THE MOON AND SERPENT BUMPER BOOK OF MAGIC - ALAN MOORE & STEVE MOORE

He finally did it. I think I’ve been waiting for this thing for over a decade. I was and am I real Alan Moore head. I think it would be fair to say I was more (pun intended?) of a fan as a younger man but I’ve read almost all of his comics work (I’ll get to the novels some day) many several times, consider a handful of them the best comics ever created, and he’s one of those people I’m always interested in hearing interviewed. He’s got a very distinctive vibe that he really leans into. Anyway, as any Moore-head can tell you, the man is obsessed with Magick (the occult type) and infuses it into all of his work, especially his later work. He’s mentioned for years and years that he’s been working on this, a big book that just lays out all of his magical theories and ideas plainly instead of suffusing it into his regular comics work. And he did it. This thing is beautiful. Lots of great illustrations from all sorts of amazing comics artists. Lots of good discussion on various esoteric concepts. There’s some really interesting stuff about the use of taboo in the occult, which piqued my interest and connects to some of the “Eye of the Chickenhawk” stuff that I might write about later. There’s lots about Glycon, the late Roman God that Moore worships. And while he is very focused on the Western Occult tradition, there is some good stuff about Voodoo that I found enlightening. It is a bit repetitive. If you’ve read Promethea, lots of this is the same and the book itself goes over some topics, like the Kabbalah, several times in different ways. However, as an object, it is amazingly beautiful and I’m glad I dropped the $50 to have it on my bookshelf forever.