A Note on Moonchild

transcribed by Grady McMurtry

from Aleister Crowley's Holograph Notes

in a copy of Moonchild

MOONCHILD—Aleister Crowley

The Mandrake Press, 41 Museum St., W.C. London, 1929.

     Cyril Grey (Crowley), experimenting with magick, takes a girl to Naples to magically attract the spirit of Luna to incarnation in an embryo. Suceeds despite machinations of Big Bad "Black Lodge," ends by dropping the whole affair, be-coming hero of British Army, and accepting the way of the Tao. Fails as a novel for many reasons.

Real characters in story:

     Lavinia King (Isadora Duncan)

     Lisa de Giuffria (Mary d'Este-Sturges)

     Amy Brough ( )

     Lavinia's brother (Raymond Duncan)

     Blaustein (Will Rothenstein)

     Monet-Knott (Hener-Skene)

     Miss Badger (Gwendolen Otter)

     Akbar Pasha (Elias Pasha)

     Countess Helena Mottich (Tomschyk: Hon. Mrs. Everard Fielding)

     Sister Cybele (Leila Waddell)

     Lord Antony Bowling (Hon. Everard Feilding)

     Duke of Flint (Earl of Denbigh)

     Mahathera Phang (Allan Bennett—Frater Iehi Aour, later Bhikkho—& the Sayadaw—Ananda Metteya)

     Wake Morningside (Hereward Carrington)

     Dr. Balloch (Dr. Berriage)

     S.R.M.D.—Douglas (S. Liddell Mathers [MacGregor Mathers], "Count MacGregor of Glenstrae")

     Wife of Douglas (Moira [Moina Mathers], "painted very badly")

     famous professor at the Sorbonne (Prof. Henri Bergson)

     Arthwait (Arthur Edward Waite) Abdul Bey (Veli Bey, son of Elias Pasha; actually a rascally adventurer)

     Gates (W.B. Yeats)

     Roger Blunt (Roy something—I suspect he was a manager of E. F.'s)

     Blackmailing articles (The Looking Glass, John Bull, etc.)

     Dr. Victor Vesquit (Dr. William Wynn Westcott, coroner, W. London)

     Hampden Road (Camden Road)

     Palladists (see A. E. Waite's rubbish Devil Worship in France) p. 178: special goat (the grimoirs say "cum que puella conabuerit")

     Cremers (brains behind Mabel Collins' plot to "expose" Helena Petrovna Blavatsky; some success)

     p. 204: genuine (the Bible; New Testament)

     p. 209: (the Phalles)

     Butcher (Plummer)

     "A. B." (Annie Besant)

     Mrs. Doughnut (Hereward Carrington's #2—or #3?—wife)

     General Cripps (French)

     Sir Edward (Grey)

     chez Zizi ("Jaja"; Jane Chéron)

     Her English journalist (Walter Duranty)

     Becasseux (Cailleux)

     Souls presented to Lisa (Georges Sand, Chopin, Joseph Smith, Ludwig II of Bavaria, Marie Antoinette, Byron, Tolstoi, Tschaikowsky, Kipling, T. H. Huxley, Strauss, Swinburne, Blake, Keats)

     Simon Iff (Dr. Reuss? [Theodor Reuss])