2 different Crowleys

Wed May 26 08:50:15 UTC 2021

A person could do worse, eh?

Moonchild was the only Aleister Crowley fiction I’ve read. In a loose construction, it’s a philosophically similar tale to John Crowley’s The Solitudes, at least if you look at it sideways and squint.

The mildest of spoilers ahead…

That is, the construction of the elaborate theory Pierce undertakes becomes different in the face of the prospect of actually writing and publishing it.
Which he’s only sitting down to begin doing at the end of the book.

Just as, if I recall correctly, the elaborate preparations for the birth of a putative Moonchild to the chosen woman in the narrative turn out to have been a diversion from the production of the actual Moonchild, to a completely different woman, and of which we learn next to nothing.

But it’s hard to imagine wanting to escape into the world of Moonchild, with its somewhat frantic escapades, whereas even though it’s possible some might find Pierce’s idylls in Blackbury Jambs and environs, ah, less than fascinating, it seems like a nice place to live.

Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
________________________________
From: Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 12:21:59 AM
To: Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>
Cc: pynchon-l <Pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: Re: 2 different Crowleys

I've often wondered how many people have purchased the Aegypt books thinking they were written by the OTHER Crowley.

A lot of people probably wondering what all the fuss was about, eh?

Jerky

On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 3:24 AM Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com<mailto:PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>> wrote:
John Crowley quite different from Aleister Crowley.
Or different “to”, if you’re English.

Didn’t help that I forgot to use their first names.

Probably obvious from context.

Anybody try that Delta eight?
 Legal (for now) even in benighted jurisdictions.
Seems to have a little more je ne sais quoi than CBD.

Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
________________________________
From: Raphael Saltwood
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2021 2:49:58 AM
To: pynchon-l <Pynchon-l at waste.org<mailto:Pynchon-l at waste.org>>
Subject: More about Crowley / Parsons

The thesis he put forth about shaping his prose style to different subjects may in some respects be true, but it doesn’t constitute what I like about him.

Reading Pynchon I’m more like gleaning detail about *this* world - I don’t escape into Vineland, for instance, no matter how much I enjoy reading it…

nor does one ever want to escape into V., does one?

whereas I definitely do escape a bit into Aegypt’s first book The Solitudes_ -

Very different read than V., despite it having a trio of important characters similar to Profane/Stencil/V in V.:

Pierce the scholarly and very slightly picaresque protagonist (who serves as a whimsical, gentle Benny Profane);

the novelist Fellowes Kraft, (whose oeuvre of historical novels certainly reminds me of Stencil’s research a bit);

and Giordano Bruno, the subject of one of Kraft’s novels, who gets about as much attention in Little, Big as V gets in V. Although you also get some John Dee ( more in the other 3 sequels ) and enough classy ruminations on history to, well, not choke a horse, but certainly enough to intersperse in a most satisfying manner with the details of the pastoral retreat being beaten by Pierce…

Side note - does it make it better or worse to read,  having a character with a similar name to yours? (Kraft e.g.)
I was bemused when the Tourette’s sufferer in Jonathan Lethem’s _Motherless Brooklyn_ kept saying, “Eat me, Bailey!” and it made reading it more fun.
The movie was also good; for the first time I got why people think so highly of Edward Norton

Anyway - if Pynchon is more or less proclaiming & educating (very inadequate description & only for comparison with Crowley) - that makes him more of an extrovert - stylewise

Whereas if Crowley is trying to draw one in (I think it’s on purpose) he’s stylistically more an introvert.

I would like to rave on about Little, Big but maybe it’s better I can’t think what to tell you.

I learned about Parsons the rocket scientist from getting partway into the OTO (Crowleyan organization) - leafing through a Crowley book in the UCF library in the early 80s where someone had put his name & phone number with an invitation to learn more. Wound up meeting & becoming friends with a young dude named Ed who was deep into Crowley. I was more of a Robert Anton Wilson fan, but got intrigued enough to hang with Ed. We went to see Baba Ram Dass  - which was totally different territory, but a pretty nice lecture. He shepherded me out to the woods near UCF to cut a willow branch to use for a magic wand.

I forget exactly how we grew apart but it didn’t take very long. Crowley’s philosophy has a significant downside and perhaps Ed realized I wasn’t really of a like mind for his cohort, when I did not hesitate to mention not appreciating elitism, a taste for warfare, and the many casualties along Mr Crowley’s path. Including Parsons.

Never really did get that Willow wand consecrated nor learn to use it, my friend Tony who died last fall found it in my closet back in 1982 or so, he grabbed it, I wrested it from him…not many days later I felt guilty and a little dumb about being so possessive, and even a bit uneasy (more than a bit, if I’m honest) about the whole occult project, so I broke it and threw it away.

Crowley, though, did write some pretty enjoyable stuff. I ended up thinking, if he’d only been a bit nicer! Robert Anton Wilson - who wrote some
even more enjoyable stuff - had a line referencing that credo “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and discovering one’s True Will: he said something like, the True Will of most Crowleyans he met seemed to be to act like pompous asses.

I liked Ed, but not what he was trying to draw me into.

But the other Crowley, John, has a much cooler thing going on by far!

Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
--
Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l