I blew the dust off the book and opened it carefully, hoping not to damage the book. As it turned out, nothing happened. Turning the pages very carefully, I skipped ahead to the index, hoping to find more information concerning the goddess Chang’e. What I’d noticed about the name upon reading it was that it sounded suspiciously similar to the word “Change”. I’m sure it was entirely coincidental; after all, the Chinese language isn’t the same as the English language. There was some information about Chang’e on page 470, so I went straight to that page. There were some old photographs there depicting some Chinese people. Footsteps! I gasped and looked around. I thought they were footsteps, but I’m not sure. I’m sure it was just my imagination doing everything. I turned back to the book:

Worship of Chang’e was first brought to the United Kingdom in 1881, via the first Chinese sailors who would end up settling in the area that would eventually become the Chinatown in Limehouse. Chang’e worship enjoyed a small cult following among the disaffected and disenfranchised of the area, especially since they considered the Greek gods to be nothing more than “a bunch of horrid people.” They also considered Chang’e to be somewhat nicer by comparison to any of them. Sometime later, a group of nuns by the name of the Order of St Barbara adopted the beliefs of the Chang’e-worshipping masses. Unbeknownst to the residents of the area, they had secretly engaged in the practice of Satanism, and were, for all intents and purposes, not especially competent at such a task.

Before we condemn this as mere superstition, we have to understand that the British were especially keen on occultism in those particular days. We hardly need to mention the existence of one Aleister Crowley to understand the general zeitgeist of the time. They honoured her by sacrificing animals, which upset the local Chinese people, since it differed so heavily from their established practice of incense and ancestor worship. The nuns argued, however, that, as a goddess, she ought to receive that which she was due, and if something did not happen, then London would be wiped off the face of the earth, and Limehouse along with it. The animals used for offerings usually included pigeons, and swans. Blood, they argued, just as the Greeks believed, was the food of the gods, barring nectar and ambrosia, which it seems that the Chinese divinities appear not to have enjoyed.

In mid-1882, the nuns eventually left their original headquarters, the Convent of the Divine in Limehouse, having changed their name to the Sororal Order of the Moon, and travelled far south. This is of course portentous because shortly thereafter, the original convent they were based in burnt down the same night. To this day, nobody can determine the precise cause. Their sojournings were accomplished solely on foot, and they told nobody what they were doing and where they were going. We do not exactly know where they went, but given that their last known location appears to be somewhere in Somerset, I would assume, to the best of my ability, that they are still present. However, there have been no records of the nuns following 1882, so I have all reason to assume that they eventually ended up being killed somewhere.