The mindscape of Alan Moore:

La magia es la ciencia del lenguaje, la relación entre lo dicho y sus repercusiones; es arte, manipular símbolos para cambiar la consciencia [percepción]. Grimorio = Gramática. Spell significa hechizo y deletrear, manipular las palabras, crear realidad desde la ficción. El escritor como chamán que reúne arte y ciencia, que en la actualidad ha degenerado en propaganda y entretenimiento: publicistas, televisión, jingles… Pensamiento único.

El artista responde a los deseos del espectador y no a sus necesidades. Los dioses y monstruos existen en la mente, el lugar donde son sobrehumanos. El poder consiste en hacer creer al otro. Sí hay conspiración, de hecho muchas compitiendo entre sí, como fantasías (ideologías) que encubren el kaos, es decir, que nadie manda en realidad.

La sustancia de la cultura inmaterial es la in-formación. La ciencia surge por oposición a la magia, Solve sobre Coagula, el universo material es producto secundario de la información: “Al comienzo fue el Verbo.” El paradigma informático supone pasar de una cultura fluida a vaporosa; el apocalipsis es un cambio en la estructura mental colectiva, la imaginación. No confundir la percepción con la realidad. Por ejemplo, la morfogenética (Sheldrake) existe desde el momento en que se formula y entra a formar parte del conocimiento. La inmateria es el espacio de las ideas, un paisaje que se puede explorar creando mapas de sus recorridos.

[Open letter to Alan Moore (about his Mindscape and Fossil Angels):]

Finally I have the chance to send you this, I hope, inspirational remark on your philosophical thought, from whom it may be consider a self-initiated student in The theory and practice of True Art: Real Magik, Ars Magna, Arte Real as in Spanish translation for Royal, or Lacan’s Réel. This is a reference to the conclusions in Fossil Angels in terms of, so to speak, bibliographic quotation, because I agree with your thesis but I think it could be depicted more precisely and beautifully.

And yes, this is also a feedback from a close reader of your work as a comic fan, Old Europe fashion of course, who has grown influenced by your ideas, walking across the realities you imagine, one of my favourite inner deepest universes from my childhood’s mythology along with Ibáñez, Ferry, Prado, Quino, Goscinny–Uderzo, Fellini–Pratt–Manara, Jodorowsky–Moebius, Otomo, Boucq, Miller–Sienkiewicz, Gaiman–McKean, Morrison, Delano, Chaykin, Davis–Claremont, Byrne, Mazzucchelli, Chadwick, Giffen–Grant–Bisley, Bolland, Allred, David, Mills–O’Neill, The Simonson, Muth, Williams, Nocenti, Bissette–Totleben, Milligan, Leonardi, Gibbons, Wagner, Nowlan, Mignola, Truman, B. W. Smith, among others that came afterwards, Ellis, Millar, Bendis, Busiek, Brubaker…

I tell you this to give you a brief background and to keep it clear from the very beginning: I´m not a crazy fan, nor an academic intellectual, or a lunatic self-proclaimed magician, but yes I have things in common with all three of them, the good and clever things, the right stuff. Actual complex people require more than that together to fully exist. Anyway. I don’t want to waste your precious time in such stupid nonsense. I don’t mean to bother you, to be disrespectful. Flattery weakens.

So this is going to be short and synthetic, not completely explained. You can contact me anytime you need any further specific information; you will always be welcome to do so. And please, excuse my many mistakes writing in English, and try to understand them as the poetics of mistranslation… periphrasal expressions… linguistic serendipity… Herrors.

To quickly contextualize my humble ambition and to present to you my scientific thesis on Real Magik as a cognitive model: I graduated in Fine Arts at Barcelona’s College (UB) the year 2000 and from then on I´ve been devoted to my research -always out of the University- in the field of symbolic knowledge, where Art, Science and Religion meet. Long story short: (1) The cognitive processes implied in the arts, (2) the proposition of Human Sciences as an autonomous methodology, (3) not correctly understood under Natural Science criteria, (4) and a trully shifter paradigma, let’s call it Icon-centric; a New World of knowledge not based on Gods, Numbers (Logic), Human Beings, or most recently, Language. I’m talking about (5) communication and knowledge based on Scott McCloud’s clousure itself, with no standarized convention, or even so, made by breaking the standards, the stablished, the law; a language without words or letters, pure grammar.

That’s Art. Matteriality but none the less immaterial. And yet, not even ideas nor archaetypes or myths, but maybe intuitions, visions, most surely perceptions. Synaesthesia, the energy/matter dance, actually, vibration as self-organization into novelty/complexity on an infinite space/time canvas. The act of perception/production gets solved in auto-poiesis: Aesthetics and Critique. The symbolic interchange we call Culture, not metaphysical concepts, but the measurable group of objects and rituals, its logics and consecuences. Of course, Metaphore is key in not confusing (trying to diferenciate) fact and fiction, because humanity is a hybrid made of both, as you say.

And now, let’s go with the explanation of the diagram, the gift I send to you, with no feedback expectation:

This one is closely related to your idea in Fossil Angels about how Magic should be understood as an artform instead of science. Here I propose Magic as a group of symbolic actions, im or matterial, caracterized by its operational ability to transform things, which diference them from the rest of Culture, as the repetition of social convention. In the center of Magic is Lacan’s Real, a zero dimensional no-space where Platonic ideas exist, and you call Immateria or Imagination, as a matter of fact, the poietic reality contained in mythic rituals, the performance itself, the theater of life. Not a methaphysical space but the act of interpretation, I want to point out.

And then we have Magic divided in three categories, Art, Science and Religion; future, present and past of symbolic normalization; or the three states of matter: gas, liquid and solid, if Magic is magma, and the Real is an hyperfluid, the vacuum. Between them, the space where they intersect and become ideology: Idealism, Humanism, Matterialism, false religions. And if we set our point of view from the perspective of Art, we will realize it is the way of self-poietic relation between methodologies and the law; the field of perception between logic and common sense; the accurate proportion between novelty and tradition.

This way, we can also solve the equation of conceptual ghosts, such as, intelligence, conscience, mind, individuality, genius, etc. We have the Unconscious, Language and Ego as dimensions where reality happens, but they are not entities; there is no objectivity, human being or nature outside Western Culture. On the other hand we have Archaetypes, Formulas and Images to communicate with each other, but they should not be mistaken for the Truth.