Alan Moore and Steve Moore on 'Illuminatus!'

I recently finished reading The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore and Steve Moore. It's a kind of compendium on magic, with chapters on Kabbalah, the tarot, "Lives of the Great Enchanters," and so on. It is so  copiously illustrated it seems almost like an art book. The list price is $50, but it's currently half that at Amazon.  

I might do 1-2 other blog posts on the book, but for now, I wanted to note what the book says about Illuminatus!

An essay toward the back of the book, "The Soul," describes how in 1994  or 1995 (page 302), Steve Moore introduced Alan Moore to Illuminatus!, "offering the younger Moore a toehold on a field about which he had previously entertained strong doubts."

On page 300, the book says, "The significance of Shea and Wilson's book to the development of magic thought lies in its presentation of a new way of regarding occult ideas, an approach which embraced contemporary knowledge and which did without the humourless and ritual-bound mental encumbrances of the traditional occult societies. Essentially, the trilogy afforded rational and reasonable people a way to engage with magical ideas that did not entail blind belief or the restricting dogmas of religion, nor subservience to the doctrines of a questionable living or dead guru. In Illuminatus! and in Wilson's subsequent essays and fictions, a window was opened onto magic through which a great number of sensibly sceptical, discriminating and creative people gained their entry to a conceptual landscape which stretched far beyond the necessarily dogmatic confines of religious or even scientific thinking. In this way was magic greatly enriched and extended."