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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
As far as accuracy goes, I think 1% of 11 miles sounds pretty good without modern surveying technology. It works out as 11% of 1 mile, which gives a reasonable amount of leeway, as well as giving room for ‘the ancients’ to use the nearest useable feature.
I think the structure of ancient sites probably is important, but may not be the only consideration. Yes, odd why they needed to bring stones so far. Is the material itself important, or their place of origin?
Thanks Yuri. I’m not insisting on anything, just curious about what would be considered to be acceptable tolerances if (and it’s a big if) there is something significant about the 11 mile distance.
But I appreciate your comments. Re the Michael line, I understand that Hamish Miller doused it as more of a meandering stream (or two intertwining streams) that follow an overall direction.
Michael
Don’t worry Ross, your loginid hasn’t been showing up in the list. I get this every so often, I guess it must be a cookie on your PC holding your login state.
I also use Firefox and get the blank screen at first, but refreshing the window with F5 then brings everything up. Sorry Simon, I guess I should have reported that last week.
Michael
Ah, I’m not normally online in the evening.
Cheers chaps, excellent stuff! I’ve filed your stories and will have to go to that part of Dartmoor ourselves (Donegal is off the beaten track for us). Despite having lived down this part of the world for nearly 8 years now, its amazing how little opportunity we seem to get to explore our own area. Also good to see that the black feather in the circle is a positive thing, something to do with the lambing season you say?
Faerylore is more my wife’s interest than mine, but I have gathered that the Other Folk are ambiguous, sometimes dangerous, and ought to be treated with respect. Just like human beings I suppose. Malcolm, what did you ‘arm’ yourselves with. Have this picture in my mind of you and your wife preparing to go back out there…”OK, got the rifle, flamethrower and explosives, let’s go, go, go!”. But seriously, I am interested to know what you use.
I wonder with the disembodied arms, if the phenomena is linked more to the place (as with the Bellever Hairy Hands). Did their homes have any history?
Michael
According to Earthquest News Vol 2 No 2 (1992), the Form of the Lamb was indeed performed using the seven swords (as they were then) at the Heart of the Rose. This was said to be somewhere in or about the Malvern Hills near the English/Welsh border; the exact location wasn’t revealed.
The article Simon referenced and his question about Meonia-ness are interesting – what makes a sword a ‘true’ Meonia sword? To claim that any swords discovered subsequently to the first seven are nothing more than theatrical props seems a little premature. After all, if I recall correctly then two swords were found at a car boot sale, the Tintagel sword was noticed lying in a display cabinet in King Arthur’s Hall in Tintagel and the seventh sword was found in an antique shop – hardly mind-blowing stuff that says ‘I’m a magical artifact – beware of cheap imitations.’
Michael
I’ve never used Instant Messenger type things, but thought I’d log into this one. I’ve kept myself in all day, and have noticed that in PHPNuke my logged in status seems to drop out, i.e. the little man next to my userid goes from green to red. If I then do something in PHP121 such as look at my account settings, PHPNuke updates to show me online.
I’ll try and sit in it again tomorrow (Tuesday), if anyone want to test holding a conversation with me (does anybody want to be my friend…?).
Michael
Am just starting to bring a few books up from the murky depths of our cellar, and Regardie’s Golden Dawn is one of them. I’ll check the page references you’ve given.
What I really want is to see if I can find a Victorian society in the 1860s that fits the bill. Golden Dawn is too late, not sure about the Soc. Ros.; anyone know anything about Soc. Ros. ceremonial? Of course, there could have been all manner of societies that aren’t documented at all (such as the Mary Heath Order of Meonia – and no, I don’t even want to begin to entertain the idea that I’m looking for that one). History is selective, as we know.
Meanwhile, I shall regard your avatar with the upmost suspicion. Wasn’t a dream by the way, it came out of a regression session. I’m not entirely convinced by it, but there seemed a chance of being able to – perhaps – follow up this one.
Michael
Just to add my tuppence worth on the swords, let’s not forget that prior to the ‘original’ seven cast in the eighteenth century there was meant to be the sword fashioned in 1604 (apparently using a blade found in the tomb of Gwevaraugh herself) by Anne Vaux. This is the sword originally placed in the bridge at the Knight’s Pool and found by James Adams (one of the Victorian Meonians) in 1872, then lost aboard the ill-fated Treneglos off the coast of Ireland (I think) in 1883. One of the Victorian copies was then placed back at Knight’s Pool by E.V.V. Wheeler in 1885.
Of course, there is only psychic information on this lost 17th-century sword; if it really existed it seems unlikely to turn up. Anyone fancy diving around the wreckage site? (not me, fish give me the willies)
I also understand that the Victorians didn’t cast a complete set of seven themselves, as they already had some of the older swords.
Is the design on this new sword anything like the Mary Stuart monogram on the ‘Meonia fore Marye’ sword? Don’t have any books handy at present to check.
Any chance that we’ll here the story behind these two swords? Interesting stuff.
Michael
‘Twas a solid yellow triangle.
Enjoy your Easter. Out of interest, what reference books on secret societies have you got? I’ve not got any (and if I did, it would be in a box buried deep in the cellar).
Cheers,
Michael
Sounds interesting, the burning question…when is it?
Michael
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
Thanks ObYsnat, interesting to know. I quite like your ‘Hellfire Club’ theory, but it doesn’t sit well with an Elizabethan group that seems to have been very much involved with the efforts of the English Catholics to restore Catholicism (unless you take a staunch Protestant view of Catholics as licentious hypocrites), or with the general tone of the Heritage material. Maybe a spot of tongue in cheek, or there’s an alternative reference for the name.
I didn’t have time to comment on the Graham Phillips thing. I’ve not read his Merlin book, but what you say sounds odd. In a recent interview with Whitley Strieber he mentioned an ‘Order of Meonia’ in passing. What is the Meonia chapter about? Perhaps there is some sort of coded information in there, which could be why he hasn’t published your question – he wants you to work it out for yourself (or he’s ignoring his forum moderating duties – how active is it?).
Michael
Hmm, interesting idea. Agree with you on the spelling issue, but did the Lydians really have that reputation? I don’t know much about the Lydians and nothing about what people in the 16th century thought about them. Can you give me any references?
Also, there are other sources for the name Meonia, but you’ll have to wait for that one.
Cheers,
Michael
