The Western Gate

The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic
Alan Moore & Steve Moore
Knockabout publishing

Cunningly disguised as a child’s annual or activity book to see any budding hi-jinxer through the long summer holidays? What we have here in fact is a delightful grimoire. It’s a poke in the eye to the plethora of new millennial occult books and authors bombarding us with highbrow text and bombastic pages of ego driven bohemian nonsense, here a classic is born, this will be remembered more so than a scholarly wieldy mudlark offered by the chin scratchers and the clicky circle of the condescending elite.

Within, are cartoons, i.e;- the lives of the great enchanters, artwork by six fantastic artists in Comic-art-style, brief outlines of all the great names in the occult world. There are stories and activities to do on rainy days, there are lengthy articles on Kabbalah in the western hermetic tradition, in fact, for want of a better description it is a perfect introduction to the occult. But. Make no mistakes, this is not the sort of book you could give your grandchildren as a first foray into this magnificent path, everyone should, and will, enjoy this book.

This isn’t an exploitive comic based foray ala-Satanic Mojo (still funny) and does not seek to shock or parody, it is a little (large) work of genius. Imagine studying six hefty volumes of Buddhist text on the art of silence and nothingness, and the ‘boy next door‘ reads his Christmas Beano annual and reads the comic strip- Roger the Dodger- where Roger is simply told to keep still and quiet, and thereupon ‘boy next door’ gets it, whilst the studious frowning perfectomundo is still battling with his conscience, with four more volumes to go. Well that’s the vibe.
This is the work of an accuser(s) declaring the new millennial, yawning, authors are boring, just as punk came long and threw two fingers up to the prog-rockers playing double keyboards in wizard capes, here we have a collection of upstarts showing how things can be ‘fun’ – remember that? How life is to be enjoyed and not diligently and perfectly studied like a suppressed cloistered monk with a command of the English, and any language.

I remembered instantly when I opened the book for the first time, many years ago myself receiving a little book- Every boy’s handbook, I must’ve been 11 years old, it was before I went to the big school, I had just read Dion Fortunes- Psychic Self Defence, far from throwing me off the scent to dabble, I dived in headlong, and within the Every Boy’s Handbook book found some Latin, I immediately crafted a circle, wrote the Latin words I liked and began to chant the Lord’s Prayer backwards with my intent fixed in my mind, being as I had the advantage of hitting puberty and all the psychic resonance that involved it was an intense and powerful experience producing manifestations no-one would believe and nothing I could ever repeat practically again, once charted- ne’er again ventured.
I would love to fill this review with copies and extracts from the book, but, perhaps that is the beauty of the thing, that wonder and childlike awe we encountered when first embarking on our treacherous path, and when as always, it worked and, was fun ! Besides which, it would be copyrighted, and in this instant, fairly so.
This book is mockery and irony, both the fool and the magician, Can wisdom stand alongside sarcasm? “The mask shows the clown, and yet the words speak the truth”- so sayeth the serpent.
But. Can I really leave this where grandchildren will find it? Has anyone actually read the original Brothers Grimm stories, they’d be banned in an instant. There are many books I could recommend as a first assay onto the threshold, but yes, this would be right up there, and of course, just like the Handbooks and references of old, any age can garner pleasant beautiful things from within.