star bright star right

'' they worshipped so they said the great old ones who lived ages before there where any man, and who came to the young world out of the sky. those old ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea ... mankind was not absolutely alone among the conscious things of earth, for shapes came out of the dark to visit the faithful few. but these were not the great old ones. no man had ever seen the old ones. ...

'' there had been aeons when other things ruled on the earth, ... they all died vast epochs of time before man came,but there were arts which could revive them when the stars come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity ... when the stars were right, they could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, they could not live. but although they no longer lived, they would never really die. they all lay in stone houses in their great city of r'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for them. ...

'' in the elder time chosen men had talked with the entombed old ones in dreams, but had then something had happened. the great stone city r'leyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, had sunk beneath the waves; ... but memory never died, and high-priests said that the city would rise again when the stars were right. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the call of cthulhu.

astro-star lamp at notcothulhu.

introduction to ruin

[the ruins of toronto.]

''the approach to ruins in this highly selective book will be seen to be that of a pleasurist. it is not architectural or archaeological, nor in any way expert, its aim however incoherently kept in view and inadequately achieved, is to explore the various kinds of pleasure given to various peoples at various epochs by the spectacle of ruined buildings. ...

''when did it consciously begin, this delight in decayed or wrecked buildings? very early, it seems. since down the ages men have meditated before ruins, rhapsodized before them, mourned pleasurably over their ruination, ...

''more intellectual than any of these emotions are those two learned, noble and inquisitive pleasures, archaeology and antiquarianism, which have inspired so much eager research, such stalwart, patient and prolonged investigation, such ingenious and erroneous deductions and reconstructions, and have been rewarded by those exquisite thrills of triumph and discovery which must be as exciting as finding a new land. these are no doubt the highest and purest of ruin pleasures, but are reserved for the few. ...

''whatever its complex elements, the pleasure felt by most of us in good ruins is great. ... this broken beauty is all we have of that ancient magnificence, we cherish it like the extant fragment of some lost and noble poem. ...

''this book is a random excursion into the fantastic world that the idioti [including time, their chief] have made and left, a shattered heritage, for us to deplore and to admire ... one must select for contemplation some phase in a ruins devious career, it matters little which, and consider the human reaction to this; or merely enjoy one's own. ... for out of this extremely ruinous world [in which there are, above and under the earth, far more ruined than unruined buildings], i have only had space to select a few ruinous objects, a ruin here and a ruin there, to illustrate the human attitude towards them, and the odds are against any one's finding here more than a few of their own favorite ruins. ...

''still, it may be held that this book, whatever it lacks, does not suffer from brevity, so perhaps it is for the best.''

rose macaulay, pleasure of ruins.

skull of zenig

''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

lovecraft's townscape

''i have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the rue d'auseil. ... but despite all i have done, it remains a humiliating fact that i cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university i heard the music ... that my memory is broken, i do not wonder, for my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the rue d'auseil, ...

''the rue d'auseil lay across a dark river bordered by precipitous brick blear windowed warehouses and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone. ... beyond the bridge were narrow cobbled streets with rails; and then came the ascent, at first gradual, but incredibly steep as the rue d'auseil was reached. ... i have never seen another street as narrow and steep as the rue d'auseil, it was almost a cliff, closed to all vehicles, consisting in several places of flights of steps and ending at the top in a lofty ivied wall. ... the houses were tall, peaked roofed, incredibly old, and crazily leaning backward, forward, and sidewise ... there were a few overhead bridges from house to house across the street ...

''i do not know how i came to live on such a street, but i was not myself when i moved there ... i had been living in many poor places, always evicted for want of money; until at last i came upon that tottering house in the rue d'auseil ... it was the third house from the top of the street, and by far the tallest of them all. my room was on the fifth story; the only inhabited room there since the house was almost empty. on the night i arrived i heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead ...

''i grew bold enough to climb the last creaking staircase to the peaked garret. there in the narrow hall, outside the bolted door with the covered keyhole, i often heard sounds which filled me with an indefinable dread--the dread of vague wonder and brooding mystery. ... it was not that the sounds were hideous, for they were not; but that they held vibrations suggesting nothing on this globe of earth, and at intervals they assumed a symphonic quality which i could hardly conceive as produced by one player ... all these are terrible impressions that linger with me, ... despite my most careful searches and investigations, i have never since been able to find the rue d'auseil. but i am not wholly sorry .''

h.p.lovecraft, the music of erich zann.

the music of stephen dickman.

comparative physiology

''they seemed to be enormous, iridescent cones about ten feet high and ten feet wide at the base, and made up of some ridgy, scaly, semi-elastic matter. from their apexes projected four flexible, cylindrical members, each a foot thick, and of a ridgy substance like that of the cones them selves. these members were sometimes contracted almost to nothing, and sometimes extended to any distance up to about ten feet.

''terminating two of them were enormous claws or nippers. on the end of a third were four red, trumpet like appendages. the fourth terminated in an irregular yellowish-globe some two feet in diameter and having three great dark eyes ranged along its central circumference. surmounting this head were four slender gray stalks bearing flower-like appendages, whilst from its nether side dangled eight greenish antennae or tentacles.

''the great base of the central cone was fringed with a rubbery, gray substance which moved the whole entity through expansion and contraction. ... the huge nippers were used in carrying books and in conversation--speech consisting of a kind of clicking. ... they commonly carried their head and its supporting members at the level of the cone top, though it was frequently raised or lowered. ... the other three great members tended to rest downward at the sides of the cone, contracted to above five feet each, when not in use. ...

''cell action was of an unique sort almost precluding fatique, and wholly eliminating the need of sleep. nourishment, assimilated through the red trumpet like appendages on one of the great flexible limbs was always semifluid and in many aspects wholly unlike the food of existing animals. the beings had but two of the senses which we recognize--sight and hearing, the latter accomplished through the flower-like appendages on the gray stalks above their heads. ...

''their three eyes were so situated as to give them a range of vision wider than the normal. their blood was a sort of deep-greenish ichor of great thickness. they had no sex, but reproduced through seeds or spores which clustered on their bases and could be developed only under water. great, shallow tanks were used for the growth of their young--which were, however, reared only in small numbers on account of the longevity of individuals--four or five thousand years being the common life span.''

h.p.lovecraft, the shadow out of space.

the filigree 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.

filigree skull at notcothulhu

body of mythos

''trembling in waves that golden whisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. ... it was a song, but not the song of any voice. night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and nyarlathotep and the other gods were born. ''

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


''for three thousand years mystics have spoken about the "music of the spheres," a sound that transcends mundane sound, ... both the veda and maitriya upansad of the ancient hindus, who were indo europeans, tell of how the universe was created by sabda brahman, the "eternal sound" that created everything--and still inheres in everything--but is itself uncreated: "begotten, not made," ''

j. nigro sansonese, the body of myth.