starry medical wisdom

''tracing the origin and spread of a symbol is always a fascinating and often a worthwhile pursuit. ... a curious medical symbol which, as such, is now completely forgotten, notably the pentagram, the five-pointed star drawn in an unbroken line, is the subject of the present study.

''the visitor to "het catharina-gasthuis" municipal museum [formerly a hospital and called "cathrijne-gasthuys"] in the dutch city of gouda will come upon the chamber of the surgeons guild. on entering this chamber, he or she will be struck by the multiplicity of pentagrams--five-pointed stars. if we ask ourselves why the pentagram should be present in the gouda surgeons' guildhall and what this sign signifies, the answer is not far to seek. ...

''a curious passage by the greek author lucian: "pro lapsus inter salutandum" will enlighten any reader who wonders how the pentagram could eventually also come to serve as a medical symbol in the west, notably in a little old dutch town like gouda. ... it is safe to assume however, that, for astrological reasons, the five pointed star [possibly the precursor of the geometrical pentagram] possessed some apotropaic value very much earlier in babylon--that same babylon where pythagoras received his scientific schooling. this babylonian five-pointed star represented a magic charm against evil influence. ...

''paracelsus pointed out that, being a sign of the microcosm, the pentagram played a very important part in the practice of magic. ... i referred earlier to the association of the pentagram with ancient astrology and to the habit of placing the sign of the five planets between the points of the pentalpha. ... on what was called a "blood letting mannikin" derived in its turn from the zodiacal mannikin, the twelve parts of the body were connected with the twelve signs of the zodiac controlling these parts of the body. ...

''it being assumed that a planet could strengthen or weaken the sphere of influence of a certain constellation, it was necessary to know the exact position of the planets with respect to the zodiac before undertaking a venesection; ... by means of the signs of the zodiac, the mannikin indicates the most propitious part of the body for blood letting at any moment. ...

''since the 16th century however the pentagram has fallen into complete oblivion as a medical symbol. but it still lives on as an apotropaic talisman, though in most cases completely, or almost completely deprived of content.''

jan schouten, the pentagram as a medical symbol: an iconological study.

body of mythos

''atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer no man to tell that he hath looked upon them. lesser peaks they once inhabited; but ever men form the plains would scale the slopes of rock and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only the last remain. sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still night the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play in the olden way on remembered slopes.

''in ulthar, which lies beyond the river skai, once dwelt an old man avid to behold the gods of earth; ... his name was barzai the wise, and the villagers tell of how he went up a mountain on the night of the strange eclipse. barzai knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comings and goings, and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemed half a god himself.

''he believed that his great secret knowledge of gods could shield him from their wrath, so resolved to go up the summit of high and rocky hatheg-kla on a night when he knew the gods would be there. ... the villagers of hateg-kla say it is ill to climb the hateg-kla at any time, and deadly to climb it by night when pale vapours hide the summit and the moon;

''but barzai heeded them not when he came from neighboring ulthar with the young priest atal, who was his disciple. ... many days they travelled and from afar saw lofty hateg-kla with his aureole of mournful mist. ... the way was rocky and made perilous by chasms, cliffs, and falling stones, ... for three days they climbed higher and higher toward the roof of the world; then they camped to wait for the clouding of the moon.

''for four nights no clouds came, and the moon shone down cold through the thin mournful mist around the silent pinnacle. then on the fifth night which was the night of the full moon, barzai saw some dense clouds far to the north, and stayed up with atal to watch them draw near.

''barzai was wise in the lore of earth's gods, and listened hard for certain sounds, but atal felt the chill of the vapours and the awe of the night, and feared much. and when barzai began to climb higher and beckon eagerly, it was long before atal would follow.

''then through the high mists he heard thte voice of barzai shouting wildly in delight: "i have heard the gods. i have heard earth's gods singing in revelry on hateg-kla! ... the wisdom of barzai hath made him greater than earth's gods and against his will their spells and barriers are as naught; barzai will behold the gods, the proud gods, the secret gods, the gods of earth who spurn the sight of man!"

''then he heard barzai's voice grow shrill and louder: "the other gods! the other gods! the gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth! ... look away ... go back ... do not see! do not see! the vengeance of the infnite abysses ... that cursed, that damnable pit ... merciful gods of earth, i am falling into the sky!"

''barzai the wise they never found, nor could the holy priest atal ever be persuaded to pray for his souls rerpose. ... and above the mists on hateg-kla earth's gods sometimes dance reminiscently for they know they are safe, and love to come from unknown kadath in ships of cloud and play in the olden way, as they did when earth was new and men not given to the climbing of inaccessible places.''

h.p.lovecraft, the other gods.


''one finds, for example very ancient ''magic'' practices that the yogis employed in order to influence and even to terrorize the gods. the phenomenology of this magic asceticism is archaic: silence, excessive torture, the ''desiccation of the body'' were among the means utilized not only by the yogis but also by the kings [mahabharata,115,24;119,7 and 34]. in order to make indra give ground, pandu remained standing on one foot for a whole day and thus he finally won samadhi [I,123,26].

''but this trance betrays no yogic content; it was rather a case of a hypnosis produced by physical means, and the relations between man and god remained on the level of magic. ... another passage extols the difficulties of these practices and draws attention to the danger that threatens him who fails. ''hard is the great road and few are those who travel it to the very end, but great is called the guilt of him who, once engaged on the path of yoga, abandons its continuation and retraces his steps.''

this is the well-known danger of all magic actions, which unleash forces capable of killing the magician if he is not strong enough to subjugate them by his will and channel them according to his desire.''

mircea eliade, patanjali and yoga; english by charles lam markmann

tomb sitting

''we were sitting on a delapitated seventeenth century tomb in the late afternoon of an autumn day at the old burying ground in arkham, and speculating about the unnamable. ... with this friend, joel manton, i had often languidly disputed. he was principle of the east high school, born and bred in boston and sharing new england's self-satisfied deafness to the delicate overtones of life ... especially did he object to my preoccupation with the mystical and the unexplained; for although believing in the super natural much more fully than i, he would not admit that it is sufficiently commonplace for literary treatment ... he believed himself justified in drawing an arbitrary line and ruling out of court all that cannot be experianced and understood by the average citizen. besides he was almost sure that nothing can be really "unnamable" it didnt sound sensible to him ...

''twilight had now approached, but neither of us felt any wish to cease speaking, manton seemed unimpressed by my arguments, and eager to refute them, having that confidence in his own opinions which doubtless caused his success as a teacher; whilst i was too sure of my ground to fear defeat. there in the dark, upon that riven tomb by the deserted house, we talked on about the "unnamable", and after my friend had finished his scoffing i told him of the awful evidence behind the story at which he had scoffed the most. ...

''i told him what i had found in an old diary kept between 1706 and 1723, unearthed among family papers not a mile from where we were sitting; that, and the certain reality of the scars on my ancestors chest and back which the diary described. i told him, too, of the fears of others in that region, and how they were whispered down for generations; ... and how no mythical madness came to the boy who in 1793 entered an abandoned house to examine certain traces suspected to be there ... it is all in that "ancestral diary" i found; all the hushed innuendoes and furtive tales of things with a blemished eye seen at windows in the night or in deserted meadows near the woods. something had caught my ancestor on a dark valley road. leaving him with marks of horns on his chest and of apelike claws on his back; and when they looked for prints in the trampled dust they found the mixed marks of split hooves and vaguely anthropoid paws. ...

''i suppose the thing, if it was a living thing, must have died. the memory had lingered hideously--all the more hideous because it was so secret. ... manton remained thoughtful as i said this; but gradually reverted to his analytical mood. he granted for the sake of argument that some unnatural monster had really existed but reminded me that even the most morbid perversion of nature need not be unnameable or scientifically indescribable.''

h.p.lovecraft, the unnamable.

skulls of zenig of aphorat

image from skulladay.

''you have come to see the great ones whom it is unlawful for men to see. ... when barzai the wise climbed hatheg-kla to see the greater ones dance and howl above the clouds in the moonlight he never returned. the other gods were there, and they did what was expected. zenig of aphorat sought to reach unknown kadath in the cold waste, and his skull is now set in a ring on the little finger of one whom i need not name."

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

furnishing hyperspace

image via notcothulhu.

''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.

cooking for ghouls

''the ghouls were in general respectful, even if one did attempt to pinch him while several others eyed his leanness speculatively.''

h.p.lovecraft, the dreamquest of unknown kadath.


''no i dont know what's become of pickman, and i dont like to guess. you might have surmized i had some inside information when i dropped him--and thats why i dont want to think where he's gone. i should think you'd have known i didn't drop pickman for the same silly reasons that fussy old women lik dr. reid or joe minot or rosworth did. morbid art dosn't shock me, and when a man has the genius pickman had i feel it an honour to know him, no matter what direction his work takes. boston never had a greater painter than richard upton pickman. i said it at first and i say it still, and i never sweerved an inch, either, when he showed that "ghoul feeding". that you remember, was when minot cut him.


''i remember your asking pickman yourself once, the year before you went away, wherever in thunder he got such ideas and visions. wasn't that a nasty laugh he gave you? it was partly because of that laugh reid dropped him. he said pickman repelled him more and more every day, and almost frightened him toward the last. but keep in mind that i didn't drop pickman for anything like this. on the contrary, my admiration for him kept growing; for that "ghoul feeding" was a tremendous achievement. as you know the club wouldn't exhibit it, and the museum of fine arts wouldnt accept it as a gift, and i can add nobody would buy it ...


''i got into the habit of calling on pickman quite often, especially after i began making notes for a monograph on weird art. probably it was his work which put the idea into my head, and anyhow, i found him a mine of data and suggestions when i came to develop it. he showed me all the paintings and drawings he had about; including some pen-and-ink sketches that would, i verily believe, have got him kicked out of the club if many of the members had seen them. now, eliiot, im what the man in the street would call fairly "hard boiled", but i'll confess that what i saw on the walls of that room gave me a bad turn. they were his pictures, you know--the ones he couldnt paint or even show in newbury street-- ...


''there was one thing called "the lesson"--heaven pity me, that i ever saw it! listen--can you fancy a squatting circle of nameless doglike things in a church yard teaching a small child how to feed like themselves? the price of a changeling i suppose--you know the old myth about how the weird people leave their spawn in cradles in exchange for the human babes they steal. pickman was showing what happens to those stolen babes--how they grow up--and no sooner had i wondered what he made of their own young as left with mankind in the form of changelings, than my eyes caught a picture embodying that very thought... it was their changeling--and in a spirit of supreme irony pickman had given the features a very perceptable resemblance to his own.


''richard upton pickman, the greatest artist i have ever known--and the foulest being that ever leaped the bounds of life into the pits of myth and madness. eliot--old reid was right. he wasn't strictly human. either he was born in strange shadow, or he'd found a way to unlock the forbidden gate. its all the same now for he's gone-back into the fabulous darkness he loved to haunt.''

h.p.lovecraft, pickman's model.