Where Once Poe Walked

Where Once Poe Walked
H. P. Lovecraft

Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,

Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;

Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,

Arched high above a hidden world of yore.

Round all the scene a light of memory plays,

And dead leaves whisper of departed days,

Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.

Lonely and sad, a specter glides along

Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;

No common glance discerns him, though his song

Peals down through time with a mysterious spell.

Only the few who sorcery's secret know,

Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe

Atlanteans, Lemurians and aliens

H.P. Lovecraft may or may not have said to Harold S. Farnese (with whom he briefly corresponded),

“You will, of course, realize that all my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on one fundamental lore or legend: that this world was inhabited at one time by another race, who in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again.”

but he did write, in “The Other Gods” (1921),

“…In cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel, and wise cotters have legends that keep them from certain high peaks at night when it is cloudy, for the gods are not lenient as of old.”

and, in “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926),

“…There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.”

and, from the same source,

“…They were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape...but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for them…”

and, in “At The Mountains of Madness”

“…Another race – a land-race of beings shaped like octopi and probably corresponding to [the] fabulous pre-human spawn of Cthulhu – soon began filtering down from cosmic infinity and precipitated a monstrous war which for a time drove the Old Ones wholly back to the sea. . . . Then suddenly the lands of the Pacific sank again, taking with them the frightful stone city of R’lyeh and all the cosmic octopi, so that the Old Ones were again supreme on the planet. . . .”

There are different theories about Mu and Lemuria, as there are about Atlantis.

Lemuria may be the ‘Kumarinâtu of Tamil literature’, metaphorical or physical, a place destroyed by volcanoes and earthquakes that sank beneath the sea, a land where the ancestors of both the Mesoamericans and the Egyptians held sway, a continent destroyed in a catastrophe so long ago that all memories of it have disappeared, whose descendants became space travellers and abducted by Daniel Fry in 1949, whose tunnels – like those of Atlantis – still exist under the earth, a civilization whose remains are to be found somewhere in the deserts of Western Australia, the continent inhabited by (according to theosophists) the Third Root-race and whose empire arose 78,000 years ago and lasted 52,000 years before being destroyed 26,000 years ago by a pole shift caused by the near-miss of the planet Nibiru. If the Elder Gods inhabited another planet in our solar system prior to visiting Earth (given that they existed in this spacetime and were sufficiently corporeal) then Nibiru is a prime candidate for such occupation since it has been claimed by Zecharia Sitchin that, “About 450,000 years ago, Alalu, the deposed ruler of the Anunnaki on Nibiru, escaped the planet on a spaceship and found refuge on Earth.” Nibiru is an Akkadian name and is the name of the planet associated with Marduk.

The anagram of Anunnaki is Ik-anu-nan (Ik – one of Quetzalcoatl’s names; Anu – the first part of Anubis, Egyptian god of the Underworld and Nan(na) – the Sumerian Moon-god whose daughter, Inanna, who has been compared to Persephone (because she went to the Underworld and was then saved).

Marduk was a god of wisdom and white magic and therefore the Sumerian equivalent of Thoth.

The priests and practitioners of white and of black magic who inhabited both Lemuria and Atlantis were clearly the descendants of genetically manipulated primates (i.e. human beings) by the Annunaki since the names of their Elder Gods may be traced to those aliens.

Perhaps Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth are, in some way, connected to Nibiru and its return!

Technorati Tags: lovecraft, atlantis, mu, lemuria, theosophy, cthulhu, r'lyeh, churchward, zechariah, sitchin, anunnaki, akkad, akkadian, marduk, nibiru, anu, anubis, inanna, yog-sothoth, azathoth

Putting the “fun” back into dysfunctional

Rabidly racist, pathologically phobic about frigidity (the weather, not his own – although that may have been the case as well) and miserably misogynistic, Lovecraft opens a whole new chapter on the meaning of ‘dysfunctional’.

Growing up, as he did, in a most unusual and highly eccentric family – his father died (of dementia caused by syphilis) in Butler’s Hospital, an insane asylum, as did his mother (in the same asylum) – he was raised by two maiden aunts. As a child his mother treated him like a girl and his hair was worn long until the age of six. Due to childhood illness he did not receive much in the way of formal schooling and he claimed to have had a number of nervous breakdowns in his youth including a severe one in 1908 that caused him to leave high school – after a mere two and a half years – without a diploma. He was often on the edge of suicide, particularly after the death of his grandfather (and the family’s subsequent ejection from the mansion in which they lived) and of his mother.

His stories rarely mention women and, although he had a girlfriend – Winifred Virginia Jackson (that is, he had a friend who was a girl) – his cohabitation with his wife Sonia Haft Greene lasted scarcely ten months, after which he moved into a single room in the squalid Red Hook area of Brooklyn, with Sonia merely returning from time to time to New York.

His racism and xenophobia knew no bounds (even though Sonia was Jewish) and his hatred and fear extended to what he clearly regarded as ‘degenerates’ of his own race. As such he would have no doubt had much sympathy with the American eugenics movement of the period – second only to that of Nazi Germany.

Yet, for all these peculiarities, he is now regarded as the father of modern horror and has influenced most of today’s seminal writers in that genre:

As Stephen King wrote in his ‘Danse Macabre’, Lovecraft “...opened the way for me, as he had done for others before me, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Fritz Leiber, and Ray Bradbury among them...[T]he reader would do well to remember that it is his shadow, so long and gaunt, and his eyes, so dark and puritanical, which underlie almost all of the important horror fiction that has come since.”

To be a servant

He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,

Let him in constancy follow the Master.

There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent to be a servant.

Becoming a servant of one of the Lovecraft deities inevitably(adv.)1 and inexorably(adv.) results in insanity, death or – if you are very, very blessed (damned?) – in both.

In “The Thing on the Doorstep” Edward Pickman Derby was a “…a close correspondent of the notorious Baudelairean poet Justin Geoffrey, who wrote The People of the Monolith and died screaming in a madhouse in 1926 after a visit to a sinister, ill-regarded village in Hungary. Derby was to suffer a death not unlike that of the Wicked Witch of the West.

In “The Call of Cthulhu” during Inspector Legrasse’s attack on the worshippers in the swamp “…Five of the worshippers lay dead, and two severely wounded ones were carried away on improvised stretchers by their fellow-prisoners. The image on the monolith, of course, was carefully removed and carried back by Legrasse.” The uncle of the story’s protagonist, George Gamell Angell, died mysteriously and prematurely, as did the protagonist, Francis Wayland Thurston – both of whom had learned little but too much.

And in “The Other Gods” Barzai the Wise dies due to his crime of hubris.

GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING: Servitude kills

Genius loci

“…There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of The Street.” – H.P. Lovecraft, “The Street”

The concept of a soul is a religious or philosophical one and, together with mind and body comprise the trinity of existence for an individual.

In common with Jews, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs and Hindus, the ancient Greeks believed in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls whereby a being reincarnates in another living organism – plant, animal or human being. The eternal movement of a soul from body to body is called samsara by the Eastern religions.

Christians, and particularly Roman Catholics, are divided on the issue with some believing that animals possess souls and others denying it. Some Christians believe that reincarnation is the equivalent of eternal damnation. The overwhelming majority, however, believe that there is a soul and some attempt to provide proof, even though such belief is, of its very essence, neither provable nor falsifiable. Certain mystics believe that every living being is ‘part’ of a Universal Soul, others see a more complex interrelationship between God, man and animals. Atheists tend to disbelieve in the existence of a soul in any living organism – and, by extension, in non-living things or places.

The Romans believed in the genius loci, the protective or guardian spirit of a place. According to the Wikipedia entry for ‘genius loci’, “…In the context of modern architectural theory, genius loci has profound implications for place-making, falling within the philosophical branch of ‘phenomenology’.” This concept has much in common with feng shui which “…is a discipline with guidelines that are compatible with many techniques of architectural planning.” In ‘Reports of Certain Events in London’, China Miéville (who has acknowledged the influence of Lovecraft on his writing) describes the Viæ Feræ, the wild streets that occur and non-occur as they fight battles with each other for survival and dominance.

Whether or not ‘things’ have souls is more problematical. “…In the horror genre model of the universe, whatever is “out there” really is trying to “get” you—the world is full of inimical things that devour all goodness and still have no goodness inside. What’s after you is pure evil, something which is literally God-forsaken. There is no recourse but to run, hide, or fight. And it really is hopeless.” (Neptune, Klipot, and Fighting Evil).

It is illogical and yet strangely consistent with his contrariness that such a confirmed atheist as Lovecraft was, who stated that, “…I am, indeed, an absolute materialist as far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism – religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality...” should, in one of his short stories, suggest that all entities are in possession of souls.

Yog-Sothiology

Yog-Sothoth – a.k.a. The Lurker at the Threshold, The Key and the Gate, The Beyond One, Opener of the Way, The All-in-One and the One-in-All – like An of the Sumerians, Osiris of the Egyptians, Vishnu of the Indians, Anu of the Babylonians, Zeus of the Greeks and Jupiter of the Romans

Each of these (apart from Yog-Sothoth) are sky- or sun-gods or gods of the heavens, lords of the constellations, and, the kings of all the other gods, spirits and demons. Supreme in their pantheonsn.3, they existed as one of a triadn.1 of gods – An, Enki and Enlil; Osiris, Isis and Horus; Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva; Anu, Bel and Ea; Zeus, Poseidon and Hades; and Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto. Some – like Zeus – directly involved themselves in the affairs of mankind, whilst others – like Anu – were remote and unlikely to respond to personal appeals (in common with many of today’s governmental leaders!). Yog-Sothoth, however, cannot be said to be one of a trinity unless one was to link him with the all-mighty Azathoth and the all-wise Yibb-Tstll (or, of course Nyarlathotep). He is also remote, except that, like Zeus, he has had congressn.5 with human females – in the case of Yog-Sothoth, the issue was Wilbur Whateley, and in the case of Zeus, too many to mention. Unlike An, Osiris, Vishnu, Anu, Zeus and Jupiter, Yog-Sothoth is neither human nor animal in form, being “a congeries of iridescent globes” – a blood-curdling bubble-bath. Also unlike them he is “…coterminous with all time and space yet is supposedly locked outside of the universe we inhabit.” (Wikipedia entry). This description, from “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, is prescient in that it sounds counterfactual in terms of the Einsteinian spacetime with which Lovecraft would have been familiar but makes perfect sense as far as the ten dimensions of space (and one of time) of string theory are concerned.

However, BEWARE! To learn too much about this deity is to fiddle around with damnation as Yog-Sothoth requires human sacrifice and/or eternal servitude of all his ‘favourites’.

Let Sleeping Gods Lie

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

In the Lovecraft Cosmos it does not behoove any fool to awaken, annoy or otherwise disturb the gods.

Apart from the undesirable and injudicious arousal of Cthulhu in “The Call of Cthulhu”, Bokrug – the Great Water Lizard god was much displeased when the men of Sarnath slaughtered the inhabitants of Ib who were,

“…in hue as green as the lake and the mists that rise above it....[T]hey had bulging eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and curious ears, and were without voice.”
– Wikipedia entry “The Doom That Came To Sarnath”

In “The Curse of Yig” Audrey Davis incurs the anger of the snake-god Yig when she kills some of his children – deadly rattlers! Other characters descend into insanity merely through the worship of his terrifying deities.

Unsurprisingly, given Lovecraft’s passion for the classical, his gods’ behaviour (even though they are alien and monstrous in appearance) is very similar to that of Ancient Greece’s Olympians. Prometheus and Ixion were punished by Zeus for their amatory adventures, Athena punished Ajax for the ‘rape’ of Cassandra and the ‘wrath of heaven’ was visited upon other mortals by the gods.