Grant Morrison and pop magick: when comics become ritual
In the nineties, chaos magick left the occult bookstores and landed on newsstands. The man primarily responsible was Grant Morrison, a Scottish writer who treated a mainstream comic book as a ritual device.
The hypersigil
Morrison calls a long narrative work in which the author stages a version of themselves and their intent, then lets the story influence the life that produces it, a hypersigil. The Invisibles is explicitly this.
The mechanism is an extension of the classic sigil: instead of a glyph charged in a few minutes, an intent is diluted over years of storytelling, with the attention of thousands of readers acting as additional fuel.
Pop magick: using symbols without a pedigree
The underlying thesis is consistent with the current: if beliefs are tools, a comic book character or a corporate logo can function like an ancient deity, as long as they actually move something within the person using them.
The advantage is practical. A contemporary symbol carries an immediate emotional charge for us that a Mesopotamian deity, studied in books, often lacks.
The limits to keep in mind
The hypersigil is a long-term commitment and is difficult to verify: narrative coincidences lend themselves to selective reading more than anything else.
It should also be remembered that Morrison also recounts the price of his experiment, including a serious health collapse during production. Pop magick is fun on the surface and demanding underneath.
Original Italian version: read in Italian.