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Liber Indigo: The Affordances of Magic
A winding path through interface design, semantics, dreams, rainbows, materialism, magic, divination, and poetry, intersecting with the ideas of Aldous Huxley, Carl Jung, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, William James, Alan Turing, and others along the way.
Borrowing terminology from industrial design, physiology, and geometry, Liber Indigo creates the scaffolding for a new system of metaphysics and mystical praxis built upon earlier structures designed by Plato, Sir Isaac Newton, and the Gnostic traditions.
Borrowing terminology from industrial design, physiology, and geometry, Liber Indigo creates the scaffolding for a new system of metaphysics and mystical praxis built upon earlier structures designed by Plato, Sir Isaac Newton, and the Gnostic traditions.
- GenresNonfiction
151 pages, Paperback
Published July 21, 2024
10 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 19, 2024
Welp, since I wrote the book, I may be a bit partial. But I think it's a perfectly adequate read. The rectangular shape is pleasing to the eye, and the pages smell delightful. Highly recommend!
August 29, 2024
Exceptional depiction of a viewpoint in which to explore new ways of understanding ones place within the mysterious realm of consciousness. Justin, in my opinion, has in so many words given a manual of sorts to be able to grasp the wonders of the universe and our place in it. I can't help but feeling both fulfilled, and a yearning for more, both from him specifically, and from what I can learn and understand of myself and ourselves in this place we call existence.
September 11, 2024
The amount of knowledge contained herein is vast for its length. It opens your eyes to wonders and leaves you clamoring for answers to the great mysteries of the universe — and with the toolset to succeed.
June 18, 2025
I first found Justin’s work on TikTok, which was so deeply impactful to me I bought the book! I’ve read it slowly over time since then and it was a delicious blend of technology and mysticism that showed me the role of different advances in shaping perception. Our roles as magicians and designers of human systems (software user interface or AI, for example) is irrevocably linked and it’s the seekers and the poets role to harmonize the two. As within, so without.
July 2, 2025
This book (and the companion video essay series) has a phenomenal introduction to the ideas of Ted Nelson. Beyond that, the book draws a bit too close to the ramblings of its partial namesake 'Liber Novus' by Carl Jung, and to the forever extrapolating, meandering style of philosophy one might see in Thomas Moynihan's 'Spinal Catastrophism'.
Can't help but feel this would be a much stronger book with heavy pruning, and more self-restriction. The author seems to have woken up with a brilliant idea, and then clung to that idea for dear life, for fear of never having a good idea again—continually attatching new limbs to his Frankenstein philosophy to keep it from dying. But like that modern prometheus, 'Liber Indigo' has a big beating heart at its core.
Looking forward to more work from Justin Kirkwood.
Can't help but feel this would be a much stronger book with heavy pruning, and more self-restriction. The author seems to have woken up with a brilliant idea, and then clung to that idea for dear life, for fear of never having a good idea again—continually attatching new limbs to his Frankenstein philosophy to keep it from dying. But like that modern prometheus, 'Liber Indigo' has a big beating heart at its core.
Looking forward to more work from Justin Kirkwood.
March 5, 2025
Hard to give this one a rating, but I give it a 4 for the sheer directions its sent my mind.
To my materialistic mind its all 'Woo' but I think the author and others would acknowledge that - and the book does as well in calling out the materialistic mind vs a mystical, magical, or subjective mind. When I think magic or 'woo', I think of some unobservable force acting on the observable universe. However as I get older, and something this book also shows, is that this is less magic than some sort of rhythm to the universe, and its not about one acting on the other but rather finding that rhythm and your place in it. That doesn't make sense, so I'll use an anecdote:
In the book there's a section about composing a glyph to find a lost key. You use this symbol and that, compose them in an aesthetically pleasing way, close it off with a circle - and in doing so you may or may not find the key. Instead you may find another key that opens a door or cabinet with something you had forgotten about that brings up fond memories. You may find a reason to not need to open the lock at all. The glyph itself is immaterial, its the mindset it puts you in. The practice of composing the glyph, of pondering it, opens up your mind to other possibilities.
In a similar sense my Grandmother would say a simple prayer to St. Anthony to find lost things - 'St. Anthony please come around. is lost and it cannot be found." St. Anthony, God, Jesus, or whatever other mystical force out there, won't conjure the item and put it in your hand. Instead you will seek with fresh eyes, a new perspective on what you seek.
Its funny - the whole impetus for this book is a dream about a Windows OS that never existed. The discussions start from how we interact with computers but quickly lose sight of that. Honestly a book simply about Magic and Mystical Thinking would never have interested me - it was couching it in the question of 'Why is it called the desktop? Why is there an enforced hierarchy of folders?' that really got me interested.
There is also a companion video series on YouTube and I recommend that as well.
To my materialistic mind its all 'Woo' but I think the author and others would acknowledge that - and the book does as well in calling out the materialistic mind vs a mystical, magical, or subjective mind. When I think magic or 'woo', I think of some unobservable force acting on the observable universe. However as I get older, and something this book also shows, is that this is less magic than some sort of rhythm to the universe, and its not about one acting on the other but rather finding that rhythm and your place in it. That doesn't make sense, so I'll use an anecdote:
In the book there's a section about composing a glyph to find a lost key. You use this symbol and that, compose them in an aesthetically pleasing way, close it off with a circle - and in doing so you may or may not find the key. Instead you may find another key that opens a door or cabinet with something you had forgotten about that brings up fond memories. You may find a reason to not need to open the lock at all. The glyph itself is immaterial, its the mindset it puts you in. The practice of composing the glyph, of pondering it, opens up your mind to other possibilities.
In a similar sense my Grandmother would say a simple prayer to St. Anthony to find lost things - 'St. Anthony please come around. is lost and it cannot be found." St. Anthony, God, Jesus, or whatever other mystical force out there, won't conjure the item and put it in your hand. Instead you will seek with fresh eyes, a new perspective on what you seek.
Its funny - the whole impetus for this book is a dream about a Windows OS that never existed. The discussions start from how we interact with computers but quickly lose sight of that. Honestly a book simply about Magic and Mystical Thinking would never have interested me - it was couching it in the question of 'Why is it called the desktop? Why is there an enforced hierarchy of folders?' that really got me interested.
There is also a companion video series on YouTube and I recommend that as well.
February 1, 2025
This book will not be for everyone, but it was definitely the kind of book for me.
Regardless of how seriously you may take it, I think there is a lot of fun in this book to be had. It brings back the wonder and joy that adult life forces you to kill for survival. Our imagination is far too oppressed by reality, but Justin manages to give that childlike wonder a proper place in our universe through metaphysics, philosophy, and a really cool operating system metaphor. If you are an artist, religious, or spiritual person. Someone who gets wrapped up in ideals, fantasies, and dreams. Someone who is not taken seriously by others because of these dreams. If you struggle to justify to other people how important these things are to you, then this is the right book for you.
10/10. Can't wait to see what other crazy and beautiful things Justin will create in the future.
Regardless of how seriously you may take it, I think there is a lot of fun in this book to be had. It brings back the wonder and joy that adult life forces you to kill for survival. Our imagination is far too oppressed by reality, but Justin manages to give that childlike wonder a proper place in our universe through metaphysics, philosophy, and a really cool operating system metaphor. If you are an artist, religious, or spiritual person. Someone who gets wrapped up in ideals, fantasies, and dreams. Someone who is not taken seriously by others because of these dreams. If you struggle to justify to other people how important these things are to you, then this is the right book for you.
10/10. Can't wait to see what other crazy and beautiful things Justin will create in the future.
January 17, 2025
This is a book about rejecting materialism and believing in the power of the mind, dreams, coincidence, and magic. It would go in the New Age section of a bookshop - whether that's praise or criticism is in the eye of the beholder.
To support his views, the author relies mainly on anecdotes from his own life, such as precognitive dreams, and appeals to authority in the form of citing famous and important scientists who held non-materialist beliefs. The arguments against materialism are not very fleshed out or compelling, and they fail to respond to some of the most common arguments used to support materialism. The talk of philosophy (materialism vs. idealism, monism vs. dualism) is, on the whole, quite thin, and won't be treading new ground for people who have read and thought very much about these ideas.
The book goes on to create a circular diagram in the vein of the zodiac wheel, to be used for divination. It describes a magic ritual to help find a lost key that involves drawing sigils on paper, placing candles on an altar, and touching things with a finger wearing a special ring.
There is not much talk of interface design, and although there is criticism of the common "desktop" interface to computers, there is little discussion about alternatives, and a vision of a new interface is hardly mentioned, much less explored.
There is little in the way of history, philosophy, science, or design here.
To support his views, the author relies mainly on anecdotes from his own life, such as precognitive dreams, and appeals to authority in the form of citing famous and important scientists who held non-materialist beliefs. The arguments against materialism are not very fleshed out or compelling, and they fail to respond to some of the most common arguments used to support materialism. The talk of philosophy (materialism vs. idealism, monism vs. dualism) is, on the whole, quite thin, and won't be treading new ground for people who have read and thought very much about these ideas.
The book goes on to create a circular diagram in the vein of the zodiac wheel, to be used for divination. It describes a magic ritual to help find a lost key that involves drawing sigils on paper, placing candles on an altar, and touching things with a finger wearing a special ring.
There is not much talk of interface design, and although there is criticism of the common "desktop" interface to computers, there is little discussion about alternatives, and a vision of a new interface is hardly mentioned, much less explored.
There is little in the way of history, philosophy, science, or design here.
May 23, 2025
Absolutely phenomenal
Read
February 7, 2025at a loss of what to make of this.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews