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 it¹s 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 it¹s 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. I¹ve 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 desire¹s 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 it's 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 doesn't 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 total 

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 o'twelve 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 we'll 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.

PART TWO