Customer Reviews

Moonchild

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Moonchild is a visionary, metaphysical novel of the highest order. Crowley provides an elegant and mysterious exploration of the realms of magick, love and psychology. Reading Crowley's book is like getting equal doses of poetry, academia and enlightenment.

In the days long before The Celestine Prophecy and others, metaphysical fiction was raw and edgy but also beautiful and wondrously haunting.

Crowley was many men wrapped up into one and certainly a writer of fiction worthy of the highest praise.

Wherever you are you crazy shining diamond, we thank you for this book.

This is a novel of quality. I read this as a student at a technical college. It is a novel by the notorious Aleister Crowley about magick and the struggles between light and darkness. Once you can differentiate between fantasy magick like Dungeons & Dragons and real life magick like Wicca you should be fine. You won't find any fireballs or lightning bolts, but good, real life magickal theory. I warn you, this a novel for adults as it contains disturbing content.

Crowley was an occultist and a practitioner of Magick (no, the "K" is not a typo) and was often dubbed a Satanist. I think maybe people labeled him as such because it's human nature to fear what we do not comprehend. He was wise and this book proves it; he knew about the "Law of Attraction" which is now gathering a lot of attention with the release of The Secret DVD and book. He himself, wrote a book titled "The Book of the Law" while under trance.

Moonchild is certainly not light reading; it's a bit disjointed and reads more like a handbook on magick, featuring many insights into this fascinating secret world (dare I say secret society?). If I had to classify it, I'd say this book belongs in the Dark Fantasy genre. It chronicles the adventures of a young magician named Cyril Grey and his mentor Simon Iff, along with Lisa La Giuffria. She will be drawn to both the good and dark sides of a magickal war. We follow Grey as he initiates Lisa into the mysterious practices of Magick and we witness Lisa's anguish grow in reaction to the lack of reciprocal feelings from Grey and watch her stand by Douglas's side, the leader of the Black Lodge, Grey and Iff's sworn enemies.

I enjoyed much of the various lessons on Magick and the parody of the higher class, society's rich and self-important folks who think themselves the centre of the universe. I did find it a bit distracting from the overall story; the book's main plot often gets lost in all the characters' discussions and gossiping. Although most of the distractions are surprisingly interesting (this says a lot about Crowely's ability to spin an engaging yarn), I wish he would've stuck closer to the central intrigue. Nonetheless, it makes for an entertaining and educational read. The only thing that really left to be desired was the third act, again, a blurry part of the book since it's hard to tell where it begins. It was a tad too anti-climactic for my taste and the whole part on the First World War was not the best direction he could've chosen, in my humble opinion. Still, we have to keep in mind that this novel was written in 1917, right in the middle of WWI. In the end, you have to remember that in a book, as well as in life, it's the journey that counts, not the destination. On that basis, it proved to be a very satisfying journey.

Fellow occultists and fans of Crowley should have a jolly old time with this one. Crowley has a very engaging writing style and the book doesn't feel too dated for a book that's 90 years old.

Yes, there's some wisdom in it as well, but I think this novel reads more like an old slapstick movie. Crowley cleverly makes fun of the fad among the rich at that time: fooling around with the occult. The black magicians are hilarious, the Great Beast at its silliest.

Moonchild is an entertaining book, but structurally it's like a car with a badly wrenched frame. In the early portions, Crowley mostly sticks to his story and develops his plot and characters. Then he hits the stretch just past the midbook where he needs to shape the existing material into a climax and conclusion. That part is harder than it looks. Most people who've read novels but not written them don't realize how difficult it is, because a properly constructed novel will start picking up speed at that point. This tends to keep the readers' attention focused on the story rather than its architectural supports.

You can see where Crowley got frustrated. He trashed the plot he'd been developing, threw in some colorful but underdeveloped and poorly integrated episodes, and revised his characters on the fly with no regard for their prior logic. Then, instead of bringing the story to a proper end, he suddenly announced that WWI had started: lots of noise, lots of urgency, but very little continuity with the earlier parts of the book. The biggest connection is that the denouement features characters who have the same names as characters who appeared earlier. In the last reel they go rushing off in all directions, and the book ends.

Crowley had a lot of talent, but what Moonchild needed was thematic continuity, a coherent storyline, and a couple of solid rewrites.

The reason I referred to it as fanfic in my title is that the main character is Crowley (or rather Crowley as he'd like to be), and many other characters are identifiable members of the occult community of the day. Crowley spends a lot of time scoring points off occultists with whom he'd quarreled. Those parts are amusing at first, especially if you know who he's talking about, but they're also cheap shots. After a while, the plating wears off and the underlying brass shows through.

I think it would be a public service if someone were to publish a good scholarly annotated edition of Moonchild, and keep it in print thereafter.

I've read this book at least ten times and I've never seen the name George Gamow before. This is an excellent book. If you are unfamiliar to Magick you will still enjoy it. You may enjoy it even more than I did the first time. If you are a novice I feel obligated to tell you the characters are based on real people. Edwin Arthwait is Arthur Edward Waite; you should be able to figure out the rest. Arthwait is my favorite character. His use of the English language is hilarious. This book is extremely well written and like Diary of a Drug Fiend you need not be interested in the subject matter to appreciate Crowley's beautiful writing. There are a few footnotes and some obscure names but these shouldn't ruin your enjoyment of this novel.

This was an . . . interesting book. Maybe because I am not a practitioner of High Magick, or because I don't know much about Crowley, I had some trouble following it; the plot often meandered away and left us with random ramblings about Magickal theory. That said, it was a most fascinating book, if only to (as Crowley says in his foreward) get a grip on his "diseased imagination." It is obvious the man was a misogynist of the first degree, but for all that it is my understanding he is responsible to a large degree to bringing Magick back into the public eye, so I cannot find it in myself to dislike him overly much. Give it a try if you are interested in High (Ceremonial) Magick and/or Crowley.

I found this book to be interesting, but eventually the storyline really didn't hold my interest anymore. I felt that instead of writing a novel, Crowley short-cycled through every rhetorical technique that he knew. Although one constant is a sort of irreverence for philosophy, which makes his own philosophy. He comes up with a lot of cool sayings and ideas in passing, but it eventually turned into rambling mixed with an irreverent voice hooked on magical symbols, since the plot wasn't really captivating. The plot actually really isn't even apparent, and your guess is as good as mine. The book description says a magical war between dark and light forces, so I guess I'll settle on that since it seems to make sense of things, but that's fairly dubious.

It actually seems like in spite of the lack of plot that Crowley uses a lot of tricks to keep the book going, making it sort of conversational with the reader, but this only lasted so long for me, and since I'm not really an occultist I'm not the type to take the time to study everything he does. But my guess would be like I said before that it's a bag of rhetorical tricks and structures, which makes for a I wouldn't say disjointed, but "non-traditional" novel that runs out of steam.

I loved this terrific novel and am writing here to strongly recommend that it be read along with THE MAGICIAN by Somerset Maugham. Maugham used a barely disguised Crowley as a basis for his villian and If you read both books you are in for a special treat.

To really appreciate this novel one needs to have a basic understanding of the author's life and philosophies. Many of the events narrated herein are based on actual experineces from Crowley's colourful life, with people like poet Willian Butler Yeats disguised as the Black magician, Gates.

Behind the veil of a less than impressive story, Crowley pushes home his philosophy, as well as revealing many interesting insights into the world of Magick, as the author practiced it.

Stephen Mackintosh