POP MAGIC!

PART ONE

Oh how they've praised POP MAGIC!...

"Without question this little book is responsible for the tremendous international
success story that is Dome Airlines. Sticking pins into replica aircraft may seem
an outlandish idea at first but just ask a couple of our unlucky competitors -
Air France and Singapore Airlines, for instance - how much they're scoffing
at Grant Morrison's 'POP MAGIC!' now. "

Peter deQuimby
Executive VP
Dome Airlines

"Every once in a while a book like POP MAGIC! just comes along. I'd recommend
it wholeheartedly to all my colleagues and our customers. This book
is my scourge, my flail and my Bible. Magic gives me the edge I need over the
competition."

Marilyn Quorn
senior VP
Aspect Life Security Philadelphia

"In any company winning is paramount but that's only the beginning of a long
climb to the next peak of efficiency. What's beyond success ? Grant Morrison
knows. Everything he writes is a masterpiece of cognitive psychology. If I
could find him and suck him off I would."

Solomon Refrain
Professor of Applied Understanding
Tankard University
author of I Will Help You Cope

"Quite simply the best book I have ever read on how to transform both your
business and your personal life into the same endless wonderland of
creative, erotic, endlessly morphing possibilities"

Adamant Broussard
Senior Executive Creative Consulting
Broussard and Steve

Foreword
by Dale Scheisse

Some time ago, as a wet-behind-the-ears sales manager, I was privileged to

witness a dynamic young speaker address an audience of formidable business
leaders from the YPO. before my doubting gaze, this hardcore group of
prominent CEOs and executive heads went suddenly boggle-eyed, gaping like
unterwasserkinder as the dazzling speaker fertilised their imaginations with
his potent methods for 'perpetual self-re-definition'. Clapping like retards
in wool hats, the titans of Wall Street and Madison Avenue played
follow-my-leader through the corridors of the Convention Center Hotel,
exposing themselves to sympathetic maids, guest and bellboys at every turn.

The subject of this entrancing talk/stroke/orgy ? Using magic to improve

your business. The charismatic speaker ? Grant Morrison.

As Grant talked, I was introduced to the idea of corporations as living

thoughtforms. The Dow Jones Company Index or 'dictionary of demons', as
Grant put it, stood revealed as the first great grimoire of a new magical
century. He demonstrated the use of brands and logos as fastbreeding memetic
sigil-bombs, engineered to colonise and paralyze unprotected imaginative
spaces within moments. He showed his audience just how much damage one of
their competitors could cause with only a little knowledge of advanced
magical martial arts and some basic Neuro-Linguistic Programming and
Feng-shui skills.

It was clear to me that I was seeing something quite special. A new voice
and a new energy had arrived in the business community and those jaded
entrepreneurs knew it.

Since then I've continued to watch Grant's eerie, mesmeric talents develop
over the years and have shared podiums with him all over the world. I've
tried to analyze his style but I think its best just to sit back and watch
the man himself. Grant looks straight into your fourth eye, the one you
think no-one knows about and delivers a message of personal change and
monetary gain that just demands all your attention.

So why magic ? Why now ?

Look around! The companies Grant and I consult with are already mutating
themselves into non-linear viral formats as we leave the industrial era
behind like the arse-ring of a rocket and engage warp factor 90 for the
imaginal age of the coming decade.

Why do you think Buffy, Xena, Harry and Sabrina are so popular ?

Why do you think Borders bookshop now sells 'Voodoo Spell Kits' for love and
revenge ?

Our parents were the inheritors of existential culture which grew up in the
ruins of World War 2. Now, just imagine that apocalyptic war for a moment,
really think about what it meant to have real evil empires hungering for
your very freedom. Think about bombs falling on your town and the
possibility of losing it all. Having to die or capitulate as jackbooted
soldiers marched through your house. Think for a moment how it must have
felt to survive the mud and the blood and the slime of death camps. Ruined
cities and human remains.

They found it hard to believe in anything after that, you can be sure. The
huge religious faith structures bequeathed by their parents had failed to
account for the savagery of human behaviour during the war-century. Good and
evil meant nothing any more. "What god would allow this ???" they cried. And,
missing the point, rejected spirit altogether.

These people grew up a little fucked in the head. But forgive them if you
can: they went through humanity's dark night of the soul so we wouldn't have
to.

That doesn't mean we can trust any of their bleak philosophies.

And no amount of covering it up can hold back the tide of the repressed;
after half a century of denial, people are admitting the truth again - the
world of 'spirit', of action at distance and prediction and contact with
'alien' intelligences is as real as the world of telephone calls and quantum
physics, e-mails, downsizing and bullets.

It shouldn't come as any surprise; people have been writing down reports and
detailed instructions for thousands of years. Did you honestly believe all
those brilliant Buddhist sages, Christian mystics, Muslim sufis, witches,
alchemists and 'occultists' were just blowing it out through their asses ?

Get with it. Magic is real. It works like gas. Everyone can use it.

And everyone wants to.

WHY MAGIC ?

Because it's magic time.

Grant Morrison knows this better than anyone. In this baffling anti-matter
topsy-turve where great opportunity and zero job security exist side by
side, magic can keep us flexible, adaptive, and ready for tumultous
change.

POP MAGIC! will give you an insight into the tools, the ideas and
the potentially life-changing high-performance strategies of today's magical
innovators.

This book fascinates the tits off me. Read, then do. Read then do

Dale Scheisse

(Dale Scheisse is Creative Director at Winston-Claire Cognitive Management

Associates a division of Sony-Manticore responsible for management
training, consulting and executive magic. He is author of Man and Salesman,
Games the Clever Play and co-author with Grant Morrison of the best-selling
sales classic Never Mind the Products)

PART 1

THINKING ABOUT IT

All you need to begin the practise of magic is concentration, imagination

and the ability to laugh at yourself and learn from mistakes. Some people
like to dress up as Egyptians or monks to get themselves in the mood, others
wear animal masks or Barbarella costumes. The use of ritual paraphernalia
functions as an aid to the imagination only.

Anything you can imagine, anything you can symbolise, can be made real and
produce magical changes in your environment.

FIRST STEPS ON THE PATH

Magic is easy to do. Dozens of rulebooks and instruction manuals are

available in the occult sections of most modern bookstores. Many of the
older manuals were written during times when a powerful and vindictive
Church apparatus was attempting to suppress all roads to the truth but most
of them are generally so heavily coded and disguised behind arcane symbol
systems that its hardly worth the bother - except for an idea of how other
people used THEIR imaginative powers to interpret non-physical contacts and
communications.

Aleister Crowley - magic's Picasso - wrote this and I can't say it any
better than he did.

"In this book it is spoken of the sephiroth & the paths, of spirits & conjurations,
of gods, spheres, & planes & many other things which may or may not exist.

It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things, certain results
follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality
or philosophical validity to any of them."

This is the most important rule of all which is why it's here at the start.
As you continue to learn and develop your own psychocosms and styles of
magical practise, as you encounter stranger and stranger denizens of the
Hellworlds and Hyperworlds, you'll come back to these words of wisdom again
and again with a new understanding each time.

HOW TO BE A MAGICIAN

Simple. Declare yourself a magician, behave like a magician, practise magic

every day.

Be honest abut your progress, your successes and failures. Tripping on 500
mushrooms might loosen your astral sphincter a little but it will not generally
confer upon you any of the benefits of the magic I'm discussing here.
Magic is about what you bring BACK from the Shining Realms of the
Uberconscious. The magician dives into the Immense Other in search of tips
and hints and treasures s/he can bring home to enrich life in the solid world.

And if necessary, Fake it till you make it.

HOW TO BE A MAGICIAN 2

Read lots of books on the subject to get in the mood. Talking about magic
with non-magicians is like talking to virgins about shagging. Reading about
magic is like reading about sex; it will get you horny for the real thing
but it won't give you nearly as much fun.

Reading will give you a feel for what's crap and what can usefully be
adapted to your own style. Develop discrimination. Don't buy into cults,
aliens, paranoia, or complacency. Learn who to trust and who to steer clear
of.

HOW TO BE A MAGICIAN 3

Put down the books, stop making excuses and START.

MAGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Magical consciousness is a particular way of seeing and interacting with the

real world. I experience it as what I can only describe as a 'head-click', a
feeling of absolute certainty accompanying a perceptual shift which gives
real world transactions the numinous, uncanny feeling of dreams. Magical
consciousness is a way of experiencing and participating with the local
environment in a heightened, significant manner, similiar to the effects of
some drug trips, Salvador Dali's 'Paranoiac/critical' method, Near death
experiences etc. many Precognitive and telepathic latencies become more
active during periods of magical consciousness. This is the state in which
tealeaves are read, curses are cast, goals are scored, poems are written.

Magical Consciousness can be practised until it merges with and becomes

everyday consciousness. Maintained at these levels it could interfere with
your lifestyle unless you have one which supports long periods of richly
associative thought.

EXERCISE 1

As a first exercise in magical consciousness spend five minutes looking at

everything around you as if ALL OF IT was trying to tell you something very
important. How did that lightbulb come to be here exactly ? Why does the
murder victim in the newspaper have the same unusual surname as your
father-in-law ? Why did the phone ring, just at that moment and what were
you thinking ? What's that waterstain stain on the wall of the building
opposite ? How does it make you feel ?

Five minutes of focus during which everything is significant, everything is

luminous and heavy with meaning, like the objects seen in dreams.

Go.

EXERCISE 2

Next, relax, go for a walk and interpret everything you see on the way as a
message from the Infinite to you. Watch for patterns in the flight of birds.
Make oracular sentences from the letters on car number plates. Look at the
way buildings move against the skyline. The noises on the streets, voices
cut into rapid, almost subliminal commands and pleas. Listen between the
lines. Walk as far and for as long as you feel comfortable. The more
aimless, the more you walk for the sake of pure experience, the further into
magical consciousness you will be immersed.

Magical consciousness resembles states of light meditation, 'hypnagogic'

pre-sleep trance or alpha wave brain activity.

SIGILS

The sigil technique was reconceptualised and modernised by Austin Osman

Spare in the early 20c and popularised by Chaos Magicians and the Temple of
Psychic Youth in the 1980s.

A sigil is a magically charged symbol like this one:

The sigil takes a magical desire or intent - let's say 'IT IS MY DESIRE TO
VISIT RWANDA' (you can, of course, put any desire you want in there) and
folds it down, creating a highly-charged symbol. The desire is then
forgotten. Only the symbol remains and can then be charged to full potency
when the magician chooses.

Forgetting the desire in its verbal form can be difficult if you've started
too ambitiously. There's no point charging a sigil to win the lottery if you
don't buy a ticket. Start with stuff that's not too emotionally-involving.
I usually sigilise to meet people I'm interested in, or for particular
qualities I'll need in a given situation. I've also used sigils for healing,
for locating lost objects and for mass global change. Ive been using them
for twenty years and they ALWAYS work.
For me, the period between launching the sigil and its manifestation as a
real world event is usually 3 days, 3 weeks or 3 months depending on the
variables involved.

Sigils ALWAYS work. If you encounter any problems getting the to work for
you, let us know.

So. Begin your desires transformation into pure throbbing symbol like
this:

First remove the vowels and the repeating letters to leave a string of
consonants - TSMYDRVWN.

Now start squashing the string down, throwing out or combining lines and
playing with the letters until only an appropriately witchy-looking glyph is
left. When you're satisfied its done, you may wind up with something like
this:

Most homemade sigils look a little spooky or alien - like UFO writing or
Witchy wall-scratchings. There are no rules as to how your sigil should look
as long as it WORKS for you. RESULTS ONLY are important at this stage. If
something doesnt work, try something else. The point is not to believe in
magic, the point is to do it and see how it works.

Charging and launching your sigil is the fun part (it's often advisable to
make up a bunch of sigils and charge them up later when you've forgotten
what they originally represented).

Now, most of us find it difficult at first to maintain the precise Zen-like

concentration necessary to work large-scale magic. This concentration can be
learned with time and effort but in the meantime, sigils make it easy to
sidestep years of training. To charge your sigil you must concentrate on its
shape, and hold that form in your mind as you evacuate all other thoughts.

Almost impossible, you might say, but the human body has various mechanisms
for inducing brief 'no-mind' states. Fasting, spinning, intense exhaustion,
fear, sex, the fight-or-flight response will all do the trick. I have
charged sigils while bungee-jumping, lying dying in a hospital bed,
experiencing a toal solar eclipse and dancing to Techno. All of these
methods proved to be highly effective but for the eager beginner nothing
beats the wank technique.

Magical masturbation is more fun than the secular hand shandy, and all it
requires is this: at the moment of orgasm, you must see the image of your
chosen sigil blazing before the eyes in your mind and project it outwards
into the ethereal mediaspheres and logoverses where desires swarm and
condense into flesh. The sigil can be written on paper, on your hand or your
chest, on the forehead of a lover or wherever you think it will be most
effective.

At the moment of orgasm, the mind blinks. Into this blink, this abyssal
crack in perception, a sigil can be launched.

When the peak passes and the sigil has been launched, feel free to roll over
and return to your feverdreams of Tom Cruise wielding the cat otwelve tails
as cruel Lestat while Sarah Michelle Gellar, unable to resist her brutal
transformation into a slutty undead bitch, gets off on drinking dog blood...

Or whatever sick thing makes it easy. The sigil is now safely on its way and
you may continue with your life and await results.

The sigil is the first and one of the most effective weapons in the arsenal
of any modern magician. In upcoming chapters well explore new developments
of the basic sigil concept: learn the science behind corporate hunter-killer
sigils like the McDonald's 'M', and how to create incredibly powerful
unfolding narrative hypersigils like THE INVISIBLES comic book.

SPECULATOR TIP:

The first person to create and launch a mass market glossy magic magazine
for young women will become as rich in the first decade of 21c. as the
creators of 'Loaded' magazine became in the last decade of 20c.

Words and Photographs are Copyright 2000/2002 Grant Morrison - please seek writers
permission to reproduce any material.

Last modified: 07/06/2002

POP MAGIC!

PART TWO
Before moving onto a couple of notes on advanced sigil magic, there are a
few points worth clearing up.

Some readers, Ive noticed, convulse with nervous laughter whenever I

mention the word masturbation. And no wonder, next to wetting the bed or
shitting in your own cats box for a laugh, its the one thing no-one likes to
admit to.

Well, Im afraid there are more embarrassed giggles afoot as we tackle this
topic one last time and hopefully reassure some worried correspondents:

Masturbation is only ONE of countless methods you can use to bring your
mental chatter to a standstill for the split-second it takes to charge and
launch a sigil. I suggest masturbation because Im kind-hearted, because
its convenient and because its fun for most of us.

However...one does not change the universe simply by masturbating

(tell THAT to the millions of sperm fighting for their life and the future
of the species in a balled up Kleenex). If that were true, every vague
fantasy we had in our heads at the moment of orgasm would come true
within months. Intent is what makes the difference here.

Forget the wanking for just one moment if you can and remember that the
sigil is the important part of the magic being performed here. The moment
of orgasm will clear your mind, thats all. There are numerous other ways
to clear your mind and you can use any of them. Dancing or spinning to
exhaustion is very effective. Meditation is effective but takes years to
learn properly. Fear and shock are very good for charging sigils, so you
could probably watch a scary movie and launch your sigil at the bit where
the heros head comes bouncing down the aluminium stepladder into his
girlfriends lap. A run around the block clutching a sigil might be enough
to charge it.

Children of Christian Fundamentalists or any other youngsters checking out

this site in defiance of their parents insistence on the literal truth of a
series of folk histories composed several thousand years ago in the Middle
East, may find it difficult to masturbate in the face of the Bibles strict
rules about spilling seed on stony ground (lucky for you, girls! In spite of
His thoughtful addition of a clitoris to Adams lively rib God apparently
overlooked the potential for female masturbation and forgot to prohibit it.
Then again, he did add thou shalt not suffer a witch to live to cover His
ass in any eventuality). Under these circumstances, Id suggest a chaste
kiss or a ride on the dodgems, either of which should be enough to white
out consciousness for as long as you need.

If you dont suffer from the symptoms of religious mania but STILL cant
make the one-backed beast with yourself, Im afraid you may have to use a
more involved method. Bungee off a bridge, perhaps, or sit naked in your
local graveyard at night. Or dance until you fall over. The important thing
is to find your own best method for stopping that inner chat just long
enough to launch a fiercely-visualised sigil into the gap. States of
exhaustion following ANY intense arousal or deprivation are ideal.

And if you experiment and still have trouble with sigils, try some of the
other beginner exercises for a while (see upcoming chapters of POP MAGIC!
or get hold of some good spell books from the list over in the second week
of the column. Ive only met a couple of people whove told me
they cant make sigils work so maybe there are a few of you out there who
genuinely have problems in this particular area. Tough luck but it doesnt
mean theres no magic for you to play with. I couldnt wheeze Twinkle
twinkle little star... out of a clarinet but I can play the guitar well
enough to have written hundreds of fabulous songs. If Id stuck with the
clarinet and got nowhere would that mean there is no such thing as music ?
Or would it indicate simply that I have an aptitude for playing the guitar
which I cant seem to replicate using a clarinet ? If I want to make music
I use the instrument Im most comfortable and accomplished with. The same
is true for magical practise. Dont get uptight about it. This is not about
defending a belief system, this is about producing results.
USE ONLY WHAT WORKS.

SIGILS: DISPOSAL

Some people keep their sigils, some dispose of them in an element

appropriate to the magicians intent (I have burned, buried, flushed away
and scattered sigils to the winds, depending on how I felt about them.
Love-sigils went to water - flushed down the toilet or thrown into rivers or
boiled in kettles. War-sigils were burned etc... Some of my sigils are
still around because I decided they were slow-burners and worth keeping.
Some are even still in print. Do what feels right and produces results.)

Soiled paper and tissues can easily be disposed of in your mums purse or
the pocket of dads raincoat.

VIRAL SIGILS

The viral sigil also known as the BRAND or LOGO is not of recent development
(see the Nazis 20c. 20s-40s) but has become an inescapable global
phenomenon in recent years. The Nazis were the last thinkers of the Imperial
Age; they still thought world domination meant tramping over the 'enemy' and
taking his real estate. If only theyd had the foresight to see that global
domination is only possible using corporate stealth-violence methods and
combined that with their undoubted design senses; the rejected artists who
engineered the Third Reich might have created the worlds first global
superbrand. The McDonalds Golden Arches, the Nike swish and the Virgin
autograph are all corporate viral sigils.

Corporate sigils are super-breeders. They attack unbranded imaginative

space. They invade Red Square, they infest the cranky streets of Tibet, they
etch themselves into hairstyles. They breed across clothing, turning people
into advertising hoardings. They are a very powerful development in the
history of sigil magic, which dates back to the first bison drawn on the
first cave wall.

The logo or brand, like any sigil, is a condensation, a compressed symbolic

summing up of the world of desire the corporation intends to represent. The
logo is the only visible sign of the corproate intelligence seething behind
it. Walt Disney died long ago but his sigil, his cartoonish signature
persists, carrying its own vast weight of meanings, associations, nostalgia
and significance. People are born and grow up to become Disney executives,
mouthing the jargon and the credo of a living corporate entity. Walt Disney
the man is long-dead and frozen (or so folk myth would have it) but Disney,
the immense, invisible corporate egregore persists.

Corporate entities are worth studying. They and other ghosts like them rule
our world. So...figure out why the Coca-Cola spirit is stronger than the
Doctor Pepper spirit (what great complex of ideas, longings and deficiencies
has the Coke logo succeeded in condensing into two words, two colours,
taking Orwells 1984 concept of Newspeak to its logical conclusion?) Watch
their habits, track their movements over time, monitor their repeated
behaviours and watch how they react to change and novelty. Learn how to
imitate them, steal their successful strategies and use them as your own.
Create your own brand, your own logo and see how quickly you can make it
spread.

Build your own god and set it loose.

APPLIED MAGIC

Is about making things happen and performing experiments. In these

endeavours we do not need to know HOW magic works only that it does.
We prove this by doing the work, recording the results and sharing our
information with other magicians. Theoretical magic is all the mad ideas
you come up with to explain whats happening to you. Applied magic is
what makes them happen.

THE MAGICAL RECORD

Always keep a journal of your experiments. Its easy to forget things youve
done or to miss interesting little connections and correspondences. Make a
note of everything, from the intent to the fulfilment. Make a note of dates,
times, moods, successes and failures.

Study YOURSELF the way a hunter studies prey. Exploit your own weaknesses
to create desired changes within yourself.

BANISHING

Banishing is a way of preparing a space for ritual use. There are many
elaborate banishing rituals available, ranging across the full spectrum of
pomposity. Think of banishing as installing virus protection software. The
banishing is a kind of vaccination against infection from Beyond.

Most banishings are intended to surround the magician with an impenetrable

shield of will. This usually takes the form of an acknowledgment of the
elemental powers at the four cardinal points of the compass. Some like to
visualise themselves surrounded and protected by columns of light or by four
angels. Any protective image will do - spaceships, superheroes,
warrior-monks, whatever. I dont bother with any of that and usually
visualise a bubble radiating outwards from my body into space all around
above and below me as far as I think Ill need it.

Why the need for protection?

Remember that you may be opening some part of yourself to an influx of

information from non-ordinary, apparently Other sources. If you
practise ceremonial magic and attempt to summon godforms or spirits (see
next month) things will undoubtedly happen. Your foundations will be tested.
There is always the danger of obsession and madness. As magical work
progresses, you will be forced into confrontation with your deepest darkest
fears and desires. Its easy to become scared, paranoid and stupid. Stay
fluid, cling to no one self-image and maintain your sense of humour at all
times.

Banishing reminds you that no matter how many gods you talk to, you still
have to take a shite and be able to cook dinner and talk to people without
scaring them.

When you complete any magical work, ground yourself with a good laugh, a
good meal, a good shag, a run or anything else that connects you with the
real world. Banishing after your ritual is over works as a decompression
back into normal world of bills and bus stops and job satisfaction. The
magicians job is not to get lost in the Otherworld but to bring back its
treasures for everyone to play with.

You now have the basic techniques of magical practise at your disposal.
Get out there and cause trouble.
Next in POP MAGIC! well move forward into some of the more exciting
and bizarre areas of magical work including :-

HYPERSIGILS

MEDIA DIVINATION

BUILDING SERVITORS AND OTHER CYBERNETIC THOUGHTFORMS

HOW TO CHAT UP GODS

BEYOND THE ABYSS: THE MAGICAL SELFPLEX

See you there. Bring your own wand.