Book Review: Alan Moore’s THE MOON AND SERPENT BUMPER BOOK OF MAGIC

The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic

Writer: Alan Moore, Steve Moore
Artist: Steve Parkhouse, Rick Veitch, Kevin O’Neill, Ben Wickey, John Coulthart
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions
Publication Date: October 2024

I think we’ve all had the experience that reality feels unreal. In moments of distress, or even sometimes great joy, we need to remind ourselves that what’s in front of us does in fact exist. “Pinch me, I’m dreaming.” Whether we feel as though we’re in a dream or a nightmare, the dissonance between our material existence and our self awareness of these circumstances implies a rather unstable tension between the world as it is, and the world of the mind. 

The relationship between the world and our consciousness, between the mind and our bodies, has been speculated about since the dawn of consciousness itself and the beginnings of a philosophy that could problematize that relationship. It’s a tricky thing to thread the needle between the world and the world of the mind without getting lost in how exactly one necessitates the other. 

However, it is exactly these issues that Alan Moore, Steve Moore and their gallery of artistic collaborators are attempting to work through in The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic. This tome was years in the making, evidenced by the fact that Steve Moore, a mentor and close friend of Alan Moore, died in 2014 and artist Kevin O’Neill, also featured here, died in 2022. The contents of the Bumper Book are therefore the research and painstaking life’s work of a very talented group of people attempting to investigate Magic and its relationship to consciousness. 

To be clear, The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic is not a graphic novel. The book is proclaimed a “grimoire of the occult sciences,” meaning that its contents are not strictly a narrative that someone should expect to read through in one sitting. While there are comics contained herein, they serve the larger ambition of the book to be a history and practical guide to magic, and what Steve and Alan Moore (Moore²) call the “science of consciousness.” The reading experience should therefore be more akin to absorbing a few pages of theory, ruminating on its meaning for however long it takes to sit right with you, and then proceeding to exercises you can try at home or illustrated stories about the history of magic to help contextualize the theory. This is less a graphic novel, and more a graphical text book or graphical philosophical treatise. 

Thus, in order to understand this text, I think it’s best to approach the book like philosophy. A mentor of mine once told me “Every philosophical text is an answer to a question or a solution to a problem. What’s the question? What’s the problem?” Thus, in those terms, we need to first understand what exactly the questions and problems are that Moore² seem to be wrestling with. 

Lucky for us, Moore² provide these questions to us very early in the book:

1. “How are we to locate this crucial and possibly mythical realm of the mind? 
2. “How can we find the maybe non-existent doorway that, if it was ever really there, has since been papered over by an age of reason?”
3. “Even if we should stumble upon such an entrance into magical experience, how will we recognize a place so unfamiliar?”
4. “What are we supposed to do with magic, once we’ve found it?”

It is from here that the Bumper Book takes us on a journey to understand not only where these questions come from but what one might gain from trying to answer them. At the end of the day, this is not really about having a concrete answer in scientific terms. But rather, developing a system or method of thought that helps us pose these questions in the first place. The world and our minds are not something to be taken for granted, for it is only through the mind that we can grant the world exists. Thus, what power lurks behind our mysterious consciousness? 

1. How are we to locate this crucial and possibly mythical realm of the mind? 

Moore² are no stranger to skepticism and, to their credit, the Bumper Book is not something that takes its conclusions for granted but instead wants to make a specific argument based on the evidence that it has collected. Thus, the “question” or “problem” of this text is primarily based on the dissonance between our conscious experiences and the nature of the world at large; these moments we spoke of at the top of this review where it seems as though what we believe to be true and what is true appear to be in conflict. 

The Bumper Book opens with a comic illustrated by Steve Parkhouse, and then another by Rick Veitch. The first resembles the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey where the simple urges of nature are disrupted by the creation of something beyond our, at the time, cognitive ability to fully comprehend. Reality is transformed by something that seems to contradict it, or at least break us away from immersion in the world. That force, as discussed in the second comic, ends up being the idea of story. Stories are fundamentally about representation. Thus, Moore² write “Representation alone distinguished humans from other animals, allowing access to a conceptual world where all phenomena, including mind itself, inevitably seemed magical.” This early claim of a separation between the mind which grasps, and the conceptual world that we are to grasp resembles a classical form of dualism. It is similar to Plato’s accounts of the representations of concepts in the world, and the Forms that we are attempting to represent. But unlike Plato, Moore² do not to me read like dualists as much as they do Phenomenologists. 

2. How can we find the maybe non-existent doorway that, if it was ever really there, has since been papered over by an age of reason?

The ability to represent, or the mechanics that provide access to a conceptual world that makes art and magic possible, is located in our own mind and the interpretation of the world it perceives. They posit here an “area of consciousness that gives us access to what has been called the magical experience,” a part of the mind that “we do not, in normal circumstances, have full access to.” Phenomenology, for its part, primarily focuses on how subjective engagement with objects within our view allow us to then instantiate the existence of the wider world, piece by piece. Or, as Moore² put here: “Not only is the mind the source of every earthly artefact but it is also the sole means by which a human being is connected to reality. Unable to experience the universe directly we rely on our perceptions, as interpreted by consciousness, to build the world around ourselves moment by moment.” This is as much a method as it is an argument, where the ability to be a good Phenomenologist or Shaman or Magician rests on how you can follow the process of transcendental reduction by “bracketing” what you perceive and building from it a wider understanding of concepts that animate the world at large. Once we have the ability to do this, we can then begin the work of creating a world that might not seem real to others. At least not until they take these steps with us.

3. Even if we should stumble upon such an entrance into magical experience, how will we recognize a place so unfamiliar?

The closest expression of magic, and the manifestation of the magical realm, we have is art. “All art is therefore magical at its inception, whereas magic is the art itself.” This is true not only because of its ability to create representation, but because it reveals our own consciousness to us. As one will notice while reading the Bumper Book, Moore² cannot seem to express the ideas of magic without using the devices of story. And this is not a problem or limitation as much as it is a proof of concept. “…in order for imagination to conceive of this elusive insubstantial territory it is necessary to use metaphor, as valuable a tool of magic as it is of poetry. This perhaps suggests that art and magic may have many attributes in common and may even, ultimately, be the same thing.”

Another way of understanding this is that I had a very hard time understanding this book, in fact I wasn’t even sure if I liked it very much as I was reading it. As I’ve said, this is a textbook rather than a graphic novel, or at least that’s how I was able to understand it. But in the act of writing about the Bumper Book, in the ability to take the words and piece together a larger framework that fits with my experience and my ability to create, the entire grimoire felt as though it unlocked for me. At that moment, I felt like a magician because this review “…once completed, is [my] first willed, conscious act of magic.” This is also why I say one should not sit down and read this book in a single sitting. Rather, take the time to move away from it, consider its contents, practice its rituals and find use for it in your ability to navigate the world. Only then is its fullest power realized. 

Magic as representation and art as representation sharing a condition, or attributes in common like metaphor, illustrate to the reader that it is not simply about perceiving the book as it is in front of you, but building upon in ways that are unique to you and your magical realm of consciousness. 

4. What are we supposed to do with magic, once we’ve found it?

This is all to say one should approach the Bumper Book, and all philosophical work, with an open mind. Again, as my mentor used to say, “if you like what you read, read it again. If you don’t like what you read, read it again.” We may be keen on letting our instincts drive our belief in what we see, or to steer us away from conceptual work that just doesn’t sit right, whatever that might mean. But in truth, magic and storytelling share the condition of effort. One must put in the work, whether through writing or re-reading, to understand what is in front us. 

The powers Moore² speak of are not bestowed upon us, but rather are the result of our critical and unselfish engagement with the material put before us. Once we develop these skills, we have the ability to exercise our consciousness in ways that are transformative of our experiences and the world at large. But we shouldn’t put the cart before the horse, we shouldn’t open this book thinking we need only arrive at the conclusion to accomplish our aims. This is not a “how to” guide of any sort. It is, like all art, an example and not a blueprint. The ultimate goal should always be better self understanding, and reverence for the power of our consciousness that forms our world view. Or, as Moore2 put it one last time. “Whether an artist or magician, pay attention to the voice of the internal world before that of the outer. Free yourself from low material intention by committing to a form of magical expression which demands we practice the Art for the Art’s sake, rather than our own.”

The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic is not an easy thing to read, nor is it an easy thing to write about or appreciate. I would imagine that people who are more inclined to debate Moore²’s ideas of magic, or how it squares with Alan Moore’s anarchic political tendencies, might find something particularly enriching here. However, for the rest of us, this is at best an interesting experience, a chance to dive into a richer psychology than we might be accustomed to. For that reason, I think it’s worth reading. If you have the interest in dissecting the work of the writers with this guide, or if you have the patience to apply these rituals to yourself, there’s something wonderful to be found here.

The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic is available now.

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