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Guys. Hope you’re all doing well.
Many years ago at the PQC’s, Richard Ward did a couple of fringe talks (both the same material I believe) on the magical reality of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
I am keen to hear this again as I can’t recall an awful lot about it. I came in half way through as another lecture ran over. Has he published any articles on the subject? I understood to did an article for the FoTN website????Any help would be very appreciated. Tx.
Dan
Hi Dan
I remember the article on the FOTN site, had to have a login for it and I think that section of the site is bust now (will check). Couldn’t save the article as McCoy’s web wizardy made the text unselectable.
Richard
Hi Richard. Is that Richard Ward in person?
Thanks for responding all the same.
No, I’ve been trying for ages to log in to the FoTN website. Are they ever going to get that fixed?
Yes, I was in the middle of trying to lift the article by retyping it when the section went belly up.
Shame.Do you have your notes from the talk still? Would you be prepared to write an article for this forum? I’d love to read a little from your research.
Cheers
DanAhh sorry, didn’t think about the name, I be Richard Green.
Perhaps an email to McCoy or The Watchman or whatever asking for the article? Maybe you could try Richard Ward himself at his site? If you succeed then let me know, it’s a favourite subject of mine and would love to see the article again and/or notes.
Richard
Ah! Sorry Richard.
Lots of Richards and Andy’s in the questing community. Should I change my name?
Quote:Perhaps an email to McCoy or The Watchman or whatever asking for the article? Maybe you could try Richard Ward himself at his site?D’Oh! Yes, quite right. I should really have thought to do that sooner, I was just taking the lazy route.
You don’t get anything by sitting around willing it into existence … hang on, I’m not so sure there! 
HernesSon wrote:Ah! Sorry Richard.
Lots of Richards and Andy’s in the questing community. Should I change my name? Bring it on! The more the merrier I say.
Quote:D’Oh! Yes, quite right. I should really have thought to do that sooner, I was just taking the lazy route. You don’t get anything by sitting around willing it into existence … hang on, I’m not so sure there!Hehe, well I’d do it myself, but I guess I’m lazy too!
What do you think of the Cthulhu Mythos in relation to psychic questing? I’ve been fascinated with it for quite a while, my own explorations therein have led to some epic dreams (as they tend to do, of course), I found I was dreaming about some H.P.L stories I hadn’t read yet. Also, recently re-read “The Colour from Out of Space” and discovered to my delight that in the story the “Colour” returned to Cygnus… I wonder if Ech Pi El was picking up those Cygnus vibes?
Wow! Thank you. I didn’t realise that! It’s been a while since I read The Colour From Outer Space. I’ve been working through Andy’s Cygnus Mystery for a few months. I just never seem to get the time to sit down right this minute. I’m going to have to revisit that me thinks.
Questing and Cthulhu I’m sure could go absolutely hand in hand, but I’m not sure I’d really want to go too far down that road.
I remember Richard W. going through a few of the UK sites said to be connected with the mythos reality. He clearly warned of the consequences, that it could quite literally make you go mad as the mythos is such a dark abyss, full of some pretty grotesque stuff.I too have had a few Lovecraftian dreams, usually of underwater cities and kraken type beasties chasing me across plains! Plays like a bad B-movie
I’d love to hear more of your thoughts, if you care to share. I’m really only a novice in such matters.
Not sure if this is down your alley but I picked up a cd several years, which is a kind of ‘War of the World’s’ meets Cthulhu Mythos, musical!
It’s set in the modern day around the Millenium celebrations, with suitably theatrical songs and creepy sound effects.It’s called Mythos: The Talisdream Mission
Quote:Wow! Thank you. I didn’t realise that! It’s been a while since I read The Colour From Outer Space. I’ve been working through Andy’s Cygnus Mystery for a few months. I just never seem to get the time to sit down right this minute. I’m going to have to revisit that me thinks.Another tidbit re: Cygnus, I had an amazing synchronicity recently: I joined an elist exploring Vril and I mentioned Cygnus, it turned out one of the members had been working with Cygnus on a subtle level for years by way of a 1920′s german occultist “Peryt Shou”. Shou developed some exercises for turining oneself in an “antena” (this was before radio astronomy by the way) aligned with Cygnus to receive comunications from what he called “The Leauge of Truth”. It’s in a book by Shou and in a chapter of Edred Thorsson’s _ Rune Might_ called “The Ritual of the Ninth Night”.
Quote:Questing and Cthulhu I’m sure could go absolutely hand in hand, but I’m not sure I’d really want to go too far down that road.
I remember Richard W. going through a few of the UK sites said to be connected with the mythos reality. He clearly warned of the consequences, that it could quite literally make you go mad as the mythos is such a dark abyss, full of some pretty grotesque stuff.IMO entities that Lovecraft wrote about inspire more awe than fear in me, or at least after a while fear turns into awe. I don’t think its necesarily “dark”. There are deffinately paralells between the Mythos and other traditions, The Greater Necronomicon (the one on the astral or whatever) is like the Terma tradition in Tibet, the GOO’s are like Nagas, gatekeepers of the information. I find I draw sustenance from it, I also find it healthy in that I’m actively seeking closeness to primal roots or whatever they are, helps me to be more complete if you know what I mean. I also find it fun in that slightly cheasy cosmic b-garde horror kind of way.
Quote:I too have had a few Lovecraftian dreams, usually of underwater cities and kraken type beasties chasing me across plains! Plays like a bad B-movieAwesome, did you see they recently caught a “Collosal Squid”, poor beastie. I live in underwater cities in my dreams too (I am half Deep One myself) and have worked as an industrial diver in offshore diamond mining in some of the foulest, blackest, coldest water – arrgh! Seriously, I’m kind of obsessed.
Quote:I’d love to hear more of your thoughts, if you care to share. I’m really only a novice in such matters.Heck, I’m a novice too.
HernesSon wrote:Not sure if this is down your alley but I picked up a cd several years, which is a kind of ‘War of the World’s’ meets Cthulhu Mythos, musical!
It’s set in the modern day around the Millenium celebrations, with suitably theatrical songs and creepy sound effects.It’s called Mythos: The Talisdream Mission
That sounds right up my alley, thanks! I’ll check it out.
Adamastor wrote:Quote:Another tidbit re: Cygnus, I had an amazing synchronicity recently: I joined an elist exploring Vril and I mentioned Cygnus, it turned out one of the members had been working with Cygnus on a subtle level for years by way of a 1920′s german occultist “Peryt Shou”. Shou developed some exercises for turining oneself in an “antena” (this was before radio astronomy by the way) aligned with Cygnus to receive comunications from what he called “The Leauge of Truth”. It’s in a book by Shou and in a chapter of Edred Thorsson’s _ Rune Might_ called “The Ritual of the Ninth Night”.That is really interesting! I appreciate the recommendation, and so I imagine would Andy Collins. Perhaps it’s worth emailing him just to see if it is beneficial to his work at all? I will certainly be checking out Peryt Shou. I’ve never heard of him.
Adamastor wrote:Quote:Awesome, did you see they recently caught a “Collosal Squid”, poor beastie. I live in underwater cities in my dreams too (I am half Deep One myself) and have worked as an industrial diver in offshore diamond mining in some of the foulest, blackest, coldest water – arrgh! Seriously, I’m kind of obsessed.Yes I did! What a beast! Imagine diving and seeing that sucker coming towards you. Kiss your butt goodbye, Cthulhu lives!
This is a bit of light fun, but very very funny. At least I think so.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q … or+cthulhu
“I WILL DEVOUR YOUR SOUL!
I’ve been the Lurker on the Threshhold of this thread. I’d also be interested in seeing Richard Ward’s material; has anyone got anywhere with it yet? Anyway, I had a few thoughts which you may find interesting (or not?):
A few months ago I was reading Michael Harner’s classic work on shamanism, The Way of the Shaman. In the first chapter he describes his first visionary experience among the Conibo indians of the Peruvian Amazon in 1961. He was studying them as an anthropologist, but was meeting little success with getting them to divulge information on their religion. Eventually they told him that if he was serious then he would need to take ayahuasca.
First of all a geometric lattice formed a canopy over him as the sound of rushing water got louder and louder, and he beheld ‘a carnival of demons’ at the centre of which was ‘a grinning crocodilian head, from whose cavernous jaws gushed a torrential flood of water.’ This scene changed into one of simple blue sky and sea. He saw two boats in the air which merged into a single galley-boat with ‘a huge dragon-headed prow’ and hundreds of oars. He heard a beautiful high-pitched singing and noticed that the occupants of the boat had human bodies but the heads of blue jays (i.e. birds). He was then aware that an energy was floating from his chest up to the boat and he believed himself to be dying and that the boat had come to bear-away his soul. He felt his body growing numb and became aware that his brain had four levels. The upper level was the observer and commander, the next level had been numbed by the ayahuasca, the third level was the source of the visions. Then the lowest level began to ‘transmit’ visions; because he was dying it was safe for him to receive certain revelations. The givers of this information he dimly perceived to be ‘giant reptilian creatures reposing sluggishly at the lowermost depths of the back of my brain, where it met the top of the spinal column.’ I shall quote the next section at length:
Quote:First they showed me the planet earth as it was eons ago, before there was any life on it. I saw an ocean, barren land, and a bright blue sky. Then black specks dropped down from the sky by the hundreds and landed in front of me on the barren landscape. I could see that the “specks” were actually large, shiny, black creatures with stubby pterodactyl-like wings and huge whale-like bodies. Their heads were not visible to me. They flopped down, utterly exhausted from their trip, resting for eons. They explained to me in a kind of thought language that they were fleeing from something out in space. They had come to the planet Earth to escape their enemy.The creatures then showed me how they had created life on the planet in order to hide within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence. Before me, the magnificence of plant and animal creation and speciation – hundreds of millions of years of activity – took place on a scale and with a vividness impossible to describe. I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside of all forms of life, including man (footnote – in retrospect one could say they were almost like DNA). They were the true masters of humanity and the entire planet, they told me. We humans were but the receptacles and servants of these creatures. For this reason they could speak to me from within myself.”
These revelations … alternated with visions of the floating galley, which had almost finished taking my soul on board… Strangely, I had no fear of the bird-headed people…But I was afraid that somehow my soul might…be acquired or re-acquired by the dragon-like denizens of the depths.
I suddenly felt my distinctive humanness, the contrast between my species and the ancient reptilian ancestors. I began to struggle against returning to the ancient ones, who were beginning to feel increasingly alien and possibly evil.”
At this point he manages to cry aloud for medicine, and the Indians with him forced open his mouth and poured in an antidote. “Gradually, the dragons disappeared back into the lower depths; the soul boat …was no more. I relaxed with relied.”
A few days later he described the experience to some missionary friends, who thought aspects were similar to the Revelation of St John, and then he sought the advice of an experienced shaman:
Quote:At first I told him only the highlights; thus, when I came to the dragon-like creatures, I skipped their arrival from space and only said, “There were these giant black animals, something like great bats, longer than the length of this house, who said that they were the true masters of the world.” There is no word for dragon in Conibo, so “giant bat” was the closest I could come to describe what I had seen.He stared up towards me with his sightless eyes, and said with a grin, “Oh, they’re always saying that. But they are only the Masters of the Outer Darkness.”
He waved his hand casually towards the sky. I felt a chill along the lower part of my spine, for I had not yet told him that I had seen them, in my trance, coming from outer space.
Interesting stuff I think, very Lovecraftian.
What originally struck when I first read this a few months back was the similarity of the dragon-like creatures and their role in creation, and the 2nd-century Gnostic accounts of the creation of the world by the dark and dangerous archons. The demiurge as the ignorant creator-god reminds me of the idiot-god Azathoth writhing at the centre of the universe. It makes me think that the Gnostic myth may have originated in similar visionary experiences, and that HPL was tapping into the same sort of cosmoclastic vision; I understand that he suffered from some quite heavy nightmares, which furnished the material for some of his stories.
Thinking about this the Lovecraftian mythos is like a ‘stalled’ version of the 2nd-century Gnostic mythos. Both involve understanding the true nature of the universe dominated by powers that are indifferent to humanity at best, or malevolent at worst. However, whereas for the Gnostics this understanding led to enlightenment and liberation into the light-realms of the Pleroma, the Lovecraftian vision doesn’t make this leap and instead leads to insanity.
BTW, I just ordered the DVD of the Call of Cthulhu film from http://www.lovecraftiana.com which ships from the UK, and has numerous mythos-related items for sale, including a downloadable PDF of the Tarot of Cthulhu – sounds interesting!
All the best,
Michael
In January/February Dr. Justin Woodman gave a series of four lectures at Treadwells Bookshop in Covent Garden, London on the subject “H.P. Lovecraft and the Occult”. I wasn’t there myself, but they are now available as mp3s at [url:20i4bspb]http://www.yog-sothoth.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=379[/url]
This guy apparently did his doctoral thesis on Chaos Magick and is writing a book based on the lectures. Not had a chance to listen yet, but they look like they should be interesting and relevent to this thread. He also has a blog, [url:20i4bspb]http://ghooriczone.blogspot.com/[/url].
Cheers,
Michael
HernesSon wrote:Guys. Hope you’re all doing well.Many years ago at the PQC’s, Richard Ward did a couple of fringe talks (both the same material I believe) on the magical reality of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
I am keen to hear this again as I can’t recall an awful lot about it. I came in half way through as another lecture ran over. Has he published any articles on the subject? I understood to did an article for the FoTN website????Any help would be very appreciated. Tx.
Dan
Hi,
I have had one article on the subject published in the now defunct Talking Stick anthology. The idea was too put out a book at some point, though that remains in a half completed state due to changes in magical and literary directions. I’m not even sure i still have the disc! oops!
I am interested in the fact that they may be an article on the Fields of the Nephilim site, and wonder if it may be the Talking Stick article, and i’d just forgotten about it. I will look into that!
Justin Woodman’s material is well worth a look, he shares a lot of my ideas on the subject and we communicated often at the time I wrote my article, quite a few years back! If i can find the article on disc, i will look at the possibility of posting it on here, with Simon’s permission of course!
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