Saucers of the Illuminati

[Charles Drago]

Helen,

Barnes and Angell Streets are separate and distinct.

Lovecraft tours continue to be offered. He is to Providence what Poe is to Baltimore -- and of course Poe also prowled the same neighborhood in which Lovecraft lived and worked.

Something in the water, perhaps.

[David Guyatt]

Is Mind Parasites the alternate title for Space Vampires? I read the latter but it didn't strike me as deeply Lovecraftian in any way, although I know Colin Wilson even authored his own version of the Necronomicon so he is presumably a fan of some sort. His Occult was very good imho, much better than his science fiction vampire story, but I could never finish his Philosopher's Stone.

On nephilim and angels, it's interesting to note the appearance of giants in Britain in the time set before the arrival of the Trojans in I think it was Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniæ, the Cyclops in Homer and Tartarus, "an abyss under Hades where the Titans were imprisoned, Latin, from Greek Tartaros, of obscure origin," which is probably cognate, imho, with the Tartaro giant cycle in Basque legend, see http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/basque/bl/index.htm ... There is a regal connexion, just as there is an aristocratic connexion in Peter Levenda's version of Andrija Puharich's The Nine.

I think Springmeier talks about this sort of unholy alliance between people and demonic forces in Bloodlines, doesn't he? Something about demonic alien vibrations becoming encoded in the genetics of certain families...

On the return to barbarity, I'm not sure Lovecraft saw it that way, he was probably more interested in the idea of escaping the confines of time. He managed to escape the real barbarity in any case, because he died in 1937, before we learned what modern people are fully capable of doing to one another. Or maybe I didn't understand David's point precisely.

(my bolding)

Helen, I know too little about Lovecraft to make real judgements about him, but there are others of the ilk of Crowley etc., who seem to positively wish to turn the clock back and recapture the "Old Ones". A serious Qabalist would eventually, and when sufficiently developed, have to tread through the paths of the Tree of Death, but it would be mighty dangerous work, for therein lies the path of despair and utter insanity. No one in their right mind would wish to meddle with the Collective Shadow, to bring Jungian terminology into this matter. But there are many out there who do believe they can harness these forces and, indeed, unleash them into our world. In this they have a will to power. In other words a very dangerous psychological disposition.

Escaping the confines of time can be advantageous but where you "visit" in that other place, that other timelessness, is also not without considerable danger - even while it can produce many lasting and very positive experiences. From what little I have read of Lovecraft, his ability to enter those other realms was said to be instinctive and intuitive. BUt I'm not convinced about that. The fact that he was drawn to the most negative and foul parts of it indicates something altogether different. And I have to wonder if the raging insanity that inflicted Lovecraft's father might have been passed along to his son? There is also that hint given in one of the two .pdf's you kindly posted that someone (unidentified) was passing Lovecraft extremely rare and exotic occult literature that focused his interest and abilities in distinctly negative directions. But I may, of course, be quite wrong about this. It's just that for me personally, I find it almost impossible to understand why anyone would voluntarily delve into these areas. If one had to use words to describe it, it would be "positive evil". Take, for example, Lovecraft's statement (which I extracted from the Cults of Cthulhu page 10:

Lovecraft also gives a brief description of the world after its
re-inheritance by the Great Old Ones:

“The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would
have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild beyond
good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all
men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the
liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout
and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth
would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.”2

And then we have Kenneth Grant's observation (on pages 23-4)

Perhaps Lovecraft himself has left us with a rather
unsatisfactory explanation of the true provenance of the
Cthulhu Mythos. Certainly, it appears to hold a great value for
those individuals currently practising ‘the Black Arts’. In the
words of Kenneth Grant, the present Outer Head of the O.T.O.,
“Lovecraft’s great contribution to the occult lay in his
demonstration — indirect as it may have been — of the
power so to control the dreaming mind that it is capable of
projection into other dimensions, and of discovering that
there are doors through which flow — in the form of
inspiration, intuition and vision —the genuine current of
creative magical consciousness.”11
Lovecraft’s occult experiences, disguised as fiction, reveal
the intrusion of forces in complete sympathy with those
archetypes and symbols brought through by Blavatsky and
Crowley, whilst in contact with astral entities ‘from beyond’.
He had become the receiver and transmitter of hidden
knowledge, though in Lovecraft’s case, the process was
intuitive rather than conscious. The internal self-division thus
engendered may have been the root cause of Lovecraft’s mental
and physical peculiarities; or it may have been that these very
traits, which set him apart from the rest of society, made him
the ideal focus for the channelling of these ultra-mundane
forces.

Were I to guess I would suggest that Lovecraft were deeply involved with someone or some others who had distinctly developed occult abilities and who focused his attention into certain obscure directions.

Changing the subject, I note what you say about the arrival of the rump of the Trojans in Britain - this being, I presume, after their defeat at the hands of the Achaeans and the subsequent sack of Troy. Although I appreciate that this derives from Greek mythology, I know that there is an occult tradition that this actually happened. However, Geoffrey of Monmouth's account is not believed by many scholars because it is argued that the idea of the Trojans coming to these isles was simply a means of elevating the royal bloodlines of those times. Are you aware o any other accounts besides Monmouth's? I have read it elsewhere where it has been stated as undeniable fact - but with no corroborating evidence given. I suspect that it is a Freemasonic continuation - and while many of these guys are often very good scholars, even so I would like to read other sources if they are available?

[Helen Reyes]

...Or maybe I didn't understand David's point precisely.

(my bolding)

Helen, I know too little about Lovecraft to make real judgements about him, but there are others of the ilk of Crowley etc., who seem to positively wish to turn the clock back and recapture the "Old Ones". A serious Qabalist would eventually, and when sufficiently developed, have to tread through the paths of the Tree of Death, but it would be mighty dangerous work, for therein lies the path of despair and utter insanity. No one in their right mind would wish to meddle with the Collective Shadow, to bring Jungian terminology into this matter. But there are many out there who do believe they can harness these forces and, indeed, unleash them into our world. In this they have a will to power. In other words a very dangerous psychological disposition.

OK I understand better now. Lovecraft himself said he was born in the wrong age and his sensibilities were probably more in tune with that of a 17th century aristocrat. He also had a sort of "reversion" to Roman times, both in his youth (see Inconsequential Scribblings) and as a fictional treatment probably derived from dream-visions in his correspondence. I think of him as an "escape artist" who was interested in showing something exists beyond mundane time and space, but he never took his "mythos" seriously, it was a joke for him, and later an inside joke, because he and others in the Weird Tales stable used the same names for the Old Ones and Forces, including Robert E. Howard, who authored Conan, and, I think more significantly, Clark Ashton-Smith.

Escaping the confines of time can be advantageous but where you "visit" in that other place, that other timelessness, is also not without considerable danger - even while it can produce many lasting and very positive experiences. From what little I have read of Lovecraft, his ability to enter those other realms was said to be instinctive and intuitive. BUt I'm not convinced about that. The fact that he was drawn to the most negative and foul parts of it indicates something altogether different. And I have to wonder if the raging insanity that inflicted Lovecraft's father might have been passed along to his son?

Apparently his father had some sort of syphilis-induced madness. He was a travelling salesman, away from home for long periods. At least that's what Lovecraft biographer Joshi says in A Life. His mother, on the other hand, used to make him come home before dusk because of the werewolves, or so I've heard.

There is also that hint given in one of the two .pdf's you kindly posted that someone (unidentified) was passing Lovecraft extremely rare and exotic occult literature that focused his interest and abilities in distinctly negative directions.

Lovecraft received some correspondence regarding his publications in Weird Tales by one person who said he was ignorantly serving real forces in his stories.

But I may, of course, be quite wrong about this. It's just that for me personally, I find it almost impossible to understand why anyone would voluntarily delve into these areas. If one had to use words to describe it, it would be "positive evil". Take, for example, Lovecraft's statement (which I extracted from the Cults of Cthulhu page 10:

Lovecraft also gives a brief description of the world after its
re-inheritance by the Great Old Ones:

“The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would
have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild beyond
good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all
men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the
liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout
and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth
would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.”2

This is the passage always cited as demonstrating a connexion between Lovecraft and Crowley, specifically his Book of the Law. Some say it also echoes Nietzche's Beyond Good and Evil. There is a spurious insertion in history that Lovecraft's wife Sonia Greene was Crowley's girlfriend or friend. It isn't true.

And then we have Kenneth Grant's observation (on pages 23-4)

Perhaps Lovecraft himself has left us with a rather
unsatisfactory explanation of the true provenance of the
Cthulhu Mythos. Certainly, it appears to hold a great value for
those individuals currently practising ‘the Black Arts’. In the
words of Kenneth Grant, the present Outer Head of the O.T.O.,
“Lovecraft’s great contribution to the occult lay in his
demonstration — indirect as it may have been — of the
power so to control the dreaming mind that it is capable of
projection into other dimensions, and of discovering that
there are doors through which flow — in the form of
inspiration, intuition and vision —the genuine current of
creative magical consciousness.”11
Lovecraft’s occult experiences, disguised as fiction, reveal
the intrusion of forces in complete sympathy with those
archetypes and symbols brought through by Blavatsky and
Crowley, whilst in contact with astral entities ‘from beyond’.
He had become the receiver and transmitter of hidden
knowledge, though in Lovecraft’s case, the process was
intuitive rather than conscious. The internal self-division thus
engendered may have been the root cause of Lovecraft’s mental
and physical peculiarities; or it may have been that these very
traits, which set him apart from the rest of society, made him
the ideal focus for the channelling of these ultra-mundane
forces.

Were I to guess I would suggest that Lovecraft were deeply involved with someone or some others who had distinctly developed occult abilities and who focused his attention into certain obscure directions.

Clark Ashton-Smith might fit that bill. Anton LaVey would say so. He knew Klarkash, as Lovecraft dubbed him, and kept one of his books in his secret locked box.

Changing the subject, I note what you say about the arrival of the rump of the Trojans in Britain - this being, I presume, after their defeat at the hands of the Achaeans and the subsequent sack of Troy. Although I appreciate that this derives from Greek mythology, I know that there is an occult tradition that this actually happened. However, Geoffrey of Monmouth's account is not believed by many scholars because it is argued that the idea of the Trojans coming to these isles was simply a means of elevating the royal bloodlines of those times. Are you aware o any other accounts besides Monmouth's? I have read it elsewhere where it has been stated as undeniable fact - but with no corroborating evidence given. I suspect that it is a Freemasonic continuation - and while many of these guys are often very good scholars, even so I would like to read other sources if they are available?

Wikipedia has some ideas at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_Re...ae#Sources
I don't know; it seems like Bede or Augustine (the British one) might've mentioned it somewhere, or it might be in the Welsh or Irish pseudo-histories? wikipedia says Geoffrey claimed an unimpeachable source but no one believes him.

On the Tree of Death and the Collective Shadow, I have it on fairly good authority the French-Lithuanian poet Oscar de Lubicz Milosz used to stay up all night in avid conversation with dead people, including Shakespear. It really bugged Petras Klima when he stayed at some Lithuanian embassy somewhere. Reminded me of a Lovecraft scene.

Also, there's a really good podcast being produced right now which I think fairly portrays Lovecraft in all his atheism, check out episode 42 at the top of the page at http://www.hppodcraft.com, it made me seriously laugh.

[Helen Reyes]

Helen,

Barnes and Angell Streets are separate and distinct.

Lovecraft tours continue to be offered. He is to Providence what Poe is to Baltimore -- and of course Poe also prowled the same neighborhood in which Lovecraft lived and worked.

Something in the water, perhaps.

Benefit Street and St. John's churchyard I guess. I sort of wondered why Lovecraft would be ashamed to bring his Jewish wife to Providence. I remember reading Newport (Newburyport?) has probably the earliest synagogue in North America except for one pretender in Brooklyn perhaps. Apparently Stuyvesant didn't want Jews from Brazil fleeing the Dutch conflict with Portugal settling in New Amsterdam, even though they were Dutch-alligned and thus had to flee, so some settled in the state of the free thinkers instead, where I remember at least one took a moral stand against slavery and the slave trade. How that relates to Dunkin Donuts I'll never know for sure.

[Charles Drago]

Newport's Touro Synagogue is indeed North America's oldest.

As for the Dunkin Donuts Center -- formerly the Providence Civic Center -- I can offer the following:

A few years ago, I'm told, Bette Midler played the venue to which we less-than-fondly refer as "The Dunk."

At one point she raised her eyes heavenward and reverently intoned, "The Dunkin Donuts Center ... who says dreams don't come true!"

[Helen Reyes]

I saw a slideshow from some event there involving the Sopranos actors and state government, unless they have one in New Jersey as well. I somehow got the idea Dunkin Donuts began their illustrious history right there in Providence. Yes, the Touro synagogue in Newport. Who knew Bette Midler was a cop in her heart of hearts?

[David Guyatt]

There is also that hint given in one of the two .pdf's you kindly posted that someone (unidentified) was passing Lovecraft extremely rare and exotic occult literature that focused his interest and abilities in distinctly negative directions.

Helen said:

Lovecraft received some correspondence regarding his publications in Weird Tales by one person who said he was ignorantly serving real forces in his stories.

I just checked the foregoing semi-citation I made and it refers to comments made in Parker Ryan's essay on the Necronomicon in which he suggests that Lovecraft must've had access to a very rare Arabic text connected to the Necronomicon - apparently derived from Muqarribun magical practises - which he says were not available during Lovecraft's time (page 5).

And then on page 7 Parker Ryan states:

Let's closely examine the material on Arab magick. I believe it leads to one conclusion.
Lovecraft had access to rare material on Arab magick and myths. Ignoring the possible
coincidental equivalence of Kutulu and Khadhulu there is still overwhelming evidence
supporting this proposal. Lovecraft used Irem in a manner that Parallels the Muqarribun
use before this information was generally available. The Rub al Khali (Roba el Khaliye)
is in truth important to the Muqarribun. The Jinn are exact counter parts of the "Old
Ones." Lovecraft's description of Alhazred is VERY consistent with the Arabic Meaning
of the "Mad Poet" even though this also was generally unknown in the 1930's. The Al
Azif (the howling of the Jinn) is obviously related to Alazred's title: "The One Who is
Possessed by Jinn and Whose Writings Are Inspired by Jinn." Al Azif being a book of
poetry is consistent with the fact that almost all mystical or prophetic writings in Arabic
are poems. Khadhulu's association with the sleeping Dragon of the Abyss is VERY close
to Lovecraft's Cthulhu who lays Dreaming in the Abyss (ocean). To my knowledge there
was nothing available (in print) about Khdhulu in English in the 1930's. All this seems to
indicate that Lovecraft had a source of information of Arabic magick and myths not
commonly accessible. It appears HPL expanded on some of the material, in this source,
in his fiction. Please note that this in no way detracts from his considerable creastivity.
HPL's stories are great not because of few isolated elements but rather because of the way
Lovecraft could blend the individual pieces into a whole.

I accept in advance that I may be adding two and two and coming up with five. However, largely due to the apparent obscurity of the Arabic magical traditions he appears to have had access to, my sense is that Lovecraft may actually have amounted to more than is publicly apparent.

It was one of Jung's analytical techniques to assess the state of an individuals active psychology by the fiction they write (amongst other applications). And the concern is that Lovecraft may have been promulgating, via his fiction, various aspects of Arabic left-hand magic with the purpose of stimulating in the Collective Unconscious of his readers the hidden dark regions in order to create a new pulse of life - a sort of proselytizing at arms length if you will. Can this happen unconsciously? Yes. But it seems more likely in view of the foregoing that Lovecraft probably knew what he was doing.

This certainly seems to be the undertone or thinking of Kenneth Grant and others who are, or have been, deeply involved in such practices themselves (which is why I think they are inclined to "adhere" to Lovecraft) - a coming together of like minds perhaps - and one reason I should think why certain Lovecraft's stories seem to be required reading by the Brotherhood of the Left Hand path (to lift the occult terminology used by Parker Ryan), whereas Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, for example, is not on their curriculum (I checked a Satanic online book list).

For what it's worth, this is the main concern I have with Lovecraft.

[Helen Reyes]

I just checked the foregoing semi-citation I made and it refers to comments made in Parker Ryan's essay on the Necronomicon in which he suggests that Lovecraft must've had access to a very rare Arabic text connected to the Necronomicon - apparently derived from Muqarribun magical practises - which he says were not available during Lovecraft's time (page 5).

...

Let's closely examine the material on Arab magick. I believe it leads to one conclusion. Lovecraft had access to rare material on Arab magick and myths. Ignoring the possible coincidental equivalence of Kutulu and Khadhulu there is still overwhelming evidence supporting this proposal. Lovecraft used Irem in a manner that Parallels the Muqarribun use before this information was generally available. The Rub al Khali (Roba el Khaliye) is in truth important to the Muqarribun. The Jinn are exact counter parts of the "Old Ones." Lovecraft's description of Alhazred is VERY consistent with the Arabic Meaning of the "Mad Poet" even though this also was generally unknown in the 1930's. The Al Azif (the howling of the Jinn) is obviously related to Alazred's title: "The One Who is Possessed by Jinn and Whose Writings Are Inspired by Jinn." Al Azif being a book of poetry is consistent with the fact that almost all mystical or prophetic writings in Arabic are poems. Khadhulu's association with the sleeping Dragon of the Abyss is VERY close to Lovecraft's Cthulhu who lays Dreaming in the Abyss (ocean). To my knowledge there was nothing available (in print) about Khdhulu in English in the 1930's. All this seems to indicate that Lovecraft had a source of information of Arabic magick and myths not commonly accessible. It appears HPL expanded on some of the material, in this source, in his fiction. Please note that this in no way detracts from his considerable creastivity. HPL's stories are great not because of few isolated elements but rather because of the way Lovecraft could blend the individual pieces into a whole.

I accept in advance that I may be adding two and two and coming up with five. However, largely due to the apparent obscurity of the Arabic magical traditions he appears to have had access to, my sense is that Lovecraft may actually have amounted to more than is publicly apparent.

He was a voracious reader. In the quote, "not generally available in the 1930s to my knoweldge" and "not generally known" fail on two counts: the author probably hasn't done an exhaustive survey of scholarly literature available on the subject ca. 1930, and Lovecraft has never been accused of dabbling in "general knowledge."

He said Al Azif refers to the buzzing of insects, not jinn, granted it's a small step from flying insect to fairy. You can believe that Cthulhu is related to Khadhulu as Parker Ryan has it, but there are plenty of alternative explanations, too. You could even connect it with the Icelandic volcano, Ketla, which lies deep in the ocean, dreaming Here's an entry from a book called The Discovery of Language by Holger Pedersen, translated to ENglish and published by Harvard Press in 1931, pg. 146:

"Thus, the different forms of the verb to kill in Arabic run as follows:
katala he killed
kutila he was killed
katalta thou didst kill
ya-ktulu he will kill
katlun killing, murder"

(all of the initial Ks have a little dot under them.)

Lovecraft wrote Call of Cthulhu sometime in 1926 or so, before the English translation of Pedersen's book came out, and his story was published in the February, 1928, issue of Weird Tales. This is, supposedly, his first mention of Cthulhu, which he later explains is a human approximation at pronouncing an extraterrestrial word, the Hs adding gutteral values.

Alhazred, according to Lovecraft, was suggested to him as an Arabic name by an older friend of the family when he was young and fascinated with Thousand and one Nights. It likely was an orthographic form of a transliterated name floating around in the literature in the late 1800s. Likely it was a form of Khezr, or Heder, see http://hermetic.com/bey/anticaliph.html
The appelation "the Mad Arab" is interesting but not all that surprising imho.

If you download and listen to the following radio drama from 1937, Men of Vision - Roger Bacon, at 2:47 in you'll hear someone make reference to Alhazred, at least I think that's what I heard. They mention his name several times as one of the preservers of European science among the Arabs. Lovecraft died in 1937 and it's possible the radio drama was using his character, but he himself was fairly obscure even then, and it seems odd they'd insert a Lovecraft character into a serious drama about Roger Bacon.

Men of Vision 370505 Roger Bacon

Apologies for the sound quality.

It was one of Jung's analytical techniques to assess the state of an individuals active psychology by the fiction they write (amongst other applications). And the concern is that Lovecraft may have been promulgating, via his fiction, various aspects of Arabic left-hand magic with the purpose of stimulating in the Collective Unconscious of his readers the hidden dark regions in order to create a new pulse of life - a sort of proselytizing at arms length if you will. Can this happen unconsciously? Yes. But it seems more likely in view of the foregoing that Lovecraft probably knew what he was doing.

I think that it is the ability to interpret Lovecraft in so many ways that points the way toward the real process at work. He was attempting to convey his own dreams, the emotional power of his dreams, through his fiction, without resorting to cliches and tired literary devices. He certainly knew he was doing this because he wrote about it. What he drew up from the well has resonated in various circles. His creative process is a lot like that the surrealists cultivated in themselves and their works, drawing on dream imagery to make art.

This certainly seems to be the undertone or thinking of Kenneth Grant and others who are, or have been, deeply involved in such practices themselves (which is why I think they are inclined to "adhere" to Lovecraft) - a coming together of like minds perhaps - and one reason I should think why certain Lovecraft's stories seem to be required reading by the Brotherhood of the Left Hand path (to lift the occult terminology used by Parker Ryan), whereas Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, for example, is not on their curriculum (I checked a Satanic online book list).

I think his imagery and stories draw on a lot of sources but that it is teh electric charge of his dreams that animates it all and makes it worth contemplating.

For what it's worth, this is the main concern I have with Lovecraft.

It's possible to trace conspiracies and networks around Lovecraft, but he really is the lone pen-man if you will, a total loner, the archetype of the loner. His opening paragraph for Call of Cthulhu is his most-quoted item, and it makes the case against science, and on a higher level, against cosmic and spiritual knowledge, which will lead to the dissolution of human dignity and civilization if pursued. The problem is, Lovecraft didn't really believe this himself, he was an atheist and a scientist at heart, but he was interested in widening the conceptual horizons, in expanding the human imagination to encompass larger things. I think he's innocent, was interested in having fun, making friends (pen-pals) and writing mind-blowing stories. I think he got bad press the same way Oskar Milosz railed against Ed Poe as some sort of menace to the human spirit. Anyway, here's the first paragraph, and the quote from Algernon Blackwood; I like the style:

The Call of Cthulhu

Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival... a survival of a hugely remote period when...consciousness was manifest, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity... forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds...
- ALGERNON BLACKWOOD


I. THE HORROR IN CLAY

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Rather than adopting the view he is promoting anticosmic agnosis, think of a youngish man trying to tell a really spooky story, but instead of doing so around a campfire, since he has no friends to go camping with, he resorts to prose fiction on paper, an activity for which he has some talent.

[David Guyatt]

Helen, you are very clearly far more knowledgeable about Lovecraft - and clearly have a strong feeling tone for him - than me. In fact I regard myself as a rank amateur-cum-dunce in this respect, compared to you.

I do have some insights and practical experience when it comes to dreams and speaking personally, I sincerely doubt this was the major source of his knowledge. Rather I have the impression that this was a useful device to cloak other developed abilities. Which is why it seems far more likely to me that he was able to access those timeless places in an ultra deep state of meditation, where his consciousness remained acute - his body virtually dormant - and with well practiced memory skills, he could have later written concise diary notes of his experiences and sensations - a so called "magical diary" (not something that would ever be made publicly available).

It is my sense that in order to achieve these abilities one needs to have been taught. Some people do have a natural facility for it - I have known some who fall right in so to speak, but that natural ability still needs to be harnessed and focused by someone experienced in that field. This normally (and certainly in those days I would think) would almost certainly have derived from an occult lodge or order - and unlike the Golden Dawn and Crowleyian O.T.O etc., most of these do not publicize their membership, nor do their members publicize their affiliation to such.

In the last analysis however, all this is a feeling tone, or gut instinct, that I have about this and is certainly not the result of scholarly research.

Meanwhile, this is what Parker Ryan states about his research efforts (page 10):

I've been researching Arab magick (and it connection to Lovecraft) for nearly 10 years so I won't be able to list every source I've used. However I should be able to give resource in which people interested can verify ALL the claims I make.

Which is the principal reason I was impressed with his conclusion that Lovecraft had access to a very rare treatise on Arab magical traditions - and if this was so, then probably he also had direct access to a teacher or lodge. It would be typical for an occult lodge to have its own library, some of which may have been very rare tombs indeed.

One such group who had great insights into Arabic magical techniques were, as you know, the Knights Templar - who went underground just over 700 years ago and arose again just prior to when the current Pope took office and forgave them declaring they were innocent of the charges brought against them (they had earlier issued a threat due to be enacted on their 700th anniversary if this absolution didn't take place - although no one knows outside of themselves and the Vatican what this threat represented).

And so I suspect we must probably agree to disagree on how Lovecraft may have come about his apparent knowledge. I doubt either of us will ever know one way or the other for certain. But it is really good that different perspectives are, and continue to be, explored as has happened in this thread. Such exchanges force deeper pondering etc., which is beneficial. Meanwhile, I never cease to be impressed by your broad knowledge on these more than obscure subjects - which are right up my street too. Bravo!

David

[Helen Reyes]

Thanks David. I've explored just a little bit about Lovecraft. I'm trying to think of evidence to support your belief and one thing I can say is that he wrote more letters than anyone I've ever heard of before. I think five volumes in hardback were published years ago just of selected correspondence, and that was just scratching the surface. I'm not certain but I think that Brown University in Providence has a large collection of Lovecraft manuscripts and letters. That might be the contact you're looking for between Lovecraft and an established group practicing magic, but I've never come across mention of any such correspondence. Instead Lovecraft co-authored and ghost-wrote with many people known and unknown, discussed story ideas, encouraged amateur writers and discussed politics, from what little I've seen.

I do have some insights and practical experience when it comes to dreams and speaking personally, I sincerely doubt this was the major source of his knowledge. Rather I have the impression that this was a useful device to cloak other developed abilities. Which is why it seems far more likely to me that he was able to access those timeless places in an ultra deep state of meditation, where his consciousness remained acute - his body virtually dormant - and with well practiced memory skills, he could have later written concise diary notes of his experiences and sensations - a so called "magical diary" (not something that would ever be made publicly available).

This would be what Lovecraft called his Common-place Book, parts of which are available. Dreams, visions... plots stemming from them, spur of the moment ideas for stories... He starved himself at times and was very driven toward active participation in his dreams. There are several time periods he tuned into, one was Roman, another was European America before Columbus (Norse in New England), another was England in the 17th or 18th century with an emphasis on a literary personality there and I suspect he also tuned into Poe, whom he adored. There's also some library outside of time inhabited by a strange race of cone-shaped creatures who are capable of time travel and collect knowledge from all over the universe, with some connexion to Western Australia in the distant past. He did exert his imagination on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, this is what Parker Ryan states about his research efforts (page 10):

I've been researching Arab magick (and it connection to Lovecraft) for nearly 10 years so I won't be able to list every source I've used. However I should be able to give resource in which people interested can verify ALL the claims I make.

Which is the principal reason I was impressed with his conclusion that Lovecraft had access to a very rare treatise on Arab magical traditions - and if this was so, then probably he also had direct access to a teacher or lodge. It would be typical for an occult lodge to have its own library, some of which may have been very rare tombs indeed.

His grandfather Whipple had an extensive library he used as a child and then moved on to Brown U I guess. While he lived the married life in New York he was a fixture at the Public Library there.

One such group who had great insights into Arabic magical techniques were, as you know, the Knights Templar - who went underground just over 700 years ago and arose again just prior to when the current Pope took office and forgave them declaring they were innocent of the charges brought against them (they had earlier issued a threat due to be enacted on their 700th anniversary if this absolution didn't take place - although no one knows outside of themselves and the Vatican what this threat represented).

I think the Necronomicon is supposed to represent exactly that kind of lost knowledge resurfacing, the idea of an occult continuation both from the Islamic alchemists and the Greeks and Egyptians and Chaldeans before them, but also containing antedeluvian lore and things only knowable from higher planes of observation. Lovecraft makes Dee a recipient of a volume that survived the attempt to suppress the book, thus placing him in that continuity from Crotona to Alexandria to Damascus. Saana the capital of Yemen also has some occult significance as the Garden and Alhazred is supposed to have been there or disappeared there or something. Lovecraft's lost knowledge resurfacing, symbolized by the Necronomicon, coincidentalyl took place shortly after his death in the real world, with the discovery of the Chenoboskion codices and Qumran wadi scrolls.

And so I suspect we must probably agree to disagree on how Lovecraft may have come about his apparent knowledge. I doubt either of us will ever know one way or the other for certain.

His knowledge proper came from books and correspondence mainly, but he used his researches to lend credence to the psychic force of his dream-vision symbols and pondered some fairly profound connexions. He does seem to consider the acquisition of specific knowledge via unknown faculties in a lot of his stories. I will continue to think he's home-grown and self-taught but am more than willing to consider otherwise if I can find any reason for it. There are a number of coincidences in his work we haven't touched on but they seem to have been addressed by the Lovecraft scholars at least a little bit. They've been noted, I should say (Sarnath, Azathoth, etc.). There might be more, or more to come as events unfold