The Complete Simon Iff

The Complete Simon Iff

Aleister Crowley

(version 4.1)

Introduction

The Scrutinies of Simon Iff
(6 stories)

These stories were written in Dec 1916, published in The International using the pseudonym Edward Kelly. 

Big Game
(published in The International XI 9, Sep 1917)

The Artistic Temperament
(published in The International XI 10, Oct 1917)

Outside the Bank’s Routine
(published in The International XI 11, Nov 1917)

The Conduct of John Briggs
(published in The International XI 12, Dec 1917)

Not Good Enough
(published in The International XII 1, Jan 1918)

Ineligible
(published in The International XII 2, Feb 1918) 

Simon Iff next appears in Moonchild, which novel, although published in 1929, was begun after the first 6 stories, as The Butterfly Net, in 1917. 

Simon Iff in America (12 stories)

What’s in a Name?

A Sense of Incongruity

The Ox and the Wheel

An Old Head on Young Shoulders

The Pasquaney Puzzle

The Monkey and the Buzz-Saw (Annotated)

A Dangerous Safe Trick

The Biter Bit

Nebuchadnezzar

Suffer the Little Children

Who Gets the Diamonds?

The Natural Thing To do

Simon Iff Abroad (3 stories)

Desert Justice

In The Swamp

The Haunted Sea Captain

Simon Iff, Psychoanalyst (2 stories)

Psychic Compensation

Sterilized Stephen

Simon Iff is the main protagonist of a series of short detective stories written by occultist Aleister Crowley. He is portrayed as a mystic, a magician and a great detective with a thorough insight into human psychology.

The stories typically revolve around an apparently unsolvable crime, which is eventually untangled by Iff's magickal and psychological logic. Crowley explained the method of crafting a Simon Iff story in simple terms:

"Think of a situation as inexplicable as possible, then to stop up all the chinks with putty, and having satisfied myself that no explanation was possible, to make a further effort and find one".

The Simon Iff stories were written during a visit to New Orleans in December 1916, primarily as a means of alleviating Crowley's financial hardships. The mystic was verging on bankruptcy, a result of his lifestyle, and extravagant self-publishing, while having never earned a wage. The initial collection of six stories which Crowley penned would be labelled The Scrutinies of Simon Iff. Crowley would later write twelve more stories under the title Simon Iff in America, four stories as Simon Iff Abroad (one is lost), and two final stories as Simon Iff Psychoanalyst. The Scrutinies of Simon Iff were first published in 1917-1918 in the New York publication The International under the pseudonym Edward Kelly ( presumably a nod to Edward Kelley, the Elizabethan alchemist and enochian magician), yet most of the Simon Iff stories remain unpublished. There is however, an edition of The Scutinies of Simon Iff published by Teitan Press: ISBN 0-933429-02-9. As with most of Crowley's work, the Iff stories are practically unheard of outside of occult circles.

Simon Iff also appears in Crowley's most widely read novel Moonchild (1929).

Dick Ffoulkes was in good practice at the Criminal Bar, and his envied dinner parties, given to few and well-known friends, were nearly always held in his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. They looked out on one of the pleasantest green spots in London.

There was a brooding of fog on the first December night of 1911, when Ffoulkes gave a supper to celebrate his victory over the Crown in the matter of the Marsden murder.

Marsden was a wealthy man, and had no enemies. The police suspected a mere protege of his unmarried sister, who was his only heir; he might thus benefit indirectly; no other motive could be found. The boy—for he was barely twenty—had dined with Marsden on the night of the murder, and of course the police had finger-prints by the dozen. Ffoulkes had torn their flimsy web to rags, and tossed them in the air with a laugh.

All his guests had gone but one, his oldest friend, Jack Flynn. They dated from Rugby, and had continued their inseparability at Balliol. They had read together for the bar, but Flynn, after being called, had branched off into the higher journalism.

The Marsden case had stirred England profoundly. Slight as was the motive attributed to Ezra Robinson, the suspected boy, there was no other person with any motive at all; faint as were the clues which pointed to him, there were none at all to point elsewhere.

Besides these considerations, there was apparently no physical possibility of any other murderer. Marsden had unquestionably died of a thrust in the heart from a common carving-knife, which was identified as the one which had been sent up with the dinner. Unobserved access to the suite was impossible, a floor clerk being continously seated in full view of the only door to the whole apartment. The only person known to have been in the room, after the table had been cleared by the hotel servants, was the accused. And even Ffoulkes had not dared to suggest that the wound—a straight drive from above and behind—might have been self-inflicted. Now was there any motive of robbery, or any trace of search for papers. But there was an undoubted thumb-print of Robinson’s in blood on the handle of the carving knife, and there was a cut on his left hand. He had explained this, and the presence of the knife itself, by saying that it had slipped as he was carving, and that he had run into the bathroom to wash and bind the cut, leaving the knife on the washstand.

The only point clean for the defense was the medical evidence, which put the time of death some two hours later than the departure of Robinson. This coincided with a temporary failure of the electric current all through the hotel. Ffoulkes suggested that the old man, who had drunk a good deal of wine, had gone to take a bath before retiring, seen the knife, remembered his old skill as an amateur juggler, ample testimony of which was forthcoming, and started to play at catching the knife. The light had gone out while he was throwing; he had dodged maladroitly, and the blade had chanced to catch him between the shoulders.

The opposite theory was that Robinson had returned to fetch his cigarette-case, which was in fact found in the room by the police, passed the floor clerk and slipped into the suite in the short spell of darkness, seen his opportunity and seized it, making off before the light was restored. He had not been able to give a satisfactory account of his movements. His story was that he had left Marsden early on account of a severe headache, and had wandered about the streets trying to obtain relief; on the other hand, no one in the hotel would swear to having seen him after his ostensible departure. The floor clerk had testified to a considerable commotion just at the time of the failure of the electric supply: she had heard noises apparently in several rooms; but this might well have been the normal confusion caused by the sudden darkness.

Flynn had been of the utmost service to Ffoulkes in the case. He had performed a weekly miracle in avoiding a spell of prison for contempt of court; for every week he had returned to the charge. There were long articles on miscarriages of justice; others on the weakness of circumstantial evidence where no strong motive was evident; others again on strange accidental deaths. He quoted the case of Professor Milnes Marshall, Who slipped and fell while setting up his camera in Deep Ghyll on Scawfell. He was on a gentle slope of snow, yet he made no effort to recover himself, and rolled over and over to the edge of a precipice, at whose foot he was found dead, smashed to a pulp. This happened in full view of several other climbers. This accident was contrasted with that of Arthur Wellman on the Trifthorn. He fell eight hundred feet, and yet only hurt himself by cutting his leg slightly with his ice axe.