Maine is an important part of Marcia Moore’s legacy. “When she’s an old lady of ninety she’ll probably still be telling everyone who will listen about the magic summer the way Marcia talks about summers in Maine…” Marcia Moore’s first husband described.

Jeannie, Marcia’s paternal grandmother, lived in Cape Elizabeth where Marcia Moore spent summers growing up.

Marcia’s father, Robert, also had a brother, Reverend Arthur N. Moore, who was a Unitarian minister in Portland, Maine for over forty years.

Uncle Arthur lived in Maine with his wife Frances and their children. They were a musical family, with a string quartet. Built around 1926, their small house, with upstairs loft style bedroom for the children, sat just up the beach, right on the water. Waves lapped against the dining room windows during storms. It was a tiny place called “Sunnybank,” sandwiched between two now state parks. As a child, Marcia’s celebrated writer brother Robin Moore spent a period living with his uncle and family, during an absence from school.

In the 1960s, Marcia Moore lived in Maine’s “Greystone Manor,” a 14 room, six acre mansion, still highlighted by local boat tours today. With a spectacular view of the ocean, the mansion sits high atop the cliffs in Cape Neddick, near a lighthouse, and just south of Perkins Cove.

One could say that Maine was a source of profound inspiration. Marcia Moore wrote most of her books at Greystone, including what she called her “magnum opus” Astrology the Divine Science, co-authored with her third husband. Even after the pair separated, Marcia returned to Greystone to write from time to time. An ideal spot for concentrating, with a magnificent view.

Years later one summer, Greystone became a Junior League decorators’ showplace. The mansion was also used in a movie, and has since turned into a wedding venue.

When Marcia lived there, Greystone had a much more esoteric history. There was even purported reports of hauntings during that time. In addition, past life regression was practiced on the living room floor. Marcia Moore wrote extensively on the subject, and became highly regarded in the regression community among her peers and fans by word of mouth. People would approach Marcia from all over the United States asking if they could travel to be personally regressed by her, no matter where she was.

At one time Marcia had a stake in several businesses with her third-husband in Maine, including a steakhouse, even though Marcia was a vegetarian, and a bowling alley, among other ventures. The couple kept a box in York Harbor for their establishments; Arcane Publications where they did their own printing, as well as Arcane Bookshop, a quaint shingle roofed store with studio apartment overhead.

During her time living in Maine, Marcia Moore gained a little bit of a reputation as an astrologer, doing astrological readings at Greystone and meeting Maine coastal area astrologers. The mansion provided an impressive place to host, and Marcia found a couple of really good amateurs. One was an English medical doctor who lived in Windham, Maine. Another was an antiques dealer who came weekly. There was also a much younger gay astrologer (for context), who Marcia enjoyed comparing notes with. Always apt to build her knowledge.

Marcia’s son Christopher, reported by those that knew Marcia as her favorite, and who went by the nickname Chrishna in correspondence with his mother, was recently discovered deceased in Maine. Throughout his life Christoper tried his hand at odd jobs like organic gardening and working in a bakery. Around the time he was applying to Harvard he thought about a career in archaeology, but later became an author of children’s books. As a child he’d spent breaks from boarding school at summer camp in Maine. Like Marcia, Christopher became vegetarian, slightly frowned upon by his grandmother, Marcia’s mother Eleanor, who always fancied him hungry so would try to give him extra helpings. At one time Christopher lived in a commune or spiritual hermitage of about fifty disciples of a Hindu guru. For a two year interlude, during the late 1950s, Christopher and his siblings had lived in India with their parents, Marcia and Simons. Those that knew Christopher described him as sensitive, a conscientious objector of the Vietnam war, and like his father, a lover of poetry.

No stranger to the more mystical side of life, during her first marriage, Marcia and then husband Simons, even attended one or more séances in Maine.

In hindsight, Maine and all its beauty represented an important creative retreat.

Joseph DiSomma, author of Dematerialized: The Mysterious Disappearance of Marcia Moore

(In her letters; Marcia Moore sometimes spelled Greystone, “Graystone,” with an “a.”)