A Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay Book Review

Wow! What a voyage!

It’s phantasy, totally fantastic!

We start at a seance. A spectre appears, he looks so beautiful. Then Krag arrives and kills the spectre. The haunting face of Crytsalman glows on the face of the dying ghost.

I go with Nightspore to a castle in Domremy. We meet Krag at the top of the battlements and alight into the heavenlys with the backrays of Arcturus.

I awake in the strangest dream. Or is it real? The story is the damndest thing I’ve ever read. It’s mysticism. It’s a message. What is the message?

I walk to many places. Each place reveals a different appendage on my body that perceives new and wonderful perceptions. A third eye, a third arm, a strange orb on my forhead.

I kill three people. One of them I strangle, two of them I stone.

Why did I do it? Guilt, remorse, grief? I still don’t know.

My name is Maskull. Where is Nightspore?

I want to be free. Do I want a trip to Tormance?

What about the women? Maskull kills one and falls in love with another. Is the book about sex? I love women. I undertsand nothing about them. Perhaps that’s why I love them.

It was neither the shame-carrying passion of a male, nor the deep-rooted instinct of a female to obey her destiny
Notes: Difference between man and woman.

The third sex. Let’s be careful here. The queers would have you believe this is all sexual, when- in fact, it’s mystical. The most MASCULINE MEN emanate a delicate femininity. For example, I love fairies. I want to be with you in a fairy garden under a full moon in a fairy circle.

three essentials of beauty— character, intelligence, and repose

Because queer culture has co-opted all of our language and hyper-sexualized everything, a MASCULINE MAN cannot define a fairy outside of queer culture.

You FAGS are so weak-minded, not only will you wear a face mask and get injected when your screen tells you, your sexuality is sold like a BUD LIGHT advertisement.

Your smart phone made you queer. YOU’RE PROGRAMMED. Get over it.

I would never tell anyone who or how to love.

Queer culture is a beer commercial.

This book was written in 1920. I won’t say the world was QUEERLESS IN 1920. However, in 1920 men could speak about being GAY, FAIRIES and FAGS– and now the queers have stolen our language.

Thanks a lot queers.

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A Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay Book Review

My annotations and highlights:

Four Novels by David Lindsay

Book last read: 2026-05-30 19:38:03
Percentage read: 15%

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 9.09%
Highlight: this is not a theatrical performance
Notes: Prepare for seance

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 15.15%
Highlight: Scriabine
Notes: Ask viola for this music.

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 15.15%
Highlight: I dream with open eyes,” he answered, looking round at the door, “and others see my dreams. That is all.”

Notes: How to manifest.

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 24.24%
Highlight: Nature is one thing, and Art is another
Notes: Agreed

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 27.27%
Highlight: prestidigitator
Notes: A person who performs conjuring tricks for entertainment.

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 39.39%
Highlight: The room was brilliantly lighted by electric bracket-lamps
Notes: 1920 electrics

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 42.42%
Highlight: Drury Lane presentation of the temple scene in the ‘Magic Flute’
Notes: Ask viola

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 48.48%
Highlight: Mozart’s ‘Temple’ music pulsated through the air
Notes: Ask circe

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 51.52%
Highlight: It was evident that aesthetically she was by far the most important person present
Notes: I see you.

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 51.52%
Highlight: Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness a materialization
Notes: Cool!

Chapter 2: Chapter I — The Séance
Annotation
Chapter progress: 72.73%
Highlight: She was staring straight at the couch, and was twisting a little lace handkerchief through the different fingers of her hand
Notes: Twisting the lace

Chapter 3: Chapter II — In the Street
Highlight
Chapter progress: 21.43%
Highlight: There you see Arcturus, and Tormance is its one inhabited planet.”

Chapter 3: Chapter II — In the Street
Highlight
Chapter progress: 50.0%
Highlight: A gift declined is not offered a second time.”

Chapter 3: Chapter II — In the Street
Highlight
Chapter progress: 57.14%
Highlight: Well, if that journey were a possible one, and I were given the chance of making it, I would be willing never to come back

Chapter 4: Chapter III — Starkness
Annotation
Chapter progress: 58.33%
Highlight: made up his mind to regard the whole business as a gigantic hoax.

Notes: Covid 19

Chapter 4: Chapter III — Starkness
Annotation
Chapter progress: 75.0%
Highlight: Solar Back-Rays
Notes: Some light returns back to the sun.

Chapter 5: Chapter IV — The Voice
Annotation
Chapter progress: 21.43%
Highlight: I am growing nervous, and need incidents.”
Notes: Incidents of distraction

Chapter 5: Chapter IV — The Voice
Highlight
Chapter progress: 78.57%
Highlight: One of the suns shone with a glaring white light; the other was a weird and awful blue

Chapter 6: Chapter V — The Night of Departure
Highlight
Chapter progress: 83.33%
Highlight: your memory will be your worst friend

Chapter 6: Chapter V — The Night of Departure
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.44%
Highlight: Krag then released the speed-valve, and the car sped on its way with a velocity more nearly approaching that of thought than of light
Notes: Speed of thought

Chapter 7: Chapter VI — Joiwind
Annotation
Chapter progress: 2.44%
Highlight: It gnawed away at him continuously; sometimes it embittered and irritated him, at other times he forgot it.

Notes: The pain.

Chapter 7: Chapter VI — Joiwind
Annotation
Chapter progress: 9.76%
Highlight: Looking up over his shoulder quickly, he was astounded to see a woman standing beside him.

Notes: Introducing the alien woman.

Chapter 7: Chapter VI — Joiwind
Highlight
Chapter progress: 17.07%
Highlight: Where am I?—Is this Tormance

Chapter 7: Chapter VI — Joiwind
Annotation
Chapter progress: 21.95%
Highlight: What pleasure is greater than loving-kindness? I rejoiced at the opportunity. . . . But now we must exchange blood
Notes: Loving kindness

Chapter 7: Chapter VI — Joiwind
Annotation
Chapter progress: 29.27%
Highlight: Joiwind delicately and skilfully placed the mouths of the two wounds together, and then kept her arm pressed tightly against Maskull’s for a long time. He felt a stream of pleasure entering his body through the incision. His old lightness and vigour began to return to him. After about five minutes a duel of kindness started between them; he wanted to remove his arm, and she to continue. At last he had his way, but it was none too soon—she stood there pale and dispirited
Notes: Curious blood exchange

Chapter 7: Chapter VI — Joiwind
Highlight
Chapter progress: 31.71%
Highlight: it’s a fearful thing for a girl to accept in her own veins the blood of a strange man from a strange planet. If I had not been so dazed and weak I would never have allowed it.”

Chapter 7: Chapter VI — Joiwind
Highlight
Chapter progress: 46.34%
Highlight: We eat no food, and drink only water

Chapter 7: Chapter VI — Joiwind
Highlight
Chapter progress: 65.85%
Highlight: Yes, I wish to be pure,” he muttered. “Without that what can I ever be but a weak, squirming devil?”

Chapter 7: Chapter VI — Joiwind
Highlight
Chapter progress: 70.73%
Highlight: What do you wish for?”
“For purity

Chapter 8: Chapter VII — Panawe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 11.11%
Highlight: “Where do you come from?”
“From the planet of a distant sun, called Earth.”
“What for?”
“I was tired of vulgarity
Notes: Good reason to leave earth.

Chapter 8: Chapter VII — Panawe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 55.56%
Highlight: Love flows in her veins, instead of blood, and that’s why she is so strong
Notes: Love

Chapter 8: Chapter VII — Panawe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 66.67%
Highlight: I was a prodigy. . . . That is to say, I was without sex
Notes: Red alert

Chapter 8: Chapter VII — Panawe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 88.89%
Highlight: My experience is,’ said I sententiously, ‘that wisdom is misery.’

Notes: Agreed

Chapter 8: Chapter VII — Panawe
Highlight
Chapter progress: 88.89%
Highlight: You will never rise above mysticism

Chapter 9: Chapter VIII — The Lusion Plain
Annotation
Chapter progress: 4.35%
Highlight: a spirit of rashness, daring, and adventure seemed to call to him
Notes: The call

Chapter 9: Chapter VIII — The Lusion Plain
Annotation
Chapter progress: 8.7%
Highlight: Ask nothing difficult, for I hardly know my powers yet.”
Notes: Figuring it out.

Chapter 9: Chapter VIII — The Lusion Plain
Annotation
Chapter progress: 17.39%
Highlight: You won’t think badly of other women on my account?”
“You are a blessed spirit,” answered he
Notes: Agreed

Chapter 9: Chapter VIII — The Lusion Plain
Annotation
Chapter progress: 26.09%
Highlight: declamatory
Notes: Vehement or impassioned expression.

Chapter 9: Chapter VIII — The Lusion Plain
Annotation
Chapter progress: 39.13%
Highlight: I will try to keep myself pure.”

Notes: Trying

Chapter 9: Chapter VIII — The Lusion Plain
Annotation
Chapter progress: 60.87%
Highlight: His brain was all dark and confused, but one idea was already beginning to stand out from the rest—huge, shapeless, and grand, like the growing image in the soul of a creative artist . . . the staggering thought that he was a man of destiny.

Notes: Forming destiny.

Chapter 9: Chapter VIII — The Lusion Plain
Annotation
Chapter progress: 86.96%
Highlight: Why should we be friends? . . . If I thought you were a man, I might accept you as a lover.”
Notes: Okay! I am a man!

Chapter 10: Chapter IX — Oceaxe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 5.77%
Highlight: quiescent
Notes: In a state or period of inactivity

Chapter 10: Chapter IX — Oceaxe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 17.31%
Highlight: Isn’t the whole world the handiwork of innumerable pairs of lovers?
Notes: Indeed

Chapter 10: Chapter IX — Oceaxe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 26.92%
Highlight: we only regard a man as human for just as long as he’s able to hold his own with others.”

Notes: Deep

Chapter 10: Chapter IX — Oceaxe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 30.77%
Highlight: enigmatic
Notes: Difficult to interpret or understand

Chapter 10: Chapter IX — Oceaxe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 32.69%
Highlight: Oh, mine is a decrepit world, where nature takes a hundred years to move a foot of solid land. Men and animals go about in flocks. Originality is a lost habit.”

Notes: Home world.

Chapter 10: Chapter IX — Oceaxe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 53.85%
Highlight: he realized that he had been tricked, and that this ride had been planned for one purpose only—to inflame his desires
Notes: The trick!

Chapter 10: Chapter IX — Oceaxe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 55.77%
Highlight: In the front and centre of his consciousness was the knowledge that he was gripping a fair woman, and that her flesh was responding to his touch like a lovely harp
Notes: Blush

Chapter 10: Chapter IX — Oceaxe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 59.62%
Highlight: he felt nothing but an intense longing for action and possession
Notes: Agreed

Chapter 10: Chapter IX — Oceaxe
Annotation
Chapter progress: 86.54%
Highlight: He longed to test his powers on his fellow-creatures
Notes: Test the powers

Chapter 11: Chapter X — Tydomin
Annotation
Chapter progress: 1.85%
Highlight: Don’t pretend, woman!
Notes: !

Chapter 11: Chapter X — Tydomin
Annotation
Chapter progress: 16.67%
Highlight: every woman has more than one character. Don’t you know that?
Notes: Agreed

Chapter 11: Chapter X — Tydomin
Annotation
Chapter progress: 38.89%
Highlight: There’s only one relief for remorse, and that’s voluntary pain
Notes: Is this true?

Chapter 11: Chapter X — Tydomin
Annotation
Chapter progress: 67.35%
Highlight: Who is this woman, and why are you following at her heels like a slave? She looks insane to me. . . . What’s that corpse . . . why are you dragging it about the country with you?
Notes: Hehe. Good questions

Chapter 12: Chapter XI — On Disscourn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 63.64%
Highlight: you are a slave to words
Notes: Help us

Chapter 12: Chapter XI — On Disscourn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 72.73%
Highlight: He who is always anxious to teach, will learn nothing
Notes: Agreed

Chapter 12: Chapter XI — On Disscourn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 90.91%
Highlight: Until eye sees, of what use is it for ear to hear
Notes: Eye salve and q-tips

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 2.78%
Highlight: Previously all external things had existed for him; now he existed for them. According to whether they served his purpose or were in harmony with his nature, or otherwise, they had been pleasant or painful.
Notes: The swap

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 5.56%
Highlight: and now it turns out that apart from the present we have no life at all
Notes: Living in the now

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 5.56%
Highlight: Watch that you don’t lose your gift
Notes: Keep your senses

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 10.0%
Highlight: Out of no other mother can truth be born. I have brooded, and rejected; and I have brooded again
Notes: Is this true? truth born from brooding?

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 17.07%
Highlight: I wish to see how long the famous frost-man can withstand the breath, smiles and perfume of a girl.
Notes: Not long

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 19.51%
Highlight: joy and beauty was but another name for the bestiality of souls wallowing in luxury and sloth
Notes: Certainly not true

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 31.71%
Highlight: Beware of love—beware of emotion!” exclaimed Spadevil. “Love is but pleasure once removed. Think not of pleasing others, but of serving them.”

Notes: Beware of love!

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 51.22%
Highlight: As they steadily ascended the almost perpendicular stairs, the sun got higher in the sky. Its light dyed their bodies a ruddy gold.
Notes: Ruddy gold

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 56.1%
Highlight: this pain is eating up the evil in your nature
Notes: Pain and evil

Chapter 13: Chapter XII — Spadevil
Annotation
Chapter progress: 92.68%
Highlight: Do not fear change and destruction; but laughter and joy.”

Notes: Fear!

Chapter 14: Chapter XIII — The Wombflash Forest
Annotation
Chapter progress: 20.0%
Highlight: During the whole of the previous day he seemed to have been labouring under a series of heavy enchantments. First Oceaxe had enslaved him, then Tydomin, then Spadevil, and lastly Catice. They had forced him to murder and violate . . . he had guessed nothing, but had imagined that he was travelling as a free and enlightened stranger. . . . What was this nightmare-journey for . . . and would it continue in the same way?
Notes: The story so far.

Chapter 15: Chapter XIV — Polecrab
Annotation
Chapter progress: 7.5%
Highlight: I must make up my mind that this is a strange journey, and that the strangest things will happen in it. It’s no use making plans, for I can’t see two steps ahead—everything is unknown. But one thing’s evident . . . nothing but the wildest audacity will carry me through, and I must sacrifice everything else to that
Notes: No plans just wild audacity

Chapter 15: Chapter XIV — Polecrab
Annotation
Chapter progress: 72.5%
Highlight: And so it occurs to me that reality and falseness are two words for the same thing
Notes: True

Chapter 16: Chapter XV — Swaylone’s Island
Annotation
Chapter progress: 4.0%
Highlight: A woman is a noble and sensitive creature, and there are attractions in nature too subtle for males
Notes: Subtle attractions

Chapter 16: Chapter XV — Swaylone’s Island
Annotation
Chapter progress: 40.0%
Highlight: Shaping (whom you call Crystalman
Notes: Code

Chapter 16: Chapter XV — Swaylone’s Island
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.0%
Highlight: To love he joins death; to sex, shame; to intellect, madness; to virtue, cruelty; and to fair exteriors, bloody entrails. These are Krag’s actions, so the lovers of the world call him ‘devil.’ They don’t understand, Maskull, that without him the world would lose its beauty
Notes: Without grotesque there is no beauty

Chapter 16: Chapter XV — Swaylone’s Island
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.0%
Highlight: To see beauty in its terrible purity, you must tear away the pleasure from it.
Notes: Is this true?

Chapter 17: Chapter XVI — Leehallfae
Annotation
Chapter progress: 7.55%
Highlight: The great spout-waves fell against the trunk with mighty thuds, the breaking seas hissed through the lower branches
Notes: A tree at sea to travel by. Clever story.

Chapter 17: Chapter XVI — Leehallfae
Annotation
Chapter progress: 37.74%
Highlight: They had limbs, faces, will, and intelligence, but they remained for the greater part of their time rooted in the ground by preference, and they fed only on soil and air
Notes: Plant people.

Chapter 17: Chapter XVI — Leehallfae
Annotation
Chapter progress: 52.83%
Highlight: for this person, though clearly a human being, was neither man nor woman, nor anything between the two, but was unmistakably of a third positive sex, which was remarkable to behold and difficult to understand
Notes: Third sex?

Chapter 17: Chapter XVI — Leehallfae
Annotation
Chapter progress: 56.0%
Highlight: It was neither the shame-carrying passion of a male, nor the deep-rooted instinct of a female to obey her destiny
Notes: Difference between man and woman.

Chapter 17: Chapter XVI — Leehallfae
Annotation
Chapter progress: 56.6%
Highlight: If they were to live together for a hundred years, they could never be companions.

Notes: Incompatible.

Chapter 17: Chapter XVI — Leehallfae
Highlight
Chapter progress: 60.38%
Highlight: three essentials of beauty—character, intelligence, and repose

Chapter 17: Chapter XVI — Leehallfae
Annotation
Chapter progress: 62.26%
Highlight: Nowadays there are men and women, but in the olden times the world was peopled by phaens
Notes: Third sex

Chapter 18: Chapter XVII — Corpang
Annotation
Chapter progress: 39.22%
Highlight: Whatever a man sees with his eyes, Maskull, he sees in three ways—length, breadth, depth. Length is existence, breadth is relation, depth is feeling
Notes: See in three ways

Chapter 18: Chapter XVII — Corpang
Highlight
Chapter progress: 68.63%
Highlight: It possessed the beauty of a girl and the daring force of a man

Chapter 18: Chapter XVII — Corpang
Annotation
Chapter progress: 82.35%
Highlight: this new light. It cast no shadows
Notes: Mystic

Chapter 18: Chapter XVII — Corpang
Annotation
Chapter progress: 84.31%
Highlight: It must mean that life is wrong, and the creator of life too, whether he is one person or three.”
Notes: Father son holy spirit. Wisdom strength beauty

Chapter 19: Chapter XVIII — Haunte
Annotation
Chapter progress: 20.75%
Highlight: There are men there, and there are women there, but there are no men-women, as with you
Notes: The third sex.

Chapter 19: Chapter XVIII — Haunte
Annotation
Chapter progress: 20.75%
Highlight: What do you call men-women?
Notes: Good question

Chapter 19: Chapter XVIII — Haunte
Annotation
Chapter progress: 20.75%
Highlight: “I have always regarded myself as a man.”
“Very likely you have; but the test is, do you hate and fear women?”
Notes: Hehe

Chapter 19: Chapter XVIII — Haunte
Annotation
Chapter progress: 24.53%
Highlight: Where men are called to women by pain, and not pleasure
Notes: Hmmm

Chapter 19: Chapter XVIII — Haunte
Annotation
Chapter progress: 28.3%
Highlight: The great body of the earth is continually giving out female particles, and the male parts of rocks and living bodies are equally continually trying to reach them. That’s gravitation
Notes: Gravity explained

Chapter 19: Chapter XVIII — Haunte
Annotation
Chapter progress: 62.26%
Highlight: The life of an absolute male is fierce. An excess of life is dangerous to the body. How can it be anything else than torturing?”
Notes: Agreed

Chapter 19: Chapter XVIII — Haunte
Annotation
Chapter progress: 88.68%
Highlight: it is not enough to desire her; she must desire you as well. But why should she desire you?”
Notes: Good question.

Chapter 20: Chapter XIX — Sullenbode
Annotation
Chapter progress: 17.39%
Highlight: Love is that which is perfectly willing to disappear and become nothing, for the sake of the beloved.
Notes: Agreed

Chapter 20: Chapter XIX — Sullenbode
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.65%
Highlight: there is no longer any spirit of adventure amongst the Earthmen. Everything is safe, vulgar, and completed
Notes: Written in 1920. Even more true today.

Chapter 20: Chapter XIX — Sullenbode
Highlight
Chapter progress: 71.74%
Highlight: Love can’t go back—it can only go on

Chapter 20: Chapter XIX — Sullenbode
Annotation
Chapter progress: 80.43%
Highlight: Can the memory of love be worth more than its presence and reality?
Notes: Good question

Chapter 21: Chapter XX — Barey
Annotation
Chapter progress: 20.93%
Highlight: Now you’ve got a mortal heart-wound on account of a woman you knew for six hours.
Notes: It’s true. Lovesick.

Chapter 21: Chapter XX — Barey
Annotation
Chapter progress: 34.88%
Highlight: To be a free man, one must have a universe of one’s own
Notes: Too true

Chapter 21: Chapter XX — Barey
Annotation
Chapter progress: 41.86%
Highlight: It makes all the difference whether one sees darkness through the light, or brightness through the shadows
Notes: Transforming the darkness

Chapter 21: Chapter XX — Barey
Annotation
Chapter progress: 81.4%
Highlight: Just as the principal character of an ordinary dawn is mystery
Notes: Every dawm a mystery awaits the day.

Chapter 22: Chapter XXI — Muspel
Annotation
Chapter progress: 8.0%
Highlight: The sound comes from Muspel, but the rhythm is caused by its travelling through Crystalman’s atmosphere. His nature is rhythm as he loves to call it . . . or dull, deadly repetition, as I name it.
Notes: Is the rhythm of life dull and repetitive?

Chapter 22: Chapter XXI — Muspel
Annotation
Chapter progress: 84.0%
Highlight: He comprehended at last how the whole world of will was doomed to eternal anguish in order that one Being might feel joy.

Notes: Curious