Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia Read online

  See Hodgkins, Arthur. (“The Dweller in the Tomb”, Carter (O); “Out of the Ages”, Carter.)

  BLAKE, ROBERT HARRISON. Milwaukee painter and weird fiction author. Due to difficulties in finding work, Blake turned to writing as a source of income. Though his works met with little commercial success at first, over time they began to gather acclaim, and Miskatonic University Press published the collection The Feaster from the Stars in 1928. Later, Blake took up painting as well, mainly depicting scenes of alien landscapes.

  In search of greater thrills for use in his fiction, Blake searched for forbidden books, discovering a copy of De Vermis Mysteriis. He made a journey to Providence so that a friend might translate the archaic Latin in which the book was written. During this visit, his friend’s house burned to the ground with its tenant trapped inside. Blake left Providence hastily following this incident.

  During the winter of 1935, Blake took up residence in an apartment on College Street in Providence. It was here that Blake completed many of his most famous stories. That spring and summer, however, Blake became increasingly obsessed with a deserted church on French Hill. He disclosed to friends that a series of strange events connected with this structure had befallen him; many consider these assertions to be pat of a tremendous hoax engineered at least partially by Blake himself. On August 8, 1935, Blake was found dead from electrical shock in his rooms following a thunderstorm. His writing is still quite popular, and the short story collections The Stairs in the Crypt and his Collected Works have been reprinted after his death.

  [Blake first appeared in Bloch’s “Shambler”, but was not named until Lovecraft’s “Haunter”. Lovecraft chose the name “Blake” due to its similarities to “Bloch”, so that he could return the favor Bloch had done by killing a Lovecraft-based character in “Shambler.” According to Lovecraft, the title story of the collection Feaster from the Stars (invented later) was not written until 1935.]

  See Dexter, Ambrose. (“The Shadow from the Steeple”, Bloch; “The Shambler from the Stars”, Bloch (O); “The Franklyn Paragraphs”, Campbell; “The Freshman”, Farmer; “The Haunter of the Dark”, Lovecraft.)

  BLASTED HEATH. Five-acre area to the west of Arkham covered with nothing but grey dust. No plants will grow on the Heath. At its center are the remains of a house and well. The Blasted Heath is believed to have been submerged beneath the new Arkham reservoir.

  (“The Colour out of Space”, Lovecraft (O).)

  BLAYNE, HORVATH (c. 1925–1948). Student of mythology and religion. Blayne was born Horvath Waite, but cousins in Boston adopted him when his home town of Innsmouth was destroyed and his family killed. He later became a student of Asian culture, centering his studies upon Indo-China and the isles of the Pacific. After the end of the Second World War, Blayne spent his time almost exclusively in the South Pacific, where he became known for his work with the ruins on Ponape.

  In 1947, Blayne was sighted in Singapore with the noted scholar Laban Shrewsbury, and he is believed to have taken part in a secret government action somewhere in the Pacific. His fate is unknown, though a testament found among his papers hints at some disturbing possibilities.

  (“The Black Island”, Derleth (O).)

  BLOATED WOMAN. See Nyarlathotep (Bloated Woman).

  BLOODY TONGUE. See Cult of the Bloody Tongue.

  B’MOTH (also BEHEMOTH or PHEMAUT). Oceanic deity worshiped in many parts of the world. B’moth desires to return all of humanity to the savage state that it once held, and can control weather and animals to accomplish this purpose. This creature may be another name for Cthulhu, or may be associated with the Great Old One in some way.

  See Magic and the Black Arts. (“The Scourge of B’Moth”, Russell (O).)

  BOKRUG. God who took the shape of a water-lizard and who was worshiped by the Thuum’ha of Ib. He is especially infamous for his vengeance upon those who offend him. His revenge may take hundreds of years to overtake his foes, but when it comes, it is swift and devastating. The entire city of Sarnath blasphemed against this deity for many centuries, but Bokrug’s wrath eventually destroyed the metropolis. Bokrug is worshiped today in the city of Ilarnek in the Dreamlands, and possibly in the lost pre-human city of Lh-Yib.

  Some evidence suggests that Bokrug may not actually be a god, but is in fact one of a race of humanoid beings who have set themselves up as gods of the Thuum’ha, as the people of Ib are known. Others disagree, and say that “Bokrug” is only a mask for a more dangerous entity.

  See Ib; Ilarnek; Sarnath. (“The Book of Dismissals”, Carter; “The Doom that Came to Sarnath”, Lovecraft (O); Beneath the Moors, Lumley.)

  BOLTON. Factory town north of Arkham. The first settlers built their town on the banks of the James River in 1650, but Bolton was not incorporated until 1714. Today, Bolton is a major site for industry; its mills primarily employ immigrants, and the town has acquired an unsavory reputation due to the frequent quarrels which occur between the different ethnicities. The brilliant young doctor Herbert West practiced in this town for a short while, and Thomas de la Poer lived here before his ill-fated departure for England.

  [It is uncertain whether Lovecraft knew that Bolton was a real town before he included it in his stories.]

  See Miskatonic River. (“Herbert West—Reanimator”, Lovecraft (O); “The Rats in the Walls”, Lovecraft; “Freak Show”, Ross and Woods.)

  THE BOOK OF AZATHOTH. Volume carried by some forms of Nyarlathotep. Anyone who enters the service of the Outer Gods must sign the Book with their blood. It may possibly be the book spoken of by the victims of the witchcraft trials; if so, it would explain only a few of these volumes were ever found. The Book of Azathoth also contains material in parody of Scripture, praising the Outer Gods and denigrating Christianity.

  Another “Book of Azathoth”, a spiral notebook containing a long rambling discourse about the nature of the universe, was found in a hotel room in Midium’s Grove, New York. Since the other volume is in Nyarlathotep’s possession, any comparison between the two is impossible.

  See Azathoth; Nyarlathotep (Black Man). (Devil’s Children, Conyers, Godley, and Witteveen; “The Higher Mythos”, Hensler; “The Dreams in the Witch-House”, Lovecraft (O).)

  THE BOOK OF DAGON. Set of inscribed conical stones. The Book was a gift from the Deep Ones to Captain Obed Marsh after he had founded the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Through help from his inhuman visitors, Marsh was able to translate the R’lyehian glyphs into English. The book was never published, and only a few handwritten copies exist. After the raid on Innsmouth, the cones were taken into government custody, where they were destroyed in 1955 in a freak accident.

  This book, which serves as the scripture for the cult of the Deep Ones, provides the history of that species and describes their religious ceremonies.

  (Delta Green, Detwiller, Glancy, and Tynes; Escape from Innsmouth, Ross (O).)

  THE BOOK OF DZYAN (also the STANZAS OF DZYAN). Book of ancient wisdom which exists on a higher spiritual plane, where psychically sensitive travelers can find it. According to tradition, the Lords of Venus brought the first six chapters of this book, as well as the Senzar language, to humans. The grateful humans preserved the Book in the lost city of Shamballah. The book was later translated into Chinese and distributed widely, though only a few copies survive today.

  Traders discovered the oldest known written copy in a Chinese cave in 595, from which it made its way to the Wharby Museum in England. This copy was written in Chinese, Sanskrit, and characters resembling those in the G’harne and Sussex Fragments, and proved instrumental in Gordon Walmsley’s deciphering of both books. Chinese and Sanskrit copies once rested in many monasteries of the East, though most of these have been destroyed or lost. Others have turned up in the van der Heyl mansion near Chorazin, New York, and the Starry Wisdom Church in Providence. In 1901, Wallace Deely supposedly translated the book from the Tsath-Yo language into English.

  The contents of this book remain a mystery. One section relate
s to the Seal of Solomon, a variant Elder Sign, and incantations that ward off evil might be found within.

  [The Book of Dzyan originally appeared in the works of the Theosophist Helena Blavatsky. In her book The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky quotes it at some length, supposedly having viewed the original during a trip to Tibet. According to her account, the Book of Dzyan is the first of fifteen esoteric commentaries on the thirty-five books of Kiu-te, a likely transliteration of a term used to describe the Tibetan Buddhist corpus. According to Blavatsky, the Book of Dzyan was written on palm leaves in the Atlantean language of Senzar. Lovecraft did not encounter Blavatsky’s work until the end of his life, and his main source for his descriptions of the book were the accounts of his friend E. Hoffman Price derived from later Theosophical sources.

  [Blavatsky stated “Dzyan” (pronounced “Djan”) is derived from “Dhyan”, the Sanskrit term for mystical meditation.]

  See Feery, Joachim; Study of the Book of Dzyan, A. (The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky (O); The Fate, Detwiller with Ivey; The Dark Destroyer, Glasby; Keeper’s Compendium, Herber; “The Haunter of the Dark”, Lovecraft; Selected Letters IV, Lovecraft; “The Diary of Alonzo Typer”, Lovecraft and Lumley; The Book of Dzyan, Maroney, ed.; Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley.)

  THE BOOK OF EIBON. Tome penned by the Hyperborean wizard Eibon. Legend has it that it was found amid the ruins of his blasted tower, but Cyron of Varaad’s afterword to the book tells of how Eibon left him the manuscript, which Cyron then arranged into sequential order. The Book was then passed from teacher to pupil for many years, with occasional notes being added by subsequent readers. After the destruction of Hyperborea during the Ice Ages, copies of the Book made their way to Zobna and Lomar, and later Atlantis and Hyboria, by way of a secretive cult that revered Eibon and may have been related to that which preserved the Pnakotic Manuscripts. The priesthood of Mithra in Brythunia, a country of the Hyborian Age, might have preserved a copy, but if so it has been lost.

  There seem to have been two paths by which the Book of Eibon made its way into the modern world. The first route was through Egypt, as traders from Atlantis brought their goods and knowledge to that land. The volume was translated into hieroglyphics, and the so-called “Kishite recension” made by the former high priest of Sarnath may have derived from one of these. It then made its way through the Mediterranean area, where the Syro-Phoenician scholar Imilcar Narba made a Punic translation around 1600 B.C. Byzantine Greek (or Graeco-Bactrian) copies were later made, and around 960, Theodorus Philetas correlated several of the surviving texts into a medieval Greek volume. A Greek copy may still exist, but the oldest confirmed copy is the ninth-century Latin translation of C. Philippus Faber, which was likely the source of the Latin text printed in Rome in 1662. The Latin copies of the Book of Eibon at Miskatonic and Harvard stem from this particular tradition.

  The second path was through a mysterious culture known as the Averones. These people fled to the east from the sinking Atlantis, bearing the Liber Ivonis on tablets with them. The Averones settled in a land that was to become Averoigne, and these tablets formed an important part of their rituals even centuries later. One book in the original Hyperborean tongue may have been kept here, at least until the fourteenth century. The Averonian version eventually made its way to Ireland, where Latin and Irish translations may still be found. One Latin version might have been found in the library of the notorious Aleister Crowley.

  In the 13th century, Gaspard du Nord of Averoigne made a French translation of the Book, most likely from a Greek manuscript (though the possibility of influence from his region’s traditions should not be ruled out). This Gaspard was a sorcerer of some note, who saved his home city of Vyones from the designs of the evil magician Nathaire, who might have owned the copy that Gaspard later translated. In their gratitude, the authorities allowed him to continue in his occult studies, which presumably gave him the freedom to translate the Book of Eibon free from all popular censure. Many sorcerers and witches of the area used this particular edition to great effect, even centuries after its completion. Several copies of this edition still survive, including those at the van der Heyl mansion and another at the Starry Wisdom Church of Providence.

  During the reign of James I, an unknown scholar, presumably a translator of the King James Bible, translated the Book of Eibon into English. A dedicated searcher may still find a few of these copies. To the best of our knowledge, the Book has never been printed. A more recent French translation by the noted author Clark Ashton Smith vanished after his death. One Randall Flagg, a member of the Church of Starry Wisdom, created an unpublished set of Notes from the Book of Eibon.

  It should also be noted that a copy was passed down among the van Kauran family of New York, though it is uncertain which edition they held.

  A great deal of Eibon’s book is devoted to tales of his own youth, his magical experiments, and his journeys to Shaggai and the Vale of Pnath. The book contains information on the rites of Tsathoggua, the artist Rhydagand, and tales of the great Rlim Shaikorth. Incantations for calling the emanation from Yoth and the Green Decay are held within, along with formulas for a chemical that petrifies living flesh and a powder that will destroy certain star-spawned monstrosities.

  Though the Book of Eibon covers a vast amount of knowledge, only a fraction of the original work survives. For instance, certain rituals intended to call down dholes to serve the summoner have survived have been lost, and an encoded one-page appendix regarding the Antarctic Old Ones is found in only a few volumes.

  [A reconstruction of this work has been compiled by Robert M. Price and recently published.]

  See Averoigne; Bugg-Shoggog; dark young; dholes; du Nord, Gaspard; Eye of Tsathoggua; Ghorl Nigral; Green Decay; Grey Rite of Azathoth; Hyperborea; Iagsat; Liber Ivonis; Livre d’Ivon; N’tse-Kaambl; Papyrus of the Dark Wisdom; Parchments of Pnom; Rhydagand of the Brush; Rlim Shaikorth; Selections de Live d’Ivon; Testament of Carnamagos; Zon Mezzamalech. (“The Horror from the Bridge”, Campbell; “The Book of Eibon”, Carter; History and Chronology of the Book of Eibon, Carter; “In the Vale of Pnath”, Carter; The Life of Eibon according to Cyron of Varaad, Carter; “Papyrus of the Dark Wisdom”, Carter; “Shaggai”, Carter; “The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders”, Derleth; “Cults Exposed!: The Starry Wisdom Church”, Harms; “By the Bay, Part I”, Herber; Keeper’s Compendium, Herber; “Pickman’s Student”, Herber; Dreams and Fancies, Lovecraft; Selected Letters V, Lovecraft; “The Man of Stone”, Lovecraft and Heald; “The Thing at the Threshold”, McConnell and Sutton; “To Call Forth Tsathoggua to Smith Thy Enemy”, Pulver; “The Beast of Averoigne”, Smith; “The Colossus of Ylourgne”, Smith; “The Coming of the White Worm”, Smith; “The Holiness of Azedarac”, Smith (O); “Ubbo-Sathla”, Smith; Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley.)

  THE BOOK OF HIDDEN THINGS. Volume mentioned in a manuscript discovered by Alonzo Typer. Nothing else is known of this book, though it may have to do with the lost city of Yian-ho.

  (“The Diary of Alonzo Typer”, Lovecraft and Lumley (O).)

  BOOK OF IOD. Book of unknown origin, though some attribute it to a mysterious author named “Khut-Nah”. Only one copy in the original “Ancient Tongue” (which may be a mixture of Greek and Coptic) exists. It has been suggested that the Druids used some of the rites therein. Johann Negus later published an expurgated Latin (or possibly English) translation, a copy of which is kept at the Huntingdon Library in San Marino, California.

  The book discusses Iod, the Shining Hunter, Vorvadoss, and the being Zuchequon. Its philosophy seems to have much in common with that of the Gnostics.

  See Pott, Johannes; Von Junzt, Friedrich; Vorvadoss. (“Bells of Horror” (O), Kuttner; Letters to Henry Kuttner, Lovecraft; “Beneath the Tombstone”, Price; “The Mythos Collector”, Sammons; “The Looking-Glass”, Worthy et. al.)

  BOOK OF KARNAK. Tome of occult knowledge. From its title, it may consist of rituals taken from the Egyptian temple complex of Karnak. The book also c
ontains information regarding Iod, the Hunter of Souls.

  (“The Hunt”, Kuttner; “Hydra”, Kuttner (O).)

  BOOK OF K’YOG. Work that was old even in the age of Eibon. It has been lost on Earth for millennia, but supposedly tells how Tsathoggua was brought to earth from Yuggoth by an alien species that built a city now beneath the waves.

  (“The Haunting of Uthnor”, Cornford; “The Old One”, Glasby (O).)

  BOOK OF NIGHT (also NOCTUARY OF VIZOORANOS). Dangerous work on necromancy written by the Hyperborean wizard Vizooranos. Eibon is the only one known to have seen a copy, and he quickly rid himself of it.

  (“Annotations for the Book of Night”, Price (O).)

  BOOK OF SKELOS. Grimoire written by the blind sage Skelos and preserved by his devotees, though some attribute it to the serpent-people wizards of Valusia. There has been considerable disagreement as to whether “Skelos” penned one or several books, but wizards throughout the world have put great stock in his reputation. In the Hyborian Age only three known copies existed, and none of these is known to have survived until today. Although all of Hyboria’s mages coveted this book, we only know it contains information on an artifact called the Hand of Nergal and an isle on which monsters guard a great treasure.

  (Conan the Buccaneer, Carter and de Camp; “Black Colossus”, Howard; “The Hour of the Dragon”, Howard; “The Pool of the Black One”, Howard (O); “The Hand of Nergal”, Howard and Carter.)

  BOOK OF THOTH (or SCROLL OF THOTH-AMMON). Volume supposedly written by Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and magic who is said to have written thousands of books on occult subjects. Current scholarship holds that Thoth-Ammon, a powerful Stygian wizard and priest of Set, was actually the author. After the destruction of that continent, the Book of Thoth was preserved by the high priests of Egypt in their temple at Alexandria. The Roman emperor Caligula took this volume from Egypt for his own experimentation, but it was destroyed shortly before his death. Abdul Alhazred is known to have perused another copy, and others may exist in Tibetan monasteries, but no outsider has seen the book for many years.