Moonchild by Aleister Crowley (Book Review)

But Simon If was the strangest object in that stranger room. She had heard of him, of course. He was known for his writings on mysticism, and had long born the reputation of a crank. But in the last few years he had chosen to use his abilities in ways intelligible to the average man. It was he who had saved Professor Briggs, and incidentally England when that genius had been accused of and condemned to death for murder, but was too preoccupied with the theory of his new flying machine to notice that his fellows were about to hang him. And it was he who had solved a dozen other mysteries of crime, with apparently no other resource and pure capacity to analyse the minds of men. People had consequently begun to revise their opinion of him. They even began to read his books, but the man himself remained unspeakably mysterious. He had a habit of disappearing for long periods, and it was rumored that he had the secret of the elixir of life. For although he was known to be over 80 years of age, his brightness and activity would have done credit to a man of 40. And the vitality of his whole being, the fire of his eyes, the quick conciseness of his mind, bore witness to an interior energy almost more than human. An excerpt there from Alistair Crowley's Moonchild, that was originally written actually in 1917 and published in 1929. So this review or thought on Moonchild by Crowley is kind of a bit for me, because at the moment I'm after reading other stuff of Crowley's years ago and every now and again tipping back in, I'm finally putting the time aside to kind of try really understand the guy and to a certain degree try understand Faleema. And one thing that happens with Crowley is that most people just read about him, because he had a fascinating, extremely exciting life and was for better or worse, he was a bit of a madman and a rogue, let's say. And of course all the occult craziness to boot, but it also was an accomplished magician and created one of the few large alternative religions that have survived after the founder has passed away. So a lot of people read about his biography and then if people are interested in the occult they might move through to his dynamic writings or his magical writings in Leibor, ABA or whatever it might be. But very rarely do you hear anyone really talk about his fiction or his poetry. So most people who are into writing who know of Crowley's poetry would probably attest to the fact his poetry isn't that great. Besides that you don't really hear too much about the fiction, but if you look up Moonchild which is the book I'm talking about, it has this kind of, it's had a pretty big influence on a lot of things, a lot of bands and a lot of other creatives. And now is it a good novel? It's pretty bog standard, but it is kind of an important document for Crowley and for what I would put under the rubric of an ideas novel. So there's this sort of 12 year gap, so he writes it when he's quite young, mid-20s I believe, in 1917. Then he's published in '29 and by the time it appears the landscape that it was written in had pretty much dissolved. So it has all these references that even the hidden references are very obscure. So the golden dawn was long dead, long gone, madder's was dead who is really, pretty brutally attacked in the novel. The personal war that really the novel is about has already gone, but Crowley published it anyway. So there's this sort of suggestion that there's something in him more than the sum of its rather sassy and catty parts. The title is actually a technical term. So in occultism, a Moonchild is actually a specific kind of being that's produced by a specific magical operation and the novel is basically named for the operation rather than anything that kind of happens in the story. The plot then exists to make the operation legible, not the other way around. So Crowley did, for those that know about his life, Crowley did write this actually during his period where he was writing for the fatherland, which was the pro-German propaganda work, that he then claimed was like double agent, deliberate sabotage. So he's kind of isolated at this point. He's outside of all the establishments. He's fighting enemies on all fronts, as you could say. And there's a pressure that's visible in this book, and it comes through in kind of every way, and especially in the plot and especially in the characters. So the plot that's there, I mean there is this clear plot. So many of the elements of the book are just kind of created to allow Crowley to discuss really something else that I'm not sure I quite got. I mean, it's clearly almost like a manifesto of what he thinks magic should be or how it should appear in the world, but a lot of the characters are created, really as instruments to carry that idea along. So it's set in London and then southern France in 1914. And there is a woman called Lisa La Jufre, she's very beautiful, she's quite susceptible, and she gets caught between two magical lodges. The white lodge, which is led by a man named Cyril Gray, who was basically Crowley dramatized, and when you start seeing these things, it's quite funny. And then there is the black lodge that is run by kind of mysterious figure, Douglass, who is basically Mathers from the Golden Dawn with any redemptive qualities removed. So the object they're fighting over is Lisa, and more precisely the child she might carry, which is to do with the moon child operation. And this kind of fight, the white versus the black, would determine the kind of entity that incarnates through her, right? Now the plot, much like the characters to be honest, does what it needs to do, not much more. And what actually is happening in the book is a delivery of doctrine, which is pretty, I was quite surprised by this because Crowley did write this when he was pretty young. And so it's delivering really, we could say what goes on to be the limit cosmology, but largely magical theory, how Crowley understands the nature of will, the desire of attainment, what magic looks like in the world, what magicians should be like in the world. And this is delivered through extended speeches by various characters. So the story is a vehicle, the characters are a vehicle, and the different instruments are all a vehicle. And all the arguments are just kind of things that need to happen for Crowley. But amidst this is this interesting character. So I should say that I'm releasing this in a few weeks, I had a chat with Ian Reese about Crowley and the cabala and his book in the subtitle is Simon If. Now Simon If, and this is what has led me to then go on and read this book by itself, Simon If is a character, I F F. Simon If is a character that Crowley handles pretty well in the novel because he appears elsewhere in Crowley's uva. He doesn't really often get too much attention now in my chat with Ian Reese. He thinks Simon If is a big part, should play kind of a bigger part in Crowley's work. So he appears as kind of senior figure in the white lodge. He's older than Gray Crowley. And he's less interested in being right, more interested in what's happening. So he's a mystic, right? He's the mystic that's moved through the world, moved through magical operation into sort of dissolution. He's exhausted the magical path. And what's left with If is something kind of strange and transparent. He doesn't need to prove anything anymore. And what's interesting is that Crowley clearly has a preference for Simon If to serial Gray. He's a kind of a preference for If. And If is really meant to be the idealistic Crowley when he's older. So one of the strange things that's happening in this novel is that we have asked Crowley writing it, giving him, inserting himself as the character of serial Gray whilst having another character in the novel that he understands that as his idealistic image wants his older. So you're seeing kind of multiple self-portraits in this novel all at the same time. And Crowley is then imagining himself past the worst of his own personality whilst also being in dialogue with the worst of his personality. If does appear in all these separate short stories and he functions as a kind of a cult home. But within. Moonchild specifically, he articulates the white lodges position without this kind of tendency for Cyril Gray Crowley to lecture. And it's one place the book is drastically let down is when and this happens with a lot of ideas novels is that writers aren't really good enough at writing fiction to organically and naturally allow exposition on doctrine to come in naturally, right? It's at Anne Rand, right? Being an example actually, but you're reading along and there's a flow and then it's suddenly like, right, we're just going to have a speech and you're kind of completely taking out of it. So the novel has all these stops and starts where we're trying to just know the cause of the trilogy. Now, as a novel, so I'm kind of talking about it around it as an idea is a book, how does it hold up? So the big the big floor, the big and I will say I'm not going to read anymore excerpts because it is very much a generic novel that just has a lot of these historical intrigues to read because it's Crowley and if you're into the occult, it's quite like a pulp thriller at times, right? Now, but how does it hold up as a novel? Well, the main unevenness is these like sudden bursts of discussion. Now Crowley is a good writer, like this, this is one of the things about Crowley. Now, when it comes to his nonfiction work, Crowley is not just a good writer. I am opening his great writer because he understands and this is something Israel Regardy points out in the start of in his introductions to the magic without tears, the Crowley's control of syntax and grammar and the technicality of language is it's kind of bar none, right? It's watertight and Crowley even writes about this in magic without tears saying that one of the things that he would often do is understand the etymologies of words. So what their true meaning is speaking through the word that we think we're saying but the true meaning is speaking through and so he he's understanding of language is it has that certain depth to it. So he's very, very precise as a writer, which is why he works better as a nonfiction writer because he's very good at articulating what he's trying to get across whilst allowing you enough mystery to unravel it yourself. How does this sort of transfer to fiction? Well, he's really good at atmosphere. Ryan reminds me of Mackin actually. The London sections have a great quality. There's this kind of underground feeling of the occult scene in London. Lots of feeling of strange and visible operations going on when he describes the preparations for these operations in France. The writing has this authority from experience rather than imagination say and he knows what the environment feels like. So this is one of the few books that will get you into that feeling of seeing the world via the lens of initiation that you won't really get elsewhere. Now to go to the sassiness, the satire is very good, right? The the black lodge portraits which are Douglas and a guy called Akbar Pasha. They're funny, they're vicious but they are biting to a degree where you know Crowley is personally annoyed. And so Crowley knew these types. He was one less not tonight but Crowley knew the type of occultist that he's attacking that. These kind of portraits and caricatures of what an occult figure should be. So he's not fooled and he has a sort of disillusionment that comes through. It's a very honest novel. But the if scenes and its one thing to mention again, the Simon if scenes and the one I read, they have a lightness which the rest of it lacks. The rest of it at times takes itself a bit too seriously for it is. And then with the Simon if self, it can become a bit ironic. So the plot kind of which which is this culmination of eventually the two sides, the white barrage and the black lodge kind of taking their places and beginning to perform their rights on behalf of two worldly powers. The plot because it revolves around Lisa, she doesn't it's a typical thing. She doesn't have any interiority. She's there for all the magical operations and the blocs to move around. Her development is basically functional on the competition magical currents and lodges. She doesn't really choose anything. She doesn't perceive anything. I'll become anything. It's just she's she's basically exists as a symbol. Very young Crowley and it's one of the issues with ideas novels that that can happen that characters just become so transparent. They're clearly just a functional cog in the machine. The pacing's pretty off. The comparison I might give is to what I've read of the Master in the Margarita where the devil is the author's mouthpiece where the doctrine kind of delivered through fictional apparatus but sometimes you just end up getting lost. So none of it kind of fails on its own terms because its purpose becomes clear very quickly that it's a deliver it's trying to deliver a doctrine. It's trying to give you an honest insight into magical workings and the feeling of that and he does a good job of those things. But but the novel comes up against the things it needs. So it comes up against the fact that well people need character or the the people have agency. Right. So when we get to the core of the novel the the Moon Child right which is really the magical impregnation of an aura. The environment of this is kind of the thoughts and the emotions is this shaping of the souls of the character. And what Crowley adds is this competitive dimension to this kind of pretty heavy act which is the two magical lodges can be active in a contest regarding as I've said what entity kind of comes through the birth. And I think this may also be how Crowley is seeing the move into the new Aeon that this is what's at stake. So this is his discussion on spiritual war. And the whole thing then is a dramatization from an an initiatory lens of what it means to be inside that transition in a world where there's two very clear competing factors. And to be one for whom actually has a real stake in this in their own realm let's say and it's more than symbolic. And so the specific nature of this cosmology distinguishes between solar and entities which are phyllemic they're individualized oriented toward true will and lunar entities which are collective and elemental and they're not bound by that individual thing. So the moonshawed operation isn't trying to bring through like a great adept it's trying to bring through something wilder. And this seems to have influence actually for those that know Parsons or listen to my episode on Parsons has some influence on the Babylon working there. So there is this whole other basically undercurrent of Crowley being annoyed with the Gregor Mathers from the Golden Dawn and basically when they fell out they they had a big falling out with regards to the Golden Dawn and Douglas in the novel novel is Mathers stripped of everything as I've said that makes him kind of significant and the critique goes beyond many sort of a cult goal and becomes personal. Now that's you know that stuff is in there for the sort of the occult dinks we could say but why why don't you know why are we doing this review so it is you know I'm sure many of you might have been drawn in from what I've said so far if you want relatively easy to read 270 page novel that has that kind of feeling of mac and an occultism in a fictional form with with a lot of experience from Crowley and atmosphere and really not that much heaviness then then go for it. But it does it does do things that other books just don't do the one thing is that it's a record of of doctrine as I've repeated many times but it's from somebody who has a massive amount of experience so it's kind of it has a strange completeness that isn't actually in his other books so when Crowley trying in magic and theory and practice well that's about technique when it's the book of the law well that's like divine scripture for Crowley that's revelation very difficult to get through and so the novel form actually allows something more you know the ideas novels usually do Crowley doesn't handle it particularly well but it's one of the more useful tools I think for unraveling Crowley it's one of the more useful ones I found and it contains inside what is a lot of ceramic a lot of doctrine and a lot of self promotion a sort of meditation actually because it's not about the act of will even though there's a lot of doctrine about this it's not about the true world specifically on the time it's about protecting that onto something greater it's about creating conditions for something larger so Crowley is pretty hospitable right here he's quite strangely warm about the future of magic from what people might imagine Crowley to be and Simon if is the character to really focus on I think who embodies the tension the most he's the magician who's moved through the well into something quieter and so the question that the book is always asking is that is what kind of it's kind of like after the magical orgy what happens after the magical operation we we get to see this stage set and so with the questions that we revolve around is what not the great dramatics of the magical operation, even though we get the atmosphere. sphere. Once this has all been exercised, and once there's maybe a triumph or not triumph, kind of what's left. And Simon F is this character to kind of look out for this answer. For a way, currently already knows he's going to end up in two a degree, maybe he did when he was finally at, kind of, the name of the home that he ended up in, but it's kind of where he did end up was F. And so I just kind of want, as I'm delving into currently at the moment, I did just kind of want to give Moonchild by him just a nod really. Like, if you are intrigued by Mr. Crowley to quote the Sabbath song, if you intrigued by him and you get put off by books of Libre ABA and it's this great hulking tomb filled with esoteric stuff, or you get put off by the book of the law, which admittedly, you know, unless you're going to be involved into Lima well, that's like reading alternative scripture or scripture, right? And you don't really want to go sit down and read some of his poetry and you think, well, I kind of want to get a feel of this Crowley fellow. I actually think Moonchild is a good starting place. Because it gives you the atmosphere, that's the key thing. It gives you the atmosphere and what was at stake for Crowley. And then just gives you enough of a hints towards how he viewed the world in different garbs and personages that you just care for it. But give it a go. You know, it's not a difficult read. He's not a bad writer and he's very young so we did get much better. But that's my thoughts on Alice Crowley's Moonchild. Thank you.