Marie Lavroff (Lavrov), née Roehling

Born: circa 1891 in Odessa, Ukraine.

Died: Unknown.

Marie Lavrov, née Roehling was a Russian immigrant from Odessa, she became a U.S. citizen upon her 17 April 1913, marriage in Chicago to Herman Roehling. Although she made her home in Chicago, at the time she met Crowley she was traveling as a lecturer on Russia. On 23 May 1917, she had addressed representatives of 125 women’s organizations at a meeting of the League of Cook Country Clubs in Chicago, speaking on the condition of Russia before and after prohibition, remarking, “The revolution never would have succeeded without prohibition. Our peasants had been encouraged to stupefy themselves with drink. When that was taken away they could think better. The Russians have been forty years starting a real revolution, but when it came it was good.” From there, she lectured at Milwaukee-Downer College on Russian women, and on 10 March 1908, the Ethical Culture Society in Philadelphia.

Standing five feet, six and a half inches tall with gray eyes, dark brown hair, and a fair complexion, her magical name was Olun, after Plato’s Timaeus. Meaning “the whole of wholes” or “Absolute Whole,” Crowley connected it to Nuit, Our Lady of the Stars. Shortly after meeting her in 1918, Crowley took her as his new Scarlet Woman, noting that Olun and Marie both added to 156, the number of Babalon. Her name appears throughout Liber Aleph. Although by 22 March Crowley had her and Roddie Minor together in bed with him doing magick to cure Marie’s “sin complex” and Roddie’s jealousy, Olun “soon abandoned the unequal contest.” When reprinting his Russian memoir The Fun of the Fair nearly three decades later, Crowley would name her among the dedicatees.