Aleister Crowley's name often gets thrown into sentences with HP Lovecraft. I am not so fond of Lovecraft however. Aleister Crowley's name is famous in the occult of the previous century. He seems like a far more interesting person than Lovecraft who created cardboard characters. I hope that one day I will read a Lovecraftian book and say, 'Wow, that was amazing. My opinion on the writer is forever changed.' That would be great. I'm still waiting. In any case, Moonchild is available freely at www.feedbooks.com.
In any case, Moonchild has far more going for it than anything I've read so far out of Lovecraft. So, I am quite happy that I read it. It was certainly a voyage into a different kind of novel than I've been into of recent months. It is a strange fiction filled with some pretty sinister imagery.
In one of the scenes where the evil sorcerers, looking to get at the 'white magicians', it's quite an enlivening scene. "The doctor was himself the last to enter the circle. In a basket he had the four black cats; and, when he had lighted the nine small candles about the circle, he pinned the four cats, at the four quarters, with black arrows of iron. He was careful not to kill them; it was important that their agony should frighten away any undesireable spirits." It's a book, right? No actual harm came to any cats in the making up of these words. Harming actual cats would not be entertaining at all. Another particularly brilliantly dark scene involved more imaginary cats being tortured, "The hideous cries of the tortured cats mingled with the triumphant bleating of the goat and the nasal monotone of Arthwait as he mouthed the words of the Grimoire. And it seemed to all of them as though the air grew thick and greasy; that of that slime were bred innumerable creeping things, monsters misshapen..." is such a visually delightful horror. I cannot imagine a more discordant cacophony of sound than the bleating of a goat mingled with the awful cries of four tortured cats.
Some of the politics were a bit funny. He writes, "A parliament of the wisest and strongest men in the nation is liable to behave like a set of schoolboys, tearing up their desks and throwing their inkpots at each other. The only possibility of cooperation lies in discipline and autocracy..." It would seem that he had a rather sour look on the ideals of democracy.
There is no real main character throughout this book. Through much of it, I'm under the impression that Lisa la Giuffria is the main character. Through much of the story it is her mind we are exposed to; her thoughts; her experience being brought into magical training. She is seduced by a white magician, Cyril Grey, and persuaded into helping him in a magical battle with a black magician and his black lodge. Ultimately, all the sacrifices that she makes to assist him: joining his cult, going through a kind of willing imprisonment, ultimately gets thrown aside in an act of kindness.
Then she is whisked away by a Turk who was in love with her. She gives birth to a child named the Moonchild. But she hates the child, as does the Turk. I am unsure if the Turk himself is the father or if she was magically impregnated or some other means of her carrying it. When she gives birth, she isn't even aware that she is pregnant. There does not seem to have been enough time for the Turk to have been the author of the pregnancy. Since this book treats magic seriously, it is well within the realm of such fiction for that to be the case. Crowley makes no effort to clear it up.
Moonchild seems like it ought to be the first book in a series. But, as far as I can tell in the Wikipedia article, it is not. I can't help but wonder what would have happened to it.
I recommend reading this book. But if you don't, I don't think you will have missed anything particularly amazing.
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