Inspired by news that Alan Moore is still social­ly iso­lat­ing in 2022 and “knows” the coro­na virus was cre­at­ed in a lab, I dug up this old account from 2007: the year my child­hood Alan Moore fan­ta­sy bub­ble final­ly & irrev­o­ca­bly burst.

Last night I met Alan Moore, the famous com­ic book writer. I have admired Moore ever since I read Watch­men at age twen­ty and it con­sol­i­dat­ed my intu­ition (make that obses­sion) that I was liv­ing in the End Times. He was a for­ma­tive influ­ence. Nat­u­ral­ly, I’d want­ed to meet him for years.

Over the years, I’d had dreams of Moore that seemed some­what “sor­cer­ous”; since Moore admits to being a prac­tic­ing magi­cian, I assumed, as one does, that we were fel­low astral trav­el­ers. One day, I was stay­ing with an autis­tic friend Mark Lawn in Bedford.

 “Let’s go to Northamp­ton and find Alan Moore,” I said.

Mark didn’t hes­i­tate for thought. “OK,” he said, and off we set.

We had no clue where Moore lived or how to find him, so we didn’t have any plan. We just drove to the town and start­ed wan­der­ing around. Half an hour lat­er, Mark spot­ted Moore. He was easy to spot, since he has a huge wizard’s beard and car­ries a magician’s staff. He was with a female com­pan­ion and as we spot­ted him they were enter­ing a restau­rant called Piz­za on Earth. We fol­lowed him in and sat down a few tables away. I ordered tea and cheese­cake and we pre­tend­ed to have a nor­mal conversation.

Moore and the woman even­tu­al­ly fin­ished their piz­za, and as they were get­ting up to leave, I went over and intro­duced myself. He was cour­te­ous and gra­cious in response to my praise, and I gave him the print­ed sheets of writ­ing I’d brought along for the occa­sion, excerpts from the as-that-time-unpub­lished Homo Ser­pi­ens by my alter-ego Aeo­lus Kephas.

He glanced at the papers and said, “You’re Aeo­lus are you?”

I said I was and told him I’d left a num­ber for him to call me if he got the chance.

 “Things are pret­ty hec­tic right now,” he said, and we part­ed ways.

Moore nev­er called the num­ber I gave him but I was sat­is­fied that I’d proved there was a con­nec­tion between us, and that my sor­cery was pow­er­ful enough to have found him when I set out to do so.

*

Sev­er­al months lat­er, I found out that he was tak­ing part in a dis­cus­sion at Bishop’s Gate, tied to the release of some book called Dis­ap­pear­ing Lon­don, with fel­low writ­ers Ian Sin­clair and Michael Moor­cock. I arrived ear­ly and got a front row seat, next to an Amer­i­can girl who was total­ly starstruck over Moore and not in the least embar­rassed by it. Her slight­ly pathet­ic infat­u­a­tion seemed like the Universe’s way of gen­tly chid­ing me.

As the audi­to­ri­um filled, Moore was hang­ing around with the oth­er two writ­ers. I got him to sign a copy of Promethea. He showed no sign of rec­og­niz­ing me. I was about to remind him of our pre­vi­ous meet­ing when some­one else approached with a book. Moore asked to bor­row my pen so I wound up wait­ing. The Amer­i­can girl joined us and asked me to take a pho­to of her with Moore. I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty and men­tioned to him that we’d met before.

He remem­bered me then, so I asked if he’d read my writing.

“Prob­a­bly not all of it,” he said. “I haven’t read a book all the way through in about three years.” He then made a non­com­mit­tal remark about it being “inter­est­ing,” adding that it was not quite “his way” of see­ing things.

I could see he was being polite, that he was unwill­ing or unable to feign enthu­si­asm. This was some­thing I hadn’t expect­ed. I loved his work, why wouldn’t he like mine?! My plan had been to ask him for a quote for when the book came out. Now it was clear this was not an option.

Moore didn’t seem espe­cial­ly com­fort­able with me, pre­sum­ably because he couldn’t praise my work and because I plain­ly want­ed him to. He tried to appease my disappointment.

“You’ve obvi­ous­ly put a lot of ener­gy into it,” he said, then reit­er­at­ed that it didn’t quite agree with his “sys­tem.”

I replied that I didn’t think my book was a magikal sys­tem, so much as an overview. He nod­ded and said that “the kind of magikal think­ing” wasn’t the same as his.

I was try­ing to think of a way to find out what he meant exact­ly, but he clear­ly wasn’t open to talk­ing about it. He wished me good luck and pat­ted me on the arm, then walked away.

I watched him go. To my amuse­ment, he sat down in the emp­ty seat next to mine. I had no choice but to sit down next to him!

“You don’t get away from me that eas­i­ly!” I joked. He didn’t laugh, and seemed dis­tinct­ly uncom­fort­able. He want­ed to talk to the woman on his left (it was the same woman I’d seen him with in Northamp­ton) but she was engaged in con­ver­sa­tion with some­one, so he sat for a moment, unsure what to do. Before I could launch my next attack, he mut­tered some­thing, got up, and went back to the oth­er writers.

*

Dur­ing the talk he was sat direct­ly oppo­site me and had no choice but to look at me, at least some of the time. I got the feel­ing that he was dis­turbed by my pres­ence. The read­ing and dis­cus­sion was very dull, and it occurred to me—while I was pro­cess­ing my dis­ap­point­ment over the encounter—that, besides Promethea, noth­ing Alan Moore had writ­ten in the last ten years or more (prob­a­bly since From Hell) had impressed me that much. So why was I so hung up on gain­ing his approval?

The answer is sim­ple: he was one of lit­er­ary heroes in my for­ma­tive years, and I had become fix­at­ed on con­nect­ing to him and mak­ing him part of my per­son­al his­to­ry. He had become an obsession.

The result of the encounter was that my obses­sion end­ed. Dis­ap­point­ing as it was not to be “met” at the des­ig­nat­ed sor­cer­ers’ appoint­ment, the main thing—the only thing—was to have found out that Moore and I weren’t and nev­er would be cohorts. Now I could put my fas­ci­na­tion for him away, along with an ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of child­ish things, like those stuffed toys of my past.

“Fail­ure” is a far greater teacher than success.

I recent­ly watched a doc­u­men­tary called Died Sud­den­ly, which has been doing the rounds on the inter­net recent­ly. It has been both wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed and wide­ly crit­i­cized. I found the film impact­ful: dis­turb­ing, apoc­a­lyp­tic, even mov­ing, but also quite excit­ing, and hence a lit­tle ques­tion­able. Should some­thing this hor­rif­ic also be this enter­tain­ing? The images of peo­ple sup­pos­ed­ly react­ing to the mRNA jab, spin­ning around with their arm in the air and then falling down, in com­bi­na­tion with footage of hor­ren­dous Cthul­hu-like blood clots being removed from corpses, and the var­i­ous embalmer and mil­i­tary whistle­blow­er inter­views, all adds up to an out­stand­ing piece of con­spir­atain­ment. But is it true, and if so, shouldn’t such mate­r­i­al be han­dled more sober­ly and care­ful­ly? The answer is some of it is true, but not all, and yes, it should.

Here are a cou­ple of arti­cles, both well-con­sid­ered, both for and against. From Mark Crispin Miller (most­ly for): https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/died-suddenly-is-all-about-those

From Josh Guet­zkow (most­ly against): https://jackanapes.substack.com/p/died-suddenly-is-typical-trash-from (points out four areas of pos­si­ble misinformation).

I sug­gest read­ing these before watch­ing the doc­u­men­tary, if you haven’t already seen it. I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend watch­ing the doc­u­men­tary, despite my mis­giv­ings, because much of the mate­r­i­al deserves to be seen, and con­tem­plat­ed. Embrac­ing the film too quick­ly is a mis­take, but so is jump­ing onto the oppo­site band­wag­on and decry­ing it as a psy­op (the rea­son­ing being that the film is a well-poi­son­er meant to dis­cred­it the truth and the truth-tellers in the film, by asso­ci­a­tion.)  What it clear­ly is an exam­ple of, at the very least & IMO, is slop­py report­ing, pre­ma­ture con­clu­sions, and counter-pro­duc­tive, if not self-sab­o­tag­ing, pre­sen­ta­tion methods.

The film also makes sev­er­al ref­er­ences to meta­phys­i­cal evil, as the con­text for the evi­dence it presents. Fair enough, except that this under­scores the dan­gers of “unearned wis­dom,” or too much knowl­edge with­out the nec­es­sary psy­cho­log­i­cal (or spir­i­tu­al) prepa­ra­tion. The film seems designed to incite a kind of apoc­a­lyp­tic fer­vor, zeal, and out­rage in the view­er, which leads to forms of action that are like­wise counter-pro­duc­tive, if not self-sab­o­tag­ing (such as ham­mer­ing peo­ple online when their friends or rel­a­tives die, blam­ing the mRNA jab and mak­ing fren­zied demands to check the bod­ies for blood clots).

If a lot of peo­ple are dying cur­rent­ly, I am start­ing to won­der why I am not hear­ing about it more direct­ly, from the peo­ple I know? Admit­ted­ly, I don’t get around much these days, it is just us, the cats and chick­ens, and the occa­sion­al work­man. But I still check my email and send out this newslet­ter, and as yet I have heard very lit­tle about sud­den deaths. So, if you think you know peo­ple who have fall­en vic­tim to the mRNA gene-hack, please let me know, that way I can tal­ly the score, and real­i­ty-check this apoc­a­lypse scenario.

Next up, for more counter-pro­duc­tive if not self-sab­o­tag­ing pre­sen­ta­tion meth­ods, there is Gra­ham Hancock’s Ancient Apoc­a­lypse, the first episode of which I watched last night. I had heard that it was con­sid­ered “dan­ger­ous” TV, but with­in 5 min­utes I knew the only dan­ger it pre­sent­ed was of per­ma­nent­ly demol­ish­ing (what­ev­er remained of) my inter­est in ancient arti­facts and civ­i­liza­tions. I man­aged to make it through the whole half-hour (only because my wife is big on archae­ol­o­gy), and I came away think­ing that there could hard­ly be a bet­ter way to dis­cred­it ancient arti­fact dis­cov­er­ies than to get Gra­ham Han­cock togeth­er with Net­flix to present the evi­dence to us. Almost every last shot was drip­ping with Dan Brown-style histri­on­ics: slow-motion shots of the intre­pid explor­er, omi­nous music rum­bling and whoosh­ing on the sound­track, flash cuts and glid­ing over­head shots, CGI recre­ations of the “orig­i­nal” struc­tures, com­plete­ly unsup­port­ed by evi­dence, all of which ensured that the relent­less­ly pumped up medi­um-as-mes­sage total­ly drowned out any nat­ur­al inter­est the sub­ject mat­ter might have had for me.

After suf­fer­ing it none-too-silent­ly, I skimmed the Guardian piece, titled and bylined, “Ancient Apoc­a­lypse is the most dan­ger­ous show on Net­flix: A show with a tru­ly pre­pos­ter­ous the­o­ry is one of the stream­ing giant’s biggest hits – and it seems to exist sole­ly for con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. Why has this been allowed?”

Is this the old one-two effect? Hit them with some over-cooked spicy enter­tain­ment pro­pa­gan­da, and then fol­low it with some “sober” (actu­al­ly equal­ly hys­ter­i­cal) “con­sci­en­tious” (even more uncon­scionable) coun­ter­pro­pa­gan­da, to val­i­date the spice ~ like bland hot sauce with a pic­ture of Satan that says “Dev­il­ish­ly Hot!”? Could any­one real­ly seri­ous­ly con­sid­er a tawdry lit­tle show like this dan­ger­ous? Well, maybe some woke retard at the Guardian who just got his third boost­er shot and feels deeply, per­son­al­ly threat­ened by the first whiff of “ques­tion the sci­ence” (the Guardian’s “argu­ment” is sim­ply that the show rests on the Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry  that main­stream sci­ence is repress­ing the truth ~ ergo, is Dan­ger­ous). But I am more inclined to smell a rat than spy a woke-tard (not that it is either/or), and sus­pect the old good cop/bad cop rou­tine, with usu­al-sus­pect Han­cock* promis­ing the juicy fruit, and the Guardian step­ping in to for­bid it, there­by mak­ing damn sure we con­sume it, all the more obses­sive­ly and guilti­ly. (* Entheogen-advo­cate Han­cock has been on “the team” since at least 1990s, see Pris­on­er of Infin­i­ty p. 154. see also ISGP on Han­cock)

Iron­i­cal­ly, I have no trou­ble believ­ing the premise of the show, or that of most of Hancock’s books (not that I have read any, besides Super­nat­ur­al). But nor do I con­sid­er it espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing, with­out a suit­ably deep and dark con­text to ren­der it rel­e­vant. How many decades have we heard about Atlantis/a pri­or civ­i­liza­tion com­ing to ruin through mis­use of tech­nol­o­gy? How many gen­er­a­tions have grown up on this stuff (which may well be true, but that’s not the point), with­out it mak­ing a lick of dif­fer­ence to any­thing, besides steadi­ly low­er­ing the aver­age man and wom­an’s lev­els of dis­cern­ment? (A bit like UFOs.)

On the oth­er end of the rev­e­la­to­ry spec­trum, I also saw this week a refresh­ing ~ and typ­i­cal­ly for­got­ten ~ doc­u­men­tary called El Sicario: Room 164. It is shot on one loca­tion (room 164), with one per­son, their face cov­ered with a big black hood, and one prop (a sketch pad and a mark­er pen) to pro­vide touch­ing­ly child­ish illus­tra­tions to an ex-Car­tel mem­ber’s chill­ing account of life in the dark lane. I have uploaded it to my YT chan­nel, see below. (It may be tak­en down since i do not have copy­right, in case it does, you can DL it here.)  As I tweet­ed, I watched three doc­u­men­taries that (very rainy) day. The first was about a famous rock n’ roller (Lev­on Helm); the sec­ond was about a famous magi­cian (the amaz­ing Randy); the third was about a sicario with a price on his head. The sicario was the one who got the clos­est to God. At least one per­son found the tweet dis­turb­ing. But you have to see the film to under­stand that I was mere­ly stat­ing a fact (at least if El Sicario is a true account).

I hope to spend more time keep­ing up this newslet­ter, and pro­vid­ing more audio con­tent, in the near future, and I am now offer­ing “con­trib­u­tor” access for any­one who makes a dona­tion of 5.55 euro or more (per month).  To be hon­est, this is a very loose ship I run, so one dona­tion might get you more than a month’s access, depend­ing how reg­u­lar­ly I update the con­trib­u­tor sec­tion. If you want a 6‑month or year’s access, offi­cial­ly, just make a dona­tion to cov­er the peri­od required.

I am just now fin­ish­ing up The Kubrick­on audio book (which will be avail­able when the book is; you can pre-order Kubrick­on now; full descrip­tion + invite to reviewers/interviewers here). After that I will make an audio book for Vice of Kings, and then for Seen and Not Seen. I am also going to make my old audio book of Homo Ser­pi­ens avail­able, since it is now sell­ing for $80 online. First of all, I have to record a disclaimer! 

Bless­ings,

Jasun