Sylvia Sullivan (née Mannooch) aka Violet

Born:  1896.

Died:   Unknown.

The first wife of John Wilson Navin Sullivan, Sylvia was a beautiful, tragic figure trapped in an unhappy marriage. She and her husband shared only a love of music, and his preoccupation with mathematics much eroded even this. Both realized their relationship was pointless. When John Sullivan vowed to Aleister Crowley to find his true will, Sylvia became a greater hindrance. Crowley recalled, "He asked me point-blank to take her off his hands for a time." Crowley agreed and told him, "You can have her back whenever you like by whistling for her." It was a replay of his affair with Ratan Devi at the behest of her husband.

As in the affair with Devi, Sylvia became pregnant. She and Crowley planned to return to the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Italy, where John would meet them and write his precis on Liber AL. Sullivan, however, met them at the dock during lunch and demanded, "I want Sylvia back."

"Righto!" Crowley nodded his head, stuffing food in his mouth and swallowing. "I'll have to get the cabin changed and take a few of Sylvia's things out of my trunk." The scene was a perfect picture of irony, with Crowley agreeable, Sylvia enraged, and Sullivan flabbergasted. In the end, Crowley returned to Cefalù alone. Sylvia would die of typhoid shortly thereafter.