Lucian's Alexander the False Prophet (c. 180 CE) describes Alexander of Abonoteichus exhibiting a large tame snake with a linen puppet head as the incarnate god Glycon, building an oracle cult on it. Alan Moore publicly announced his magical vocation on November 18, 1993, his fortieth birthday, and has explained his Glycon devotion in numerous interviews, alongside his concept of Ideaspace, where ideas exist and act.
Moore's comics became the laboratory: Promethea (1999-2005) was written as an explicit course in the Western magical tradition, and The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic (2024, with Steve Moore's legacy) as a grimoire in comic form. Colleagues and readers report the books work on them strangely; Moore would call that the art doing its job.
Moore's claim is strict: Glycon is admittedly imaginary, and the magic still works, which he takes as proof that imagination is a real territory with real inhabitants. Skeptics translate this into psychology; Moore replies that psychology is just the polite name for the same place.
If a god can be a documented fraud and still alter the course of a writer's life and work, which gods among the respected ones could survive the same audit?