Purple has morphed a fair bit since its 1992 inception as a rejoinder to all that late-80s airbrushed glamour and fashion fromage. The significantly smaller Purple Prose gained some serious heft and took the fashion bull by the horns in the ensuing decades, dropping the ‘prose’ and growing not just in terms of scale and pages, but in its significance among the heavyweight bi-annuals. Now, 30 years on, the magazine has established itself as a modern classic.

This issue explores magic’s potential as an alternative way of approaching everyday reality—‘Magic works!’ proclaims editor Olivier Zahm—informed by the work of a wide range of thinkers and artists: an excerpt from Michel Foucault’s 1966 book The Order of Things kicks the conversation off, followed by Carl Jung’s psychoanalytic illustrations, interviews with Patti Smith, David Lynch and contemporary occultist Mitch Horowitz, an essay on superstitions in the couture workshop, plus one penned by Björk.

Also included is the second edition of the Purple Residence supplement; American painter Elizabeth Glaessner is the current artist-in-residence at Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles.

"In thinking about this chaotic world and sensing collapse, I instinctively chose to explore magic for this issue. Without knowing much about it, I began with many questions: could the world of magic be more than entertainment, more than dubious esoteric practices, and more than a realm of coded signs, cryptic symbols, and fantastical imagery? Could magic be not a miraculous solution, but an alternative? Could magic revive beneficial practices that have been forgotten? A world of neglected possibilities? Or, even better, a potential re-enchantment of the world? Or a faint glimmer of hope?

After finishing the issue, to my great surprise, the answer is yes! Magic works! Magic can change the operating system of the universe. It can take control of reality and transform how we perceive life in this chaotic world.

How is this possible, you might ask in response to this novice’s enthusiasm?

First, magic can truly change the way we perceive reality and offer a different paradigm, one that mocks analysis and rational thinking. It liberates us from our addiction to language and logic. It offers a beneficial confusion, a joyous upheaval of perception, and a “non-knowledge” embracing the unknown or the uncertain. Also, magic connects us to the world in an animistic way, reminding us that we are living beings interacting with all other living beings — plants, animals, and the natural world — and Earth’s cycles and vibrations. It reawakens a forgotten pagan sensibility and resonates with contemporary ecofeminist movements, mind expansion, and psychedelic research.

Finally, magic is the power of words, the mystery of art, the Music of the Spheres from the quantum to the cosmological. But, you might argue, magic is nothing but illusion and manipulation. Yes. And that’s the beauty of it."

— Olivier Zahm