Howard Phillips Lovecraft born in Rhode Island. Born on August 20, 1890. Died tragically, at the age of 46 on March 15, 1937, s victim of cancer of the intestine and Bright's Disease. Known as the "Father of Gothic Horror" (Movies: In The Mouth of Madness, and The Dunwhich Horror)
In the same year that Lovecraft found print in the pages of Weird Tales, another gentlemen was seeing his name in print; but in the British tabloid press.
Edward Alexander Crowley Born in England. On October 12, 1875. The Name and Number by which he would become famous for was "The Beast 666," His mother was the first one to call him that.
Believed to be the incarnation of God, an Ancient One, the Aeon of Horus, displacing the old age of Osiris. In 1904, he had received a message, from what Lovecraft might have called "out of space", that contained the formula for a New World Order, a new system of philosophy, science, art and religion, but this New Order had to begin with the fundamental part, and common denominator, of all four: Magick.
The Mythos and the Magick Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos was meant for entertainment, which Lovecraft stated that the Necronomicon was not real. But Scholars, of course, are able to find higher, ulterior motives in Lovecraft's writings, as can be done with any manifestation of Art.
Lovecraft depicted a kind of Christian Myth of the struggle between opposing forces of Light and Darkness, good and evil. This religion is older than Christianity. The Ancient religions of the world, back then most of their gods and goddesses were of reptillian nature, or atleast the Ancient Ones are depicted as reptiles; scaly, slimy, fish-like.
History This religion stems from the Sumerians, maybe even earlier then Sumer. It is read in the Bible that Abram, later known as Abraham, came from the City of Ur. A city found in Sumeria, the land that is now Iraq. By that time Abram lived in Sumer, Ur was already a known city-state.
There are two "sets" of gods in the mythos: the Elder Gods, about whom not much is revealed, save that they are a stellar Race that occasionally comes to the rescue of man, and which corresponds to the Christian "Light"; and the Ancient Ones, about which much is told, sometimes in greatl detail, who correspond to "Darkness". These latter are the Evil Gods who wish nothing but ill for the Race of Man, and who constantly strive to break into our world through a Gate or Door that leads from the Outside, In. (Stargate)
There are certain people, among us, who are devotees of the Ancient Ones, and who try to open the Gate, so that this evidently repulsive organization may once again rule the Earth. Cheif among these is Cthulhu, typified as a Sea Monster, dwelling in the Great Deep, a sort of primeval Ocean. There is also Azathoth, the blind idiot god of Chaos, Yog Sothot, Azathoth's partner in Chaos, Shub Niggurath, the "goat with a thousand young", and others.
The Necronomicon is, according to Lovecraft's tales, a volume written in Damascus in the Eighth Century, A.D., by a person called the "Mad Arab", Abdul Alhazred. This book, according to the Mythos, contains the formulae for evoking incredible things into visible appearance, beings and monsters which dwell in the Abyss, and Outer Space, of the human psyche.
Books to look out for: Book of Power by Arab magician Abdul-Kadir (see: The Secret Lore of Magic by Shah); The Keys of Solomon, and The Magus by Barrett.
These were the sorcerer's handbooks, and generally not meant for the untrained magician. " The Book of the Black Earth" "The Book of the Worm".
Crowley: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law"
The actual meaning of thids phrase has taken volumes to explain, but roughly it concerns the uniting of the conscious self with the unconscious Self, a process of individuation which culminates in a rite called "Knownledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel"; the Angel signifying the pure, evolved Self.
Yet, there are many terrors on the Way to the Self, and an Abyss to cross before victory can be declared. Demons, vampires, psychic leeches, ghastly forms accost the aspiring magicing from every angle, from every quarter, around the circumference of the magicak circlem and they must be destroyed lest they devour the magician himself. When Crowley professed to have passed the obstacles, and crossed the Abyss of Knowledge, and found his true Self, he found it was identical with the Beast of the Book of Revelation, 666, whom Christianity considers to represent the Devil. Indeed, Crowley had nothing but admiration for the Shaitan (Satan) of the so-called "devil-worshipping" cult of the Yezidis of Mesopotamia, knowledge of which led him to declare the lines that open this introduction. For he saw that the Yezidis possess a Great Secret and a Great Tradition that extends far back into time, beyond the origin of the Sun cults of Osiris, Mithra and Christ; even before the formation of the Judaic religion, and the Hebrew tongue. Crowley harkened back to a time before the Moon was worshipped, to the "Shadow Out of Time"; and in this, whethere he realized it as such or not, he had heard the "Call of Cthulhu".
Sumeria That a reclusive author of short stories who lived in a quiet neighborhood in New England, and the manic, infamous Master Magician who called the world his home, should have somehow met in the sandy wastes of some forgotten civilization seems incredible. That they should both have become Prophets and Forerunners of a New Aeon of Man's history is equally, if not more, unbelievable. Yet, with H. P. Lovecraft and Aleister Crowley, the unbelievable was a commonplace of life. These two men, both acclaimed as geniuses by their followers and admirers, and who never actually met, stretched their legs across the world, and in the Seven League Boots of the mind they did meet, and on common soil.... Sumeria.
Sumeria is the name given to a once flourshing civilization in what is now known as Iraq, in the area called by the Greeks "Mesopotamia" snf by the Arabs as simply, "The Island" for it existed between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, which run down from the mountains to the Persian Gulf. This is the site of the fabled city of Babylon, as well as of Ur of the Chaldees and Kish, with Nineveh far to the north. Each of the seven principle cities of Sumeria was ruled by a diiferent deity, who was worshipped in the strange, non-Semitic language of the Sumerians; a language which has been closley allied to that of the Aryan race, having infact many worfs idenitcal to that of Sanskrit (and it is said, to Chinese!)
For no one knows where the Sumerians came from, and they vanished just as mysteriously as they appeared, after the Assyrian invasions which decimated their culture, yet providing the Assyrians with much of their mythology and religion; so much so that Sumerian became the official language of the state church, much as Latin is today of the Roman Catholic Church. They had a list of their kings before the Flood, which event they carefully chronicled, as did many another ancient civilizations around the world. It is believed that they had a sophisticated system of astronomy (and astrology) as well as an equally sophisticated religious rituale. Magick, as well as history, begins at Sumer for the Western World, for it is here, in the sand-buried cuneiform tablets that recorded an Age, that the first Creation Epic is found, the first exorcism, the first ritual invocations of planetary deities, the first dark summonings of evil powers, and, ironically, the first "burnings" of people the anthropologists call "Witches".
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