Member Review
Review by
James G, Media/Journalist
Once upon a time there was a much rumoured and long-awaited book called Pop Magic! by Grant Morrison — an expanded version of his essay in Disinformation's 'Book of Lies' which any chaos magician worth their salt should check out.
Sadly this is not that book.
Pop Magic! the book never happened. I got my hopes up when I saw that Pop Magick had endorsements from Richard Metzger, the Grand Poohbah of Disinformation, and Fiona Horne who wrote the Disinformation classic 'Pop! Goes The Witch.'
Disinformation were an American media and publishing company and over-the-counter counterculteral phenonemon in the 1990s. If you ever saw the Disinformation TV show (called Disinfo Nation when it aired in the UK) then we're probably already friends.
So what is Pop Magick by Alex Kazemi? Magick for Millennials as far as this gnarly old chaos magician is concerned. It's the first phrase that popped into my head when I started reading the book and, no matter how much I enjoyed reading it, it did nothing to disavow me of this notion.
It is exactly what you'd expect a Millennial to come up with.
Billed as the one book all you cool kids need to read so that you can skip reading all those dusty old occult books you bought to make your bookshelves look cool.
It reads like it was written by someone who couldn't be bothered to read Crowley, let alone any other books about the occult, but has decided to start a YouTube channel about it anyway.
Vaccuous, celebrity obsessed, and full of contradiction. It defines magick in a hand-wavy way that suggests a lack of even a basic understanding about what magick is.
Want to know how to use Instagram for Glamour Magic? It's all in here. Want to understand magick? Picky a dusty old tome at random and actually read the damned thing.
My favourite bit is Kazemi's anecdote about how he used magick to get in touch with his hero Marilyn Manson.
Get this, right? Kazemi knew a girl who knew Marilyn Manson, So, after performing all the relevant rituals and all that, he asked her for Marilyn Manson's phone number and sent him a text message.
Guess what, people? The magick worked. All hail the powerful wizard!
To be fair, despite my reservations, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I'm letting on. It is exactly what you'd expect Magick For Millennials to look like, but so what? At least it's interesting.
I'm a grumpy old man. What do I know about anything? You kids have fun.
Sadly this is not that book.
Pop Magic! the book never happened. I got my hopes up when I saw that Pop Magick had endorsements from Richard Metzger, the Grand Poohbah of Disinformation, and Fiona Horne who wrote the Disinformation classic 'Pop! Goes The Witch.'
Disinformation were an American media and publishing company and over-the-counter counterculteral phenonemon in the 1990s. If you ever saw the Disinformation TV show (called Disinfo Nation when it aired in the UK) then we're probably already friends.
So what is Pop Magick by Alex Kazemi? Magick for Millennials as far as this gnarly old chaos magician is concerned. It's the first phrase that popped into my head when I started reading the book and, no matter how much I enjoyed reading it, it did nothing to disavow me of this notion.
It is exactly what you'd expect a Millennial to come up with.
Billed as the one book all you cool kids need to read so that you can skip reading all those dusty old occult books you bought to make your bookshelves look cool.
It reads like it was written by someone who couldn't be bothered to read Crowley, let alone any other books about the occult, but has decided to start a YouTube channel about it anyway.
Vaccuous, celebrity obsessed, and full of contradiction. It defines magick in a hand-wavy way that suggests a lack of even a basic understanding about what magick is.
Want to know how to use Instagram for Glamour Magic? It's all in here. Want to understand magick? Picky a dusty old tome at random and actually read the damned thing.
My favourite bit is Kazemi's anecdote about how he used magick to get in touch with his hero Marilyn Manson.
Get this, right? Kazemi knew a girl who knew Marilyn Manson, So, after performing all the relevant rituals and all that, he asked her for Marilyn Manson's phone number and sent him a text message.
Guess what, people? The magick worked. All hail the powerful wizard!
To be fair, despite my reservations, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I'm letting on. It is exactly what you'd expect Magick For Millennials to look like, but so what? At least it's interesting.
I'm a grumpy old man. What do I know about anything? You kids have fun.
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