the dome like skull of ibid

'' his remains, notwithstanding the troubled state of italy, were taken to ravenna for interment ... were exhumed and ridiculed by the lombard duke of spoleto, who took his skull to king autharis ... ibid's skull was proudly handed down from king to king of the lombard line ... the skull was seized by the tottering desiderius and carried in the train of the frankish conqueror ... charlemagne took ibid's skull to his capital at aix, ... william the conqueror, finding it in an abbey niche ... did reverence to its osseous antiquity; ...

'' it was captured by the private soldier read-'em-and-weep hopkins, who not long after traded it to rest-in-jehovah stubbs ... stubbs, upon sending forth his son zerubbabel to seek his fortune ... gave him st.ibid's ... skull as a talisman. upon landing in salem zerrubbabel ... having become addicted to gaming, lost the skull to one epenetus dexter, ... it was in the house of dexter, in the northern part of the town near the present intersection of north main and olney streets, ... but the austere head of ibid continued on its wanderings ...

'' petrus van schaack, secured the distinguished cranium for the modest sum of two guilders, he having recognised its value from the half-effaced inscription carved in lombardic miniscules ... from van schaack, sad to say the relic was stolen in 1683 by a french trader, jean grenier ... fired with virtuous rage at the possession of this holy relic by a protestant, crushed van schaack's head one night with an axe and escaped to the north with his booty; soon however being robbed and slain by the half-breed voyageur michael savard, who took the skull ... to add to a collection of similar but more recent material ...

'' his half-breed son pierre traded it among other things to some emissaries of the sacs and foxes, ... charles de langlade, founder of the trading post at green bay, ransomed it at the expense of many glass beads; later traded to jacques caboche, another settler, it was in 1850 lost in a game of chess or poker to a newcomer named hans zimmerman; ... where falling into the burrow of a prairie-dog, it passed beyond his power of discovery or recovery ...

'' so for generations did the skull ... lie hidden beneath the soil of a growing town ... at first worshipped with dark rites by the prairie-dogs, who saw in it a diety sent from the upper world, ... and at last one fateful night a titan thing occured. subtle nature, convulsed with a spiritual ectasy, ... laid low the lofty and heaved high the humble and behold! ... subterrene arcana hidden for years came at last to light. for there in the rifted roadway, lay bleached and tranquil in bland, saintly and consular pomp the dome like skull of ibid.''

h.p.lovecraft, ibid.


i: amethyst skull talisman at rene's custom jewelery.

magah birds

'' the whole air was fragant with balsam, and the magah birds sang blithely as they flashed their seven colors in the sun ... around him he wrapped another blanket, for the nights are cold in oriab; and when upon awaking once he thought he felt the wings of some insect brushing his face he covered his head altogether and slept in peace till roused by the magah birds in distant resin groves.''

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

i: magah-birds and shantak skull.

flight of the shantak-bird

'' then the man motioned carter to mount one of the repugnant shantaks ... it was hard work ascending, for the shantak-bird has scales instead of feathers, and those scales are very slippery ... once he was seated the slant-eyed man hopped up behind him ...

'' there now followed a hideous whirl through frigid space, ... beyond which leng was said to be ... far above the clouds they flew, till at last there lay beneath them those fabled summits of which the folk of inquanok have never seen, ... carter saw them very plainly as they passed below, and saw upon their top most peaks strange caves ... he noticed that both the man and the horse-headed shantak appeared oddly fearful of them, ...

'' the shantak now flew lower, revealing beneath the canopy of cloud a grey barren plain whereon at great distances shone little feeble fires ... around the feeble fires dark forms were dancing, ... very slowly and awkwardly did these forms leap; and with an insane twisting and bending not good to behold ... as the shantak flew lower, the repulsivness of the dancers became tinged with a cetain hellish familiarity, ... they leaped as though they had hooves instead of feet and seemed to wear a sort of wig or headpiece with small horns ...

'' but the shantak flew on past the fires ... and soared over sterile hills of grey granite and dim wastes of rock and ice and snow ... and still the vile bird winged meaningly through the cold and silence ... and finally they came to a wind-swept table-land which seemed the very roof of a blasted and tenantless world ... the lothsome bird now settled to the ground,''

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

i: grinning shantak-bird, perpetrated by goya, at norton simon museum.

table-book in the house

'' i opened the door at the left, and crossed into a small low-cieled chamber ... it appeared to be a kind of sitting room, for it had a table and several chairs ... what interested me was the uniform air of archaism as dispayed in every visible detail ...

'' most of the houses in this region i had found rich in relics of the past, but here the antiquity was curiously complete; for in all the room i could not discover a single article of definitely post revolutionary date. had the furnishings been less humble the place would of been a collectors paradise ...

'' as i surveyed this quaint apartment i felt an increase in that aversion first excited by the bleak exterior of the house ... i felt disinclined to sit down, and wandered about examining the various articles which i had noticed. the first object of my curiosity was a book of medium size ... it was bound in leather with metal fittings ...

'' when i opened it to the title page my wonder grew even greater, ... i had often heard of this work with its curious illustrations by the brothers de bry, hence for a moment forgot my uneasiness in my desire to turn the pages before me. ... nor would i soon have closed the book had not an exceedingly trivial circumstance upset my tired nerves and revived my sensation of disquiet ... the volume tended to fall open of itself at plate xii, ... i experienced some shame at my suseptibility to so slight a thing, but the drawing nevertheless disturbed me.'' h.p.lovecraft, the picture in the house.

pedestals quasihexagonal

'' there were great masses of towering stone, carven into alien and incomprehensible designs and disposed according to the laws of some unknown, inverse geometry ... gigantic hieroglyphed pedestals more hexagonal than otherwise, and surmounted by cloaked, ill defined shapes ... one of the pedestals was vacant, ... another pedestal taller than the rest, and at the centre of the oddly curved line--neither semicircle nor ellipse, parabola nor hyperbola--which they formed.''

h.p.lovecraft and e.hoffman price, through the gates of the silver key.


i: quasihexagonal coffea-table.

the body of mythos

'' the bas-relief was a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about five by six inches in area; obviously of modern origin. its designs however were far from modern in atmosphere and suggestion; ... it seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster of a form which only a diseased fancy could concieve.


'' if i say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human charicature, i shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing ... a pulpy tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful ... ''

h.p.lovecraft, the call of cthulhu

forgotten books and scrolls

'' i never learned its title for the early pages were missing but it fell open toward the end and gave me a glimpse of something which sent my senses reeling ... there was a formula--a sort of list of things to say and do--it was a key--a guide--to certain gateways and transitions of which mystics have dreamed and whispered since the race was young and which lead to freedoms and discoveries beyond the three dimensions and realms of life and matter that we know...

'' i remember how i read the book at last--white faced and locked in the attic room that i had long devoted to strange searchings ... it was by the light of candles that i read...then came the first scratching and fumbling at the dormer window that looked out high above the other roofs of the city ... it came as i droned aloud the ninth verse of that primal lay, and i knew amidst my shuddering what it meant. for he who passes the gateways always wins a shadow and never again can be alone...

'' dogs had a fear of me for they felt the outside shadow which never left my side ... but still i read more--in hidden, forgotten books and scrolls to which my new vision led me--and pushed through fresh gateways of space and being and life-patterns toward the core of unknown cosmos. '' h.p.lovecraft, the book

astropolis

'' into the north window of my chamber glows the pole star with uncanny light ... and in the autumn of the year, i sit by the casement and watch that star ... winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some message, ... sometimes, when it is cloudy i can sleep ...

'' and it was under a horned waning moon that i saw the city for the first time, still and somnolent did it lie, on a strange plateau in a hollow betwixt strange peaks. of ghastly marble were its walls and in the marble streets were marble pillars, ... overhead scarce ten degrees from the zenith, glowed that watching pole star ... upon my memory was graven the vision of the city ...

'' the pole star, evil and monstrous, leers down from the black vault, watching hideously like an insane eye which strives to convey some message, yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey.''

h.p.lovecraft, polaris.

et in arkham ego

'' he was in the changeless legend haunted city of arkham, with its clustering gambrel roofs that sway and sag over attics where witches hid from the king's men in the dark olden days of the province ...


'' nor was any spot in that city more steeped in macabre memory than the gable room which harboured him--for it was this house and this room which likewise had harboured old keziah mason, ... she had told judge hathorne of lines and curves that could be made to point out directions leading through walls of space to other spaces beyond, ... then she had drawn those devices on the walls of her cell and vanished ...


'' old keziah he reflected might have had excellent reasons for living in a room with peculiar angles for was it not through certain angles that she claimed to have gone outside the boundaries of the world of space as we know it? ... he knew his room was in the old witch house ... that, indeed was why he had taken it ...


'' gilman's room was of good size but queerly irregular shape the north was standing perceptibly inward from the outer to the inner end, while the low ceiling slanted gently downward in the same direction ... there was no access--to the space which must of existed between the slanting wall and straight outer wall on the houses north side, ...


'' the curious angles of gilmans room had been having a strange, almost hypnotic effect on him ... he had found himself staring more and more intently at the corner where the down-slanting cieling met the inward-slanting wall ... his absorption in the irregular walls and cieling of this room increased, for he began to read into the odd angles a mathematical signifigance. ''

h.p.lovecraft, dreams in the witch house.

i: a book by john modrow containing some cautionary advice on staring too intently at the cracks in the cieling, peeling paint, and strange angles of your room.
ii:witch house k in sapporo by sekkei-sha
ii: witch house in argentina.

terra-nova

'' the great war was then at its very beginning ... it was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad pacific that the packet of which i was supercargo fell a victem to the german sea raider ... five days after we were taken i managed to escape alone in a small boat ...

'' when i fanally found myself adrift and free, i had but little idea of my surroundings ... i drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land ...

'' the change happened whilst i slept. its details i shall never know for my slumber, though troubled and dream infested, was continuous. when at last i awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as i could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away ...

'' as i crawled into the stranded boat i realised that ... through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface ... so great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me that i could not detect the faintest noise of the surging of the ocean, strain my ears as i might. i remember little. i believe i sang a great deal and laughed oddly when i was unable to sing ...

'' when i came out of the shadow i was in a san francisco hospital; ... of any land upheaval in the pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; ... nor did i deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which i knew they could not believe ... often i ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm--a mere freak of fever as i lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the german man-of-war. '' h.p.lovecraft, dagon.

i: new islands at the energy collective, via dailygrail

nameless muse

'' wearied with the commonplaces of a prosaic world, ... st.john and i had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movment which promised respite from our devestating ennui ... which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear i mention with shame and timidity--that hideous extremity of human outrage, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing ...

'' our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled an universe of terror and decay to excite our jaded sensibilities ... it was a secret room, far, far underground; around the walls of this repellant chamber were cases of antique mummies ... niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution ...

'' statues and paintings there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by st.john and myself. a locked portfolio bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnamable drawings which it was rumoured goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge ... whilst in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity ...

'' it is of this loot in particular that i must not speak ...thank god i had the courage to destroy it long before i thought of destroying myself.'' h.p.lovecraft, the hound.

deoxyriboshoggothic acid

'' it was under the sea ... that they first created earth life ... certain multicellular protoplasmic masses ... capable of molding their tissues into all sorts of temporary organs ... these viscous masses were without doubt what abdul alhazred whispered about as the "shoggoths" in his frightful necronomicon ... they were normally shapeless entities composed of a vicous jelly which looked like an aggultination of bubbles, and each averaged about fifteen feet in diameter when a sphere ...

'' they seem to have become peculiarly intractable toward the middle of the permian age ... when a veritable war of resubjugation was waged upon them ... and in the end had achieved a complete victory ... though durihg the rebellion the shoggoths had shown an ability to live out of water this transition was not encouraged ... but the shoggoths of the sea, reproducing by fission and aquiring a dangerous degree of accidental intelligence, presented a formidible problem. ''

h.p.lovecraft, at the mountains of madness.


i: shoggoth fetish art via notcothulhu.
ii: shoggoth experiments at notcothulhu.
iii: shoggoth war maneuvers at artcom.de, via notcothulhu.

who or what was my great-great-great-grandfather

'' one shall bee in years to come that shal looke backe and use what saltes or stuff for saltes you shal leave him. job xiv,xiv ...

'' this matter of the portrait interested him, particularly, since he would have given much to know just what joseph curwen looked like ... in three days he returned with an artist of long experiance, mr. walter dwight, ... and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once ... as day by day the work of restoration progressed charles ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion, ...

'' the subject was a spare, well shaped man ... a thin, calm undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar; ... and to confront the bewildered charles dexter ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather... ... ...

'' somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the features of joseph curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel ... he stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resembalance ... cosmo alexander, he decided was a painter worthy of the scotland that produced raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustious pupil gilbert stuart. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the case of charles dexter ward.

''job 14,14-if a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will i wait , till my change come,''

pleasure in horror

'' searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. for them are the catacombs of ptolemais, ... the scattered stones of forgotten cities in asia ... and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands ...



'' but the true epicure in the terrible ... esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods new england. most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses remote from travelled ways, ... two hundred years and more they have leaned or squatted there, ...

'' they are almost hidden now in lawless luxuriances of green and guardian shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still stare ... silent, sleepy, staring houses ... sometimes one feels it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must dream often. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the picture in the house.

i: scattered stones of forgotten estates of the hudson valley.

rumours of shantak-birds

''carter had taken passage on their dark ship, telling them that he was an old onyx miner and wishful to work in their quarries ... on later days they talked of the quarries in which carter said he was going to work ... there was an unused quarry greater than all the rest; ... but it was thought best not to trouble that quarry, ... so it was left all alone in the twilight with only the raven and the rumoured shantak-bird to brood on its immensities ...

i: shantak skull with veil.



''and they whispered that the rumoured shantak-birds are no wholesome thing it being indeed best that no man has ever truly seen one ... once in a while a raven would croak far overhead and now and then a flapping behind some vast rock would make him think uncomfortably of the rumoured shantak-bird ... huge ravens flapped and croaked and vague whirrings in the unseen depths told of bats or urhags or less mentionable presences haunting the endless blackness ...

i: shantak skull and eggs.


''they were not birds or bats known elsewhere on earth or in dreamland, for they were larger than elephants and had heads like a horse's. carter knew that they must be the shantak-birds of ill rumour, ... a noxious horde of leering shantaks to whose wings still clung the rime and nitre of the nether pits ... fabulous and hippocephalic winged nightmares that pressed around in great unholy circles,''

i: shantak cultist.


h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

wish you were here...

'' along the shore the cloud waves break, the twin suns sink behind the lake, the shadows lengthen in carcosa.

'' strange is the night where black stars rise, and strange moons circle through the skies but stranger still is lost carcosa.

'' songs that the hyades shall sing, where flap the tatters of the king, must die unheard in dim carcosa.

'' song of my soul, my voice is dead; die thou, unsung, as tears unshed shall dry and die in lost carcosa. ''

r.w.chambers, the king in yellow.

dear baffling diary

''an almost interminable manuscript in strange characters, written in a huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the spacing and the variations in ink and penmanship, presented a baffling puzzle to those who found it on the old bureau which served as its owner's desk.

''after a week of debate it was sent to miskatonic university, together with the deceased's collection of strange books, for study and possible translation; but even the best linguists soon saw that it was not likely to be unriddled with ease ...

''the curious manuscript record or diary of wilbur whatley, delivered to miskatonic university for translation, had caused much worry and bafflement among the experts on languages both ancient and modern, being absolutely unknown to any available authority. the final conclusion of the linguists was that the text represented an artificial alphabet, though none of the usual methods of cryptographic solution seemed to furnish any clue ...

''the old ledger was at length given wholly in to the charge of dr.armitage, both beacause of his peculiar interest in the whatley matter, and because of his wide linguistic learning and skill in the mystical formulae of antiquity and the middle ages.'' h.p.lovecraft, the dunwich horror.

innsmouth bijou

''in the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design which had apparently been worn around the sleepers neck. it was the oddly conventionalised figure of a crouching winged hound, or sphinx with a semi canine face, ... around the base was an inscription in characters which neither st.john nor i could identify; and on the bottom like a maker's seal was graven a grotesque and formidable skull ... we recognized it as the thing hinted at in the forbidden necronomicon of the mad arab abdul alhazred;'' h.p.lovecraft, the hound.

boreal charm

''slumber watcher till the spheres six and twenty thousand years have revolv'd and i return to the spot where now i burn. other stars anon shall rise to the axis of the skies; stars that soothe and stars that bless with sweet forgetfulness: only when my round is o'er shall the past disturb thy door.''

h.p.lovecraft, polaris.

who or what was my great-great-grand mother ?

''one night i had a frightful dream in which i met my grandmother under the sea... she had changed-as those who take to the water change-this was to be my realm, too-i could not escape it. i would never die, but would live with those who had lived since before man ever walked the earth.''


h.p.lovecraft, the shadow over innsmouth.

the onyx zone

''yet who shall declare the dark theme a positive handicap? radiant with beauty, the cup of the ptolemies was carven of onyx.''

i: dark onyx set in silver

h.p.lovecraft, supernatural horror in literature.