Jonas E. Alexis: Alan Moore, Freemasonry, and Aleister Crowley on Pop Culture.

The Jewish people taken collectively shall be its own Messias. In this new organization of humanity, the sons of Israel, now scattered over the whole surface of the globe, shall everywhere become the ruling element without opposition. Thus shall the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, that, when the Messianic epoch shall have arrived, the Jews will control the wealth of all the nations of the earth. Baruch Levy, one of Karl Marx's correspondents. In the article Nietzshe Goes to Hollywood, we argued that ideas are powerful and can subtly and unsuspectingly spread in many different branches. We also suggested that ideas not only have consequences but the masses can embrace a powerful idea without being aware of what they are doing. The top grossing film in 2008, The Dark Knight, is a classic example. Alan Moore's comic book Batman: The Killing Joke was essential in the making of The Dark Knight. Director Christopher Nolan specifically gave the late Heath Ledger a copy of Moore's The Killing Joke in preparation for the role. In order to understand the Joker, and some of the scenes in the movie and welt-anschaung upon which pop culture is largely based, one would do well to explore the world of Alan Moore himself and Aleister Crowley. Here is how Moore described his writings: I found that I couldn't progress any further with writing by strict rationality. If I wanted to go further with my writing, make it more intense, more powerful, make it say what I wanted to say, I had to take a step beyond technique and rational ideas about writing, into something that was trans-rational if you will. This being magic. Moore goes on to admit: I've done some bits of artwork purely for my own consumption of some of the things that I've seen during magical rituals. Moore continues to say that during his teenage years, he had a brief flirtation with Dennis Wheatley, which he viewed as a heady mixture of Satanism and the super-natural. In a nutshell, Moore found out that during his teenage years, he had a brief flirtation with Dennis Wheatley, which he viewed as a heady mixture of Satanism and the supernatural. In a nutshell, Moore found out that strict rationality and magic do not go together. Rationality, as the ancient Greeks tell us, is reason, logos, order, and harmony. It is part of the governing principle of the universe. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus attributed to a person. This seems to correspond to what the gospel of John is saying. In other words, for Moore magic is trans-rational, which is another way of saying that it is irrational. And it is the realm of the irrational that most of Moore's greatest works came from, and this includes Watchmen, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and V for Vendetta, which have been translated into major motion pictures.