a comic book?

Welcome to an episode on occult symbols in comics through the works of Grant Morrison, the one who thinks that life plus significance equals Magic.

Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University Lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Paganism, Esotericism, Shamanism and all things occult.

As you know, the content on my channel is based on peer-reviewed, academic scholarship and, unfortunately, there isn’t a lot on the topic yet. We still do have a fascinating chapter by Kennet Granholm on the Occult and Comics, that will be the source of today’s episode.

As Granholm explains, Magic has always played a role in comic books. Even before the advent of superheroes, you have characters like Mandrake, in full stage magician attire, or Captain Marvel, a young boy who can transform into a Superman-like being by shouting the word SHAZAM! [for the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury].

Even for Superman Magic played a role, as it was one of the few things, apart from kryptonite, that he was vulnerable to. We then have characters like Doctor Strange and Zatanna who are primarily Magicians.

A major change in mainstream comics occurred in the 1980s, leading to a more complex and mature engagement with the occult. This shift is the so-called ‘British Invasion’ in American superhero comics with writers such as Alan Moore with “Saga of the Swamp Thing” from 1984, Neil Gaiman with “Sandman” from 1989, and Grant Morrison with “Animal Man” around 1988 and 1990.

The most representative example of how Magic gets featured now in this new wave of comic books is the character John Constantine, part of The Saga of the Swamp Thing #37 who also features in the series Hellblazer in 1988. Interestingly, this is not a superhuman being wielding vast superhuman powers in a fight against supervillains. Constantine possesses a vast knowledge of the occult arts and engages with non-human realms and beings by Ritual Magic or other occult means.

Ceremonial Magic also plays a role in Gaiman’s Sandman series, which starts in the second decade of the twentieth century with a group of magicians summoning by the use of the ‘Magdalene Grimoire’, trapping the personification of dream, Sandman.

Now, if you want dedicated episodes on Moore and Gaiman’s works, leave me a comment so that I can gauge how much interest there is on your part.

Let’s now focus on one artist more specifically now, Grant Morrison.

Scottish comic book writer Grant Morrison identifies as a Magician. They recently came out as non-binary and so I will be using the appropriate pronouns which differ from my source, dating prior to Grant’s coming out. Grant’s work is particularly interesting because, aside from reflecting their interest in the Occult, becomes at times a tool for magical practice.

Born in Glasgow in 1960, Morrison began doing comics at a young age, publishing his first work in the Scottish alternative comics magazine Near Death [Near Myths] in 1978. Also, at around 19, they tried his first magical working, allegedly because they wanted to prove that Aleister Crowley’s Magic was nothing but fantasy.

Then, when a demon actually showed up, his [their] lifelong engagement Magic began.
After that, Morrison was given increasingly prestigious comic book work, eventually even writing flagship titles such as New X-Men for Marvel (2001–4) and Batman (2006–8, 2010) for DC.

In 1992 Morrison started experimenting with drugs in magical workings, and in 1994 in Kathmandu, Nepal, they claimed they ‘was taken out of the Four-D reality, shown the entire universe as a single object, shown the world as it is from the outside’ (Babcock 2004) – an experience that had a substantial impact on them and their comic book work.

Morrison has also written on their experience of Magic that they call Pop Magic, a system that shows a significant influence from Chaos Magick.

As for the occult figures in his comic books, we find them already in Zenith. For instance, the Nazi super being Masterman is a genetically engineered human body possessed by ‘Iok Sotot, Eater of Souls’ – which is a name strongly reminiscent of beings in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, quite popular in modern Occultism – and then through the ‘Ritual of Nine Angles’ – which is named after a ritual described in Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible (1969) – in which in ‘The Order of the Black Sun’ – a symbol which figures prominently in discussions of (primarily imagined) Nazi occultism – communes with a formless ‘Dark God’ – again showing an influence from H.P Lovecraft.

Other examples are: a story titled ‘A Separate Reality – reference to Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic book, a character called 93 Mantra – reference to Crowley’s religious and magical philosophy of Thelema, and the chaos-magickal group Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth mentioned in passing.

“Kid Eternity” (Morrison and Fegredo 1991) has even stronger occult symbolism and more elaborated occult themes, and also demonstrates some of Morrison’s chaos-magickal inclinations, like the concept of the mind creating its reality.

We see this represented in Hell adapting to the mindsets of individual souls trapped there – (79) duality ultimately being an illusion (105), popular cultural icons representing archetypical occult forces (123), and the inclusion of a ‘chaosphere engine’ devised to speed up human evolution (101).

Occult themes are explored most clearly and deeply in Morrison’s “The Invisibles” (1994–2000), a series directly influenced by their experiences in Kathmandu.

Let’s explore a few examples of the occult ideas and practices found in The Invisibles: A heavy-handed push by a magical mentor, shifts the initiate’s perception (Morrison and Yeowell 1994b, 7) – as described in Castaneda’s books – as well as the idea that extreme experiences are also able to induce this kind of shift, the idea of Sigil-Magick being used in mainstream corporate culture, for example, the McDonald’s golden arc described as ‘the Sigil of the dark emperor Mammon’; the alphabet described as the name of a demon, ‘a spell word, an “abracadabra,” implanted in the brain of every English-speaking child, the root mantra of restriction’ and, also, popular cultural icons such as John Lennon, being invoked as archetypical occult forces.

Morrison has described The Invisibles as a hypersigil, namely – in their words – ‘a sigil extended through the fourth dimension…an immensely powerful and sometimes dangerous method for actually altering reality in accordance with intent’ – very reminiscent of Crowley’s understanding of Magick (Morrison 2003, 21). According to Morrison, the series consumed and recreated their life during the period of its composition and execution’ (Morrison 2003). They wrote themself into their stories, as the musician and author ‘Kirk Morrison’ and the superspy Gideon Stargrave, whom Morrison had used as a character in their stories in Near Myths, as imaginary ‘shieldpersonas’ used by the character King Mob when being tortured and interrogated (Morrison and Jimenez 1996a; 1996b; 1996c).

King Mob became both a reflection of Morrison and a character that influenced their circumstances, with things written for the character manifesting in various, often unpredictable, ways in Morrison’s own life (Morrison 1996b, 26; Cowe-Spigai and Neighly 2003, 233–34, 246–47).

Interesting that the series The Invisibles was meant to be a magical working to change the world and Morrison themself.

When sales of the series went down to the point of it being cancelled, Morrison appealed to his fans to engage in a ‘wankathon’ or ‘a magically charged global masturbation session to increase the sales of The Invisibles’ (Morrison 1996a, 25; Brother Yawn 2002).

I mean, they could have simply asked fans and their friends to buy more copies… right? Too basic for a magician, I guess.

Well, apparently it worked. So… you know… if this channel will ever be under threat of closing down… options! (Granholm, 2016, pp.501–505)

This is it for today’s video.

I hope you liked it and do let me know in the comments section what was the best part of this video and what you’d like to see next and if you want to see specific episodes on Moore and Gaiman.

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Bye for now.

REFERENCE

Granholm, K. 2016. The Occult and Comics In: C. Partridge, ed. The Occult World. London: Routledge, pp.499–508.

First uploaded 13 Mar 2020