by Donald Tyson
(The Diary of Alonzo Typer)
The keeper of the North Point lighthouse at the mouth of Kingsport harbor, who boarded the White Ship that sailed out of the south, and was carried on a voyage past some of the fabled cities of the dreamlands. He stopped and lived in the land of Sona- Nyl, where there is neither time nor space, for "many aeons" before foolishly setting forth once more in the White Ship to seek the land of Cathuria, beyond the twin Basalt Pillars of the West. His dream galley was carried over the great cataract that forever falls off the edge of the world, and he regained awareness standing on the platform of his lighthouse, to find that no time had passed. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, it is mentioned that Randolph Carter talked to Elton about his dreamland experiences, although Elton is not named.
(The White Ship; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
A female witch who once lived in a farm cottage near Arkham, and whose name has become a part of local legend. She was noted for her potions.
(The Silver Key; Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
This native of Haverhill, Massachusetts, came to Arkham to attend Miskatonic University, where he studied higher mathematics and folklore, a curious combination of disciplines that perhaps would only make sense at this institution, with its world famous library of occult books. Gilman rebelled against the attempts by the witch, Keziah Mason, to dominate him. His heart was eaten out of his body by her familiar, Brown Jenkin.
(The Dreams in the Witch House)
In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward mention is made of "Hermes Trismegistus in Mesnard's edition," which is in the library of Joseph Curwen. In the story The Tree on the Hill, which Lovecraft co-wrote with Duane W. Rimel, Hermes Trismegistus is characterized as "the ancient Egyptian sorcerer." The German mystic Rudolf Yergler, author of the apocryphal text the Chronicle of Nath, is supposed in this story to have borrowed some of his lore from Hermes Trismegistus.
Hermes is a Greek god, but Hermes Trismegistus is Egyptian, and has been reckoned variously as a great sage, a demi-god born of a divine father and a mortal mother, and a full god, by those who place credence in his supposed existence. There is no proof that such a man ever lived. The Greek god Hermes was identified by the Greeks who ruled Egypt during the reign of the Ptolemies (305 BC-30 BC) with the Egyptian god Thoth. The two names are sometimes combined in the form Thoth-Hermes. "Trismegistus" means "thrice great" in Greek, and is a title of honor.
Many books of religion and philosophy were attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, but even more numerous books of ritual magic. Those that survive have been conjecturally dated to the second or third century, and hence are later than Hermes Trismegistus himself, the earliest surviving mention of whom may be 172 BC. Most of these Hermetic books have been lost to the past. The surviving books that concern philosophical matters are sometimes referred to as the Corpus Hermetica. Hermes Trismegistus was especially associated with the art of alchemy, which is Egyptian in its origins. Indeed, he was credited with its invention.
(The Case of Charles Dexter Ward; The Tree on the Hill)
This seventeenth-century glass and mirror maker, born in 1612, a native of Copenhagen, was also a Luciferian and a witch. Using an existing "ancient glass" with extraordinary properties which he fused into a much larger glass, he devised a chiffonier mirror that had the power to absorb and trap human beings in the fourth dimension, where they did not age or die. The small ancient mirror had spiral whorls or ripples on its surface that could only be viewed at certain angles, but which were part of its function as a dimensional portal. Holm entered the mirror in 1687, hoping to achieve eternal life, and, from time to time over the course of the following two centuries, drew others into his curiously inverted mirror world as companions. His shadow existence was ended when a private school tutor in Connecticut named Canevin used a glass-cutting tool to remove the small, ancient, oval piece of glass from the larger sheet to which it had been bonded by Holm.
(The Trap)
The stage magician and escape artist Harry Houdini (1874-1926), born Ehrich Weiss in Budapest, Hungary, of Jewish parents, immigrated with his family to the United States at age four years. From early childhood he was fascinated with stage magic. He took the name Harry Houdini, basing it on the name of the famous French magician Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, and began to perform escapes along with his stage illusions in the 1890s, first with the help of his brother Dash, and later with his new wife, Bess, whom he married in 1893. When he realized the escapes were impressing the audiences more than his magic tricks, he dropped the magic and became an escape artist, and his legend was born.
Houdini commissioned Lovecraft to ghostwrite several works for him as a way of publicizing his name. The most important of these is the story Imprisoned With the Pharaohs, published in the May-June-July 1924 issue of Weird Tales, and featured on the cover of that magazine. Naturally an escape from bonds figures prominently in the story, which is quite readable, and very much a part of Lovecraft's mythos. Lovecraft put Houdini into the story as its hero, in an adventure in Egypt that takes Houdini under the Pyramids, where he witnesses unspeakable rites of sacrifice by ghouls in adoration of an enormous and deathless monster that in ancient times was the living model for the original Sphinx, before the head of the giant statue was recarved into the image of the pharaoh Khephren. So vast is the monster that at first Houdini is able to see only its great hairy paw as it reaches through an opening for its charnel sacrifices, although at the end of the story he intimates that he has seen its face as well.
Houdini died due to miscommunication. While about to give a performance in Montreal, Canada, a McGill University student in the crowd asked him if it was true that Houdini could withstand any punch to his abdomen, and if so, could he try hitting the performer? Houdini had not been paying attention to the fan, and agreed absently. The repeated forceful blows the student rained down before Houdini could prepare himself ruptured his appendix. Instead of having it attended to immediately, Houdini went on with his performance that night, and continued to travel and perform. The delay in treatment resulted in his death more than a week later, on the afternoon of Halloween.
At the time of his death, Houdini had been corresponding with Lovecraft regarding a book on which they intended to collaborate, along with the writer C. M. Eddy Jr., which was to be entitled The Cancer of Superstition. Lovecraft prepared a detailed outline of the work, which is extant, and Barlow actually began the writing and completed three chapters, but Houdini's widow cancelled the project-perhaps because she was herself more inclined to believe in the reality of spiritualist phenomena than her skeptical late husband.
(Imprisoned with the Pharaohs)
High priest of the hundred priests of the cult of the demon-god Ghatanothoa, in the kingdom of K'naa on the continent of Mu. According to the Unspeakable Cults of Von Junzt, he flourished in 173,148 BC.
(Out of the Aeons)
He doused himself with oil and set himself on fire out on the moor on August 3, 1913, after learning the truth about his family bloodline-his great-great-great grandfather, Sir Wade Jermyn, had taken as his wife the princess of a race of hybrid white apes inhabiting the ruins of a great stone city in the Congo. Arthur Jermyn could not bear the thought of his tainted blood.
(Facts Concerning the Late ArthurJermyn and His Family)
English explorer of Africa and great-great-great grandfather to Arthur Jermyn, he was one of the earliest Europeans to see the Congo, and wrote a book about its tribes, animals, and antiquities. He often spoke of the stone ruins of a forgotten city in the jungle, with treasure vaults and catacombs beneath. The lost city was said by the Onga tribe to be inhabited by strange hybrid creatures resembling white apes. On his second African expedition he brought back with him to England a wife, who was never seen by others, not even the house servants, but was always kept in seclusion. She bore him one son. On his third and last African expedition he returned her to the Congo and left her there. In 1765 he was placed into a madhouse at
Huntingdon, where he died three years later.
(Facts Concerning the Late ArthurJermyn and His Family)
Bearded priest of the earthly gods. In company with his fellow bearded priest, Nasht, he presides in a cavern temple with a pillar of flame that lies in the dreamlands, not far from the gates of the waking world. Randolph Carter invoked the gods by means of a sacrifice within this temple, when he was about to set forth on his epic quest to find Kadath, but they failed to respond to his invocation. The priests attempted to dissuade Carter from his purpose, pointing out that the gods had already indicated their disapproval of his intention, but he ignored their warning. The cavern of flame is reached by a descent down a stone stair of seventy steps while in a state of light slumber.
(The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
The high-priest of Nath, remembered in the Chronicle of Nath by the German mystic Rudolf Yergler. He kept safe in the temple the amber gem that alone could show the true form of the Shadow that comes in the Year of the Black Goat to feed on the souls of men. Yergler wrote that the Gem was lost when a hero of Nath, Phrenes, attempted to use it to drive away the Shadow and was never heard from again.
(The Tree on the Hill)
This pharaoh of Egypt was associated with the renovation of the Sphinx. He had a dream about the Sphinx in which it was revealed to him that if he cleared away the sand from around the statue, and repaired the damage that had occurred to it over time, he would have a prosperous reign. He was said to have remodeled the face of the Sphinx to resemble his own face. Khephren's pyramid is the second in size of the three large pyramids on the Giza Plateau. It is easily recognizable, because it is the only pyramid to have retained part of its original outer covering of white stone, which can be seen around its apex.
In Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, ghostwritten for the escape artist Harry Houdini in 1924, Lovecraft wrote: "The whispers of Arabs are very wild, and cannot be relied upon. They even hint that old Khephren-he of the Sphinx, the Second Pyramid and the yawning gateway temple-lives far underground wedded to the ghoul-queen Nitokris and ruling over the mummies that are neither of man nor of beast."
(Imprisoned with the Pharaohs)
A high priest of Atlantis. The name is derived from the name of Lovecraft's friend, fellow fantasy writer Clark Ashton Smith.
(The Whisperer in Darkness)
An Egyptian of the 14th Dynasty who knew the "hideous secret of Nyarlathotep," which Lovecraft does not reveal to his readers. It may be surmised that Khephnes was either a priest or a magician of Egypt. The secret may have involved the Egyptian Sphinx.
(The Shadow Out of Time)
The king of the dreamland seaport of Celephais, which lies in the valley of OothNargai beyond the Tanarian Hills, on the shores of the Cerenerian Sea. In waking life Kuranes had been a native of Cornwall and a pauper living in a garret in London. He dreamed the city of Celephais into existence in the dreamlands. Randolph Carter had known this king in waking life. Kuranes had once ventured out beyond the stars into the ultimate void, and was said to be the only person who had ever returned sane from this perilous journey. For six months of the year Kuranes rules Celephais, and for the other half of the year he rules the sky city of Serannian, which is built of pink marble on the low-hanging clouds "where the west wind flows into the sky." The trading galleys from Celephais sail off the edge of the Cerenerian Sea and into the clouds that touch the western horizon, and in this way reach Serannian.
(Celephais; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
An alchemist of the thirteenth century, who with the help of his father, the alchemist and sorcerer Michel Mauvais, succeeded in discovering the elixir of eternal life. When his father was unjustly killed by Henri, the Count de C , Charles pronounced a terrible curse against all of the count's male descendants, that they should live no longer than the Count de C himself, and then he killed the count with a thrown vial of poison, and vanished before he could be apprehended. Over the following six centuries he continued to carry out his curse against the descendants of the count, who met with mysterious deaths at age thirty-two, until he was killed with fire by Antoine, last of the Counts de C , in the early nineteenth century.
His body after six centuries was still vigorous, his hair and wild beard jet black in color. The cheeks beneath his high forehead were sunken and lined with wrinkles, and his black eyes glared forth as though from two dark pits. He spoke with a rumbling but hollow voice in a debased Latin of the Middle Ages, and wore a skullcap and dark medieval tunic. Only the stoop in his back, and his claw-like, gnarled hands, so unnaturally bloodless and white, betrayed his centuries of age.
The quest for the elixir of eternal life that cured all diseases and banished death was one of two preoccupations of medieval alchemists, the other being the search for the philosopher's stone that would transform base metals into gold. Sometimes the stone was held to possess both occult virtues-touching it to lead or iron would transform the thing touched into pure gold, and dropping the stone into a glass of water and drinking the water cured disease and prolonged life.
(The Alchemist)
The French writer and occultist Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-75) is widely regarded as the foremost exponent of the modern revival of ceremonial magic in Europe. He wrote numerous influential books on the practice of magic, gave private lessons in magic for large sums of money, and had a great influence on the teachings of French occultists of his century, as well as on the system of magic formulated by S. L. MacGregor Mathers and W. Wynn Westcott for the English occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Aleister Crowley, a member of the Golden Dawn in his youth, proclaimed himself to be a reincarnation of Levi, such was his admiration for the occultist.
Lovecraft mentioned Levi in connection with a ritual invocation in Latin beginning with the words "Per Adonai Eloim" that is incanted by Charles Dexter Ward for necromantic purposes, stating through his narrator, "its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of Eliphas Levi, that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond." For more on this incantation, refer to the Thirteenth Gate of this book.
(The Case of Charles Dexter Ward)
Captain Obed Marsh was a Yankee trader in the South Seas who made his homeport in the New England coastal fishing town of Innsmouth. He flourished in the early decades of the nineteenth century, and was a leading figure in Innsmouth. With three trading ships, he must have been the most prosperous resident of the town, which had fallen on hard times following the War of 1812. His time spent among the savage tribes on the islands of the Pacific made him contemptuous of Christian piety. He told his fellow townsfolk that the gods of the islanders were superior to the Christian God, because they came when they were called, answered prayers, and gave good fishing in return for sacrifices.
On an island east of Othaheite, Marsh found a tribe of Kanaky natives that possessed a hoard of strange gold jewelry carved with monstrous figures described by Zadok Allen, a character in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, as "fish-like frogs or frog-like fishes." The tribe always had an abundance of fish in their nets, even when the natives on neighboring islands were starving. The chief of the tribe revealed to the Yankee trader the secret of the tribe's success-a pact they had formed with a race of aquatic humanoids known as the Deep Ones. Lovecraft intimated through Zadok Allen that these beings were the origin for all the legends about mermaids that are encountered throughout history.
The Deep Ones have their own cities on the floor of the ocean. When some of their dwellings were heaved up to the surface on an emerging island, carrying the Deeps Ones along with them, the Kanakys came into communication with the aquatic race and began to sacrifice to them and trade with them. The sacrifices consisted of children given over to the Deep Ones twice a year, on May-Eve and Halloween. Obed Marsh was not overly concerned about what became of the sacrifices after they were given to the Deep Ones. He was more occupied with the gifts of gold a
nd fish offered to the islanders as payment.
The Deep Ones enjoyed mating with human beings, being at root of similar genetic structure. The hybrids born of such couplings were completely human in appearance when young, but as they matured and grew old, they became similar to the frog-like Deep Ones, and developed gills in their necks that allowed them to live under the sea. They were also eternal, and would never die unless by some physical accident causing great injury to their bodies. At about age seventy, the transformation progressed to such an extent that the hybrids left life on the land entirely and took up residence beneath the waves.
Here we see one of Lovecraft's most prevalent themes, the transformation of human beings from an outwardly normal condition into something strange and monstrous as a result of some taint in their blood. It may have arisen out of Lovecraft's own fear of insanity. Both his father and mother were committed to an insane asylum, and Lovecraft could never shake off the suspicion that he himself was not wholly sound of mind, not truly normal beneath the skin.
Marsh, being an enterprising Yankee who feared neither God nor the Devil, decided to bring the religion of the Deep Ones to Innsmouth, as a way of revitalizing the commerce and industry of the town, and making himself rich. From the chief of the tribe Marsh received a device made of lead that, when let down into the water accompanied by certain prayers, would summon the Deep ones anywhere in the oceans of the world that they had one of their underwater cities. He held off from using it until 1838, when the entire tribe of islanders was wiped out by a neighboring tribe. This cut off his access to gold for trade, and he was forced to summon the Deep Ones himself and begin dealing with them directly.