On his fortieth birthday in 1993, Alan Moore openly declared himself to be a magician, something he discussed in an interview with The Guardian in 2002:

“One word balloon in From Hell completely hijacked my life… A character says something like, ‘The one place gods inarguably exist is in the human mind’. After I wrote that, I realized I’d accidentally made a true statement, and now I’d have to rearrange my entire life around it. The only thing that seemed to really be appropriate was to become a magician.”

For Moore, his writing is his magic and his magic is his artform. In The Mindscape of Alan Moore documentary, he states rather unequivocally:

“I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people’s consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman.”

Consider the truth of that statement in terms of Moore’s very own work and say… the Occupy movement or Anonymous.

God, I love Alan Moore. May he have the best birthday ever this year (and every year).

Click here to read about “Who Strips the Strippers?” Excelsior Burlesque’s tribute to Alan Moore.

Below, a video of Alan Moore’s complete lecture at Northampton College on September 26, 2013. The mage of comics reads an extract from his book, The Mirror of Love and offers insights on being a writer.