The Masks of Lovecraft (part 3) - Report on the Miskatonic Expedition

"...The things once rearing and dwelling in this frightfull masonary in the age of dinosaurs were not indeed dinosaurs, but far worse. Mere dinosaurs were new and almost brainless objects - but the builders of the city were wise and old, and had left certain traces in rocks, even then laid down well nigh a thousand million years - rocks laid down before the true life of earth had advanced beyond plasmic groups of cells ¹ - rocks laid down before the true life of the life of earth had exsisted at all. They were the makers and enslavers of that life, and above all doubt the orignals of the fiendish elder myths which things like the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomican offrightlingly hint about.

At the Mountians of Madness, and other tales of terror, H.P. Lovecraft, 1939.

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¹ Cells Classified by Sub-Cellular Materials ("-plasmic")In a broader structural sense, groups of cells or tissues are often grouped and named by the type of cellular material ("-plasm") they dominate in or how they develop:

• Cytoplasmic / Protoplasmic Groups: Living cell matter containing the cytosol and organelles.
• Neoplasms: A group of abnormal cells forming a tumor or new tissue growth (cancerous or benign).
• Sarcoplasm: A term used specifically for the specialized cytoplasm found within groups of skeletal muscle cells.

AI overview

The Masks of Lovecraft (part 2) - The Testament of the Shuttered Room

“Destroy every living thing in that room – every living thing, no matter how small. Abner Whately’s grandfather wrote in the strange letter he left after his death.

Abner did not understand until he saw the prints in the dust of the shuttered room – prints of tiny, webbed human hands and feet. Hundreds of them.”

The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror, H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth

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The Masks of Cthulhu & the Cthulhu Mythos, first part

Tall and Crooked Trees

“You know how tall all the trees are in Mulligan Wood. You can’t see the tops of some of them from the wagon-road on a clear day. And you know how crooked and queer-looking some of them are.

It’s funny, but I’ve always thought of them as old men-tall old men, you understand, tall and crooked and very evil. I’ve always thought of them as wanting to work mischief. There’s something unwholesome about trees that grow very close together and grow crooked.

...Through swirling clouds of fog we saw the scaly, gnarled boles of the trees, and every bole resembled the twisted body of an evil old man."

Tales of Cthulhu Mythos, Vol. 1, H.P. Lovercraft & Others, The Space Eaters, Frank Belknap Long

It has been a long while since I made a tree post,

H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing

“The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bow-spit of the sturdy yacht…

There was bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand open graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper.

For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething...”

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Vol. 1

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The Thing

The Much Discussed Couplet

“No book had ever really hinted of it, though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose, especially the much discussed couplet:

‘That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and with strange eons even death may die.’

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1, The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft

The Unexplainable Couplet

“In a point of time, the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, was the first character of the Cthulhu Mythos to the make his appearance; this was in strongly Dunsanian tale, The Nameless City (1921), fashioned about the unexplainable couplet.”

‘That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and with strange eons even death may die.’

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1, The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft

The Masks of Cthulhu & the Cthulhu Mythos

"The vast, terrible enity from beyound time and sapce who waits brooding in his cyclopean home in sunken R'lyeh symbol and actuality of inimaginable nightmare - the greatest creation of H.P. Lovecraft.

The Cthulhu Mythos inspired many authors to write storoes using it as a theme - and thie anthology contains the best of these, together with key Cthulhu stories by Lovecraft. Some of these authors are: August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Howard, Frank Belknap Long , J. Vernon Shea".

The Masks of Lovecraft – The Al Azif Texts

“In brief, the book, originally entitled Al Azif, was written circa AD. 730 at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred, “a mad poet of Sana, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade Caliphs.”

Thereafter, its history unfolds as follows:

“Translated into Greek as the Necronomican, AD. 950 by Theodouis Philetas”
“Burnt by Patriarch Michael, AD. 1050(IE Greek text...Arabic text now lost)
“Olaus Wormius translates the Greek into Latin, AD. 1228”
“Latin and Greek editions suppressed by Pope Gregory IX, AD. 1232”
“Black letter edition- Germany – 1440?”
“Greek text printed in Italy – 1500 – 1550”
Spanish translation of Latin text – 1600?”

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft and Others

Reign of Cthulhu Investigator Miniatures

"The Federal government made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth."

The Shadow Over Innsmout, H. P. Lovecraft

The squade of investigatiors are primed and ready to solve the next Lovecraft mystery. I purchased these miniatures so that I might have something to stand next to a structure once it has been completed. The figures average approximately 38mm tall, that is from the crown of their heads to the bottom of their bases.

It seems the 38mm figures for O-gauge model railroading might just work out, although they do seem to be a bit chunky.

Other Books from the Cthulhu Mythos

The Book of Azathoth

The Book of Azathoth features a “parody of scripture which praises the Outer Gods” and belittles Christianity.

The Book of Dagon

The Book of Dagon was a gift to Captain Obed Marsh from the Deep Ones after he had founded the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

The Book of Dzyan

This book contains a collection of ancient wisdom. This wisdom exists on a “higher spiritual plane” where only psychically sensitive travelers can connect with it. “Per tradition, the first six chapters of this book were brought to earth by the Lords of Venus”.

The Book of Eibon

The original manuscript was said to be written by the wizard Eibon. Legend has it that the manuscript was found amid the ruins of Eibon’s blasted tower.

The Book of Hidden Things

This text is mentioned in a manuscript discovered by Alonzo Typer. There is nothing else known about this text.

The Book of IOD

Although the Book of IOD is of unknown origin, folklore attributes it to the mysterious “Khut-Nah”.

The Book of Karnak

The Book of Karnak is a digest of occult knowledge.

The Book of K’ Yog

This book predates the age of Eibon and has been lost for a millennium.

The Book of Night

The Book of Night is purported as being a dangerous work on necromancy and is said to have been written by the Hyperborean wizard, Vizooranos.

The Book of Skelos

The Book of Skelos is an ancient text thought to have been written by the blind sage Skelos; the scroll being preserved by his devotes. However, some attribute its authorship to the serpent people's wizards of Valusia.

The Book of Thoth

This text is attributed to the Egyptian God of wisdom and magic, Thoth. Thoth is said to have authored thousands of texts on occult subjects.

The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, Third Edition, Daniel Harms

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Other books, manuscripts, scrolls and text fragments mentioned in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Quotes from the Necronomicon

I have started to pick through my copy of the Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia. There is more material here than I what to do with.

The Necronomicon is one of several texts mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft’s writings; this purported text, like the rest mentioned in his works are fictional in nature are are all part of the Cthulhu Mythos.

There are many writings included in the manuscript including the following couplet and translation.

A famous couplet:

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

In the original Arabic, it is translated as:

“That thing is not dead which has the capacity to continue to exist eternally,
And it the abnormal (bizarre, strange) ones (things, times) come, then death may cease to be.”

The Unexplained Sand Funnels

The two river travelers find that many sand funnels have been formed around the island and expect that the unexplained creatures that they had previously witnessed are the cause of these indentations.

"It's those sand-funnels," exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us. "And look at the size of them!"

All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far bigger and deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit the whole of my foot and leg.

Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least motion would disturb and wake us.”

The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood

They Have Found Us

More of the Blackwood’s horrors among the willows…

"Look! By my soul!" he whispered, and for the first time in my experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice. He was pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the direction of his finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.

There, in front of the dim glow, something was moving.

I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze drop-curtain used at the back of a theater—hazily a little. It was neither a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three, moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar result, though expressing it differently, for he thought it was shaped and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the top, and moving all over upon its surface—"coiling upon itself like smoke," he said afterwards.

I watched it settle downwards through the bushes," he sobbed at me. "Look, by God! It's coming this way! Oh, oh!"—he gave a kind of whistling cry. "They've found us."

The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood

There Was a Hue of Dull Bronze Upon Their Skins

These creatures were believed to have arrived from another dimension and thought to live within the willows. Algernon Blackwood was a protégé of H. P. Lovecraft thus his rendition of the multidimensional idea.

"I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves about these shapes, forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty feet in front of me, I saw these things.

My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see them, but something made me hesitate—the sudden realization, probably, that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself that I was not dreaming.

They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of the bushes—immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance proclaimed them to be not human at all. Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost—rising up in a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins."

The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood

Other Influencers of H.P. Lovecraft

Although I have mentioned one of the following texts in my The Work and Influences of H. P. Lovecraft post my research has uncovered a few others that I would like to mention:

Tales of Three Hemispheres, Lord Dunsany, and especially the following three interlocked stories within this volume:
    Idle Days on the Yann
    A Shop in Go By Street
    The Avenger of Perdondaris
The Dammed Thing, Ambrose Bierce
The Hyborian Age, Robert E. Howard
The Great God Pan, Arthur Machen

All four of these texts are available from Project Gutenberg.

The Work and Influences of H. P. Lovecraft

In Daniel Harms “The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia” Harms includes a pretty through bibliography with works that he picked through to write his text. Within this appendix he includes several authors that were before H.P. Lovecraft’s time, Lovecraft being born 1890, the following authors wouldn’t have been Lovecraft’s contemporaries. 

There a few texts that were written during the time of Lovecraft’s writings, however the majority were written when Lovecraft was still a wee lad. I cannot say that I have read all that many of these titles and getting my hands on some of these titles is going to be bit of challenge. 

Ambrose Bierce: “The Death of Halpin Trayser” (1893), “Haita the Shephard” (1893), “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (1891). “The Man and the Snake” (1891).

Robert Chambers: “In the Court of the Dragon” (1895), “The Maker of Moons” (1895), “The Repairer of Reputations” (1895), “The Silent Land” (1896), “The Slayer of Souls” (1920). “The Yellow Sign” (1895).

Arthur Macken: “The Novel of the Black Seal” (1895), “The Great God Pan” (1894), “The White People” (1910)

Edgar Allen Poe: “The Narrative of A Gordon Pym of Nantucket” (1838), “Ulalume” (1847)

The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

“ANTARKTOA, MOUNT. Mountain located near the South Pole, beneath which dwells the Great Old One Gol-goroth.
    See Gol-goroth(“The Fishers from Outside”, Carter; “Antarktos”, Lovecraft (O))”

Daniel Harms’, The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, page 8

The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia is a comprehensive collection of the Cthulhu Mythos. The newly revised edition lists the occurrences of the places, and the things that are mentioned by, not just Lovecraft, but also by those authors who picked up on Lovecraft’s objects and themes and carried them further down the road, in their own ways, adding to the Cthulhu Mythos.