Postmodern Magic for a Skeptical Atheist (How Grant Morrison taught me Design)

Today let us discuss "magic".
Or rather this:

Meet Grant Morrison.
He is a wizard.

(Self-proclaimed).

In this talk about counter culture and sigil magic, Grant Morrison discusses how to become a practicing magician.
What does that mean?

The Abduction

Grant Morrison was abducted by aliens at Kathmandu.
And why?
Because Grant Morrison went to Kathmandu to be abducted by aliens.
He describes them as

Formless, morphing, blobs of shifting chrome that think.

And in this encounter (after taking him to Alpha Centauri) they describe to him how the universe works. And they say:

Tell the world what is going on.

So that is what Grant Morrison does.

What the aliens said.

The "same bullshit":

• The universe we live in is set to grow "larvae" (hint, we are the larvae)
• Beyond space and time are our actual selves (a higher dimensional existence)
• Each of us is a section through time
• Our body is a process: from when we were born to when we die
• We look like a giant centipede (starting at birth and moving through time until we die)

The Hand

If you pass your hand through a layer of water and call it time, you see four distinct circles that are part of a larger whole. That is what we are: discrete intersection through time that are part of a larger process. 

 How Is This Magic?

Well, the aliens apparently exist in a sea of pure information outside of spacetime and create their own reality.

They are able to influence it.

How?

According to Grant Morrison with words.

How to Magic:

1. Write down a desire (making sure it is physically possible inside of our material universe)
2. Take out the vowels
3. Take out the repeated consonants
4. Reduce it down to an image

That is it. 

Why/how does it work?

To go into how it works, we need to appreciate a little history of magic and how it became the occult.

This talk is not only about the occult &sigil magic.

Grant Morrison is also discussing counter culture.

Counter culture has been around since the French Revolution when the youth culture would wear costumes to mock the outfits of the wealthy.

What we have here is an original case of hipsters.

This idea of counter culture proved important during the French Revolution

This garment is called the sans culottes:

Literally: without breeches.

Because the peasant class could not afford to wear breeches, which were not a working class uniform.

The Sans-Culottes were also a political movement, a radical militarization of the peasantry that overthrew the French aristocracy leading to the beheading of the royal family.

Fabric, due to its design, leading to political action, leading to war.

So now we have this idea of counter culture and its importance/influence. 

What about magic?

Magic used to be pretty common place.

In Egypt:

In Greece:

In Rome:

So what happened?

According to Grant Morrison it had something to do with the Industrial Era.

This caught my attention.

He explains a little bit in detail, but think about that. 

Think of how to create a sigil:

reducing a desire down to just a few lines to create a symbol to convey meaning to change the world (meaning the minds of those who view it.)

Keeping that in mind we get: 

 McDonald's

 Nike

adidas.

The modern, contemporary, culture is wholly consumed with images, with sigils, with symbols that convey meaning and change or influence the culture accordingly.

And in that moment I started rethinking what we mean when we say magic.

The Legend of McDonald's

Have you ever heard the trivia about the McDonald's logo?

It was chosen to be harmless, caring, inviting, and nourishing. 

Keep that in mind as we go.

Now, if you follow any logo, it simplifies through time, similar to the rules for sigil magic until we get: 

This: 

And this is the part that freaks me out.

The "M" is meant to symbolize a mother's breasts.

And I didn't get it for years until I realized that I was looking up at them.

So from my perspective as audience, I am looking up at a pair of breasts, something that I haven't done since I was a child.

Therefore, when I look at the logo, unconscious association is meant to pair with that experience to convey: harmless, caring, inviting, and nourishing.

Just like a mother's breasts.

Grant Morrison contends it works because we exist in a sea of information that exists outside of spacetime that we can only experience through mind-altering drugs.

I don't know about all of that.

But!

There seems to be something there when you realize that all of our corporate overlords follow these rules.

Arguably, they are just good rules for design:

This is a wonderful TED talk about design.

So the laws of design are similar/the same as practicing magic.

Why?

Because of a revolutionary idea.

Design is a form of magic.

And all that magic is is a form of design.