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Pop Will Shit Itself with Grant Morrison
Introduction
So what exactly happened with your alien abduction anyway? I was convinced that I had been peeled from the surface of the four dimensional spacetime object we inhabit and lifted into higher dimensional spaces and higher dimensional times. I was told that our universe is a living single entity, the larval form of beings who inhabit what felt like an infinite, yet enclosed 'ocean' of living information. These beings are 'us' as we truly are, beyond the limits of one dimensional time and three dimensional space. From in here however, within our universe, our womb of time in which we are grown, our adult hyperselves (the midwives who have been tending us through our universe's long development towards maturity) appear as helpful or frightening spirits - UFOs, gods, devils, fairies etc. monitoring the larvae's growth and ensuring that it progresses correctly through all the necessary developmental stages towards birth. The higher reality I was experiencing seemed completely familiar and much more real to me than the one we currently occupy. I was Home in Eternity, far from my attachment to the little 'Grant Morrison' body I'd been using to experience the growth of the larval universe entity. The circumstances surrounding the event are detailed in Fortune Hotel an anthology of travel writing edited by Sarah Champion for Penguin Books.
Following the apparent 'encounter' which was real enough emotionally and experientially that it rewired my entire head and changed my life forever, I began to experience all manner of weird synchronicities and I plunged deeper into some very odd and dangerous magical spaces for a few years. Things I wrote in my comics would become true within three weeks or three months. I felt that I was receiving constant 'downloads' of strange cosmological information, often in bizarre compound languages. Most of this stuff went directly into INVISIBLES (see King Mob's subterranean Australian initiation sequence in Volume 1 18 for some of the 'compound language' transmissions) After several weird illnesses all of which had been PREFIGURED in the comic, I ended up in hospital with pneumonia and septicemia, fighting for my life. This was after an encounter with Voodoo scorpion loas and, frightening as it was at the time, I have to say that the ordeal was a breakthrough which changed my entire life - made me happier, freer, more creative, sexier and younger by the minute. I don’t do magic now, it does me. I feel like I'm living in one of my own stories. "The most pernicious image of all is the antichrist-hero figure. A creation of commodity culture, he allows us to buy into an inauthentic simulation of revolutionary praxis." "When's the movie?" "The hero encourages passive spectating and revolt becomes another product to be con-sumed." "?" -Grant Morrison INVISIBLES. I don't make these claims to seem better or weirder than anyone else. I assume anyone can do this if they follow the instructions as I did. As a skeptic I've pursued the path of magic for twenty years now, initially just to see if all these people like Crowley and Peter Carroll were lying to me or not, in the same way many of my readers now think I'm lying to them. I've proved to my satisfaction that magic works, however and can be used by anyone who's willing to put the work in. I want everyone to know and everyone to start using these techniques. If that means I get ridiculed in some quarters, fine. I now seem as mad to some people as all the counterculture oddballs I once thought were mad but I feel completely sane and completely in control of my life and what I want so I have to conclude this shit definitely works for me and it works for all the other magicians I know so I'm only ever trying to encourage everyone to explore magic and MAKE THE LIFE YOU WANT TO LIVE IN instead of fucking moaning all the time. The people who refuse to believe me or accuse me of hallucinating everything on drugs are all the people who seem too scared to even prove me wrong by TRYING the techniques I keep suggesting. Then again, if everything's I see and do is just a drug trip I've been having then I guess my critics are too. We're all one in hyperspace and I must be arguing with myself in order to refine my ideas. Funny you should say that, while reading your abduction tale I couldn't help but jokingly think 'you sure you just didn't fall down at a rave, maybe swallow some glow stick juice.
What constantly shocks, disappoints and amuses me is that people constantly assume I'm lying or mad without even trying the techniques TO SEE IF I'M NOT. I'm very baffled by people and their lack of curiosity. When I first read Crowley, Ray Sherwin or Peter Carroll I could scarcely believe any of it but there were clear instructions I could follow in order to test these outlandish claims. When I performed the ritual, I got the demon, exactly as it said on the packet. I found out that magic produces results. I discovered that magic allows the user to ACTUALLY make large scale changes in the surrounding reality JUST BY THINKING ABOUT IT in the right way. In fact, I'll ask you the same question I ask everyone. Why did you assume I was simply tripping instead of actually experimenting with the easy-to-follow spell instructions in a book of magic and proving to yourself whether it's real or not? My claims can be easily validated or refuted by a few simple tests in the comfort of ones own universe. Don't you want to be able to rewrite your reality and talk to aliens? So have you gotten much flak from people because of your theories, stories, beliefs, practices?
I'm often asked how someone as weird as I'm supposed to be can survive in the real world. Well, I'm fit, I'm healthy and I'm making lots of money doing something I love. I have a brilliant, beautiful girlfriend, cat pals and a global network of amazing, creative friends. I travel, I make music, I commune with gods and spirits and have the time of time of my life so it's quite easy to survive. I much prefer being a loony to being on the dole. I don’t want to become evangelical about magic although it’s veering that way. I have nothing to offer but my own account of fringe experiences. I’m not lying, I’m simply trying to figure out how this stuff works by making it public and by encouraging others to talk about their own experiments.
-Grant Morrison DOOM PATROL. It's well known you practice Chaos Magic, but have you tried any other magic's? Healing magic? Elemental? What all does chaos magic involve? Chaos Magic as I understand it is simply a description for a type of modern quasi-shamanic practice which incorporates ALL other magics, allowing the practitioner to choose from a constantly changing postmodern menu of techniques, gods, cosmologies, rituals etc. Chaos Magic might use a traditional Enochian ritual as the framework for an invocation of Clive Barker’s Pinhead or Mickey Mouse. Chaos emphasizes work and results over abstract theorizing. In addition to sorcery, it makes use of Reichian body therapy, NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis to facilitate the creation of multiple creative selves. Or the opposite of the above. And every shade between. Chaos is the magic you make for yourself, using the totems of your own experience and the gods of your own imagination. In 1996, willing to try anything to save a dying cat, I allowed myself to be taught the basic Spiritualist healing method by a lovely woman named Lettie Moody. I used her prayer technique and my cat’s cancer (he had been diagnosed with several tumors, including a huge growth on his jaw) disappeared. Vets were amazed. I taught the same method over the phone to Jill Thompson, (artist on INVISIBLES, SANDMAN, and SCARY GODMOTHER. Learn more on Jill from her past ProFile with PopImage. Including an extensive interview by Christopher Butcher) and the tumor in her own cat’s leg also disappeared. I’ve used it with other dying animals and they've stiffed very peacefully but stiffed nevertheless. That’s all I have to report. I think it works but I’m not sure what it is. A prayer technique which has a heightened affect on the nervous system producing bioleletric patterns conducive to stimulating tissue repair? Real contact with invisible helper spirits capable of reversing some illnesses? Fuck knows. I noticed a faint white light around my fingers but that’s just me... Any chaos magic tips for your fans? I'm putting up all my tips as 'Magic For Moderns' on the website. Speaking of which, you're newly launched website has come under focus of many a fan. What should people who haven't visited yet know before coming around? Has a schedule been set as to updates concerning your columns, photos, mail bag excerpts, etc.? Kristan and I usually update the site - www.grant-morrison.com - every week. Anything can happen on the website so it's difficult to tell people what to expect. Plenty of sexy pictures, supercool prose, letters, discussion and raw bleeding ideas and, most importantly, a deep sense of belonging to something decent, worthwhile and wholesome. And finally... What would you like to leave as your epitaph? On my tombstone
it will read: -Grant Morrison Huge Thanks to Grant for taking the time for this interview and to all you who took the time to read it. Thank You
Introduction
All characters, titles, images mentioned or shown are copyright and trademark their respective creators.
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If
the same experience had occurred in Biblical times I would no doubt have described
burning bushes and celestial voices. If it had happened in the Dark Ages I would
have used the language of angelic hosts and infernal spirit hierarchies. If
I was Aleister Crowley I’d have called it Aiwass and founded a religion. If
I'd been brought up with a lot of fear in the last few decades perhaps I could
have explained it as Satanic Abuse or Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. I'm a comic writer,
so my attempts to frame the experience in language sound read like surrealist
science fiction.
I've
downed enough glow juice in my time to know the difference between
tripping and reality. If this experience was available in pill form,
then you'd be able to buy it from your dealer every weekend and
everyone who got high would report a similar contact experience.
It doesn't seem to work that way. Over the last 13 years, I've ingested
every hallucinogen I could lay my hands on. What happened to me
in Nepal was NOTHING like any other drug trip I've ever taken, including
those on DMT and other high-dose tryptamines.
Some
people treat me like I'm a fucking lunatic. The good thing is that
if they go away and do the work and realize I'm NOT lying to anyone
here, THEY'LL be seen as fucking lunatics too.
