Happy H. P. Lovecraft Mardi Gras to You All -- Cthulhu Mythos Based Figures

The Mardi Gras season has about ended here on the Gulf Coast with Fat Tuesday looming in a couple of days.  This year Friday the 13^th was followed by St. Valentine’s Day and just a few days later, Fat Tuesday will begin and signal the ending of the Mardi Gras season for 2015, so it seemed a post was in order with this plethora of diametrically opposing holidays. 

New Orleans is linked to one the most central of Lovecraft mythos stories, The Call of Cthulhu, which was written in 1926, but did not see print until February 1928 in Weird Tales.  Interestingly, Lovecraft didn’t actually visit New Orleans until June of 1932^[1], eventually getting in touch with author and editor Edgar Hoffman Price at his apartment in the French Quarter near where Lovecraft stayed at a hotel.   Mutual correspondent Robert E. Howard had alerted Price via telegram to Lovecraft’s presence in the Crescent City and that led to a writer’s confab that lasted many hours.  I only wish we could have a transcript of their long conversations.  It’s just too bad that Robert E. Howard couldn’t have made that meeting in NOLA, but the stars just weren’t right. 

Well it wasn’t even close to Mardi Gras in June ‘32 when H. P. Lovecraft paid a visit to New Orleans.  But the weirdness and rule of inversion that is the soul of Mardi Gras just seems to lend itself to his writings nonetheless.  The human arbitrary temporal measure of days and times just don’t seem to work within the magic crescent of New Orleans so the fact that Lovecraft wasn’t in N.O. during Mardi Gras.   Synopsis of the story, Call of Cthulhu  

With all that said, to celebrate the 2015 Mardi Gras season, I put together a photographic ad hoc tableau of artifacts celebrating a H. P. Lovecraft New Orleans Mardi Gras and the looming end of the 2015 season in the mood of his story Call of Cthulhu.  Featured in this photo set is a 19^th century Italian cast iron mask form for making traditional carnival masks, as well as a fairly old conch horn, typical of the Caribbean and used in certain rites not condoned in the Catholic Church.  In voodoo ceremonies the loa, Agwe^[2] is called with one of these conch shell horns.   

Scattered about the photos about are some original Native American Gulf Coast potshards dating from before the “discovery” and colonization of the area by D’Iberville in 1699.  The flints are imports that the Biloxi Indians and other coastal tribes traded for with northern tribes, as there was no local source on the coast.  These also predate “discovery” so they are fairly old.  As background, I have included an interesting French contract document dating to the 1680s.  Although it has little to do directly with the proceedings, it just seemed too cool to not have in the photo, with its intricate stamps and the hand-laid paper.  A note to prop makers, the 300 year old paper is not yellowed nor does it look like the edges were burned.  Also in the picture is a (20^th century modern) hand-hammered iron knife made from a single piece of iron with a dragon handle.  Although not old, it also seemed rather appropriate for inclusion in a Weird Fiction tableau. 

In the story, Call of Cthulhu, inspector John Raymond Legrasse^[3] of the New Orleans police contacted the American Archeological Society in 1908 about a figure found, “in the woods and swamps south of New Orleans during a raid”.   Previously Legrass had captured some items from a voodoo meeting.  He led a party of police who found some “oddly marred” bodies used in a ritual.  But you know the story.  If you haven’t, you can download the story from the links below.  Consider that these items are from Legrasse’s collection made over a number of years. 

The swamp featured in Call of Cthulhu was supposed to be quite close to the French Quarter, just outside the original old walls of New Orleans.  This leads me to believe that the area suggested just might be near Chalmette, which coincidentally is the site of the Battle of New Orleans, which just so happens to have celebrated its bicentennial just last month on the 8^th of January 1815.  The coincidences just seemed to be too good to pass up! There is an interesting military graveyard at the site dating from 1815 to the near present.

Anyway, most of the figures, icons, and the like in these photos were made by that ceramic artist Michael Moses, whose diversity shows in the plethora objects he has made over the years.  The rest of the items are a mix original artifacts, one of which is the voodoo related conch horn.  Some other items here are antiques dating from the time of European “discovery” or before.   The Mythos ceramic figures are made of pottery clay and fired at a high temperature (twice) and should last centuries, even when dropped in a swamp.

Mardi Gras has always had a wild kind of pre Christian flavor, so this assemblage seems to work out well in association.  I thought a cornucopia of Chthonian goodies would be a fine ending to the season.  The collection needed a little airing out so a photo shoot just seemed to follow.  Hopefully this will get folks reading HPL’s Call of Cthulhu, if they haven’t already or at least be amused by the assemblage of items, both original and spurious.  Keep on reading.             CoastConFan

Footnotes:

     ^[1] Info on Lovecraft’s visit to New Orleans http://mfkorn.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-novel-sold-and-mention-made-of.html and  https://tentaclii.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/lovecraft-and-new-orleans/
  
   ^[2] As a bit of coincidence, see also Kenzaburo Oe’s story, Aghwee The Sky Monster from his book, Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1994).  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agw%C3%A9

Additionally, one of Michael Moses’ other pieces of pottery is called The Day he Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away (not shown).  Here's another one, the loa called Agassou, one of Papa’s Agwee’s crew, is in the form of a crab.  Now it just so happens that Agassou is close in sound to Sargasso – the place of giant crabs and groping tentacles in the novella, Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson (see my post about same), whose influence on HPL is discussed therein.  This is all just happy coincidence and makes the story work even better by this bit of serendipity.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agassou  and  http://altreligion.about.com/od/symbols/ig/Vodoun-Veves/Agwe.htm .  Also Agwe's female counterpart is La Sirene, the siren of the seas, the conch horn also comes into play with this.  It doesn't take much of this kind of loose association to make it all appear to be part of the whole narrative. These kinds of random and weak association can enhance the backstory of a prop or in a RPG/LARP scenario sequence. 

    ^[3] John Raymond Legrasse, inspector of the New Orleans police from 1904 to 1916, after which he enlisted in the U.S. army.  He was discharged in 1919 after a tour in the military police and returned to New Orleans.  Born in 1874, in New Orleans, Legrasse was of Creole descent and educated at parochial schools and later at Tulane.  He was in the N.O. police from 1894 to 1916 and again from 1919 to 1927, after which he retired.  Legrasse passed away in 1932 and his estate funded the Legrasse Endowment for Cultural Studies in 1932.  The collection was housed in a private residence for years.

Some links of interest to you Lovecraft and New Orleans fans

Lovecraft friends http://www.hplovecraft.com/life/friends.aspx

CoC RPG ref  Sourcebook for New Orleans   http://www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.php/The_New_Orleans_Guidebook

CoC RPG ref book,  The Great Old Ones   http://www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.php/Tell_Me,_Have_You_Seen_The_Yellow_Sign%3F   and   https://www.pelgranepress.com/trail/files/conversions/Tell_Me_Have_You_Seen_The_Yellow_Sign.pdf

A little more True Detective  http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/03/true_detective_louisiana_is_more_than_just_the_setting_it_s_the_inspiration.html

Cthulhu leather mask  https://www.etsy.com/listing/100648031/leather-cthulhu-mask-burgundy-and-copper

Call Girl of Cthulhu film http://wtmd.org/radio/2014/08/05/wtmds-first-film-screening-call-girl-of-cthulhu-on-aug-20/

An kickstarter article about a NOLA-based CoC set of RPG scenarios   https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/goldengoblinpress/tales-of-the-crescent-city-from-golden-goblin-pres

An overview of some CoC RPG titles https://www.sfsite.com/11b/chao21.htm

Free downloads of the story, Call of Cthulhu

Download Lovecraft audio books  http://www.openculture.com/2014/10/h-p-lovecrafts-classic-horror-stories-free-online.html

The complete works of H. P. Lovecraft for Nook and Kindle (free -- why pay more) http://arkhamarchivist.com/free-complete-lovecraft-ebook-nook-kindle/

The complete works of H. P. Lovecraft in PDF form (708 pages) free again -- https://maggiemcneill.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/the-complete-works-of-h-p-lovecraft.pdf

Some posts about the Cthonian inspired ceramic works of Michael Moses

Propnomicon post on MWM staff head  http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/2011/01/cthulhu-fhtagn-moses-edition.html

The Cthulhu box by Michael W. Moses  http://mwmosespottery.blogspot.com/2014/09/post-titleblue-white-delft-style.html

One of my posts about the same ceramic box http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2014/09/michael-moses-pottery-and-lovecraft.html

Cthonian staff head  http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2014/09/michael-moses-pottery-and-lovecraft.html

Cthulhu reverse glass painting icon by Michael W. Moses  http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2010/09/cthulhu-icon-painting.html

A cryptic figure in a still life  http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2011/01/bulb-vase-still-life.html

A little lagniappe:  An article by Robert Bloch, Poe & Lovecraft, 1973:  http://alangullette.com/lit/hpl/bloch.htm

 Text Copyright © by William Murphy, aka CoastConFan, 2015  
as well as some photos.

Collinsport, Arkham’s Sister City, a Weird Fiction Playground for the Call of Cthulhu Gamer

Tucked away up on up on the coast of Maine, Collinsport is the (fictional) home of the Dark Shadows TV show fame.  With a plethora of information put together by Dark Shadows fans, consider playing the H. P. Lovecraft mythos RPG, Call of Cthulhu in beautiful downtown Collinsport for a change of pace, if Arkham becomes a bit too expected.

If you are of a certain age, you remember running home from school to catch the latest episode of the daytime soap opera, Dark Shadows.  It was an afternoon weekday TV show that ran from 1966 to 1971 originally.  But it was a bit different because it was a horror series, something not seen in a daytime slot.  There were 1,225 episodes overall and a couple of movies+.  The series starred the notorious vampire Barnabas Collins as played by Jonathan Frid and featured a parade of Frankenstein monsters, witches, zombies, and werewolves.  The show also had time travel story lines and parallel universes.  Clearly there is enough ground there to please any eldritch gamer.

Although obscure to most of you today, Dark Shadows was a huge hit in its heyday in the late 1960s.  Today, the episodes are all but unwatchable by modern standards, but Dark Shadows brought in slow pacing, tropes, and memes that we see more often in our modern graphic novels these days.  Dark Shadows was ground breaking and had a good deal of influence even years after the show went off the air.

There was also a bit of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos connection in Dark Shadows.  The story arc, The Leviathans, brought some Lovecraft stirrings to the TV series, although fans really didn’t like seeing Barnabas as the pawn of the Old Ones.  Given the parallels with Lovecraft Country, working on scenarios in Collinsport wouldn’t be too hard.

A couple of links about Collinwood Mansion the lair of the Collins family and Barnabas himself:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collinwood_Mansion  and  http://darkshadows.wikia.com/wiki/Collinwood

Floor plans of Collinswood   http://imgarcade.com/1/collinwood-mansion-floor-plan/

Well worth your time is a trip to the Dark Shadows Wiki, which has tons of useful information: http://darkshadows.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Shadows_Wiki

Pictured is a map of Collinsport drawn by Jean Graham at Dark Shadows wiki  http://darkshadows.wikia.com/wiki/Collinsport

Playing in Collinsport in the 1920s would prove to be a lot of fun for those who don’t mind a bit of initial preparation.  Being contemporary with Arkham and the Cthulhu mythos works well, especially since most folks are not familiar with Dark Shadows enough to find continuity errors in your home-build scenarios if you color outside of the limes somewhat.

Here’s a bit of background to pique your interest in adding Collinsport to the topography of Mythos haunted New England.  To show you how much fun Collinsport might be, I gleaned a few things from the series itself, but other parts I extrapolated, borrowed or made up whole cloth.  Pay a visit to beautiful Collinsport sometime, especially in the 1920s.

Collinsport was founded in the 1620s but began a decline from the 1870s onward as a fishing village.  By the late 1890s, it’s picturesque quality attracted summer visitors escaping the summer heat of large cities.  Plus it was a lot cheaper than other resorts.  The railroad made the village accessible.  Note that by 1962 the railroad stopped making daily scheduled stops, due to lack of traffic and the decline of fishing industry cannery cargo.  A seasonal artist colony sprang up just after WWI.  It was a quiet place for relaxation in seclusion.  The townspeople were insular and often uncouth and the village did not attract “the right kind of people” and remained unfashionable.

In previous centuries ship salvage was a source of income and when that proved lean, wrecking would suffice.  Smuggling from Canada to avoid taxes started in colonial times down to the present.  Additionally the Collinsport fishing fleet ranged down to Florida in winter months to fish for the Havana market starting in 1815, wrecking there in the dangerous reefs to make extra money.  Often used Indian Key, Florida as a headquarters.

Historically, Collinsport was seldom directly involved in the slave trade from Colonial times to Civil War, although their shipping expertise would have been useful from their smuggling and wrecking days.  Some profit was made in outfitting and crewing slave ships, but the most money was made in financing the trade both when it was legal and later illegal.   Later, there was a little income from the China Trade, but not much.

Prohibition (1920 to 1933) saw some activity in Collinsport with rum running from Canada, but Collinsport’s activity was primarily as a middleman, generally by poor fishermen trying to make ends meet rather than large, national-level gangs.  Meeting larger ships, they broke down the cargo into smaller lots and hid it until they it picked up or shipped out again.  Some use of false-bottom train cars used for shipping fish were used early on, but were too easy to catch, leading to dispersal of illegal liquor throughout the fishing fleet and being hidden in spots around the coast.  There was some small-scale moonshining, but it was generally for local consumption. 

You can visit to the so-called Viking ruins well outside of town and the long-abandoned site of the old Indian village site in a clearing just down the coast.  The famous treasure pit, which sees occasional excavation for elusive gold (see Oak Island treasure).  Collinsport ships may have stumbled on treasure from the 1733 treasure fleet while “fishing” down in Florida, at least that is the origin of the story of the treasure pit.  Sometimes dark things are found at the site and there are stories of “disturbances” in the area.    Also http://info.flheritage.com/galleon-trail/fleetOf1733.cfm 

Anyway, I suggest you do a little Googling around, follow some of the links provided below and see if you don’t get excited about gaming in and around Collinsport and other haunted sites around Maine.  I think this is fertile ground for CoC or any paranormal role playing gaming and there is plenty to discover.  The background to the Dark Shadows world is interesting in itself and would lend itself creditably to some RPGing from the Victorian era, the 1920s, and even up to modern times.  The sea has always been a link to the dim, primordial past as well as a highway between cultures.  Some exploring is in order.

                                                                        CoastConFan

Footnotes

+Films made Both theatrical films, House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971).  There was also a revival movie in 2012 starring Johnny Depp

Some good links for RPGing in the Collinsport area:

A must-visit is the fan site, The Collinsport Historical Society, with tons of information  http://www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com/

A detailed Wikipedia article about Collinsport and its environs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collinsport

Dark Shadows Every Day, a blog that reviews an episode of the popular 60 TV show each day  http://darkshadowseveryday.com/

Maine has it shares of domestic monsters and the like:  http://dsduby.hubpages.com/hub/Urban-Legends-and-Haunted-Places-the-series-Maine-Edition    

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/stories/maine.htm    

http://www.etravelmaine.com/attractions/strange-maine/maine-sea-monsters/

Of course, Steven King’s home is in Maine and some of his stories are set there as well.    He created a number of fictitious towns in Maine for his stories and Collinsport would fit in nicely:  http://www.syfy.co.uk/blogs/top-10-stephen-king-towns 

If this doesn’t give you enough Weird Fictional New England towns as grist for your scenario mill, then you are probably not much into gaming.

Well worth a download, American Architecture and Building News, 1890 on Project Gutenberg for building ideas and floor plans  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21596/21596-h/21596-h.htm

 

Zotz!, a Magic Amulet Right Out of Weird Fiction

A professor of archeology comes into possession of a dangerous ancient amulet.

A rather quirky movie from my youth is the William Castle “B” movie from 1962, Zotz!, which involved possession of a powerful ancient amulet that accidentally falls into the hands of an average guy.  This is powerful stuff and once word gets out, rival governments also want the amulet, of course.  Both a comedy and cautionary tale, the movie was made during the Cold War when fears of atomic war were grist for Hollywood’s movie mill. 

Stop me if your have heard this one:  A professor of archeology and ancient languages comes into possession of an amulet found at an archeological dig and sent to him by mail.  The professor can read the language and finds that the amulet is magical.  By intoning the magic word (Zotz of course) or by pointing at the target, the user can stun, inflict pain or kill.  In the book, the powers are a bit more dire, as just pointing at an human or even animal while holding the amulet will cause them to faint.  If you also utter the magic world while pointing the person will die.  In the film the professor used the amulet to slow his fall.  While not flying, this power comes in handy.

The original release of the film for theaters was in October of 1962 saw a promotional item in the form of plastic replicas of the amulet from the film.  A number of these turn up from time to time with varying degrees of accuracy to the film used prop.  A screen capture shows the original prop and a couple of snapshots show a plastic version and a metal version.  The plastic original one has the most detail.  Note the dimples on the face, which is probably from the mold ejector during the casting process.  The pot metal version lacks most all detail and there are other plastic copies that really look soft.  Clearly there are a number of copies around with varying accuracy to the one in the film or those given out at the original release of the film.

This film was based on a book by Walter Karig published in 1947 with clear indications of being a reference to the misuse of modern technology.  Karig knew all about it as he was a US Navy captain who also wrote on the side.   Interestingly Karig wrote scripts for the TV series, Victory at Sea, which was rerun on TV and another old favorite of mine when I was a kid.  Amusingly enough, he also ghostwrote three Nancy Drew books under the name Caroline Keene.*  He also wrote Perry Pierce stories around the same time.

I remember this film as a kid, but wasn’t too taken with it at the time.  Over the years, with some readings in Weird Fiction and H. P. Lovecraft and the like, my interest returned.  Especially with my interest in movie props and prop blogs, such as Propnomicon as well as costuming and role playing games such as Call of Cthulhu and the like.  So the story line works for an RPG and the ZotZ! amulet would make a great prop as well. 

I haven’t read a copy of the original 1947 book by Walter Karig that inspired it all, but it’s on my “to do” list.  I’d like to recommend another quirky book another book about an eccentric professor of Eastern cultures called When the Assyrians Came Down From the Trees (1969) by Gwendolyn Reed and Angela Conner about a professor of archeology who goes mad and begins to believe that squirrels are the descendants of the ancient Assyrians.  The illustrations become progressively more stylized in the manner of ancient art as the story unfolds and the professor’s madness takes him to the trees.  A really great children’s book. 

I learned a bit myself researching about Zotz! and Walter Karig.  I hope this post will get you out thinking and reading a bit yourself.  The idea of the Zotz amulet is not a new one by any means but it lends itself quite well for a prop in an RPG.  Also at the end of the film, the amulet disappears down a storm drain, to be found by the next person.

    *Those books were:  Nancy’s Mysterious Letter (1932), The Sign of the Twisted Candles, 
      and Password to Larkspur Lane (both 1933)

     Update:  I just found ZotZ! on YouTube, so interested parties can see the film:

The theatrical trailer is on YouTube:   http://youtu.be/3df9PGETpMs

The film itself is on YouTube in 9 sections:  http://youtu.be/uMYMA8ELcfE

For a little extra credit: 

Zotz is also a German language surname as well as a month of the 365 day Mayan Haab calendar (also as Sotz’)   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haab%27

There was a fizzing candy that came out in 1968 also called Zotz, which had nothing to do with the book or film  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZotZ_%28candy%29  and here's a blog entry on the candy   http://www.collectingcandy.com/wordpress/?p=1690

A review of the film Zotz! as well as a nice overview with photos, well worth the visit http://www.midnightonly.com/2011/08/18/zotz-1962/

         ZotZ All!

                                                    CoastConFan

The First Female Pharaoh Nitocris, H. P. Lovecraft, and the Tennessee Williams Connection

If you like strong women, you have come to the right place. 

The Father of History, Herodotus wrote of a female pharaoh called Nitocris in his histories (which he finished circa 440 BCE) and the story was picked up by Lovecraft and Tennessee Williams four thousand years after her death.  That’s some staying power and some story: murder, revenge, mass killings, and suicide.  Her closest rival in that scenario would be Cleopatra VII and that is two thousand years later.  The pharaoh Nitocris was supposed to have ruled from 2148 to 2144 BCE, the last ruler of the 6^th Dynasty and ended up on a barbeque. 

Herodotus says of the Pharaoh Nitocris:  (Book II, 100)  

" ... the name of the woman who reigned was the same as that of the Babylonian queen, namely Nitocris*. Of her [the Egyptian one] they said that, desiring to take vengeance for her brother, whom the Egyptians had slain when he was their king and then, after having slain him, had given his kingdom to her, desiring I say, to take vengeance for him, she destroyed by craft many of the Egyptians.  For she caused to be constructed a very large chamber under ground, and making as though she would  [make a] handsel [of] it, but in her mind devising other things, she invited those of the Egyptians whom she knew to have had most part in the murder, and gave a great banquet.  Then while they were feasting, she let in the river upon them by a secret conduit of large size.  Of her they told no more than this, except that, when this had been accomplished, she threw herself into a room full of [burning] embers, in order that she might escape vengeance."

Now Nitocris may have been the first female Pharaoh, but certainly not the last, click the links to find out more.

http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/pharaohs-women.php

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/ancientqueens/tp/women_pharaohs.htm

http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/women%20who%20reigned%20as%20pharaohs.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra

The 3^rd century BCE Ptolemaic era Egyptian historian, Manetho says of her in his history of Egyptian rulers, Aegyptiaca, “There was a queen Nitôcris, the noblest and loveliest of the women of her time; she had a fair complexion, and is said to have built the third pyramid.”   The Greek version by Eusebius is a bit more expansive, “There was a queen Nitôcris, braver than all the men of her time, the most beautiful of all the women, fair-skinned with red cheeks.  By her, it is said, the third pyramid was reared, with the aspect of a mountain.”  Other versions, such as a Latin Armenian version says about the same, but if they were copying from each other and from the same text, you would expect it.  By those accounts, she was a looker.  There is a  possibility that she appears under other names or honorifics, which is common enough in Egyptian royalty.  Additionally, the Turin Egyptian King List also mentions her as pharaoh on a papyrus fragment, but that is now under question.+  Real or not, Nitocris has survived the centuries to be written about and we’ll just have to wait until the academic heavyweights thrash it out.  In the mean time we have some excellent fiction written in the early 20^th century.

Now that we have established a basis for Nitocris by historians, let’s jump forward a few thousand years and on the other side of the planet.  When only 16, budding southern author Tennessee Williams (but born in Columbus, Mississippi, go figure) wrote a historical fiction short story, The Vengeance of Nitocris and it was published in the magazine Weird Tales in August of 1928.  This was his first published story, but not his last.  Tennessee Williams didn’t do much more with his weird fiction writing experience, but instead began writing his own weird tales of the 20^th century about his view of America, families, and the south.  

 

As an aside, Robert E. Howard's story Red Shadows, the story that introduced Solomon Kane, which is the cover story of Weird Tales of the same edition that also had Tennessee William’s The Vengeance of Nitocris story inside.  As you may know, Howard also wrote Lovecraftian types tales.  See my previous blog entry:  The Sixtystone – A Web of Deceit and Illusion. 

H. P. Lovecraft ghostwrote a short story for Harry Houdini, which mentions Nitrocris.   It was originally published under Houdini’s name in Weird Tales in February 1924, as Under the Pyramids (AKA Entombed with the Pharaohs, Imprisoned with the Pharaohs).  But even before that, Lovecraft  had written a short story, The Outsider in 1921, (but published in 1926) with a reference to Nitocris in the story.   This early date shows he was aware of Nitocris  (maybe from Herodotus and possibly even Manetho) and had written about her rather early on and before he wrote Under the Pyramids. 

Part of this story has some synchronicity, with Propnomicon having recently published a blog post based on the story, Entombed with the Pharaohs and me just reading a short bio of Tennessee Williams, which mentions his Nitocris story.  Of course I quickly remembered the Lovecraft story and the Propnomicon blog entry, so it all began to fall together along with a bit remembered bits from Herodotus about Nitocris.  Well the entry just pretty much wrote itself with all the connections and coincidences jelling at once. 

Clearly there is something enticing about the Egyptian Nitocris story, which has kept it in circulation for centuries.  I have to wonder if there is any link between H. Rider Haggard’s novel about another strong beautiful ruler, She A History of Adventure (1886) and the two Nitocris mentioned in Herodotus?  Maybe, but I haven’t found proof of it yet.  Haggard’s first novel, King Soloman’s Mines was an instant hit and created the new fiction genre of the Lost World, but that’s another story for another time.

Bram Stoker (you know Dracula and all that) wrote a story called, The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), about an attempt to revive an ancient Egyptian female ruler’s mummy (fictional Queen Tera), which makes me wonder if Lovecraft had read it and if the story had had any connection to Stoker possibly reading Herodotus.  I’m sure a Lovecraft scholar out there might know the answer. 

Well we can see that a four thousand year old queen, who may or may not be mythical, can still generate some classic weird fiction stories.  I hope that this blog entry wasn’t too long or too serious, but I felt that the information was far too interesting to leave out of the article.  There are probably some that feel it was too much and other too little information.  But I sincerely hope that it has piqued your interest and you will download some of the cited stories.  Additionally, you prop makers out there ought to be interested in the two historical rulers named Nitocris, the weird fiction stories spawned, and the possible earlier association with H. Rider Haggard’s She, who gained her immortality in flames, rather than killed  For you writers and prop makers, there should be some good ideas in all this.  Good reading to you all.     CoastConFan

FOOTNOTES

* There is another queen called Nitocris (6^th century BCE, daughter of Nebuchadnezzer II, who made the Hanging Gardens) and also mentioned by Herodotus, but this other one is Babylonian and 1,500 years later, but just as crafty.  She also had a flair for architecture, especially her tomb.  Go to the bottom of the article to find out about her according to Herodotus (Book II, 185), if you have any interest.  Nebuchadnezzer is also mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible, during the period of the Babylonian Captivity, but you'll have to look that one up yourself.

+ See Kim Ryholt’s article, The Late Old Kingdom in the Turin King-list and the Identity of Nitocris, ZAS 127 (2000) pgs 87-100.  It’s a little involved, but also sheds light on the difficulties in reconstruction of damaged ancient records.  
     Update Dec 2014:  For those of you deeply interested in Egyptology, the New Reconstructed Chronology of Egyptian Kings by M. Christine Tetley (Vols I & II) is available for download at  http://www.egyptchronology.com/vols-1--2.html

LINKS OF INTEREST AND FREE DOWNLOADS

Download Herodotus’ history in English:  http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html

A smaller 1464k text-only version is available for download. 

Download Mantho’s book of Egypt’s history, Aegyptiaca in English  http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Manetho/History_of_Egypt/1*.html

Article on the Lovecraft/Howard axis   http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Robert_E._Howard

And http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.02.97/cover/horror1-9701.html

Blog article about archeology in H. P. Lovecraft  http://archaeopop.blogspot.com/2009/06/archaeology-in-fiction-hp-lovecraft.html

Download Tennessee Williams’ story, The Vengeance of Nitocris http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Vengeance_of_Nitocris

Download H. P. Lovecraft’s story, The Outsider http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theoutsider.htm  and Imprisoned with the Pharaohs http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/lovecraft/hp/pharaohs/

Download Bram Stoker’s story, Jewel of Seven Stars  https://archive.org/details/BramStoker-TheJewelOfSevenStars

Now for a bit of lagniappe, some information on the Babylonian queen Nitocris:   An absolutely outstanding article about the Babylonian Queen Nitocris by Robert Lebling on his blog, A Strange Manuscript  http://rlebling.blogspot.com/2012/11/queens-of-mesopotamia-part-ii-nitocris.html  and some obligatory Herodotus.

What Herodotus says this about the Babylonian Queen Nitocris (Book II, 187):  

 "This same queen [Nitocris] also contrived a snare of the following kind: - Over that gate of the city through which the greatest number of people passed she set up for herself a tomb above the very gate itself.  And on the tomb she engraved writing which said thus: "If any of the kings of Babylon who come after me shall be in want of wealth, let him open my tomb and take as much as he desires; but let him not open it for any other cause, if he be not in want; for that will not be well."  This tomb was undisturbed until the kingdom came to Dareios [Darius]; but to Dareios it seemed that it was a monstrous thing not to make any use of this gate, and also, when there was money lying there^, not to take it, considering that the money itself invited him to do so.  Now the reason why he would not make any use of this gate was because the corpse would have been above his head as he drove through.  He then, I say, opened the tomb and found not indeed money but the corpse, with writing which said thus: ‘If thou hadst not been insatiable of wealth and basely covetous, thou wouldest not have opened the resting-places of the dead."

^I’m guessing she was not actually buried with her treasure or that it was pilfered long before Darius shows up.  Her impressive architectural exploits start at 185, but the above concerns the tomb alone.

If you are interested, you can download Herodotus in English:  http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html   or  http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.mb.txt

The Sixtystone: A Web of Deceit and Illusion – Arthur Machen, the Black Seal, and the Nesting Story of The Three Imposters

The background of the short story, The Novel of the Black Seal is a lot older, a lot weirder, and a lot more fun than I expected.

Arthur Machen is not as well known now as he was originally, but he was a highly influential author of the Weird Fiction genre.  His important short story, The Novel of the Black Seal is a portion of an elaborate overstory or nesting novel, The Three Imposters, published in 1895.  I’d like to leave the rest of the book alone and focus on just one story, The Novel of the Black Stone in this blog article.  

My first exposure to the Machen’s book, The Three Imposters was from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series of books when it released an affordable reprint in 1972.  The series was a real boost to average fans that wanted above average fantasy books but couldn’t afford or find costly, rare editions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballantine_Adult_Fantasy_series

Arthur Machen’s works have had a powerful influence on many writers and quite strongly on H. P. Lovecraft, who cites Machen in his Notes on Writing Weird Fiction as a great author along with Lord Dunsany, Edgar Allan Poe, Montague R. James, Algernon Blackwood, and Walter de la Mare.   

As you will note in HPL’s Notes on Weird Fiction, he states:

“One cannot, … present an account of impossible, improbable, or inconceivable phenomena as a commonplace narrative of objective acts and conventional emotions. Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to overcome, and this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the story except that touching on the one given marvel.”

The careful placement of the “single marvel” in this particular story (which is part of a larger story) is a small black stone, which cannot to be taken casually by any means.  One way to do this is to embed your single marvel, in this case a seal stone of great antiquity and evil, into the fabric of reality and history by having it written about by previous authors, preferably real, but they can be fictional as well.  In some cases, the reference book itself is the marvel, such as the Necronomicon.

The Sixtystone or Black Seal in the story is very masterfully borrowed from the 2^nd century Roman writer Solinus, who refers to a stone called the Hexecontalithon in his writings.  Machen carefully misquotes the original work, Caii Julii Solini de Mirabilibus Mundi to add depth and to move locality of the story from Libya to England.  This embeds the historical cited Sixtystone with accompanying text and author into Machen’s universe quite deftly.  Machen makes no secrecy about the lifting, giving the original author’s name and the source.  It’s all in good fun anyway.*

Machen’s rework of Solinus is quoted from The Novel of the Black Seal:

 "This folk," I translated to myself, "dwells in remote and secret places, and celebrates foul mysteries on savage hills. Nothing have they in common with men save the face, and the customs of humanity are wholly strange to them; and they hate the sun. They hiss rather than speak; their voices are harsh, and not to be heard without fear. They boast of a certain stone, which they call Sixtystone; for they say that it displays sixty characters. And this stone has a secret unspeakable name; which is Ixaxar."

Along with the Sixtystone being taken from ancient writings, the title of the main book itself, The Three Imposters, may be a direct reference to another book of great age, the Treatise of the Three Imposters, itself a hoax book, which (in many modified forms) has been circulation for centuries.   Both Solini de Marabilibus Mundi and The Treatise of The Three Imposters had been in circulation for centuries and available in a number of print editions in England.  I have to wonder if anybody sees the possible connection between the two books called The Three Imposters, one published in 1895 and the other circulating in manuscript form since at least the 1200s. 

Did Machen use the title The Three Imposters as a nod to the earlier esoteric book of the same name?  It certainly looks likely, although I have not downloaded or read the medieval version of The Three Imposters.  Like the Necronomicon, The Treatise of the Three Imposters is considered an imaginary or spurious book in a blog post at Languageandthat.com.

While considering all the in jokes, the transparent borrowings, and the scholarship required to spot them, consider that the Sixtystone is referred to as a black stone by Machen, but not Solinus – which may be an oblique reference to another black stone, which is real and located in the Middle East.  But also consider it may be a play on the name of a contemporary writer of weird fiction with Machen (and also cited by HPL in Notes on Weird Fiction) Algernon Blackwood.  It’s hard to say for sure, but it is interesting to note the multiple use of layers in Machen’s The Three Imposters, especially looking at the stories within The Novel of the Black Seal.  It’ll certainly take a some scholarship to unravel the puzzle. 

Consider also that IXAXAR, may be a play on ΙΧΘΥΣ (fish in Greek) which was a secret symbol from early Christianity, dating to the first century, the same period as Solinus wrote.  But I don’t want to jump too deeply into religious waters for concern about offending and a lack of serious scholarship on my part in this matter.  Machen would appear to be both serious and playful at the same time.  Another idea that may just be coincidental is that there are sixty stones at Stonehenge.  Once you start the association game, it’s hard to stop.

Another anchor into history for the story and the Sixtystone is the Sumerian’s and later the Babylonian’s use of a sexagesimal, (base 60) numeral system.  This works well linking the Sixtystone into another culture and body of researchable data.  Interestingly, we still use many of the Babylonian’s base 60 concepts like the 60 minutes in an hour & etc.  Solinus would have been quite familiar with the system himself.  The great thing is that with a well-imbedded artifact is that the more you dig, the more associations or coincidences you find.  The accidental associations weave themselves automatically into the body of works, supporting the whole, even though the author may not have been aware of the association.  Coincidence can be an author’s friend, as long as it doesn’t become a forced literary cliché.+

As a side note, Robert E. Howard did a short story called the Black Stone (pub Nov 1931), which is supposedly set in the Lovecraftian universe.  So everybody has had a shot at the title.   For Howard fans, here’s a nice article about Howard’s debt to Lovecraft.  http://www.crypt-of-cthulhu.com/borrowerbeneath.htm

Certainly Machen’s association with mysticism, theosophy, and neo-romanticism and it’s associated interest in pagan and pre Christian beliefs lends some credence to these theories of literary association.  Eventually, Machen purposeful mistranslantion of Solinus’ work made its way into texts of modern esoteric teachings, bringing the farce full circle.  It’s much like Lovecraft’s imaginary Necronomicon becoming esoteric canon.  See the article by Christopher Josiffe in the links section at the end of this post for more information.

One more quick aside:  If you are still following this, you prop making fans might check into the Cyrus Cylinder, as fodder for thought, although that is clay not stone.  

The power of Machen’s mythmaking power is quite evident in his creation of The Angels of Mons from a 1914 story, The Bowmen, later released as a book of short stories, The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War.  Machen explained the story was fictional, but the more he protested, the more people believed it was real.  I have to wonder if there is a link between this WWI story of ghostly protectors and the raised dead protecting Britain from invasion in WWII in the movie, Bedknobs and Broomsticks of 1971.  But that’s for someone else to ferret out.  Additionally, see this article on AbeBooks.com about Machen’s mythmaking and the Angels of Mons:  http://www.abebooks.com/books/gothic-horror-non-fiction-angels-mons/arthur-machen.shtml  

What really got this whole thing rolling was a Sixtystone prop posted on Propnomicon’s outstanding Cthulhu Mythos prop making site a good while back.  It got me interested again in Machen and rekindled my old interest in cylinder seals.  I did a little digging and as usual, things got wonderfully out of hand.  The result is this blog article.      

Arthur Machen’s writing prowess continues to influence readers, writers, makers of props, and esoteric authors.  His works influenced writers from Lovecraft to Steven King, as well as Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, and James Branch Cabell.  By the way, most of these authors had stories and books appear in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.  Machen also influenced other authors outside of the genre such as Jorge Luis Borges with his magic realism and even writers of mysticism Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Grant owes a debt of gratitude to the writings of Machen. 

Machen was also an originator in what would be later called psychogeography,^ due to his writing about the interconnectivity between landscape and imagination.  Along that line, you might also check out my previous post on William Hope Hodgson who was another influence on Lovecraft and his Dreamlands.  The problem with imaginary lands is that you introduce the great possibility of unreliable narrators, in which The Three Imposters is rife at multiple levels.  But that's part of the fun.

Hopefully this information dump will make you want to follow the links and enjoy the ride or do some follow-up work in places I have only touched.  Many of these referenced authors were contemporaries and friends so cross pollenization is inevitable.  They certainly influenced each other and molded our ideas about fantasy and horror today.  I hope you will be intrigued to enough read a few of the different cited authors’ works.  The great thing is that many of them are available for download for free.  See the links below.

                                                                              CoastConFan

          Footnotes

*More contemporarily, take a page from NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ Rulebook:  Rule 7, "Always be specific when you lie.”  

+(Op Cit) Keep in mind Gibb's Rule 39 and of course, while writing Weird Fiction, remember his Rule 45 also applies.  Good detective work has much the same rules as being a good writer. 

^Psychogeography has strong links to ley lines, earth mysteries, and chaos magic.  It also is linked to magic realism and other techniques used in fiction writing. 

          Additional links of interest

Download these books for free from Project Gutenberg by Arthur Machen

The Three Imposters, (1895) which contains the story The Novel of the Black Seal http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35517

The Great God Pan (1894)  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/389

The House of Souls (1906)  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25016

The Terror (1917) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35617 

The Hill of Dreams (1895, pub 1907)  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13969 

The White People (1899, pub 1904) by Machen

The Shining Pyramid (1895) http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606971.txt

Also Famous Modern Ghost Stories (1921) with Machen stories inside  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15143 

Arthur Machen Gallery of book covers:  http://web.archive.org/web/20080514193504/http://www.cafes.net/ditch/macgal.htm

Article about Machen’s weird fiction  http://thequietus.com/articles/08758-leave-the-capitol-the-weird-tales-of-arthur-machen

An article about Machen in the Spanish language http://vagabundosdeldharma-jmt.blogspot.com/2011/03/arthur-machen.html

A gallery of Machen book covers  http://web.archive.org/web/20080514193504/http://www.cafes.net/ditch/macgal.htm

A link to a good article by Christopher Josiffe is just below, about the Sixtystone and Machien’s use of Solinus’ writings.  Josiffe’s makes use of Arthur Golding’s English translation of Solinus from the late 1500s makes for really good reading, but also note in this article, tracing of the Machen of Solinus mistranslation making its way into modern esoteric writing.   Fun stuff.  http://www.academia.edu/1476885/Some_Notes_on_Machens_Sixtystone  or 

http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4474/1/Josiffe_-_Faunus_-_n18_-.pdf

A Latin language downloadable copy of the 1847 edition of Solinus’ Caii Julii Solini de Mirabilibus Mundi  The part you want is XXXI for the Sixtystone hexecontalithon reference used by Machen.  Prop makers, this would be a great source for text for your prop books and documents.  Alas I could not find the Arthur Golding late 1500’s English translation quoted so colorfully by Christopher Josiffe in the above article.  

For those interested in a 1904 English translation of the 1716 French edition of De Tribus Impostoribus, (1230), AKA The Three Imposters, a download is available here:  https://archive.org/details/cu31924029093320

Robert E. Howard's The Black Stone, available for free download:  http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1666/the-black-stone