I’ve always been ever so slightly jealous of people who get invited to do AMAs on Reddit. It’s not exactly like being parodied on SNL, still it’s a signifier that whatever you are up to seems to be perceived as relevant. And who doesn’t want to be relevant, especially halfway through a Kickstarter for a documentary project? Count me in! I will go anyplace or do anything to push the Magick Show Kickstarter campaign over the finish line, even if that means going into the den of lions that is a Reddit AMA.
Just kidding, I’m grateful that the r/Occult moderators invited me to discuss Magick Show and I’m sure it will be a mostly welcoming crowd. I’m equally sure that at least a few fuckwits will show up, but, for me at least, that’s part of the fun. It wouldn’t be a Reddit AMA without the requisite assholes, now would it? I want the full experience, especially if this is my only shot at it.
So join me on the r/Occult subreddit on Monday, July 29th at 6pm EST and ASK ME ANYTHING.
In this excerpt from ‘Magick Show,’ author/musician Rodney Orpheus compares Aleister Crowley’s Law of Thelema to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
I was recently on the Right Where You Are Sitting Now podcast—which explores Occulture and High Strangeness—with co-host Ken Eakins and Brian Buckman. We discussed the fall of the “classic” counterculture, modern magick and the Magick Show project which you can back on Kickstarter!
Just a note to thank everyone who has thus far backed Magick Show on Kickstarter. We (quite literally) cannot do it without your support and greatly appreciate your generosity. We’re only about one-third of the way into the campaign and we’ve already crossed the 50% mark towards our goal!
If you’ve been considering backing the project, if you could do it today and give us a boost, it would help us to get ranked higher on the Kickstarter documentary page, which would help even more. Approximately one-fifth of backers on Kickstarter come from within the Kickstarter community. Magick Show so far is getting only 2% of our total from Kickstarter internally so you can see how important it is to show momentum so we’re ranked higher.
In this excerpt from Richard Metzger’s Magick Show, author/musician Rodney Orpheus compares Aleister Crowley’s Law of Thelema to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
This is my second Magick Show Diary. You can read the first one here.
Once a documentary project is greenlighted, you go straight to the research, looking for potential on-camera experts. When it came to something like Magick Show, there were a lot of obvious choices, individuals who were either known to me, or who I knew personally that had to be on the list, but they comprised fewer than half of the people we finally assembled.
Although I was well aware of the famous #WitchTok hashtag, TikTok isn’t the sort of thing I tend to partake in, so I was starting from scratch there. Primarily I was looking on the app for younger people, but I was also hoping to find within that broad subset a racial and gender mix that would represent millennial and Gen Z occultists more authentically. The occult subculture has always been—to be blunt—a very white and Eurocentric space. It also tends to skew older on the male side. Young witches, as you might expect, are in abundance, and easy to find on TikTok, but I quickly noticed that the vast majority—9.75 out of 10—of the videos that came up from clicking on the #WitchTok hashtag didn’t show anyone’s face. Altars. Lots of altars. Burning candles or burning sage, but rarely any faces. Typically no voices are heard either, you just see affirmational quotes superimposed over all the shots of the candles and altars. Few “personalities” emerge, at least on occult TikTok, and most creators who have broken through, and are seen on camera in their videos, are difficult to take seriously.
I did try to book four people from TikTok but only one of them replied when they were contacted. The young woman who did, I was bitterly disappointed about ultimately not being able to get for Magick Show. She described herself as a chola bruja and the minute I saw her severely plucked eyebrows, I thought “wow this one is a star.” She had a strong presence on camera, she looked great and quite obviously had a very, very big personality. (She ultimately passed due to her infant son not being old enough to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and she didn’t want to be on the subway in NYC, a reasonable excuse, of course.)
So much for #WitchTok. Many of the people who are in Magick Show, I tried to contact via their own websites, but it was surprising how few replied. You’d expect that this would be the easiest way to get in touch with someone, right? Maybe I’m just showing my age, but I would ultimately find that DMing on Instagram was the best way to reach many people. Even then it would take days, and often weeks—and in one case six weeks—before I’d hear back from them. Several people would contact me after I’d already written them off as unreachable. It was perplexing, not something I was used to. Whenever I have asked someone to be on camera for something, I’m used to getting a speedy response. Everyone likes being interviewed, right?
WRONG. Not when it comes to talking about occult stuff, they don’t. Many people publish occult books under pen names, their reason might be their career—one polite “no thanks” mentioned a government gig that the respondent didn’t want to jeopardize. There were several people like that, often with high-paying corporate gigs. With some it was simple shyness. John Zorn told me over email when I asked him if I could interview him for Magick Show that he didn’t do interviews anymore because “mouthing off in public has its price!” And what he meant by that is by respecting his creative muse in this way—those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know—his angels never abandoned him. Another, I felt, quite reasonable excuse. (He sent me some files of some then-unreleased music that seared my synapses. It was the nicest turndown that I’ve ever received.)
But… yeah. It was really difficult to book people for this, much, much harder than I anticipated. In the end, this forced me to work harder and to dig deeper until I assembled, like Profesor Xavier, just the right mutant thinkers, or at least a critical mass of them. I’ve gotten a lot of emails and DMs telling me “You should have gotten so and so…” Trust me, in most cases I did try to get so and so, but so and so never replied to my email or DM. I really wanted to get Erik Davis on camera, but sadly he would be in Germany while I was shooting in LA. I’d still like to get Erik on camera if the Kickstarter does well enough. By and large, I got most of the people I wanted but it was an anxious ordeal, truly one of the most difficult tasks of my entire career.
This is getting long enough, so I’ll end here and pick this up again tomorrow.
Grant Morrison Will Cast a Spell for You. Comics Genius to Support a Kickstarter Campaign for a New Occult Documentary Series with Unusual Offering
Launches this Thursday at midnight
Los Angeles – July 8, 2024 – Renowned comics genius Grant Morrison offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for three lucky individuals to have a personal magick spell cast just for them. This unique reward is part of an ambitious Kickstarter campaign to fund the post-production of Magick Show, a groundbreaking documentary project being described as a “masterclass in the occult.” Magick Show was created by Richard Metzger (Dangerous Minds, Disinformation) and produced by media theorist Douglas Rushkoff.
Grant Morrison, a legendary figure in the world of comics and a practicing magician, has joined the campaign with this extraordinary pledge. For his contribution, Morrison will cast a personalized spell for the backer, blending his vast knowledge of magic and storytelling to create a unique and powerful work of art.
“I’m thrilled to be part of this momentous occasion,” said Morrison. “Quite simply it’s the best show about magic ever made! The best, least sensationalized, most informed presentation of what contemporary magic is and how it works that I’ve ever seen onscreen.” Morrison looks forward to becoming part of the Magick Show community. “It is time to call together the next generation of occultists, expose them to their lineage, and initiate them into the larger culture of practicing magicians.”
The spell includes a consultation with Morrison, who will work with the recipient to focus, calibrate, and aim the spell perfectly.
Morrison is known for his promotion of the “sigil” theory of spellcasting and will create a symbol relating to the accomplishment of the desired outcome on a canvas with paint, delivering a one-of-a-kind artwork to the lucky supporters.
“It seemed pretty obvious that it would be difficult to get many outlets to write about some ‘weird occult documentary project’ on Kickstarter,” said Metzger, “but what if the story was ‘Grant Morrison will personally cast a spell for you’? That’s different. That’s catnip for comics, horror, and sci-fi blogs and the story writes itself. Then it seeps out into public consciousness. That’s how we pitched it to Grant and he readily agreed to help us out.”
Magick Show promises to delve deep into modern occultism’s mysterious world, exploring its influence on contemporary culture and uncovering its hidden truths. With a team of visionary creators at the helm, including Metzger, known for his pioneering work in alternative media, and Rushkoff, an acclaimed author and media theorist, the documentary aims to offer an unprecedented look into the myriad ways magick is practiced in the 21st century.
“Magick inflects the reality in which we live,” Rushkoff explained. “From corporate logos and money systems to warfare and presidential elections. It is everywhere, once you learn to see it. Magick Show teaches us how.”
The Kickstarter campaign seeks to raise $150,000 in 40 days to bring Magick Show to life. In addition to Morrison’s spellcasting, backers can choose from a range of exclusive rewards, including an incredible limited edition poster designed by artist Dima Drjuchin (famous for his work with Tool and Father John Misty) and special acknowledgments and credits in the film.
The campaign is being organized by Magick Show ally and Century Guild founder Thomas Negovan, an inaugural member of Kickstarter’s creator advisory council who has been responsible for over 70 successful campaigns. In his words, “Magick Show is a clarion call for everyone who can feel this acceleration of reality we are experiencing to gather together, to gain focus, and learn to harness that velocity for positive change.”
Anyone wanting to support Magick Show and take advantage of this unique opportunity to have a spell cast for them by Grant Morrison himself, visit the Kickstarter campaign page here when it goes live on Thursday, July 11, 2024.
For media inquiries, please contact Richard Metzger [metzger.richard AT gmail DOT com]
About Magick Show: Magick Show is a sprawling documentary project exploring the world of contemporary occultism and its cultural impact. Created by Richard Metzger and produced by Douglas Rushkoff, the project—described as a “documentary bundle”—promises to unveil the secrets and influence of modern magic practices. So far over 50 members of the occult community have been interviewed for Magick Show in London, Los Angeles, and New York City. It includes the final on-camera interview with the legendary underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger.
About Grant Morrison: Grant Morrison is a celebrated comic book writer, author, screenwriter, and magician, known for his groundbreaking works such as The Invisibles, All-Star Superman, Doom Patrol and Multiversity. His work often explores themes of magic, consciousness, and the nature of reality.
Newly added to the backer rewards on the Magick Show Kickstarter is a place in Arden Leigh’s Myths & Magick class, a 4-week course on narrative magick and archetypal invocation. Arden is a practicing chaos magican and musician living in Los Angeles who Grant Morrison has described as his “magical heir.”
I asked Arden a few questions over email.
What is the Re-Patterning Project course and what should someone expect to get out of it?
The Re-Patterning Project is an 8-week course container that provides a comprehensive view of the way our human operating system forms the beliefs, mindsets, and patterns that inform our responses, habits, choices, worldviews, and ideas of what is possible. It is a multi-disciplinary approach to unearthing our core bugs and re-installing our behavioral patterns and frameworks, culled together with information and practices from cutting-edge trauma and addiction research, neuroscience, attachment theory, neuro-linguistic programming, Timeline Therapy… and a little bit of magick. It’s being handed the keys to deep self-awareness and integration of our past timeline so that we can fully meet our present and evolve to generate our ideal future. Graduates of the program report an overwhelming, often eyeball-melting slide into the life of their dreams about six to twelve months after the course ends, renewed excitement and engagement with life when they realize they have the ability to volley with reality and learn how to control their results, crystal clear manifestation energy for building their future (the result of untangling patterns imprinted by past trauma), the ability to predict how situations are going to play out based on the patterns present in them, and a sense of peace, capability, awareness, and badassery, as well as the ongoing will to live even in times that challenge it.
How many students do you teach at a time and it’s over Zoom?
Usually, it’s around a dozen. Lectures and group calls are both held over Zoom and there’s also a private Facebook group so participants can ask questions in between meetings or process the material that’s coming up for them. I also offer 1-1 work to those who are either current students or graduates of the course, to facilitate the rewiring of those patterns, especially if there are particularly stubborn ones or if they prefer facilitation over DIYing them.
Grant Morrison has called you his “magical heir” which is quite the wand to be dinged with, obviously. What does that mean, exactly?
Grant was extraordinarily generous to take me on as an apprentice. The apprenticeship was my idea; since we were already forming a friendship around our shared love of magick, and since around that time I’d managed a successful spell for the safe return of one of Grant’s cats, I suggested we add a more formal mentorship structure and that I could perhaps be of service to them in a spellcraft capacity that would help me develop my magickal skillset. Grant responded with a beautifully well-thought-out correspondence curriculum based on the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life, with homework, ritual exercises, and reading assignments based on each sphere. I complete the assignments on my own time and then report back with my thoughts, findings, and results. One day we’ll turn all this into an epistolary book, we hope, so that the curriculum we’re carving out as teacher and student can one day be made available to anyone who wants to replicate the journey—but we began five years ago and have only just wrapped up Netzach, so future readers may have to wait a bit as it’s likely to be a path that spans a large chunk of our lives.
You’re a musician, too. Can you tell the readers about Arden and the Wolves?
Arden and the Wolves is the solo project I created to contain all my songwriting. The music is mostly pop/rock, but I don’t limit myself in a genre as I use it as a narrative device to create the world that best suits whatever story I want to tell in the song or album. The next album, titled The Bourbon Room Sessions, leans more Southern gothic blues since the subject matter is heavy, dealing with the transmutation of deep-set patterns causing addiction and the grit it requires to pave the way back from the brink of death. At this point, all of my albums are hypersigils, and my songs are individual works of narrative magick, whether I’ve been fully aware of it at the time of writing them or not. I’ve learned I need to be extraordinarily careful with what I sing into being, so going forward any musical work I create gets approached first and foremost as a work of magick. The magick hits hardest around the time of their release, and following that the albums stand as monuments to the aspects of reality I’ve altered in writing them.
When he sent me this poster design, my reaction was one of “OH HELL YES,” but wait until you see what this looks like animated for the opening title sequence!
As I mentioned in my Magick Show Diaries post yesterday, my day began with a podcast interview at 7am. And then I was on the telephone with several people in a row until the cartilage in my ear felt like it was disintegrating. At around 4pm, I realized that I had a migraine headache coming on and took some Imitrex for that.
By 5pm, when I was slated to appear on Michael Parker Media, I was profoundly tired and really just… talked out, if not fully zonked out. I contemplated asking to postpone the interview, but I always hated it when someone would do that to me, so I opted to tough it out. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried as Michael is a very warm and charismatic interviewer and his high energy helped me rally. We had a really good chat about all things occult, the media and the Magick Show project that I’m trying to promote.
Richard Metzger the founder of Disinformation and the Dangerous Minds website discusses his new project Magick Show. We discuss magic with a K, modern occultism, psychedelics, the intersection of technology and metaphysics, and the rising profile of Chaos Magick. We also touch on the challenges of pitching occult media in today’s media landscape, the rise of #WitchTok, and the political and marketing uses of magick against the populace.
Michael’s show features a variety of wild topics—from rock and roll to conspiracy theories to rock and roll conspiracy theories—that I think many Dangerous Minds readers would appreciate. He’s very open-minded. I think Michael Parker would make an especially good stand-in host for George Noory on Coast to Coast AM.
Another installment in “The Magick Show Diaries.” Back Magick Show on Kickstarter via MagickShow.net
Yesterday was a fun day and it was also an absolutely exhausting day. It began on a high note and stayed the course, although I must admit that I felt bone-tired when it was all over.
My first stop of the day was an interview conducted by the brilliant Gordon White for his Rune Soup podcast. It was late at night where Gordon is located—Tasmania—and 7am in my part of the world. Despite the time zones, we had a great conversation. Gordon is a very well-informed interviewer, he’s an expert’s expert when it comes to matters of the occult and spiritualism, and he’s also rather well-versed in media theory and advertising. I was really looking forward to this interview and meeting Gordon, and I had a lot of fun doing it. Gordon’s Rune Soup podcast is one of my favorites, I highly recommend subscribing to his YouTube channel. (Here’s a link to a particularly good recent episode that I found really fascinating.)
One of the topics that came up during the Rune Soup interview was my teenage obsession with Night Flight and as magick would have it, later in the day I had the pleasure of speaking on the phone to the delightful KJ Howell who is the underground culture TV streamer’s social media maven. KJ wrote to me, graciously offering some marketing suggestions and asking me if I wanted to jump on a call. I did. No time like the present.
I love talking to younger people who are really culturally clued in and KJ definitely fits that description, she’s a real asset to a company like Night Flight and all of her ideas were solid gold. We must’ve yammered for at least 90 minutes.
Soon after that, it was time to do another podcast on Michael Parker Media. I’m not gonna lie, I was by that point quite talked out, but Michael is such a warm and personable guy, and with his excellent questions and obvious enthusiasm for the topic of the occult, I was able to rally myself—barely at times—into some degree of conversational coherence. I’ll be posting that interview here soon as well.
Another installment of “The Magick Show Diaries.” Support us at MagickShow.net
Bri Luna is the Queen of the witches. She doesn’t call herself that—she famously calls herself the Hoodwitch, of course—but that’s how I describe her. Some people have a regal way of carrying themselves. They have an air of elegance and sophistication that seems more inherent than cultivated. A refined and aristocratic demeanor that commands respect. A natural grace and intelligence that makes them stand out and draws other people to them. A natural nobility, if you will. It’s who they are.
There’s not a single motherfucker alive who wouldn’t immediately notice Bri Luna walking into the room, let me just put it that way!
Bri Luna is probably the most famous witch in the world. I asked Elisabeth Krohn, the editor-in-chief of Sabat magazine, who she felt best exemplified the modern witch and without any hesitation whatsoever, she said it was Bri, citing her style, her originality and her on-point nail game. She feels that Bri has created a singular and noteworthy brand that stands out from the pack.
That’s all true. Bri’s carved out a unique space for herself in popular culture that allows her to live life on her own terms. She gets invited to speak at universities and has been paid tens of thousands of dollars for single Instagram posts. She’s made lucrative endorsement deals for beauty projects. She takes private clients for tarot readings several days each week and she published her first book, the intriguingly titled Blood Sex Magic, last Halloween.
My pal Bri is an impressive human being. She’s a true original, there is nothing clichéd about her. Every time that I have ever had a conversation about her with someone else there’s never any disagreement over how cool Bri is.
Which is not to imply with any of this that she’s not a sweet-natured and approachable human being, because she is. And she’s really funny. A few days ago we were on Zoom and she told me this insane, very David Lynch-like tale of something that had happened to her in the boondocks outside of New Orleans. I was laughing so hard that I was crying. And then she got to the punch line, which, dear reader, I can assure you I did not see coming:
“And then I broke that bitch’s nose.”
I’m hope I’m conveying at least a somewhat accurate portrayal of Bri here. She contains multitudes. I simply cannot imagine Magick Show without her in it.
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