Hite Written by Kenneth

Edited by Scott Haring, Steven Marsh, and Steve Jackson

Cover art by Philip Reed
Foreword by John M. Ford
Illustrated by Philip Reed and Dan Smith

These columns originally appeared in

Pyramid Magazine
www.sjgames.com/pyramid

Managing Editor
Alain H. Dawson
Design, Art Direction, and Production
Philip Reed
Production Assistance
Jeremy Zauder
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Sales Manager
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GURPS and the all-seeing pyramid are registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. Suppressed Transmission, Pyramid and Illuminati Online and the names
of all products published by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated are registered trademarks or trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, or used under license.
Suppressed Transmission 2 is copyright © 2000 by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. All rights reserved. Some art copyright www.arttoday.com.

ISBN 1-55634-445-7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

STEVE JACKSON GAMES

ABOUT SJ GAMES
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PAGE REFERENCES
Any page reference that begins with a B
refers to the GURPS Basic Set, Third
Edition Revised; e.g., p. B144 refers to page
144 of the Basic Set. A refers to Aliens, AE
refers to Alternate Earths, AH refers to
Atomic Horror, BO refers to Black Ops,
CM refers to Celtic Myth, I refers to
Illuminati, RU refers to Russia, STi refers
to Suppressed Transmission: the First Broadcast,
TT refers to Time Travel, WT refers to
Warehouse 23, WWi refers to Who’s Who
1, WWii refers to Who’s Who 2, Y to Y2K.
2
FOREWORD ...........................................................................................3
I NTRODUCTION ......................................................................................4
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: A LTERNATE HISTORY ...........................................6
History on the Rocks: Alternate Ice Ages...............................................................................................................7
Return of Clio’s Nightmares .............................................................................................................................................10
Shades of Black: Alternate Black Ops ......................................................................................................................13
Crisis on Alternate Earths! ................................................................................................................................................16
Altered Spaces..............................................................................................................................................................................19
Deus ex Machina Tempora.............................................................................................................................................22
An Alternate-Historical Alphabet..............................................................................................................................26
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: E NIGMATIC E XPLANATIONS ......................................30
Templar America: Red and White Across the Blue.....................................................................................31
Crypto *** Icon: The Voynich Manuscript ............................................................................................................35
Who Killed Kit Marlowe?...................................................................................................................................................38
Illyrium Tremens: What Stirs on Twelfth Night?...........................................................................................41
A Night to Embroider: Who Sank the Titanic? ..............................................................................................45
One Giant Leap After Another: Lunatic Theories ......................................................................................49
HIGH WEIRDOS: M EN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS ......................................52
Into the Woods With Robin Hood...............................................................................................................................53
The Maiden and the Monster: Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais..........................................................57
Who Ya Gonna Caul? The Benandanti....................................................................................................................61
Frankenstein Family Album .........................................................................................................................................64
Paul Bunyan, All-American.............................................................................................................................................67
Jacks Wild: Six Stabs at the Ripper..........................................................................................................................70
The Extra “H” is for “Homicidal”: H.H. Holmes..............................................................................................74
The Shadows Over Lovecraft........................................................................................................................................78
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: P ECULIAR PLACES ......................................................81
Libertatia or Death!................................................................................................................................................................82
City in Dust: Many-Columned Irem.........................................................................................................................85
Glozel Est Magnifique!...........................................................................................................................................................88
Golden Cities, Far: The Greater El Dorado Metropolitan Area...........................................................91
The Fractal Valley....................................................................................................................................................................95
Trail of the Black Dragon..................................................................................................................................................98
Nine is Not Enough................................................................................................................................................................101
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS ...........................105
Plumb Weird: Sacred Geometry ................................................................................................................................106
Fooling Around .........................................................................................................................................................................109
Devil’s Prom Night: Walpurgisnacht Fun ............................................................................................................113
Patterns in Amber..................................................................................................................................................................116
Be True to Your Skull............................................................................................................................................................119
Things to Do in Gaming When You’re Dead ...................................................................................................122
G LOSSARY .........................................................................................125
I NDEX...............................................................................................127
 by John M. Ford
In the Neomythic Age
In the Pretabloidal Era, when the steam that blew up Thera
Started Solon on a tale of Once Upon
Plato first, and Donnelly too, then Mr. Churchward with his Mu
Blew it up again into Atlantis Gone

Now, there's never been a story that somebody couldn't quarry

For a wagonload of iron-pyrite ore
There's a lizard in the loch! There's a Bigfoot down the block!
And each time they're bigger than the time before

We are pattern-forming critters; dangling ends give us the jitters

And the truth is that it happens pretty often
There's a stunning declaration of a shocking revelation
In the recipe for Strudel mit Kartoffeln.

Yellowed papers flake off hints and faded photos offer glints
Of a doppelganger world behind the fog
But clues are where you find 'em, and the chap who walks behind 'em
May spot giant footnotes on the Holmesward bog

What frightens you? What's groovy? Shouldn't life be like a movie?

Will Paul be dead if you reverse the song?
It's the thrill of exploration, and the shining exaltation
Of knowing everyone but you is wrong.

Grab your therapeutic magnets and your psychic Aunty Agnes

As seen on television of the night
Here's a second thrilling season of the dreams of sleeping reason
And every single one of them is Hite.
– John M. Ford
with a nod to Mr. K.

3
 by Kenneth Hite
“Since he has cultivated his soul, already richer than any other
man's, he thereby reaches the Unknown, and, even if, insane in
the end, he should lose every shred of understanding gained so
laboriously, he will have had his Visions! He may perish in
his leap into those innumerable, unnameable things, there
will follow other terrible workers. They will begin at the
horizons where he fell.”
– Arthur Rimbaud,
“The Visionary Letter to Paul Demeny”

Hello, again. Welcome to the Second Broadcast. For those of

you who came in late, this is the second collection (April 1999 to
March 2000) of my weekly column “Suppressed Transmission” in
Pyramid magazine, Steve Jackson Games’ online publication of
“The Best in Gaming.” Or, technically, “The Best In Gaming Plus
Whatever Craziness Hite Is Going On About Now.” Because,
although I often discuss gaming (by which, for those of you who
came in really late, I don’t mean casino gambling, but roleplaying
games) in these columns, they’re not really about “The Best in
Gaming,” but “The Best in Weirdness.”

“The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery,

a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a
spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is
inborn in us.”
– Paul Valéry, “Introduction to the
Method of Leonardo da Vinci”

For me, Weirdness generally winds up in one of four cate-

gories: Conspiracy (the CIA shot JFK), Alternate History (what if
they missed), Secret History (JFK was shot in a Golden Dawn sac-
rifice ritual), or Horror (after JFK was shot, the demon situation
really got out of hand). Horror is a genre, Alternate History is a
mental exercise, Secret History is applied speculative anthropology,
and Conspiracy is nonsense. These aren’t hard-and-fast categories,
of course; as you’ll see when you read further, any of the four can
slop into its neighbors’ realm without warning. And, of course, any
of the four can be nonsense.

“The truest account of reading Shakespeare would be not to

write a book with a beginning, middle, and end; but to collect
notes without trying to make them consistent.”
– Virginia Woolf

But it’s fun nonsense, the kind that gamers (espe-
cially) seem to enjoy, and (more importantly) the
kind I enjoy stringing together into vast, multicol-
ored webs of speculation and phantasy. Think of it
as particularly plotless fiction, or as the mental
equivalent of slowing down to look at accident
victims. Sure, it’s embarrassing and unproductive.
Just like talking about the Masons and ritual
magic and werewolves and the Face on Mars. But
it’s fun, and (as I reassure my editors) it’s all some-
how relevant to roleplaying games.
“She herself was a victim of that lust for books
which rages in the breast like a demon, and which
cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful
acquisition of books. This passion is more common,
and more powerful, than most people suppose.
Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be
gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them
are so. But there are others who will lie and
scheme and steal to get books as wildly and
unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his
drug. They may not want the books to read
immediately, or at all; they want them to possess,
to range on their shelves, to have at command.
They want books as a Turk is thought to want
concubines – not to be hastily deflowered, but to be
kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often
in thought than in reality.”
– Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost
And occasionally even useful. Like the material in
Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast, feel free to
wrench any of this stuff out of context and bang it around;
the odds are that the researcher whose conspiracy theory I
lifted for the column did more than a little of that himself.
So, follow your own pet theory or interest through the
cross-references to see what shiny objects you can dangle
from it. Look your favorite suspects up in the Index, and
invent your own patterns based on their neighbors in the
INTRODUCTION
essays. I’ve tried to keep this book relatively self-con-
tained, but where I covered a topic in the first volume,
I’ve pointed you thataway to avoid going over old
material. I added a Glossary to this volume to help get
everyone up to speed (and I snuck some bibliographic
notes in there, as well as everywhere else in the book).
Between those two decisions, I’ve added annotations,
explanations, and notes to the essays themselves;
there’s more than enough material here to make you
the bane of your roleplaying group or cocktail party
all by itself.
“As to the extraordinary spectacle of a
thing, world, super-construction, that was
seen in the sky, in 1816, I have not yet been
able to find out more. I think that here our
acceptance is relatively sound: that this
occurrence was tremendously of more
importance than such occurrence as, say,
transits of Venus, upon which hundreds of
papers have been written – that not another
mention have I found, though I have not
looked so especially as I shall look for more
data – that all but undetailed record of this
occurrence was suppressed.”
– Charles Fort,
The Book of the Damned
So look to the skies, or (as in my case) to the
books and magazine articles and websites of those
who do look to the skies. There indeed shall you see
signs and wonders. Signs like “Steep Cliff Here” and
wonders you can only visit during posted hours, to be
sure. But the creative mind isn’t constrained by sanity,
or reason, or fact, or anything; this is High Art
through High Weirdness, stepped down and beamed
out to all those willing to receive a few Suppressed
Transmissions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kenneth Hite is an editor and writer living in
Chicago. His unusual pallor, consuming interest
in the Templars, deep knowledge of history, and
bizarrely-shaped head all have perfectly rational
explanations. His wife Sheila, however, knows
the Truth.
“Kenneth Hite” is a nom de plume used by
the authors, co-authors, or editors of quite a bit
of work for the Star Trek Roleplaying Game,
and of such works as GURPS Alternate
Earths, The Cainite Heresy, Mage: the
Sorcerers’ Crusade, and the horror roleplaying
guide Nightmares of Mine.
Kenneth Hite is, with the unfortunate
breakup of the Clash, now the only band that
matters.
5
 I
n this section, the essays examine worlds that might have
been, for a sufficiently large value of “might,” at least.
Although they begin firmly rooted in historical climatol-
ogy, they rapidly take flight through realms of horror, action
(consider it Alternate Secret History), and superheroism,
and thence into space. (For more “straight,” “hard historical
SF” alternate histories, I urge the interested reader to exam-
ine GURPS Alternate Earths and GURPS Alternate
Earths 2, both coauthored by your humble narrator with
Craig Neumeier and Michael S. Schiffer.) I conclude the
section with a possible (for a sufficiently large value of
“possible,” of course) time machine with which to set up all
these alternate unrealities, and last, a bit of instructive silliness.

History on the Rocks: Alternate Ice Ages ............................................................................7

Return of Clio’s Nightmares ..........................................................................................................10
Shades of Black: Alternate Black Ops ...................................................................................13
Crisis on Alternate Earths! .............................................................................................................16
Altered Spaces...........................................................................................................................................19
Deus ex Machina Tempora..........................................................................................................22
An Alternate-Historical Alphabet ...........................................................................................26
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
Much as I did in the First Broadcast, I’ve

History on the Rocks: rearranged these essays from their original publi-
cation order into some sort of thematic structure.
Should you wish to read them in order of publica-
Alternate Ice Ages tion, the earliest one is “Fooling Around” on p.
109. Pyramid originally posted “History on the
Rocks” on March 3, 2000. The next essay in pub-
“Climate change at the end of these interglacial time periods is rather sharp lication order is “Frankenstein Family Album,”
on p. 64.
and dramatic. Excellent historical evidence exists from areas on the
European plains which once were oak forests and were later transformed into
poplar, then into birch, and finally into tundra within a 100-year span.” 1 A reference to meteorologist Edward
– CIA Report: “A Study of Climatological Research as it Lorenz’ famed “butterfly effect,” taken from
Pertains to Intelligence Problems” (1974) his 1979 paper: “Predictability: Does the
Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off
For want of a nail, the old rhyme reminds us, the kingdom was lost. So imagine a Tornado in Texas?” The general scientific
term for the “butterfly effect” is “sensitive
what several million tons of ice can do. In the four following alternate histories, I
dependence on initial conditions,” and it’s a
posit the return of the glaciers to their rough positions around 18,000 years ago at keystone of chaos theory, about which much
the approximate height of the Würm-Wisconsin glaciation (only slightly modified nonsense has been talked, although very little
for dramatic effect). For those scoring at home, that means that everything north of a of it in James Gleick’s excellent book Chaos.
line running Tacoma-Duluth-Peoria-Long Island in North America, and slightly Fields like meteorology, political economy,
north of Birmingham-Amsterdam-Dresden-Minsk-Kazan in Europe, is under miles and (perhaps) history, with phenomena
of ice. Sea levels are 300 feet lower, the Black Sea is a lake, Sumatra, Borneo, and exhibiting such sensitive dependence on ini-
Japan connect to Asia, and many other mountain chains (Alps, Himalayas, Pamirs, tial conditions, are simply not finely
Andes) are impassably blocked. Everything in this essay (except the trigger for the reducible based on general laws, which
final alternate) is legitimate geology; even the glaciers’ rapid onset (between 70 and comforts many of us. For an interesting
200 years, adopted to drive the ice’s impact historically) isn’t outside the bounds of meditation on the topic as it applies to alter-
nate history, see Kim Stanley Robinson’s
viable theory. Each alternate begins glaciating during an unusually cold period in
essay/short story “A Sensitive Dependence
Real History, as can be determined from H.H. Lamb’s excellent Climate, History, and on Initial Conditions,” reprinted in Remaking
the Modern World or Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie’s discursive Times of Feast, Times of History and Other Stories, which is even better
Famine. As chaos theory teaches us, we’re always just a butterfly flap1 away from cli- than most Kim Stanley Robinson books.
matic catastrophe – over ice.
2 The theological implications of this also
“The sea freezes over, and the whole of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; and the favor the traditional polytheistic fantasy
Scythians, who live outside . . . make war upon the ice, and drive wagons world. Perhaps a winter god like Hoder, or a
circle of sorcerous frost giants, cast a power-
across it to the country of the Sindi.”
ful spell to bring about the Ice Age specifical-
– Herodotus, The Histories, IV:28 (ca. 445 B.C.) ly to stop monotheism from evolving.

Although the theory isn’t as all-encompassing as it used to be, historians once 3 You’ll also turn much of the
blamed the cooling period from 1200 to 800 B.C. for the fall of ancient cultures as Mediterranean basin into an eroded desert
far apart as Olmec Mexico, Mycenæan Greece, and Zhou China. Turn that cold snap with such carelessness, but it can’t be helped.
into an Ice Age, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Egypt, which barely made it
through the era in our history, fell to the Sea Peoples, leading to a Philistine culture 4 The term mana derives from a Melanesian
of bronze-working city-states along the Nile. (The Hebrews still made their Exodus, word meaning, roughly, “special force.” To
the Melanesian peoples, anything out of the
but rapidly blended into the Aramaeans who invaded Canaan from the other direc-
ordinary – a water-carved rock, a rare bird, a
tion.2) The Cimmerians, likewise, plowed through the Hittites and into the powerful chief, a lucky fisherman – bears
Assyrians, disrupting the nascent Iron Age. Proto-Celtic cultures became more like mana. Or so, at least, theorized 19th century
the Eskimo as they adapted to the tundra of Western Europe, while the flukes of anthropologists such as Max Müller and Sir
monsoon patterns actually permitted a large-scale Persian state to form five centuries James George Frazer, who used the term as a
early south of the Caspian. The result is a world more like that of GURPS Conan general term for any supernatural energy of
than not; the uncertain climate rewards barbarism and penalizes all but the most primitive belief, held to undergird the evolu-
restrictive or autocratic city-states. (No Judaism, no Greek civilization, no Romans.) tion of religion. As this usage fell out of favor
A few pastoral empires (the Persians, the Karasuk to their north, the Vedic states of in anthropology (since mana doesn’t actually
the Ganges) dwell in the east, building up surpluses of wealth as the only cultures connote all Melanesians’ magical energy,
capable of exporting food. Isolated pockets of iron-working may exist, but most much less anyone else’s, adequately), it
entered roleplaying rules (including
weapons are bronze and wielded on little provocation. For more fantasy flavor, raise
GURPS) as a synonym for “magical or
the strait of Gibraltar, 3 and uncover vast mana 4 wells beneath the former divine power.” Which is how I’m using it
Mediterranean; down in the trenches, dragons and Cyclopes grow, and the lizard here.
men plot to fall on the kingdoms of beleaguered mankind.
7
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
5 Sadly, Leonardo da Vinci never built
any steam-pumps, although he did design
land-tortoises for siege warfare, among
other delights. His doodles and his wide-
ranging genius make him a natural Great
Engineer for alternate histories like this
one or like Paul McAuley’s Pasquale’s
Angel. The da Vinci-Machiavelli canal,
however, came considerably closer to
existing, as Roger D. Masters demon-
strates in his electrifying study of that
project, Fortune is a River.
Leonardo turns up all over the place,
most interestingly as the man who forged
the Shroud of Turin (using a pinhole
camera) in Lynn Picknett & Clive
Prince’s Turin Shroud: In Whose Image?
They explain that he was the Secret
Master of the Prieuré de Sion (see the
Glossary), in this reading a cabal of
Johannine heretics who considered John
the Baptist to be the Messiah, in The
Templar Revelation, which is even more
fun.
6 Verrazano has his own occult ties to the
Prieuré de Sion, as we learn on p. 34.
7 In our world, 1816 was the “year with-
out a summer” thanks to the eruption of
the volcanic Mt. Tambora, in the East
Indies. It was that rotten weather that
forced Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord
Byron, and Dr. Polidori to stay indoors
and tell ghost stories, with the results we
read about on p. 66.
8 The Taiping Rebellion is just too freaky
for words. After failing his civil service
exam for the third time, Kwangtung vil-
lager Hung Hsiu-ch’üan fell into an ecsta-
tic trance in 1837 in which he saw an
elderly man with a golden beard (a
Nordic ultraterrestrial?) explaining that
demons controlled China. Hung decided
he was Christ’s younger brother, and his
revelation sparked a sect, the Taiping
(Heavenly Peace). In 1851, the Taiping
cult rebelled against the Manchus, even-
tually seizing Nanking and endangering
both Shanghai and Peking before the
Rebellion ended in faction, defeat, and
Hung’s suicide in 1864. It killed more
than 20 million people before its messy
conclusion, and fatally weakened the
Manchu Dynasty. See Jonathan Spence’s
superb God’s Chinese Son for the details of
something that sounds suspiciously like an
ultraterrestrial (see Glossary) plot gone
horribly wrong. Or right.
8
“I came to an immense mass of ice. As far as I could judge, it was two
or three pikes thick, and as wide as the range of a strong bow. Its
length stretched indefinitely upward, so you could not see its end. To
anyone looking at it, it was a terrifying spectacle . . .”
– Sebastian Münster, Cosmographiæ Universalis Libr. (1546)
The coldest known period in recorded history, the Little Ice Age, began
around 1315 with a series of famines in France and the Low Countries. In this
alternate, that was the beginning of a rather bigger Ice Age – the glaciers crept
south, turning the proud national states (England, France, Castile) into bleak
tundra and thin piny scrub. The Germanies, pressed hard by Scandinavian
refugees, fell again into barbarism and poured over the Plantagenet domains
stretching across the new lands that were once the English Channel. Italy’s city-
states, however, managed to keep their prosperity and increase their indepen-
dence (the Alpine glaciers prevented invasion) during that parlous century,
although the Turks poured across the Bosphorus land bridge and laid the
Balkans waste. The Ottomans found the new weather uncongenial to campaign-
ing in Europe, however, and left Italy to a vigorous new Renaissance. By the
time Machiavelli and da Vinci’s canal crossed the new salt flats to the sea from
Florence, the Italian states had learned to harness the coal from the Romagna,
and to trade for coal from the richer veins (worked by poorer Germans) in the
Ruhr and Silesia. Da Vinci’s steam-pumps5 clear the new coastlands for crops,
and let Florence put more men into battle. Changed currents and destruction of
northern shipping restricted exploration until the coal-fired galleasses of
Florence’s Great Navigator, Giovanni da Verrazano,6 made landfall on the tem-
perate shores of Brazil in 1524. Florence, under Machiavelli’s direction as
Gonfalonier, rapidly became the center of an Italian League.
The setting now is GURPS Swashbucklers-Steampunk with a Renaissance
twist. The League’s musketeers trade for aurochs hides among the northern
princelings, and crusade for gold in idyllic Morocco (the shifted Gulf Stream
brings more rain to Casablanca and Tangier). Rumor has reached the Duomo
that China, fallen into chaos after the Mongols fell to the ice, can yield up its
riches to any bold condottiere with a few large coal-galleasses, a steam-gonne or
two, and enough da Vinci land-tortoises to overrun peasant infantry.
“An immense glacier was on our left, which continuously rolled stones
to its foot . . . We see several avalanches, some very small, others of
great magnitude . . . overwhelming everything as it passed along, and
precipitating great pieces of ice into the valley below. The glacier is
increasing every day a foot, closing up the valley . . . This is the most
desolate place in the world . . .”
– from the Swiss journals of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1816)
At least the ice stopped seventy miles from London. 1816, the “year without
a summer” rapidly became the “reign without a summer.”7 George IV was
forced to watch Canada fall, not to America (where power, along with cropland,
moved to the South to stay) but to the all-covering ice. India rode out repeated
mutinies and famines, but Britain held grimly on to its warmest dominion even
as the cold crushed its Russian rivals. Revolts splintered the Romanov empire, as
the glaciers drove Prussia (and the rest of Germany) into the Hapsburg
embrace. The new Bonapartist regime in France annexed the Saar and Ruhr, to
ensure French coal supplies, and still threatens England’s hold on Egypt – and
the remains of England itself across the Channel-Lands. Slave-holding America
(reinforced by massive Irish immigration after the British refused to open the
ports when the glaciers came) and imperialist Britain duel for command of the
warm, arable tropics in South America (Mexico having fallen to Presidents Polk
and Quitman). The Japanese, meanwhile, have taken advantage of the exposed
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
land bridges to Korea and Manchuria; their invasion of China coincid- 9 For Atlantis, see note 1 on p. 106.
ed with the Taiping Rebellion8 (a decade longer in this uncertain
new history) to dump the Manchu Empire into complete dis- 1 0 The Hole in the Pole is
array. (The Royal Navy, unfortunately, was forced to common knowledge among
Hollow Earth theorists,
rebuild most of its shore facilities numerous times as
although the boldest such
coastlines receded, and is still not up to its pre-Ice was no doubt Capt.
deployable strength.) John Cleves Symmes
This world cries out for Weird Science of all sorts, (1780-1829), who in
in true steampunk fashion. The Ice-Borer opens tun- 1822 actually got a
nels to the Frozen Fortress of the Mad Baron Kentucky state senator
Bismarck. The Edison Mega-Mirror holds the glaciers to petition Congress to
away from Chicago to keep the rails open. Judicious fund an expedition
injections of mountain-gorilla gland extract enable Her through the Hole, into
Majesty’s Own Caledonian Glacier Guard to keep a watch the Hollow Earth. For
for Ukrainian infiltrators crossing the Hindu Kush. The more, seek out Walter
Kafton-Minkel’s Subterranean
retreating Aegean seacoast reveals an Atlantean 9 colony
Worlds, or Joscelyn Godwin’s
between Crete and Athens. Mammoths and saber-toothed tigers Arktos. (See also note 15, p. 66.)
return from the Hole in the Pole,10 and stalk the deserted streets of
Bristol. Most worrisome of all, slumbering Things Man Was Not Meant To 11 Ithaqua is one of the Great Old Ones of
Know float south in the melting icebergs as Ithaqua’s11 realm ever expands . . . Lovecraftian mythology, bound forever in
the Frozen North. Unless some cultist’s
“Of course, the implementation of the World Ice Theory ordered by the spell in, say, 1816, released him . . .
Reichsführer-SS must be planned in accord with scientific methodology.
12 For the Ahnenerbe, see the Glossary.
Thus is the manner of working in the Administration for Scientific
Research in the Ahnenerbe unambiguously set forth. At the same time, 13 Ragnarok, the apocalypse of the Norse
a change from the usual method of applying the World Ice Theory has gods, begins with a supernatural winter.
been decided upon as well . . .” It's also the name of a key element in the
– Ahnenerbe-SS internal document, 9 Dec 1937 origin of the title character from Mike
Mignola's comic series Hellboy. Hellboy is
a paranormal investigator who would feel
This much is true: The general warming pattern of the 20th century was
right at home in many Suppressed
broken by a sudden cold drop between 1933 and 1941. This much is not: It was Transmission-inspired campaigns.
the result of Ahnenerbe-SS12 magics, uncovered by the Edmund Kiss expedi-
tion to Tihuanaco in 1928. In this alternate, the Ahnenerbe successfully trig-
gered the Fimbulwinter, first stage of Ragnarok13, in 1933. This set up the New
Ice Age, and a swell “secret magic” GURPS Special Ops campaign frame. (If
you’d rather avoid magic, it was the detonation of a “dust weapon” developed by
von Braun to blot out sunlight – but those glaciers are still growing awful fast.)
By the war’s outbreak, Moscow lay under a mile of ice, and England battled the
glaciers rather than Nazism. Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, and Tojo’s Japan
all gained new expanses of coastal land to be worked by forced labor; France fell
to the Jura glacier and the blitzkrieg in 1940. German troops poured across the
14 Pykrete, so help me, is a real invention
steppes, eventually stopping at the Urals, but even the much vaunted Finnish by the eccentric Mr. Geoffrey Pyke
Exile Legion has its hands full dealing with Chechen partisans in the oil fields at (1894-1948) mentioned here. A war
the foot of the Caucasus glaciers. (America simply fortified the Bering land reporter, failed spy, commodities specula-
bridge.) The United States absorbed nine million Canadian (and twice that tor (at one point he controlled a third of
many internal) refugees, but the strain cracked FDR’s fragile New Deal, letting the world’s supply of tin), and education
Charles Lindbergh take power in 1936. Churchill fled the Nazi panzers as they reformer, he reached his rightful fame as
rumbled past the White Hills of Dover, and now keeps British resistance alive the designer of the frozen battleship. His
by sheer force of will from exile on the new Great Bahama Island. The key to “Habakkuk Project” actually reached
maintaining British power is her ever-larger fleet of pykrete14 (ice and wood- Churchill’s desk and a prototype pykrete
pulp) super-ships developed by Geoffrey Pyke; the H.M.S. Boreas can launch an ship survived the summer in Lake Erie,
but Operation Overlord somehow suc-
entire wing of Comet jet-fighters from its shaved-ice deck. Nazi rocket-planes
ceeded even without frozen ships and the
“hop the cap” over frozen Norway to attack the British ice-fields, but run the project was cancelled. Pyke, along with
risk of drawing America (which claims the polar cap after Byrd’s explorations of many other wonderful people, festoons
it) into the war. Japan, busy with new lands to conquer (and exploit for oil) in John Michell’s Eccentric Lives & Peculiar
the erstwhile East Indies, has no interest in attacking America either, so the bal- Notions, although Michell is one to be
ance of power tilts ever-farther into the cold clutches of Nazi Germany. Brrr. talking, given his own predilections for
earth energies and sacred geometry.
9
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
Pyramid originally posted “Return of Clio’s
Nightmares” for Halloween on October 29,
1999. The next essay in publication order is
“Paul Bunyan, All-American,” on p. 67.
1 For the first four, see pp. STi19-22.
Clio, of course, is the Muse of History.
2 But see p. STi19.
3 For the curious, the Britannica calls
Philip II’s disease cancer; Fernand
Braudel describes the fatal symptom as
“septicaemia,” which is pretty useless,
albeit graphic enough.
4 This really happened, though probably
not to Philip II. The term mummia is the
Persian word for “bitumen,” or pitch,
which the ancients set great store by as a
cure-all. When the Persian supply dried
up, medieval travelers seeing the black-
ened preserved corpses in Egypt falsely
guessed them to be rich in Persian mum-
mia, and the name migrated from the
bitumen to the body. Since there were
plenty of “mummies” in Egypt, pharma-
cists simply used their ground-up remains
instead of expensive Persian pitch.
Eventually, they just used any old ground-
up human remains, a counterfeit of a
counterfeit. (Although human corpses
have long been considered magical or
medicinally useful items: see, for example,
the medicinal use of skulls on p. 121.)
Authentic Egyptian mummy-powder
remained in pharmaceutical catalogs into
the 20th century.
5 The laws of similarity and contagion are
two of the “laws of magic” adduced by
Edwardian anthropologists like James
George Frazer. Unlike most of their the-
ories, this one has held up pretty well,
possibly because it’s a truism. The Law of
Similarity holds that “like affects like” –
hence, a voodoo doll affects the person it
looks like, or a king raised with magical
mummia will raise other mummies. The
Law of Contagion holds that “things in
contact always affect each other,” so you’d
put the hair or fingernails of your victim
in the voodoo doll, and have both laws
working for you. P.E.I. Bonewits, in his
Real Magic, explicates these Laws, and
plenty more, too. He’s opinionated as all
hell, and has a bug in his ear about psion-
ics, but he writes a useful primer.
6 And yes, all these people were, in fact,
mummified. You’d be amazed what you
can turn up digging through Bob Brier’s
superb Encyclopedia of Mummies.
10
Return of Clio’s
Nightmares
“Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they
walk, for fear The very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the
present horror from the time, Which now suits with it.”
– William Shakespeare, Macbeth, II:i:56-60
Last year, Halloween brought four nightmares of a historical stripe, High
Alternate-Historical Horror-Fantasy. This year, Clio’s slumber is again dis-
turbed by four more worlds 1 where progress took a horrific turn. On All
Hallow’s Eve, the hinge of the world swings wide2 and lets the forces of dae-
monic chaos through for one night – and mayhap it shuts again on a different
world, one owing more to GURPS Undead than to GURPS High-Tech. Happy
Halloween, and pleasant dreams.
“Thou standest there as a king, ruling over them as Geb rules his
Ennead. They come in, they strike down evil; they come out, their faces
are lifted up. They see thee as Min, who rules over the two shrines. He
stands, who stands behind thee, thy brother stands behind thee; thou
goest not under, thou wilt not be annihilated, thy name remains with
men, thy name comes into being with the gods.”
– The Pyramid Texts, Egyptian Fifth Dynasty (ca. 2350 B.C.)
In the year 1597, King Philip II of Spain lay in the Escorial palace, rotting
alive from an unknown disease.3 The court alchemists, desperate, turned to
ever-darker formulae to save his life. Finally, one of them thought of using
mummia powder, made from ground human corpses preserved by unknown
rites.4 The bodies of an Inca chieftain and an Egyptian pharaoh were pulver-
ized, and when the mingled powders of two ancient traditions met the dying
breath of the King of the West, it set off an alchemical chain reaction. Philip II’s
life was saved – but by the laws of similarity,5 the mummified
dead arose across the globe. Wielding the lost magics of their
prime, the Egyptian mummies soon hurled the Mamelukes out
of Egypt, establishing a dark empire under the Returned
Pharaoh Ramesses II and his vizier Imhotep. Some priests
and pharaohs fled Ramesses’ wrath, overthrowing the Turks
and establishing shadow courts across the Levant.
Tamerlane’s frozen corpse arose in Asia, leading the
undead armies of Sinkiang into China, and Pizarro’s
mummy barely escaped to serve the undying lich-king
Philip (and his new mummy bride, Anna of
Hapsburg6) before the revenant Incas climbed down
from their sacred mountain-tops. Philip now wars against
the human courts of Europe, against the necrocracies of Egypt and Inca Peru,
and against the Guanche mummy pirates who raid Spanish galleons from the
Canary Islands. All factions seek the mummy of Alexander the Great. Buried
with the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus,7 his body disappeared 1,500
years ago. Whether he lives again and seeks to restore his empire from some
remote province, or whether the Tablet keeps him asleep, he would be a power-
ful ally or enemy. This is a GURPS Swashbucklers setting, crossed with
GURPS Undead. The PCs can be French Musketeers, battling the Jesuits
under the revived Cardinal Francis Xavier, or bold English sea-dogs lobbing
fiery shot into the death-ships of Philip’s funereal navy.
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
“No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, 7 See the Glossary for Hermes
like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death Trismegistus.
appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through,
8 Yes, I know that in the novel Victor
and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species Frankenstein doesn’t use electricity to
would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent create the Monster, but a chemical (or
natures would owe their being to me . . . Pursuing these reflections, possibly alchemical) formula. And if you
I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I read the description carefully, you’ll note
might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew it’s the “fuming beakers” that do it here,
too. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley got the
life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.” notion for a revenant Monster from read-
–Victor Frankenstein, in Frankenstein ing about, among others, Galvani’s exper-
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley iments with electricity, however, so I
think a little James Whale tribute is in
1782. Lightning crashes down on a laboratory in the Scottish Highlands. order here. For more Frankenfun, of
His nerves unnaturally steadied by laudanum, Victor Frankenstein gazes course, see pp. 64-66.
serenely at the form on the table . . . the form of Frederick, Lord North.
Electricity courses through a series of breakers and transformers, volatiliz-
ing the fuming fluids in racked beakers, filling the stone chamber with the
true spirits of life itself, and pouring new power into North’s limbs.8
Brought here to Frankenstein’s lab by the retired Tory prime minister
and natural philosopher Lord Bute, North hopes to restore his nat-
ural energies and – should Frankenstein’s methods work – the
King’s sanity, thus returning himself to the ministry. And indeed,
Frankenstein’s babbled promises hold all that could be expected.
George’s renewed energy returns to him his implacable drive to
restore the monarch’s prerogatives; the Crown and aristocracy
once more clamp their fists around England and look across
the sea to weak America. Thirty years later, George still sits on
the throne, regular galvanic stimulation keeping his will and body
firm. Frankenstein’s electrical fluid rejuvenated the French Bourbons,
as well; the philosophes and their radical friends fled to Switzerland ahead
of the secret police. Washington refused Franklin’s offer to extend his
life preternaturally – but Benedict Arnold easily obtained the treatment
from the increasingly distracted Frankenstein, and intrigues constant-
ly with the most corrupt sprigs of the British squirearchy.
Fortunately, the cause of freedom has friends on the
Continent; Lord Byron works with the unknown Scarlet
Pimpernel for justice in England, and cells of the myste-
rious Illuminati promise revenge against unjust kings
and lords. Rumor whispers that Frankenstein’s first
experiment, a created man, a modern Prometheus
self-taught in morality and politics, still lives and
conspires with Adam Weishaupt9 to create more
of his kind – an unkillable army for the barricades
of liberty. PCs in this conspiratorial GURPS
Scarlet Pimpernel-Illuminati game may work with
– or be – Promethean monsters to defeat corrupt
humans.

“For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead, For all the
fatal rhythm of their tread. The land they died to save from death
and shame Trembles and waits, hearing the spring’s great name,
And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred.” 9 This is something of an in-joke: the
– William Vaughn Moody, name Frankenstein gave the Monster in
the novel was “Adam.” So, perhaps, this
“An Ode In Time Of Hesitation”
mysterious “Adam Weishaupt” is the
monster’s alias, in this alternate. (See the
Glossary for Weishaupt and his
Illuminati.)
11
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
10 I found out after writing this column
that the first “ghost photograph” was
taken by Scottish scientist Sir David
Brewster in 1856. He, however, knew that
it was a time-lapse illusion, describing it
as such in a paper entitled “Application of
the Stereoscope for Purposes of
Amusement.” There may have been “gen-
uine” ghost photos in England after
Brewster’s illusion and before Mumler
became famous, as well.
Back in the day, of course, eminent
scientists such as Sir William Crookes
(inventor of the vacuum tube) and Karl
von Reichenbach (the chemist who isolat-
ed both paraffin and creosote) believed
wholeheartedly in the supernatural, and
von Reichenbach devoted much of his
later career to capturing the “odic force”
on film. See Kirlian photography, in note
9 on p. 86.
11 The “Gray Ghosts” are my tip of the
cursor to Confederate ranger Col. John
Singleton Mosby (1833-1916), the “Gray
Ghost.” The “30th Delaware” is another
in-joke; “30” being the telegraph slang for
“finished.”
12 In 1944 SS chief Heinrich Himmler
tapped SS-Obergruppenführer Hans-
Adolf Prützmann to head a group of Nazi
German would-be partisan resistance
fighters, known as “Werwolf.” Their
best-known operation, “Undertaking
Carnival” on March 25, 1945, resulted in
the successful assassination of the
American-appointed mayor of Aachen,
but depended upon Otto Skorzeny’s SS-
Jagdverband commandos rather than
Werwolf recruits for cadre and support.
Skorzeny, Bormann, Schellenberg,
Kaltenbrunner, Göbbels, and other top
Nazis all attempted to hijack Werwolf for
their own empire-building purposes,
which (along with the rapid Allied
advance and Prützmann's lack of organi-
zation) rapidly turned the Werwolf group
into an uncoordinated morass of small-
unit guerrilla teams and so-called
“Vehme” death-squads to execute “trai-
tors to the Reich.” The only academic
source in English for the Werwolf group
is Perry Biddiscombe’s Werwolf! The
History of the National Socialist Guerrilla
Movement 1944-1946. For good were-
wolves, see p. 62.
1 3 Do, please, make time to see the
Professor Quatermass movies, especially
the second one, Quatermass and the Pit (or
Five Million Years To Earth, as it was
released in America).
12
In 1861, Boston photographer William Mumler developed the first “ghost
photograph.”10 In our history, it was a hoax; behind the door of All-Hallows,
however, it was the first window to the Other Side. The old stories were true –
if you photographed a dying man’s eyes with the proper ecto-magnetic emul-
sions, you could see into the realm of the dead, and pull him out of it. A combat
photographer on the field at Chancellorsville took the next logical step, and
“pulled back” Stonewall Jackson’s ghost rather than lose the South’s greatest
leader. Matthew Brady began doing the same for Union casualties, and a spec-
tral recruitment race was on. Ghost squads made perfect scouts and raiders, and
made even better counterstrikes against the other side’s spirit warriors. The
Confederate Gray Ghosts and the Union’s 30th Delaware11 are only the best-
known of these grim legions. Of course, what neither side realized was that
wholesale use of ghost troops began to weaken the borders between the world
of the living and the dead – soon, it didn’t take a camera to cross the gap, just a
motivation. Or, of course, pure cussed evil meanness. This can be a Civil War-
era GURPS Special Ops game, a game of subtle horror in the plantations (slaves
tend to come back as angry shades, for some reason), a game of steampunk
ghost-breaking in New York or Atlanta, or all three.
“What has happened here was caused by a force which, up until a few
days ago, was entirely beyond the scope of man’s imagination. Tokyo, a
smoldering memorial to the unknown; an unknown, which at this
moment still prevails and could, at any time, lash out with its terrible
destruction anywhere else in the world. There were once many people
here who could have told of what they saw; now there are only a few.”
– opening narration, Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Perhaps establishing the atomic test site in Montana, instead of New
Mexico, was a mistake. In hindsight, it seems so. When Oppenheimer detonated
the bomb in 1945, the radiation awoke the gestalt-mind of millions of slumber-
ing dinosaurs. Their revenant psychic energies poured forth, recreating their
bodies and striding forth to ravage the present day. Japan saw its hoped-for mir-
acle occur, as the plains of China suddenly
swarmed with Cretaceous killing machines,
and the Americans battled radioactive zombi-
fied tyrannosaur and velociraptor packs
swarming their cities from the badlands. One
particularly resourceful group of German
POWs managed to escape in the confusion,
and Nazi “werwolves”12 plague Nevada and
Nuremberg alike. Unified by their primordial
group-mind, the saurians show disturbing
signs of intelligence; wilder rumors have
already started about troodons using guns –
and even building their own aircraft.
This is the no-holds-barred GURPS
Dinosaurs meets GURPS Undead and
GURPS Atomic Horror world. PCs can be Army per-
sonnel battling allosaurs in the ruins of St. Louis, British
boffins from the Quatermass13 Group trying to prevent an infestation of
eurypterids and plesiosaurs from leveling Scotland, or agents of SNIPE (the
Scientific Network for the International Paleontological Emergency) trying
desperately to hunt down living specimens across the globe for study. You can
play it for camp, of course, with Nazi Dinosaur Riding Saucer-People and
Communist atom spies seeking to strengthen the dinos with subversive explo-
sions in America’s deserts. But think of it, also, as a truly horrific tribute to all
those movies – velociraptors will disembowel you just as horribly in black and
white, after all.
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
Pyramid originally posted “Shades of Black”

Shades of Black: on May 7, 1999. The next essay in publica-

tion order is “Plumb Weird: Sacred
Geometry,” on p. 106.
Alternate Black Ops
“Any type of BLACK OPS campaign can be run as a
1 For the Greys, see the Glossary.
historical campaign . . . ”
– Jeff Koke and S. John Ross, GURPS Black Ops, p. 58 2 Perhaps Strike Force Chronos uses the
Ernetti projecting chronovisor on pp. 22-
Or so they claim, but they only take it back to Roswell. But surely, Grey1 25. For more GURPS Black Ops cam-
evil plots and giant leeches lurk throughout the history of our clement world. paign frames, check out Strike Force
In every time and every era there must be men, jut-jawed men, men honed to Copernicus on pp. 49-50, Strike Force
the finest pitch of human perfection, ready to drive back Those Things and Calusari on p. 63, Strike Force Kepler on
leave the world safe for decent folk to live in. Herewith, then, in honor of the p. 104, and Strike Force Jason on p. 118.
reprinting of GURPS Black Ops, are five historical Black Ops frames, suitable (Not to mention Strike Force Cheops on
p. STi34, Strike Force Scorpio on p.
for the most action-packed monster-smacking the far side of 1947. Run any of
STi60, and other historical GURPS Black
them solo, or throw Strike Force Chronos2 into a temporal gate rigged up by Ops frames on pp. STi24, STi44, and
Tech Division to blast free a chunk of Earth’s history from the gray grasp of STi52.) Then when they all die, send
Bad Evil. them to the Afterworld on p. 123. Can
you tell that I really, really dig GURPS
“O black and unknown bards of long ago How came your lips to touch Black Ops? And if you haven’t read it, the
the sacred fire? How, in your darkness, did you come to know?” allusions and re-imaginings here won’t be
– James Weldon Johnson, “O Black and Unknown Bards” nearly as much fun, either.

3 See, specifically, “There’s More To

Sure, it all sounds grand, lots of acorn wine and dancing with swan-mays,
Faeries Than Their Glamour,” on
but you and I know that the Good Folk aren’t all that Good.3 They kidnap folk, pp. STi85-87, or any of the works of folk-
and demand the best of everything, and drain our very lives for their amuse- lorist Katharine Briggs (especially her
ment. They’re shadowless beings from Otherwhere, is what they are, and the incredibly well-done Encyclopedia of Fairies).
sooner a few bold black-robed types bring their unseelie castles down, the soon- However, the best way to get a really good
er we’ll have green and pleasant isles that we can all be proud of. The Black feeling for how really not good the Good
Bards work to break mankind (or at least Prydain and Eriu) free of the Faerie, Folk were is to read Terry Pratchett’s
using berserk fighting arts of a deeply cinematic kind (think Drunken Fighting Discworld novel Lords and Ladies.
with shillelaghs and go on from there), experimental ogham inscriptions (sure
and the boys at Talisman Division are almost positive they’ve gotten the bugs 4 On pp. CM93-112.
worked out of that particular gesa), and visionary trips to Dom-Daniel under-
5 A giant beaver with red and white ears.
cover thanks to our lads in Strike Force Changeling. The Tree Magic from
The Celts weren’t really up to scratch
GURPS Celtic Myth4 is just too cool not to include, and the Sidhe are roughly when it came to inventing cool monsters,
equivalent to the Greys in terms of kicking human ass. If the Fae get a little thin one must admit.
on the trod, a monster-stomp hunting down loch monsters, afanc,5 and similar
Annwn-beasts can keep the Black Bards in fighting trim. 6 This book is actually about the sartorial
tradition of men wearing black, analyzed
“. . . [O]ne might speak here of black as the uniform of a strict- as a cultural artifact. It’s good, but I
disciplined force, of a severely spartan holy army, since the wouldn’t want anyone thinking it’s up
there with Jenny Randles’ The Truth
Hospitallers . . . were at the same time real soldiers . . .” Behind the Men In Black, or Jim Keith’s
– John Harvey, Men in Black6 Casebook on the Men In Black, or especially
John Keel’s Mothman Prophecies.
13
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
7 The word “Saracen” was the traditional
medieval descriptor for the Arabs, deriv-
ing from the Greek Sarakenoi, which
referred to a group of tribes in northern
Arabia, and which likely came itself from
the Arabic sharqiyun, or “easterners.”
More interestingly, though less reliably,
the medieval writer John of Damascus
derives it from Abraham’s wife, Sarah, to
emphasize that the Arabs were “empty of”
(kenos) Sarah, hence Sarakenoi. The best
derivation of all, of course, comes from
the Arthurian corpus, where the word
“Saracen” is traced to the city of Sarras,
the legendary City in the Waste Land
(Irem? See pp. 85-88.) where Galahad
sought the Grail.
8 Ergot, the fungal rye parasite Claviceps
purpurea, contains lysergic acid and has
been known at least since ancient Assyrian
times to cause hallucinations, madness,
convulsions, and epilepsy. Outbreaks of
ergotism, called “St. Anthony’s Fire” after
the patron saint of epilepsy, struck many
medieval European villages (the first
recorded outbreak near a church to St.
Anthony in 1039), driving everyone
therein into jerking, foaming madness.
Even after ergot was identified as the
cause of “St. Anthony’s Fire” in 1676,
occasional outbreaks occurred, even as
late as 1953 in Belgium. Some historians
believe that ergotism sparked both the
Salem witch craze and the “Great Fear”
before the French Revolution. Richard
Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann’s
Plants of the Gods is a swell reference to
ergot and all kinds of hallucinogenic and
otherwise game-worthy plants.
9 Alexander the Great’s diving bell, in
which he went to the bottom of the sea
to search for immortality, is sadly an
invention of the medieval romancers who
also gave him a flying chariot pulled by
griffons.
10 For the School of Night, see note 15
on p. 40.
11 For more on Guiana, see p. 92.
14
Or we can switch it up from Yeats to Scott, and go on crusade against alien
infidels from beyond the fixed stars, who call themselves djinn and manipulate
the Saracens7 into war against Christendom and all civilization. (And, for the
GM who roots for the paynim, the Black Order can team up with elite ghazis
who rebel at the godless djinn’s power over corrupt emirs.) A capture mission
might center on nabbing a flying carpet and smuggling it back to the silk works
at Lyon, just as a cover-up mission might involve leveling some monastery run
by a Dominican who’s gotten a little too close to the truth. Black Knights roll
into battle wearing alchemically-potent chainmail designed by Philosophy
Division and wielding “handgonnes” smuggled down the Silk Road from China
and reverse engineered by the Mechanism Division. Monsters run thick through
the streets of medieval Paris, however (note to Heraldry Division: check on
Lodge or Prima involvement with the stonemasons’ guilds putting all those gar-
goyles on the cathedrals), and a village of brainsucked peasant zombies can be
surprisingly threatening, especially hopped up on ergotic8 rye. Cinematic two-
handed swordplay (using top-secret Nipponese steel techniques to beat the
monomolecular Damascene blades of the Grey puppets in the Caliphate) can’t
be beat for excitement, unless it’s by stealing Alexander’s diving bell9 from the
Museum of Alexandria and using it to hunt down a kraken below the ruins of
Santorini island.
“Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to th’ rooky wood;
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse And night’s black agents
to their preys do rouse”
– William Shakespeare, Macbeth, III:ii:50-53
When Queen Elizabeth needs those pesky Gullets and Rockworms routed
out of the wells and forests of Albion, to whom does she vouchsafe her privy
seal? Why, to the Black Operatives of the School of Night, 10 of course.
Centered in the remote Wiltshire downs, the Black Operatives rove wherever
the interests of Englishmen or humanity are threatened. Many of the Black
Operatives ride along with sea dog captains and carry out missions of reconnais-
sance and discovery in the insectile jungles of Guiana11 or the Lodge’s library
island somewhere off the coast of India. You’ll find them firing salt shot into
ghost ships in the Caribbean, and hunting ice weasels in frozen northern
Muscovy – and dodging the Black Horse of the Oprichnina.12 After the Grey
Dons who pull the strings of Spain, perhaps the Oprichniks are the Black
Operatives’ worst enemies – for they are what they could become. Rumor has it
that Ivan the Terrible, concerned about the infestation of monstrosities and
aliens in Mother Russia, set up his own elite hunters – but either the power or
the brainsquids got to them, and now they ravage without qualm, endangering
the safety of all Europe with their careless murders and open use of black sor-
ceries. Fortunately, the Star Chamber keeps an eye on England’s Black
Operatives, and the Omicron Pendant never leaves an Operative’s throat.
“You look best in black – which is a great compliment, for people
must be very distinguished in appearance in order to do so.”
– Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Pelham
Ah, the glitter of a court ball. Surely, the elegant lord in black must win the
heart of that comely countess – see, he makes so bold as to touch her wrist! Oh,
she faints, overcome by the war of breeding and passion! How deftly he whisks
her languid form behind the damask curtains. And how rapidly he pours vitriol
over her suddenly gray and shrunken form, leaving only a powdery ash for the
servants as he departs through the secret panel. Cross a Regency romance with a
Dumas swashbuckler and stir in the shapeshifting Grey menace, and you have a
tale of the Black League. You could set such stories in the glittering courts of
Louis XIV and crank up the rapier wit and rapier wounds with
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
GURPS Swashbucklers (the half you weren’t using for the Black Operatives
above). Or you could posit a France under the thumb of psionic alien influences
and send Mercury Branch agents of the Black Pimpernel into Paris to rescue the
Merovingian13 bloodline from the vampire Robespierre. Break out the GURPS 12 In the Real World, the Oprichnina
Scarlet Pimpernel for flair, and for the polished public side of the League. were already plenty scary: sort of the SS
Athena Branch keeps England safe, just as Apollo Branch plumbs the mysteries of Ivan the Terrible, between 1565 and
of the aether and electrico-magnetism for possible dangers from other dimen- 1573, they formed a “separate estate,” a
sions. Keep the swordplay and acrobatics properly cinematic; if you also want to “Russia within Russia” devoted to rooting
out all of Ivan’s enemies. The 6,000 Black
blow things up real good, there’s advanced forms of guncotton waiting in the
Riders, who dressed in black cloaks and
hold of a ship in Calais harbor – and primitive forms of megalodon waiting in rode black horses, were the Oprichnina’s
the fens of East Anglia. But, such gaucheries aside, this is the most glittering striking arm. Interestingly, their badges
of our alternate Black Ops; Savoir-Faire is le mot juste herein. Amp up the were the broom and the dog’s head, both
unlikeliness with Baron Münchausen, or the conspiracies with le Comte de of which sound kind of crypto-Benandanti
Saint-Germain;14 the polished villains and the ringing repartee are just as (see pp. 61-63) to me. See pp. RU58-59
important as the sleek caplock revolvers of Vulcan Branch and the esoteric for more of the grisly details.
savate of Mars Branch.
13 See the Glossary for the Merovingians.
“The hangman asked of the carrion crow, but the raven made reply,
14 See pp. WWii70-71, STi67-69, or the
Black ride the men who ride with Death beneath the midnight sky” Glossary for Saint-Germain.
– Robert E. Howard, “Death’s Black Riders”
15 This theory, at least, makes a refresh-
President Lincoln had a lot on his mind, but not so much that he couldn’t ing change from the ones pinning the
see that there was more than one Grey threat to the Union. In 1865, he autho- conspiracy on Secretary of War Edwin M.
rized the Black Marshals, to travel wherever they needed and do whatever they Stanton, most famously Otto Eisenschiml
must to keep America out of the clutches of the Martian menace. The Martians in Why Was Lincoln Murdered? Other the-
(or their brainsucker allies) killed him for it,15 but the Marshals rode west and ories point to English bankers angry at
Lincoln’s “greenback” policy, the
went to ground at Fort Freedom, out in Nevada Territory. In their black air-
Southern expansionist Knights of the
ships and secret trains, the War Company strikes hard at skinwalkers in the Golden Circle, and the self-castrating
Arizona Territory and Martian bases under New Mexico. The News Company Skoptsi cult of Cybele, the Great Goddess
looks into rumors of Aztec death (note 9, p. 71). For a sane look at the first
cults and keeps an eye on the three, I recommend William Hanchett’s
Blacklines of covert telegraphy, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies.
as the Gadget Company takes
delivery of the new shipment of 16 Thomas Edison did, in fact, attempt to
electrical ghost-detectors from build a device with which to communicate
their chief designer, “Mister E of with the dead, a “necrophone.” His inter-
Menlo Park.”16 Meanwhile, the est may have been sparked by his parents’
dabbling in (or at least tolerance for) spir-
Brain Company works on using
itualism in his youth, by the psychic and
peyote and Chinese meditation spiritualist experiments of the noted
techniques to develop mind- British physicist Sir William Crookes
powers akin to the Martians’ and (1832-1919), or by the death of his
the Warden Company keeps Fort astronomer friend Walter Dinwiddie,
Freedom safe from too-nosy who like Crookes was deeply interested in
prospectors. The Marshals spiritualism. During the period roughly
recruit not only cowboys and between 1916 and 1920, Edison worked
cavalrymen, but Indian medicine on his necrophone, confirming his inter-
men and scouts, Chinese tong est in the project in a 1920 interview with
fighters and herbalists, ex-slave Scientific American. No papers or appara-
tus for the purpose were found after his
conjure men and Mexican pica-
death, however. I depend here on the
dors. Any man (or woman – ask writeup in Martin Ebon’s anthology of
Annie Oakley) who can pitch in famous people’s paranormal interest, They
and kick the Martians off the Knew The Unknown. More fictionally,
planet – and can survive the Tim Powers has explored the fruitful
toughening-up process called the intersection between Thomas Edison and
Gauntlet – gets the Omicron ghosts in his novel Expiration Date.
Badge and the black hat. Once they’ve proved themselves, War Company might
even share one of its fancy new Gatling rifles. Saddle up, pardner; you might be
burning the last daylight the world has left.
15
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
Pyramid originally posted “Crisis on
Alternate Earths!” on August 13, 1999. The
next essay in publication order is “The
Shadows Over Lovecraft,” on p. 78.
1 The term “elseworlds” is, no doubt,
some kind of trademark or something,
since it’s the label DC Comics uses for its
own alternate-superheroes books. Few of
them actually take place in alternate his-
tories, with the notable exception of
Flashpoint, in which the Flash prevented
JFK’s assassination, and Batman: Holy
Terror, which is set in a world where
Cromwellian theocracy became the model
for America. Most of the “Elseworlds”
books deal with alterations to the super-
heroes rather than their world; the best
of the recent batch is The Liberty Files,
which has breathtaking roleplaying possi-
bilities for World War Two era pulp
superheroics.
2 For those not au fait with their Marvel
superheroes, here’s a brief translation:
The Pythagoreans (after the Greek mystic
and mathematician Pythagoras, who codi-
fied the four elements as the four basic
geometric solids): The Fantastic Four.
Fabulus Calamus (“Fantastic Reed”): Mr.
Fantastic (a.k.a. Reed Richards).
Gaius Tempestas (“Guy Storm”): Human
Torch (a.k.a. Johnny Storm).
Sylvia (from “sylph,” an air elemental):
Invisible Girl (a.k.a. Sue Richards).
Antaeus Earth-Born (after the Greek giant
whose strength derived from touching the
earth): The Thing (a.k.a. Benjamin
Grimm).
Viridis (“green”): The Hulk.
Tiniaz (Etruscan thunder-god, just like it
says): The Mighty Thor.
Arachnus Retiarius (“spider net-thrower”):
Spiderman.
Audax (“the daring”): Daredevil.
The Crucifers (“cross-bearers”): The
X-Men, led by Professor Xavier, and
including Cyclops and the Angel.
The Ultorae (“avengers”): The Avengers.
Centurion Roma: Captain America
(although a centurion was, technically, a
non-com, so a better, though less cool-
sounding, version would be “Tribune
Roma,” perhaps).
And I want to hear no whining from clas-
sics majors: I said it was dog-Latin.
3 In case it’s not clear, this is my tribute
to all those alien invasion storylines in
comics from the Khund to the Kree.
16
Crisis on
Alternate Earths!
“Now you know what I’ve been doing the last few weeks, Wally! I’ve
been experimenting with time travel by use of super-speed!”
– The Flash, in “The Conquerors of Time”
Do all superheroic stories begin with a rocketship landing in Kansas in
1938? I’m not talking about cheap dodges like The Iliad, I’m talking about
superheroes – powers, clichés, costumes, and all. If you look in the four-color
world of my youth, sadly, aside from a few lame tokens superheroic tales have to
be modern ones. Well, not in my games, and one hopes not in yours, either.
Herewith, five elseworlds:1 Alternate Earths where things are just a little more –
super.
“Fire is the test of gold, adversity the test of heroes.”
– Seneca, On Providence
Rome under Domitian Caesar is the capital of the world. Its fountains,
monuments, aqueducts, stadiums – everything is the greatest. And it’s only to be
expected that a city upon which the gods smile so brightly is a city where men
become heroes. Indeed, the superbi have surpassed not only the lowborn gladia-
tors but even the haughty charioteers in the mob’s esteem. The Pythagoreans
(in whom the four elements are reified) are special favorites, with their flying
chariot designed, like the city’s lights and hot water system, by Fabulus Calamus
(whose body and mind flow like water). Gaius Tempestas (whose body can
become flame), his sister Sylvia (invisible mistress of air), and Antaeus Earth-
Born round out the quartet. The strength of Antaeus (once a Jew named
Benjamin) is only matched by that of the raging giant Viridis and the Etruscan
thunder-god Tiniaz – both of whom the city mistrusts somewhat. Other superbi
with questionable reputations are Arachnus Retiarius (the net-slinging wall-
walker) and Audax (whose ability to see in total darkness leads some to speculate
of devilish powers). The Crucifers, of course, are hated Christian superbi
(including the Cyclops and Angelus) with no connection to Proctor Xavier’s
Academy on the Quirinal Hill.
With this setup (which can go as far as your grasp of dog-Latin and the
Marvel Universe’s New York2 will take you), you can play urban superfights,
internecine romance, or whatever other take you like. Do the efforts of the
superbi (especially the Ultorae, an assembly of many heroes led by the beloved
Centurion Roma) help control the mob and, hence, restore stability to the
Empire? Or do they lead to chaos as superbus fights superbus and legions die
needlessly? Only the Fates – and the Watcher – know for sure.
“In that year, news began to trickle in of the appearance of the Franj,
coming down . . . in an innumerable multitude.3 People took fright.”
– Ibn al-Qalanisi
In A.H. 490, the peaceful world of the Dar-al-Islam was shattered by alien
invasion.4 Wearing invincible battlesuits of alien metal and strange design,
killing and plundering with unslakeable ferocity, the Franj drove to the holy
cities in an unstoppable onslaught – until the Righteous Ghazis stopped them.
From Damascus came al-Nur with his sword of light and al-Qawr who
is stronger than Samson. From out of Egypt came al-Mumit (bearer of the
death-touch) and al-Baqi the invulnerable one. Among the Franj went al-Batin,
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
wearing his cloak of night, using uncanny powers of disguise and stealth, and 4 This alternate splits in the era of the
confusion followed in his wake. Even al-Muqqadim came from the far Maghreb, Crusades, from the Muslim perspective.
more swiftly than any desert tornado. And over them all flew the mighty al- A.H. 490 (the 490th year After the
Kabir, the Most Great, Defender of the Holy Places of Mecca. There are Hegira) is A.D. 1099/1100, and the
“Franj” are the Crusaders. Franj is the
rumored to be 99 Righteous Ghazis, one for each of the Holy Names of Allah.5
Arab word for Westerner, and it comes
But the Franj are still more numerous, and the Righteous Ghazis have inspired from “Franks,” which is in turn what the
jealousy in lesser imams and qadis. Not only jealousy causes questions about the Byzantines called any Christian who
Righteous Ghazis’ orthodoxy, since many of them are women, and some are wasn’t a “Roman,” i.e., a Byzantine. (It’s
Sufis or Ismailis. Will the Righteous Ghazis throw the Crusading Franj out of a also where Gene Roddenberry stole the
united Arab world, and invade their cold alien home to force a peace? Or will “Ferengi” from, for Star Trek: the Next
choosing up sides between heroes and villains lead to two centuries of warfare Generation.) For more on this version of
and faction, with only the Franj the winners? the Crusades, see The Crusades Through
Arab Eyes, by Amin Maalouf, which is, if
anything, a little too accessible to the
“It is true that, whether favored by the stars or by nature, some men
non-academic reader. For the old-fash-
are born endowed with such graces that they seem not to have been ioned “Crusades through European eyes,”
born, but to have been fashioned by the hands of some god . . .” I haven’t ever found a version better-
– Baldassare Castiglione, The Courtier written than Sir Steven
Runciman’s
The alien craft fell to earth in 1452, rocketed from a doomed planet. Raised History of the
in the small village of Vinci by Gianbattista and Marta diChiente, Calli learned Crusades, although
it’s woefully out-
to fight for truth, justice, and humanitas – now he is the metropolis of
dated now.
Florence’s greatest defender, the Star. (His childhood playmate, sadly, has
become a twisted genius bent on revenge – feared artificer Leonardo Lector.)
Each city has its own brightly-caparisoned hero, complete with secret identity
and superpowered nemeses. The Raven hunts criminals in the back alleys of
Rome, while serving on the Curia by day as a wealthy noble cardinal. Chain
Lightning runs criminals and condottieri ragged in Pisa; the Emeraldist joins
him when Milan is quiet. The Atlantean patrols the seas of Italy from an under-
water palazzo beneath Venice. Silver Athena dispenses justice (and protects
women) while ruling an island of Amazons near Sicily. Occasionally, all these 5 The 99 ways Allah is described in the
heroes team up in a Legion of the Just 6 sponsored by enigmatic politician Koran include: al-Nur (“the Light”),
al-Qawr (“the Most Strong), al-Mumit
Niccolò Machiavelli – usually to defeat invasions from France, Spain, or
(“the Creator of Death”), al-Baqi (“the
Venus,7 but sometimes to foil the plots of villainous alchemists, mercenaries, Everlasting”), al-Batin (“the Hidden”),
gods, and so forth. Slowly, the Legion is uniting Italy – how will that change al-Muqqadim (“the Expediter”), and
the world? al-Kabir (“the Most Great”).

“When I peruse the conquer’d fame of heroes and the victories of 6 And again, for Mighty Marvel fans not
mighty generals, I do not envy the generals.” up on their DC Justice League heroes:
The Star: Superman
– Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Leonardo Lector: Lex Luthor
The Raven: Batman
Our fighting heroes: On battlefields from Arizona to Florida and from Chain Lightning: Flash
Texas to Pennsylvania, they struggle. On the one side, the Liberty Legion: Emeraldist: Green Lantern
Captain Union, Steam-Master, the Equalette, and Furnace. On the other, the Atlantean: Aquaman
Southern Cross: Superior, the Cavalier, Dr. Green, and the Gray Ghost. Silver Athena: Wonder Woman
Other heroes fight on the sidelines and in the back country – Conqueror John
helps save slaves while Naphtha Jack burns Union depots. 7 For the planet Venus, see the Glossary.
This campaign frame can go a few different ways; it’s set up as an homage
to Roy Thomas-era All-Star Squadron and Justice Society stories,8 but it can 8 For this alternate, however, I just made
up some superheroes who sounded cool,
easily become war comics with a super edge. Is there a Union (or Confederate)
taking my cue from Will Shetterley’s
Unnamed Soldier disguised in the opposing army? Do the Rebs have a gone-but-not-forgotten comic book
Haunted Ironclad, while Sgt. Nicholas Wrath and his Howling Raiders strike Captain Confederacy, which is set in an
behind Confederate lines? This battle can also turn the world either way. In alternate (Confederacy wins) present,
one branch, perhaps the existence of supermen inspires the South and allows however, rather than the 1860s. My war
them to negate much of the Union’s advantage in men and materiel, resulting comics heroes, however, are straight pas-
in a negotiated peace and an independent Confederacy brimming with super- tiches of the Unknown Soldier, the
humans. In the other, the supermen’s battle settles the war early, and Lincoln Haunted Tank, and Sgt. Fury and his
is able to reconstruct the South in peace and in a second term. Howling Commandos.

17
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
“Well, my children
Well, my children
When you meet your friends again
When you meet your friends again
The earth will tremble.
The earth will tremble.”
– Cheyenne Ghost Dance chant

In 1870, it began. The spirits, called by the medicine man Tavibo, returned
across the great divide, traversed the sky grasses, and saw the People pressed
hard. The whites, recovered from their war, were riding hard into the West, tak-
ing the last of the lands from the People. The spirits agreed that this could not
be, so they entered chosen receptacles, granting them great power. Crow grants
piercing vision (and even shards of light as hot as the sun’s gaze) to his favorite;
Hawk gives supernatural archery; Bear gives toughness and strength; Eagle
gives flight; and Wolverine grants ferocity. Suddenly the whites get pushed
back, as more and more spirits enter more and more of the People under the
impetus of the Ghost Dance’s powerful pull. It’s all that Edison and the others
can do to invent steam-skeletons, lightning-guns, and other devices to let the
whites barely hold the line. (The peaceful words and amazing powers of young
Clark Wild, a white child raised by the Apache and the spirits to become a per-
fect warrior, don’t help the Eastern morale effort any, either.)9
In this campaign frame, the PCs can be either the very outgunned cavalry,
desperately trying steampunk mini-gatlings and para-packs to give themselves a
fighting chance.10 Or, they can be the Indian braves now possessing (and pos-
sessed by) powers far beyond those of mortal men. Or, the PCs can be the spir-
its themselves – who may not be restricted to a single body.11 When the 7th
Cavalry kills one “Eagle” among the Lakota, another flies the next day among
the Nez Perce. For even more flexibility, perhaps it’s the humans who have the
latent power (Keen Eagle may have good eyesight, or Lightfoot the potential to
fly, etc.) and the spirits just boost it – thus a single player-spirit might possess a
fleet-footed warrior in one adventure, and switch to an invisible scout in the
next without changing characters. You could even combine this frame with the
Civil War supers frame I mentioned above to give the kemosabes a shot. If the
spirits so move you, that is.

9 This alternate is set in the Ghost Dance

(see p. STi26) era of the Old West, but
the individual spirits are a relative galli-
maufry of traditions. “Clark Wild,” of
course, is Doc (Clark) Savage writ
Western.

10 For other steampunk Western cam-

paign frames, see pp. 15 and STi25.

11 This particular notion was that of the

redoubtable and brilliant John Tynes.

18
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
Pyramid originally posted “Altered Spaces”

Altered Spaces on September 24, 1999. The next essay in

publication order is “Jacks Wild: Six Stabs at
the Ripper,” on p. 70.
“Now let’s look briefly at how planets and stars form . . . Although
broad limits exist, it seems that much of the details . . . do not seem to
be inevitable. Instead they reflect vagaries in the formation of the
particular planetary system. This strong element of historic contingency
gives us a lot of options for storytelling.”
– Stephen L. Gillet, World-Building

The redoubtable Dave Pulver’s swell new edition of GURPS Space cries
out for salute, and five rayguns’ worth shall it receive here. Space, as they say,
is big, and GURPS Space even more so, spanning everything from Allen
Steele-flavored near-space near-future storylines to the whispering crash of
future civilizations of Stapledons and Smiths. Which means, of course, that it’s
more than ripe for five more directions to sprawl in, five spaceframes (or,
rather, Space campaign frames) stress-rigged for travel into hyperdimensional
gaming – and beyond. Let’s boldly go, then, sideways and forward, and into
the darkness between the stars.

“This was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes
and photographic plates of our observatories. This was no breath from
the skies whose motions and dimensions our astronomers measure or
deem too vast to measure. It was just a colour out of space . . . from 1 For more on H.P. Lovecraft specifically,
see pp. 78-80. For more on Lovecraftian
realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the gaming, of course, see Call of Cthulhu,
black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.” from Chaosium.
– H.P. Lovecraft, “The Colour Out Of Space”
2 My valued friend, correspondent, and
evil twin James Palmer avers that
Cordwainer Smith’s short SF story “The
Game of Rat and Dragon” is particularly
Lovecraftian, especially given HPL’s love
of cats. He’s correct, of course. More
broadly than that, Smith’s Instrumentality
of Mankind series (which consists of the
collections The Rediscovery of Man and The
Instrumentality of Mankind, along with the
Even people who correctly identify H.P. Lovecraft 1 as a science fiction novel Norstrilia) is quite simply some of
writer sometimes forget exactly what that implies. The presence of numerous the purest work of the imagination that
interplanetary civilizations, of hideously ancient alien beings, of metals and SF has ever (or likely will ever) produce.
colors unknowable by terrestrial laws – it’s all horror, and it’s all out there for a “Cordwainer Smith,” by the way, did
GURPS Cthulhupunk-Space crossover.2 The discovery of a grav-drive system not technically exist, the name being a
by a Russo-Japanese korp opens up the solar system. Reports immediately start pseudonym of the American military
filtering back of “bogeys”; things that fade in and out of radar and imagers – adviser (in Korea and Malaya), Sinologist,
and psychological warfare expert Paul
things with wings instead of grav fields that maneuver in some unknown way.
Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913-1966).
The other powers also launch reverse-engineered ships, and one of them Linebarger’s (or “Smith’s”) universe is too
draws the attention of the Beings of Yaddith, a relatively benign race which sheerly wondrous to detail here, or even,
travels in FTL light-envelopes; a technology soon shared. However, the dis- really, in his own work. Linebarger lost
tortions of spacetime created by the human FTL systems attract other entities much of the background work he’d done
– the Byakhee, Insects from Shaggai, the Xothic Star-Spawn, and other inter- on the “Instrumentality universe” when
stellar dangers (and interdimensional ones like the Hounds of Tindalos). Ships his notebook went astray on the island of
disappear, pilots go mad, colonies fall into dark worship on distant planets. Rhodes in 1965. I, personally, combine
The Mi-Go watch and wait, seizing control of the human colony on Yuggoth “psychological warfare expert writing fab-
and using its brain for their fiendish researches. On one level, the campaign is ulous future-history” with “mysteriously
one of trying to understand humanity’s place in the universe, a traditional First missing notebook” with “island citadel of
the Knights Hospitaller” and get a dis-
Contact theme. But in this universe, the understanding is tainted, and as the
turbing conspiratorial time-war pattern,
Earth’s ossified systems splinter under madness and anarchy, the human but I’m probably overreacting.
19
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
3 For some reason probably related to the
personal interests of David Drake, there’s
a thriving subgenre of “Roman SF,”
including Drake’s “Roman mercenaries in
space” novel Ranks of Bronze, from which
I got the idea in the first place. Other
thrilling examples include two “Romans-
and-aliens” novels, Drake’s Birds of Prey
and Killer (with horror writer supreme
Karl Edward Wagner).
4 From pp. A64-67 or A108-111, pp.
I60-62 or AH55-57, or pp. BO84-88,
respectively.
5 Sadly, such a conquered Earth could
only take the occasionally inspirational
gobbet from Somtow Sucharitkul’s wry
alternate “Romans-and-Indians” history
The Aquiliad, to say nothing of Roma
Aeterna, from GURPS Alternate Earths
(pp. AE52-69).
6 My friend Josh Knorr suggests that,
having overthrown the corrupt and deca-
dent Engai Empire, the PCs should be
rewarded with the following ringing
speech: “Congratulations, players. You
have successfully liberated Terra from her
vassal status by demolishing the
most advanced civilization in stellar
history. Enjoy the next thousand years of
darkness.”
7 On pp. AE33-51.
8 For the exploded planet, along with a
lot of other pseudoastronomy, see p. 102.
9 Cydonia is the region of Mars where
the famed “Face on Mars” turned up on
the Viking orbiter photographs, along
with some pyramids and other excite-
ments. (For details, see Richard
Hoagland’s unsurpassable opus The
Monuments of Mars, now in its fourth edi-
tion; or p. STi59.) The name, by the way,
comes from that of a city on the north
coast of Crete (now Canea), founded
around 550 B.C. by exiles from Samos.
Even for Hoagland the Atlantis-to-Crete-
to-Cydonia-to-Mars connection would be
straining, so he wisely doesn’t mention it.
10 For sacred geometry, see pp. 106-108.
20
colonies see themselves left alone in the dark . . .
“Just think of it . . . Class Fours with a military organization tough
enough and flexible enough to retaliate like that! We’d already beaten
them once and they counterattacked . . . and that with no weapons,
no technology, nothing but their hands . . . all I can say is, give them
a few years to soak up our brand of know-how and they’ll be out here
with us . . . ”
– Keith Roberts, “Survey of the Third Planet”
Stuck for a plot, Isaac Asimov transposed
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
into the future of our Galaxy and got the
Foundation. Here, the Galaxy transposes itself into
Rome3 – the aliens (possibly the Kaa or Engai
from GURPS Aliens, the Alphans from GURPS
Illuminati, or even the Greys from GURPS Black
Ops)4 land on Earth to secure the rimward flank of
the Orion Arm. Appreciative of the human mar-
tial spirit and impressed by the primitve
Roman military, the aliens rapidly begin
recruiting legions to serve as bodyguards,
slaves, and mercenaries across the vast expanse
of their own Empire. Outmoded technology is more than sufficient to let the
Romans conquer the Earth5 for their alien patrons and ensure a large supply of
Homo romanus. (It’s probably more fun if the aliens use force swords, cybersuits,
and single-shot energy weapons, the better to replicate Roman arms drill.) A
campaign could even start with PC German “barbarians” in Rome who become
Roman “barbarians” on Rigel; the parallelism adds resonance and serves as a
great story mine, as Roman backstabbing politics becomes alien backstabbing
politics with just a search-and-replace. Remember, it didn’t take too long at all in
our history for the “barbarian” guardsmen to start naming Emperors – and can
we expect any less from Romans in the Engai capitals?6
“Victory and defeat are matters of temporary force of circumstances.”
– Yamamoto Tsunetomo
This frame, like the last, begins with an alternate history, but pits it not
against the decadent backdrop of alien empire but against – our own world.
Whether the result of some freakish dimensional flux, a quark experiment gone
horribly wrong, or an incredibly peculiar pocket where Einstein’s spacetime con-
tinuum meets Schroedinger’s, two Earths exist in the same galactic neighbor-
hood. One is our Earth, perhaps a century hence. The other – Reich-57 from
GURPS Alternate Earths, also a century into its future. On this Earth, Japan not
only won World War II, it blindsided its Axis allies and fascist America with a
biowar attack, genetically engineered to destroy non-Japanese. The global
Japanese Empire then turned its attention to the stars, to conquer new worlds for
the Emperor. The shocked reaction as the two Earths met gave way to rivalry
and war over the few human-habitable planets known to both. Giant space-
carriers drop fighters and bombers out of warp to attack the enemy’s positions,
cloaked destroyers hunt ore freighters and troop transports, and battleships clash
across the light-years as battlesuited space marines fight for every kilometer of
hellish jungle worlds scattered between the rival Earths. This frame exists (of
course) to replicate World War Two action on a grand space scale; trading the
fighters for mecha and bringing in GURPS Mecha would be the work of a
moment, were the GM so inclined. For the GM who hates to see cousins fight,
the two sides might be forced to make peace when the Bugs attack, unable to tell
(or uninterested in telling) one set of soft humans from another.
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
“Welcome to the amazing and wonderful world of Extra-terrestrial
Archaeology! . . . [T]he book is about artifacts. Ancient artifacts.
Artifacts so old, and so out-of-place that their very existence threatens
11 Odd stuff all over the Moon shows up
every religious and scientific dogma cherished by modern man. Is the on pp. 49-51. I selected Crater
world ready for pyramids, obelisks, platforms, huge walls, giant statues Aristarchus because Charles Fort (in New
and glowing UFOs . . . ?” Lands) mentions a “bright light” from that
– David Hatcher Childress, Extraterrestrial Archaeology crater seen from Earth (specifically, from
Marseilles) on May 7, 1867. Having
Teasing out the unreality a trifle farther – okay, a lot farther – we come to looked up the origin of the name
“Cydonia” for note 9, above, synchronici-
the world of the roaring 2020s, when the exoarchaeologist is the woman of the
ty rears its magical head in approved
hour, discovering the secrets of the exploded planet8 and the Martian pyramids. Fortean style. Crater Aristarchus is named
This is GURPS Cliffhangers in the serial future rather than the newsreel past; for the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of
from deadly fungi running amok in London to battles between the University of Samos; from which island fled the exiles
Chicago and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army over the Sacred Ark of who founded Cydonia, where they erect-
Cydonia,9 this is the carefree world of space crackpottery played for thrills ed a great temple to Britomartis. Who
rather than paranoia. You don’t even have to go with the 1940s “Martian canals was, it symmetrically turns out, the
and Venusian jungles” model if you want; part of the feel of this frame draws, Cretan moon goddess. Moon-to-Samos-
after all, from its relatively straight-faced use of legitimate astrophysics bisociat- to-Cydonia-to-Moon. Wheee!
ed with its flagrant abuse of archaeology. (Player tech is a different matter; the
trusty blaster should be handy, and to speed things along you can slip torch 12 For MJ-12, see the Glossary under
“Majestic-12.”
ships or some other bogus reactionless drive in. Do it while the players are still
goggling at the lost Atlantean colony under the ice of Europa, if you want.) Or,
if you want, introduce a lodge of magicians who don’t want the sacred
geometric10 ratios of the Aristarchus11 petroglyphs published, and spin in some
occultist mojo with your neurolashes and epigraphic linguistics software.

“We both knew who the real targets of the

SDI were, and it wasn’t a bunch of ICBM
warheads. It was the UFOs, alien
spacecraft thinking themselves
invulnerable and invisible as they soared
around the edges of our atmosphere . . .”
– Col. Philip J. Corso (ret.),
The Day After Roswell

Or, step into fullblown conspiracy, and find out the truth that humanity
can’t handle. The galaxy is big, and it is full. The Rigellians, Antareans,
Betelgeusans, Sirians, the whole crew have the good real estate locked down,
and they’re fighting over the wildlife preserves now – over us, and planets like
us. Edward Teller reverse-engineered the salvaged Roswell saucer under
MJ-1212 direction just in time to forestall Earth’s annexation, but humanity
remains an annoying afterthought and irritant in cosmic politics – the Kurds,
Kosovars, or Tutsis of the galaxy. Fortunately, the Russians and the British
cooperated, and Earth presented a relatively unified front at the Sirius
Conference of 1970. Meanwhile, human “cultural observers” steal technology,
bribe friends, connive against enemies, and somehow keep the whole system
boiling without getting the planet conquered in a “police action.” There’s just
no time or margin for global panic and frenzy; we have to run a bluff and bid
for friends while we modernize. MJ-12 has been desperately releasing alien
tech into Earth’s laboratories (the transistor was only the first of many MJ-12
“inventions”) in a crash course powering Earth up to speed with our hungry
neighbors. This is GURPS Espionage meets GURPS Uplift against the back-
ground of the alien conspiracy theory. MJ-12 agents on Earth may be creepy,
all-powerful Men In Black, but out in the real galaxy, they’re the
rats in the walls. Join MJ-12 and see the universe – so that
the rest of mankind doesn’t have to yet.

21
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
Pyramid originally posted “Deus ex Machina
Tempora” on March 17, 2000, the final essay
in publication order in this volume. With it,
our harum-scarum journey through time is
Deus ex Machina
finished.
Tempora
“And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth
lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever
1 This particular passage, which on the and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and
surface seems to be a fairly clear (for the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things
Revelation, anyway) description of the which are therein, that time shall be no more.”
End of Time, might also be taken to – Revelation 10:5-61
mean that, when “time shall be no more,”
the End Times will occur. In other words,
In the End Times, says St. John, time shall be no more, and all God’s works
the invention of the time machine signals
the beginning of the reign of Antichrist,
shall be revealed. He doesn’t specifically say that they’ll be revealed to a musi-
or the end of the world, or both. Now cologist priest in Venice, of course, but then he had a lot of ground to cover.
there’s a notion for a roleplaying campaign Unlike the Biblical prophet of Patmos, however, we have more time to cover
of Biblical proportions, as the PCs zoom time, from 1952 to the Crucifixion and back again, chasing demons, conspira-
back and forth in time to fight the cies, and Deadly Mirror Entities all the while. And since all this makes great
Antichrist and his minions: after all, if campaign fodder, let me urge you to take time for Father Ernetti. After all, he
“time shall be no more,” then the End took time for you.
Times are occurring at all times simulta-
neously: serial time has ended, as well. “‘Every human being,’ declares Father Ernetti, ‘traces from birth to
You can start with the Book of
Revelation, and with the notes on pp.
death a double furrow of light and sound. This constitutes his
Y116-123. individual identity mark. The same applies to an event, to music, to
movement. The antennae used on our laboratory enable us to ‘tune in’
2 Which means that Father Ernetti also on these furrows: picture and sound.’ Physicists will perhaps be
discovered EVP, or “electronic voice phe- unconvinced by such theories, but it is an undeniable fact that Father
nomena” seven years before its first
Ernetti can show ‘photographs’ of the distant past, and play back voices
known explorer, Friedrich Jurgenson.
Jurgenson, a Swedish opera singer, found that have been silent for millennia.”
a Norwegian voice amidst his tape- – Robert Charroux, The Mysterious Past
recorded bird songs in 1959. For five
years, Jurgenson left tape recorders run-
ning in various circumstances, and found
that ghosts, or spirits, or astral entities, or
invisible people from Dimension Z, were
real chatterboxes. In 1965, he met Latvian
EVP pioneer Konstantin Raudive, who
recorded 100,000 separate phantom com-
munications before his death in 1974.
EVP is strongly linked (by its initials, if
nothing else) to “electronic visual phe-
nomena,” the sighting of ghostly forms in
the “snow” of a TV set tuned to a dead
channel. Both (along with many other
things from the Cydonian Face on Mars
to Rorschach inkblots to appearances of
Jesus in a tortilla) are examples of what
neurologists call pareidolia: meaningful
images seen in random shapes. Which is,
of course, the whole point of divination
itself. This is only a sampling of the kind
of useful information you’ll find in the
surprisingly hard-headed encyclopedia
Alternate Realities, by Leonard George,
and the less-surprisingly relativist Harper’s
Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal
Experience, by Rosemary Ellen Guiley.

22
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
It all began with Gregorian chants. In 1952, Father Pellegrino Ernetti, a 3 The story of Thyestes tells of his rivalry
27-year old Benedictine priest, labored to remove stray harmonics from with his brother Atreus over the kingship
recordings of Gregorian chants. As Peter Krassa tells the story in Father Ernetti’s of Argos. Angered that Thyestes had
Chronovisor, Ernetti accidentally recorded the voice of his co-worker’s dead stolen the ram of the Golden Fleece (see
p. 116), Atreus killed Thyestes’ two chil-
father, seemingly sent from the afterlife.2 Ernetti, a student of ancient music
dren and fed them to him at a feast. In
theory, speculated that the classical Pythagorean and Aristotelian notions, that response to Thyestes’ horrible (though
sound and harmonies never actually cease to exist, explained the voice. He had unknowing) crime, the Earth shifted on
somehow recorded a voice from the past! Working on the project for the next its axis (for which, see pp. STi53-55).
five years with an increasingly high-powered team of Catholic physicists Thyestes later cursed Atreus, which
(including Enrico Fermi and a mysterious Portuguese Professor de Matos), (eventually) led to the Trojan War and
Ernetti slowly developed an apparatus that could focus on any harmonic of light the fall of Heroic Greece.
and sound from any time in the past – his “chronovisor.” Thyestes’ story can be read as a sym-
The chronovisor combined trimetallic antennae capable of receiving all har- bolic reference to the change of zodiacal
monic vibrations, a tuner/direction finder device similar to an oscilloscope, and Ages from the age of Taurus (the bull, the
recording equipment. Father Ernetti’s team tested the apparatus, using it to fertility goddesses such as Britomartis,
goddess of Thyestes) to Aries (the ram,
view speeches by Mussolini and Napoleon, then skipping backward through
the gods of kingship such as Zeus, god of
Roman history to a vegetable market during Trajan’s reign and then to the fall Atreus). Aries in turn gave way, two mil-
of Catiline. At one point, they watched the performance of a lost play, Quintus lennia later, to Pisces (the fish, symbol of
Ennius’ Thyestes,3 at its Roman debut in 169 B.C. Ernetti copied the play, and Christ); Pisces, in its turn, is due (either
made plans to seek out other lost artworks. And then the group searched for 30 years ago or 600 years from now,
Jesus Christ. And they found Him (in 36 A.D.), and filmed the Last Supper, the depending on whose numbers you use) to
Passion and Crucifixion – and the Resurrection. In 1958, Father Ernetti showed shift into the Age of Aquarius (the water
the film to Pope Pius XII along with top Cardinals, the President of Italy, and jar, or initiatory Grail of personal magic).
key members of the Pontifical Academy. For the next decade or so, hints drib- There’s a tremendously technical, but
bled out of Venice about Father Ernetti’s chronovisor – Ernetti even spoke to a exhaustive, mythological exploration of
parapsychological congress on the topic in 1966. Tabloid reporters and curious this theme in Hamlet’s Mill, by Giorgio de
Santillana & Hertha Dechend.
fellow priests alike heard alternately that the chronovisor had been dismantled
as unsafe (or too dangerous to publicize) and that it had been used to make 4 Alberto Luciani, Pope John Paul I, died
archaeological discoveries, translate the original Ten Commandments, or record of an apparent heart attack (no autopsy
the lectures of Pythagoras. At some point, however – roughly coinciding with was performed) on September 28, 1978,
the sudden death of Pope John Paul I4 – Father Ernetti stopped cooperating. after only 33 days as pontiff. According to
He returned to musicology, and died in 1994, six months after making a final In God’s Name, by journalist David Yallop,
report to Pope John Paul II. the Pope was poisoned by Bishop Paul
“the Gorilla” Marcinkus, secretary of the
“[Steinmetz] drew the plans for that camera and we followed through Vatican Bank. Yallop claims that John
Paul I was going to institute a thorough
and today we can say definitely that we can go into the past and pick up housecleaning to expose the massive cor-
every past event. Of course, that becomes too cumbersome, but we select ruption in the Bank and its partners in the
past events, and as I said, the scientists are admitting today and fully Italian Mafia and the Freemasonic P2
believing that we will go into the past events to the extent of a million (“Propaganda Due”) society. The P2
years . . .” Lodge also possessed rumored ties to the
CIA, the international Fascist shadow-
– Baird T. Spalding, Life and Teaching of the
government, and (no doubt) the Montauk
Masters of the Far East (Vol. 5) Project (see note 18 on p. 25).
Marcinkus’ confidant and financial
But Father Ernetti was hardly the only pioneer in the exciting field of tem- advisor, Roberto Calvi, was discovered
poral photography. Even discounting the “spirit photography” of William on June 17, 1982, hanged in alleged
Mumler,5 there’s the instructive example of Baird T. Spalding, who made a consid- Freemasonic ritual fashion beneath
erable amount of money (most of it, admittedly, for his unscrupulous publisher- Blackfriars Bridge in London with bricks
manager Douglas DeVorss) recapping the Wisdom of the East for small-town in his pockets.
Americans. Spalding, who claimed to have spent much of his childhood in Inner
5 For more on Mumler, see p. 12.
Asia finding golden books and speaking with “elder brothers” from Shambhala,6
also told the story of building a time camera from plans drawn up by famed (and 6 For Shambhala, see the Glossary.
conveniently demised) electrical pioneer Charles Steinmetz. Spalding’s “group”
of 26 men (a double coven, I note idly) worked in Central Asia between 1914 and 7 The Damanhurian Federation, nestled
1953, and made movies of George Washington’s inauguration and of the Sermon in Valchiusella, Italy, uses their time
on the Mount. (The relatively unimaginative Oxford engineer George Delawar machine only for the good of mankind.
used his 1950 time camera to take pictures of his own wedding.)7 However, when The Lemurians said so. See
DeVorss was gunned down (by an assassin suffering from memory loss)8 six www.damanhur.org for the details.
months after Spalding’s death, any leads to the Time Camera vanished.
23
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
8 Amnesiac assassins have become a staple
of conspiratorial theorizing, especially
about the CIA (although Satan’s Assassins,
by the indefatigable Brad Steiger with
Warren Smith, suspects yet Darker
Forces). It’s the CIA’s own fault, of
course: if they hadn’t carried out the MK-
ULTRA mind-control experiments
between 1953 and 1964 (as documented
in the rigorously researched Search For
The Manchurian Candidate, by John
Marks), maybe they wouldn’t be accused
of masterminding memory-wiped,
microwave-activated hit squads now (in
the rather less rigorous Mind Control,
World Control, by the late, lamented Jim
Keith).
9 Specifically, in “Mirror, rorriM” on pp.
STi94-97.
10 Venice had a monopoly on properly-
ground mirror glass from 1507 to 1667.
11 As does, of course, sacred geometry,
for which see pp. 106-108.
12 Pythagoras (ca. 580 B.C.- ca. 500 B.C.)
of Samos (see note 9, p. 21) is best-known
for the Pythagorean theorem, which he
may actually have learned in Egypt, since
the Egyptians knew it. The ancients
claimed that Pythagoras gained his
knowledge from Egypt and Babylon; later
folks have added the Brahmins of India
and the Druids to Pythagoras’ itinerary.
After all this, he settled in Croton, a
Greek city in Italy, to attempt to bring his
notions of harmony in all things into the
political sphere (a goal reminiscent of that
of the Bavarian Illuminati). It didn’t work.
Among other things, Pythagoras believed
in the music of the planetary spheres (see
p. 102), and that “all is number,” the
foundation principle of the kabbalah (for
which, see the Glossary).
13 For Lemuria, see the Glossary. For the
Lemurians, see note 8 on p. 84.
14 For Tesla, see the Glossary.
15 The Observer Effect, as stated on p.
TT45, holds that “An observed event
cannot be changed.” (GURPS Time
Travel then goes for a couple more pages
on how to sneak around it.) High
Resistance (p. TT41) says that changing
time is very, very hard. The combination
means you have to work very hard to
change time, while leaving no traces
whatsoever. In other words, perfect con-
ditions for conspiracy gaming.
24
“After a moment he asked, ‘What about the Resurrection? Did you wit-
ness that as well?’ ‘Yes.’ the Venetian priest replied emphatically. ‘And it
is very difficult to describe. We saw it in silhouette, as if it were a shape
seen through a thin film of illuminated alabaster – as if we were seeing it
through a crystal.’”
– Frs. Francois Brune and Pellegrino Ernetti, in
Father Ernetti’s Chronovisor, by Peter Krassa
In the old days, of course, if you claimed to see historical events “through a
crystal,” you were practicing skrying, or catoptromancy – mirror magic. We’ve
already covered much of that freakiness in a previous essay,9 but it’s interesting
to recall the vital role played by Venice in both the history of mirror science10 and
in the career of Father Ernetti. Familiarity with mirrors, of course, is akin to famil-
iarity with sound, both optics and acoustics dealing with ratios, frequencies, and
similar elements.11 Father Ernetti’s insistence on the “scientific” basis of his
chronovisor turns out to draw heavily on Pythagorean12 mysticism – the music of
the spheres, and the permanence of the transmigrated soul as an “astral record” in
the universe. (Pythagoras, according to Pausanias, possessed a magic mirror of his
own.) What Father Ernetti called the astral record, the Theosophists who followed
Spalding would call the “Akashic Record,” the complete story of everything and
everybody in the history of the world, accessible only to those adepts who have
opened their mystical eye. Hmmm. Krassa explicitly ties the mystical sight of the
Akashic Record to the mystical (and one-eyed) Lemurians,13 who still exist as
thought-forms hanging in the immutable ether. Krassa even hints darkly that
Father Ernetti’s other claim to fame may have come from his close association with
astral entities – the good father was also one of Italy’s foremost exorcists. One
wonders if, in his time-viewing, Father Ernetti might not have stumbled upon the
Lovecraftian “Hounds of Tindalos,” who pursue those who see them throughout
time and can only be stopped by carefully measured curved lines. Like, say, those
in a lens.
“Yes, the chronovisor would turn the world topsy-turvy, as you say – but
in ways that would strike fear into the hearts of certain groups of people.”
– Fr. Pellegrino Ernetti, in Father Ernetti’s Chronovisor,
by Peter Krassa
So, let us take leave even of the thin and tattered facts of Father Ernetti’s
career, and propose a super combo GURPS Time Travel-Voodoo campaign frame.
Father Ernetti gains the crucial hint in his researches from Enrico Fermi just
before Fermi’s death in 1954. (The same death year as Spalding and DeVorss.
Hmmm.) He develops the chronovisor, shows it to Pope Pius XII, and is made the
General of a new, secret society within the Church – the Order of St. Eligius
(patron of clockmakers). The Order uses the chronovisor first to chart history, and
after improving the apparatus to project themselves back in time, to battle demons,
astral and akashic entities, and threats to the Vatican. (Perhaps they used the
chronovisor to read over Tesla’s14 shoulder – or Steinmetz’.) It’s likely that the
Observer Effect holds (with concomitant High Resistance),15 although much can
escape in the blurred visions of the past. (If I were running the game, I’d force
Eligian elites projecting back in time to have an artifact from the place and time
they aimed to visit – the Vatican’s storehouse of relics16 and manuscripts would
come in handy here.) The Eligian library, deep within the bowels of the Giorgio
Cini Foundation at the abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, holds copied
secret documents from all of time – the magics of Pythagoras and Roger Bacon,
the secrets of the KGB and CIA, the numbered accounts of crimelords and dicta-
tors. The Order uses this knowledge to make pinpoint strikes into history, using
Father Ernetti’s powerful harmonic exorcism techniques to drive off the demonic
In-Betweeners and their malevolent Lemurian masters.
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
“All this gives rise to serious questions. What was going on in Geneva 16 Apropos of the Vatican’s store of relics,
during the last few centuries? What was the power and the technology I’m reminded of the great scene in
Wolfgang Jeschke’s novel The Last Day of
behind the clock makers, also the seat of world finance? And what was
Creation, in which the special Papal com-
the symbology of creatures popping out of clocks? Could all this mean to mission on relic evaluation discovers that
suggest that those who control the finances of the world also control and the overwhelming majority of the “mirac-
manipulate the consciousness of time?” ulously preserved” relics of the saints are,
– Preston Nichols and Peter Moon, Montauk Revisited in fact, pieces of (non-biodegradeable)
plastic left over from earlier time voyages.
Which brings up the whole topic of
And, of course, to battle the other time conspiracies. Where did Fermi get
“erratics,” machined equipment or human
the secrets of time travel in the first place? Why, from Project Rainbow – better bones found in impossibly ancient strata.
known as the Philadelphia Experiment.17 The Rainbow team, now located at My favorite examples include the spear-
Montauk, Long Island18 under the direction of shadowy forces within the U.S. heads and “mortar and pestle” discovered
government and scientific elite, may have been the ones who silenced Fermi, in a California gold mine (in 1877 and
Spalding, and DeVorss. Though not before the Spalding-Steinmetz camera fell 1853, respectively) immersed in 55-mil-
into the hands of the Nine Unknown Seers of Shangri-La, who use it to access lion-year-old gravel, the metal “bell-
the Akashic Records directly in an ambitious plan to bring Lemuria once more shaped vessel” with incised floral designs
into phase with the Earth and create a Golden Paradise in Tibet. blasted out of 600-million-year-old rock
Unless, of course, the British royal family can stop them – everybody knows in Dorchester, Mass., and the “hundreds”
that wherever there’s a Vatican conspiracy, there is an equal and opposite British of very machined-looking metal spheres
discovered in 2.8-billion-year-old strata in
conspiracy.19 Using John Dee’s20 “shewstone” (an obsidian skrying mirror?)
mines in the South African Transvaal.
and the Delawar Time Projector (as well as the vast resources of the British More Lovecraftian Elder Races? The
Museum), the secretive MI-∞ teams seek to preserve Western power in Asia lurid details can be found in Michael
and restore Cecil Rhodes’ “Great Work of Time.”21 Thus we have a four-way Cremo and Richard Thompson’s
conspiracy campaign of intrigue and time travel, in which anyone (or no one) Forbidden Archaeology.
can be the good guys. (We just don’t have space to do justice to Marc
Davenport’s theory, in Visitors From Time: The Secret of the UFOs, that UFOs are 17 On the Philadelphia Experiment, see
time machines.) Or they can all struggle heroically against the Mirror-Venusians William Moore and Charles Berlitz’ The
from our Battling the Mirror Realm campaign frame I mentioned in that earlier Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility,
column – look back in time and decide for yourself. or (for the larger picture) Brad Steiger
and Sherry Hanson Steiger’s The Rainbow
Conspiracy. Or, of course, pp. STi49-52.

18 According to the delirious and delight-

ful Montauk series by Preston Nichols and
Peter Moon, a secret cabal of black magi-
cians and Nazis at the highest levels of the
U.S. government direct a secret research
project into psychotronics, time travel,
and covert Tesla technology from
beneath the radar station at the decom-
missioned Montauk AFB in Montauk,
Long Island.

1 9 Well, everybody at A-Albionic

Research, anyway, who combine
LaRouchite Anglophobia (as in his Dope,
Inc.) with good old-fashioned American
Catholic-baiting for a very impressive
bipolar unified field theory. For a differ-
ent, albeit related, British royal conspira-
cy, see p. 72.

20 For more on John Dee, see pp. 36-37,

and the Glossary.

21 Billionaire imperialist Cecil Rhodes’

“Great Work of Time” was, according to
conspiratorial legend, the establishment
of a secret society to maintain British rule
over the world. Cf. “occult imperialism,”
in note 5 on p. 39.
25
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
Pyramid originally posted “An Alternate-
Historical Alphabet” on January 14, 2000.
The next essay in publication order is
“Templar America,” on p. 31.
1 “A Conspiratorial Alphabet” appears in
the first volume, on pp. STi119-122. “A
Secret-Historical Alphabet” remains
uncollected.
2 We shouldn’t leave the topic without a
mention of Robert Schmunk’s brilliant
alternate history bibliography, on line at
www.uchronia.net.
3 The current historical consensus, as
exemplified by Heisenberg’s War by
Robert Powers, seems to be that the
Nazis were, in fact, rather comfortably far
from developing an atomic bomb; Robert
K. Wilcox, on the other hand, argues per-
suasively (if not conclusively) in Japan’s
Secret War that the Japanese were surpris-
ingly close.
4 For more America-discovering excite-
ment, see pp. 31-34.
5 But see Peter James and Nick Thorpe’s
Ancient Inventions, for a blithe survey of
the clever things people invented before
Our Glorious Selves, without even the
benefit of time travelers.
26
An Alternate-Historical
Alphabet
“Originally they shaped their letters exactly like all the other
Phoenicians, but afterwards, in course of time, they changed by
degrees their language, and together with it the form likewise of
their characters.”
– Herodotus, The Histories, V:60
It’s so fun we’re doing it again; a sequel to “A Conspiratorial Alphabet” and
“A Secret-Historical Alphabet,”1 this time in the sunny skies of Alternate
History. As always, the great model for this panoply of clichés, tropes, themes,
and elements is Diana Wynn Jones’ Tough Guide to Fantasyland, which does
much the same thing, at rather greater length, for fantasy. Like its predecessors,
this column can serve as a kind of spice rack for the GURPS Alternate Earths
GM, who will likely notice that the authors of that august tome (and its sequel)
used these ingredients with a fine and liberal hand. Players will be glad to have
some familiarity in a world where history is sideways, even (or especially) the
familiarity of the cliché.2
A is for Anachronism
Changing historical causes and effects also seems to alter technical, social,
and scientific causality, resulting in the premature development of later ele-
ments (computers, feminism, democracy) and the prolonged use of archaic ones
(swords, wealthy nobility, interurban trains). The prevalence of Zeppelins (q.v.)
may be a specialized symptom of this effect.
B is for Bomb, The
This horrifying weapon
is used with dramatic fre-
quency in Alternate
Histories, perhaps because
the higher level of Ideology
(q.v.) overrides the basic
game theory that kept The
Bomb mostly a threat in our
world. Sometimes the deto-
nation of The Bomb (espe-
cially by the Nazis3 (q.v.)) is
the Change Point (q.v.) that
triggers the Alternate
History, and even if The
Bomb isn’t used, its invention
is often the cherished goal of
one or another Empire or
Lost Cause (q.v.).
C is for Change Point
The event, person, or place when history turns sideways and becomes
Alternate. It is polite to select only one Change Point rather than hogging
a whole bunch, unless, of course, you have some really cool effect in mind.
There are those who will tell you that multiple Change Points are a sin
against Plausibility (q.v.) as well as against politeness, a claim difficult to sustain
empirically.
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
D is for Discovering America
This feat, which in Real History demanded both pigheaded foolhardiness
and skilled seamanship far outside the acceptable norm, is much easier in an
Alternate History.4 Virtually any Change Point (q.v.) prior to 1492 will result in
someone other than Columbus doing it regardless of need, technical develop- 6 The downside of bringing up the Jews
ment, resistance from the otherwise invincible Red Indians (q.v.), or economic at all, especially in fraught contexts like
sense. Perhaps most such Change Points actually stem from the climatic effects alternative history and conspiracy theory,
of a far narrower Atlantic Ocean, although you wouldn’t know it to look at the is that almost anything you say can
Map (q.v.). become intertwined with the most con-
temptible anti-Semitism imaginable after
E is for Empires a brief (or not-so-brief) journey.
The classic case, of course, is the
Perhaps thanks to the Ideology (q.v.)-reinforcing nature of Alternate Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which began
Histories, there are more, and larger, Empires than in our history. They take its existence as an imagined Machiavellian
much longer to fall, if they ever do at all. Even after they fall, they often blueprint for global conquest ascribed to
Discover America (q.v.) just in time to plant a thriving colony there. Empires Napoleon III by a writer named Maurice
keep the Map (q.v.) from being all cluttered, and have the spare resources to Joly in his 1864 Dialogue in Hell Between
invest in harebrained Gadgets (q.v.) and to maintain Anachronisms (q.v.). Machiavelli and Montesquieu. The (anti-
Semitic) Russian Okhrana secret police,
F is for Fate eager to discredit foreigners and revolu-
This will nudge, or in some cases compel, people to act out roles in an tionaries (some of whom, like Trotsky,
were Jewish), rewrote Joly’s by then for-
Alternate History closely parallel with their roles in Real History, no matter
gotten dialogue as the supposed secret
how Anachronistic (q.v.) it might seem for Queen Victoria (q.v.) to be governing minutes of the International Zionist
Britain for the Aztec or Inca Empires (q.v.). Cf. Underachievers. Congress of 1897, and added their forged
Protocols to a millennialist tract by one
G is for Gadgets Sergei Nilus. Nilus’ widely-distributed
Often rapidly invented by Time Travelers (q.v.) anxious to make a quick tract influenced Baltic-born Alfred
buck, Gadgets crop up rather often in the foreground of Alternate Histories. Rosenberg, who in turn introduced the
Telescopes, gunpowder recipes, telegraphs, printing presses, and similar practi- forgeries into post-WWI German poli-
cal tools are the most common Gadgets to be invented in the lifetime of any tics, with the gravest of consequences.
specific Visitor (q.v.) regardless of the technological level of the world.5 For all (Norman Cohn’s masterful Warrant for
practical purposes, The Bomb (q.v.) is a Gadget. Genocide is the ultimate study of the
Protocols forgery.)
H is for History Lecture An even more disquieting case is
Arthur Koestler’s Thirteenth Tribe, which
Inevitably during the course of the Alternate History, someone (often a his- presents intriguing linguistic and histori-
torian, but not uncommonly a randomly encountered stranger) will deliver a cal evidence that the 8th-century Jewish
History Lecture (or write a controversial novel, Ideological (q.v.) screed, or text- Khazar Empire in southern Russia
book) centering coincidentally on the history of the world since the Change became the basis for the Ashkenazic
Point (q.v.), or even meditating on the topic of alternate history. Quite often, Jewish population of Eastern Europe.
the thesis of the Lecture will be that the world would be much better (or worse) Koestler wrote to disprove anti-Semitic
had the Change Point gone the other, i.e., our, way. The inhabitants of the arguments that Jews shared a “blood
Alternate History will mostly consider this Lecture a risible waste of time, like guilt” by demonstrating Jewish diversity
they’re ones to talk. of heritage. Anti-Semites, of course, used
Koestler’s arguments to “prove” that
I is for Ideology European Jewry had nothing in common
with Biblical Jews, or to argue that the
In an Alternate History, political beliefs are usually clearer, and historical Khazars were an “Asiatic” element “taint-
and political developments more uniformly favor a single set thereof. This ing pure European culture and blood.”
coherence of both events and theories creates a fertile ground for a particular Be warned: the result of all this is
Ideology, which varies depending upon the History (though not, necessarily, that even a casual collector of conspiracy
upon the Change Point (q.v.)). The correctness and inevitability of the favored theory can wind up with a lot of anti-
Ideology will be most people’s most frequent topic of conversation, once they’ve Semitic trash intermixed with the good,
gotten the History Lecture (q.v.) out of the way. Perhaps this constant verbal clean fun of Reptoids or Freemasons.
reinforcement is what keeps history politically coherent. This is one reason I buy so much conspir-
atology at used bookstores – that way I
J is for Jews 6 know that these slimebags aren’t getting
my cash.
Virtually everyone in an Alternate History by Harry Turtledove will
encounter them anywhere they turn; sadly this usually includes the Nazis (q.v.).
Even in Harry Turtledove books, they somehow still don’t get many Empires
(q.v.).
27
HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
7 And they make such marvelous villains,
to boot! See “Reich-5” on pp. AE33-51,
and “The Antarctic Space Nazis” on pp.
STi77-80.
8 He did so. See, for example, Jim
Moore’s Conspiracy of One.
28
K is for Knowledge
This, even more than guns, water-purification tablets, flashlights, or gold
pieces, is the most vital thing for any Visitor (q.v.) to possess. Time Travelers
(q.v.) often have Knowledge not only of Gadgets (q.v.) but of the course of future
history that leads them to alter it, or return it to its proper course, whichever suits
their Ideology (q.v.). Knowledge of even the most elementary military tactics will
often lead to a meteoric rise in the army of most Empires (q.v.) despite such
Anachronisms (q.v.) as aristocratic ranks. Perhaps as an aid to Plausibility (q.v.)
conservation, few people are flung into an Alternate History without the equiva-
lent of several advanced degrees worth of Knowledge about the relevant milieu.
L is for Lost Cause
No matter how unpleasant, incompetent, ludicrous, or doomed it may have
been in Real History, in an Alternate History the Lost Cause isn’t. Doomed, any-
way. Quite often its un-Losing is the focus of the Change Point (q.v.). If one Lost
Cause succeeds, others may cluster in its timeline, though Lost Causes aren’t as
gregarious a species as Anachronisms (q.v.).
M is for Map
Usually with bright colors indicating the chief Empires (q.v.), a Map is a
handy and common adjunct to any History Lecture (q.v.). Brief (or not-so-brief)
discussions of (or meditations on) its boundaries, inaccuracies, and so forth
will break out anywhere one is hung, no matter how well everyone knows the
geopolitical situation.
N is for Nazis
The most likely Lost Cause (q.v.) to succeed in an Alternate History, if only
because they believe strongly in an Ideology (q.v.) and flew Zeppelins (q.v.).7
Because the Nazis killed millions of people, it’s perfectly all right for the char-
acters to erase the lives of billions of people by changing their history to
reverse the Nazi victory.
O is for Oswald, Lee Harvey
Only in our history did he shoot John F. Kennedy;8 this is an exception to
the general rule that everyone except Underachievers (q.v.) will somehow
accomplish their Fated (q.v.) task no matter how implausible it seems.
P is for Plausibility
Normally not a criterion by which history need be judged, as a cursory exam-
ination of the career of, say, Abraham Lincoln would indicate. Alternate Histories
should generally seek to conserve Plausibility, if only by involving only those
implausibilities that all work in the same direction. Too little attention to
Plausibility can create a world with a dangerously high Zeppelin (q.v.) content.
Q is for Queen Victoria
A very stubborn personality whose legendary stuffy conventionality is
often all that holds the British Empire (q.v.) together. In Alternate Histories,
this can be explained by making Victorianism (her specific Lost Cause (q.v.))
simultaneously the embodiment of Ideology and Plausibility (q.v.). Her Maps
(q.v.) are always heavily splotched with red.
R is for Red Indians
This is to contrast them with the Indians from India, who almost never do
anything at all in an Alternate History. The Red Indians, contrariwise, possess
incredible cultural and ethnic stamina despite any number of Discoveries of
America (q.v.). They may be immune to diseases,9 or even gunfire in Alternate
Histories with Change Points (q.v.) in the 1870s. If they ever build an Empire
(q.v.), it’s built to last.
 HISTORICAL WEIRDNESS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES
S is for Space Travel
Like Time Travel (q.v.), Space Travel seems to be an associated syndrome
connected with Alternate Histories. Especially if slightly Anachronistic (q.v.) or 9 Disease, of course, is what decimated
the Indian nations of the Americas in Real
overtly Ideological (q.v.), it succeeds easily. Many Alternate Histories may main-
History. With the best will in the world,
tain their Plausibility (q.v.) by exporting their excess implausibility to other Europeans simply didn’t have the physical
planets, where it creates water and breathable air. capacity to purposely commit genocide on
that scale until this century. See William
T is for Time Travel McNeill’s classic Plagues and Peoples, or
A leading cause of, and cure for, Alternate History. Alternate Histories may Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.
be forced to maintain Plausibility (q.v.) as a kind of balance against the sheer
contradictory unlikeliness of Time Travel. 10 See Harry Turtledove’s short story
“Counting Potsherds” for just such an
U is for Underachiever outcome. Except for the Bomb or the
One of the standard figures encountered in the Alternate History, the Zeppelins.
Underachiever is most notable for not having done what made him (or her)
11 This is a rather different “butterfly
famous in Real History, and is often something of a schlub. Sometimes the char- effect” from the one in note 1, p. 7. It
acters can catch an Underachiever early enough to drive him on to his Fate refers to the superb Ray Bradbury short
(q.v.); sometimes the Underachiever is simply present to reinforce the world’s story “A Sound Of Thunder,” in which
Ideology (q.v.) by example. the crushing of a butterfly in the
Cretaceous Era propagates chaotic
V is for Visitors changes into the present.
Even if the characters don’t arrive in the Alternate History by means of
Time Travel (q.v.), they’re often Visitors to a given city or Empire (q.v.). This
allows them to ask passersby for History Lectures (q.v.),
admire the Anachronisms (q.v.), and generally soak up
the exposition and setting in a relatively Plausible (q.v.)
manner.

W is for World War

Any Alternate History worth its salt is either teetering
on the edge of, or locked in the middle of, a World War.
This allows characters to rapidly discern which nations
support the history’s governing Ideology (q.v.), as well as
to discreetly gather a list of important Empires (q.v.)
which they will sadly have no opportunity to visit.

X is for Xerxes
One of the first Empires (q.v.) to become a Lost
Cause (q.v.) did so because of him. If only he’d had The
Bomb (q.v.), or even a few Zeppelins (q.v.), perhaps the
battle of Salamis would have gone the other way.10

Y is for Yangchuanosaurus
Only one of the many dinosaurs who stamp on but-
terflies all day 11 without producing any measurable
Alternate Histories. They keep trying, though.

Z is for Zeppelins
All Change Points (q.v.), from Xerxes (q.v.) to the last
presidential election, create worlds with clean, efficient
Zeppelin traffic. Changing history may produce
Zeppelins as an inevitable by-product, much as bombard-
ing uranium produces gamma rays. Often, the quickest
way to tell if you are in an Alternate History is to look up,
rather than at a newspaper or encyclopedia. From this
premise, it is not outside the realm of Plausibility (q.v.)
that our history between 1900 and 1936 was, in fact, an
Alternate History. It would, at least, explain a lot.
29
 Y
ou thought you knew the story, and
maybe you did. But there’s more than
one story; there’s even more than
one story behind the story. Here the harsh
light of High Weirdness shines on historical
events from Columbus to Neil Armstrong. This
roughly chronological trawl through the Sargassos
of pseudoscholarship begins and ends with
exploration, both physical and paradoxical. In
between, there are two mysterious manuscripts, a
great reckoning, and death by water.

Templar America: Red and White Across the Blue...................................................31

Crypto *** Icon: The Voynich Manuscript ..........................................................................35
Who Killed Kit Marlowe? .................................................................................................................38
Illyrium Tremens: What Stirs on Twelfth Night?.........................................................41
A Night to Embroider: Who Sank the Titanic?.............................................................45
One Giant Leap Af ter Another: Lunatic Theories....................................................49
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
Pyramid originally posted “Templar

Templar America: America” on January 21, 2000. The next

essay in publication order is “Things To Do In
Gaming When You’re Dead,” on p. 122.
Red And White 1 On pp. STi39-42.

Across The Blue 2 George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison,
Patrick Henry, John Hancock, Paul
“The brethren, the Masters of the Temple, Revere, John Marshall, Samuel Adams,
Who were well-stocked and ample, Ethan Allen, Henry Knox, and Benjamin
With gold and silver and riches, Franklin can all be reliably shown to have
been Freemasons. Michael Baigent and
Where are they? How have they done? Richard Leigh go even farther in The
They had such power once that none Temple and the Lodge to argue that the
Dared take from them, none was so bold; American Revolution was either a
Forever they bought and never sold.” “Masonic civil war” or a Masonic shadow-
– 14th century English rhyme play, and that in either case the result was
a Masonic Republic (with a capital laid
out with sacred Masonic geometry, for
In the past, while digging around in the Roanoke mystifaction,1 I’ve men- which see pp. 106-108).
tioned the founding strangeness of America. It’s worth reiterating; there’s plenty
of wild and woolly weirdness from which to build a properly bizarre national 3 For more on Rosicrucian imperialism,
myth here. Not just the Masonic masterwork of the Founding Fathers,2 or even see note 5 on p. 39. For the Rosicrucians
the occult Rosicrucian imperialism3 of John Dee and Sir Walter Raleigh, need per se, see note 14 on p. 44.
underpin our conspiratorial chronicles, although it doesn’t hurt that they do.
Out of some surprisingly deep (if correspondingly murky) sinkholes we can 4 “The lunatic, on the other hand, doesn’t
draw that pure alchemical gold of the proper lunatic:4 America’s Templar con- concern himself at all with logic; he works by
nection. It doesn’t begin with Columbus; in its most deranged form it begins short circuits. For him, everything proves
before Atlantis sinks. But we’ll start where the Templars5 start to end, the day everything else . . . You can tell him by the
liberties he takes with common sense, by his
before Friday the Thirteenth.
flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that
sooner or later he brings up the Templars.”
“On the evening before the raid, Thursday October 12th 1307, I – Belbo, in Foucault’s Pendulum,
myself saw three carts loaded with straw, which left the Paris Temple by Umberto Eco
shortly before nightfall, also Gèrard de Villiers and Hugo de Châlons,
at the head of 50 horse[men]. There were chests hidden on the carts, 5 The Knights Templar (or, technically,
the Order of the Militia of the Poor
which contained the entire treasure of the Visitator Hugo de Pairaud. Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem)
They took the road for the coast, where they were to be taken abroad in began as a military-monastic brotherhood
eighteen of the Order’s ships.” in 1118. Founded, according to tradition,
– testimony of Jean de Châlons, Knight Templar by nine French knights to guard the pil-
grim roads to Jerusalem, they rocketed to
When the blow fell, at least some of the Templars must have been ready. the forefront of European chivalry after
St. Bernard de Clairvaux endorsed them
This much is common sense; the French court and the Papacy could hardly
and wrote their Rule. Their growing
have kept a secret of this magnitude for any great period of time. The historical wealth and power earned them enemies,
record clearly indicates the escape of the Templar fleet, or at least it has since who hinted that they consorted with the
1809, when Napoleon uncovered the Inquisition’s records of Jean de Châlons’ Arabs (especially the Assassins). Once the
testimony by looting the Vatican Library. Those 18 ships could have carried any Crusades petered out, in 1291, the
amount of Templar treasure or artifacts (Arks of the Covenant, Holy Grails, Templars lost much of their raison d’etre;
magical prophetic heads, Atlantean nanotechnological manna-machines, etc.). King Philip IV of France conspired with
Reading the records, it’s possible to support a figure of about 2,000 Templars Pope Clement V to arrest the Knights,
and hangers-on mentioned in charters but not arrested. Some of them might seize their treasure, and try them for
have been on the fleet when it left La Rochelle with the morning tide, too. In heresy (including the worship of a magical
The Temple and the Lodge, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh make much of head; see p. 121). Authorities arrested all
the Templars in France on Friday,
graveyards in Argyll and Masonic legend purporting to prove that the Templars
October 13, 1307. Although some
found refuge in Scotland. We’ll get to those Templars in a minute. For now, Templars (especially those in Portugal)
note that the Templars in Portugal simply metamorphosed into a new knightly escaped, the arrests and executions broke
order, the Knights of Christ, and kept right on going down to the sea in ships. the Order’s power.

Continued on next page . . .

31
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
Continued from previous page . . .
Although the Templars were almost cer-
tainly innocent (see Supremely Abominable
Crimes, by Edward Burman), the charges
of heresy and sorcery have attracted con-
spiracy theorists and mystics to the
Templars ever since. Peter Partner’s The
Murdered Magicians is the best sober, his-
torical guide to this phenomenon;
Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum
is the best literary use of the theme.
6 René of Anjou (1409-1480) is almost a
secret society all by himself. Brother-in-
law of King Charles VII of France, father-
in-law of King Henry VI of England,
René himself was Duke of Lorraine and
Anjou, Count of Provence, and King of
Naples and Sicily. Known as the “last of
the troubadours,” René sponsored artists
of all kinds at his court, as well as search-
ing out valuable books and statues from
antiquity. He claimed to own the cup
Christ used at the wedding feast of Cana,
and was consumed by the Grail quest.
Among the figures at his court were
Nostradamus’ grandfather, the physician
(and rumored kabbalist) Jean de Saint-
Rémy. That scoundrel René appears all
tangled up in the Joan of Arc story on p.
60, too. Tch, tch.
7 I got most of this silliness from the
amazingly fecund David Hatcher
Childress, specifically from his Lost Cities
of North & Central America, which is but
one of a series of absolutely indispensible
magpie-like guides to everywhere under
the sun.
8 Hyperborea crops up again on p. 116.
9 For the Piri Re’is Map, see p. STi99, or
Charles Hapgood’s exhaustive (but sadly
incorrect) Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings
(now back in print from Adventures
Unlimited Press).
32
“[Columbus] is one of history’s most controversial and shadowy figures,
with mystery surrounding his birth, his character, his career, and his
achievement.”
– Simon Wiesenthal, Sails of Hope
Prince Henry the Navigator, the father of the Portuguese (and hence the
European) Age of Discovery, was the Grand Master of the Knights of Christ.
And so, apparently, was Bartolomeo Pestrello – Christopher Columbus’
father-in-law. Columbus sailed to the New World (as the Knight of Christ
Vasco da Gama sailed to India) under the red cross pattée on white – the
Templar cross. If various exciteable sources are to be believed, he’d also sailed
under the rosy cross (in 1472-1473, piratically preying on Moslem shipping –
and possibly hunting manuscripts in a GURPS Swashbucklers-Arabian
Nights-Illuminati crossover to die for) for René of Anjou, 6 the Grand
Master of the Prieuré de Sion. And in 1480, Columbus was murdered by an
imposter, or rather, he murdered the person he later claimed to have been all
along – one Christoforo Colombo, the son of a Genoese weaver. The mur-
derer, Cristobál Colón, was in actuality the illegitimate son of Prince Carlos
of Viana and a Majorcan Jew, Margarita
Colón. Or so they say, and some of
them even said it at the time.
Columbus’ habit of lying like a
bearskin rug about his emphati-
cally bourgeois past doesn’t
clear anything up, either.
Columbus took notes in
Spanish (not Italian), signed
his name “Colón,” wrote
Hebrew characters in the
margins of letters to his son,
set sail the day that Jews were
banned from Spain, and
claimed descent (according to
his other son) from the “Royal
Blood of Jerusalem.” 7 Royal
Bloodlines carried to refuge across
the water; sound familiar, anyone?
Perhaps it was his magical Bloodline, or
his Templar connections (or the secret maps he acquired in Egypt on René of
Anjou’s orders) that got Columbus through the Bermuda Triangle. Other
explorers weren’t so lucky; John Cabot (alias Giovanni Caboto) vanished on
his 1498 voyage (sailing from the old Templar port of Bristol) after (suppos-
edly) discovering Newfoundland (his ship, the Matthew, recalls the secret
Gospel that the Templars supposedly discovered in Jerusalem). Miguel de
Corte-Real vanished in 1500, and his brother Gaspar vanished the next year
searching for him. Their father, João, may have discovered Newfoundland in
1472 – for some reason, King Alfonso of Portugal hushed it up. Corte-Real,
too might have been working from a top-secret map: this one made in 1380,
by a Venetian working for Scotland.
“When the tempest died at last, they discovered an island called
Estotilanda lying to the west over one thousand miles from [the
Faerøes] . . . The inhabitants are very intelligent people and possess
all the arts that we do. It is believed that in time past, they have had
dealings with our people, for he said that he saw in the king’s library
Latin books, which they do not now understand.”
– Nicolò Zeno the Younger, The Zeno Narrative
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
That map, the Zeno Map, shows Scandinavia, Scotland, and Greenland
with considerable accuracy, and a recognizable Iceland. (Greenland is actually
shown free of snow or glaciers, a Hyperborean8 paradise recalling the Piri Re’is
Map’s9 view of Antarctica.) The Faerøes and Shetlands are rather more imagi-
native, and “Icaria” and “Estotiland” may be the Skerry shoals and – Nova
Scotia? That’s the story given (incoherently) by Michael Bradley’s Holy Grail
Across The Atlantic and with more restraint, if equal insouciance, by Andrew
Sinclair’s superb The Sword and the Grail. Sinclair is out to buttress the claim of
his ancestor, Henry Sinclair, Earl of the Orkneys, to be the mysterious “Prince
Zichmni” mentioned elsewhere in the above-quoted Zeno Narrative.
Zichmni, hearing the story of the fishermen blown to Estotiland,
resolved to discover it himself (in voyages between 1391 and 1398)
along with his Venetian navigators Nicolò (the Elder) and
Antonio Zeno; if it was Nova Scotia, he may have left traces
of his passage as the Micmac culture-hero Glooscap.10 Or
as the Westford Knight, a mailed and armored figure
incised into a cliff above Westford, Massachusetts –
wearing a Crusader tabard; a Templar. 11 And the
Sinclairs’ Rosslyn Chapel12 overflows with Templarist
imagery, along with sunflowers, aloe cacti, and maize
plants carved eighty years before Columbus. The
Sinclairs, too, carry the Bloodline; Michael Bradley
avers that Henry Sinclair carried the Grail across the
Atlantic and hid it in Nova Scotia, possibly in the Oak
Island Money Pit (the subject of a future column, you can
be sure).13 To clinch the deal, there’s a 1545 map of the
area by Caspar Vopell that illustrates what might be Nova
Scotia with what’s pretty clearly a Templar knight.
“More certain, because it rests on indications that are almost conclu-
sive, is the introduction, on the [medieval] European market, of gold
from the mines of Mexico . . . I bring forward no direct proofs. As
regards the Temple, there never were any.”
– Louis Charpentier, The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral
The Sinclair voyages definitely occurred – to Greenland 14 in 1391, if
nowhere else. The fisherman’s testimony he followed, according to Zeno, men-
tioned a “land rich in gold far to the south” where “human meat is savored”; i.e.,
Aztec Mexico. The secret of Mexican gold mines (or, better yet, Mexican
Pyramid resonance15 tied into the telluric currents through the Templar Gothic
cathedrals and Solomon’s Temple) is something worth keeping very well hidden.
Perhaps the famous Crystal Skull of Lubaantun16 is actually Baphomet, the sor-
cerous Head of the Templars, concealed in a Mayan Refuge. It’s only geographi-
cally significant, of course, but the Templar fleet in the Caribbean might have
flown the Templar skull and crossbones banner (GURPS Swashbucklers-
Aztecs-Illuminati), and let’s never forget that arcane phrase in the Master
Mason degree, promising to make the newfledged Freemason “brother to
pirates and corsairs.” Ivan Van Sertima’s They Came Before Columbus has Malian
and Mandingo traders in medieval Aztec and Maya country; perhaps the
Templars picked up the hint from their Moslem foes, or Columbus took some
specially trained slaves when visiting Mandingo country in 1483.
“This Madoc arriving in that western countrie, into which he came in
the yeare 1170, left most of his people there, and returning back for
more of his own nation, acquaintance, and friends, to inhabit that
fayre land and large countrie, went thither againe with ten sails.”
– Richard Hakluyt, Voyages and Discoveries
10 Glooscap, or Gluskabe (or Kluscap, or
Gluskap), might be called the
Quetzalcoatl of the Micmac (and the
Abnaki, Maliseet, and Pasamaquoddy).
He arrived in a “stone canoe” or “on the
backs of whales” or in “a floating forest.”
He taught the Indians the names of the
stars, how to use weighted fishing nets,
and many other crafts and arts (much as
Apollo or Thoth taught the Greeks or
Egyptians). He is also a rare case of the
non-brutal Trickster hero in Amerind
lore. Also unlike similar heroes such as
Rabbit or Raven, Glooscap always appears
in human form, although Wolf is his twin
brother and he taught the frogs to sing.
Like Quetzalcoatl, he left for the East on
his magic boat, promising to return.
Although the Glooscap myth quite clearly
predates Sinclair’s alleged voyage, it’s
interesting that the beginning of weight-
ed-net fishing in Nova Scotia can be fairly
exactly dated to around 1400 A.D. I quite
recommend both Sam D. Gill and Irene
F. Sullivan’s Dictionary of Native American
Mythology and the Funk & Wagnall’s
Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology,
and Legend.
11 Or in the Newport (R.I.) Round Tower
(sometimes identified as Verrazano’s
“Norumbega” from p. 34), which people
persist in denying is a colonial windmill.
Far be it from me to spoil anybody’s fun,
seeing how many round towers the
Templars built. A considerably more con-
vincing piece of evidence for the Sinclair
voyage is a very peculiar cannon discov-
ered in 1849 in Louisburg harbor, off
Cape Breton Island north of Nova Scotia.
In form, it looks very much like a welded,
ring-clamped Venetian petriera cannon of
a type that became obsolete in the 1390s –
just in time to be sold as war surplus to
barbarian earls on the edge of Europe.
12 William St. Clair (or Sinclair), 3rd Earl
of Orkney and Henry’s grandson, built a
richly-carved “Lady Chapel” at Roslin,
near Edinburgh, known as Rosslyn
Chapel. Sir William’s chapel, begun in
1441 (and completed by his son Sir Oliver
in 1486) has been a gold-mine of crypto-
Templarist, proto-Masonic, quasi-pagan
Celtic, and generally conspiratorial
imagery ever since. Consistent rumor
since at least 1693 places some great
Treasure or Secret either in the sealed
Chapel vaults underneath the altar-space
or inside the so-called “Apprentice”
Pillar. A fair sampling of such rumor can
be gleaned from Rosslyn: Guardian of the
Secrets of the Holy Grail, by Tim Wallace-
Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins.
33
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
13 Though not as of this writing. In 1795,
one Daniel McInnis and two friends
attempted to excavate a shallow depres-
sion on Oak Island off Nova Scotia. By
1805, although McInnis’ group had dis-
covered oak platforms and a flat inscribed
stone (its code translated as “Forty Feet
Below Two Million Pounds Are Buried”),
and dug 90 feet down, they had also
somehow filled their shaft with seawater.
Later attempts in 1849-1850, 1858-1862,
1866, 1891, 1897-1900 (this one includ-
ing a young Franklin Roosevelt), 1922,
1934-1937, 1955, 1959-1960, 1965-1966,
and 1970-1987 have yielded enigmatic
artifacts such as watch-chain links and
scraps of parchment, flooded and caved in
the site beyond all recognition, and killed
six people. Theories on the Pit include
natural sinkhole and Masonic fraud, and
its possible treasures range from Captain
Kidd’s booty to caches of Shakespeare’s
true manuscripts to the gold of the
Templars. See D’Arcy O’Connor’s The
Big Dig for a relatively sober (if still
believing) history of the Money Pit, and
Steven Sora’s Lost Treasure of the Knights
Templar for, well, the obvious reason.
1 4 Columbus also may have visited
Greenland, some time around 1477. He’s
everywhere you want to be.
1 5 For which see Peter Tompkins,
Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids.
16 On pp. 119-121.
17 The tale of Madoc first appears in
print in 1582, and can be best viewed in
Charles Michael Boland’s cheerily broad-
minded They All Discovered America. As a
corrective, it’s good to read Kenneth L.
Feder’s Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries,
which points out that the “stone forts” of
Madoc were actually built between 30 and
450 A.D. by the local Indians. And not by
the Hebrew refugees (of the sacred
Prieuré Bloodline?) that other people
entirely claim colonized Bat Creek,
Tennessee.
18 Peredur, who originates in Welsh leg-
end, is better known as Percival (or
Perceval, or Parsifal), the knight who
quests for and attains the Grail.
19 For Atlantis per se, see note 1, p. 106.
20 The sole translation of Mandean scrip-
tures is iffy, since translator E.S. Drower
had Theosophist leanings. The Mandeans
might not even be Gnostic, although their
Judaism is unorthodox, to say the least.
34
The Templars might have also checked back with their pals the Sinclairs;
the Sinclair family married not only into Scottish nobility and Norman aristoc-
racy, but Welsh royalty. Brenda Saint-Clair (or Sinclair) was the mother of
Prince Madoc ap Owain Gwynnedd of Wales. Who, as you may have guessed,
has likewise accrued a scrim of America-discovery about himself. After being cut
out of an inheritance dispute, Madoc took a party of kinsmen and boon com-
panions across the Atlantic to a “western countrie” (possibly hunting Hy-
Breasal, the paradise of Saint Brendan) and, according to the consensus, landed
at Mobile Bay. Anomalous stoneworks on the Alabama River, Fort Mountain (in
Georgia), and the Chattanooga hills all supposedly date to the 12th century and
have been loudly proclaimed identical to various castles in Wales.17 No less an
authority on the Indians than George Catlin believed that he’d found remnants
of Madoc’s people in the Mandan tribe among the Sioux. We know, of course,
that Madoc established various Templar outposts and searched for Avalon;
Madoc’s century is also the century in which the Welsh and French Grail stories
fully intertwine. Does the Welsh warrior Peredur18 first meet the French cheva-
lier Lancelot somewhere in the Western Paradise?
“This idyllic land across the sea to the west (or sometimes the north), is
a belief common to many cultures, from the Jews to the Greeks to the
Celts. The Mandeans, however, believe that the inhabitants of this far
land are so pure that mortal eyes will not see them and that this place is
marked by a star, the name of which is ‘Merica.’”
– Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key:
Pharaohs, Freemasons, and the Discovery of
the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
When you drag the Grail into things, of course, everything explodes. John
Dee decided that Estotiland had been conquered by King Arthur, and that
America was Avalon, thus giving Britain a claim to the New World that handily
predated Spain’s. Dee normally referred to America as “Atlantis,”19 invoking
images of island paradises not unlike Avalon or Hy-Breasal (which became,
eventually, Brazil). Verrazano named one of the new American lands he discov-
ered “Arcadia,” a Rosicrucian tipoff if ever there was one, and one that intrigu-
ingly echoes “Orchadia,” the medieval Latin name
for the Orkney earldom of Henry Sinclair.
Verrazano also claimed to have found a
“Norman city,” or “Norumbega,” up a river
somewhere in the New World – a Templar
monitoring station? You can also get to Henry
(either Sinclair or the Navigator) another way;
Amerigo Vespucci is the fellow conventional toponomy
attaches to the continent. “Amerigo,” however, is a cor-
ruption of “Enrico” – “Henry” in Italian. Thus the
Templars cover their bets; Amerigo Vespucci (a
Medici agent, and thus allied with René of
Anjou) is sent to make sure the continent gets a
name that will draw down the Mandean paradise,
that ruled by the star Merica. (The Mandeans are Gnostic descendants of, possi-
bly, the Nazoreans,20 who may have been Essenes, who may have written the
Dead Sea Scrolls – in other words, stuff the Templars were soaking in.) This
term may be cognate with the Chaldean Omoroka, an ocean goddess whose
name may mean “overwhelmed by the deep.” And what island paradise to the
West was overwhelmed by the deep? Atlantis. But its secret name, like its secret
maps and wisdom, remain sealed somewhere in the Templar Refuge that is
America.
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
Pyramid originally posted “Crypto *** Icon:

Crypto *** Icon: The The Voynich Manuscript” on June 18,

1999. The next essay in publication order is

Voynich Manuscript “Fractal Valley,” on p. 95.

“The unreadable book hints at the idea that the world is information
. . . But we don’t know what it says, which always carries with it the
possibility that it says something that would unhinge our conceptions of
things . . . It points to the Otherness of the nature of information, and
is what is called in structuralism a ‘limit text.’ Certainly the Voynich
Manuscript is the limit text of Western occultism. It is truly an occult
book – one that no one can read.”
– Terence McKenna, “The Voynich Manuscript,” in
The Archaic Revival

What’s the difference between meaning nothing and meaning everything? 1 “Bisociation” is Arthur Koestler’s word
Everything – and nothing. As evidence, consider the enigmatic Voynich for “perceiving of a situation or idea . . .
Manuscript. As a symbol of the Enigma, the insoluble question, it is supreme. If in two self-consistent but fundamentally
it is ever deciphered, the most likely result would be its complete disappearance incompatible frames of reference,” which
from human memory. As long as it means nothing, it means everything to cryp- is the key not only to humor, scientific
theory, and art but also to enjoying and
tographers, medievalists, and Rosicrucians. But should it come to mean some-
crafting the kinds of subjects (and objects)
thing, it will become meaningless – another expired mystery, another thing that in this volume of essays. See “Two-World
everybody knows and nobody cares about. Minimum: Bisociation and the Art of
But until then, of course, it makes a superbly bisociative1 thing for your High Weirdness” on pp. STi108-111, or
game. It can be a McGuffin, a grimoire, a gate, a lever, an instruction kit, or just Koestler’s The Act of Creation.
an easily portable item worth $200,000. It is, after all, about the size of a thick
hardback novel (say, Cryptonomicon), roughly six by nine by three inches, 2 In addition to Newbold’s thesis (see p.
although since vellum (even thin, high-quality vellum like the Manuscript con- 36), the Manuscript has been read as a
tains) is thicker than paper, it’s only 235 pages long. Renaissance text on contraception (coded
What’s on those pages?2 Well, therein lies the problem. The Manuscript to avoid Church sanction), a narrative of
contains many variegated illustrations: plants, star maps, body parts, zodiacs, an apocalyptic Khazar civil war between
an All-Seeing Eye (Illuminati alert) and a
tiny images, mortars and pestles – moons and stars and hearts and clovers and
goat-headed demon, the secret Isis death-
diamonds. One particularly enigmatic section (the third, if I understand liturgy of the heretical Cathars (for
things correctly) sports myriads of naked, Rubenesque women in whom see note 5 on p. 90), and an
baths and tubs connected and plumbed by Terry Gilliamesque alchemical treatise on the Key of
pipe works and valves. Some of the illustrations are in color, Life.
with red and green and blue painted in; many of them appear
highly technical and craftsmanlike. But the most arresting 3 A very useful starting
thing about the Manuscript is that the text, written firmly and source on the Voynich
confidently, is in no known alphabet and (hence, likely) no Manuscript is Robert S.
known language. It looks kind of like Tolkien’s tengwar, and Brumbaugh’s 1978 collec-
kind of like Arabic, and kind of like 13th century monastic tion The Most Mysterious
Manuscript: The Voynich ‘Roger
Latin miniscule. The whole Manuscript, as somebody once said,
Bacon’ Cipher Manuscript. It can
looks kind of like a lot of things, and in general like nothing at be tough to find; Lingua Franca
all.3 (in April 1999) and Fortean Times (in
January 2000) both ran articles on the
“The former owner of this book once asked your opinion by letter, topic. Both are excellent magazines on
copying and sending you a portion of the book from which he believed every count, in addition to providing cut-
you would be able to read the remainder, but he at that time refused to ting-edge Voynich coverage. Speaking of
the cutting edge, of course, you’ll want to
send the book itself. To its deciphering he devoted unflagging toil, as check out the European Voynich
is apparent from attempts of his which I send you herewith, and he Manuscript Transcription Project, on the
relinquished hope only with his life. But his toil was in vain, for such World Wide Web at
Sphinxes as these obey no-one but their master . . .” http://web.bhm.ac.uk/G.Landini/evmt/
– letter from Johannes Marcus Marci to Athanasius Kircher, evmt.htm, or the Voynich page at
http://www2.micro-net.com/
accompanying the Voynich Manuscript, August 19 1665
~ixohoxi/voy/voynich.htm.
35
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
4 Founded in 1540 by St. Ignatius Loyola
(1501-1556), the Society of Jesus was
intended as the shock troops of a new
“Counter-Reformation” to restore
heretics to the true faith and to educate
the elite of Europe in proper doctrine.
The Jesuits combined devotion to
Catholicism and the Pope with almost
military discipline, and with regular medi-
tation and visualization exercises more
often associated with Eastern religions or
mystical practice. Since they believed that
Protestantism and other heresies arose
from “error,” they became the foremost
intellectuals and educators in Europe.
They combined this rigor with a mission-
ary zeal, traveling to every country of the
Earth in the wake of explorers and mer-
chants. By 1626, there were 15,544 Jesuits
all over the world from Mexico to China;
their communalist mission government
governed much of modern Paraguay by
the late 17th century.
This prominence in politics, educa-
tion, and Catholic intellectual and mis-
sionary work led to much fear (among
Protestants) and jealousy (among
Catholics). Queen Elizabeth’s secret ser-
vice considered the “Black Order” spies,
and implicated them in several assassina-
tion attempts. A former Jesuit, Francois
Ravaillac, actually assassinated King
Henri IV of France in 1610. In 1614 a
renegade Jesuit, “Hieronim Zahorowski”,
published Monita Secreta Societas Jesu,
which purported to reveal the secret
Jesuit plot to rule the world through,
basically, mind control and poisoning.
Portuguese Prime Minister Pombal
accused the Jesuits of the attempted assas-
sination of King Joseph I in 1757. The
Jesuits didn’t help their case any with
works like Juan de Mariana’s De Rege et
Regis Institutione, which argued (in 1599)
that an unjust or un-Christian king could
legitimately be conspired against and
overthrown.
By 1773, the Jesuits had been
expelled from Portugal, France, and
Spain; Pope Clement XIV dissolved the
order in that year. (He died the next year,
just as Pope Clement V died the same
year as the last Templar Grand Master.
Hmm.) Although reinstated by Pope Pius
VII in 1814, they remain a favorite para-
noid target, especially for anti-Catholic
theorists like the A-Albionic Research
team in note 19 on p. 25. Jesuits are also
accused of serving as the inner core of
Freemasonry, of being a Satanic cult, or
of abandoning the Pope to serve
International Communism. Christopher
Hollis’ The Jesuits is a decent history of
the Order.
36
It’s called the Voynich Manuscript, by the way, because in 1912 the antiquities
dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich bought it from the Jesuit 4 College at Villa
Mondragone in Frascati, Italy. Wilfrid died in 1930, and his wife wound up with
the Manuscript. She sold it to another dealer who, unable to get the price he
wanted for it, unloaded it on Yale University’s Beinecke Library of rare books,
where it rests in proud opacity as MS 408. The nice librarians at the Beinecke
are not at all tired of dealing with cranks, cryptoids, and Atlantean channelers
who all want to see the Manuscript. (Stop here and think: wouldn’t it be fun if,
the next time your PCs go to the Rare Book Room to consult the Bad News
Codex, rather than a sense of brooding evil, they get put into a “kook file” and
treated like a bad smell?)
Tracing the Voynich Manuscript back before Voynich is tougher. It was in the
personal library of the 22nd General of the Jesuit Order, the euphoniously
named Petrus Beckx, S.J., for much of the 19th century. Before that, it most
likely belonged to the polymathic Athanasius Kircher5 (also S.J., but 200 years
earlier – he translated hieroglyphics,
or at least, he thought he did, which
was the same thing in those days).
At least, there’s a letter folded into
the Manuscript from one Johannes
Marcus Marci to Kircher, which
mentions a puzzling cipher manu-
script. (The letter could be a
forgery. Or, of course, the letter
could be genuine, and the Voynich
Manuscript could be a forgery, or a
substitution made by the Jesuits or
Voynich for an Even More
Mysterious Manuscript.) The earliest
certain date we have is 1608; the first
folio bears the signature of Jacobus de
Tepenecz, director of Holy Roman
Emperor Rudolf II’s botanical gardens, and we know that the former
Jake Horcicki gained the title “de Tepenecz” in 1608.
“If my analysis of the Voynich Manuscript as the product of Dee and
Kelley has seemed too facile, let me assure my reader that it is, and that
not all the facts are covered by this theory.”
– Terence McKenna, “The Voynich Manuscript,” in
The Archaic Revival
So, assuming that the Manuscript is genuinely of (at least) the 17th century
(annoyingly, atmospheric carbon-14 plateaus make specific dates coincidentally
impossible for the period roughly, say, 1608-1912), and that Rudolf II6 owned it,
where did he get it? Marci’s letter theorizes that the Manuscript was written by
Roger Bacon, the greatest of the medieval scientist-cum-magi (he invented gun-
powder and spectacles and spoke to a magical bronze head – see James Blish’s
Doctor Mirabilis). One of the Manuscript’s earliest (and, as it turns out, craziest)
decipherers, one William Romaine Newbold, thought so, too, and thought that
it proved that Bacon also knew about germs and moons of Saturn and eclipses
and, gosh, everything. It turns out that Newbold was deciphering cracks in the
vellum instead of words. But much of Bacon’s library wound up in the library of
Queen Elizabeth’s magus John Dee, and John Dee went to Rudolf’s court in
Prague in 1584, which gives us a vector. John Dee also, of course, invented (or,
as he insisted, channeled from the angels) his own language, Enochian.7 The
Manuscript is probably not in the Enochian alphabet, although it might be in the
Enochian language. John Dee also hung around with a contemptible con man
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
named Edward Kelley (Dee’s “skryer” – the guy who actually talked to the 5 Jesuit scientist, librarian, linguist, and
angels for him), who wouldn’t have been above preying on Emperor Rudolf’s polymath Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680)
well-known collector’s urge and providing him with a “genuine” Baconian man- serves as a vital link in strangeness. He
uscript (for the sweet sum of 600 ducats) filled in with copied data from Dee’s explored Atlantis and the Hollow Earth in
works. And, of course, Edward Kelley was a convicted (wait for it) forger. Looks Mundus Subterraneus, insisted on the
bad for Voynich. Hermetic power of hieroglyphs in Oedipus
Aegyptiacus, and designed a magic lantern
while studying Pythagorean optics and
“The man is insane who writes a secret in any other way than one acoustics. For Kircher’s Egyptian work,
which will conceal it from the vulgar and make it intelligible only with see Peter Tompkins, The Magic of Obelisks.
difficulty even to scientific men and earnest students . . . Certain
persons have achieved concealment by means of letters not then used by 6 Rudolf II (1552-1612) reigned in
their own race or others but arbitrarily invented by themselves.” Prague as Holy Roman Emperor (1576-
1612). In addition to Dee, he patronized
– Roger Bacon, Letter on the Secret Works of Art
Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Giordano Bruno,
the painter Arcimboldo, and countless
Dee, however, also invented and broke codes himself. Even if the Voynich other alchemists, kabbalists, architects,
Manuscript is a forgery, it’s still a nigh-unbreakable cryptogram. (There have dwarves, and linguists. For Rudolf II and
been a number of Voynich decipherings – none of them much more convincing his proto-Rosicrucian court, see R.J.W.
than Newbold’s.) Roger Bacon also invented his own alphabet for coded writ- Evans, Rudolf II and His World.
ings; none of them have survived – so far as we know. Thomas Peterson, a
medievalist at Catholic University, suggests that the Manuscript might be the 7 Beloved black magician Aleister
work of the great 12th-century mystic St. Hildegard of Bingen, who received Crowley also channeled Enochian send-
her “ignota lingua” (unknown language) from the angels. (We detect a trend – ings from the being “Aiwass” to create
The Book of the Law in Cairo in 1904. In
Someone is trying to send these folks a Message, and it’s probably not about
addition to Enochian, the angels have also
plump ladies in bathtubs.) Newbold was part of the U.S. government’s code-
communicated in the unknown language
breaking team in World War I; during WWII a team under Col. William of the original Book of Mormon, the OAH-
Friedman tried cracking the Voynich Manuscript using an IBM tabulating com- SPE document received by “angelic type-
puter but disbanded after the war ended. (Computer analysis hasn’t yet decided writing” in 1881 by John Newbrough,
how many letters are in the Voynich alphabet, although it’s very likely that the and (from the Devil) in Theseus
language is an invented tongue with a Romance background – and that there are Ambrosius Albonesi’s 1539 Introductio in
two “Voynichese” forms in the Manuscript. This just keeps getting weirder.) Chaldaicam Linguami. UFO contactees
Even now, knowledgeable folks insist that the DoD or NSA continue to plug also receive messages in odd tongues,
away at the Voynich language – for obvious reasons. Between Yale (home of the from the “Ummo script” of various
CIA), the NSA, the Jesuits, the Rosicrucians Dee and Rudolf, and the Cathars Spanish sightings, to the hieroglyphs of
the Roswell wreckage and the Adamski
(tied to the Manuscript by another spurious translation), you can stick the Voynich
“Venusian” contacts, to the 1890s
Manuscript into any conspiracy game from the grittiest to the gooniest.
“Martian” of Hélène Smith (note 14, p.
124). Ancient human or ultrahuman soci-
“Yet as soon as I handled the Voynich Manuscript, I had a nasty eties like the Lemurians communicate in
sensation. I cannot describe it more precisely than that. It was not a glyphs or in the primordial language
sense of evil or horror or dread – just nastiness; like the sensation I used Vattan (according to Agartha-explorer
to have as a child passing the house of a woman who was reputed to St.-Yves d’Alveydre), Mantong (according
to hollow-earth devotee Richard Shaver),
have eaten her sister.” Naacal (according to Muvian archaeolo-
– Colin Wilson, “The Return of the Lloigor” gist James Churchward), or Senzar (from
which Helena Blavatsy translated the Book
Or, of course, you can make the Voynich Manuscript a thing of magick, an of Dzyan). As a fascinating way of blend-
enigma because it comes from a place where the Rules are different. Is it the ing all of this excitement, Allen
original Necronomicon or Pnakotic Fragments? A coded codex from Uqbar,8 a Greenfield proposes, in The Secret Cipher
channeled document from Atlantis (there are no script errors, no scratching-out of the UFOnauts, that all “alien” messages
– the scribe knew his work cold, and may even have been copying from yet can be kabbalistically interpreted as ver-
another manuscript), a communication from Them? Associations abound, from sions of Enochian, a revelation with (to
say the least) sweeping implications.
the Cathar Society of Isis to the Villa Mondragone (the House of the
Mandrake)9 itself. One scholar sees an American sunflower in the illustrations,
8 The linguistically imperialist alternate
and insists that the Manuscript postdates 1492, little knowing that the Templar- world in Jorge Luis’ Borges’ brilliant
Masonic Rosslyn Chapel10 of 1441 has sunflowers carved on its walls. The final short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.”
sentence of the Manuscript, the only one (aside from German marginalia proba-
bly put there by our buddy Jake) in ordinary letters, reads: “Michiton oladabas 9 For the Mandrake, see p. STi92.
multos te tccr cerc portas.” Ignoring “tccr” and suchlike, Newbold made it say
“To me thou gavest many gates.” Many gates indeed; you can read the Voynich 10 For Rosslyn Chapel, see note 12, p. 33.
Manuscript any way and to any end you wish, at least until someone reads it.
37
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
Pyramid originally posted “Who Killed Kit
Marlowe?” on September 10, 1999. The next
essay in publication order is “Who Ya Gonna
Caul?” on p. 61.
1 While we’re all exercised about
Marlowe’s name up here, it might be
meet to mention the other two Marlowes
you might want to work in.
One “Marlow” is the narrator of
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which
could be delightfully re-cast using the
Thames as the Congo. (And in fact, the
opening scene of the novel has Marlow
speculating on just such an expedition by
a Roman governor.) Perhaps Marlowe
must hunt down fugitive playwright
Thomas Nashe on the Isle of Dogs, which
was a famed low-life pirate and bandit
hangout of the Elizabethan era.
The other, of course, is Raymond
Chandler’s hard-bitten P.I. Philip
Marlowe. The notion of Christopher
Marlowe, P.I., stalking the mean streets of
Elizabethan London is almost too perfect.
It may be worth noting (and indeed it
was, to my tireless compeer James
Palmer), in a more mystical parallel, that
Philip Marlowe was also a Grail seeker: in
Farewell, My Lovely, he searches for “Anne
Grayle.”
2 In Elizabethan times, “atheism” covered
more than simply belief in no God. Any
unorthodox, even unorthodox Christian,
religious practice (besides Catholicism
and Puritanism, which had their own legal
categories) fell under that rubric.
Needless to say, the “Hermetic
Christianity” of the Rosicrucians, the
mystical Grail worship of the Prieuré de
Sion, or the various heresies imputed to
the Templars could all be construed as
“atheism” for the GM who wishes to tar
Marlowe with an entirely different brush.
3 Until GURPS Gloriana is vouchsafed
unto us, Nicholl’s is still one of the great-
est, most detail-choked books available on
the Elizabethan era, especially in its treat-
ment of the more-than-suitable-for-role-
playing seamy underbelly thereof.
4 Sir Francis Walsingham (1532-1590),
loyal spymaster, privy councilor, and sec-
retary of state to Queen Elizabeth I.
Walsingham’s daughter Frances married
Rosicrucian poet Sir Philip Sidney.
38
Who Killed Kit Marlowe?
“Marley was dead: to begin with.”
– Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Or Morley, or Marly, or even Marlin or Merling – but Marlowe is the tradi-
tional name1 of the untraditional man Dickens almost certainly isn’t referring to
in the synchronistically perfect quote above. Which quote sets into play a num-
ber of themes for this particular inquest: names, and identity, and reversal, and
supernaturalism, and when an allusion is only illusion, and whether Marlowe was
dead. To begin with.
“And so it befell, in that affray, that the said Ingram [Frizer], in
defense of his life, with the dagger aforesaid of the value of twelve pence,
gave the said Christopher [Marlowe] a mortal wound above his right
eye, of the depth of two inches and the width of one inch.”
– from the coroner’s inquest into the death of
Christopher Marlowe, June 1, 1593
On the morning of May 30, 1593, four men gathered in a small guest room
at the lodging-home of the widow Eleanor Bull, in Deptford on the Thames east
of London proper. After a feast and some long hours of conversation, according
to the survivors’ testimony, a quarrel broke out over the bill (the “recknynge” or
“reckoning,” in the specific language of the inquest). Christopher Marlowe, play-
wright and poet (and reputed atheist,2 homosexual, magician, rakehell, duelist,
tobacco-user, spy, and counterfeiter) grew heated and snatched the dagger of one
Ingram Frizer (a “gentleman of London”), pummeling him about the face and
inflicting several shallow gashes. Frizer was hemmed against the table by
Marlowe’s assault, and the position of the other two men (Robert Poley and
Nicholas Skeres) prevented him from dodging to either side. In the melee, then,
Frizer and Marlowe struggled over the dagger and it went through Marlowe’s
supraorbital fissure and into his brain. Christopher Marlowe, the father of
English blank verse and the most successful playwright of his day, died at 29 in a
squabble over “a sum of pence.” Death by misadventure and self-defense. Such,
at any rate, was the finding of the inquest under William Danby, Coroner to the
Royal Household. (Since Deptford fell within the statutory twelve-mile radius of
the Royal Presence – Elizabeth was either at Greenwich or Nonsuch – the killing
fell under Danby’s jurisdiction.) Later Puritan chroniclers, anxious to defame
Marlowe’s blasphemous, rakehell memory, added the notions that he “died
swearing” “in a tavern brawl” over “lewd love.”
“They are the faction. O conspiracy,
Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
When evils are most free? O, then by day
Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough
To mask thy monstrous visage?”
– William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II:i:79-83
And still later chroniclers, including Anthony Burgess in Death at Deptford
and Charles Nicholl in The Reckoning,3 don’t exactly buy it. The evidence is very
strong that Marlowe had worked as a spy in the famed Walsingham4 intelligence
network (and it’s no coincidence that his patron in 1593 was Sir Thomas
Walsingham, the nephew of its founder). The evidence is incontrovertible that
Robert Poley was a senior case-officer and agent provocateur in Sir Robert
Cecil’s succeeding network, and that Nicholas Skeres performed a similar
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
function for the (eventually treasonous) Earl of Essex. And Frizer, far from being 5 In brief, John Dee (see Glossary)
a “gentleman,” was a confidence man, loan shark, and general lowlife with mys- believed that to recreate the mystical
terious intelligence connections of his own. Nicholl’s book traces the careers of Golden Age, the monarchy should rule
tens of Elizabethan spies, all of whom are one or two handshakes at the most with symbology drawn from Hermetic
(and proto-Rosicrucian) lore. Central to
from Robert Poley and Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe, hints Nicholl, was as
this concept, then, was the creation of a
much a spy as he was a poet, steeped to his smooth eyebrows in intrigue and false “British Empire” (a phrase Dee coined) in
testimony. the Western Paradise, Atlantis (his term
But ironically, it’s not through Marlowe’s spying that he meets his untimely for America, as we learned on p. 34). This
end – it’s through his presumed “atheism.” Marlowe, at the time of his murder, is tied up with the archetype of a golden
was on parole under a charge of atheism, incitement to riot, and treason. “Arcadia,” a New Eden (or New Israel)
Nicholl’s argument (which is very sound but not quite bulletproof) is that the ruled by holy justice and holy kingship,
Essex operation (specifically the informer Richard Cholmeley) set Marlowe up which archetype is crucial to Rosicrucian
for a fall to embarrass his other patron, Essex’s rival, the occult imperialist5 Sir lore (and to the Prieuré de Sion, we are
Walter Raleigh6 (whom we’ve met before in connection with Roanoke).7 When reliably informed by Baigent, Lincoln,
Marlowe proved too adept at using his own court connections to avoid the and Leigh’s Holy Blood, Holy Grail). This
whole complex of themes and goals can
frame, someone called a “summit meeting” of spies connected to the various
be shorthanded as “occult imperialism.”
court figures – Poley for Cecil, Frizer for Walsingham, Skeres for Essex, and For details, see Frances Yates, Astraea: the
Marlowe for Raleigh. Either as a preplanned assassination (in which Poley and Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century.
Frizer turned their coats, and not for the first time), or an argument over poli- Her later work The Occult Philosophy in the
tics, Frizer stabbed Marlowe through the eye with his dagger (a common killing Elizabethan Age is also well worth reading
maneuver in Elizabethan knife-fighting, not the “accidental blow” of the inquest for a more general look at occultism’s
at all) and the three survivors concocted a plausible cover story (also not for the influence on elite Tudor-era ideology.
first time).
6 We’ll meet Sir Walter Raleigh again in
El Dorado, on p. 92.
“When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit
seconded with the forward child Understanding, it strikes a man more 7 In “Croatoan or Bust: Finding the Lost
dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods Colony” on pp. STi39-42.
had made thee poetical.”
– William Shakespeare, As You Like It, III:iii:10-14 8 Examined on pp. STi35-38. For more
magickal Shakespeare, see pp. 41-44.
Even at the time, some folks didn’t buy it. The poets George Chapman and
9 Discussed on p. STi40.
Thomas Nashe referred to Marlowe’s “divine Muse” (subtly refuting the charges
of atheism) and implied he died “for liberty of speech.” But the most opaque 10 For Robin’s myth, see pp. 53-56.
such epitaph (and keep in mind that defending someone who died under investi-
gation of treasonous atheism was an exceptionally brave thing to do, and an 11 For Jack the Fool, see pp. 109-112, or
exceptionally stupid thing to do openly) comes in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, in (dare I hint it) pp. 71-73.
the form of the above riddle spoken by the “wise fool” Touchstone. The “great
reckoning in a little room” is the killing of Marlowe (whose “verses cannot be 1 2 In The Rosicrucian Enlightenment,
understood”), ostensibly over the “reckoning” but in actuality over some “great” Frances Yates argues that Frederick V
cause. The play specifically alludes to Marlowe (quoting and referring to his (1596-1632), Elector Palatinate of the
poem Hero and Leander), to make sure the allusion hits home. The name of the Rhine, was seen (by occultists, at least) as
the new incarnation of the “Rosicrucian”
fool also alludes to Marlowe’s careers as spy and counterfeiter: a touchstone is a
holy monarch when he accepted the
black stone that changes color when rubbed against true gold. throne of Bohemia in the winter of 1619.
There’s even more going on in As You Like It than that; like our other mag- Following the battle of White Mountain,
ickal Shakespeare play The Winter’s Tale8 it has four seasonally/alchemically in November of 1620, Frederick fled into
identified couples, and like Love’s Labours Lost9 it has a symbolic Duke with an ignominious exile, ending the Rosicrucian
exiled court. This Duke, significantly unnamed, rules the Forest of Arden living dream and beginning the Thirty Years’
“like the old Robin Hood of England,” with all the fertility-magic and so forth War. Frederick’s wife was Elizabeth,
inherent in that myth10 and with another Fool, named Jaques – Jack.11 The daughter of the witch-hunting and not-
unnamed Duke represents Summer, in contest with the Winter Duke Frederick Rosicrucian James I of England; their
– another precognitive echo of Frederick, Winter King of Bohemia?12 (In that daughter married the Elector of Hanover,
context, pure synchronicity throws up a motherlode; the Summer King Orion from whence came the Hanoverian claim
to the throne of England.
killed by the archery of the Virgin Queen Artemis, the Sparrow who killed Cock
Robin with his bow and arrow, and the fact that thanks to a copyist’s error, the 1 3 And, of course, “Archer” was Sam
murderer of Marlowe was thought to be one “Francis Archer”13 for a century. Spade’s partner, whose death Spade had
Hmmm.) Finally, as Shakespeare’s audience knew, Robin Hood plays are associ- to avenge in The Maltese Falcon, which is
ated with Whitsuntide14 – the season of mock kingly sacrifices and fertility ritu- about the Templar rivals, Hospitaller
als when Christopher Marlowe was killed for a “great reckoning.” Knights of Malta.
39
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
14 For an in-depth, accurate, and general-
ly amazing examination of Whitsuntide
and every other British holiday (and their
associated traditions, both real and imag-
ined), there is no better recourse than
Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun. He’s
the best kind of debunker, since he gives
plentiful, gameable details about the theo-
ry to be debunked.
15 The “School of Night” comes from a
cryptic allusion in Shakespeare’s Love’s
Labours Lost. The term, if not necessarily
the allusion, refers to the “school of athe-
ism” (most likely a study group for natural
philosophy, which in those days included
things like anatomy with stolen corpses,
alchemy, and Hermetic occultism) cen-
tered on Sir Walter Raleigh. In The Occult
Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, Yates
argues that Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is a
savage indictment of the occult imperial-
ists; in The Reckoning, Nicholl implies that
Marlowe was their agent. Literary critic
Muriel Bradbrook’s The School of Night,
which first made the identification, says
that Shakespeare (or his patron
Southampton) was a bitter rival to the
Raleigh group; Graham Philips & Martin
Keatman’s delightfully outré The
Shakespeare Conspiracy argues that he was
Marlowe’s successor in it (and that
Shakespeare was murdered by Raleigh for
playing his own double game with the
Elizabethan secret service). Like so much
of Marlowe’s two-faced career, things
point both ways.
16 For which witch, see pp. 57-60.
17 Sir Henry Percy (1564-1632), 9th Earl
of Northumberland, was known as the
“Wizard Earl” for his scientific (including
alchemical) experiments and enormous
library. He patronized Marlowe and
Hariot. He was also a crypto-Catholic,
and seventh in line to the throne.
Basically, everyone in Elizabethan times is
perfect conspiracy fodder, it turns out.
18 For Rosicrucianism, see note 14, p. 44.
19 For the Three Craftsmen, see p. 70.
20 Available to the interested conoisseur
at www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/title.htm.
21 The brother of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-
1626), Rosicrucian, proto-Mason, conspira-
tor, author of The New Atlantis, and general
Secret Master Nexus. (More convention-
ally, Lord Chancellor of England and a
pioneering scientist.) See pp. STi105-107.
40
“And glutted more with learnings golden gifts,
He surffets upon cursed Necromancy,
Nothing so sweete as magicke is to him
Which he preferres before his chiefest blisse,
And this the man that in his study sits.”
– Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, I:i:25-29
Now, it’s true that May 30 was a Wednesday, four days before Whitsunday. But
it’s also true that May 30 is the beginning of the Roman Feast of the Queen of the
Underworld, sacred to Hecate, threefold goddess of witchcraft and the moon. The
moon, we may recall, was the emblem of Elizabeth in her role as Virgin Queen –
and specifically as “Cynthia,” poetical patroness of Raleigh’s School of Night.15
(Before we go further into that good night, it’s worth noting another virgin death
associated with May 30 – that’s the day Joan of Arc16 was burnt at the stake for
heresy and witchcraft.) One of the briefs against Marlowe was that he “read the
atheistical lecture” at Raleigh’s “school of atheism” – he was very closely associated
with Raleigh’s occultist circle (Robert Greene refers to magicians “bred of Merlin’s
race”; a pun on Marlowe/Marlin), as were Marlowe’s patrons Lord Fernando
Strange and the “Wizard Earl” Henry Percy of Northumberland.17 Percy collected
the manuscripts of the Italian heretic and magus Giordano Bruno, who may,
according to John Bossy’s Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, also have been a
spy for Walsingham, and who may also (along with John Dee) have been a model
for Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. (From Bruno, we can go to Rosicrucianism18 and
ponder the proto-Masonic implications of Marlowe being killed by three unworthy
craftsmen.) 19 Faustus has been seen both as an attempt to understand
the Renaissance scientific mindset epitomized by Raleigh (and by the surveyor-
magician of Roanoke, Northumberland’s man Thomas Hariot) – and as a bitter
reaction to it, identifying Dee-style magic with Satanism. Was this why Marlowe’s
protectors turned on him? To cover up their Satanism, or to eliminate his? Does
Marlowe die, like Faustus, cursing and blaspheming “to his last gasp?”
“O, death’s a great disguiser; and you may add to it. Shave the head, and
tie the beard; and say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared before
his death: you know the course is common.”
– William Shakespeare, Measure For Measure, IV:ii:175-178
Or does he die at all? In the delightful netbook A Deception in Deptford,20 Peter
Farey takes Nicholl’s theory and turns it 90 degrees square – if Poley, Frizer, and
Skeres are untrustworthy witnesses, how do we know they actually killed Marlowe?
What if they helped him fake his own death to skip the country ahead of the treason
charges? (It’s interesting that the main document in the government’s case against
Marlowe, the so-called “Baines Note,” is delivered three days before his death – and
dated three days after it by the clerk of the Privy Council.) Farey’s even found a
prisoner hanged the day before Marlowe’s “death” whose body “disappeared” to
provide the corpse for the inquest, and a mysterious spy in Anthony Bacon’s21 ser-
vice, “Louis Le Doux,” who he maintains is Marlowe under another name.
So far it’s all good fun, and even barely possible. Of course, Farey goes that cru-
cial one step further and says that Marlowe/Le Doux changed his name yet again to
“William Shakespeare” and wrote all those plays, including The Winter’s Tale, Romeo
and Juliet, and Measure For Measure, all of which deal with faked deaths. (In Measure
For Measure, we even get a corpse-substitution.) Not only is this ludicrous on the
surface of it to anyone who’s read both Shakespeare and Marlowe remotely critical-
ly, it beggars the imagination that, having escaped with his life, Marlowe would then
return to the single social circle that would be most likely to recognize him – the
Elizabethan stage. Unless, of course, some time during his “death” he mastered the
mystic arts of “Merlin’s race,” of Hermes, god of a thousand faces, patron of trick-
sters – and guide to and from the world of the dead. But for the sacred feast-days of
Hecate, disguised as Whitsuntide, Marlowe was dead. To begin with.
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
Pyramid originally posted “Illyrium

Illyrium Tremens: What Tremens: What Stirs On Twelfth Night?”

for Christmas on December 24, 1999. The

Stirs On Twelfth Night?

next essay in publication order is “An
Alternate-Historical Alphabet,” on p. 26.

“O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;

It is too hard a knot for me t’ untie.”
– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II:ii:40-41

Indeed, much as in The Winter’s Tale, (our previous exploration of the secret, 1 On pp. STi35-38.
the magickal, the occult Shakespeare)1 the Time is very clearly entangled in
Twelfth Night. Exactly how, and to what end, and by whom; well, that’s murkier. 2 Sir Francis Bacon, for whom see note
Murky enough that for any answer, (or answers) a game-driving Secret can exist. 21 on p. 40, or pp. STi105-107.
Are the plays (or at least this play) occult documents, liturgies for magickal ritu-
al? Do they encode mythic truths passed down from mystery cultists and kab- 3 That would be Sir William Stanley (1561-
1642), 6th Earl of Derby and brother of
balists of yore? Do their plots and flourishes disguise the machinations of
Lord Fernando Strange, Shakespeare’s first
unseen Masters, either political or paraphysical? Do their poetries become patron. The case for Stanley’s authorship of
Words of Power, capable of upending spacetime and the laws of man and God? Shakespeare’s plays (such as it is) is made by
Is Shakespeare (be he the brilliant Stratford actor, the nefarious Bacon,2 the Abel Lefranc in the unintentionally hilari-
enigmatic Stanley,3 the undead Marlowe,4 or a bisociative magic circle of them ous Under the Mask of William Shakespeare.
all) again altering our very knowledge of the world with his occult dramatur-
gies? Put on your masks, then, the better to reveal (or invent) the secret stories 4 Christopher Marlowe, for whom see
of Twelfth Night. pp. 38-40, and specifically p. 40 for his
undeadness.
“If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an
improbable fiction.”
– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, III:iv:129

41
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
5 For more Foolishness, see pp. 109-112.
6 The Biblical version of the story, the
Greek text of the Gospel of Matthew,
calls them magoi, usually translated “wise
men,” and doesn't give a number. Perhaps
inevitably, Matthew’s later mention of
three gifts – gold, frankincense, and
myrrh – combines with the mystical
power of triplicity. This collapses the
indeterminate number of visitors to
Three Wise Men, or in the Persian word,
Magi. The Magi were, technically,
Zoroastrian priests and astrologers, and
the source of much excitement and the
word “magic” even now.
By the 8th century, not only have
their numbers been definitively pared to
three (though some Eastern churches still
revere 12 Magi) but they've sprouted
names: Gaspar or Kaspar (the old king,
who gives gold), Melchior (the mature
king, who gives myrrh), and Balthasar
(the young king, who gives frankincense).
In addition to each representing an age of
man (much as the three Fates represented
maiden, mother, and crone), each repre-
sented a continent: Balthasar is often
painted as a black man, for Africa (or
Ethiopia) with Gaspar usually represent-
ing Europe (or India) and Melchior Asia
(or Arabia).
The three kings also parallel three
planets, mystically linked by three con-
junctions in Pisces in 7 B.C. While
Jupiter (planet of kings) and Saturn (plan-
et of Time) conjoin, Mercury (planet of
magicians) rises with Regulus, the star of
kings. Mercury, of course, is also Hermes,
as in Hermes Trismegistos, the thrice-
great – “physician, priest, and king.” Or,
in other words, just the kind of guy who
can use myrrh (a healing and embalming
gum), frankincense (a resin offered to
deities), and gold (metal of kingship).
Hidden paganism alert: the crypt of
the Three Kings in Cologne Cathedral is
built on the site of a temple to Mercury.
Although Gaspar probably comes from
the Persian word for “treasure keeper” (he
did bring the gold, after all), you can trace
Melchior to Melkart (“lord of the city”),
the Phoenician version of Hercules, and
Balthasar to Belshazzar (“Baal protect the
King”). Finally, the actual feast day of the
Three Kings is not January 6 but July 23,
which is also the Roman feast of Neptune,
bringing us to the realization that
Tarshish (of which Gaspar may or may
not have been King) is the Biblical term
for, basically, Atlantis. For more Magian
fun, see Adrian G. Gilbert’s Magi.
42
There are two stories told here, in parallel, both tales of knowledge lost and
gained, tales of festive freedom defeating stern sobriety. Orsino, Duke of Illyria,
is in love with the Countess Olivia. She, mourning for her dead brother, spurns
his (and all) love. Meanwhile, Viola washes up on Illyria’s shore after a storm,
not knowing if her twin brother Sebastian is alive or dead. Disguising herself in
Sebastian’s clothing as a man (for unclear reasons), Viola quickly gains the
friendship of Orsino, carrying his love messages to Olivia – Olivia falls in love
with the disguised Viola while Viola falls in love with Orsino. Meanwhile,
Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby Belch (while sponging off the dimwitted Sir Andrew
Aguecheek, who himself desires Olivia) enrages Olivia’s uptight steward
Malvolio with his jollity. Sir Toby eggs Olivia’s maid Maria into forging a note,
ostensibly from Olivia to Malvolio, declaring her love. Malvolio falls for it, and
his bizarre behavior (on instructions from the note) allows Maria to declare him
mad and have him shut up in prison. (While he’s in there, Sir Toby and a Fool5
attempt to actually drive him insane.) Meanwhile, Sebastian (alive after all)
makes his way to Illyria; after the traditional mistaken identity ensues he mar-
ries Olivia, fights Sir Toby (who has been trying to incite a duel between Sir
Andrew and Viola), and nearly gets everyone in trouble; fortunately, Viola and
Sebastian reveal their true identities to each other and the two courts, and love
sorts itself out as Orsino becomes engaged to Viola. Malvolio is even released
from prison after Maria reveals her prank, but exits vowing revenge. The Fool
(whose words of wisdom, paradoxical koans, and songs have peppered all of the
above storylines) finishes with a song about rain and death. Happy Twelfth
Night, everybody.
Unusually for Shakespeare, he only took half of this play from another
source; the Olivia-Sebastian-Viola-Orsino plot derives from Plautus’ Menæchmi
via three separate Italian plays (all called The Frauds) and Barnabe Riche’s
“Apollonius and Silla,” written in prose in 1581 (based on a French version of
one of the Italian plays). None of these sources contain the Malvolio-Toby-
Andrew-Maria subplot, original to Shakespeare. The Fool was probably
Shakespeare’s addition, too, since the play was written as a Twelfth Night
masque (or Feste, which is the Fool’s name), traditionally full of witty sayings,
songs, and paradoxes. Hence the play’s title; it could more descriptively go by its
subtitle, What You Will. Nobody can exactly pin down when Shakespeare wrote
it, but it was at the turning of the century between 1599 and 1601. If the death
of the Old Year leaves a magickal gap, the death of the Old Age, the Old
Century, leaves an accordingly more powerful one tailor-made for conspiratorial
dramaturgy.
“‘Three merry men be we.’ Am I not consanguineous? Am I not of her
blood? . . . ‘O’ the twelfth day o’ December –’”
– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II:iii:76-84
Twelfth Night was a day of masques and riddles and upsetting the conven-
tional order of things, part of a general tradition known as Misrule. A “foolish
lord” or a “boy bishop” would lead the revels, inverting the natural order of
things during the time the old year died, and before the new had taken hold.
Christian medieval England saw Misrule drift from the Roman Saturnalia
(December 17-24) to the Twelve Days of Christmastide, of which January 6,
Epiphany, is the Twelfth Night. Epiphany (from the Greek for “manifestation”
or “revelation”) is traditionally the date that the Three Magi6 (or Three Wise
Men) arrived bearing gifts7 for the Christ Child. In older traditions, January 6
was Christmas (it still is for the Orthodox church, which still uses the Julian cal-
endar), and in still older ones, it was the date of Christ’s Baptism by St. John the
Baptist. In still older traditions than that, January 6 was the birthday of
Dionysos, the god of wine, which may be why the Church also identified
Epiphany as the date of the wedding at Cana – where Christ turned water
to wine.
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
The Dionysian connection helps explain all the madness and the masques, 7 For more Twelfth Night gifts, see note
and oddly enough so does the Baptismal one – St. John’s Day is Midsummer’s,8 2 on p. 109.
June 24. Which is when the play is set; although the title holds the beginning of
winter, the action spans the height of summer. Seeming contradiction, resolved 8 And, in the further coincidence depart-
ment, A Midsummer Night’s Dream may
by epiphany. That’s Twelfth Night. Going back to the Magi for an inverted sec-
have been first performed at a masque for
ond, a group of masked figures in motley called the Hognels, or Hogglers, used the wedding of Sir William Stanley.
to collect gifts (gold and food) during Misrule; nobody’s quite sure what they did
with them. They share a costume and a reputation with the Mummers (from the 9 Specifically, those of Chrétien de
Greek “mommos,” or “mask”), who would perform ritual combats (like the false Troyes (1135?-1188?), author of the first
duel between Viola and Sir Andrew) for money and date to Troyes (home of the mainstream Grail romance, Le Conte du
Grail romances)9 in the 13th century. The Mummers or Maskers (despite the Graal. This romance is also known as Le
frequent accusations that they hosted masked assassins and conspirators) became Roman du Perceval, and Chrétien also
standard features of court entertainment, leading to the masques such as the one wrote the first major Lancelot romance,
Queen Elizabeth held for Don Virginio Orsino (!!) on Twelfth Night, 1601 – Le Roman du Lancelot. Keeping in mind
the actual beginning of the 17th century. Which may have been when Twelfth what we speculated above (on p. 34) about
the Grail romances being coded referents
Night first manifested.
to the Templar voyages to America, it’s
intriguing to know that Troyes was the
“O fellow, come, the song we had last night heartland of “Templar country.” Its lords,
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain; the Counts of Champagne, were among
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, the first Templars, and the Council of
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones, Troyes established the Templar Rule in
1128.
Do use to chant it.”
Le Roman du Perceval introduces the
– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II:iv:42-46 notions of the Grail Bloodline, the Fisher
King, and several other elements of the
And what better time than the beginning of a century (and the end of a mythos; apropos of something, Chrétien
reign; Elizabeth had two more years left) to alter its fate? For a play celebrating identifies Perceval as the “Widow’s Son,”
Misrule, there are lots of invocations of fate, beginning with Olivia’s “Fate, show a common Masonic appellation. Perhaps
thy force” in Act One. The spinsters, knitters, and lacemakers mentioned above it was just such a tendency to hint at
echo the Three Fates who spun, measured, and cut the lives (and bones) of men. secrets that led to Perceval remaining
Twelfth Night, of course, celebrates another famous triplicity, and Sir Toby’s unfinished – and possibly to Chrétien’s
song “Three merry men we be” is only one of many throughout the play, sung death in a mysterious fire in Troyes in
1188.
by three singers – Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Fool. They also make up one of
two three-man conspiracies, the other being Sir Toby, a servant named Fabian, 10 For more triplicitous fun, see p. STi38,
and Sir Andrew – both sets plot against Malvolio, but never as a foursome or note 9 on p. 59.
(although Maria joins both with impunity). The Fool refers to a number of
superstitious triples including lucky dice rolls and “the third pays for all” while
trying to cozen a third coin out of Orsino in Act Five. Were it not for
Shakespeare’s forcing the twins into your sight at all times, the theme of triple
fate would haunt the action – which takes “three months,” at the close of which,
Sebastian makes “thrice welcome drownèd Viola.”10

“And what should I do in Illyria?

My brother, he is in Elysium.”
– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, I:ii:3-4

Not only time and number float into the unreal, the magickally open; place
does as well. Illyria, unlike Bohemia, does indeed have a seacoast, being the
coastal half of the former Yugoslavia and thus a perpetual battleground between 11 For May Eve, which is even more fun
than May Day, see pp. 113-115.
East and West, belonging to neither. Unstuck in place, Illyria becomes a magical
land where the time between May Day11 and Midsummer (both mentioned as 12 For Enochian, see p. 36. Or, for the
the time of the play) is variously three months and a few hours. Interestingly, ambitious, see Golden Dawn Enochian
Illyria, in the Enochian12 Suborder system of Elizabethan magus John Dee, has Magic, by Pat Zalewski, The Complete
the number 25 (a square) and lies under the sign of Gemini – the twins. In Golden Dawn System of Magic, by Israel
Enochian, in fact, its name is ODDIORG, a near anagram, or mirror image, of Regardie, or Enochian Magic: A Practical
“Roderigo,” Sebastian’s alias. And when Orsino marries Viola, Sebastian’s mir- Handbook, by Gerald and Betty Schueler.
ror (his twin) will become Illyria, as lady of the land. I’ll tell you right now, though, it’s not
nearly as much fun as it sounds.

43
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
13 One of the key ways to achieve the
Philosopher’s Stone, in mystical alchemy,
is to “recapitulate the androgyne” by
engaging in the “Chymical Marriage” of
the Red King (sulfur) to the White Queen
(antimony?) or of the (male, red) Sun to
the (female, white) Moon. The “alchemi-
cal marriage” comes in many forms, as
does alchemy itself; it shows up on pp. 51
and 94, as well as p. STi38. For more
alchemical goodness, seek out Gareth
Roberts’ Mirror of Alchemy, Andrea
de Pascalis’ Alchemy: The Golden Art,
or the incredibly vast and mighty alchem-
ical database and archive located at
www.levity.com/alchemy/index.html.
14 In 1614-1616, three mysterious pam-
phlets (the Fama Fraternitas, the Confessio,
and the Chemical Wedding of Christian
Rosenkreutz) appeared in Europe,
announcing that a secret Order of the
Rosy Cross, the Rosicrucians, were mov-
ing invisibly through Europe to spread
occult enlightenment, recruit members,
and reform the nations. The pamphlets
were actually an intellectual hoax by one
Johann Valentin Andrea (1586-1654), but
the “Rosicrucian panic” that ensued
helped jump-start Enlightenment cul-
ture. See A.E. Waite, The Brotherhood of
the Rosy Cross, or Frances Yates’
Rosicrucian Enlightenment.
15 For whom, see note 12, p. 39.
16 For the Great Witch Hunt, see note 2
on p. 61.
17 Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is sel-
dom given his propers as one of the most
devoted students of alchemy, angel-
magic, Pythagorean optics (see note 12,
p. 24), and Hermeticism in the history of
the field. He was a member of the proto-
Masonic Royal Society and was, they say,
Nautonnier (Grand Master) of the Prieuré
de Sion. He may, in fact, have died a vir-
gin. For details of Newtonian alchemy,
see Isaac Newton: The Last Sorceror, by
Michael White, or (more alternatively)
the “Age of Unreason” alternate historical
fantasy series by J. Gregory Keyes, begin-
ning with Newton’s Cannon.
1 8 January 6 is also the Koreion, an
Egyptian syncretic feast combining the
worship of the goddess Kore (Isis) with
the birth of an Aeon of light, rising out of
the Nile. Interestingly, the oldest name
for the Epiphany feast is the Syriac denho,
the “rising” – an odd name for a visit from
three Magi, but an excellent name for a
rising star, or for a UFO taking off.
44
“One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons
A natural perspective, that is and is not!”
– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, V:i:215-216
The impostor twins, complete with sexual androgyny (for those seeing Viola
as the Philosopher’s Stone)13 and strong hints of homoerotic love (at the very
least between the effeminate Sebastian and his friend Antonio), power the play’s
text and themes. As if to underscore the parallels between the twins and our
iconic mirror image, Shakespeare has both Viola and Sebastian describe the
other as an image in a glass. The action and characters, thus, join the time,
number, and place in the unreal, all twisted and refracted, putty in Shakespeare’s
hands (or those of the mysterious Hognel Mummers who made him write it).
Shakespeare gleefully destroys the sanity of Malvolio – who represents order,
reason, and virtue. Lawful Good, in other words, is made a fool (while a Fool
reveals truths such as “Nothing that is so is so”), driven mad, and sent away.
“Father, I charge thee by thy reverence
Here to unfold, though lately we intended
To keep in darkness what occasion now
Reveals before ‘tis ripe, what thou dost know.”
– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, V:i:149-152
The masked Mummers in motley win, and the road of reason diverts. The
17th century just born with Maria and Viola as midwives is the century of
Rosicrucianism,14 of the Winter King15 and the Thirty Years’ War, the flower
of the Great Witch Hunt16 and the alchemies of Newton17 and Helvetius.
(Does Newton, bringing order out of chaos, finally reconcile the twins, in his
own sexless way?) The theme of the play is the discovery, or rather the revela-
tion, of knowledge; the ideals of Renaissance magi and Rosicrucian conspirators
alike held that the recovery of knowledge holds the key to the Golden Age – or,
as Duke Orsino puts it, “when that is known, and golden time convents.” The
Golden Age is the Age of Saturn, whose Saturnalia powers Misrule and the
Masks of Twelfth Night.
Or is some other Epiphany what the dramaturgists have in mind? The twins
reconciled is the image of the Kabbalah’s two pillars joining in Godhead, for
example (and Illyria is the kingdom of Cadmus, father of the Greek alphabet).
The central myth of the Gnostics is the search for disguised female (possibly
sea-born) Wisdom; Sebastian’s quest for “drownèd Viola” may recall the quest
of such Wise Men from the East as Apollonius of Tyana (as in “Apollonius and
Silla”). Perhaps the secret is necromancy. Both Sebastian and Viola are given up
for dead by their twins, but come alive. Olivia not only begins the play sworn to
seven years’ contemplation of her dead brother, she “waters once a day her
chamber round” with salt tears – a magickal circle broken only by an androgy-
nous twin returned from the salt sea, and from the dead. Perhaps it’s Dionysian
knowledge called for on his day, knowledge uncovered in the madness of
Malvolio, alias Reason. January 6, the triumphant rebirthday of Dionysos (the
“twice-born,” another twin reference) after his death at
the hands of the Triple Goddess, climaxed the Lenæa,
the festival in honor of Greek comic drama (!!), seed
of the Twelfth Night masque. 18 And from those
wild Aegean islands, drunk on cakes and ale, the
Hognels extend the grinning mask of the Fool and
the mock duel of the Mummers, driving their mad-
ness through the gap of Misrule and the genius
of Shakespeare, as time, like the skein of the
three Fates, twists and unravels on Twelfth
Night. Make of it what you will.
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
Pyramid originally posted “A Night to

A Night To Embroider: Embroider” on April 16, 1999, the 87th

anniversary of the Titanic disaster. The next

Who Sank The Titanic?

essay in publication order is “Devil’s Prom
Night,” on p. 113.

“My mother always believed that the Great Eastern, the first
steamship of any size to speak of, met with repeated disasters because
God was jealous, as He was of the Tower of Babel. In 1917, my cousin,
Lawrence Bishop, told me that he thought ‘the Lord prepared a great
iceberg’ for the Titanic in annoyance at the claim of the shipbuilders
that she was unsinkable.”
– Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley

Fourscore and seven years ago yesterday, the first great tragedy of the mod- 1 The White Star calls to mind, of course,
ern world slammed home to newspaper readers all across the globe. The S.S. the Star of the Magi (note 6 on p. 42),
Titanic, proudest and newest ship of the White Star1 Line, had struck an iceberg which may also be cognate with the “Star
and sunk, taking over 1,500 lives with her. This event’s iconic power is hard to of Sarmoung” supposedly recapitulated in
fathom so many years and so many tragedies later, but the collision of ice and the “Mark of the Bloodline” carried by
steel, of design and Nature, seemed in hindsight to presage a century marred by the Merovingians (see p. STi119). The
bloody miscalculation and hubristic designs. As, no doubt, it did, somewhere in “morning star” symbolizes both Lucifer
the mythic sphere – the best known disaster of its time is still enough to drive a (Isaiah 14:12) and Christ (Revelation
billion-dollar epic around the world, fixing the Titanic in the mind afresh, and 22:16), and as “the Blazing Star” it is one
of the key symbols of Freemasonry. The
setting off any number of inspirational legends and rumors usable in your game
star on the White Star flag was a five-
of myth, tragedy, or conspiracy. pointed star, which is heraldically not a
star at all, but a “mullet” (from mollet, or
“When Cameron began his film career . . . he was already a member “spur”). The white mullet was, interest-
of the Freemasons . . . Since a group of Freemasons helped Cameron ingly enough, the badge of the de Vere
finance his film projects while they secretly embedded MK-ULTRA2 family, which boasts yet another claimant
to the true authorship of Shakespeare’s
technology into his films, it’s logical to conclude that the person
plays, Edward de Vere (1550-1604), 17th
controlling MK-ULTRA technology under project MK-SEARCH at Earl of Oxford.
that time was none other than George Bush . . .”
– Daniel Perez, “James Cameron, 2 For MK-ULTRA, see note 8, p. 24.
33rd Degree Freemason”
45
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
3 Astarte was the Phoenecian name of the
primary fertility goddess of the Near East,
also known as Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth,
Ishtar, Asherah, and Aethra. She may
have been cognate with Neith, an
Egyptian goddess, or with Tanith, the
Carthaginian moon goddess. There is a
school of thought deriving Athena from
Neith, which would mean that Astraea,
the goddess of justice who became one of
the avatars of Athena, is actually an avatar
of Astarte, with interesting connections
back to the occult-imperial “Astraea cult”
of Queen Elizabeth I (see note 5, p. 39).
Ashtaroth was one of the deities wor-
shiped in the Chambre Ardente affair (see
note 3, p. 58). Interestingly enough, one
of Astarte’s symbols was the white star.
The film I’m specifically referring to
is Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, by
the way, and I’m well aware that it’s a ten-
uous link at best, but it’s a heck of a movie
regardless.
4 This, by the way, is the traditional
“Insider” conspiratorial theory of the
United States government, as put forth in
Gary Allen’s None Dare Call it Conspiracy
and other classic works. The specifically
Anglophobic version of this conspiracy
appears in Dr. John Coleman’s The
Conspirator’s Hierarchy: The Story of the
Committee of 300, and in Lyndon
LaRouche’s anonymously published Dope,
Inc. In this company, the stodgy, pragmat-
ic, financially-concerned tone of A. Ralph
Epperson’s The Unseen Hand can seem
almost reasonable.
5 See note 21, p. 40 for Francis Bacon.
6 See pp. 35-37 for the Manuscript.
7 The purchaser is generally identified as
one Douglas Murray, and it was in fact
Murray’s acquaintance, the sensational
journalist William T. Stead, who was,
after a fashion, responsible for the rumor.
One of Stead’s most famous stories con-
cerned a cursed mummy case; when the
British Museum bought Exhibit No.
22542 (an inner coffin cover from a
princess’ burial dated to 1050 B.C.), Stead
used the cover’s “haunted expression” to
drum up interest in his (pre-existing)
mummy tales. Stead then, conveniently,
died on the Titanic, and one of the sur-
vivors mentioned that Stead had told his
mummy story in the ship’s lounge, and
(possibly) hinted that the “cursed
mummy” was aboard. For more mummy
madness, see p. 10.
46
Leaving aside (however reluctantly) an MK-ULTRA mind-control conspir-
acy to plant unwholesome lusts for Leonardo DiCaprio in the hearts of red-
blooded prepubescent girls everywhere, or the threads of Astartean3 sacrifice
running through the film career of Kate Winslet, we can look at the Titanic
through the familiar lenses of the unflagging conspiratologist: cui bono? Who
benefits when the pride of the White Star Line sinks?
According to The Titanic Conspiracy by Robin Gardiner (and didn’t you just
know there’d be a book by that title out?), the White Star Line benefited, hav-
ing had the presence of mind to switch the much cheaper Olympic (the Titanic’s
sister ship and near double) for the Titanic at the last minute and give Captain
Smith (a suspicious moniker if there ever was one) orders to smack it into the
first convenient iceberg he ran across. Then, the White
Star folks pocketed the insurance money (from the poli-
cy of the more generously insured Titanic) and moved
on to bigger and better things. For added fun, the
Titanic (under its Olympic pseudonym) served for 23
more years, retiring in 1935. Folks with those kind of
tendencies hint darkly at J.P. Morgan’s stake in the Line
(supposedly a controlling share through dummy stock-
holders and so forth), and point to the fact that he gave
up his berth on the Titanic (or Olympic) because of his
wife’s “premonitions of disaster.”
Folks who want to add yet another layer of excite-
ment to the plot can point out that Morgan’s business
rivals John Jacob Astor (identified by Lyndon LaRouche as a puppet of the
British Crown’s opium trade, and parse that as you wish) and Benjamin
Guggenheim both went down with the great ship – leaving Morgan in a posi-
tion to found the Council for Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and
the Federal Reserve the next year.4 While we’re going on about coincidences,
it’s a little too cool that the U.S. Ambassador to France, who also canceled his
Titanic trip at the last minute, was named Robert Bacon – a lovely echo of
Francis Bacon,5 our Secret Master de luxe (and, of Roger Bacon, whose putative
Voynich Manuscript6 surfaced, rather than sank, in 1912).
“The way shall be opened to him that hath power over his feet, and he
shall see the Great God in the Boat of Ra, when souls are counted
therein at the bows, and when the years also are counted up.”
– The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Moving further into the foggy North Atlantic of mysticism, rumor states
that the Titanic had a passenger even more noble and deadly than Colonel Astor
– a 3,400-year-old mummy, usually identified as a princess of Luxor from
around the reign of Thutmose III. Dug up in the late 1890s, the four men7 who
clubbed in to buy the mummy case all suffered disaster (one wandered into the
desert, one was shot in the arm by an Egyptian servant, one went bankrupt and
the fourth was broken by illness). The British Museum wound up with the case,
but moved it to the basement when a visitor’s child died of measles after he’d
treated the case disrespectfully. (Mummies are touchy bastards under the best of
circumstances; the kid had it coming.) Two of the Museum’s moving staff died, a
photographer who was tracking the curse committed suicide, and finally in des-
peration, the Museum sold it to an American collector – who packed it on board
a ship for New York. One guess which ship that was, of course – and the
absolutely silliest versions of the story have the case being rescued from the
choppy Atlantic, shipped to America to kill yet more random passersby, and
then being shipped back to England – on the Lusitania. Now that’s a curse – the
case must be in Warehouse 23 by now. (It would be far too cruel to let some
GURPS Cliffhangers PCs find that case in some unlikely place after great trou-
ble. Far too cruel.)
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
“From the bridge, engine-room, and a dozen places on her deck 8 The Titans always served Mother
the ninety two doors of nineteen water-tight compartments could be Earth, Gaia, while the Olympians identi-
closed in half a minute by turning a lever. These doors would also close fied themselves with the sky-god Zeus.
Another variant on the Thyestes story
automatically in the presence of water. With nine compartments from note 3 on p. 23?
flooded the ship would still float, and as no known incident of the sea
could possibly fill this many, the steamship Titan was considered 9 In, mayhap, an Alchemical Marriage,
practically unsinkable.” such as we read about in note 13 on p. 44.
– Morgan Robertson, Futility (1898)
10 Look at “390904” in a mirror if you’re
still not sure where that “NO POPE”
Psychic prediction? Time travel? Hellish coincidence? Whatever your business came from.
fancy, it’s interesting to compare the ship in Morgan Robertson’s Futility (a
novel in which an unsinkable ship is brought low by a North Atlantic iceberg on 11 Isis (and later, the Virgin Mary) are both
its maiden voyage from England to New York and the passengers drown thanks depicted iconically in boats. This likely
to inadequate lifeboats) to the pride of White Star. Among other coincidences, derives from the similarity in appearance
Robertson’s ship, the Titan, was 70,000 tons, 800 feet long, with a top speed of between the crescent moon and a boat with
24 knots; the Titanic was 66,000 tons, 882 feet long, with the same top speed. a high prow and stern; or from the com-
Not bad for 14 years early. And lightning struck twice; Robertson wrote a later mon shape of the boat and the womb.
book called Beyond the Spectrum about a futuristic war between the United States Perhaps this is the context in which to
and Japan, beginning with a December sneak attack by the Japanese upon remind people that the (very gynolatrous)
Prieuré de Sion is supposedly led by a
Hawaii and ending with the use of “sun bombs” dropped from airplanes, one of
“Nautonnier,” or “Navigator.”
which could destroy an entire city.
1 2 According to medieval legend, an
“. . . Here, said she, Englishwoman consumed by love for a
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, Benedictine monk disguised
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) herself as a monk to follow
him to Rome. Rising through
. . . Fear death by water.”
the ranks of the Church, she
– T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land found herself elected Pope
John VIII upon the death of
The Titanic has mythic resonances that begin with Leo IV in 855, but she died
the “switched twin” tale (recalling, for example, the in childbirth two years later,
Olympic god Heracles and his mortal twin Iphicles – in the street between St.
and the rivalry between the Olympians and the Peter’s and the Lateran
Titans)8 and run through the boats of the Sun Palace. This “Pope
(Ra) and Moon (Isis). The Hindu sea goddess Joan” legend began as
anti-Catholic Greek
Maryamna has her sacred day on April 14 (when
propaganda, and later
the iceberg hit), and the Egyptian goddess Bast became anti-Catholic
holds hers (complete with celebratory boat pro- Protestant propaganda.
cessional) on April 15, when the ship sunk. Bast, At some point in the
in addition to cats, joined the power of Sun and story, a chronicler
Moon.9 Perhaps our mummy case held one of added the filip that
the Cat People’s princesses? “Pope Joan’s” son was,
Legend has it that the Titanic’s hull number in fact, the Antichrist,
was 390904, which, when flipped around, spelled out NO POPE;10 implying and she herself was the Whore of
the Titanic was indeed a goddess-boat. 11 Her code key was, in fact, MGY, Babylon, seated on the seven-headed
which under the kabbala-tarot correspondence is Hanged Man, High Priestess dragon in the seven-hilled city of Rome.
Since a female Pope is a pretty good reca-
(the famed “Female Pope” 12 card), Hermit; a woman traveling in secret
pitulation of the Androgyne (see note 13,
between two silent men. (The distress call the Titanic sent was CQD – p. 44), perhaps her son was, in fact, the
Temperance, Moon, Empress; all three women, and one specifically a Moon living Philosopher’s Stone.
goddess.) MGY adds kabbalistically to 53, the stone that slew Goliath – an
interesting parallel to the berg that slew the giant ship. 390904 adds to 25,
which is “to break,” so it’s a real shame that the actual hull number of the
Titanic was 131428, which doesn’t spell anything backward, although it does
add to 19 (which corresponds to the Strength card of the Tarot, again female
power, and specifically congruent with an unsinkable ship). The Titanic was a
Gemini (more twin imagery), “born” in Belfast on May 31, 1911. Her death
spot, 41 degrees north by 50 degrees west, is the place where “Divine Majesty”
(41 kabbalistically) meets 50, Jonah’s whale.
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
13 For the Round Table, see pp. I57-58,
or The Naked Capitalist, by W. Cleon
Skousen, which presents itself as a “review
and commentary on” the 1966 magnum
opus Tragedy and Hope, by Carroll
Quigley (for which, see also p. I35).
Quigley’s basic thesis seems to be that
yes, there is an Anglo-American
Establishment (which he refers to as “the
Round Table Groups) that secretly runs
the world, and he wishes it would get the
credit it deserves. Quigley is most famous,
latterly, for having been Bill Clinton’s
professor of international relations at
Georgetown. I have good reason to
believe that my own copy of Tragedy and
Hope was reprinted by a conspiratorially-
minded publisher, no doubt in order to
prevent Them from dropping Quigley’s
charitable whistleblowing down the
Memory Hole.
14 For a more jaundiced view of Captain
Nemo, as well as for a hearty pulp thriller,
I recommend Philip José Farmer’s The
Other Log of Phileas Fogg.
15 Widener went to the bottom clutching
a 1598 collection of the essays of Sir
Francis Bacon (see note 21, p. 40), which
has any number of possibilities.
16 Bimini is the island in the Bahamas
where Edgar Cayce predicted the “rise of
Atlantis” in 1968; coincidentally, divers
off Bimini found regular blocks seemingly
forming a “road” and “pillars” that year.
For more Atlantology, see note 1 on
p. 106.
17 For Thule, see the Glossary.
18 For the ley lines, see the Glossary, or
note 3 on p. 106.
19 The Midgard Serpent is the legendary
world-girdling dragon-snake that will slay
Thor during the battle of Ragnarok at the
end of the world. Kundalini, meanwhile,
is the “serpent energy” that tantric magic
awakens; the connection is a natural.
48
“The answer to all these Titanic riddles will never be known for cer-
tain . . . Some will disagree, and they may be right. It is a rash man
indeed who would set himself up as final arbiter on all that happened
the incredible night the Titanic went down.”
– Walter Lord, A Night To Remember
And where there’s no single answer, then, there are as many answers as you
have INWO Illuminati cards, and we bisociate thusly.
The Bavarian Illuminati: Interested in cementing Anglo-American ties,
the furtive Round Table13 group sank the Titanic to give both nations a shared
tragedy, binding the populace together in weepy sentiment and setting up reso-
nances that it would put to good use by sinking the Lusitania three years later to
draw America into WWI.
Discordians: The iceberg
was a practical joke on Captain
Smith for his retirement, and like
a lot of retirement parties, it got
out of hand.
The UFOs: Divers have
reported UFO wreckage on the
bottom near the ship’s stern – was
there a crashed UFO in the hold,
maybe the triangular shadow
seen over Wiltshire on April 8,
1912? Was the hole punched out-
ward rather than inward, as the
pilot escaped?
Adepts of Hermes: It was a
blood sacrifice to Odin; April 14
is Sommarsblot, when blood
must be offered for summer’s
harvest. The Adepts needed a
rich harvest of magickal energy
to see them through the wars and
revolutions of the next decade,
and they got it from Njord of the
Seas.
Shangri-La: Well, Shangri-
La is near India and desires world
peace – which Indian pacifist reg-
ularly sank British ships over
Atlantis? Could the ghost ship
some witnesses saw have been the
conning tower of Nemo’s 14
Nautilus, marking its kill for the Nine Unknown Seers?
Society of Assassins: It was a hit, pure and simple, and the target was trac-
tion heir Harry Elkins Widener,15 whose death caused his mother to found
Harvard’s famous (and conspiratorially useful) Widener Library.
Gnomes of Zurich: Killing Astor and Guggenheim was just a distraction;
the real target was Lloyd’s of London and the ripple effect on the next 40 years
of insurance policies.
Bermuda Triangle: The ship went down on the Bimini16-Thule17 ley
18
line in a geomantic working to open a death-vortex and pin down one end of
the Midgard Serpent kundalini.19
The Network: Jacques Futrelle, creator of the Thinking Machine stories,
was one of the casualties of the Titanic, along with an unpublished tale which
Told Too Much.
Servants of Cthulhu: Burp.
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
Pyramid originally posted “One Giant Leap

On e Giant Leap After Another: Lunatic Theories” on July 16,

1999, the 30th anniversary of the launch of
Apollo 11. The next essay in publication order
After Another: is “Into the Woods With Robin Hood,” on
p. 53.

Lunatic Theories
“That’s right – so it all begins to leak out that the space program is one 1 For Robert Graves, see the Glossary.
giant big cover-up – it’s a covert operation between the United States
and the Soviet Union. It’s been going on for over thirty years.” 2 For details on Projekt: Saucer and the
Antarctic Space Nazis, see pp. STi77-80,
– “Been on the Moon Since the Fifties,” Slacker Renato Vesco and David Hatcher
Childress’ Man-Made UFOs 1944-1994,
Thirty years ago today, Apollo 11 lifted off from Cape Kennedy on its way or W.A. Harbinson’s wonderfully recon-
to man’s first step on the Moon. What that step was, who took it and why, and dite novel Projekt Saucer: Genesis.
even when and where – well, that’s the kind of thing that they don’t tell you in
anniversary TV specials. (Well, they do, but they don’t tell you the really 3 Warren Ellis’ “Artemis Project” in his
strange answers.) The Moon hardly needs me or any of the oddballs and cranks absolutely superb comic series Planetary
cited below to make it magical, of course; it’s possibly mankind’s first mystery, riffs off of this theme, as well.
sorcery, and goddess. But when you shoot rockets at it, you have to leave the
4 For details on antigravity drives (you
swan-mays and crossroads behind for a bit and think like an engineer, albeit a
know, some days it’s hard to believe the
crazy one. A book like Stan Gooch’s delirious Guardians of the Ancient Wisdom or kinds of sentences you get to write with a
Robert Graves’1 exhilarating The White Goddess will give you more than enough straight face in this business), there’s
pure moon mysticism for any game. Today, we’ll just look at the Moon through hardly any better source than David
one little pseudoscientific lens, bisociatively refracted through the light of Hatcher Childress’ three compilations:
Apollo. The Anti-Gravity Handbook, Anti-Gravity
and the World Grid, and Anti-Gravity and
“We’ve been on the Moon since the fifties. You want to know how we the Unified Field.
got there – I’ll tell you: antigrav drive – antigravity technology – We
5 I got this exciting notion from Richard
stole it from the Nazis after World War Two, it’s perfectly obvious.” Sauder’s superb Underground Bases and
– “Been on the Moon Since the Fifties,” Slacker Tunnels: What Is The Government Trying
To Hide? It reveals the giant nuclear (or
Been on the Moon since the fifties? Hah, in Rocketship reverse-engineered alien tech) tunnel-
Galileo, Heinlein revealed that we, or rather They, had drilling machines which can blast glass-
been on the Moon since the forties! That’s right, secret walled tunnels ten feet around from the
Nazi experiments with the Flügelrad Dora of Projekt alien compound at Dulce, New Mexico
(see note 12 on p. 97) to the subterranean
Saucer2 fame led ineluctably to the establishment of the
command center beneath the UN build-
Führer’s ultimate Refuge not in Antarctica (or at least not ing. A network of “sealed vacuum” bullet
only in Antarctica) but beneath the sandy soil of the trains criscrosses the country a mile deep,
Moon! Perhaps the Nazis teamed up with the Selenite probably paralleling the ley lines (much
ant-people from H.G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon and like the Atlantean tunnels in South
the U.S. and Soviet Union had to fight a covert war America in note 3 on p. 91).
against the Nazi Lunar Menace (it could even be an overt UFOlogy and conspiracy lore takes
war in a GURPS Atomic Horror-Alternate Earths off not only from the "underground evil"
crossover game), using the Cold War as a cover to pre- archetype of the Faerie caves, but from
vent panic. Or maybe, with Werner von Braun on the the 19th-century conspiratorial fear
“inside”3 (and other Nazi scientists in the Soviet program), Hitler was able to (mentioned in the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, for which see note 6 on p. 27) that
keep the Nazi base hidden from the American space effort. Or, possibly, we did
shadowy secret societies were encourag-
just roll over the Nazis and steal their scalar-technology Tesla antigrav4 engine, ing the construction of subways, intend-
and use it to establish a series of secret bases on the Moon, dug out by nuclear ing to use underground passages to blow
tunneling machines like the Mahendra-Tagaras design (a steal at around $50 up government buildings. For yet more
million) running off an SP-100 fission reactor just like you’d find at home.5 delightful details, see Labyrinths of Iron:
Here, the Black Ops6 battle the Greys on Earth’s front door (you get to carry a Subways in History, Myth, Technology &
much bigger gun in one-sixth gravity), and Strike Force Copernicus turns War, by Benson Bobrick.
75-foot-wide-alien tractors into desperate armored redoubts against the
Reptoid armada. 6 For more Black Ops fun, see pp. 13-15.

49
HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
7 Richard Hoagland waxes enthusiastic
about the “Castle” in the latest (fourth)
edition of his seminal Monuments of Mars:
A City on the Edge of Forever, and implies a
“hyperdimensional” link between the
Sinus Medii Castle, the Pyramids of
Egypt and Mexico, and the Cydonia Face
and Pyramids of Mars. For more
Cydonism, see the note 9 on p. 21.
For more lunar anomalies, see note 11 on
that page.
8 Put relatively simply, the “capture theo-
ry” holds that the Moon was a separate
body traveling through the Solar System
until it was captured by the Earth’s gravi-
ty; the “twin theory” holds that the Earth
and Moon formed simultaneously as a
“twin planet” from the proto-planetary
muck. Yet another theory, even less suit-
able than either of these, holds that the
Moon was ejected from the Pacific Ocean
very early in the Earth’s formation. I sup-
pose one could combine it with the sink-
ing of Mu/Atlantis for mystical juice.
9 See the Pole Shift in the Glossary.
10 Is this the “secret of Arcadia” guarded
by the Prieuré de Sion and the
Rosicrucians? Well, probably not.
50
“Ah, yeah, another astronaut’s in the background yelling his fool head off
saying ‘Oh my God, what’s that over there in that crater – what the hell
is that?’ Well, NASA cuts him off just like that. But those of us with the
right kind of radios – yeah, you know what I mean – we got enough of it.”
– “Been on the Moon Since the Fifties,” Slacker
Seventy-five-foot wide alien tractors, you ask? Well, sure. What else could have
left those tracks across Crater Vitello – going uphill? If you look in my main man
David Hatcher Childress’ Extraterrestrial Archaeology or George Leonard’s model of
restraint Somebody Else Is On The Moon, you’ll see pyramids in Crater Gassendi,
domes in Crater Kepler, obelisks along the western edge of the Sea of Tranquility,
25-mile long construction rigs in Crater Julius Caesar, airfields near Crater
Archimedes, the 68-mile long “Straight Wall” in Mare Nubium, a 12-mile long
bridge across the edge of Mare Crisium, and a glittering glass “Castle”7 suspended
nine miles above the Sinus Medii. There are cable-stringing alien trucks and mining
equipment and drilling heads and radomes, if you look hard enough. All that alien
gear and much, much, more has been working there for a while – Gian Domenico
Cassini saw a small cloud (steam exhaust?) on the Moon in 1671, and Baron Franz
von Gruithuisen mapped a lunar city north of crater Schroeter, near the Sinus
Medii, in 1824. Etienne Trouvelot saw “enigmatic walls” of crystal reflecting light
running across Crater Eudoxus in 1877 – the broken remnants of alien diamondoid
nanotech from a fallen Castle?
“That’s no moon.”
– Obi-wan Kenobi, Star Wars
Or was it – and the “stitches” in Bullialdus-Lubinicky, and the nearly-straight
Schroedinger Valley – a seam? Are the “mascons,” those strange gravitic anomalies
in the center of the maria, actually immense rivets, or projector nozzles, or “studs”
in the Moon’s sheetrock? Don Wilson’s Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon and two odd
Soviet scientists named Vasin and Shcherbakov make the case that the many many
“moon anomalies” (moon dirt is different from moon rocks, some moon rocks are
older than the Earth, the inadequacy of the “capture theory” and the “twin
theory,”8 the high titanium composition and surpising toughness of the maria floor,
etc.) can be explained by the fact that aliens built the moon and flew it here. (If
you’re going to do Spaceship Moon, by the way, look into David Weber’s rousing
space opera Mutineer’s Moon, and its sequels.) One really good anomaly, the fact that
the Moon rings like a bell when you drop something on it, implies that the Moon is
hollow. (So does its low density.) And as I should hardly have to explain by now,
hollow planets (and moons) can hold dinosaurs and moon-maidens and flying
saucer bases and gosh knows what. The Moonship aliens might even have shown up
relatively recently – H.S. Bellamy claims that carvings on Tihuanaco prove that the
Moon arrived around 12,500 years ago (during the Pole Shift,9 perhaps?), and
Aristotle and Plutarch both repeat the claim of the Arcadians to have lived in
Greece “before the moon was in the sky.”10
“Okay, boss, this LTX-71 concealable mike is part of the same system
that NASA used when they faked the Apollo moon landings. Yeah, the
astronauts broadcast around the world from a soundstage at Norton Air
Force Base in San Bernardino, California. So, it worked for them, it
shouldn’t give us too many problems.”
– Darren “Mother” Roskow, Sneakers
So how did the Apollo astronauts avoid seeing all that cool stuff? Why, by not
going at all, of course. The whole moonshot program was a big hoax, a scam to
drain dollars ($30 billion, nearly 7% of the budget) out of the public purse and into
Some Secret Op You Can’t Be Told About Here. That’s the word from Bill Kaysing,
 HIDDEN WEIRDNESS: ENIGMATIC EXPLANATIONS
anyway, whose We Never Went To The Moon places the covert soundstage at the 11 This is probably as good a place as any
heart of Area 5111 in the Nellis AFB test range. (I’ve always liked the notion that to recommend Phil Patton’s Dreamland as
the landings were filmed at Craters of the Moon National Park in southern Idaho; a superb history of Area 51. Patton dis-
talk about hiding in plain sight, after all.) He points to the suspicious absence of cusses both real missions staged out of
Groom Lake (such as the U-2 spy flights,
stars in the NASA films and photos (which a different crackpot, William Brian II,
and the Red Hat Squadron tests of stolen
claims proves that the Moon has a breathable atmosphere and that, oh yes, or purchased Soviet jets) but also the
Newtonian physics is wrong), and the fact that the lander’s thruster didn’t dig out a strong speculation that Air Force and CIA
huge crater despite the alleged powdery, footprint-friendly soil. According to counterintelligence created much of the
Kaysing, the Mob handled the security and Stanley Kubrick did the special effects. UFO mythology as a disinformational
The astronauts may not have been party to the hoax – Kaysing hints at Manchurian cloud to frustrate the Soviets’ intelli-
Candidate-style brainwashing, making them believe they were really on the Moon. gence-gathering on experimental aircraft
activities. Patton also does a decent job of
“The reason these guys are being forgotten is that they’re not Freemasons. summarizing the Area 51 mythology.
Another good book on the site is David
The Masons are the ones that control history. Look, every president but one Darlington’s Area 51: The Dreamland
– a Mason. Every man that’s walked on the moon – a thirty-third degree Chronicles. I personally treasure my copy
Mason.” of Glenn Campbell’s Visitor’s Guide to
– “Masonic Malcontent,” Slacker Area 51, which I bought at the famed
Little A’le’Inn in Rachel, Nevada.
But if we really did go, to the Moon, to our Moon, and in 1969 – why did we
12 For sacred geometry class, see pp.
name the program after the Roman god of the sun? Well, either because Project
106-108.
Diana sounded fruity, or because it was actually a vital component in a (gasp)
Masonic Ritual! James Webb, NASA Administrator from 1961 to 1968 was, in fact, 13 This particular theory springs from the
a Mason, as were Buzz Aldrin, Tom Stafford, Paul Weitz, Edgar Mitchell, James mind, initially, of construction engineer
Irwin, and Wally Schirra (the last three made in Canaveral Lodge No. 339). Neil Robert Bauval, who expounded upon it in
Armstrong, Jr., is not a Mason – at least, not according to the records – but his The Orion Mystery (with Adrian Gilbert)
father is. Farouk el-Baz, the Egyptian geologist who selected the Apollo 11 (11 + 22 and then again in The Message of the
years after Roswell = 33 degrees) landing site, might not be a Mason (Egyptian Sphinx (with Graham Hancock). Peter
Rite?), but he’s certainly an Egyptologist heavily involved in Pyramid research – Lemesurier’s Gods of the Dawn is a good
which comes in handy when you realize that Apollo is (according to properly picky primer, recapitulation, and unified field
mythographers) the Roman version of Osiris, who the Egyptians placed in the sky theory of cutting-edge Pyramidiocy ca.
1998. For more such, see pp. 106-107.
as Orion – lover of the Moon. (Apollo himself was the brother of the Moon, which
is kind of creepy, unless you’re an Egyptian pharaoh and accustomed to that kind of 14 For Sirius, see the Glossary.
carrying on.) And, as we all learned back in sacred geometry class,12 the Pyramids
of Giza are aligned with – Orion’s Belt.13 15 The sheer wonder of this heteroge-
Now it starts getting complicated. Farouk El-Baz picks the one place on the neous foam of Masons, Egyptian gods,
Moon (Mare Tranquilitatis, convenient to those tricky obelisks, which also match Nazis, anomalies, and sacred geometry
the Giza pattern), at the one time (8:17 PM GMT, July 20, 1969) when Sirius,14 the can only be hinted at here. Haste ye, then,
companion star to Orion – representing Isis, the Moon and companion to Osiris – to Richard Hoagland’s website at
is exactly 19.5 degrees above the horizon, precisely the degree of arc where a pyra- www.enterprisemission.com for the
mid is tangent to a sphere. Except that it wasn’t; Neil Armstrong took over manual Awful Truth.
control and flew the orbiter farther west than El-Baz’ planned site, so that Isis hit
16 See note 13, p. 44.
her magical 19.5 degrees exactly 33 minutes after lunar touchdown! At which point,
according to Buzz Aldrin, he broke out a vial of wine and a “small silver chalice” 17 Ashlars are Masonic stones, usually of
and celebrated “a small religious offering.” Woo-hoo!15 (That chalice wasn’t all; ritual significance. For this and similar
Aldrin also took a Templar flag with him to the Moon, which now hangs in the questions of Masonic terminology, I turn
Library Museum in the Scottish Rite Temple in Washington, D.C.) Was the bring- to my trusty two-volume Encyclopedia of
ing of Apollo to the Moon, of Orion to Artemis, of Osiris to Isis, the Alchemical Freemasonry by Albert Mackey. A.E.
Marriage16 of Sun and Moon? (And if that wasn’t, was the jettisoning of the Waite’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry is
“Phoenix” lander, covered with moon dust, into the Sun the necessary alchemical more targeted to Masonic groups and his-
consummation?) torical Masonic personages.
Are the moon rocks powerful ashlars,17 prima materia from the heavens, lapsit
exilii18 (like the Grail?), pure alchemical Whiteness, used now in spells of unholy 18 The Grail was also known as the lapsit
exilis (“the rejected Stone”), which elides
potency by the magelords beneath the five-sided Pentagon? And if not, why not?
into lapis ex caelis (“Stone from Heaven”)
Doesn’t your game need, nay, demand, a 5.4-billion-year-old magickal Engineer’s and thence to meteorites. It refers to
Stone, made of unholy alloys by a 25-mile-long alien refinery on a hollow space- Christ’s description of Himself as “the
ship, and brought back in 1952 only to be faked in a NASA chemical kiln in Idaho? Stone rejected by the builders,” a passage
It may just be one small step for you, but it’s a giant leap for Lunatic Game Fun. with understandably high Masonic import
in its own right. (See p. STi46.)
51
 I
n these eight essays, you’ll find eight
people, at least three witches, a god, three
myths, a mythologist, at least three mass
murderers, at least two packs of werewolves,
Frankenstein’s monster, two Bluebeards,
possibly three alchemists, one saint, six sinners,
a tribe of heretics, a cloud of nightmares, a
smattering of aliens, and the rest of the usual
suspects. With a cast of characters like this, you
could roam all across space and time (and some
of them may), but this lineup stays mostly in
chronological order from 1290 to 1920, give or
take a century or two.

Into the Woods With Robin Hood.............................................................................................53

The Maiden and the Monster: Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais........................57
Who Ya Gonna Caul? The Benandanti..................................................................................61
Frankenstein Family Album .......................................................................................................64
Paul Bunyan, All-American...........................................................................................................67
Jacks Wild: Six Stabs at the Ripper........................................................................................70
The Extra “H” is for “Homicidal”: H.H. Holmes............................................................74
The Shadows Over Lovecraf t .....................................................................................................78
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Pyramid originally posted “Into the Woods

Into the Woods With With Robin Hood” on July 23, 1999. The
next essay in publication order is “City in
Dust: Many-Columned Irem,” on p. 85.
Robin Hood 1 The White Stag, according to medieval
iconography, symbolizes Christ. This
“The forest glade and the merry men are pure romance. seems, to my admittedly untrained eye,
But at least they are genuine mediaeval romance – the lure like patent layering of Christological sym-
of the greenwood was there in the poems from the beginning bolism over a putative existing “horned
and is not a later nostalgic development. By turning the woods hunting god” (who was far from ubiqui-
into an endless labyrinthine refuge from the world of law, tous, apparently), or more likely over
some Faerie or nature spirit. The hunter
minstrels could turn Robin Hood into the master of a magical who kills the supernaturally elusive beast
territory, an anti-king of inverted values, a prince of thieves . . . ” must kiss the fairest maid at the court,
– Jeremy Harte, “Under the Greenwood Tree” according to Arthurian lore.

Everybody knows Robin Hood – and nobody does. Try and track the bold 2 More specifically, of the Tudor court,
outlaw down and he vanishes into the dappled woods, as uncatchable as the and most influentially, of the playwright
White Stag1 and as indefinable as Faerie. Both of which he can be, in your Anthony Munday, who named Robin
Hood “Robert, Earl of Huntingdon” in
game, at least. Actually, as we trail him through the greenwood, his tracks run to
the 1598 plays The Downfall of Robert Earl
all manner of interesting shapes – it’s not surprising that the ballads recall his of Huntingdon and The Death of Robert Earl
mastery of disguise. Although GURPS Robin Hood does an interesting job of of Huntingdon. Munday’s plays also
moving the myth, it doesn’t really look too deeply into it. That, then, must be cemented Robin in the public mind as
our task, so that you can use Robin in all his merry multifariousness. Zoicks and contemporary with (and loyal to) “Good
away! King Richard” in the 1190s.
“Litil Iohun and Robert Hude By an alarming coincidence, the Earl
Waythmen war commendit gud of Huntingdon in the real, historical
1190s was David of Carrick, brother of
In Ingilwode and Bernnysdaile
King William of Scotland – and feudal
Thai oyssit al this tyme thar trawaile.” lord of Barnsdale Forest.
– Andrew of Wyntoun,
The Orygynale Chronicle (1420)

The Scottish chronicler presents the first formal, historical

mention of the classical Robin Hood outlaw; the date he gives is
1283 and the locations are Inglewood (near Carlisle) and
Barnsdale (which can refer to a moor in Yorkshire or a forest near
Rutland – these two Barnsdales neatly bracket Sherwood Forest
and Nottinghamshire in general). Barnsdale was so closely identi-
fied with the outlaw that the phrase “Robin Hood in Barnsdale
stood” was a legal example of an uncontested fact as early as 1429.
The Robin Hood of the earliest stories was a yeoman, a small-
farmer; the “aristocratic Robin” is clearly an invention of the 16th
century.2
And so people go trolling through the records looking for
common-born outlaws with coincidental names. “Robert Hod,”
also known as “Hobbehod,” went fugitive in Yorkshire in 1226. In
1262 a “William Robehod” goes on the lam and winds up hung.
One promising chap, Robert Hood, was a tenant of Wakefield in
1316 and may have been the “Robyn Hood” made porter to King
Edward II in 1323 on a royal progress through Nottingham. He
wasn’t an outlaw, and there’s not the tiniest shred of evidence that
“Robert” was the same as “Robyn,” but there you go. (There’s
also a similarly blameless chap named Gilbert Robynhod on the
1296 register in Sussex.) By 1354, the term was apparently a com-
mon pseudonym for thieves, the Rockingham rolls report a
“Robin Hood” in jail for poaching; peasants rebelling in Norfolk
in 1441 identified themselves as “Robynhodesmen.”

53
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
3 Knight’s book is excellent, though over-
ly dismissive of the musty, but thorough,
J.C. Holt’s Robin Hood.
4 The Robin Hood plays occasionally
became excuses (and templates) for the
sort of social protest, debauchery, and
rioting associated with the 1441
“Robynhodesmen” of Norfolk. I mined
these specific data from the previously-
cited, but well worth reiterating, Stations
of the Sun by Ronald Hutton.
5 For Frazer, see the Glossary. For superb
gaming nuggets, regardless of their funda-
mental unsoundness as anthropology,
read Frazer’s The Golden Bough, available
in one handily abridged volume in finer
used bookstores everywhere.
6 Herne the Hunter, according to
Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of
Windsor, at least, is the ghost of a hunts-
man who hanged himself on an oak tree,
which he walks around in the winter.
According to other sources, Herne is a
generalized huntsman, and one of the fig-
ures sometimes identified as the leader of
the Wild Hunt (for which, see note 7 on
p. 114). Herne has, for no good reason
(barring assonance), been declared the
English form of the Celtic stag-god
Cernunnos (himself in actuality a very
minor god attested only in one partial
inscription in Gaul) and thus the quintes-
sential male deity of the putative pagan
cult led by the putative Robin Hood.
7 And, apparently, to the Pyramids, for
which see note 13 on p. 51. A fellow
named David Furlong, in a bravura work
of sacred geometry called The Keys to the
Temple, ties the Pyramids to the megalith-
ic monuments of ancient Britain, and so
we go in a merry May Day circle.
8 The Green Man seems to trace, artisti-
cally at any rate, to classical depictions of
Bacchus causing vines to grow out of
ships, possibly as an import from
Levantine fertility iconography. As early
as 400 A.D., the “conventional” Green
Man, a human head from which sprouts
lush foliage, appears on Christian sacred
architecture. He became nearly
omnipresent in much Gothic decoration,
and later in nostalgic Victorian pub sig-
nage. Some find the Green Man in the
Fool (with leaves in his hair) of pp. 109-
112. For more details, see the compre-
hensive and beautiful (if slightly sappy)
Green Man: Archetype of Our Oneness With
the Earth by William Anderson.
54
“I can nought perfitly my paternoster as the prest it syngeth
But I can rymes of Robyn hood and Randolph erle of Chester.”
– William Langland, Piers Plowman (1377)
All of which probably has nothing whatsoever to do with the ballads of
Robin Hood, except to demonstrate that there sure were a lot of people with
names beginning with “Rob” in medieval England. Confusingly enough, there
are at least two threads to the ballads: there’s a French pastoral tradition in
which “Robin and Marian” are lovers in the greenwood, and the English outlaw
tradition descended from early- to mid-14th century ballads, now lost. (Stephen
Knight’s Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw3 goes into detail, and
follows it down to Men In Tights.) About seven of these ballads (give or take)
were roughly sewn together by the printer Wynkyn de Worde in 1506 or so,
and printed as A Lytell Gest of Robyn Hood. Here we have Robin, Little John,
Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, Much the Miller, and so forth – Maid Marian doesn’t
cross over from France until the ballads get turned into plays.
“I’m skeptical that there was a real Robin Hood. I think it is a mythic
name like Santa Claus. You become Santa Claus when you put a beard
on and give presents to children at Christmas. And you become Robin
Hood when you’re an outlaw, and live in the forest shooting the king’s
deer. That did happen.”
– Stephen Knight, Professor of English at the
University of Wales
Marian appears roughly the time the ballads get printed – around 1500 or
thereabouts, although the plays don’t get printed for about another 60 years.
The plays, weirdly enough, spread out of the southeast rather than from
Nottinghamshire and the northern “Robin country.” It used to be quite the
fashion to tie the May Day-to-Midsummer “Robin and Marian” play season to
the rural fertility festivals of pre-Christian Britain, and the plays certainly had
their share of lewdness and excitement,4 including Summer Kings and the rest
of the Frazerian5 fun. By the Victorian era, although the ritual elements of the
plays were almost gone (my favorite title from that era is a drawing-room farce
entitled Robin Hood, or the Maid That Was Arch and the Youth That Was Archer),
anthropologists and folklorists were rapidly preserving them and making up
even better new ones, and tying it all together in that glorious fashion that leads
to risible scholarship and super gaming.
“It seems likely that Llew’s mediaeval successor, Red Robin Hood, was
also once worshipped as a stag. His presence at the Abbot’s Bromley
Horn Dance would be difficult to account for otherwise, and ‘stag’s
horn moss’ is sometimes called ‘Robin Hood’s Hatband.’ In May, the
stag puts on his red summer coat.”
– Robert Graves, The White Goddess
Which leads us ineluctably to the Robin Hood as myth familiar to all of us
from the TV show Robin of Sherwood: Robin as Robin of the Wood, avatar of the
Fertility God Herne the Hunter.6 Robin is tied to other archers – as a figure in
the Court of Love he recalls Cupid, the animalistic woodland archer recalls
Chiron, and from the trope of the giant, to the archery contest, to Robin’s death
at the hands of a woman, his story parallels the story of Orion. Which, of
course, ties him Egyptian-style to Osiris,7 the god of vegetation and the dead.
Vegetation is, in fact, an even stronger part of the mythical Robin than
archery; he’s identified as the legendary Green Man8 of the Forest (whose leaf-
wrapped head can still be seen on cathedrals and tavern signs all over England),
a.k.a. Dionysos, the Green Knight, the Jolly Green Giant, etc. Intriguingly,
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Robin fights “George-a-Green”9 (a crop guardian) to a draw in the Ballad of
Robin and the Pinder of Wakefield – a change of archetypes, or Robin as
Gawain? 10 Robin has also been identified as Hoder 11 (god of the wind),
Llew/Lugh, Woden (on the basis of some truly ludicrous linguistics), Merlin,
and of course Robin Goodfellow – Puck, the Trickster of Faerie. (Green and
scarlet? Faerie colors.) Finally, of course, no mention of the mythic, antler-
bedecked12 Robin can be complete without a nod to Margaret Murray,13 who
(in The God of the Witches) seized upon Robin’s twelve companions, animosity to
the Church combined with veneration of women, hooded appearance, and gen-
eral Hernosity to identify Robin as the Horned God, the Black Man of the
witch-cult – in a word, Satan.
“‘You think, then, that we do not understand the real nature of evil?’
‘No, I don’t think we do. We over-estimate it and we under-estimate
it. We take the very numerous infractions of our social “bye-laws” –
the very necessary and very proper regulations which keep the human
company together – and we get frightened at the prevalence of “sin”
and “evil.” But this is really nonsense. Take theft, for example. Have
you any horror at the thought of Robin Hood . . . ?’”
– Arthur Machen, The White People
Where the legends and myths (be they real or be they Memorex) identify
Robin with horned gods, Faerie kings, and Satan himself, they enter into shad-
owed territory – the dark wood where the sunlight seldom falls. This is the deep
woods of the grim Grimm fairy tales, abode of witches (the Barnsdale Witch
Project?) and wolves. Robin is called
“Wolfshead” in many of the lays – is this
the traditional name of an outlaw or
the first hint that Robin’s band is
more of a pack? Robert
Holdstock’s excellent Mythago
Wood does a yeoman job (heh
heh) uncovering the very
ambivalent nature of the
Archetypes that Hide in the
Woods – read that for Robin-
Horror inspiration.
Then follow it up with our
aforementioned Arthur Machen; in
an earlier column14 I’ve pointed up
the similarities between Machen’s primi-
tive goblin-like survivals with their elf-shot
and their wild hideaways and the Green
Archers of Sherwood preying on all and
sundry. (Speaking of earlier columns, recall if
you will that the anthropophagous
manticore15 is triumphantly blazoned on the
arms of the Earls of Huntingdon.16 Hmmm.)
I ask again the question I asked then: do you
dare to run a game where the PCs are brave
liege knights of the Sheriff of Nottingham
sent into the murky woods to find the
band of Deliverance-style “back-
woodsmen,” or Unseelie, or
trolls, or manticores (shoot-
ing cloth-yard spines), or
werewolves lurking there?
9 The Green Man is also somehow con-
nected with St. George, whose day (April
23) is Shakespeare’s birthday, as well as a
major Green Man-related feast day, espe-
cially in Carinthia and Transylvania. Like
Osiris, St. George was dismembered and
resurrected after reassembly of his scat-
tered body parts. For what it’s worth,
Osiris is also depicted as a green-skinned
man, often with pointed ears!
10 If you needed any other reason to read
Gawain and the Green Knight, it’s been
translated by J.R.R. Tolkein.
11 Whose archery, or rather prowess with
darts, killed Balder, the Norse god of
light.
1 2 For what it’s worth, Archbishop
Theodore of Canterbury apparently con-
demned the wearing of stag’s antlers in
680 A.D., so someone must have been
doing it.
13 For more Murrayesque madness, see p.
59. It may be worth mentioning, in this
context, that Murray also identifies the
Order of the Garter (whose patron is St.
George, from note 9, above) as a secret
witchcraft coven established by King
Edward III in 1348.
14 In “There’s More to Faeries Than
Their Glamour,” on pp. STi85-87.
15 That man-eating beast is the star of
“Stalking the Wild Manticore,” on pp.
STi88-90.
16 Robin was supposedly identified as the
Earl of Huntingdon in an inscription on
his gravestone at Kirklees:
Here underneath this little stone
Lies Robert Earl of Huntingdon
No archer was as he so good
And people called him Robin Hood
Such outlaws as he and his men
Will England never see again.
Oddly enough, for whatever reason, a leg-
end grew up identifying pieces of Robin
Hood’s gravestone as sovereign cures for
toothache, and when a railway cutting
went in nearby, the workers demolished it
seeking dental relief. Thanks to a sketch
made in 1665, we know that the grave-
stone actually had no such inscription, but
did bear the name of “Roberd Hude” and,
interestingly, a Templar cross.
55
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
17 The Druids have been something of
the catch-all for British mystics for some
time; Julius Caesar identified them as the
repressive leaders of a human-sacrifice
cult, while more recent adherents call
them Pythagorean masters, beatific
nature-shamans, wise masters of the Art
of Memory, and so forth. By the evidence,
and making allowances for war propagan-
da, Julius Caesar seems to have been clos-
est; Stuart Piggott’s The Druids remains
pretty much the standard text. For variant
pro-Druid readings, however, I’ll recom-
mend Celtic mythologist John Matthews’
compilation The Druid Sourcebook or Ross
Nichols’ The Book of Druidry as both con-
taining enough historical meat and quality
mystagoguery to keep me entertained.
1 8 William Stukeley (1687-1765),
anatomist, alchemist, and Freemason, was
also a gifted antiquary who matched a
gravid imagination with a clear and dis-
cerning eye for detail. (Modern archaeol-
ogy still finds his maps of the megalithic
sites at Avebury useful.) He was friends
with Isaac Newton (for whom see note
17, p. 44), and a fellow member of the
Royal Society. His masterwork Stonehenge
Restored to the British Druids combined his
two great passions of detailed antiquarian-
ism and making crazy things up about the
Druids. He served as the Chosen Chief of
the Druid Order in Britain from 1722
until his death in 1765, finding little con-
tradiction between that role and his posi-
tion as Anglican vicar of All-Saints
Church at Stamford.
“Hoodwink: A symbol of the secrecy, silence, and darkness in which the
mysteries of our art should be preserved from the unhallowed gaze of
the profane.”
– Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
So maybe he’s not a monster – but why does he wear that hood, again?
Robin’s role in tales of the Conspiracy can, of course, be that of an Invisibles-
style anarchist fighting the good fight against Church and State. Which is to
say, that of the Bavarian Illuminati (who, like Robin, celebrate May Day zestily).
The mythographers have explicitly given Robin a nationalist, almost terrorist,
agenda in the war of Saxon vs. Norman – and simultaneously made him a pro-
pagandist for the Plantagenets in the person of the (Assassin-Order-employing?)
Richard the Lionhearted. How to untangle the mess? Is Robin an agent provo-
cateur? Serving a conspiracy of Druids? 17 Part of the Sacred Bloodline?
William Stukeley,18 the Druid and antiquarian who mapped Stonehenge in
1740, also produced a genealogy for Robin Hood tying him to King David of
Scotland, the Earls of Northumberland, and the royal bastard Gaunt family in
addition to the traditional Huntingdons.
The Scottish connection appears in Rosslyn Chapel19 south of Edinburgh,
a well-known proto-Masonic shrine covered with Green Men and similar fun.
Sir William Sinclair (a well-known Prieuré sympathizer) allowed the local
Gypsies (bearers of Tarot magick)20 to perform Robin Hood and Little John every
May Day on the castle grounds, going so far as to rename two of the Castle’s
towers “Robin Hood” and “Little John.” Even more allusive than the Rosslyn
connection are two of the later ballads, Robin and the Widow’s Three Sons (“Will
no one help the widow’s son?” is a traditional Masonic code sign)21 and Robin
and the Noble Fisherman, which not only casts Robin as a pirate (!) but also
reminds the reader of – the Arthurian Fisher King, keeper of the emerald Holy
Grail.22 We end where we began: going into the green in search of stories.

19 For Rosslyn Chapel, see note 12, p. 33.

20 Well, in the fevered imaginings of

Gerard Encausse (a.k.a. Papus) (1865-
1916), in his Tarot of the Bohemians, at any
rate. Charles Williams did a nice job with
the Gypsies as bearers of Tarot wisdom,
however, in his novel The Greater Trumps.

21 As we saw in note 9 on p. 43.

22 You really don’t want to get me started

on the Grail. I’ll simply point to p.
STi109, and again recommend Norma
Lorre Goodrich’s The Holy Grail and John
Matthews’ anthology Sources of the Grail
as decent overviews of the legend, and
Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh’s Holy Blood,
Holy Grail as the traditional entry into the
conspiratological cycle therefrom.

56
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Pyramid originally posted “The Maiden and

The Maiden and the the Monster” on November 19, 1999. The
next essay in publication order is “Trail of the
Black Dragon,” on p. 98.
Monster: Joan of Arc
and Gilles de Rais
“‘You think then . . . that the Maid of Orléans was really responsible
for his career of evil?’ ‘To a certain point. Consider. She roused an
impetuous soul, ready for anything, as well for orgies of saintliness
as for ecstasies of crime . . . There was no transition between the two
phases of his being.’”
– Des Hermies and Durtal, Là-Bas by J.K. Huysmans

The Maid of Orléans, sainted peasant symbol of purity, idealism, and the
visible workings of God – and the legendary Bluebeard,1 pedophile and serial
killer embodying the demonic and corrupt whims of aristocracy. They were
contemporaries, allies, probably friends – warriors fighting for France’s alabaster
banner in her hour of greatest need. But the threads forming the warp of this
tapestry connect Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais to other colors as well; the green
of witchcraft, the gold of magick, the black of conspiracy. And untangling them,
despite difficulties, will certainly lead us somewhere even more interesting than
the court of a prince driven from his kingdom, which is where beauty first met
the beast.2

“First, let me tell you whom you have condemn’d:

Not me begotten of a shepherd swain,
But issued from the progeny of kings;
Virtuous and holy; chosen from above . . .
No, misconceived! Joan of Arc hath been
A virgin from her tender infancy,
Chaste and immaculate in very thought;
Whose maiden blood, thus rigorously effused,
Will cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven.”
– William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part One, V:v:36-53

It was, in fact, at the court of the Dauphin Charles (the future Charles VII)
that Joan of Arc (technically, Jeanneton Darc, or possibly Jeanne d’Arc) revealed
her mission, picking Charles out of a concealing crowd of courtiers and whis-
pering a secret in his ear that convinced him to give her a hearing. God, she
said, had sent her to save France, defeat the English, and see Charles crowned at
Rheims. One of the generals witnessing this astounding performance by an 1 For more on the Bluebeard legend, see
unknown girl from the back of beyond was Gilles de Rais (or de Retz, or de pp. 76-77. In The Book of Werewolves,
Rays), the richest lord in France. Sabine Baring-Gould says that Gilles’
At that court in 1429, Gilles was, at 25, only a year younger than Charles, beard appeared black in some lights and
and eight years older than Joan. Joan passed a series of tests, both theological blue in others, from whence derived the
and medical, which determined that she was neither heretical nor unchaste, and nickname, but Baring-Gould is more an
Gilles was made captain of her guard. Gilles and Joan between them broke the enthusiastic reporter than an accurate
one.
English siege of Orléans, witnessed the coronation of Charles VII, and restored
French momentum in the Hundred Years’ War. Then, somehow, Joan was cap- 2 Which is a different fairy tale entirely,
tured by the Burgundians in the woods at Compiègne in 1430. When Charles although the Beast in that story and Gilles
refused to ransom her, she was tried for heresy, and burnt at the stake in 1431. in this story have both been adduced as
And Gilles, Marshal of France, went back to his home in Brittany, never again werewolves.
to raise his sword in Charles’ defense.
57
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
3 Outside lurid Dennis Wheatley novels
(of which the best is probably The Devil
Rides Out, but the whole Black Magic
Series is pretty rollicking), the Black Mass
per se doesn’t seem to be much practiced.
Traditionally, the Black Mass involves a
defrocked priest reciting the Latin Mass
backward, a stolen consecrated Host, ani-
mal (or infant) sacrifice to Satan, and
drinking the resulting blood. The altar,
traditionally, is the nude body of a whore.
The sole documented historical case
(I except whatever the Church of Satan
gets up to these days, but I suspect it
doesn’t involve nearly enough Latin) of a
true Black Mass being performed with
magical intent occurred in the reign of
Louis XIV.
It seems to have begun with simple
“amatory masses,” which are normal
Masses said with the purpose of produc-
ing magical infatuation. The use of the
Mass as a magical rite, be it for love,
money, or success goes back probably as
far as the Mass does. It has its dark side,
too: Saying of the Te deum, the Mass for
the dead, for a living person was con-
demned as black magic as long ago as the
Council of Toledo in 694 A.D.
At any rate, aristocratic French ladies
began by commissioning amatory masses,
along with purchasing love potions from
fortunetellers, among them one Catherine
Deshayes, the widow Montvoisin, best
known as La Voisin. In addition to the
love potion business, La Voisin also dis-
tributed for an international poison ring
headed by the Knight of Malta Francois
Galaup de Chasteuil. Paris prefect of
police Nicholas la Reynie broke
Chasteuil’s ring open in 1677, and discov-
ered the extent of La Voisin’s poison-and-
love connections throughout aristocratic
French society two years later.
Worried about the scandal, in 1680
Louis XIV authorized the Chambre
Ardente (the “burning court,” so called
because it occurred in a windowless
chamber lit only by candles), admitting no
appeal and sitting in secret. The Chambre
eventually uncovered evidence that the
King’s mistress, Madame de Montespan,
had been using poisons and (as the stakes
grew higher) Black Masses to retain the
King’s love and poison his new favorites
(some of whom resorted to La Voisin
themselves). When the King, aghast at
the level of murderous blasphemy in his
most intimate circles, finally closed down
the Chambre in 1682, 36 people had been
sentenced to death, 34 banished, and 4
sent to slavery on the galleys. La Voisin
was burnt at the stake on February 22,
1680.
58
“I never had to do with wicked spirits:
But you, that are polluted with your lusts,
Stain’d with the guiltless blood of innocents,
Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices,
Because you want the grace that others have,
You judge it straight a thing impossible
To compass wonders but by help of devils.”
– William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part One, V:v:42-48
Because he was too busy raping, mutilating, and murdering young boys.
Starting in 1432, Gilles used his large fortune, certain trusted servants, and the
unquestioned powers of a medieval lord to abduct youths from the cities and vil-
lages he owned. Deep in the recesses of his castles at Machecoul, Malemort,
Champtocé, and elsewhere, Gilles tortured children to death by the scores. He
confessed to 140 such murders at his trial; the true number is almost certainly
higher. The trial itself came about only because he overstepped even his own
extravagant bounds. Gilles’ profligate lifestyle began draining his fortune, which
led him to sell his property. His heirs, panicked at the thought of losing their
chance at his fortune, began filing lawsuits and writs in court; driven to rage at
such obstructionism, Gilles made the mistake of beating and imprisoning a
priest, Jean le Ferron, who had come to collect the title deed to such a disputed
holding. This action violated clerical privilege, and the bishop of Nantes, inves-
tigating the case, discovered the local rumors of Gilles’ ogreish appetites.
Tortured and threatened with excommunication, Gilles made a full and detailed
confession, one so horrific that the judges covered a nearby painting of Christ
rather than expose it to such blasphemy. Thanks to his confession, he was grant-
ed the privilege of death by strangulation rather than burning; on October 26,
1440, four “ladies of noble character” collected his body from the pyre before it
was set alight.
It wasn’t solely for murder, or even abuse of clerical immunity, that the
Breton lords tried Gilles de Rais. He also confessed to practicing devil-worship,
witchcraft, necromancy, and alchemy in a desperate bid to restore his flagging
fortunes by discovering the Philosopher’s Stone. Starting in 1426, Gilles had
begun to dabble in alchemy after his rabid book-collecting led him to a gri-
moire. He patronized a series of magi (one of whom conjured up Satan in the
shape of a leopard), but it was an Italian alchemist and defrocked priest,
Francesco Prelati, who trained him in blood sacrifice to demons. (Prelati’s lurid
confession earned him a stay of execution, and he vanished shortly after Gilles’
death.) Anticipating the classic Black Mass3 in perversion of Catholicism, Gilles
founded a charitable order dedicated to the Holy Innocents – the children mur-
dered by Herod searching for Jesus4 – and used its priests and choirboys as
recruiting agents to find more victims to feed to Satan and Belial.
“It was deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc
And high above the wedding guests
He hung the ashes of her lovely wedding dress”
– Leonard Cohen, “Joan of Arc”
In his excellent psychohistory of Gilles de Rais, Bluebeard, Leonard Wolf
describes the extravagant mystery plays Gilles wrote and sponsored, spending
millions of livres on sets, costumes, actors, provisions, and so forth. The culmi-
nation of these dramaturgies was the 20,529-line verse play The Mystery of the
Siege of Orléans, starring 140 actors and 600 extras, on sets and scaffolds multi-
ple city blocks long. For five continuous months, from May to September
1435, Gilles presented the play gratis, feeding not only the actors but the
audiences for free. Every costume was authentic, made of the most expensive
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
materials, and could be worn only once. Wolf points out that, in medieval gri- 4 We shouldn’t forget that Herod only
moires, all magickal garments and equipment should be “virgin,” used only for slaughtered all those children (according
the magic and only one time. Was the play a dramaturgical ritual,5 intended to to the Bible; there’s no historic record of
rewrite history with Gilles as resplendent hero? Was it a powerful invocation of the Massacre of the Innocents) because
three Magi (note 6, p. 42) appeared and
the spirit of the martyred Joan, an attempt at a magickal resurrection?
told him that the True King was born
among them. It’s on the basis of this kind
of evidence that John Keel thinks the
three Magi were, in fact, three Men In
Black; ultraterrestrials covering up some
kind of power-play on Earth, possibly one
involving the Prieuré Bloodline. And once
you start looking for mysterious Men In
Black in these stories, the disappearance
of Francesco Prelati after setting up and
egging on Gilles seems kind of suspicious,
too.

5 For more dramaturgy, see pp. 41-44.

6 For a solid demolition of Murray’s the-

sis, see A Razor For A Goat, by Elliot
Rose, Europe’s Inner Demons, by Norman
Cohn, or almost any academic work on
That’s not the sole ritual connection we can draw. The excitable Margaret witchcraft published in the last decade.
Murray, in The God of the Witches,6 suggests that both Joan and Gilles were fol- For the Great Witch Hunt per se, see the
lowers of the ancient witch-cult, and intentionally sacrificed themselves as sub- note on p. 61.
stitutes ensuring success for their Sacred King, Charles of France. Joan’s selec-
7 Robin and Marian disport themselves
tion of Gilles as her guardian secretly names him as her successor in the Old
gaily on pp. 53-56.
Religion. Joan’s nickname Pucelle, or “Maid,” was a traditional title for members
of witch covens (from whence one draws such imputations about the French 8 The best exculpation of Gilles that I’ve
import Maid Marian and her consort Robin Hood),7 which were most common seen is Kathleen Lehman’s solidly-argued
in Lorraine (her home duchy) in the next century. To really make this argument “Reinterpreting the Life of Gilles de
work, ironically, Murray must maintain that although Gilles was a pagan magi- Rais,” a Netbook located at
cian, his trial was a farce of trumped-up charges much as Joan’s was; Gilles was http://users.erols.com/lehket/Kathleen/
framed and railroaded so that his heirs (and the Bishop of Nantes) could accede gintro.html. I’ve heard that archaeolo-
to his estates.8 gists excavating one of Gilles’ châteaux
have failed to find any human remains,
but I haven’t been able to track down any
“Great attempts were made at Joan’s trial to connect her with some
documentation of this story. Eyewitness
superstitious practices supposed to have been performed round a certain testimony from the trial places at least 40
tree, popularly known as the “Fairy Tree” (l’Arbre des Dames), but the skeletons in the basements of Gilles’
sincerity of her answers baffled her judges. She had sung and danced château Machecoul. And, of course, if
there with the other children, and had woven wreaths for Our Lady’s Gilles did kill all those people, surely the
statue, but since she was twelve years old she had held aloof from such Bishop of Nantes and the other heirs
would have removed the bodies for
diversions.” Christian burial, anyway. In short, I still
– Catholic Encyclopedia think he dunnit.

Murray’s argument that Joan of Arc was railroaded for witchcraft while 9 Again with the three mysterious ultra-
simultaneously actually being a witch is a delight to watch. (Although certainly terrestrials giving weird orders that get
both of Joan’s trials, her condemnation and her rehabilitation, were purely polit- everyone in trouble. Don’t forget the
ical matters.) Murray emphasizes, perforce, then, the same elements of Joan’s three murderers of Christopher Marlowe
past that the Inquisition did – her youthful cavortings around the Fairy Tree (p. 38), 162 years to the day after Joan’s
execution, which would evoke both the
where she first heard her three mysterious “voices,”9 and her assuming male
Three Witches and the Three Murderers
dress, with the concomitant hints of mystical androgyny.10 Perhaps the fear of in Macbeth, were we to think about it.
Joan’s putative Faerie allies explains why the Burgundians displayed her only in Gilles de Rais was executed with two
a specially-built iron cage (iron being, of course, proof against faerie magic). accomplices (Griart and Poitou, his atten-
Joan’s execution date, May 30, was the date of the Roman Feast of the Queen of dants), while we’re counting murderers.
the Underworld – and Joan’s inspirational effect in battle recalls the Celtic
death-goddess Morrigan rather more than it does the Virgin Mary. 10 For mystical androgyny, see note 13 on
p. 44.
59
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
1 1 The Dossiers Secrets, on which the
whole Prieuré de Sion edifice rests, turn
out to be forgeries even more bizarre than
the conspiracy they purport to reveal.
Pierre Plantard, an anti-Semite, Vichy
collaborator, and convicted con-man
(who goes by the name Pierre Plantard de
St. Clair) and his partner Philippe de
Cherisey, possibly in collaboration with
French occultist Gérard de Sède (who
eventually revealed the imposture in
1988), forged the Dossiers, along with doc-
uments they claimed were the “secret
texts” uncovered by Berenger Saunière in
1891 at Rennes-le-Château.
Saunière did, indisputably, uncover
something at this remote parish church in
the Pyrenees, something that made him
both rich and immune to the displeasure
of his clerical superiors. What it was
remains a complete mystery. See, for a
still muddled version, Lionel & Patricia
Fanthorpe, Secrets of Rennes-le-Château.
Either through his new riches or his
new mystic insights, Saunière fell in with
the social circle surrounding the singer
Emma Calvé, who belonged to the Order
of the Rose-Croix of the Temple and
Grail, founded by one Josephin Péladan
(1858-1918) also in 1891. When Péladan
died, one of his acolytes, Georges “Count
Israel” Monti (1880-1936) tried (with
Plantard) to take over the group and the
French mystical scene. Plantard likely
took the notes of Péladan and Monti, as
well as the Gestapo archive of secret soci-
ety documents his Vichy contacts opened
up for him, as raw material to create the
Dossiers forgeries, and to “backdate” his
own legitimacy in the French occult
underground.
The delightful part is that even
authors who know all of the above still
repeat the central Prieuré myth, just juic-
ing it for their own version of the delu-
sion. An excellent example is Marilyn
Hopkins, Graham Simmans, & Tim
Wallace-Murphy’s Rex Deus.
12 For more on René d’Anjou, see note 6
on p. 32.
13 My primary source for this particular
canard is Colin and Damon Wilson’s
excellent Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries.
60
“If King Charles VII, on the entrance of Jeanne d’Arc into the great
hall of his castle at Chinon, hid himself among the throng of his
courtiers, it was not for the sake of a frivolous joke – where was the
humor in it? – but because he already knew of whom she was the
ambassadress. And that, before her, he was scarcely one courtier among
the others. The secret she delivered to him in private was contained in
these words: ‘Gentle lord, I come on behalf of the King.’”
– excerpt from the Dossiers Secrets11 of the Prieuré de Sion
Joan’s capture might not have been stage-managed by the witch-cults, of
course. It might have been part of a grand charade beginning when Queen
Isabeau of France gave birth to an illegitimate daughter in 1407. Isabeau’s lady-
in-waiting was the sister of the mayor of Domremy, Joan’s home town. Could
little Joan have been placed in faraway Lorraine to keep her safe – and her
recognition of Charles, skilled horsemanship, passing of the tests, and easy
acceptance by the French nobility, have been evidence of coaching and assis-
tance? Such aid may have come from from Isabeau’s sister-in-law, Yolande
d’Anjou, mother of the lord of Domremy (and all of Lorraine), the deeply
Rosicrucian, Grail-questing René d’Anjou.12 René (a secret head of the Prieuré
de Sion) served with Joan at Orléans – and Gilles waylaid, robbed, and kid-
napped Yolande in a mysterious ambush in 1431, following which she used him
to arrange her marriage to the son of the Duke of Brittany. When Charles
became suspicious of these Prieuré machinations, of course, he arranged for
Gilles’ exile and disgrace – and Joan’s capture and execution.
“Nicole Louve, a knight, gave her a horse whose price was thirty francs
and a pair of hose, and the lord Aubert de Boullay a hooded cape, and
sire Nicole Grognat a sword. And the said Maid leapt upon the horse
very skillfully and told sire Nicole Louve several things by which he
understood well that she it was who had been in France.”
– from the journal of the dean of St-Thiébault of Metz (1436)
Unless he didn’t. Unless, after a secret agreement to withdraw from politics,
Joan was ransomed, and another witch burned in her place leaving Joan to slip
down a trap-door (which still exists in Rouen’s Place de la Pucelle) and away to
anonymity. In 1436 (nine
months after Gilles’ myste-
rious dramaturgies ended) a
mysterious figure named
Claude des Armoises
claimed to be Joan – and
was recognized as the Maid
by the city of Orléans, by
Joan’s former landlords, and
by Joan’s two younger
brothers. In 1439, the
“Dame des Armoises” met
Gilles de Rais – who also
apparently believed her
genuine. Maid (if it was her)
and monster (if such he was)
met for the last time. In
1440, Gilles was tried and
executed, and King Charles
declared the Dame des Armoises an impostor. She retired to the country and
died in 1450.13 That year, Charles began the Trial of Rehabilitation of Joan of
Arc. The Church canonized her in 1920.
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Pyramid originally posted “Who Ya Gonna

Who Ya Gonna Caul? Caul?” on September 17, 1999. The next

essay in publication order is “Altered Spaces,”
on p. 19.
The B enandanti
“Questioned: How does one enter this company of the benandanti? He
1 This figure, at least according to
replied: All those who have been born with the caul belong to it, and
Ginzburg, seems to be a relatively com-
when they reach the age of twenty they are summoned by means of a mon one in the general swath of territory
drum the same as soldiers, and they are obliged to respond.” between Greece and Germany centering
– testimony before the Inquisition of Battista Moduco, Jun. 27, 1580 on Friuli. Ginzburg traces her back to
Hecate, queen of the dead (note 7, p. 71),
You can’t keep a good witch down. Or at least you can’t keep them down on as an aspect of Diana (or possibly to
the Friulian farm once they’ve seen the golden throne of the Devil, even if it’s Diana’s assumption of the role of Hecate
after the fall of the Roman Empire). This
only in their dreams. If that makes no sense to you, well, you’re not alone – it
female Queen of the Ghosts also appears
made no sense to the Inquisition in late 16th-century Italy, either. And they as Berchta, Holda, or Abundia, all of
didn’t even know about the werewolves, the dark companion to Sirius, or whom show up in the discussion of
Robert Graves. (And unlike myself, they hadn’t read Carlo Ginzburg’s superb, if Walpurgisnacht on pp. 114-115.
occasionally drifty, The Night Battles.) So pop your amniotic sac over your eyes,
grab your fennel-stalks, and join me for a look at the Benandanti. 2 The Great Witch Hunt, as such, never
existed at all. This is the somewhat sur-
“Once we were there we were to say nothing, even if we were to see prising consensus of virtually every mod-
ern scholar of the topic; between 1428
certain wild dancing, otherwise we would be compelled to remain there,
and 1782 something like 45,000 people
and he also told me that he had been badly beaten by the witches for were executed for witchcraft, which is a
having spoken about these things; and some of these who are good, bare fraction of the numbers executed for
called vagabonds (and in their own words benandanti) prevent evil, more conventional religious reasons, for
and others of them commit it.” theft, or for virtually anything else.
– testimony before the Inquisition of Around 40% of those executed were men,
and only a tiny fraction of those accused
Fr. Bartolomeo Sgabarizza, Nov. 21, 1575 of witchcraft by their neighbors were even
charged. Localized “witch panics” (very
“Benandanti” roughly translates as either “good walkers” or, more loosely similar to modern “Satanic child abuse
still, “doers of good.” And indeed, the Benandanti did good – four times a year, ring panics”) erupted in that period, virtu-
during the Ember Days of fasting (roughly corresponding with the solstices and ally all between 1560 and 1630. In almost
equinoxes), the members of this secret society would hear the roll of a martial all cases, these panics erupted in small,
drum or see a golden figure calling them to battle. While their bodies slept, the disorganized states or towns suffering
Benandanti, made up of those young men age 20 to 40 born with a “caul” (an extreme economic or political dislocation;
intact amniotic sac over their faces), sent their dream-selves forth to do battle in almost all cases, the higher authorities
did virtually everything possible to stop
with the Devil’s army of witches. The Benandanti used fennel stalks, while the
the trials and sweep the whole embarrass-
“Malandanti” witches wielded shoots of sorghum – if the witches won, the har- ing business under the rug. Not one sin-
vest and the wine would suffer for it. Meanwhile, female Benandanti dream- gle known case involved a witch executed
journeyed to the lands of the dead and spoke to them, dickering for fertility of for practicing a recognizable pagan
their own from the Queen of the Trooping Ghosts.1 (Sex roles aren’t always religion.
consistent, but that’s the commonest breakdown.) It was this story, in general The best book on the topic to come
outline, that the Inquisition stumbled upon in the German-Slavic-Italian mish- out of the modern scholarship is Robin
mash province of Friuli in 1575, and it nearly blew their minds. Inquisitors kept Briggs’ Witches and Neighbors. James
trying to force Benandanti to confess to the “normal” tales of the witches’ sab- Sharpe’s Instruments of Darkness covers
bath, and slowly piece by piece they managed, over seven decades, to get even witchcraft in England during the period.
some of the Benandanti to believe it, or at least confess to it. However, by then For some good lurid stories presented
with faultless skepticism, I very much
the Great Witch Hunt2 had tapered off in Italy, and the Inquisition let the last
enjoy The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and
batch of Benandanti off with penance and a stern lecture in 1661. Demonology by Rossell Hope Robbins,
even though it’s almost 40 years old now.
“The werewolves were the dogs of God, he said, armed with iron whips. The inimitable and superlative Ronald
In hell they battled with the devil and sorcerers, who were armed with Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon covers this
broomsticks wrapped in horse tails.” topic, and much else, during his discus-
sion of the history of the modern Pagan
– Adam Douglas, The Beast Within:
and Wiccan religions in Britain.
Man, Myths and Werewolves
61
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
3 The best book on werewolves I own is
probably The Beast Within: Man, Myths,
and Werewolves, by Adam Douglas, which
I cite on the previous page. In addition to
Baring-Gould’s Book of Werewolves, anoth-
er compendium more marked by enthusi-
asm than rigor is Brad Steiger’s The
Werewolf Book, presented as an encyclope-
dia, but almost entirely unusable as one.
4 For more Misrule, see p. 42.
5 Opie and Tatem’s superb Dictionary of
Superstition documents belief in the caul’s
powers as late as 1980, and prices cauls
both before WW1 – 1s 6d – and after
German submarines drove the price up
to 63s.
6 For those who care, Friuli is just up the
coast from Illyria, on pp. 43-44.
7 The Uskoks were, primarily, displaced
Christians from the Balkans driven north
by the Turks in the 1530s. The Austrian
Empire granted them military subsidies to
hold the port of Zenj (right across the bay
from Friuli); when the Emperor cut back
on the subsidies, the Uskoks turned to
piracy to make ends meet. The last of the
Uskoks was rooted out by the Venetians
and Austrians in 1621. Could the
Benandanti have led the Uskoks to the
mystical Libertatia on p. 84?
8 Although I have no idea where I saw it,
I have an indication in my notes that St.
Germain (St. Germanus) of Auxerre (390-
448) opposed “the good women who
walked about at night.” Could Saint-
Germain and the Benandanti be on oppo-
site sides in some conspiratorial battle?
9 According to the scarily detailed The
Sirius Mystery, by Robert Temple, around
3,000 B.C. an alien named Oannes (or
Oe, or Dagon, or Anubis) arrived with his
kin, the Nommos, from the star Sirius.
The Nommos being aquatic merman-like
beings, Oannes kept to the swamps at the
mouth of the Persian Gulf or the Nile
Delta. Eventually, the Nommos went
back to Sirius (or died out, or turned into
dolphins, or bred themselves into the
Prieuré de Sion Bloodline) and the ancient
knowledge was lost to everyone.
Everyone, that is, except the Dogon tribe
of Mali in central Africa, who (says
Temple) are descendants of the Pharaonic
high priests who fled across Africa when
the Old Kingdom of Egypt fell around
1700 B.C. This is truly the go-anywhere,
do-anything, all-purpose Alien Secret.
62
Ginzburg calls attention to the odd parallels between the lore of the
Friulian Benandanti and the werewolf-lore3 of Livonia, hundreds of miles
north. In one 1692 case, specifically, an 80-year-old accused “idolater” named
Theiss confessed to being a werewolf – and to having traveled “beyond the sea”
to Hell with his pack in order to steal new shoots from the Devil and ensure the
success of the harvest. (Theiss’ werewolves only traveled three times a year, but
there are fewer harvests in Livonia.) The werewolves brandished iron whips,
battling Hell’s sorcerous legions, themselves armed with horsehair-wrapped
broomsticks.
The mid-16th-century chronicler Caspar Peucer records Livonian stories of
a lame child driving men across a river with an iron whip, transforming them
into wolves who battled witches and ravaged cattle, but were forbidden to harm
mankind. (In a confusing aside, Peucer seems to say the werewolves changed to
butterflies for part of this sojourn – an allusion to the butterfly as the soul, and
thus to dream or astral werewolvery?) Peucer’s wolves (and those in some
Russian, Prussian, and Lithuanian tales) could only transform during the twelve
Nights of Misrule 4 between Christmas and Epiphany – and interestingly,
Russian legend identifies those born with a caul as potential werewolves.
“The bundles of fennel wielded by the benandanti, and the iron whips
brandished by the werewolves, must be understood not as different but
as isomorphic elements.”
– Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies:
Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath
When it’s not marking you out for werewolvery or as a Benandante, the caul
traditionally grants “second sight,” (handy for seeing the Dead like the female
Benandanti) good luck, and protection from drowning.5 The latter, specifically,
ties in with the caul as marker of anti-witchcraft warriors; storms at sea came
down to witchcraft a surprising number of times (and, of course, the Friulian
and Dalmatian coast6 was a hotbed of Uskok7 piracy in those days, so there
were plenty of ships getting wrecked). At its basis, then, these night warriors are
supernaturally marked, able to withstand the sundering from our plane (enter-
ing the dream-world, or crossing the river of death) and the contest with the
“bad walkers,”8 the Malandanti, keeping the crops healthy and safe.
About those crops – the fennel business is relatively standard herb-magic;
fennel and garlic are both common “good luck plants.” It flowers around the
summer solstice, and coincidentally John Gerard’s 1597 Historie of Plants says
that fennel gives “cleere” sight on fast days – on Ember Days. Fennel’s associa-
tion with magic goes back to Prometheus, who stole the sacred fire from
Heaven in a fennel stalk. Dionysos’ thrysus-wand is made of fennel, as well.
Sorghum is a different matter – one of man’s oldest, most boring grains, it may
have been domesticated in Africa before Egypt arose. One interesting connec-
tion is that sorghum is called “broomcorn” in parts of Europe, and I shouldn’t
have to tell you what brooms mean. Sorghum does have a culture hero of its
own: the Dogon call the dark star Sirius C (home of Robert Temple’s Nommo
aliens)9 “Emme Ya” – “Sorghum Woman.” And the “Sirius Trinity” of Egyptian
goddesses includes Isis, Anukis, and Nephtys – dark mother of Wepawet, the
wolf god, opener of the way. So we meet the Livonian werewolves coming the
other direction.
“No. It’s not a religious thing – at least, it’s not just a religious thing.
It’s more like the Church is part of the Benandanti – like all these
churches and religions and things are part of it. There are members
everywhere, all over the world. The Masons, the Vatican, Bohemian
Grove, Skull and Bones . . . it’s like the ultimate Old Boys’ Network.”
– Angelica di Rienzi, in Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Which is the great thing for gaming about the Benandanti – you can make
them the good guys, and the Malandanti the bad guys (or vice versa) on either side 10 Or should I say Nordics vs. Reptoids?
of any bipolar struggle – Light vs. Dark, Coke vs. Pepsi, Promethean Loi vs.
11 For enthusiastically creative details
Nommo Gill-Men.10 In her somewhat overheated but rewarding novel Waking the
about the theologies of pre-literate cul-
Moon, Elizabeth Hand makes the Benandanti the forces of the Patriarchal Sky- tures, there’s no better source than mav-
God, battling the putative archaic Matriarchal Dark Moon Goddess11 (such as, say, erick archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. Her
Hecate, speaking of the Sirius Trinity). This, for example, is where your quality Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe and The
White Goddess Robert Graves references come back in, assuming you didn’t cast Language of the Goddess are brilliant, base-
them as Summery Benandanti vs. Wintery Malandanti, J.G. Frazer-style. less extrapolations full of archetypes and
Legends similar to the Friulian Benandanti occur (although without as many photographs and spiral patterns and
neat, Inquisition-sanctioned court records to document them) in Corsica (the everything else a game could need for
mazzeri), Dalmatia (kresniki), Hungary (taltos), and so forth across Eastern Primitive Pagan Survival Fun. Oddly
Europe. The twelve-day quasi-beneficent werewolves12 of Misrule show up in enough, Gimbutas is from Lithuania,
practically overlapping with Livonian
Greece (kallikantzoroi), Macedonia (eskari), Romania (calusari), and so forth.13
werewolf country.
(And just guess how many of them have cauls.) In Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’
Sabbath, Ginzburg enthusiastically spins the threads out not only to include all 12 On the other side of the moral fence,
these, but to loop the Wild Hunt14 in with the female Benandanti’s Queen of the Pausanias reports that the people of
Trooping Dead (who herself may be cognate with our old pal St. Walburga),15 to Arcadia practice unmentionable sacrifices
tie in shamanic initiation16 (complete with ritual death and animal transformation and become werewolves for nine years at
in ecstatic planewalking), and to snare the cults of Cybele17 and Attis (and right a stretch. Is the Prieuré Bloodline lupine?
back into Robert Graves land). On the ubiquity front, one can also note that
dreamwalking witches play a role in “nightmare” attacks (up to 15% of Americans 1 3 And we haven’t even touched the
suffer from Night Hag syndrome),18 and that until the 15th century, the official benevolent wolves of legend, such as the
position of the Church was that if witches communed with devils at all, it was she-wolf who raised Romulus and Remus.
Did the Benandanti found the Roman
through dreams and visions. Unless the Benandanti stop ‘em, of course.
Empire?

“But if such a bio-genetic component exists, then there is no need 14 For the Wild Hunt, see note 7 on
for ‘Murrayism’ to explain European witchcraft. Benandanti would p. 114.
appear in any culture, at any time, and into any social class without
regard for or in reaction to the predominant religion . . . But, if this 15 On pp. 113-115.
theory is correct, Benandanti would still be with us today. I believe 16 Although virtually every detail of it has
they are.” come under fire in the last 30 or so years,
– ‘Philip,’ “Who Are The Benandanti?” Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic
Techniques of Ecstasy is still the go-to
Which they’ll do, anywhen they have to. In primer for the topic.
Hand’s framework, for instance, you can extend
the Benandanti back to 5000 B.C. without break- 17 For Cybele, see note 7 on p. 71.
ing a sweat, and you don’t think that the
18 “Night Hag Syndrome” is a neuro-
Inquisition could stamp out a whole secret society
physiological syndrome involving night
of fennel-wielding dreamweres, do you? Which terrors, feelings of pressure on the chest,
means that you can not only tie any duality in and occasionally, hallucinations. See p.
your game into the Benandanti-Malandanti STi71, or David J. Hufford’s The Terror
oneirofeud, but also plonk it into any time or That Comes In The Night.
place you think is handy. (Assuming dream war-
riors even live in our linear time, that is; the 19 For Lovecraft, see pp. 78-80.
dreamselves of H.P. Lovecraft, 19 Jorge Luis
Borges, 20 Christopher Marlowe, 21 Virgil, 22 20 For Borges, see p. STi29.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Edgar Allan Poe
21 For Marlowe, see pp. 38-40.
can be the Secret Masters of the Benandanti
recruiting the caul-born dreamers from across all spacetime.) You can create the
22 For Virgil, see p. STi97.
effect all kinds of ways, too, from a simple GURPS Grimoire Planar Visit spell
enchanted into a caul, to a Benandanti Lodge using the GURPS Voodoo Path of 2 3 Clarke’s Law: “Any sufficiently-
Dreams. GURPS Psionics has its Telesend and Astral Projection for more advanced science is indistinguishable from
Clarke’s Law-abiding23 Nommos or for the deadly sorghum-spore-grown magic.”
Greys dusted across Neolithic Eurasia by an early probe. But that’s okay – Strike
Force Calusari is ready with Tech Division Dreamprojectors and deadly 24 For more Black Ops campaigns, see
Electrothermal Gatling Assault Fennelstalk-60s. Truly Badass Black Ops 24 pp. 13-15.
Benandanti, anyone?
63
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Pyramid originally posted “Frankenstein
Family Album” on March 10, 2000. The
next essay in publication order is “Deus ex
Machina Tempora,” on p. 22.
1 The “grateful dead” is a common motif
in folktales; usually the hero comes upon
a corpse being mistreated or refused bur-
ial. He pays the dead man’s debts (usually
with his last penny) and goes on his way.
Later, a mysterious stranger helps him
solve the magical puzzle, get the princess,
etc., and only at the climax reveals himself
as the corpse the hero had helped previ-
ously. It was, in fact, from the entry for
this motif in the Funk & Wagnall’s
Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology,
and Legend that Jerry Garcia picked the
name for his band.
2 For the Teutonic Knights, see note 11
on p. 117.
3 For the Thule Society, see the Glossary.
4 “Drive to the East,” a philosophy that
got the Germans into a lot of trouble
both then and later.
5 For the life of Vlad (1431-1476) Tepes
(“the Impaler”), voivode of Wallachia and
real-life “Count Dracula,” the best
sources I have are In Search of Dracula, by
Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu,
and their later Dracula: A Biography of
Vlad the Impaler. You can also seek out pp.
WWi56-57 for him in GURPS terms.
64
Frankenstein
Family Album
“Just like Mary Shelley
Just like Frankenstein
Clank your chains and count your change
Try to walk the line.”
– The Grateful Dead, “Ramble On Rose”
There’s the Grateful Dead,1 and then there’s the just plain ungrateful dead.
Animate them out of sewn-together cadaver parts and they kill your bride and
demand you help them spawn, then drag you into the icy north and literary
immortality. It was immortality of a different sort that animated, if not the man
behind the myth, at least the man behind the name, the name of Frankenstein at
least. Which name, of course, he never had. But then, neither did the Monster,
and that didn’t stop the myth. We’ll clank the chains of coincidence and impli-
cation that bind a forgotten alchemist to an immortal philosopher, and count
some of the changes we can ring on fiction and truth alike. Because, like life and
death, they’re very distinct entities. If you don’t believe me, ask Frankenstein.
“Georg von Frankenstein . . . dismounted and attacked the foe. The
dragon, defending his life, panted and spewed forth fire and smoke; the
castle and the valley resounded with the clang of the sword. Finally, the
knight triumphed. Scarcely feeling though the dragon was, it happened
that he wound the tip of his tail with the poisonous spike around the
knight’s leg and wounded him . . .”
– August Nodnagel, Hessenspiegel
And you can start (as does Radu Florescu’s In Search of Frankenstein) in 948
A.D., when the first known scion of that mighty house, one Arbogast von
Frankenstein, won a joust at Cologne. His connection with the Lützelbachs of
Odenwald, and their heirs the Breubergs, is murky at best, but it was they who
built in 1252, on a hill near Darmstadt in the Rhine valley, Castle Frankenstein.
This “stone of the Franks” isn’t a patch on grander piles, but maintains a nice
air of wuthering gloom even now. From that date, then, the Lützelbach-
Breubergs became (one imagines with some relief) the noble family von
Frankenstein. One Frankenstein served with the Teutonic Knights2 (which,
were we so inclined, could lead us into the icy mists of Thule and its black, sor-
cerous Society3 – but not yet), and another entire branch settled in Transylvania
(!) as part of the same German Drang nach Osten.4 It was the Transylvanian line
that became (eventually) the Barons von Frankenstein (Baron Frank von
Frankenstein (1647-1693), student of the Hollow Earth and alchemy, being the
first such), rather than the Rhineland branch. One Rhenish Frankenstein did
pass through Transylvania on pilgrimage in 1431 – the year of Dracula’s birth.5
Exactly a century later, Sir Georg von Frankenstein died, according to his
grave monument, after slaying a dragon6 (dracul in Romanian) near the castle.
Sir Georg’s death was only one of six violent or accidental deaths in the main
Frankenstein lineage in a 30-year period:7 his aunt and mother in 1525, his two
brothers in 1525 and 1566, and his sister-in-law in 1553. (His father died,
apparently naturally, at the age of 47 the year after Georg did.) This period,
“the great Frankenstein death” in the records, found its coda in 1602 when
Georg’s last living descendant, his great-grandson Philip Ludwig von
Frankenstein, died in an accident near the castle.
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
“Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest 6 This story of Georg and the dragon
diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life; does sort of catch the eye; it’s important
to remember that the historic St. George
but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention.”
lived much closer to Transylvania than he
– Victor Frankenstein, in Frankenstein did to England. In fact, he lived in the
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Turkish highlands of Cappadocia,
assuming he lived at all. St.
Unsurprisingly, then, the family sold the castle to George’s cult has always been
their feudal overlord, the Landgrave of Hesse, and very strong in the Balkans,
decamped. By 1673, Castle Frankenstein had where it may have taken on
become a military hospital, which is where (and some aspects of the Dionysian
fertility cults (see note 9, p.
when) Johann Konrad Dippel was born. Son of a
55). Like Dionysos, St.
Lutheran minister, the young Dippel early con- George was also resurrect-
sidered himself, in his own words, animated by a ed after dismemberment.
“higher spirit”8 (a Frankenstein ghost?) which St. George’s famous
endowed him with nigh-supernatural intellect dragon-killing is an
and prophetic gifts. Despite this early unortho- almost exact transposition
doxy, Dippel took a degree in theology at the of the feat of Perseus
University of Giessen. Because of it, he went to from Greek mythology,
teach at the University of Strasbourg, the old down to the location (the
stomping ground of the alchemist Paracelsus9 Lebanese coast). The
(who also created an artificial man, and who visit- whole dragon-killing busi-
ness implies some enmity
ed Transylvania around the time of the “great
between St. George-
Frankenstein death.”). It was during his university Perseus-Dionysos and the
days that Dippel began signing himself Reptoids, although the man
“Franckensteina,” or Frankenstein. who created the rites of
While in Strasbourg, Dippel engaged in astrology Dionysos, Melampus, supposed-
and palmistry, but was forced to flee city justice by ly received secret knowledge
night in 1696 – perhaps due to an unfortunate habit of (including the language of the
grave-robbing for medical lectures (or for other reasons, beasts) from serpents. Reptoid civil
hmmm?). 10 Returning to Darmstadt, he began studying war, or clever infiltration?
alchemy, as Landgrave Ernst Ludwig of Hesse was well-known for
his generous sponsorship of such studies. Sure enough, by 1701 Dippel had cre- 7 Possibly the Frankensteins had ticked
off some powerful death entity. Like, oh,
ated the Philosopher’s Stone, and bought a large farm near the Castle (itself still
I don’t know – a vampire?
too expensive). However, as the alchemical gold never managed to reach the
Landgrave, Dippel moved on. In Berlin, under the wing of Chancellor Count 8 While on the topic of immortal cursed
August von Wittgenstein, he developed an Elixir of Life made from distilled wanderers, that hardy perennial the
blood. (He also invented an actually useful anti-spasmodic, Dippel’s oil, made Wandering Jew made an appearance at
from boiled human bones.) And what do we call someone who unnaturally pro- Frankenstein in 1678. Was it his touch on
longs their life by drinking blood? That’s right – Dippel, the erstwhile Johann Konrad Dippel’s touseled head
Frankenstein, was a vampire. Be that as it may, in 1707 his strong resemblance that put such thoughts into it?
to King Charles XII of Sweden got him tossed in jail as a Swedish spy; released
through Wittgenstein’s political influence, he moved to Holland. It was tough to 9 Theophrastus Bombastus von
get expelled from Holland, but Dippel managed it in 1714 (possibly, again, Hohenheim, who styled himself
Paracelsus (1493-1541) left us a most
thanks to his habit of monkeying around with corpses, this time attempting to
complete alchemical recipe for a homon-
transfer souls from body to body). In Denmark, he was thrown in prison for culus. Briefly, it involves masturbating
treason, freed only when the hypochondriac Queen of Denmark made him her into a sealed flask, and letting the flask
personal physician in 1726. No fool, Dippel quickly decamped to Sweden as hibernate at blood warmth beneath a
personal physician to King Frederick I, but his Rasputin-like reputation drove manure heap. Make sure to keep checking
him back to Darmstadt in 1729. the temperature! One senses that
Paracelsus was having his little joke, here.
“The most humble undersigned asks of His Princely Highness to He appears in GURPS terms on pp.
WWi64-65.
permit him to receive and to buy . . . the castle Frankenstein . . . For
this he promises to cede to His Princely Highness an arcanum chymicum 10 Which puts me, at least, in mind of the
which easily . . . should yield at least as much revenue, all expenses similarly checkered medical career of
deducted, as the total sum would be if the property were sold . . .” H.H. Holmes, for which see p. 74. Maybe
– Johann Konrad Dippel, letter to the that body-transmigrating trick worked
Landgrave Ernst of Hesse (1732) better than it should have.

65
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
11 John Polidori (1795-1821) was a doctor
(his thesis was on the nightmare) with lit-
erary ambitions who followed Byron and
the Shelleys on their European trip in
1816. While in Switzerland, confined to
the villa by the appalling weather of the
“year without a summer” (see note 7,
p. 8), Polidori, Byron, the Shelleys, and
Claire Clairmont took turns telling ghost
stories. Mary Shelley’s story became
Frankenstein, while Byron’s story became
Polidori’s 1819 novel The Vampyre. For
two versions of that evening, see Tim
Powers’ vampire novel The Stress of Her
Regard and Ken Russell’s hallucinatory
mishmash of a movie, Gothic.
1 2 It’s surely worth mentioning that
Charles Nodier (1780-1844) wrote the
first stage adaptation of The Vampyre,
which was (in fact) the first vampire
drama ever staged. It’s even more worth
mentioning because Nodier was the chief
librarian of Paris’ Arsenal Library, and
the mentor of the great 19th-century
magus Eliphas Levi (see p. STi10). In his
youth, Nodier was active in secret soci-
eties such as the “Pythagorean”
Philadelphes, and wrote an anonymous
History of the Secret Societies Under
Napoleon. Finally, he was also the
Nautonnier of the Prieuré de Sion between
1801 and 1844.
13 For just such a Frankensteinian alter-
nate history, see p. 11.
14 Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829)
turns out, in fact, to be the fellow who
coined the term “Aryan.”
15 According to persistent, if sadly undoc-
umented, occult rumor, Hitler’s imagina-
tion was stoked by the revelations of a
race of supermen who lived inside the
Hollow Earth and harnessed the power of
“vril” (for more on vril, see note 19, p. 87)
to accomplish mighty techno-magical
feats. Hitler’s oft-quoted assurances that
the “superman” was “already here” are, in
this story, evidence for his contacts with
the malevolent vril-users, whether they be
the Nordic aliens, the Reptoids, the
Deros from pp. WT85-86 (and note 20
on p. 87), or some as yet unknown race.
For the rumor, and plenty more like it,
see Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s
The Morning of the Magicians, or Robert
Charroux’ The Gods Unknown. For a fasci-
nating overview (underview?) of the
whole Hollow Earth excitement, see
Walter Kafton-Minkel’s Subterranean
Worlds, available from Loompanics Press.
66
Here, he flung himself back into alchemical research, further refining his
gruesome Elixir Vitae. He attempted to exchange its secret for the feudal right to
Castle Frankenstein, but the Landgrave of Hesse, perhaps recalling that missing
alchemical gold, rejected the offer. Dippel then printed up a circular advertising
his Elixir, which got the attention of his old Prussian ally Count von
Wittgenstein. Dippel promised that his Elixir would prolong life to the age of
135; unfortunately for him, he died in 1734. Quite possibly, he had misjudged the
dosage: his body, found in Wittgenstein’s palace, was stiff and cold, with foam at
the mouth and a bluish tinge to one side of the face. Interesting coincidence
watch: Dippel isolated potassium ferrocyanide, a key ingredient in Prussic acid.
(By which method John Polidori,11 author of The Vampyre,12 committed suicide
in 1821.) Cyanides, of course, leave a bluish tinge to the skin. Or, perhaps, so does
transmigrating your soul into another body.
The Castle briefly fell under the sway of a mad baroness Euler, who sold off
all the glass and furnishings to keep a court of lovers and, without windows,
allowed birds and bats of all sorts to nest throughout the edifice. In 1763, a
forester named Paul Meister, having discerned the location of a buried treasure in
a “magic bottle,” excavated “terrible caves and great caverns” under Castle
Frankenstein until a workman named Drott died in a cave-in. Two more attempts,
in 1770-71 and 1787, found only underground walls; finally a gunpowder explo-
sion killed a last gold-seeker in 1788 and the authorities put a stop to the whole
business. Castle Frankenstein became a picturesque ruin, attracting such visitors
as Goethe and Bismarck.
“‘My reign is not yet over’ – these words were legible in one of these
inscriptions – ‘you live, and my power is complete. Follow me; I seek the
everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and
frost, to which I am impassive.’”
– The Monster to Frankenstein, in Frankenstein
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
And, quite likely, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, during her trip down the
Rhine to Switzerland in 1814. Although she later claimed that the entire action
of the novel Frankenstein came to her in a dream in 1816, she was in truth a
highly intelligent woman who researched subjects such as galvanism, Swiss
mountaineering, and alchemy for her novel. (Interestingly, though, much of the
crucial summer of 1816 is missing from both Mary’s journal and her cousin
Claire Clairmont’s, her companion both on the Rhine in 1814 and at the cre-
ation of Frankenstein two years later.)
Although her hero, Victor Frankenstein, is a Swiss “natural philosopher,”
the parallels with Dippel’s career are striking, from their mutual obsession with
artificial and extended life, to alchemical studies.
(Victor Frankenstein also attended the University
of Ingolstadt, possibly contemporaneously with
Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Bavarian
Illuminati. Quite an alumni party those two could
have gotten up.) 13 At the novel’s end,
Frankenstein, like Dippel, winds up in the arctic
North (not coincidentally, at the same time that
Schlegel’s anthropological mysticism was placing
the origins of the white race in the polar
reaches).14 He pursues his Monster onto the ice
of Thule, entry to the Hollow Earth, home of the malevolent beings Hitler
sought.15 These were perhaps the same immaterial, ultraterrestrial beings
whose “higher spirit” sent an alchemist (and many others) on a fruitless search
for the source of Life from graveyard to palace – while it lay beneath the bat-
infested walls of dragon-cursed Castle Frankenstein.
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Pyramid originally posted “Paul Bunyan,

Paul Bunyan, All-American” on November 12, 1999. The

next essay in publication order is “The
Maiden and the Monster,” on p. 57.
All-American
1
“The question what the American imagination will make of “There are new lands, new men, new
thoughts. Let us demand our own
Paul Bunyan is a curious one. Will it make him another Hercules
works and laws and worship.”
or another Munchausen? Or will it extravagantly think itself rich
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”
enough to afford to neglect him?”
– Carl Van Doren, The Roving Critic The sad truth is that there’s precious little
in the way of popular American mythic
Bangor Gattigan and his crew of hard-bitten roughneck lumberjacks fantasy fiction out there to enjoy. The
resolved one foggy morning to log the slopes of Mount Katahdin in Maine, the only Paul Bunyan (or Pecos Bill, or Davy
first place sunlight hits the United States of America. They climbed the crags Crockett, etc.) tales currently available are
for six days and 23 hours, felling trees and swamping them out as they went – either children’s stories (where I first read
about Paul) or folklore collections such as
until they had logged their way all around the mountain and found the trees
Botkin or Dorson’s, cited on p. 69.
growing back where they’d been. It was only then that they realized that they’d The American Western legend is, I
gotten lost in the fog, accidentally climbed Paul Bunyan’s chin and shaved him, imagine, still going strong in the tradition
mistaking Paul’s beard hairs for pine trees. of Zane Grey, but American fantasists
Paul Bunyan built America; the waterholes he dug for his blue ox, Babe, are almost always turn either to the Old
the Great Lakes. Moving west, Babe’s hoofprints made Minnesota’s Ten World (as in Robert E. Howard’s Conan
Thousand Lakes. Paul used a water tank to freeze roads so he could drag logs tales, or John Crowley’s superb Little, Big)
along them; when it broke, the flood became the Mississippi River. The govern- or to horror. In horror, actually, there is
ment hired Paul to log the Arizona Forest because vacationers couldn’t enjoy an embarrassment of riches for American
the desert with all those trees growing in it; tired out from that job, he acciden- legendry, from the wilderness aesthetic of
tally let his axe drag the ground and created the Grand Canyon. To shelter his Hawthorne (which has its descent in the
horror-crime Westerns of Joe R.
lumbermen, Paul built a windbreak out of sourdough – the Rocky Mountains.
Lansdale) to the Southern Gothicism of
Paul was ingenious, Paul was resourceful, Paul was good-tempered – but most Poe (Robert R. McCammon’s Usher’s
of all, Paul Bunyan was ebullient, confident . . . and big. Passing is a superbly overheated blending
Now that’s a god, an American god. And where there’s a god, there’s sagas, of Poe and Faulkner) to the cosmic
and demons, and other gods, and epics, and mythic roleplaying. Or, at least, nihilist science fiction anti-mythologies of
there should be.1 And if there isn’t yet, well, I’m sure that Paul and I can rustle Lovecraft and his imitators. (It’s probably
something up. possible to draw parallels between
American urban legends and the “serial
“Who made Paul Bunyan, who gave him birth as a myth, who joked killer” subgenre, too.)
However, the genuine American
him into life as the Master Lumberjack, who fashioned him forth as an mythologies seldom appear in fantastic
apparition easing the hours of men among axes and trees, saws and literature, Orson Scott Card’s Alvin
lumber? The people, the bookless people, they made Paul and had him Maker series being the sole exception I
alive long before he got into the books for those who read . . . And some know of. The rich Amerind and African-
of Paul is old as the hills, young as the alphabet.” American folk traditions still wait for even
the limited exposure that Manly Wade
– Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes
Wellman gave Appalachian hex magic in
his superb “Silver John” horror stories.
Outside the comic books (where
Superman and Batman rule their pan-
theon of immortals), an American Conan,
or even an American Frodo, seem still far-
ther off. Until then, we seem to be forced
to make do either with regional retellings
of the Old World’s myths (such as Tom
Deitz’ transference of the Mabinogion to
rural Georgia in the Soulsmith trilogy) or
“melting-pot” style postmodern fantasies
such as Jane Lindskold’s Athanor series,
which transplants King Arthur’s court to
New Mexico, and teams him up with
Coyote, Enkidu, and Athena.

67
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
2 Or “Good Jack,” from whence we join
the column on the Fool, already in
progress on pp. 109-112.
3 There’s also a “Paul Bunyon,” apparently
a lumberjack of impressive physique who
fought in Quebec’s Papineau Rebellion in
1837. And Paul Bonhomme, a famous
lumberjack from the Two Mountain coun-
try in central Canada.
4 David Crockett (1786-1836) may be one
of the last historical personages to become
a myth, at least in the traditional way the
term is understood. (Though one could
actually make a pretty solid case for Elvis
Presley at this juncture.) Tennessee land
speculator, Indian fighter, congressman,
and humorist, Crockett wrote or sanc-
tioned the publication of numerous pam-
phlets detailing his legendary actions such
as killing a bear when he was only three
years old, tearing the tail off Halley’s
Comet, grinning a raccoon out of a tree,
and unfreezing the sun by squeezing bear
oil out over its axle. After Crockett’s death
at the Alamo (an almost untoppable capper
to his heroic legend), the tales spread
throughout the American frontier country
both as entertainment and as ideological
statements of the American frontier spirit.
It’s difficult to imagine anyone wanting to
believe, or even read, tall tales about a
modern congressman.
5 Paul also incorporated tales of other,
localized heroes such as Jigger Johnson,
Joe Mufraw, and Jean Frechette, perhaps
as the deeds of five or ten Romano-British
cavalry commanders harassing the Saxons,
or twenty or thirty “Robynhodesmen”
poaching the King’s deer became a single
King Arthur or Robin Hood.
6 Finn MacCool, or Fionn MacCumhaill,
was a legendary Irish chieftain of the 3rd
century A.D. See p. CM41 or any good
book of Irish mythology. I’ve got a sneak-
ing fondness for T.W. Rolleston’s idiosyn-
cratic Myths of the Celtic Race, although
William Butler Yeats certainly liked Lady
Augusta Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men.
As a reference book, I’ve never found rea-
son to cavil at Daithi O hOgain’s Myth,
Legend & Romance: An Encyclopedia of the
Irish Folk Tradition.
7 Interesting tidbit: Hebrew for ox is
“aleph,” the Beginning.
8 See note 8 on p. 54.
68
A surprising number of people still follow folklorist Richard M. Dorson in
dismissing the entire corpus of Paul Bunyan legendry as “fakelore,” cooked up as
advertising copy. Daniel Hoffman’s Paul Bunyan: Last of the Frontier Demigods (the
only full-length scholarly study of the cycle) makes a relatively incontrovertible
case (as folklore studies go) that before W.B. Laughead published Introducing Mr.
Paul Bunyan of Westwood, Cal. for the Red River Lumber Company in 1914, Paul
Bunyan tall tales had circulated through logging camps for at least three decades.
Admittedly, they can’t be much older than that; the kind of lumberjacking
that Paul Bunyan does began in Maine in the 1840s. I’m fond of the almost com-
pletely unsupported theory that traces Paul’s name back to the French-Canadian
logger-trickster Bon Jean.2 In this mythography,3 the Maine loggers and the
French-Canadian refugees from Riel’s Rebellion met in the Minnesota North
Woods in the 1870s, combined the legendarily clever Yankee Jonathan with Bon
Jean’s wood-spirit magic and the frontier legends of Davy Crockett4 to create a
new demigod. However, it was Paul’s misfortune (or fortune) to be born on the
flood tide of both American literacy and American commercialism; where the
gestes of Robin Hood or the lays of King Arthur could spend centuries finding
their character, Paul Bunyan’s stories evolved for perhaps 30 years orally5 before
appearing in local newspapers. Before the first spate of advertising circulars, chil-
dren’s stories, and edifying tales of commerce (including Paul’s manufactured
career as a lumber tycoon) had died down, so too had the frontier culture from
whence Paul Bunyan sprang.
“He looked up and Paul Bunyan’s huge plastic face had been right in
front of his, bigger than a face on a movie screen, filling everything. The
rush of air had been caused by Paul’s bending down . . . although he did
not precisely look like Paul any more.”
– Stephen King, It
Folklorists scrambled to trace Paul’s lineage back to the French Gargantua or
Irish Finn MacCool6 or Scandinavian Thor (neatly encompassing the main eth-
nic groups of American lumberjacks). As Scandinavian myth goes, I see more res-
onance in the Norse creation, with Audhumbla the ox7 licking Ymir out of the
ice, only to have Odin dismember the giant and build the world from his body.
Greek myths of Zeus being fed by oxen, and Heracles’ harnessing the Oxen of the
Sun-giant Geryon (and creating the Pillars of Heracles, the Rhône valley, the
Cottine Pass, and other landmarks on his way back to Greece with them) harmo-
nize even better with the tales of Bunyan and Babe. Some have professed to find
tree-spirit ancestors for Paul Bunyan, casting him as an American Green Man8 (a
jolly green giant, as it were). This fits Johnny Appleseed9 better – few timber-
gods level forests like Paul Bunyan. The giant, monstrous Wendigo10 uproots
trees, but if Paul Bunyan has inspired cannibalism, I don’t want to know about it.
“Stranger . . . you come mighty sudden. Where are you from and where
do you think you’re going?”
– Paul Bunyan to Pecos Bill, in The Wonderful
Adventures of Paul Bunyan by Louis Untermeyer
But all that, while fun for mythic resonance, and useful for plot devices and
archetype-spotting games, misses the point and begs the question. American tall
tale legends have an unmistakable national character; a quintessentially American
personality not even entirely present in Errol Flynn-style Robin Hood, the most
American of the Old World stories. “Ebullient self-assertion, preternatural clev-
erness, and fantastic exaggeration . . . heroic self-projection [and] comedy” is how
Hoffman sums it up; I’d add the traditional American schizophrenia about the
wilderness (Eden or Hell?) and that mythic vastness so well expressed by the
Pilgrims’ Bible: “There were giants in the earth in those days.”
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
And indeed there were. Paul Bunyan had his own supporting cast, Doc 9 John “Appleseed” Chapman (1774-1845)
Savage style: Johnny Inkslinger the heroic accountant, Sourdough Sam the cook, was a traveling herbalist, nurseryman, and
Febold Feboldson the super-mechanic, and the Lucifer in Paul’s Heaven, the Swedenborgian missionary in the Ohio
rebel lumberjack Hel Helsen. More importantly, Paul met (and in the American country. Most stories about him resemble
tales of St. Francis of Assisi, specifically
superheroic tradition, fought) Pecos Bill, the “ring-tailed roarin’, cyclone-ridin’”
Johnny’s unwillingness to kill, or even
cowboy demigod. During Paul’s stint in the Oklahoma oil fields (the only other inconvenience, any animal or insect.
genuine source of oral Bunyan tradition, which ironically probably sprang from
roughnecks reading Bunyan stories in the paper and making up their own) he 10 The Wendigo, or Witiko, or Windigo,
must have met legendary oilman Gib Morgan.11 America’s gods, appropriately is a common legend in almost all subarctic
enough, are gods of careers – Joe Magarac the steelworker, Casey Jones the loco- North American tribes. Non-human giants
motive driver, Yankee Jonathan the salesman, A.B. Stormalong the clipper cap- with ice for hearts, the Wendigo uproot
tain, John Henry the steel-drivin’ man, Mose the Bowery Boy fireman, and even trees for snowshoes and move as rapidly as
the latest addition, Augustus Stanley Owsley III the LSD chemist. (No doubt a blizzard. They have the power to turn
there’s a legendary computer hacker somewhere, too.) humans “wendigo” if their target succumbs
America’s larger-than-life characters in recent years, like Owsley, tend to be to cannibalism, and they frequently create
winter storms to such ends. Lovecraft’s
criminals, or at least gunfighters. Jesse James becomes our Robin Hood, John
disciple August Derleth (who lived in
Wesley Hardin our Lancelot – John Dillinger (Rob Roy, perhaps) shares a birth- Wisconsin, where the Wendigo-fearing
day with Paul Bunyan, June 28. The older American gods included at least one Ojibwa once dwelt) transferred the
killer – keelboatman Mike Fink, the archenemy of the legendary Davy Crockett. Wendigo into the Cthulhu Mythos as
(Centuries from now, scholars of comparative religion will confidently assure us Ithaqua, who turns up on p. 9.
that Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett, and Daniel Boone are all versions of the same
myth, or worse yet, forms of Adonis or Orion.) Although almost all American 11 Gib once built an oil derrick hinged in
demigods share some of the canniness of Yankee Jonathan (the original version of the middle to let the moon go by and
Uncle Sam, who has himself evolved into a quixotic bearded deity who Wants drilled a 2,000-foot well with needle and
You), the great American Trickster is the Southern slave hero High John the thread. According to Mody C. Boatright’s
Conqueror,12 a.k.a. Br’er Rabbit. (Again, although people like to trace John back Gib Morgan: Minstrel of the Oil Fields,
Gabriel “Gib” Morgan (1842-1909) was an
to Anansi the Spider,13 he’s all American, too – possibly owing a little something
oilman, first in Pennsylvania, then in
to Nanabozho, the tricky Hare of the Algonquins.) Texas, who became known as the
“Münchausen of the Oil Well” thanks to
“It is a spring morning without benefit of young persons. his gift (and penchant) for telling tall tales,
It is a sky that has never registered weeping or rebellion. usually starring himself.
It is a forest full of innocent beasts. There are none who blush at
12 High John the Conqueror shares his
the memory of an ancient folly, none who hide beneath dyed fabrics a
name with a root commonly used in
malicious heart. hoodoo rituals (marsh St. John’s wort); he
It is America but not yet. traditionally tricks his way out of trouble
Wanted: Disturbers of public order, men without foresight or fear.” and often gets a reluctant laugh out of
– W.H. Auden, Paul Bunyan “Massa” in the process. John’s stories
range from “go along to get along” to tra-
ditional trickster myths (such as Br’er
By now, you’ll note, we’ve got a pantheon (thanks in no small part to Richard
Rabbit) to contests of wits against the
Dorson’s America In Legend and B.A. Botkin’s American Folklore), even if it’s not white man. Like many traditional
distributed in proper shoehorned Joseph Campbell style across sun and moon and Amerindian trickster stories, in many cases
so forth. It’s a pantheon of heroes, of individual demigods more like Heracles, John “loses” the contest, although he
Hermes, Dionysos, and Theseus, rather than one of personified cosmic forces. always gets a chuckle out of it. Some sto-
Which is where the PCs come in – it’s Mythic Roleplaying, American Style. The ries depict John with a magic hat or magic
game world is the America of legend, a timeless land of 17th-century wilderness horses, often swindled from the Devil. An
and 19th-century wildness. It resembles (and not coincidentally) a supers game as excellent source for John, and for other
suggested (also not coincidentally) for “heroic roleplaying” in GURPS Greece and African-American lore of the era, is Zora
GURPS Celtic Myth. Heroes can roam the land battling the monsters in the dark Neale Hurston’s Of Mules and Men, avail-
forests (manitou from Indian legend or the Behinder from Appalachian tall tale), able in a critical omnibus edition of all her
non-fiction (including the essay “High
intervene in the battles of the gods (as Paul Bunyan and Gib Morgan compete to
John de Conquer”) from the New
drill wells), perform their own mighty feats (Digging the Panama Canal? American Library.
Reversing the Chicago River?), fight invaders with Jim Bowie and George
Washington, or free slaves with Honest Abe and High John, or stop the fat cat 13 Anansi is the Akan name for the West
mine lords with Joe Hill or the Molly Maguires. Go on quests for the Crystal African spider trickster, known as “Aunt
City or the Big Rock Candy Mountain; build the Hoover Dam and drown the Nancy” in the Gullah culture of South
Anasazi ghost-ogres. And then, when your distant cousins Roland and King Carolina. The famous Tar Baby story was
Arthur call – swim with Paul Bunyan across the Big Pond, lick your weight in originally the Guinean tale “Anansi and
werewolves, whip Wotan’s Nazi ass, and burn the topless towers of Berlin. the Gum Doll.”
69
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Pyramid originally posted “Jacks Wild: Six
Stabs at the Ripper” on October 1, 1999. The
next essay in publication order is “Libertatia
or Death,” on p. 82.
1 Available at www.casebook.org.
2 During the fall of 1888, an unknown
person (probably working alone) mur-
dered at least five prostitutes in the
Whitechapel district of London’s East
End. He was likely white, male,
employed, and lower or middle class.
Contrary to contemporary opinion, the
murders required no particular surgical
skill, but neither is a medical murderer
ruled out by the evidence. The murderer
most likely strangled his victims before
mutilation, to avoid gouts of blood stain-
ing his clothing. The murderer was,
according to the 1988 FBI profile, likely
unmarried and a sexual deviant.
Everything else is speculation.
The victims:
Martha Tabram, age 39, died of 39
stab wounds on August 7, 1888. Her body
was found at 37 George Yard. She is not
considered a “canonical” Ripper victim.
Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, age 43,
died on August 31, 1888. Her body was
found in Buck’s Row with two slashes to
the throat and abdominal mutilations.
Eliza Anne “Annie” Chapman, age
47, died on September 8, 1888. Her body
was found at 29 Hanbury Street nearly
decapitated, with her uterus removed and
intestines laid across her body.
Elizabeth “Long Liz” Stride, age 44,
died on September 30, 1888. Her body
was found in Dutfield’s Yard between 40-
42 Berner Street with a single fatal slash
wound to the neck. Because of the differ-
ing m.o. and the amount of blood, some
doubt the “canonicity” of Stride’s murder;
other assume a bystander frightened the
killer away before further mutilation
could occur.
Catherine Eddowes, age 46, died on
September 30, 1888. Her body was found
in Mitre Square with her throat cut,
intestines exposed, and left kidney and
uterus missing, along with other mutila-
tions to her face and torso.
Mary Jane Kelley, age 25, died on
November 9, 1888. Her body was found
in her room at No. 13 Miller’s Court, off
Dorset Street, savagely mutilated. Her
heart was missing, and burned women’s
clothes found in her fireplace.
70
Jacks Wild:
Six Stabs At The Ripper
“I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you’ll hear
about Saucy Jacky’s work tomorrow double event this time.”
– from a postcard signed “Jack the Ripper,” received by the
Central News Agency on October 1, 1888
While one glance at the calendar shows us the beginning of October, another
one shows us the end of September. Both turn our attention horrorward – to
Halloween a month in the future, and to Jack the Ripper 111 years in the past.
That kabbalistic-looking span of years (equating to “red,” “sudden death,” and
“madness” according to an appendix tucked away in the ever-useful Godwin’s
Cabalistic Encyclopedia) runs back to the “double event,” the murders of Elizabeth
Stride and Catherine Eddowes in the early morning of September 30, 1888.
Rather than go over that well-trodden ground, however, we’ll peer farther afield,
into some of the more recondite corners of the legend of Red Jack. Should you feel
the need of a primer, I strongly recommend Paul Begg’s Jack the Ripper: A to Z,
Donald Rumbelow’s Jack the Ripper: the Complete Casebook, or, for still more instant
gratification, the introduction page on the comprehensive Casebook: Jack the Ripper
website.1 Thusly fortified with the facts,2 we shall stride bravely into the fog to
round up some unusual suspects.
“they are become the enemies of women
‘The Apostles,’ Bloomsbury, Forster
J.K. Stephen, Gothic possession
Ripper threats in slim Latin volumes
they curse & blast”
– Iain Sinclair, “Skofeld, Man of the East”
One of the more usual unusual suspects in the case is one or more members of
the Freemasons, usually adduced as the killers for complicated reasons involving
covering up the involvement of various Highly Placed Officials in Seedy Goings-
On. (Stephen Knight’s Jack the Ripper: the Final Solution is the seminal text on the
topic, although Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell is vastly better written and
more enjoyable to boot.) The argument, such as it is, holds that the victims (espe-
cially Chapman and Eddowes) were mutilated in a fashion consonant with
Masonic oaths and lore (throats cut, belly torn open, intestines over the shoulder);
that the nickname “Leather Apron” given to the killer was a hint of Masonic
involvement; that the curious grafitto blaming (or seeming to blame) the “Juwes”
for the crimes refers to Jubelo, Jubela, and Jubelum, the Three Unworthy
Craftsmen who murdered Hiram Abiff;3 and mostly that you can’t swing a dead
cat in Victorian London’s law enforcement community without hitting a Mason.
That much, at least, is true. Specifically, Royal Arch Mason Sir Charles
Warren (who also dug up some peculiar tunnels in Jerusalem Templar-fashion)4
was Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police until the very day of the last
(accepted) Ripper killing, November 9. His Assistant Commissioner, Dr. Robert
Anderson, was also a Freemason, although less influential than Sir Charles.
GURPS Illuminati GMs should have little or no problem tying the Masons (or
some rogue element therein, of course) to whichever conspiracy is currently hold-
ing the strings in their campaign.
One particularly inviting (in game terms, anyway) suspect usually gets relative-
ly short shrift, however. Your midrange “Masonic Jack” needs to be a medical man,
connected with law enforcement, and well versed in secret symbolism (the “Juwes”
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
mentioned were extraordinarily obscure, even to advanced Masons, in 1888). A
perfect candidate was working as coroner for Central London in 1888 – Dr.
William Wynn Westcott, founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.5
“At this time London was agog with the exploits of Jack the Ripper.
One theory of the motive of the murderer was that he was performing
an Operation to gain the Supreme Black Magical Power.”
– Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley
Jack the Ripper as ceremonial magician – now there’s a theory to conjure
with. Moore’s Masonic Ripper kills women as a conscious campaign against the
powers of the Goddess, bolstering the masculine Sun God of obelisks,
Hawksmoor-churches, 6 and statues of important Masons like Lord
Northampton. (All of which figure, in some fashion, in Moore’s Ripper geogra-
phy.) Look at the killing-grounds themselves: Buck’s Row, Mitre Square – the stag
and the bishop, both male symbols. Of course,
you can always go the other way and argue for a
“Jill the Ripper” trying to energize the Moon
Goddess with human sacrifices of “sacred pros-
titutes.” Possible Ripper victim Martha Tabram
was killed on August 7, the festival of
the Nile-goddess Hathor. Mary
Ann Nichols was killed the night
of August 30, on which day
Bengalis made human sacrifices to
the earth-goddess Tari Pennu. It
also marks the Roman harvest festi-
val Charisteria (sacred to Ceres) and
it’s the day after Hathor’s birthday.
Sadly the September Inca blood-
festival Citua, in honor of the moon goddess
Quilla, doesn’t fit (no Ripper killing took place
during a full moon), but September 8 (the
Long killing) is the Nativity of Mary, and
September 30 (Stride and Eddowes) occurs
not only during the Greek Demeter festival of
Thesmophoria, but on the holy day of both
Themis (Greek goddess of divine law) and
Medetrina (Roman goddess of medicine).
Finally, to cap it all off, Mary Jane Kelly was
slaughtered – at No. 13, Miller’s Court, and
during the new moon – on the Night of
Hecate,7 goddess of dark witchcraft, ruler of
“the passages of life and death.”
After all that, it’s almost anticlimactic to adduce the
theory8 that the Ripper planned the murders as a magical rite to destroy the
Earth under the Leonid meteor shower of November 1999 (111 years to the day
after his final murder); counting on the repeated 11.1 year sunspot rhythm, the
33-year cycle of the Leonids, and the Millennium to see him through numerolog-
ically. (Possibly the Great Fire of 1666 was the cosmic temporal backlash of the
Ripper’s magical working.) Speaking of triple numbers, Heliogabalus, the Cybele-
cultist Emperor of Rome, died under an assassin’s blade in 222 A.D. And, of
course, the Cybele cult9 worshipped sacred meteorites. Was the Ripper’s blade
meteoric iron?
“Jack and Jill went out to kill For things they couldn’t alter, Jack fell
down and lost his crown And left a baby daughter.”
– Anonymous Cleveland Street doggerel
3 Hiram Abiff is, in Masonic lore, the
architect of the Temple murdered for
refusing to reveal the Mason Word. In
The Hiram Key, Christopher Knight and
Robert Lomas identify the “real” Hiram
Abiff as the last Pharaoh of Middle
Kingdom Egypt, Seqenenre Tao II, mur-
dered in 1574 B.C. in (apparently) proper
Hiramic fashion (but see the note on p.
83). His Hyksos rival Apophis I, delight-
fully, had the same name as the evil ser-
pent who opposes Ra in the Duat, the
Egyptian underworld. So we have St.
George (or, in this case, Ra, or possibly
Hiram Abiff) and the Dragon, Apophis!
Apophis’ Hyksos were overthrown by
Seqenenre Tao II’s son, the Pharaoh
Ahmose, who (they say) founded the
proto-Rosicrucian Great White
Brotherhood, or Egyptian Rite Masonry,
or something at least as good.
4 Sir Charles Warren (1840-1927) exca-
vated the area adjacent to and below
Temple Mount in Jerusalem between
1867 and 1870, uncovering the
“Hasmonean Tunnel.” In this same area,
“Solomon’s Stables,” the Templars had
been based in the 1100s, and here they
supposedly uncovered whatever it was
that made them wealthy heresiarchs.
When Jerusalem authorities re-opened
Warren’s Tunnel in September of 1996,
it sparked Palestinian rioting that killed
over a dozen people. See also p. STi33.
5 For the Golden Dawn, see the Glossary.
6 For Hawksmoor (1661-1736), see
p. 108.
7 See the deaths of Marlowe (p. 38) and
Joan of Arc (p. 59) for Hecate’s other
night. She also shows herself to advantage
on p. 63. As a “triple goddess” she also
gets in on some of that mystical triplicity
action hinted at in note 9 on p. 59. As a
moon goddess she shares in the moon-
boat symbolism in note 11 on p. 47, like
Berchta (p. 114) she keeps hounds.
8 Presented by “Simon Whitechapel” in
The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper.
9 Cybele and Attis are particularly
nasty versions of the Devouring
Goddess/Dying God dyad that also
encompasses Venus and Adonis, Isis and
Osiris, and all those versions of Astarte
(from note 3, p. 46) and Baal. See J.G.
Frazer’s Golden Bough (where he takes this
myth and runs with it) or p. STi20.
Cybele also manifests herself on pp. 63
and 79.
71
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
10 Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward
(1864-1892), grandson of Queen Victoria,
died of influenza the year after becoming
Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the same
year as his tutor, James Kenneth Stephen
(1859-1892) died of lingering brain dam-
age from a severe blow to the head in
1886. J.K. Stephen was a feverish misogy-
nist, the author of a poem called “Air:
Kafoozalem; The Harlot of Jerusalem,” in
which a “syphilitic spawn of hell” rapes
and murders the titular prostitute.
Stephen’s father, by coincidence,
presided over the murder trial of Florence
Maybrick, accused of poisoning her phi-
landering husband with arsenic. Despite
the evidence that Maybrick was a habitual
user of “medicinal” arsenic, his widow was
convicted and sentenced to prison for fif-
teen years. In 1992, a diary purporting to
be that of James Maybrick (1838-1889)
surfaced, containing Maybrick’s record of
his career as Jack the Ripper. The authen-
ticity of the diary remains in doubt.
11 Sir William Withey Gull (1816-1890)
died of a third stroke after a long and dis-
tinguished medical career. The sole piece
of evidence (using the term loosely)
directly linking Gull to the Ripper is that
he may have been the “eminent physi-
cian” identified as the killer by spiritualist
medium Robert James Lees (1849-1931),
occasionally known as “Queen Victoria’s
psychic” (although his name doesn’t
appear in Court documents). As yet,
nobody has accused Lees of being the
Ripper, although it should have been
child’s play for a truly advanced psychic to
commit the crimes using bilocation,
thought-materialization, and other
advanced mystical techniques. It’s on sim-
ilar grounds that Aleister Crowley once
accused Theosophist Helena P. Blavatsky
(see note 8 on p. 84) of being the Ripper,
using the body parts to placate her
Unseen Masters.
72
From royal death as sacred sacrifice, we come to royal murderer: in the surpris-
ingly influential Prince Jack, Frank Spiering claims without a shred of evidence that
Prince Albert Victor Edward10 (“Prince Eddy”), heir presumptive to the throne of
Britain was the Ripper, possibly in partnership with Queen Victoria’s physician-in-
ordinary Sir William Withey Gull11 (a Mason, if you’re still keeping track). Eddy
may have been (well, certainly was) a retarded, depraved deviant even for a British
royal, but he was also 200 miles away during at least one of the killings. (That doesn’t
clear Gull, of course, although the fact that the 72-year-old doctor was half-para-
lyzed by a stroke does.) But that’s why you get your Masonic buddies to drive you to
the sacred killing zone, I suppose. I’ve also seen – only on the Net – someone named
“P.M. Luchessa” claim, or pretend to claim, that Queen Victoria, herself, suffering
from multiple personality syndrome, was the Ripper, and that Lord Salisbury uncov-
ered her role, imprisoned the Queen on the Isle of Wight, and replaced her with a
double improbably named Hermione Watley. Consider this the “one louder” version
of the Prince Jack theory. (Don’t like that one? How about King Leopold II of
Belgium? Alleged psychic Robert Lees allegedly identified one of Leopold’s London
mansions as the Ripper’s house, and Leopold killed 10 million other folk by proxy in
the Congo, so he had what it took.)
“The Emissaries of the Irish-American Secret Societies, says this ingenious
scribe, were thwarted in all their efforts to terrorise London with dynamite,
& May it not be possible that one of their most dare-devil agents has taken
this plan to annoy and engross the Metropolis?”
– The Star,
November 19, 1888
The Irish have to come in somehow, of course; Prince
Jack’s secret marriage to a Catholic girl (Annie Crook)
was the secret that the Whitechapel whores discovered,
attempted blackmail to exploit, and died to conceal
(according to Knight, Moore, and Speiring).
Proof can be found in the paintings of East
End artist Walter Sickert, who knew
Crook, or Kelly, or Gull, or Eddy, depend-
ing. (His painting Blackmail does resemble
Mary Kelly; and a gull flaps significantly with-
in his work Ennui. Of course, there’s more.)
More hints appear in the work of the painter
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, especially (wait
for it) The Roses of Heliogabalus, tying us back
to the meteorites. (Alma-Tadema’s other
favorite topic? The Merovingians. So, did
the Prieuré de Sion kill Kelly to cover up a
different royal bloodline?)
If we’re tired of magic and Masons, of course, we can go with the Fenians, Irish
terrorists attempting to embarrass the (Orange-connected) government. Sir Melville
Macnaghten, who took over the CID in 1889, believed it, and he had all the files
before the Masons took ‘em.12 The Fenians did assassinate a civil servant in Dublin
in 1882 with “long surgical knives,” and Ripperologist Nick Warren believes that
Mary Kelly was a police informant, which his why she opened her door to her killer.
“Bet I beat my glands til,
With hand-sword I slay the evil gender.
A slimey theme; borrow gloves,
And masturbate the hog more!”
– First quatrain of “Jabberwocky,” as anagrammatized
by Richard Wallace
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Rapidly, I’ll mention Richard Wallace’s theory that Charles Dodgson, alias 12 Missing Scotland Yard files may indi-
Lewis Carroll, was the Ripper. In Jack the Ripper: Light-Hearted Friend, Wallace cate grounds for believing that the Ripper
offers evidence consisting of armchair psychoanalysis, anagrams, and numerolo- was (or was at least suspected of being)
gy even more tenuous than that of our Heliogabalus theorists. (Carroll repeat- the ringleader of a plot to assassinate
Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), at the
edly mentions the number 42; Mary Nichols was 42,13 Mary Kelly was killed 42
time Secretary of State for Ireland, who
days after the “double event,” and there you have it.) Both Jack and Lewis would later go on to become Prime
Carroll were left-handed,14 though, which means we can’t even blame a weird Minister of Great Britain.
Looking-Glass version of Carroll who emerged from the mirror dimension to
commit the crimes with his vorpal sword.15 13 Actually, as it turns out, she was 43.

“There have been rumors of homicidal, UFO-related, human mutila- 1 4 Or maybe not; although Dr. Rees
tion cases for some time now but hard evidence has been lacking. Until, Ralph Llewellyn, who performed the
autopsy on Mary Ann Nichols, felt that
perhaps, now.” the pattern of the wounds indicated a left-
– G. Cope Schellhorn, “UFO-Related Homicide in Brazil: handed killer, the verdict is by no means
the Complete Story” unanimous.

And finally, there’s one that nobody seems to have come up with yet.16 The 15 There’s no shortage of Ripper fiction
Ripper was able to come and go nearly invisibly. His victims were mutilated out there, but there’s probably none so
according to some inhuman scheme, with organs carried away. You no doubt see perversely charming as Roger Zelazny’s A
Night In The Lonesome October, told from
where I’m going with this, but follow along. On September 29, 1988 (100 years
the perspective of the Ripper’s dog, Snuff.
almost to the day17 after the “double event”), police found a mutilated body
near the Guarapiranga reservoir in Brazil. Along with the well-known alien 16 I was wrong. Alan Moore had come up
mutilation of cattle and horses, there are a few similar cases of human mutila- with it in “Dance of the Gull Catchers,”
tion, the best-known being that of Sgt. Jonathan P. Louette outside White his epilogue to From Hell.
Sands in 1956, found mutilated after his abduction by a “disk shaped” object.
Might, then, the Whitechapel killings be related to the UFOs seen in New 17 Actually, when time zones are taken
Zealand and South Carolina in May of 1888, or (closer in time and space) the into effect, it was exactly 100 years to the
sheep panicked by an invisible entity across 200 square miles of the Thames day after the murders of Stride and
Valley the night of November 3? Could Red Jack be Grey? Eddowes.

73
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Pyramid originally posted “The Extra ‘H’ is
for ‘Homicidal’: H.H. Holmes” on August 6,
1999. The next essay in publication order is
“Crisis on Alternate Earths!” on p. 16.
1 Depraved: The Shocking, True Story of
America’s First Serial Killer, by Harold
Schechter, aside from an unfortunate ten-
dency to fabulism in the service of psy-
choanalysis, is a well-researched, smooth-
ly written history of H.H. Holmes and his
crimes.
2 As far as serial killers go, there are a lot
of compendia but I’ve found very little in
the way of a solidly-researched, historical-
ly-broad, one-stop reference book.
Probably the best, I say with unusual diffi-
dence, is Michael Newton’s Hunting
Humans: An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial
Killers. This, by the way, shouldn’t be
confused with Elliott Leyton’s Hunting
Humans: Inside the Minds of Mass
Murderers, which purports to be a socio-
logical study of serial killers and their ilk,
and is still more soberly reliable (though
far less useful for games) than Michael
Newton’s Raising Hell: An Encyclopedia of
Devil Worship and Satanic Crime. Who
wouldn’t love a title like that?
3 Former Tory irregulars William
Micajah “Big” Harpe (1760?-1799) and
Wiley “Little” Harpe (1762?-1803)
ambushed and murdered travelers along
the Wilderness Trail in Tennessee, and
later killed settlers in the Ohio country;
committing something like 40 murders
between them. Jay Robert Nash’s
Bloodletters and Badmen, which can be
trusted for nothing except grue, says that
the posse who gunned down Big Harpe
later boiled his head for soup after run-
ning out of rations.
4 For whom, see pp. 70-73.
5 The prosaic Chicago Police Depart-
ment determined that Holmes had killed
at least 19 people, but the number is
almost certainly vastly higher than that.
6 “Gilmanton,” or “Gill Man Town,” a
Deep One lair if I’ve ever heard of one.
Was Holmes actually a deranged Nommo
vivisectionist?
7 Rather like our acquaintance Johann
Konrad Dippel, erstwhile Baron
Frankenstein, on pp. 65-66.
74
The Extra “H”
Is For “Homicidal”:
H.H. Holmes
“To parallel such a career one must go back to past ages and to the time
of the Borgias or Brinvilliers, and even these were not such human
monsters as Holmes seems to have been. He is a prodigy of wickedness,
a human demon, a being so unthinkable that no novelist would dare to
invent such a character. The story, too, tends to illustrate the end of the
century.”
– Chicago Times-Herald May 8, 1896
Sensational book subtitles1 aside, he wasn’t America’s first serial killer2 (that
dubious honor likely belongs to William and Wiley Harpe 3 in 1790s
Tennessee). Eclipsed in his own century by Jack the Ripper4 and in the next by
Al Capone, the name of Herman Webster Mudgett, alias H.H. Holmes, no
longer strikes an immediate chord; no frisson of terror ripples down the spine at
his mention. But it should. Perhaps it’s just perverse hometown pride, but H.H.
Holmes’ Chicago Murder Castle has always struck me as something unique,
something extraordinarily full of portent and dark potential for horror gaming.
Seemingly sprung from a freakish combination of Edgar Allan Poe and the
Brothers Grimm, in its endless twisting labyrinth dozens5 – perhaps hundreds –
met their deaths at the hands of the man who was to murder what Rockefeller
was to oil, a Robber Baron of homicide. And its corridors can perhaps lead us
down some interesting paths of our own. Watch that first step. It’s a doozy.
“There really was no end to its windings – to its incomprehensible sub-
divisions. It was difficult, at any given time, to say with any certainty
upon which of its . . . stories one happened to be. From each room to
every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in
ascent or descent.”
– Edgar Allan Poe, “William Wilson”
Even the beginning of Holmes’ life is a lie and a mystery – he was born
Herman Webster Mudgett in Gilmanton,6 New Hampshire, in an unknown
year. (1858 and 1861 are the likely candidates.) He attended medical school in
Vermont and at the University of Michigan, where his education seems to have
flourished mainly in dissection, grave-robbing, and postmortem destruction of
flesh.7 Expelled from the University for cadaver theft (likely for use in insurance
fraud schemes), Mudgett traveled across the Midwest running short cons and
insurance frauds, and beginning a career of bigamous marriage for money. (Like
the number of his victims, the number of Holmes’ wives may never be known.)
In 1886, using his new sobriquet of “Harry Howard Holmes” and his medical
training, he applied for a job in the drugstore of the widow Mrs. E.S. Holden in
the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago.8 His skill and drive turned the store
into a thriving operation and Ms. Holden into his lover and possibly his first
Chicago victim, in short order. With the proceeds from her store, her life insur-
ance policy, and the sale of her skeleton to a medical school, Holmes began con-
struction of an edifice truly worthy of his ambitions. Between August of 1888
and May of 1890, a crew of 800 workers under Holmes’ personal supervision
began building a three-story turreted, battlemented combination storefront,
offices, apartment complex, and mansion at 701-703 West 63rd Street.
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Few workers remained on the job for more than two weeks; Holmes fired any-
8 I would be remiss in my duties as a true
one who asked too many questions about the purpose of the gas-jets in the guest
Chicagoan if I didn’t add an endorsement
rooms, the elevator shaft with no elevator, the hidden passages, the soundproof here of Richard Lindberg’s superb Return
asbestos-lined vaults, the alarm bells activated by opening apartment doors, the to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to
stairs to nowhere, the kilns and quicklime pits and trapdoors and full chemical Infamous Places in Chicago. From gangland
laboratories and peepholes and everything else in the 105 rooms covering the hits to Indian massacres to fires to prison
entire city block including a nine-room basement illegally hooked up to the camps to decadent murders, it’s all here,
city’s gas mains and tunneled under the alley. In this Gormenghastly palace, and picked out on handy maps for the
Holmes flourished, killing his secretaries and office-girls, a series of wives, and ghoulish tourist. Lindberg’s Chicago by
at least 50 paying guests, many of whom arrived for the Chicago World’s Gaslight is a riproaringly good look at
Columbian Exposition held in nearby Hyde Park. Holmes dissected the bodies, Chicago’s deliriously corrupt “Levee” era
performed his chemical experiments upon them, saved important pieces in his from 1880-1920. In a similar vein,
Herbert Asbury’s Gem of the Prairie and
vaults, and dissolved the rest in quicklime or burnt them in a glass-bending fur-
Curt Johnson and R. Craig Sautter’s
nace. Among the victims disposed of thusly was Wade Warner, the furnace’s Wicked City Chicago ramble through much
designer. anecdotal sin, culture, and history.

“The case of Holmes illustrates the practical as well as the purely 9 There’s not actually anything standing
ethical value of ‘honor among thieves,’ and shows how a comparatively on the site of Holmes’ Murder Castle
insignificant misdeed may ruin a great and comprehensive plan of now; the closest building is a U.S. Post
Office.
crime.”
– H.B. Irving, 10 An even better novel based on Holmes’
A Book of Remarkable Criminals career is Robert Bloch’s American Gothic,
although it fictionalizes more details than
In the Murder Castle, Holmes was in his element. Unfortunately, the Castle Eckert.
cost a fortune to operate – Holmes gave the figure of $50,000 – and due in part
to its unorthodox construction, was showing its shoddiness early. Holmes
torched the third floor for insurance – only to balk at the adjuster’s
reasonable request to see the inside damage. He attempted to
marry one Minnie Williams, a rich Texas heiress, to solve the
problem, but her sister interfered, and Holmes wound up
killing them both for nothing when the Texas courts
refused to transfer their property to him without death cer-
tificates. Broke, Holmes returned to the old “unknown
corpse” insurance scheme, talking his sidekick Benjamin
Pitezel into faking his death for money. The fake turned real,
and Holmes followed up by killing Pitezel’s children. Arrested
when he tried to claim the money, Holmes wound up in grave
trouble as the Chicago Police finally broke into the deserted
Murder Castle and found some of Holmes’ gory trophies.
The Castle burned down on August 19, 1894, before a com-
plete search could be made (and before the police detective in
charge could turn the building into a “murder museum”).9
Convicted of Pitezel’s murder (though never charged with any
of his other, possibly 200+, killings), Holmes was hanged in
Philadelphia’s colonial-era Moyamensing Prison, under the
gaze of a man-shaped iron gibbet frame. Following pro-
nouncement of last rites by Father Henry MacPake, Holmes
again denied killing anyone but “two women,” recanted his
confession, and died at 10:25 a.m. on May 7, 1896, after dan-
gling from the noose for 13 minutes.
Ironically, Allan Eckert’s true crime novel The Scarlet
Mansion10 makes the case that Holmes was hung for one of
the few deaths in his acquaintanceship he didn’t cause – that
Pitezel really did commit suicide, but being an idiot, screwed
that up, too. Of course, Harold Schechter’s equally well-
researched study Depraved says, with the jury, that Holmes was indeed
guilty as charged. You pays your money and you takes your choice; me, I’m with
Schechter on this one, but both works repay the reader with grue aplenty.
75
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
“Take your time, Alex. You know I’m in no hurry.”
– last words of H.H. Holmes

11 Of the four known serial killers who
were operating in Englewood when I
wrote this column, the Chicago Police
Department have identified and arrested
three as I write this footnote.
12 Gilles makes his bow on pp. 57-60.
13 Bruno Bettelheim, one of the premier
psychological researchers into fairy tales,
turns out to have been something of a
piece of work himself, but his The Uses of
Enchantment is still very compelling read-
ing for people interested in projected sub-
texts behind “children’s stories.”
14 Which was based on Clive Barker’s
short story “The Forbidden,” and on the
“Bloody Mary” urban legend (for which
see p. STi95) and on actual occurrences at
Cabrini-Green, viz:
Old women in the housing project
reported “men coming out of the mirror”
to the police, who dismissed it as senile
dementia or mass hysteria or both. Until
one of the “mirror men” murdered one of
the old ladies in question, and the police
tracked the killer to the bathroom mirror.
Which, apparently to save money, the
contractor had failed to provide with a
back; the mirrors covered, essentially,
open passageways between the adjacent
apartments.
But in your game, of course, that’s another beautiful area of fog, another
dark room in the metaphorical castle of Holmes’ potential. If, for instance,
Holmes was innocent in Pitezel’s death, it might explain the “Holmes Curse.”
Oh, come now, you knew there’d be a curse, right? Apparently Holmes, or his
“malign influences,” killed coroner’s physician (and key prosecution witness) Dr.
William K. Mattern by blood poisoning, Father MacPake by a mysterious sav-
age beating, informant Marion Hedgepeth by gunshot, Moyamensing Prison
Superintendent Perkins and Murder Castle custodian Pat Quinlan by suicide,
and jury foreman Linford Biles in an electrical fire. Fire crackles through the
stories, seemingly carried by sparks jumping from the blazing Castle – the insur-
ance claim office that balked at paying off the Pitezel claim was gutted in 1896,
one of Holmes’ fathers-in-law burned in a gas explosion, and the World’s Fair
White City that fed the Castle itself went up in 1894. Even today, multiple seri-
al killers operate in Englewood,11 the neighborhood where the Murder Castle
stood, and where a recent Chicago Police survey found over 600 abandoned or
burned-out buildings – any one of which could have a strange back door into
1893 in your game.
“She took then the little key and opened [the door] in a very great
trembling. But she could see nothing distinctly, because the windows
were all shut; after some moments, she began to observe that the
floor was all covered over with clotted blood, on which lay the bodies of
several dead women ranged against the walls.”
– Charles Perrault, “The Bluebeard,” in
Tales and Stories of Times Past (1697)

15 See note 13 on p. 44.

16 Or so says Robert Graves, in The White

Goddess. For the Druids, see note 17 on
p. 56.

17 This whole doppelgänger element calls

to mind the 1824 novel The Private
Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
by the folklorist and poet James Hogg
(1771-1834). In it, a man claims that his
double, one Gil-Martin, seems to have
encouraged him on a path of serial killing.
Whether Gil-Martin was the Devil, a psy-
chotic projection of the narrator’s reli-
gious mania, a dissociated personality, or
(as the narrator suggests) Peter the Great
incognito (!) is left bisociatively indeter-
minate. It influenced not only Poe’s story
“William Wilson” (where we add the
eldritch edifice to the doppelgänger
motif) but also Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde.

76
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
But be careful when you open strange doors, as the bride finds out in the
old fairy tale of Bluebeard – he of the closet full of dead wives, the only room in
1 8 Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, or
his castle his bride is forbidden to enter. You’ll find it in Perrault and Grimm,
Thatch, had a brief career (15 months)
although its origin is a mystery. Many
that ended on December 3, 1718 at
authorities consider the story of Oracroke Inlet, North Carolina, where
Bluebeard a mythologization and Teach had a villa near the governor’s
socialization of the mass murders of plantation. For more pirates, see pp. 82-
Gilles de Rais, 12 the pedophile 84. Tim Powers works his customary
alchemist of the 15th century. Others magic with Blackbeard’s career in On
point to the legend of St. Triphine and Stranger Tides.
Cunmore the Cursed, about the holy
wife of a 6th-century uxoricidal Breton 19 See Maury Terry’s The Ultimate Evil,
noble. Still others adduce the “forbid- for a feverish linkage between American
serial killers like Charles Manson and the
den bride” stories like the swan-may or
“Son of Sam” and the old British Satanic
Cupid and Psyche, although the
cult, the creepily Nazi-loving Process
absence of piles of dead exes is a signifi- Church (which, interestingly enough,
cant difference. Bruno Bettelheim 13 named their Eden “Xtul,” for us
calls the stories fears of cuckolding; Lovecraft fans). The Process Church
feminists call them fears of childbirth. flourished between 1965 and 1971, finally
It’s all about the bloodstains on that key, petering out around 1975 when its
or in some cases, an egg. Before we founder, Robert DeGrimston Moore, quit
leave the realm of the archetype and the to go work for the phone company.
urban legend, does the Murder Castle
remind anyone else of the – quite accu- 20 In fact, as Norman Cohn demonstrates
persuasively in Europe’s Inner Demons, the-
rately-depicted – warren of rooms in
ories and rumors of blasphemous murder
the Cabrini-Green housing project in
cults, with exactly the same m.o., go back
the movie Candyman?14 Thought it might. The story is quite old; it seems that to the Roman accusations against the
Holmes (and Gilles de Rais) may have been playing parts in a drama of mythical Christians (and before that, to Roman
power – a very old Greek story tells of Death’s habit of feeding his former wives accusations against the cults of Dionysos
to his newest bride, and being vanquished with his own name. and Cybele). The Christian Church then
turned around and aimed the same attacks
“I am convinced that since my imprisonment I have changed woefully at the Jews, the Templars, the “witches”
(though see note 2, p. 61), various heretics
and gruesomely from what I was formerly in feature and figure . . .
including the Cathars, and so forth.
My head and face are gradually assuming an elongated shape. I believe “Rational, secular” society has then seen
fully that I am growing to resemble the Devil – that the similitude is the same stories crop up about the Jesuits
almost completed.” (and other Catholic orders), the
– from the confession of H.H. Holmes, April 10 1896 Freemasons, the CIA, and the completely
imaginary “Satanic child abuse rings” (for
which see Satanic Panic, by Jeffrey S.
Which brings us to Mudgett/Holmes, and the peculiarity of naming. Was
Victor) of the modern repressed-memory
Holmes just following a standard con-man practice, or was he putting on and
cult. (On which topic, let me recommend
taking off ritual masks? Inductees into a magical lodge take new names, and so Hollida Wakefield and Ralph
do married women. (Marriage itself, of course, is an alchemical consumma- Underwager’s Return of the Furies.)
tion;15 perhaps Holmes’ anima needed constant infusions of feminine, lunar Now, like the UFOs (who can be
energy.) The triplicity of “HHH” screams magickal intent – and the Druidic shown to be Satanic minions of this con-
meaning of the hawthorn-“H” is death, purification by fire, and the month of spiracy on the Watcher’s website at
May16 – when Holmes completed the Castle. Holmes also died in May, recall, www.MT.net/~watcher), one can take
and following his request, his body was encased in a solid block of concrete. evidence of a common legend stretching
Who did Holmes fear? In his confession, he claimed that “the Evil One” back to the beginning of history one of
had been “standing as my sponsor” since birth – and in his autobiography he two ways: either people will always make
this stuff up, or the Truth is really Out
repeatedly mentions a mysterious accomplice,17 one “Edward Hatch.” Hatch
There, and there really has been a contin-
never existed, although (Bluebeard) Holmes’ parallels with another Evil One,
uous Satanic Tradition (most likely in
Blackbeard, pop to mind – especially since “Edward Thatch” was a name used league with the Reptoids, as David Icke
by the sadistic pirate.18 Plenty of other serial killers, from the “Son of Sam” to will assure you in The Biggest Secret) dat-
Richard Ramirez, have been convinced of help or inspiration from Below, and in ing back to ancient Rome and beyond, all
your game the claims of a nationwide ring of Satanic murder-cultists19 might of whom kidnap and abuse children in
stretch back a century.20 They might even be accurate. And if so, what better between committing serial poisonings.
place for the cult to begin than the twisting corridors and hellish basement of
the Murder Castle of H.H. Holmes?
77
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Pyramid originally posted “The Shadows
Over Lovecraft” on H.P. Lovecraft’s 109th
birthday, August 20, 1999. The next essay in
publication order is “Who Killed Kit
Marlowe?” on p. 38.
1 I’m unable to discern whether Whipple
Phillips’ rumored Egyptian Freemasonry
was the Krata Repoa Egyptian Rite in
Seven Degrees founded by one von
Köppen in Germany in 1770, or the more
successful (if more embarrassing to stodgy
Masons) Egyptian Masonry founded in
1777 by “Count Cagliostro” (1743-1795),
or (to be technical) whether Phillips was
actually initiated at all.
Alchemist, mystery man, confidence
trickster, spy, and courtier, Cagliostro
may, in fact, have been the Sicilian rogue
“Giuseppe Balsamo” that the Inquisition
identified him as, but all that’s known for
certain of his meteoric career is that it
ended badly, with him in the prison of
San Leo for heresy. He’s something
of the “Hammer Films version” of
Saint-Germain, more richly-colored and
gratuitous.
2 The Cahokia Mound complex marks
the site of the largest city north of the Rio
Grande until 1740, when it was edged out
by Philadelphia. Begun around 700 A.D.,
Cahokia reached its peak population of
20,000 some time between 1100 and
1200. Monk’s Mound, the 100-foot-tall
monument at the center of the city, is the
largest earthwork in the Western
Hemisphere. Cahokia began to decline in
the 13th century, and was entirely desert-
ed by 1450. Nobody knows why.
3 Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, with its
total length of caves and passages of over
150 miles, is home to not only the tradi-
tional “little people” and haunt lore, but
at least three ghosts: an old slave guide
named Stephen Bishop, a young girl
named Melissa who marooned her lover
in the cave as a prank, and trapped miner
Floyd Collins. For such details, I com-
mend Dennis William Hauck’s Haunted
Places: The National Directory, and Arthur
Myers’ (vastly less comprehensive, but
still worth dipping into) Ghostly Gazetteer
and Ghostly Register.
4 For the Mysterious Airship, see pp.
STi43-45, or Daniel Cohen’s The Great
Airship Mystery, or Wallace O. Chariton’s
delightfully chauvinistic The Great Texas
Airship Mystery.
78
The Shadows
Over Lovecraft
“[T]he Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding
their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshy minds
of mammals.”
– H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
Happy birthday, Howard. HPL is 109 today, born August 20, 1890 at 194
Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. And although Lovecraft’s life was
even more bland and prosaic than that of many a New England writer before or
since, the legendry woven about it after his death rivals even the most lurid of
the fictions he penned. If the sleep of reason brings forth monsters, the sleep of
reason about Lovecraft must bring forth Things Man Was Not Meant To
Know, But Was Very Much Meant To Slip Into Horror Games. Dream, then, a
little dream with me.
“‘But that’s absurd! The facts of Lovecraft’s life are fully documented!’
‘Not all of them.’ ‘What about the biographies I read, and the memoirs
by Derleth and others?’ . . . ‘Derleth never set eyes on him at all.
Neither did most of HPL’s correspondents or today’s scholars. They rely
on hearsay and the letters he wrote. Well, hearsay is inaccurate. As for
the letters – what better way for a man to hide his real persona than
behind a wall of words?’”
– Keith and Waverly, in Strange Eons by Robert Bloch
Even the solid and sober facts of Lovecraft’s life can give one pause, if
looked at correctly. A writer obsessed with ichthyoid beings from the deep, he
suffered from abnormally acute sensitivity to cold – “poikilothermism” or “fish
temperature.” A loudly self-proclaimed materialist and empiricist, he remained
fascinated by New England legendry and witch-trials all his life. His father died
a raving syphilitic madman – and HPL wrote stories of men driven mad by mis-
cegenation for the rest of his life. All these, rather than being grist for tedious
mills of literary criticism, can set the stage for greater parallelisms between
Lovecraft’s life and work in games. For the GM wishing to find a proximate
source for Lovecraft’s magic, HPL himself identified the library of his maternal
grandfather, Whipple Phillips. Phillips was a prominent Egyptian Freemason,1
investor, and world traveler. One itinerary of his travels mentions the Cahokia
mounds,2 Mammoth Cave,3 and ancient archaeological sites
in Italy and Egypt. Primordial mounds, the underground,
Rome, and Egypt – Lovecraftian Places of Mystery in a
nutshell. Phillips died in March of 1904 of a stroke,
bearing a “grotesque, twisted expression on [his] face”
that even the coroner found “quite disconcerting.”
“My own dreams usually go back very far
in time . . . But the real scenes frequently
merge into unknown and fantastic realms,
and include landscapes and
architectural vistas which could scarcely
be on this planet.”
– H.P. Lovecraft,
letter to Willis Conover, Jan. 10, 1937
 HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
Inheriting his grandfather’s wanderlust, Lovecraft traveled himself – all
throughout New England, of course, but also ranging as far afield as Cleveland, 5 The “Nameless City” of the short story
New Orleans, St. Augustine, and Quebec. Always he sought out old graveyards, is, in fact, modeled after (and intended to
strange hilltops and stones, and local legendry. Research for his fiction? Or allude strongly to) Irem, City of the
investigation into nonfiction? Many of Lovecraft’s most exotic – and informative – Pillars, from pp. 85-87.
trips took place in dreams. Lovecraft had been a terrific dreamer since 1896-
1897 (the years the “mysterious airship”4 cruised America), seeing monsters, 6 I don’t care what anybody told you they
strange locales, and other times. Many of his stories and poems (including read on the Net; the Necronomicon is fic-
almost all of the Fungi From Yuggoth cycle), such as “The Statement of tion, and H.P. Lovecraft made it up, as
Daniel Harms and John Wisdom Gonce
Randolph Carter,” “Celephaïs,” and “The Call of Cthulhu” derive wholly or in
III demonstrate in The Necronomicon Files.
part from HPL’s vivid nightmares. His dreams inspired “The Nameless City”5 Of the two copies of the dread tome in
(where he first quotes the Necronomicon)6 and he composed “Nyarlathotep” in a my possession, I prefer Colin Wilson and
dream, writing it as he awoke – the Messenger of the Old Ones, quite literally, David Langford’s spoof Necronomicon: The
then, appeared to Lovecraft in a dream. This was hardly the first god HPL ever Book of Dead Names to the “Simon”
encountered – as a youth, he saw Pan7 in his grandfather’s back garden. Necronomicon, which attempts to tie
Lovecraftian cosmology to Sumerian
“One is reminded of the recent case of an Adept who attempted to use a myth and Crowleian magick.
vehicle which, from sheer terror of that which lay beyond the spatial
7 Pan was the god of the wilderness, mad-
pylons, vehemently denied its master and was prematurely snuffed out ness, and sudden “panic” terror.
of existence. I refer to Howard P. Lovecraft, whose occult experiences, Traditionally, hearing the “howl of Pan”
disguised as fiction, vividly adumbrate the awful possibility at which drove the listener mad (much like man-
Crowley but vaguely hints . . .” drakes). Arthur Machen took that and
– Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God combined it with the notion of the
unwatchable divine Radiance to come up
with his exceptional short novel “The
Great God Pan,” in which seeing the god
unhinges the viewer and (it is hinted)
opens her up to possession and invasion
from Outside. Shortly after 1830, Pan
began to appear more and more frequent-
ly in poetry and fiction until by 1910 or so
he had become the most-referenced
pagan deity in all English literature. And
Dig much deeper into this, with the proper blithe disregard for truth, and then World War One broke out.
you get mighty close to Kenneth Grant’s thesis, that Lovecraft was an uncon-
8 Aiwass was the entity who dictated the
scious adept, a “channel” for extra-dimensional beings from outside Time.
Book of the Law to Crowley in 1904 (see
Grant draws explicit parallels between Crowley’s Aiwass and Choronzon8 and note 7, p. 37) and Choronzon the demon
Lovecraft’s Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth – to him, Lovecraft saw the Door Crowley defeated in Algeria in 1909 to
Between The Planes, Daath,9 and recoiled – the recoil is what killed him. It is cross the Abyss and achieve the status of a
interesting that Lovecraft died on March 15, the death-day of Attis, consort of full Magus. Some say that Crowley actu-
Cybele 10 – whom HPL identified as an aspect of Shub- ally lost the battle, and it was
Niggurath. Lovecraft’s birthday is also the birthday of the Choronzon’s influence (or possession)
Moon, appropriately so for a nocturnal wanderer preoc- that squandered his potential so effective-
cupied with lunacy – and the feast day of St. Bernard ly. And then World War One broke out.
of Clairvaux,11 the “Thaumaturgus of the West” and
patron saint of beekeepers. Bees, of course, sym- 9 For Daath, see note on p. 86.
bolize the Merovingian lineage – the “fainting
10 For Cybele, see note 9 on p. 71.
kings” born from a mysterious sea-being, bearing
the mark of their blood – does the Prieuré de Sion 11 St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153)
become the Esoteric Order of Dagon?12 also, it turns out, was an indefatigable
patron of the Templars, and wrote the
“At night, I go invisibly in spirit and Templar Rule in 1128.
the body remains behind; we go forth in the
12 And do both descend from the alien,
service of Christ, and [we fight] the witches of
gnostic Nommos, from note 9 on p. 62?
the Devil . . .”
– Battista Moduco, under interrogation
by the Inquisition, Jun. 27, 1580

79
HIGH WEIRDOS: MEN, MYTHS, AND MONSTERS
13 For the Benandanti, see pp. 61-63.
14 On pp. WWi122-123.
15 This aspect of Lovecraft’s life and per-
sonal beliefs can be overstated (as L.
Sprague de Camp does in Lovecraft: A
Biography) or understated (as S.T. Joshi
does, in his generally superior, but not as
much as some people would have you
believe, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life). But it’s
interesting that in “Shadow Over
Innsmouth,” HPL describes the Elder
Sign (which drives away the evil beings) as
“what ye call a swastika naowdays.”
16 For Enochian, see note 12, p. 43.
1 7 See p. 121 for LaVey and his
Trapezohedron fetish.
18 Michael Aquino’s Temple of Set has
been accused, by some paranoid Satanists
(and, likely, other paranoids as well) of
being a U.S. Army psychological warfare
operation. Or, I suppose, of being the
U.S. Army’s liaison unit with Satan.
19 See note 16, p. 108.
80
And if so, wouldn’t Lovecraft fight them as only a New England gentleman
can? Perhaps Lovecraft’s oneiric journeys caused him to enlist in – or be recruit-
ed by – the Benandanti,13 that mysterious north Italian secret society whose
members battled witchcraft and deviltry in their dreams before the Inquisition
drove them underground. In GURPS Who’s Who 1,14 Peter Chen suggests that
Lovecraft faked his death so that he could more easily wander the world safe
from Their notice – perhaps retracing the steps of his grandfather from
Mississippian mound to Egyptian tomb. (Speaking of Egyptian tombs, it’s pretty
interesting that Lovecraft’s “Imprisoned With The Pharaohs” posits secret tun-
nels below the Giza plateau; tunnels that radical Egyptologists are only now,
based on sonar maps of the area, beginning to suspect actually exist.) At the
other end of his life, Lovecraft’s whereabouts from 1908 to 1913 (from age 18 to
23, prime adventuring years) still remain a nearly complete blank. 1908 is when
the mysterious airship returns, visible primarily over (wait for it) southern New
England. Speaking of peculiar coincidences, it’s interesting to note that Wingate
Peaslee in “The Shadow Out of Time” spends precisely those years (1908-1913)
under the control of the Great Race of Yith; and Charles Dexter Ward (perhaps
Lovecraft’s closest fictional stand-in), from age 18 to 23 investigates occult lore
first in Providence and then in Europe.
“There surely is an actual Hitler peril – yet that cannot blind us to the
honest rightness of the man’s basic urge. . . It may be that Hitlerism’s
function will be to point out certain needs which wiser heads & hands
will ultimately rectify in a more moderate way – not only in Germany
but in other nations where similar needs or problems exist.”
– H.P. Lovecraft, letter to J. Vernon Shea, Sept. 25, 1933
Of course, if HPL was wandering prewar Europe in secret, it might not
have been a good thing. In Vienna in 1908, mad rune-magician Guido von List
founded the Armanen Initiates, ritual pagan precursors to the Thule Society and
the Nazi Party. Players may tend to like Lovecraft – which means that he makes
a perfect villain. There’s sadly little doubt about Lovecraft’s strongly-held beliefs
in Nordic superiority, anti-Semitism, and kindred racist ideologies.15 Just the
kind of fellow, in other words, that the Old Ones are looking for. For crying out
loud, he’s the person who channeled Nyarlathotep and revealed more blasphe-
mous lore than any ten men before him! Thanks to his “warning” writings,
“chaos magickians” and “Typhonian OTO” groups now perform Golden
Dawn-derived Enochian16 rituals dedicated to contacting and evoking the
Great Old Ones! Really! Is the kabbalistic reading of “H.P. Lovecraft” as 436 –
Sathanas, or Satan – a coincidence? Anton
LaVey17 incorporated calls to Cthulhu into his
Satanic liturgies, and his successor Michael
Aquino 18 has explicitly performed
“Lovecraftian workings” in the old SS cult cen-
ter at Wewelsburg.19 Returning to kabbalah;
“Necronomicon” reduces to 555, “darkness” in
Hebrew – and Hitler’s Nazi Party membership
number.
One last coincidence, one last evidence.
Unknown vandals violated Lovecraft’s grave in
Swan Point Cemetery on October 13, 1997 –
the same week “a large, triangle-shaped” UFO
appeared over Cranston, Rhode Island, less
than 15 miles away. A Shining Trapezohedron,
or a Mi-Go craft returned for some essential
saltes? Happy birthday – and pleasant dreams.
 S
aith Charles Fort, “One measures a circle
beginning anywhere.” This Great Circle begins
(almost exactly) on the other side of the Earth
from your humble author. In a Grand Tour of
High Weirdness, we move roughly west with the sun,
spanning the continents (Asia gets one essay on each
end, and Australia and Antarctica sit it out on the
bench) in a kabbalistic Cook’s tour of the planet. A
final column leaps free from the surly bonds of
Earth to worlds that shine only (or at least shine
brightest) in the skies of these places of mystery.

Libertatia or Death! .............................................................................................................................82

City in Dust: Many-Columned Irem ......................................................................................85
Glozel Est Magnif ique! .......................................................................................................................88
Golden Cities, Far: The Greater El Dorado Metropolitan Area ........................91
The Fractal Valley .................................................................................................................................95
Trail of the Black Dragon ...............................................................................................................98
Nine is Not Enough.............................................................................................................................101
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
Pyramid originally posted “Libertatia or
Death” on October 8, 1999. The next essay in
publication order is “Return of Clio’s
Nightmares,” on p. 10.
1 On the subject of pirates in general, I
strongly recommend Jan Rogozinski’s
Pirates! An A-Z Encyclopedia as the first
reference recourse. David Cordingly’s
Under the Black Flag is an excellent study
of the subject. Along with Defoe/Johnson,
Buccaneers of America by John Exquemelin
(spellings vary) is the other major nearly-
primary source, and full of bloody good-
ness it is, too.
2 Serendip is a medieval term for, proba-
bly, the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
It was known as the land of good fortune,
and reputed to be full of jewels and magi-
cal beasts.
82
Libertatia or Death!
“Content with these Prizes, he made the best of his Way home to
Libertatia, where he arrived without any sinister Accident . . . he found a
great Quantity of English Crowns on Board his Dutch Prize, which were
carried into the common Treasury, Money being of no Use where every
Thing was in common, and no Hedge bounded any particular Man’s
Property.”
– “Captain Charles Johnson,” A General History of the
Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates
With the guns of GURPS Swashbucklers sounding on the horizon, it’s only pru-
dent for the GM to look for a home port, a pirate1 haven from which to sally forth
and ravage her players’ preconceptions. Such a place is, or was, or wasn’t, Libertatia,
piratical utopia on the shore of Madagascar. Libertatia is a bisociative free port,
either fiction or legend or mistake or propaganda or suppressed history or all five.
On its teakwood docks four-armed cyclopes and dog-headed men labor, taking the
trade in roc’s feathers from Serendip,2 grimoires from Atlantis, rebels from Utopia,
and pearls from the Indies, watching the bold corsairs sail out to prowl the sea lanes
between History and Myth. Above it all flaps the white banner of the Invisibles.
What’s beneath it all? Glad you asked.
“[T]hey there enjoy’d all the Necessaries of Life; were free and independent
of all the World; and it would be Madness again to subject themselves to any
Government, which, however mild, still exerted some Power. That he was
Governor for three Months, by the Choice of his Companions; but his
Power extended no further than to the judging in Matters of small
Difference which might arise . . .”
– “Captain Charles Johnson,” A General History of the
Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates
Some time during the 1680s, a French sailor named Mission on leave in Rome
encountered a disenchanted Dominican priest, Father Caraccioli. Mission and
Caraccioli turned privateer, and when a fight with a British ship killed their officers,
the crew elected Mission the captain. Converted to Caraccioli’s ideology of rational-
ism and liberty, Mission cruised and raided around the coast of Africa, racking up
prizes and liberating the slaves on slave ships. Eventually, around 1690, Mission and
company set sail for the island of Madagascar, to found “a new marine republic”
since “every man is born free, and has as much right to what will support him as to
the air he respires.” Since they were not pirates but men fighting for “Rights and
Liberties,” they flew a white flag emblazoned “Liberté” instead of the Jolly Roger.
Mission’s new republic, christened Libertatia, began by holding all property in
common; the pirates (and their liberated slave companions) built docks and houses
but no fences, and seaward fortifications to guard against “the Europeans.” The
Libertatians built two new ships to chart the coast, and in the course of a 1692 voy-
age against Portuguese traders near Zanzibar encountered the famed pirate Thomas
Tew. Tew joined Libertatia as its Admiral, assisting in its successful defense against
five attacking European ships. Eventually, the Libertatians began to quarrel, and in
an assembly elected a democratic government which seems to have ended the experi-
ment in communalism; as “an equal Division was made of their Treasure and Cattle,
and every one began either to inclose Land for himself or his Neighbour, who would
hire his Assistance.” Although the colony both attracted new settlers and spawned
more anarchistic outliers, by 1694 it had fallen to a native attack “without the least
Provocation given, in the Dead of the Night.” Mission died in a storm on the way to
America with Tew, and the dream of Libertatia died with him.
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
“Daniel Defoe, whose life (1660-1731) spanned Britain’s emergence as a 3 The Sufis (from sufi, “wearer of wool”)
Protestant constitutional monarchy, was shifty and secretive to the point of are mystical students of Islam, much as
the kabbalists are the mystical students of
using a code and disguising his handwriting.”
Judaism. Their occasionally unorthodox
– Defoe scholar Richard West (1999) religious beliefs also have some common-
ality with the Gnostics, as does the gener-
Or not. The story of Captain Mission and Libertatia comes from one source only, al Sufistic notion that the ultimate truth is
the second volume of A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious a matter for personal study and teaching,
Pyrates, published in 1728 under the name of Captain Charles Johnson. In 1932, Defoe rather than the universal divine revelation
scholar John Robert Moore identified “Johnson” (whose name appears nowhere in the of orthodox Islam (or Christianity). Much
copious Admiralty records of the era) as pamphleteer and novelist Daniel Defoe. Defoe, of Sufist mysticism revolves around
the author of Robinson Crusoe and other works, has a properly murky career for aficiona- metaphors of motion such as ocean waves
or dancing; in fact the “whirling dervish-
dos of dubiety; he wrote travel narratives of places he hadn’t been, printed broadsheets
es” derive from the Persian darvish, mean-
on paranormal and political matters, worked as a spy for Robert Harley (Earl of ing “poor” (as in, “Blessed are the poor in
Mortimer and Oxford, and sporadic power behind the throne of Queen Anne), and spirit”). “Fakir” also derives from that
played both ends of the Whig-Tory Jacobite-Hanoverian game against the middle. (He term, from the Arabic faqir.
also wrote A System of Magic and A Political History of the Devil in 1726, and a book on Sufism traces its ancestry to
ghosts and apparitions two years later.) Mohammed (of course) but seems to have
Intriguingly, historians P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens questioned (but, heated emerged primarily in the later 9th century
statements to the contrary, did not disprove) Moore’s identification in 1988, arguing with Junayd of Baghdad (d. 920). The
that there was no solid evidence save Moore’s intuition that Defoe wrote it, so the issue well-known Turkish poet Jalal-ud-Din
remains open in proper bisociative style. A larger issue remains the authenticity of the Rumi (1202-1273) founded the Mehlevi
story – the sadly well-documented career of Tew indicates that he could not have played order of whirling dervishes. Sufi orders
continue in practice across the Muslim
the role in Libertatian history that “Roberts” puts forth. Defoe (or “Roberts”), the argu-
world, especially in North Africa.
ment goes, created the utopian Mission out of whole cloth to put forth his radical Whig For the actual beliefs of Sufis, I can
beliefs, and Libertatia joins Plato’s Atlantis and More’s Utopia on the list of political suggest looking into the works of Idries
tracts set on comfortably distant islands. Shah (who, under the pseudonym Arkon
Daraul, wrote about them in A History of
“We have speculated that 17th century mariners shared more than the secrets Secret Societies). For the Sufis as benevo-
of a craft – they may have shared certain clandestine ideas as well . . . lent Secret Masters of the world, Ernest
Scott’s People of the Secret ties them into
If Islamophilic notions circulated among educated Masons, why not among
the Cathars, Templars, Freemasons, and
a ‘masonry’ of poor mariners? . . . If we have no written record of this the rest of the usual suspects. Scott, by the
‘conspiracy,’ we may ask what documents ever emerge from an oral and way, identifies the Masonic “Hiram Abiff”
non-literate (sub)culture?” (see note 3, p. 71) as the crucified (or dis-
– Peter Lamborn Wilson, Pirate Utopias membered) Sufi teacher Hussein ibn-
Mansur el-Hallaj (858-922).
But, not necessarily. In Pirate Utopias, Peter Lamborn Wilson, though his left-
4 For Nemo, see note 14 on p. 48,
anarchistic fantasies occasionally get the better of him, demonstrates that a pirate repub- although it’s interesting in this context of
lic with a strongly communitarian bent (and a surprisingly large “heretical” European noble pirates who may or may not have
population) existed in the Moorish port (and Sufi3 center) of Sallee from 1627 to 1668. existed that the name “Nemo” means “no
It’s unquestionably true that a kind of piratical Hong Kong existed under Adam one.”
Baldridge on St.-Mary’s Island near Madagascar between 1691 and 1697. (It, too, was
destroyed by angry natives.) Possibly as many as 2,000 European and American pirates 5 From the Illuminatus! trilogy, by Robert
lived in Madagascar (conveniently out of European control, and astride the rich trade Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
routes from India to Europe) in the late 17th century. None of Defoe’s contemporaries
or sources ever questioned “Roberts’” tale of Libertatia; it certainly could have been true, 6 Who founded the Bank of England, and
at least in outline, with Tew’s role exaggerated to get a little name recognition. was an Illuminated Reptoid, according to the
wonderful David Icke’s The Biggest Secret.
Whether propagandist or publicist, Defoe was spreading anarchist-libertarian-
communist memes throughout his audience, no doubt in service to Someone. The 7 Which we encountered the last time con-
white flag of the pirates recalls Grant Morrison’s Invisibles, of course. On the interesting spiratorial types unlimbered the Masonic skull
literary echo front, Mission, like his successor in Indian Ocean predation Captain and crossbones in the Caribbean: the
Nemo,4 swears “that he did not make War with the Oppressed, but the Oppressors,” Templar fleet on pp. 31-34. In actual fact, the
which also recalls Discordian admiral Hagbard Celine.5 It’s axiomatic that anyone pirate flags varied widely, although many of
involved in British politics is involved in The Conspiracy, of course; Defoe supported the Indian Ocean pirates of Tew’s era and the
William of Orange6 and opposed the crypto-Masonic Stuarts, keeper of the Prieuré de later Caribbean pirates of Blackbeard’s bore
Sion Bloodline. Later, Defoe was imprisoned for allegedly supporting the Stuarts against “death’s head” devices on red or black ban-
the house of Hanover – could there be a connection here with the Masonic oath swear- ners. Maybe the important part is allegiance
ing “brotherhood with corsairs?”7 to the Crystal Skull from pp. 119-121.

83
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
8 According to H.P. Blavatsky’s (1831-
1891) stunningly bizarre (and racist)
Theosophical cosmology, the Lemurians
are the Third Root Race of the Earth,
four-armed giants with eyes on the sides
of their heads (or, in some cases, three
eyes, or one). Until they were possessed
by spirit beings called the Kumaras, the
Lemurians had reproduced by fission;
afterward, they developed sex, and came
from eggs. Some Lemurians, driven mad
by their new sexuality, copulated with
pre-sentient Lemurians and spawned
monsters (and apes, and most of the
native tribes around the Indian Ocean
basin as it turns out). The wars of the
Lemurians and the monsters caused cata-
strophe. Although the Lemurians gained
assistance from the “Serpents and
Dragons of Light” (aha! Reptoids!) from
Venus (and Nordics!), Lemuria was
destroyed roughly 18 million years ago,
give or take an eon.
For good old H.P.B., see her (sym-
pathetic) biography by Sylvia Cranston,
H.P.B., or her (unsympathetic) bio by
Peter Washington, Madam Blavatsky’s
Baboon. For Theosophy, see H.P.B.’s own
turgid Secret Doctrine, or Joscelyn
Godwin’s (sympathetic but sound)
Theosophical Enlightenment. For Lemuria
in general, see L. Sprague de Camp’s Lost
Continents, which is about just what you’d
think.
9 According to Plato, the Atlanteans (see
note on p. 106) used the metal orichalcum
(literally, “gold-copper”) for their tools
and arts. Orichalcum might be brass,
Spanish copper (if you believe that
Atlantis was “actually” Tartessos on the
Spanish coast), or some alchemically
potent material known only to the sor-
ceror-kings of that dubious isle.
10 For more on fantastic medieval travel-
er Sir John Mandeville (1300?-1372), see
pp. STi64-66.
11 According to Pliny, there were dog-
headed men (Cynocephali) in the moun-
tains of India; in the romances of
Alexander, they breathed fire and ate
humans. (Werewolves again? See pp. 62-
63.) St. Mercurius used the Cynocephali
as soldiers against paganism, and St.
Christopher, patron saint of travelers, was
himself a Dog-Head. This, perhaps,
explains why the various medieval travel-
ers kept bringing back sightings of dog-
headed men in the East; Mandeville put
them on the isle of “Natumera” (possibly
Nicobar I.) and Marco Polo assigned
them to Madagascar.
84
“I cite this example of retroactive Utopia since it actually could
have happened . . . Had Captain Mission lived long enough to set an
example for others to follow, mankind might have stepped free . . . The
chance was there. The chance was missed . . . Your right to live where
you want, with companions of your own choosing, under laws to which
you agree, died in the 17th century with Captain Mission. Only a
miracle or disaster could restore it.”
– William S. Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night
This raises the question, then, could a Brotherhood of Corsairs have actual-
ly come into existence in the late 17th century? On a more compact scale, that’s
essentially how the Dutch Republic emerged, from the Sea Beggars and their
landward connections. Tew’s home state, Rhode Island (also a hotbed of reli-
gious and political freethinking) was essentially a “pirate republic” itself, the
colonial government resolutely looking the other way as every leading citizen
did business with Tew and his ilk. Newport, Port-Royal, Sallee, Tortuga, St-
Mary’s, Libertatia – could one successful pirate colony have sparked a chain of
them around the world? Libertatia fought off five ships; had it fortified its land-
ward side and intermarried with the natives for another decade, no European
power could have rooted it out. America’s freedom might have come from the
seas, from the liberators of slaves – Blackbeard might be on the quarter, and
Thomas Tew on the dollar bill. The feel of this alternate history is a kind of
“compasspunk” GURPS Swashbucklers; bold free-runners against the crowns
and their chartered korps.
“The first large cities, however, appeared on that region of the
continent which is now known as the island of Madagascar.”
– H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine
But the Brotherhood will need an edge, something the Masonic navigators
know, learned in a hookah haze from Moorish Rosicrucian Sufis and from the
grateful voudou houngans freed from slavery on the Guinea coast. An edge like
the lost crystal cities of Lemuria, First Continent of the Theosophical Third
Race, hidden by vibratory barriers and impenetrable jungle. Using the psychic
secrets of the four-armed “Egg-Born” giants,8 the orichalcum9 devices and fly-
ing ships, the Pirates of Lemuria swoop down upon the feeble crowns of
Europe! Libertatia becomes the First and Last Lemurian outpost, legendary
home to the misty powers of mesmerism and magnetism.
Or, play up the interracial cooperation angle, and
Libertatia can be a powerful refuge deep in the
GURPS Voodoo spirit world, reachable on the Path
of Dreams. Perhaps the houngans can
open the Path of Time, to a world
where Libertatia’s white flag flies over
Rhode Island and the Lodges fear the
sound of guns and the drums of free-
dom. Or perhaps it’s all true, and
Libertatia is the free port between
alternate history, Lemurian science,
and Mandevillian10 fantasy (Marco
Polo puts the roc
in Madagascar, after all, along
with a race of dog-headed men)11
alternating with the mystical
monsoons of etheric wind on
the Indian Ocean. Set sail, and
find out.
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
Pyramid originally posted “City in Dust:

City In Dust: Many-Columned Irem” on July 30, 1999.

The next essay in publication order is “The
Extra ‘H’ is for ‘Homicidal’: H.H. Holmes,”
Many-Columned Irem on p. 74.

“Of the cult, he said that he thought the centre lay among the pathless
deserts of Arabia, where Irem, the City of Pillars, dreams hidden and
untouched.”
– H.P. Lovecraft,1
“Call of Cthulhu”

The center of the cult, the pathless desert, 1 For Lovecraft, see pp. 78-80.
the City of Pillars, the hidden and untouched
2 Along these lines, the small
center of dreams. Like competing mirages form-
but odd subgenre of “Arabian
ing in the heat distortion, Lovecraft’s words call Gothic” horror deserves men-
images of many possibilities to mind from tion. The 1786 novel Vathek by
archaeology, to Arabian Nights entertainment, to deranged antiquities collector
horror,2 to mystery and back again. As a city on and sugar magnate William
the edge of Never, Irem truly bisociates itself, a Beckford (1759-1844) is proba-
crossroads for the rich trade between History, bly the best-known, but the
Legend, and Tale. Its name multiplies as well: genre is far from dead: Robert
Irem, Iram, Aram, Ubar, Wabar, Omanum Irwin’s The Arabian Nightmare
Emporium, Civitas Iboritæ. In fact, with so sends the same Orientalist chills
many names, it approaches, paradoxically, down the spine.
Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City” deep in Arabia,
3 The Valusian Serpent-Folk
haunted by lizard-beings from before history.3 from Robert E. Howard’s fan-
Truly does Irem have many gates, many pillars, tasies? The “Serpents and
many columns – and in this one column we’ll Dragons of Light” from note 8
look into as many of them as we can. on p. 84? Any way you slice it, it
comes up Reptoids.
“Dost thou not consider how thy Lord dealt with A’ad,
With many-columned Irem, 4 The Ka’aba is the Black Stone at the
center of Mecca’s holiest mosque, the axis
The like of which was not created in the lands; mundi of Islam. According to most
And with Thamud, who clove the rocks in the valley; Western scholars, the Ka’aba is a giant
And with Pharaoh, firm of might, meteorite originally worshiped by the
All of whom rebelled against Allah in these lands, pre-Muslim tribes of the Arabian desert as
And multiplied iniquity therein? a sacred stone “fallen from Heaven.” In
other words, a lapis ex caelis, like the Grail
Therefore thy Lord poured on them the disaster of His punishment.
(see note 18, p. 51).
Lo! thy Lord is ever watchful.”
– The Koran, Sura 89: 6-14 5 Frankincense, of course, being the
stock-in-trade of our old pal the Magus
Irem has almost the best imaginable pedigree for a city of myth: It’s in the Balthasar, from note 6 on p. 42. It’s good
holy Koran, dictated to Mohammed by the Archangel Gabriel. In the Koran, for keeping gods happy, which is just a
Irem is similar to Sodom and Gomorrah – destroyed by Allah for its sinful ways. disturbing thought no matter how you
Pious legend elaborates thusly: The people of Irem, the people of A’ad, were look at it.
Balthasar, of course, comes from just
dissolute and drunken in the extreme, and rejected the words of Allah’s prophet
across the strait in Ethiopia, home of an
Hud (a name cognate with “Jud” as in “Judean”). Hud invoked Allah’s wrath, even more potent offering: coffee. And of
plaguing Irem with infertility and drought. The A’adites sent a delegation to a race of dog-headed men (from note 11,
Mecca to pray to the Ka’aba4 (this being before Mohammed, indeed only three p. 84) called the Benicheli, according to a
generations after Noah, the Ka’aba was still worshipped in itself as a holy Stone map from the year 1430. Ethiopia also
from Heaven) but they got drunk and distracted. Allah and Hud lose patience, boasts, according to Graham Hancock’s
and as the delegation (having finally made their petition) returns, the city is The Sign and the Seal, the Ark of the
destroyed by a series of powerful winds from three clouds. In other versions, Covenant, speaking of things rambunc-
Irem is destroyed by a Shout From Heaven or by holy fire, or sinks beneath tious GURPS Cliffhangers archaeologists
the sands. can chase around the Ubar area.

85
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
6 Said Nova website being located at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ubar/
7 The Seal of Solomon is the magical
symbol which allowed King Solomon to
command the djinn, the “demons of the
air,” and so forth. It’s also known, in its
basic outline, as the Star of David, two
interlaced triangles.
8 For the pesky archaeologist Nazis, see
p. STi34.
9 Kirlian photography, or “aura photog-
raphy,” is named for the Russian electri-
cian Semyon Kirlian, who popularized it
in the 1940s. A Kirlian apparatus exposes
photographs in a high-voltage, high-fre-
quency, low-amperage electrical field,
creating colored coronas around the
object photographed. Psychic researchers
say Kirlian photos show emotional states,
“bioenergy,” psionic potential, and so
forth. For more para-fun with cameras,
see p. 12.
10 Which itself covers Irem well on pp.
PM46-47.
11 More discussion of sacred geometry
appears on pp. 106-108.
12 The biography Captain Sir Richard
Francis Burton by Edward Rice can barely
scratch the surface of Burton’s paradoxi-
cal, far-faring life (1821-1890) and career.
But it’s a good place to start, along with
Burton’s own translation of The Thousand
Nights and a Night and his travel narra-
tives. He visited El Dorado (see p. 93) and
is also revealed in GURPS terms on pp.
WWi108-109.
13 The Philbys are the subject of a devas-
tating double biography, Treason in the
Blood, by Anthony Cave Brown. I’m reli-
ably informed that they play something of
a key role in Tim Powers’ upcoming (as I
write this) novel, Declare.
14 For chess, and its conspiratorial poten-
tial, see Katherine Neville’s novel The
Eight, and also pp. STi91-93.
15 “Daath” is also the Hebrew word for
“knowledge,” making it the kabbalistic
equivalent of gnosis. In kabbalistic tradi-
tion, Daath is the 11th Sephirah of the
Tree of Life, the quasi-gate to the realms
of the dread qlippoth (for whom see
p. STi80).
86
“It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Shaddad bin Ad fared
forth, he and his host, rejoicing in the attainment of his desire till there
remained but one day’s journey between him and Irem of the Pillars.
Then Allah sent down on him and on the stubborn unbelievers with
him a mighty rushing sound from the Heavens of His power, which
destroyed them all with its vehement clamour, and neither Shaddad
nor any of his company set eyes on the city.”
– Richard Burton (trans.), The Thousand Nights And
A Night, “The Tale of the City of Many-Columned Irem
and Abdullah Son of Abi Kilabah”
In the Arabian Nights, Irem is a treasure-house city built by the proud King
Shaddad determined to create Paradise on Earth. Having spent 70 years in its
construction, Shaddad is killed by Allah before he sets foot in it; the city remains
a pristine treasure-house out in the desert sands, and a prime target (or rumor)
for GURPS Arabian Nights PCs to track down. (In “The Nameless City,”
Lovecraft mentions that Abdul Alhazred, author of the feared Necronomicon,
learned much from Irem’s ruins.) Of course, other medieval legends say that
Irem is haunted by the one-eyed, half-skulled, monopedal, single-armed nisnas
demons; by the dreaded petrified corpses known as masqut; and, of course, by
the djinn. Indeed, it is implied in many texts that the djinn’s legendary City of
Brass – usually located deep in the Libyan Desert – is somehow coterminous
with Irem. (In fact, in “The Tale of the City of Brass,” the dead king of that City
is called “Kush, son of Shaddad bin Ad.”) Since djinn transcend normal dimen-
sionality (think of all the stuff they fit in those lamps and bottles), perhaps
somewhere in Irem’s mazelike souks it becomes the city of smokeless fire,
guarded by a brass horseman.
“In finding what fitted with
what, there had been no magic
‘Eureka!’ moment, no time to
proclaim ‘This is Ubar!’ and
unleash the formidable party
potential of our . . . volunteers.
Instead, a picture had slowly
formed of a distant time, place,
and people, a picture that seen in
its entirety was a convincing
match for the legendary lost
Ubar.”
– Nicholas Clapp,
The Road to Ubar
All this excitement led to Irem’s fame
as “the Atlantis of the Sands,” in the words of T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia.”
Unfortunately, nobody knew just where Irem was hidden. Old maps and
Bedouin legendry alike pointed to the Rub’ al-Khali in southeastern Arabia, the
largest single sandy desert in the world, an area roughly the size of Texas with
neither landmarks nor water. (The Rub’ al-Khali’s well-known “singing sands”
have been adduced as an explanation for the legends of djinn.) Two explorers,
Bertram Thomas and Harry St.-John Philby, competed to be first across the
Empty Quarter. In 1930 Thomas won, and his Bedouin guides pointed out the
“road to Ubar” on the way. In 1932, pouting at Thomas’ victory on his own
expedition, Philby misidentified a meteor crater as a volcano and claimed that
the sight of a volcanic eruption started the whole story in the first place.
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
And there it would have rested, except that an American documentary film-
maker named Nicholas Clapp talked NASA into taking earth-penetrating radar
pictures of the area from the space shuttle Challenger in 1984, rediscovered
16 According to Virgil, Dream has two
Thomas’ “Road to Ubar” on those photos, and then (with the archaeologist Juri
gates; true dreams pass through the Gate
Zarins) found a City of Pillars (well, a biggish frankincense 5-trading fort of of Horn, and delusions through the Gate
eight towers) at the southern end of said road under a village named Shisur in of Ivory.
western Oman, on the edge of the Rub’ al-Khali. When the fort’s spring dried
up, around 400 A.D., it collapsed into a sinkhole – not a bad match for “swal- 17 For the Grigori (from the Greek for
lowed by the sands.” (For more gritty details, start with the Nova website6 on “watchers”) and Nephilim (from the
the topic, or read Nicholas Clapp’s book quoted above.) There are possibilities Hebrew for “fallen ones”), see Andrew
here for a GURPS Cliffhangers scenario of searching for Lost Ubar (perhaps to Collins’ angel-phobic work of ancient-
get a particular djinn bottle, or the Seal of Solomon,7 ahead of the pesky historical paranoia From the Ashes of
archaeologist Nazis),8 or for an intriguingly high-tech spaceborne ley search Angels, or p. STi58. The Nephilim are
whom the King James Version refers to in
(imagine, say a deep-penetrating orbital Kirlian9 camera) to spice up any of
Genesis 6:3; “There were giants in the
your GURPS Places of Mystery.10
earth in those days.” More details can be
found in the apocryphal Book of Enoch.
“‘Asadum Tal’an, son of Qawmum, servant of ‘Il’ad Yalut, king of Scottish Rite Mason James Bruce (1730-
Hadramaut, of the inhabitants of the town of Shaba, undertook 1794) brought the first complete copies of
according to the Plan the town of Sumhuram, its siting and the this work known in the West back from
Ethiopia (see note 5, p. 85) in 1773.
leveling of the ground, and its flow from virgin soil. . . .”
– inscription on the gates of Sumhuram, in Oman 18 A giant brass djinn lies buried in sand
at the entrance to the City of Brass, a lit-
The tangled story of Irem rests, then, on many pillars, and they rest on eral “giant in the earth.”
some interesting soil indeed. For example, Ubar (if the Shisur fortress is,
indeed, Ubar) is aligned to the cardinal directions in proper geomantic fashion11 1 9 The Rosicrucian occult novelist
– much like the Hadrami city Sumhuram, which took much of the incense trade Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
away from Ubar. Is it just a coincidence that “Sumhuram” can be translated as revealed vril in his novel The Coming Race.
“the place of the Grand Plan”? There are those ley-lines again, invisible roads Vril was an “energetic fluid” that perme-
ated all matter; only the Ana, effete
of a different kind. It’s interesting that crucial Arabian explorers suffered myste-
dwellers of the Hollow Earth, remem-
rious deaths – Johann Burckhardt, the discoverer of Petra, died suddenly in
bered its use. H.P. Blavatsky decided that
Egypt only a year after penetrating the Arabian desert in 1816. Lawrence him- vril was a real cosmic force, and Pauwels
self died in a motorcycle crash while planning his own expedition to Ubar. and Bergier announced in The Morning of
Burton12 crossed Arabia – and took great care to learn Islamic and Indian sex- the Magicians that Hitler and his occult
magic thereafter. His translation of the Arabian Nights no doubt conceals rituals masters were but mere pawns of the
of great puissance. Luminous Lodge of Vril, which even now
Harry St.-John Philby, of course, was the father of Communist traitor and plots the restoration of occult monarchi-
spy Kim Philby13 – and a scholar of Arabic lore and of chess. One of the anom- cal fascism over us all – much, as it turns
alous artifacts on the Shisur site is a chess set at least 300 years out of place. Did out, does the real Prieuré de Sion (see note
Philby seek the Ubar Chess Set?14 Does the sinkhole beneath Shisur conceal 11, p. 60).
ghoul-warrens, or the passages to the Inner World – is this what occultists mean
20 Deros, the DEtrimental RObots from
when they equate the Empty Quarter with Daath,15 the Door to the Void of the
deep within the Hollow Earth, lost rem-
Qlippoth? Is the inner world, then, metaphysical; the world inside us? The nants of the Lemurian monster-race (see
Door to Dreams? (Shisur, like Dream, had two gates.)16 Are the djinn here note 8, p. 84). They plot against us, and
actually genii loci, the spirits of a magickal place? Is it just a coincidence that star in Richard Shaver’s hallucinatory
“Irem” is phonetically identical to the Hebrew “IRIM” meaning the “memoir” I Remember Lemuria!, now back
“Watchers”? The Watchers, of course, recall the Grigori, the sons of the in print from Adventures Unlimited
Nephilim17 – Islamic legend holds that the A’adites were, in fact, Nephilim; the Press, your source for quality strangeness
giants in the earth.18 fun. See also note 15 on p. 66 and pp.
Nephilim, kabbalistically, is N-P-L-Y-M, equalling 210 – and the value of WT85-86 for more of the horrifying
A-W-B-A-R: “Ubar.” Irem becomes Y+R+A+M = 251 = Vril,19 the power of the details.
Hidden Race below the earth – of the Deros,20 or the lizard-men in the Sishur
2 1 From Lovecraft’s novel At the
sinkhole? Vril is (no doubt) cognate with Uriel, one of the “angels of the tow-
Mountains of Madness.
ers” – another reference to Irem? Is Irem “most lofty” one of the “high places”
condemned in the Bible and the Koran? Or is the City of the Pillars, the City of 22 For the Brocken, see note 8 on p. 114.
Watchers, the City of Brass, where all the high places meet, where Kadath in See also Eryx, in note 12 on p. 123.
the Cold Waste21 and the Brocken22 and deadly dreaming mountains all across
the globe resonate, like struck tuning-forks, in the half-seen towers of the
Nameless City? Send your players into the Empty Quarter, and find out.
87
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
Pyramid originally posted “Glozel Est
Magnifique!” on May 28, 1999. The next
essay in publication order is “Be True To
Your Skull,” on p. 119.
1 Which is one reason I’m so fond of the
book Hoaxes! by Curtis D. Macdougall,
and more generally, why everyone is so
fond of Stephen Mackay’s classic work
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the
Madness of Crowds. Without fraud, from
Blavatsky’s “Mahatma letters” to
Mandeville’s voyages to the Dossiers
Secrets to the alien autopsy to the satirical
“Insider” Report From Iron Mountain on the
Undesirability of Peace, there’d be practical-
ly nothing left of this wonderful field to
write about. And only very occasionally
does it get out of hand and abet the death
of millions (see note 6, p. 27).
2 It might have been a goddess-boat, such
as we learned about in note 11 on p. 47;
of course, one could also see the whole
Titanic as a mighty ship grave, a human
sacrifice to the Undersea Lords (Deep
Ones? Nommos?) of Glozel.
3 Of course, the high radioactivity, com-
bined with the “melted glass” on the walls
of the inital Glozel barrow, might imply
that Glozel was the site of a primordial
nuclear strike, possibly when one or
another batch of ancient astronauts (see
pp. STi57-60) got ticked at the locals. Just
trying to be helpful.
88
Glozel Est Magnifique!
“With a freedom that would seem reckless to more canny scientists, or
without waiting three or four months to find out what each was going
to say, they expressed opinions. The savants at Glozel, in the year
1927, were cannier, but one can’t say that their delays boosted the
glories of science.”
– Charles Fort, Lo!
There’s very little more fun than a forgery,1 except possibly a forgery that
isn’t a forgery. Or, possibly, a forgery of a forgery. Or alien writing resting on a
dagger-wielding idol buried in a ship beneath a Templar graveyard. Which is to
say, a fiction about a forgery. Bisociatively speaking, archaeology and its kindred
pseudosciences tend to turn up more of these artifacts on the Edge of Never
than other schools of thought and endeavor, and some of the finest of these
finds are the fired-clay tablets, incised pebbles, and carved petrophalli that make
up the Glozel Enigma. Which can, itself, make up a delightful chunk of your
game, assuming you don’t mind, well, making up your mind about making it up.
“Little tablets of clay with cryptic signs on them, vases carved in the
form of death’s heads, and other strange and ancient-looking objects
dug up in a field in the French village of Glozel, have started off one of
the most remarkable controversies in the history of science . . . As to
what the great collection of objects means, however, the savants find it
impossible to agree.”
– Science News-Letter, March 5, 1927
In March of 1924, a peasant named Pierre Fradin went looking for his lost
cow in a local field named the Champ des Morts (Field of the Dead), near the
tiny French hamlet of Glozel, itself about 15 miles from Vichy in the Loire val-
ley. Pierre and his grandson found their cow fallen into a hole, whi ch, when
they went down it, turned out to be a brick-paved chamber covered in “melted
glass,” which seemed like “a kind of tomb” to the Fradins. It held various pots,
inscribed tablets, and various other goodies. The next year, an amateur archae-
ologist named Antonin Morlet showed up and offered the Fradins money for
any more archaeological finds they discovered – before long, sure enough, they
discovered more archaeological finds. (Supply and demand, ain’t it wonderful?)
The new finds included not only carved tablets covered with a strange quasi-
alphabetic script but bone carvings of animals and human sex organs, idols,
inscribed pebbles (with more of those pesky Glozel runes on them), carvings of
faces, heads, reindeer, stone and bone tools, a ship-shaped communal grave,2
potsherds, and all manner of things. Fradin and Morlet even opened a “Musée
de Glozel” to display their treasures. Before long, the dig became a tourist spot;
even the King of Romania dropped by to play archaeologist and find his share of
Glozeliana.
“After a short but gay life, it is dead. On the field of battle lie the
corpses of several learned reputations . . . We shall not refer again to
Glozel – unless greatly provoked.”
– O.G.S. Crawford, editor of Antiquity (1927)
All this activity drew, at long last, the attentions of the professional scholars,
each of whom seemingly had his own theory. A fellow named Camille Julian
decided they were Gallo-Roman inscriptions from around the time of Christ,
and in his excitement began translating the scripts wholesale, apparently also
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
translating pick marks, scratches, and cracks in the clay as letters. Morlet 4 The term cargo cults refers specifically
thought they were proto-Greek, or even proto-Etruscan, dating one of the finds to the occasional outbreaks of millenarian
to 8500 B.C., hinting at a literate civilization heretofore unknown to scholars in belief among the Melanesian islanders of
the heart of France. (Even more excitable scholars dated the finds to the late the Southwest Pacific, specifically in New
Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago.
Magdalenian period, around 14,000 B.C.) Salomon Reinach, a much-respected
Usually as the result of some great stress
historian of religion and curator of a museum in Paris (delightfully enough, the (the initial German colonization, World
Museum of Saint Germain-en-Laye), began as a skeptic and wound up discover- War II, a modernizing period in the
ing that, coincidentally, the Glozel fragments provided firm evidence for his his- 1960s), one or more tribes discover the
tory of religion (which was apparently tied in somehow with reindeer). white man’s “secret way to bring the
Other, less reindeer-obsessed, scholars kept their skepticism alive. The cura- cargo.” This most stereotypically results
tor of a different museum, at Villeneuve sur-Lot, claimed to have seen unfired in the tribe building its own “airstrip”
clay tablets in the Fradins’ museum. The International Anthropological complete with control tower, “radar”
Congress sent a team under the general direction of O.G.S. Crawford, editor of (made of sticks), talking boxes, and so
Antiquity magazine and, even more fatally for the pro-Glozel faction, British. forth. Eventually, when the cargo rituals
Sure enough, the IAC commission unanimously decreed the site a forgery, after do not, in fact, result in God and His
angels arriving with the natives’ fair share
finding artifacts seemingly salted in spots they had previously excavated, finding
of knives, Coca-Cola, blue jeans, or what
bone tools with still-red marrow in them, and digging up “ancient” clay tablets have you, the religion collapses and the
which melted in the rain. The Fradins sued Crawford and the IAC commission ground is laid for the next time, when the
for libel when Antiquity declared Glozel a hoax, and won their case – in French real ritual to bring the cargo will surely be
court, and with purely symbolic damages of one franc. And thus do we refute discovered.
Glozel. The best general source for the
cargo cults I own is The Trumpet Shall
“There is no possibility that these two samples from Glozel are of recent Sound, by Peter Worsley. Road Belong
Cargo by Peter Lawrence, and Mambu: A
date and artificially irradiated in order to make them appear old. We
Melanesian Millennium by Kenelm
conclude that they were truly made in antiquity.” Burridge, are more specific studies. An
– findings of the McDonnel Center for Space Science, 1974 absolutely painless introduction to the
legend, with all the gameable bits nicely
Now hold on, folks, because this is where it gets good. Glozelians didn’t highlighted, occurs in Larry Niven and
give up just because they’d been caught and exposed as red-handed forgers. Steven Barnes’ novel Dream Park. Before
Their supporters kept up a keen of wounded Gallic pride for decades (Morlet one becomes too culturally smug about all
continued to excavate the Champ des Morts until the mid 1930s). Fifty years of this, of course, it’s a good idea to read
Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the
later, Glynn Daniel, himself an editor of Antiquity, proposed to cap the glorious
Millennium, which tracks equally bizarre-
killjoy tradition of the journal by submitting the Glozel fragments to thermolu- seeming behavior through the main-
minescence dating, which tests clay to find the date of firing. Much to his cha- stream of Western culture.
grin, the results came back from Washington and Denmark with dates from 700
B.C. to 100 A.D. While no longer the ancient source of mankind’s writing, it
seemed that at least some of the Glozel tablets might be Gallo-Roman after all.
In the proper scientific spirit, Daniel denounced the thermoluminescence
findings as skewed (citing the high levels of uranium ore in the ground near
Glozel),3 but suddenly the pro-Glozelians had, and still have, if not an ace in
the hole, a high face card. (Not satisfied, some pro-Glozelians still argue that
the stratum of the Glozel finds is Neolithic, citing the radioactive ground as
something which skewed the thermoluminescence tests young.) A fellow named
Donal Buchanan has even proposed a translation of the Glozel alphabet, calling
it Ibero-Punic with heavy Libyan influence. He says it’s mostly magical amulets
and slave trade records, evidence of heretofore unknown Carthaginian penetra-
tion into the heart of Gaul around 600 B.C.
Others have proposed a Gallic creole; the seemingly arbitrary and random
shapes and patterns of the tablets argues that, whoever carved them, they were
hardly literate. Perhaps the local Gauls, distressed when their Phoenician trad-
ing pals left, tried making the “magic trade marks” in clay to bring them back,
going as far as human sacrifice in a desperate attempt to get more bronze hatch-
ets. This “cargo cult”4 hypothesis shows up, among other places, in the delight-
fully odd Glozel Est Authentique!, a Call of Cthulhu supplement from Way
Back, and my first exposure to L’Enigma de Glozel. It’s also a swell “low level”
example of Secret History and Lost Lore; ideal for a slightly-romantic GURPS
Time Travel or even GURPS Celtic Myth game. Not all the secrets have to be
big ones.
89
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
5 The Cathars, or Albigensians, were a
Manichean Gnostic heresy centered in
southern France that flourished between
c. 1050 A.D. and their extirpation in the
Albigensian Crusade of 1207-1244.
They’ve become the universal joint of his-
torical conspiracy theories stemming from
Holy Blood, Holy Grail and its ilk. I don’t
have a good academic source on them
available, but Zoe Oldenbourg’s Massacre
at Montségur is vibrantly readable, if parti-
san and outdated. See also pp. I58-60, and
my Cainite Heresy sourcebook for
Vampire: the Dark Ages.
6 For this calumny, see pp. 120-121.
7 That would be Hiram I, King of Tyre
(r. 970-936 B.C.), unless it’s one of
the many Hirams Abiff (see note 3, p. 71;
note 3, p. 83).
8 For Solomon’s Seal, see note 7 on p. 86.
9 Tarshish, according to the Bible, was a
land with many mighty ships, rich in
“ivory, apes, and peacocks.” Some theo-
rists identify it as Tartessos in southern
Spain (which others identify as Atlantis).
Gaspar the Magus (see note 6, p. 42) was a
King of Tarshish, in medieval legend.
10 From pp. CM94-112, or in more detail
(if less focus) from Robert Graves’ The
White Goddess.
11 A “sidhe” is a Faerie mound.
12 For the Dero, see note 20 on p. 87.
13 Could the Glozel script be somehow a
primordial version of the language of the
Voynich Manuscript from pp. 35-37? They
both reek of Cathar weirdness, after all.
For yet more fun with (and samples of)
magical scripts, I delight in Magical
Alphabets, by Nigel Pennick; for magical
uses of perfectly normal alphabets you
might find around the house, there’s noth-
ing quite like David Allen Hulse’s mag-
num opus, The Key of It All.
14 Not that I’m implying anything here,
but the King of Romania would also be
the King of Transylvania. How about
them grave bones in the Field of the Dead
being stripped of flesh immediately post
mortem – drumstick style? Glozel est
ghouleriffique?
15 The Vichy occult fascists show their
contemptible Franco-Nazi hand in note
11, p. 60. Perhaps Glozelian script is
Armanen rune-magic, as on p. 80.
90
“Little is known about the Glozel civilization, except that it must have
existed before the Flood, the great cataclysm which blocked the caves at
Lascaux and swallowed up the necropolis or religious center at Glozel,
all the inhabitants having died in the disaster.”
– Robert Charroux, The Gods Unknown
But it helps. Let’s go back to the Magdalenian date, and say that Glozel is
just the first (or least well covered up; the cow falling through the hole is pretty
serendipitous after all) site of a vast underground civilization throughout the
caves of the French countryside, caves where the Templars and Cathars5 hid,
and practiced their forbidden rites. Did Cathar “perfect” knowledge come from
these Old Underground Ones? Remember those carved human sex organs, and
the trial of the Templars for sodomy? How about the carved faces, and the claim
that the Templars worshiped a magical head?6 Keep in mind that the Templars
were known to excavate their holdings, and bury their treasures within. Keep in
mind, too, that Hiram, builder of the Temple,7 was a Phoenician, and that his
dates, with a little fudging, can be made to fit the thermoluminescence dates for
Glozel. Working drafts of Solomon’s Seal8 somehow hijacked by the ships of
Tarshish9 and buried in the middle of Celt Country, the Gallic Atlantis?
“When I first saw the hieroglyphs on the I-beams, I immediately
recognised a similarity with the Greek and Phoenician alphabets . . .
Interestingly enough, inscriptions which clearly belong to the same
family of alphabets, but pre-date the Phoenician or even the Egyptian
culture, have been found all over the world – in Peru (Ylo), Ecuador
(Cuenca), Brazil (Piedra Pintada), France (Glozel, Maz d’Azil), on
the Canary Islands, and elsewhere.”
– Michael Hesemann, “The Alien Autopsy Film:
Facts vs. Armchair Research”
Who brought that writing down here, anyway? Was it the Ancient
Astronauts, giving us the alphabet – and incidentally runic magic, the magic of
the hieroglyphs, and the Tree Magic of Letters from GURPS Celtic Myth?10 Is
that “ship-shaped” glass walled grave, with the amazingly-fresh marrow still in
the bone tools, actually a barrow mound over a UFO (with the saucer’s nuclear
core messing upthe thermoluminescence)? Or maybe a sidhe.11 Glozel as Faerie
Ring? Dero 12 Outpost? The writing is the key; 13 a supercool GURPS
Cliffhangers game can come out of a chase across the world of the 1920s looking
for other samples of Glozel Script, complete with debates and arguments among
the archaeologists, and the well-meaning interference of the King of Romania.14
“Where better to look for the true Templar than in the crowd of his
caricatures?”
– Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
There’s just too much there, there. Was there a genuine site, which the
Fradins salted to keep the checks coming? Did someone (the Antiquarian
Masters, or the Templars, or Vichy occult fascists)15 dump a lot of obvious fakes
onto the site to camouflage the True
Gallic Atlantis? Bisociate again: Perhaps
it’s all true, and Glozel is where It All
Comes Together, drawn magnetically by
the power of the alien runes, or part of a
buried treasure cache from some forgot-
ten Templar. You can find anything you
want in Glozel; and if you’re the GM,
who’s to say you salted the site?
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
Pyramid originally posted “Golden Cities,

Golden Cities, Far: Far: The Greater El Dorado Metropolitan

Area” on December 17, 1999. The next essay
in publication order is “Illyrium Tremens:
The Greater El Dorado What Stirs on Twelfth Night?” on p. 41.

Metropolitan Area
“Listen to me, King of Spain who has been very cruel and ungrateful 1 Bizarre fascist UFO contactee mystic
to me . . . They who write to you from this land deceive you, who sees George Hunt Williamson, under the pen
things from too far off. We will obey you and your governors no name of “Brother Philip,” insists in The
Secret of the Andes that the Monastery of
longer.” the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays (just
– Lopé de Aguirre, letter to King Philip II of Spain (1561) north of Lake Titicaca) still holds
the Golden Sun Disk of Mu in trust for
Those angry words were the first “declaration of independence” in the his- when mankind really needs it. Isn’t that
tory of the New World, delivered not only from a welter of conspiracy and mur- comforting?
der, but from the fringes of a myth. Aguirre, the self-styled Wrath of God and
Prince of Freedom, had made entrada into the South American unknown in 2 For the Akashic Record, see p. 24.
search of the legendary City of Gold. El Dorado, “the gilded,” began as the
3 “As we shall see, there is also considerable
name of a man, and became a city, then a country, while new cities of instanta-
historical evidence of enormous networks of
neous antiquity sprang up wherever the maps began to fade. By now, the underground tunnels in both North, South,
Amazonian hinterland glistens with the spires of myriad Places of Mystery, gild- and Central America, but it is not my inten-
ed in illusory gold like the illuminations of a medieval manuscript, all just over tion to discuss the facts here, for that would
the horizon in the emerald forest. Although Theosophist legend claims that all preclude some of the conclusions I have reached
of these cities were founded by Muvian priests,1 are recorded in the Akashic concerning them . . . ”
Record,2 and remain connected by underground tunnels,3 we’ll begin the way – Alec Maclellan,
they first emerged, with rumor hacked out of the jungle. The Lost World of Agharti

“Over the Mountains of the Moon, I just love that quote, which I first found
in Kim Stanley Robinson’s shaggy-dog
Down the Valley of the Shadow, linked short story collection Escape From
Ride, boldly ride, Kathmandu.
The shade replied, Tales of tunnels connecting the vari-
If you seek for Eldorado!” ous Inca palaces, Atlantean ruins, El
– Edgar Allan Poe, “Eldorado” Doradan gold mines, and so forth seem
quite common throughout South
America; David Hatcher Childress
On the shores of Lake Maracaibo in 1529, the German explorer Ambrosius repeatedly refers to them in Lost Cities &
Dalfinger asks a local Indian where he got the golden ornament he wears. No Ancient Mysteries of South America, and
fool, the Indian responds with the story of a different tribe, far away, where Erich von Däniken apparently found him-
there is so much gold that the king himself is painted with it, el hombre dorado, self the swindled rather than the swindler
The Gilded Man. El Hombre Dorado, went the story, must wash a coating of when he confidently reported the “golden
gold dust off his skin into the waters of a still mountain lake every year as an plaques” in the mysterious Gualaqiza tun-
offering to the sun god. For a wonder, the nameless Indian was describing an nels of southeastern Ecuador in his Gold of
actual ritual, practiced by the Chibcha tribe on the shores of Lake Guatavita the Gods. Reported tunnel systems (often
several hundred miles inland. Dalfinger died of curare poisoning in 1533, but carved in Yog-Sothoth-friendly trape-
four years and several expeditions later, the conquistador Gonzalo Ximenez de zoidal shafts; see note 21 on p. 121) in
Peru alone surface in Cuzco in 1923,
Queseda reached the Chibcha capital of Hunsa, looting it of its golden treasure.
underneath Lima after the 1972 earth-
Even after this success, however, Queseda continued his quest for the “true” quake, and deep beneath the pre-Inca
Golden City of El Dorado, mounting two more expeditions without result and ruins of Sachsahuayman.
dying embittered in 1579. James Churchward’s Children of Mu
(see note 14, p. 100) presents a complex
“He did not perceive that I meant to go onward towards the City of canal network through the South
Manoa, for neither the time of year served, neither could he perceive American mainland, which one imagines
the Atlanteans (or someone) later roofed
any sufficient numbers for such an enterprise; and if I did, I was sure,
over to create a secure tunnel system (a
with all my company, to be buried there . . .” bomb shelter, perhaps, from rival ancient
–Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discoverie of Guiana astronauts).

91
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
4 Lake Paititi, in fact, takes its name from
the “lost city” of Gran Paititi supposedly
on its shore, somewhere on the Mountain
of the Sun. It was to Gran Paititi that the
Incas supposedly removed their great
golden treasures after the fall of the last
Inca fortress of Vilcabamba in 1572. The
land of Paititi is populated by “white
men” (of course) under the rule of the
Tiger (or Jaguar) King.
A mad soldier in the Aguirre tradi-
tion, one Pedro Bohorques, declared him-
self Don Pedro de Inca in 1659 and
recruited nearly 10,000 Tucuman Indians
and mercenaries to his cause with the
intention of using his “royal Inca
Bloodline” (!) to somehow mystically
guide him to Gran Paititi. Unable to find
it, he was hanged in Lima in 1667 for
rebellion. In 1670 two Jesuits arranged an
expedition in search of the “Court and
Kingdom of El Gran Paytiti” revealed in a
vision to a mysterious friar, but they
found nothing.
It’s not all crazy conquistadors or
visionary Jesuits; in 1971 American
explorer Bob Nichols vanished on an
expedition up the Rio Pantiacolla in
search of Gran Paititi.
5 Despite (or perhaps thanks to) being a
totalitarian theocracy, the Incas get a lot
of good press in the occult community.
Thor Heyerdahl has even paid them the
ultimate compliment (for him) of claim-
ing that they were white people, somehow
descended from Vikings. They did have
their own Quetzalcoatl figure, Viracocha,
who supposedly rose up out of Lake
Titicaca and taught the Peruvians all the
useful arts. Later, he returned in the form
of an enormous white man, and created
many of the distinguishing landmarks of
the Peruvian countryside, rather like Paul
Bunyan in America (see p. 67). He then
left over the water, promising to return.
In the context of our larger project, I
should note that viracocha means “born of
the water foam” (just like the
Merovingians, or the Nommo), and that
Viracocha was also the god of snakes.
Reptoids from beneath the deep?
6 For more on Raleigh, see pp. 39-40.
7 Even Harold T. Wilkins’ irrepressible
Secret Cities of Old South America doesn’t
mention it, and it mentions everything
else imaginable. For more on Burton, see
note 12 on p. 86.
92
At some point it occurred to the Spanish to ask: where did the Chibcha get
their gold? What still greater golden city, El Dorado the Gilded, sent its dust to
the golden king? Here, more legends came to the fore; a mutineer named
Martinez left marooned in the jungle in 1537 emerged with a deathbed tale of a
golden city, Manoa, in the center of a much larger Lake Parima, somewhere to
the east. It was Martinez’ story that drove the next cycle of El Dorado searchers
eastward into Venezuela’s Guiana Highlands, indeed a rich source of gold.
Among those so driven was Aguirre, and Aguirre’s contemporary Pedro
Sarmiento de Gamboa, who had spent much of the 1570s hunting down rene-
gade Incas in the Peruvian highlands, searching for his own mythical golden
Lake Paititi.4 (Before we go too much deeper into this, it’s worth noting that
many of the tribal legends of a great golden kingdom probably referred to the
Inca,5 conflated with the Manao tribe who lived near gold deposits in the
Amazon valley, from whom the city Manaos in Brazil gets its name.) Sarmiento
is probably responsible for the notion that Manoa was a far-flung Inca outpost,
and he was even more probably responsible for involving our old friend the
occult pirate Sir Walter Raleigh6 in the search. Sarmiento had the poor fortune
to get captured by an English ship in 1586; Raleigh debriefed him, and prompt-
ly set about planning his own expedition to the Golden Land.
As Charles Nicholl describes in his book The Creature in the Map, Raleigh’s
first step was to gather intelligence about the coast and consult with the mystic
geometer of the Roanoke expedition,
Thomas Hariot, and possibly
with the magus John Dee.
With their charts (and
Hariot’s protégé, the
alchemist Lawrence
Keymis) he sailed
for the Caribbean in
1595, kidnapping
Queseda’s nephew
Antonio de Berrio
from Trinidad. With
Berrio’s information,
Raleigh proceeded up
the Manamo River, hold-
ing a mystical ceremony on
the cusp of Gemini (May 21, 1595) to christen it (or some other, more elusive
stream) the River of the Red (Rosy?) Cross. Raleigh eventually reached the
Orinoco, but supply shortages and the dangers of Manoa forced him to turn
back. In October, he returned to England, meeting first with John Dee and then
with the Queen. Although the journey would seem to have lost money, Raleigh
returned to the Queen’s favor. In 1603, King James came to the throne and
tossed Raleigh into the Tower on murky charges of atheism and treason;
Raleigh somehow wrangled royal permission for one last attempt. In 1617,
Raleigh’s second expedition ran afoul when Keymis attacked a Spanish fort
without orders and then killed himself. Raleigh returned to England, and to his
execution.
“Whether we get through and come out again, or whether we shall
leave our bones to rot inside, one thing is certain: the answer to the
riddle of South America – and perhaps of the entire prehistoric world –
may be found when the site of those ancient cities is fixed and made
accessible to scientific exploration. This much I know: the cities exist . . .
I have not a moment’s doubt upon that score. How could I have? I
myself have seen a part of them . . . The remains appeared to be the
outposts of greater cities.”
– Col. Percy Fawcett, in Expedition Fawcett
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES

8 And the cryptozoologists have returned

the favor, battening on (and inventing)
rumors of dinosaurian survival in South
America, ranging from the stegosauri
carved into the rocks of the Marcahuasi
plateau in northeastern Peru, to a
Brazilian encounter with a white-scaled
lizard larger than a man in 1577, to a ple-
siosaurus seen in the Orinoco River in
1925, to a possible iguanodon in Ecuador
in the 1930s. Dalfinger’s successor
Nicholas Federmann saw a “hydra” while
searching for El Dorado in 1534, and the
Reptoids must be up to something here
given the number of snake cults that crop
up all over the place.

9 Another of the lost South American

cities of super-science is the remote fast-
ness of the Council of 98. Guglielmo
Marconi (1874-1937), the man credited
with inventing the radio (by infringing on
Tesla's patent), like Tesla, had his wild
With the death of the alchemists Keymis and Raleigh, Manoa goes through side, experimenting in radio communica-
its own transformation, moving into northern Brazil and becoming a lost tion with other worlds on his laboratory-
Egyptian city over a rich silver mine. This, at least, was the tale of Roberio Dias, yacht, the Electra. He did, in fact, report
a mestizo who claimed that his father, the Indian Muribeca, had learned of them such contact “from another star” in 1921,
from his father, a Portuguese sailor. Dias had enough money to bribe his way and in 1930 succeeded in transmitting
out of prison rather than disclose the location of his Mines of Muribeca; and electrical power over distance, replicating
after he died in 1622, a cottage industry sprang up in searches for Muribeca Tesla's efforts in that field as well.
(which, like El Dorado, became a place rather than a person). In 1753, after a Marconi even has a “death ray” story,
ten-year search, Francisco Raposo discovered a “cyclopean” lost city somewhere although it comes bisociatively in both
pro- and anti-Marconi versions. He either
in the Matto Grosso (clear across the continent from the first El Dorado
offered Mussolini his death ray in 1935
rumors), complete with mysterious white men and an unknown treasure. and was only talked out of it by the Pope,
Raposo filed a document describing his discovery with the Viceroyalty, which or refused to turn his research over to the
was promptly lost until 1865, when Sir Richard Francis Burton’s wife Isabel dis- fascists in the first place.
covered and translated it. Burton’s subsequent trip into the interior is one of his Either way, fearing the worst, he
least well-documented.7 faked his death in 1937, escaping on his
Another British adventurer stirred up by Raposo’s yacht (now stocked with Tesla and
report was Colonel Percy Fawcett. One of Fawcett’s Marconi antigravity technology) to South
expeditions, into the Brazilian interior looking for America with 98 like-minded believers, all
mysterious monster tracks, gave Conan Doyle the top-notch scientists. Using their mighty
inspiration to create The Lost World.8 Fawcett skills, they built a secret city in the
Venezuelan Andes (possibly harnessing
also drew inspiration from British pulp writers;
Atlantean technology to do it) to guaran-
H. Rider Haggard gave Fawcett a basalt idol tee world peace.
which he claimed was found in a Brazilian “lost This Council of 98 is just swimming
city” – Fawcett took it to a psychic, who pro- in wealth, not only from Marconi patent
claimed it Atlantean. Between psychometry royalties but from the secrets of matter-
and Raposo’s report, Fawcett was eager to transmutation, revealed to them by the
venture deep into the Matto Grosso jungle alchemist Fulcanelli, who disappeared in
searching for the lost Atlantean city he referred 1932 – only to show up in the Council's
to as “Z.” He set out with only his son Jack and secret lair six years later. They may, how-
his friend Raleigh (!) Rimmel in May of 1925; ever, be more buddy-buddy with the
his last communication with the outside world occurred Akakor Nazis than they want you to
think, since famed, ranting UFOlogist
on May 30. On Fawcett’s peculiar insistence, no search party
“Branton” identifies the “Marconi
went after him until February 1927, by which time the trail was hopelessly lost. Group” as allies of the “Tall Blonds” –
Although many people (including yet another psychic) saw “Fawcett” the Nordics, in other words.
somewhere in the jungle over the next 50 years, he had vanished as surely as
Raposo’s city.
93
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
10 For Churchward and Mu, see note 14
on p. 100.
11 In Atlantis: The Andes Solution, J.M.
Allen makes the case that Atlantis was a
copper-mining city in the Bolivian Lake
Poopo, which sank in a torrential rain-
storm in 9,000 B.C. And he found a ditch
in the Peruvian altiplano to prove it, too.
For more on Atlantis, see the note
on p. 106.
12 Hy-Brasil, originally Hy-Breasal, was
the Earthly Paradise sought by the Irish
seafarers, most famously the half-leg-
endary St. Brendan (490?-577). See the
indefatigable Geoffrey Ashe’s Land to the
West for Brendan specifically, Donald S.
Johnson’s Phantom Islands of the Atlantic
for the more general subject, p. STi66, or
p. 34 for a different legendary Celtic voy-
age to the West.
13 Ophir is the country, according to the
Bible, of “King Solomon’s Mines,” rich in
gold. Although killjoy archaeologists have
identified it with fair likelihood as a gold
mine in Mahd ad’ Dhabab, Arabia, folks
have stuck Ophir, off and on, in
Zimbabwe in Africa, India, California,
and (of course) El Dorado. The best (?)
piece of evidence for this last assertion is
the Paraíba Stone, allegedly discovered on
the Brazilian coast in 1872. It was
inscribed with a Phoenician record of the
voyage in the time of King Hiram III (r.
553-533 B.C.), and although 19th-century
experts denounced it as a forgery, later
archaeological work in Phoenicia turned
up authentic examples of all its seemingly
“incorrect” elements. I say “allegedly,”
because nobody has ever seen the stone,
only the copy of the inscription sent to
Emperor Pedro II of Brazil in 1874, and
nobody even seems to know which
Paraíba the Stone came from (there are
two). Details appear in Cyrus Gordon’s
Before Columbus.
14 For the Knights of Christ, see pp.
31-32.
15 There’s that Chymical Marriage again;
see note 13 on p. 44.
1 6 The French alchemist Nicolas
Barnaud’s De Lapide Philosophico drew
such a close comparison between
Raleigh’s expedition and the quest for the
Philosopher’s Stone that the publisher
reused the same illustrations for it and
Raleigh’s Discoverie.
94
“And the Gods ruled from Akakor. They ruled over men and the
earth. They had ships faster than birds’ flight, ships that reached their
goal without sails or oars and by night as well as by day. They had
magic stones to look into the distance . . . But the underground
dwellings were the most wonderful of all.”
– Karl Brugger, The Chronicle of Akakor
Maybe the Nazis got him. According to the German journalist and von
Däniken wannabe Karl Brugger, the Nazis made a secret pact with the secret
underground civilization of Akakor, founded in the year 10,481 B.C. by white,
godlike ancient astronauts with six-fingered hands. (The Sky Gods also founded
Akanis, in Panama, and Akahim, roughly where Raleigh was looking for
Manoa.) One of Akakor’s colonies, Ophir, traded with Solomon, and the whole
civilization got a much-needed influx of Aryan blood when the Ostrogoths fled
there in the 6th century A.D. Finally, after withdrawing in disgust after the con-
quistador invasions, Akakor allied itself with the Nazis to split up South
America, eventually becoming a Refuge for the Fourth Reich – Boys From
Secret Brazil.9 (In what is either poetic justice or ominous hint, Brugger was
found, shot dead, in Manaos some years after his book appeared.)
“Now, most admired Sovereign, let your breath
Go forth upon the waters, and create
A golden world in this our iron age.”
– George Chapman, De Guiana (1596)
The Golden Dream can drive any group of adventurers,
from cinematic GURPS Egypt explorers searching for
silver mines to GURPS Swashbucklers pirates hoping
to loot the idols of Manoa to GURPS Cliffhangers
archaeologists hoping to find relics of Atlantis and
avoid Nazi agents in league with the Six-Fingered
Gods of Akakor. What’s interesting, too, is how all
these lost cities fold into one another despite
being scattered across a continent’s worth of inhos-
pitable terrain. Lake Guatavita and Lake Patiti pour
into the mythical Lake Parima, turning up in the
Theosophical maps of Muvian colonies drawn by
James Churchward 10 as the Inland Sea of Manoa
complete with canals cut through the Andes.
Atlantean ruins11 might be a golden city, if the
Space Gods’ transmuter awaits therein – or if it’s the
Holy Grail of Hy-Brasil,12 the Cauldron of Plenty found
by St. Brendan, the Mines of Ophir13 hidden by the
Templar fleet and only later revealed to the Portuguese
(Knight of Christ?)14 father of Muribeca. Transmutation
recalls the alchemies of Raleigh and Keymis (cognate
with “Khemet,” the ancient name for Egypt?) –
from the crossing of the Rosy Cross river on the
cusp of Gemini to Raleigh’s bringing of
Elizabeth’s picture (the White Moon Queen)
into the jungle city of the Golden Sun King.15
The search for the lost city is the search for true gold,16 for the Philosopher’s
Stone, for the Golden King who waits for his redeemer – Avalon, like Manoa,
lies in the middle of a broad lake, somewhere to the west. Raleigh knew that –
he made sure to be executed looking westward to Avalon, to Manoa, to El
Dorado.
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
Pyramid originally posted “Fractal Valley”

The Fractal Valley on July 2, 1999. The next essay in publication

order is “One Giant Leap After Another:
Lunatic Theories,” on p. 49.
“Preserve, within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reveries.”
– Ellen Glasgow, A Certain Measure 1 Or Google! at www.google.com, my
new favorite search engine.
Every now and again, someone is foolish enough to ask where I get this
stuff. The Web is useful, certainly: the low bar to publication it presents means 2 Let me heartily recommend The
that anyone who can type can eventually get their crack-brained theories to me Mysterious Atlas, by Francis Hitching,
with enough diligence on my part with AltaVista.1 But fundamentally, my which is sadly out of print but well worth
answer is the same as that of famed 23rd-century attorney Samuel T. Cogley: your trouble to find. I’ve also gotten some
use out of Rosemary Ellen Guiley’s Atlas
“Books, young man, books.2 Thousands of them.” Whenever I’m in a new city,
of the Mysterious in North America.
I try to hit the used bookstores; in Chicago I hit stores I haven’t checked in a
while, looking for something odd in the “New Age” or “Occult” or
“Speculations” section, or whatever they’re calling it these days.
(There’s a store in Wicker Park that labels the section “Geek,”
and better yet, one in Evanston that calls it “Dept. of Blurry
Photography.”)
And if you look long enough and hard enough, you
find what you’re looking for, or something just as good.
I found a book called Enter the Valley, by a fringe jour-
nalist named Christopher O’Brien. Its 338 pages
delivered what its subtitle promised: “UFOs,
Religious Miracles, Cattle Mutilations, and Other
Unexplained Phenomena in the San Luis Valley.”
This 150-mile long stretch of southern
Colorado and northern New Mexico was appar-
ently ground zero for everything from crystal
skull worship 3 to coma research to CIA
Tibetan black magic.4 I tore into the contents
with my customary geographic delight:
another American Place of Mystery to fill my
personal mind’s atlas. And then I discovered
that Enter the Valley was a sequel! O’Brien’s
previous tome on the subject, The Mysterious
Valley, covered 300 more pages of phenome-
na. In those 638 pages, then, the San Luis
Valley comes alive as a fractal image of the
American Weird; every pattern reveals more,
every story can be infinitely expanded. I’ve
sifted it down for your enjoyment here, but I
encourage you to find either or both of
O’Brien’s books yourself and stare long and
hard into the fractal valley.

“One thing was becoming certain. It

seemed likely that a vast majority of
SLV residents have some knowledge
about strange goings-on, but most have no
idea that this continuous activity is being
reported, nor do they realize the full extent of
the area’s mythic tradition and the history of
such goings-on. Maybe it didn’t seem particularly
strange or unusual to the locals on the surface – but
just an odd occasional part of their everyday reality.”
– Christopher O’Brien, The Mysterious Valley
95
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
3 See note 7, p. 120.
4 The CIA-Tibetan connection begins
with the 1942 OSS expedition to Tibet
under Brooke Dolan; concerned about
Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer’s
sway over the Dalai Lama, OSS wanted to
establish overflight and ground facilities
for American air operations in China.
Following WWII, the CIA provided con-
siderable assistance to the Tibetan resis-
tance to Chinese occupation, down to the
CIA plan to evacuate the Dalai Lama to
India from under the Communist guns.
John Kenneth Knaus’ Orphans of the Cold
War is a riveting record of an American
covert “Great Game” in Central Asia.
The black magic connection shows
up via Trevor Ravenscroft’s statement, in
The Spear of Destiny, that the Nazis were
in communication with “Schamballah”
through the Tibetan “colony” in Berlin
established in 1926. Pauwels and Bergier’s
Morning of the Magicians goes further,
stating that Karl Haushofer’s visit to
Tibet in 1905 allied the nascent Thule
Society with the evil “Master in the
Green Gloves,” deadly lord of Black
Tibetan Magic. Finally, spinning off the
(actual) Paperclip and Ratline OSS opera-
tions to smuggle useful high-ranking
Nazis to America, Peter Moon (in The
Black Sun) describes a CIA-Nazi-Black
Tibetan axis of power.
5 Sangre de Cristo: “Blood of Christ.”
Prieuré agents must have a field day here.
6 La Llorona, “the weeper,” is a Hispanic
banshee-like spirit eternally looking for
her child, whom she (usually) drowned.
She’s kin to “Bloody Mary” (p. STi95),
and to Berchta (p. 114), and occasionally
kills young men.
7 Freudian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich
(1897-1957) discovered the universal life
force orgone, a lambent blue field
strengthened by sexual energy. He decid-
ed that the Federal government was in
league with ultraterrestrials composed of
DOR (Deadly Orgone Radiation), pre-
venting his use of orgone boxes to cure
cancer and of orgone projectors to bring
rain. See pp. WT106-109 for yet more
orgone delight.
8 I sadly don’t have either canonical book
on “mutes,” the skeptical Mute Evidence
by Daniel Kagan and Ian Summers or the
enthusiastic An Alien Harvest by Linda
Moulton Howe, but there’s an excellent
primer (as on most things) in Jerome
Clark’s Unexplained!
96
The valley in question runs about 120 miles north from Taos, New Mexico
until it meets the junction of the Sangre de Cristo5 and San Juan-La Garita
Mountains near Saguache, Colorado. At its widest, the valley is around 45 miles
across. Down the center of it flows the Rio Grande, entering from the north-
west side near Del Norte, Colorado. According to O’Brien, many Indian tribes
used the Valley as an area of shamanic vision-quests; the forbidding winter tem-
peratures apparently prevented much permanent settlement in it before the
Spanish moved north from Taos in the late 17th century.
The conquistadors were preceded by a mysterious “Blue Lady,” who
appeared to the Indians to teach them Christianity; the explorers found crosses
and rosaries in use, and the Franciscans baptized over 50,000 of the local
Navajos and Tewas thanks to the apparition. At the same time, in Spain, Sister
Maria Jesus de Agreda claimed to be bilocating to the New World to convert
the natives through the power of the Virgin; after the Inquisition cleared her of
witchcraft, O’Brien says Sister Maria engaged in covert bilocation missions for
the King of Spain. A less pleasant apparition of the Virgin here urged one of
America’s first serial killers to cut the hearts out of 600 Americans; mountain
man Tom Tobin stopped Felipe Espinoza after Espinoza killed only 28 men in
1863. Espinoza’s head in a jar was a local curiosity for some time, although it
seems to have vanished. (Alfred Packer, the Colorado cannibal, ate “half the
Democrats in Hinsdale County,” on the north end of the Valley, in 1874.) There
have been sightings of La Llorona6 throughout the area, and of the Devil (in a
natty white suit drinking “red margaritas”) in local nightclubs in 1984. One
hardly needs Wilhelm Reich7 (who came through and proclaimed the area a tel-
luric orgone chakra) to know that this is one seriously weird valley.
“When analyzing any series of events, one looks for patterns . . . But
even though researchers invariably encounter patterns that help to
confirm various UAD [unusual animal death] theories, the
phenomenon seems to counter all attempts to analyze it, supplying data
to affirm and negate all possible explanations. In other words, one
theory works as well as another theory, which works as well as another,
and so on.”
– Christopher O’Brien, The Mysterious Valley
It was also in the San Luis Valley that the modern cattle mutilation8 epi-
demic had its Patient Zero, a horse named Lady (renamed “Snippy” in tabloid
journalism). Found in a pasture on September 9, 1967, minus the flesh of her
neck and head, Lady became a cause celebre. (We don’t really have a lot of room
to go into cattle mutilations here, but if you ever get the time, plot the locations
of cattle mutilations against the relative rigor of livestock insurance regulations
by county.) Ever since then, cattle mutilations, and their kin, black helicopter
sightings, have spread throughout the Valley, tied to reports of anomalous
burns, weird noises, and the canonical lights in the sky. (Apropos of nothing, an
extremely large meteorite9 apparently fell on a ranch owned by Lady’s owner’s
father in 1893. It’s still there, about 70 feet underground.)
UFOs, of course, proliferate here as well. The presence of several top-secret
aircraft testing zones nearby might have something to do with it, of course –
O’Brien’s second book indicates that military aircraft might explain some of the
64 different anomalous light/UFO sightings he catalogs in the Valley between
August 1995 and December 1997 alone. That wouldn’t necessarily explain the
huge cigar-shaped object that Tim Edwards videotaped on August 27, 1995 at
around 9 a.m. in Salida (witnesses later saw it disappearing into a mountain), of
course, much less the “mile long” object outlined with lights witnesses saw over
La Veta Pass on Lammas,10 1996. Now that’s a quality sighting, although the
traditional black triangles, silver disks, and red or green or whatever lights
“moving too fast to be a plane” predominate even in the Mysterious Valley.
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
“In short, it is extremely possible that extensive underground 9 Another lapsit exilis (note 18, p. 51)? A
facilities are located in the mysterious San Luis Valley. However, I Holy Grail of cattle-mutilating Faerie? A
spaceship for tiny, savage vampires?
can’t prove that there is even one underground base here. That doesn’t
mean they aren’t here to be found. The more you dig, naturally, the 10 Lammas (“loaf-mass”), or Lughnasa
more you uncover.” (the “first fruits” feast of the Celtic hero-
– Christopher O’Brien, Enter the Valley god Lugh), falls on August 1.

The Salida cigar (which to me, at least, 11 For the Airship, see
recalls the great airship11 sighting flap of note 4 on p. 78.
1896 and 1897, also in the American West,
1 2 Underground Alien
and some over New Mexico) is not the Bases by “Commander
only mysterious aircraft seen disappearing X” (probably UFOlogist
into a mountainside in the Valley. O’Brien Timothy Green Beckley)
gives lots of reports from local ranchers contains all the details of
(including Lady’s owner’s brother, syn- the Dulce “Nightmare
chronicity watchers) of jet planes flying Hall” on Level 6 you
into cliffs, weird noises underground, and could possibly want.
the whole panoply of secret underground (Level 5 is Grey housing,
facility fun. Dulce,12 the mother of all secret underground government bases Level 7 is the human clone banks for
(complete with evil Grey overlords and vats of human body parts that would “bio-power.”) In 1969, and again in 1979,
U.S. Army Special Forces had to militari-
make Felipe Espinoza green with envy) is just 45 miles west of the Valley, and
ly confront the Greys at Dulce over excess
apparently it’s the rare mountain in the Sangre de Cristos without its own theo- abduction and hostage-taking.
retical government bunker.
The Navajo apparently identified the San Luis Valley as the opening to 13 Gran Qivira and the Seven Cities of
Sipapu, the otherworldly underground whence came the Indians in the first Cibola were the El Dorados (see pp. 91-
place, after being cared for by “ant people” during a time of evil skies. The 94) of the American Southwest, searched
Sangres are full of less spiritual treasure, as well. Not only are there rich veins of for most famously by Coronado in 1541.
copper, gold, and silver in the Valley sides, there are at least 29 legendary buried
treasures there, including the “Grinning Skull Treasure” in the Sangres east of 14 After the invasions of the 8th and 9th
Taos, the “Phantom Mine” of Davis Gulch, and the “Missouri Bank Robbery centuries, the catacombs of Rome fell into
Treasure” near Mosca Pass. This doesn’t include the even more legendary neglect, their entrances forgotten (except,
no doubt, by sorcerors and ghouls – and
“Caverna del Oro,” named for the fabled treasure of Gran Qivira and the Seven
at least one “pagan” conspirator against
Cities of Cibola,13 which might as well be in the Valley as anywhere else, appar- the Pope, one Pomponio Leto in 1475)
ently. The Caverna itself, on Marble Mountain, extends deep into the Sangres; until 1593, when Antonio Bosio, the
it’s one entrance to either the fifth or sixth biggest cavern system in America. Its Roman agent for the Knights of Malta,
discoverer, Captain Elisha Horn, reported seeing a Maltese cross14 carved systematically rediscovered and explored
above a skeleton in armor lying in the entrance. In a seemingly unconscious them. He published his Roma Sotteranea
echo of the old St. John’s Eve15 fairy light or “witch-light” traditions of Europe, only after his death in 1629; no doubt the
by the way, O’Brien mentions a local belief that following a UFO will lead you uncensored copies still lie in a sub-base-
to buried treasure. In the Valley, folklore meets folklore. ment (heh heh) of the Vatican Library.
These details, and many others, appear in
James Stevenson’s The Catacombs, which
“The human mind, when faced with the unknown, reverts to basic, has so many evocative pictures of these
primal symbols to rationalize its experience.” Stygian fanes that I can almost forgive his
– Christopher O’Brien, The Mysterious Valley pouring cold water on the legend of the
catacombs as a refuge for persecuted
Sure, you can set a game here. Anyone can do that; it can be a GURPS Christians. No doubt all of this connects
Places of Mystery ley-quest, a GURPS Old West game of cowboys and idioms, somehow (underground, at least) to the
or a baked-desert attack of GURPS Atomic Horror. (As near as I can make out, MJ-12 “subway” (see note 5, p. 49) and
the South American tunnel system (see
the GURPS Black Ops Company’s Academy is in the next valley over; perhaps
note 3, p. 91).
they use the San Luis Valley as a sort of cadet training ground – or as a dumping
area for their leftovers.) But what I think the most important lesson or use that 15 St. John’s Eve, June 23, is the day
the San Luis Valley and O’Brien’s research has for GMs of a skewed stripe is before Midsummer (St. John’s Day). It’s
this: anywhere is magical, anywhere is Illuminated, anywhere can reveal and big juju for fire magic, ghosts and fairies
conceal any number of bisociative mysteries. Learn this, and you’ll never need (hence A Midsummer Night’s Dream), the
someone else’s tired old ideas again. After all, like I said, if you look at anything Wild Hunt (see note 7, p. 114), and High
long and hard enough, you find what you’re looking for, or something just John the Conqueror (see note 12, p. 69).
as good.

97
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
Pyramid originally posted “Trail of the Black
Dragon” on December 3, 1999. The next
essay in publication order is “Golden Cities,
Far: The Greater El Dorado Metropolitan
Area,” on p. 91.
1 Apparently, newly declassified papers
indicate that Reilly was not, in fact, the
Ace of Spies; more like a nine of clubs. It’s
an obvious Shangri-La disinformation op,
if you ask me.
2 Where they (plus their cook, their doc-
tor, two servants, and their pet spaniel
Jemmy) were murdered on July 16, 1918
by the Bolshevik revolutionaries. That is,
of course, unless they weren’t: Guy
Richards maintains, in The Rescue of the
Romanovs, that the Reds and Whites col-
laborated to free the royals and smuggled
them to Odessa (with the aid of Sidney
Reilly) and onto a waiting British ship, the
H.M.S. Calypso.
According to various rumors, Tsar
Nicholas supposedly visited Woodrow
Wilson on his deathbed; Nicholas and
Alexandra were both spotted in Marseilles
in 1923; Grand Duchess Marie (Nicholas’
daughter) stayed at a Venice hotel during
the 1920s; her sisters Olga and Tatiana
apparently masterminded White Russian
black-market art sales from Poland and
later married Germans living in
Frankfurt; Nicholas’ sister-in-law Grand
Duchess Serge may have been the myste-
rious “Sister Martha” residing with
Nicholas’ sister in London. There was a
veritable cottage industry in Tsarevitch
Alexei impostors.
The most famous Romanov sur-
vivor-impostor was the “Princess
Anastasia” fished out of a Berlin canal in
1920. Although she remained silent at
first, in 1922 she claimed to be the dead
Princess, smuggled to Romania by a sym-
pathetic officer named Tchaikovsky.
Although her uncle Grand Duke Andrei
identified her as Anastasia, a German
court ruled otherwise in 1957. Under the
name of “Anna Anderson,” she moved to
Charlottesville, Virginia, and died
in 1984.
In 1991, Boris Yeltsin authorized the
exhumation of a shallow grave near
Ekaterinburg. DNA analysis showed the
nine skeletons were the remains of the
Romanov party except for Tsarevitch
Alexei and Grand Duchess Marie. The
Russian government reburied them in St.
Petersburg in 1996. Separate DNA analy-
sis also proved that “Anna Anderson” was
not Princess Anastasia, but Polish factory
worker Franziska Schanzkowska.
98
Trail of the Black Dragon
“The Manchus are finished . . . But I should warn you that in this vacuum
which is left a new and much more dangerous Secret Service will eventually
spring up. Today it is like a sperm inside the womb. Tomorrow?”
– from a report of Sidney Reilly, December 3, 1902
When Sidney Reilly, the “Ace of Spies,”1 wrote those words, he was working for
Britain, Russia, and Japan simultaneously. (This may explain why he disappeared
shortly thereafter, to surface months later in a remote lamasery in China’s Shenxi
province. Unless he was really working for Shangri-La all along. But I digress.) They
were probably addressed to British Intelligence, and the seedling secret service of
which he warned just might have been the famed Black Dragon Society. With the
appearance of the second edition of GURPS Japan it’s time to look at tying Japan
into the conspiratorial, Illuminated mainstream (and conspiratorial, Illuminated
gaming). And the best way to do that, mayhap, is to start by following Reilly’s lead
and the trail of the dragon.
“With aristocratic backing he founded many patriotic tongs, only one of
which was the famous Amur River Society, or Black Dragon. It became the
most powerful of his organizations largely because of its awesome sounding
name. In the minds of Japanese and Europeans alike, it evoked exotic
visions of opium dens and of Chinese mandarins tugging new ecstasies of
sadism out of their sparse beards.”
– David Bergamini, Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy
The Black Dragon Society, or Kokuryukai, played a dubious role in the rise of
Japan’s sun in the East. Often dismissed as a “Japanese Mafia,” just as often hinted at
as the true power behind the militarist factions driving Japan to war, its official ideol-
ogy was a blend of imperialism, Shinto mysticism, and criminal pragmatism. Its
name came from the Chinese name for the Amur River between Manchuria and
Russia, the Black Dragon River – and its overt goal was to drive the Russians north
of the Black Dragon. After Japan defeated Russia in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese
War, the Black Dragon’s activities expanded – Black Dragon agents gave vital aid to
Sun Yat-Sen’s revolution in China, plotted with revolutionary Buddhists to seize con-
trol of Mongolia, and came within 15 miles of kidnapping the Romanovs2 from
Ekaterinburg during the Russian Civil War. By the late 1930s, Black Dragon ronin
riddled China, and Black Dragon operatives could be found not only all across the
Far East but planted from the Caribbean to Morocco. (They’d make fine antagonists
– occultists, gangsters, and spies – for GURPS Cliffhangers PCs in Asian and Pacific
Places of Mystery, and a nice nod to Axis equality as a changeup from ubiquitous
Gestapo and Thule Society archaeologists.) MacArthur officially dissolved the Black
Dragon in 1945, although conspiracy-hunters have turned up their traces every-
where from the Turkish right-wing Gray
Wolves3 (who may have shot Pope John Paul
II) to the apocalyptic Aum Shinri Kyo4 cult
that nerve-gassed the
Tokyo subway to defeat
“the shadow power” in
1995. (Thus, they make
fine villains in a proto-
GURPS Cyberpunk or
Japanophobic GURPS
Illuminati game.)
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
“The Japanese secret societies were amazingly ubiquitous and versatile.
Their tasks were to gather information, make maps, recruit informants or 3 Charismatic army officer Alparslan
political allies, smuggle gold or opium, bribe warlords, sabotage railways, Turkes (1917-1997) founded the Gray
assassinate opponents, or foment rebellions in furtherance of various Wolves in 1965 as the paramilitary wing
of the ultranationalistic MHP (Nationalist
conspiracies . . . In addition to the Black Ocean Society and Kokuryukai, the
Action Party). They helped spark the
Black Dragon Society, there were hundreds of clandestine groups – even 1980 military coup in Turkey with their
thousands if the smaller ones were included. Some of the leaders were aggressive street-fighting tactics against
men of means, and others financed their activities through gambling, Kurds and leftists, and supplied their for-
prostitution, protection rackets, strike breaking, blackmail, or small business mer member Ahmet Ali Acga with the
monopolies such as labor recruiting, entertainment or street vending.” gun he used to shoot Pope John Paul II
the next year. Their omnipresent wolf
– John G. Roberts, Mitsui: imagery derives from the mythical she-
Three Centuries of Japanese Business wolf Asena who led the Turks out of
Central Asia, and probably has nothing to
The Black Dragon’s founder, the shadowy labor boss Mitsuru Toyama, was a do with either Romulus or with note 13
renowned ascetic and mystic – and a fearsome wrestler and swordsman. He created on p. 63.
the Black Dragon in 1901 as a means of drawing attention away from his original
sect, the Black Ocean Society or Genyosha. Founded in 1881 by the samurai and 4 Former health-food shopkeeper and
mine-owner Kotaro Hiraoka, Black Ocean played the Chinese triads against one “Holy Pope” Shodo Asahara ran the Aum
Shinri Kyo (“Aum Supreme Truth”) sect
another; Toyama became Black Ocean’s leading figure when he orchestrated the
as pretty much a standard “drink my bath-
assassination of Queen Min of Korea in 1895. Black Ocean or Black Dragon agents water and give me all your money” nut
assassinated politicians in Korea, China, and Japan throughout the groups’ heyday, cult on the surface. However, with the aid
and given the Black Dragons’ passionate interest in Moslem Central Asia, it’s certain- of shadowy figures in the Japanese and
ly permissible (if technically impossible) to tie them to the dread Society of Assassins Russian underworlds, his group was train-
via (perhaps) the Illuminated Roshaniya5 of Afghanistan. ing for a coup and stockpiling weapons
It’s during the time of Black Ocean’s founding (or, rather, its overt founding) that for “X-Day.” Devotees of Tesla technolo-
Western and Eastern magic and conspiracy threads mingle. Japan’s opening barely gy, the Aum Shinri Kyo interpreted the
20 years previously led to a flood of curious European and American visitors, inter- Kobe earthquake of 1995 as the artificial
ested in the timeless wisdom of the Orient and the timely fad of Theosophy. 6 first strike of the “shadow power” against
Astronomer Percival Lowell7 spent several years in Japan, composing three books on Japan, and started cooking up their sarin
gas. For the sweaty details, see The Cult at
Shintoism and other Japanese religious practices. His views grew darker with each
the End of the World, by David E. Kaplan
volume, until Japanophilic American horror writer Lafcadio Hearn described and Andrew Marshall.
Lowell’s final work on the topic, the 1895 Occult Japan, as “painfully unsympathetic,
Mephistophelean in a way that chills me.” Lowell may have stumbled upon evil 5 Around 1570, Afghan tribal leader
Black Ocean sorcery and black magic while investigating ghosts, sacred fires, and Bayezid Ansari founded the Roshaniya
other phenomena – or on ties of another kind. A formation of flying disks emerged (“Illuminated Ones”) as a sect of mystical
from the Sea of Japan (the “Black Ocean” to the Japanese) in 1893, buzzing a British Ismailism (the same branch of Islam as
naval squadron – and Lowell fled back to America and began to obsessively study the Assassins). By meditating on sacred
Mars. phrases or words, Roshaniya members
could ascend to true power and become
perfected ones, immune to law. The ban-
“Coca-Cola8 presents the hometown of Christ.” ditry resulting from this declaration led to
– sign in Shingo, Japan Bayezid’s suppression by Mohsin Khan,
the Mogul governor of Kabul, although
It’s into this hotbed of weirdness that the mysterious Takeuchi documents the sect continued after Bayezid’s death.
emerged in 1935 in Ibaraki Prefecture. Found by Koma Takeuchi, a Shinto priest The last Roshaniya leader, Allah-da-
from a long line of hereditary priesthood, the documents indicated caches where the Khani, died in 1736.
Ark of the Covenant, the bones of the Emperors and Moses, maps of lost continents,
a magic mirror, and a hidden pyramid coated with the mystery metal “Hihiirokane”9 6 For Theosophy, see note 8 on p. 84, or
p. STi81.
could be found. One key location turned out to be two graves in the tiny town of
Shingo, in the Aomori Prefecture on the extreme north end of Honshu – the graves 7 For Percival Lowell, see the note on
of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. Having trained with master gurus there during p. 102.
His childhood, Christ returned to Japan after the crucifixion (of His brother, Isukiri)
to farm garlic and write His last will – the Takeuchi documents. Shingo used to be 8 For the weirdness and the glory that is
known as Herai, which locals will tell you is Japanese for “Hebrew,” the graves’ cus- Coca-Cola, see pp. STi101-103.
todians have a six-pointed seal resembling the Star of David, and a local chant,
Nanyadoyara, can be made to fit (with the traditional linguistic fudging) an ancient 9 Could Hihiirokane be Plato’s orichal-
Hebrew song of devotion. If Christ was Japanese, 10 are the “waterborn” cum, from note 9 on p. 84?
Merovingians actually His Japanese descendants?
99
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
10 While we’re on the unlikely Japanese
kick, it’s apparently an article of faith
among many Japanese that Genghis Khan
was a disgraced former samurai who
changed his name – another example of
medieval Black Dragon manipulation of
Asian affairs?
11 According to Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth
Chronicles, the Annunaki came from the
planet Nibiru (see p. 104); according to
Robert Temple’s The Sirius Mystery (see
note 9, p. 62) they came from (guess
where) Sirius. You pays your money, and
you takes your choice. Maybe they came
from Sirius via Nibiru. And Japan. See
also p. STi58.
12 Japanese water-demons. Or Nommos.
Or Deep Ones.
13 The Dragon’s Triangle runs, accord-
ing to Charles Berlitz’ The Dragon’s
Triangle, roughly from Yokohama to Yap
Island to Marcus Island east of the
Marianas. In approved “evil triangle of
sea” fashion, it has claimed the requisite
mysterious victims, including the Kaio
Maru No. 5, which vanished on
September 24, 1952 during an oceano-
graphic survey mission to discover why
the Triangle was so dangerous.
14 Mu is the fevered discovery (if that’s
the mot juste) of Freemason and wander-
ing adventurer Colonel James
Churchward (1850-1936), who, among
other intriguing hypotheses, thought the
Japanese were Mayans. The Lost Continent
of Mu spawned four sequels, each driftier
than the last. He took the name “Mu”
from the Abbé Charles-Étienne Brasseur
(1814-1874), who derived it by gloriously
mistranslating the Mayan Troano Codex.
Although Mu and Lemuria are often used
interchangeably, Lemuria began in the
Indian Ocean, and the French eccentric
archaeologist Augustus LePlongeon
(1826-1908), based on his own mistransla-
tions from the Maya, put Mu in Atlantis,
which is just silly. See (as always)
L. Sprague de Camp’s Lost Continents, or
p. STi89.
1 5 For the inhabitants of which (the
continent, not the festival) see note 8
on p. 84.
16 Pottery very similar to earthenware
from the Jomon area of Japan appeared,
with no known artistic or technical pre-
cursors, on the Valdivian coast of Ecuador
around 3,000 B.C.
100
“If we could go back 100 years and look in on Japan we should see a
reflection of Mu 15,000 years ago.”
– James Churchward, The Children of Mu
Thinking about sacred bloodlines, and Christ, and the Black Dragon society, I
can’t help but recall David Icke’s frantic warnings in The Biggest Secret that a dread
Black Reptoid lineage has polluted and controlled mankind from ancient times.
These evil Saurians were the “divine beings” known to the Sumerians as the
Annunaki 11 – a name perilously close to the “Ainu,” the mysterious “hairy”
Caucasian race that predates the coming of the Japanese to their islands. (Two points
here: Slightly dusty anthropological theory postulates that Ainu families made up
most of the noble clans of samurai – such as that of the founder of the Black Ocean;
and Christ’s hometown of Shingo is right up near Ainu territory, perhaps explaining
His non-Japanese appearance.) Are the Black Dragons actually the human (or
kappa12 human-Reptoid hybrid) tools of the Black Reptoids lurking in their disk
ships beneath the “Dragon’s Triangle”13 in the North Pacific?
Even now in Japan a sect called Sukyo Mahikari founded by
a guru of (reptoid-Ainu?) samurai heritage Yoshikazu Okada
(born, like the Black Dragon, in 1901) in 1959 believes that
Japan is the last remnant of the Lost Continent of Mu,14
that Christ lived in Japan, and – perhaps most signifi-
cantly – reveres the “dragon gods” left behind by
the fire gods from the sky. Sukyo Mahikari teach-
es that the Japanese Setsubun Festival, in which
householders throw beans in the spring to drive away devils,
derives from the Muvians’ foolish rejection of the dragon
gods, which is why the dragon Sea-King Ryujin sank Mu.
In the Too Freakish To Make Up Coincidence Department,
the Romans also had a spring festival (May 9-15) in which
householders threw beans to drive away evil spirits, a festival
which concluded by tossing statues into the river possibly to
commemorate an ancient flood – the festival of Lemuria,15
which of course is another name for Mu, or at least for a lost
continent just as good.
“The [Yonaguni] structure could be an ancient
shrine, possibly celebrating an ancient deity resembling
the god Niral-Kannai, who the locals say gave happiness to the people of
Okinawa from beyond the sea. This could be evidence of a new culture, as
there are no records of a people intelligent enough to have built such a
monument 10,000 years ago.”
– Masaaki Kimura, professor of geology,
University of the Ryukyus
Where, then, did the dragon king Ryujin live? In his stone and coral pyramidal
palace, Ryu Kyu. And what did divers find off Yonaguni Island in the (ahem) Ryukyu
Islands in September of 1996? An underwater, 60-foot-high, stone and coral pyra-
mid. And how long ago did the Yonaguni Pyramid sink beneath the black ocean,
according to geologists? 10,000 years ago, the date (well, a date) of the sinking of
Mu. (Maybe that’s how prehistoric Japanese Jomon ware got to Ecuador a few thou-
sand years back.)16 Is the Yonaguni Pyramid the Hihiirokane cache promised in the
Takeguchi documents? Does it hold the dragon king Ryujin, father of the Black
Reptoids, underwater lord of the Black Dragon Society? I can’t be the only one hav-
ing Lovecraftian Deep One flashbacks here. Does the Holy Blood steam and bubble
with Reptoid DNA passed down from Cthulhu to the Annunaki to Mu to Ainu to
samurai clans to the Merovingians, the Assassins, and the yakuza? Dive in and
find out.
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
Pyramid originally posted “Nine is Not

Nin e Is Not Enough Enough” on April 9, 1999, no doubt due to

all those nines lined up that way. The next
essay in publication order is “A Night to
Embroider,” on p.45.
“But data we shall have of round worlds and spindle-shaped worlds,
and worlds shaped like a wheel; worlds like titanic pruning hooks;
worlds linked together by streaming filaments; solitary worlds, and
worlds in hordes: tremendous worlds and tiny worlds: some of them
made of material like the material of this earth; and worlds that are
geometric super-constructions made of iron and steel – ”
– Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned

Frankly, in a solar system that includes the ice-seas of Europa, the Great
Red Spot of Jupiter, and the sulfuric-acid storms of Venus, you wouldn’t
think there’d be any need for more planets. But that shows all you know.
Where are the planets of the giants? Where are the ruins of the Egyptian
space colonies, the hawk-people, the enormous clockwork aether guns
going to turn up now that we’ve selfishly wasted all of our real planets on
astrophysics and exogeology? Well, in the Extra Planets, of which I’ve
selected at least seven from the potential galaxies available. That’s what
they’re there for, and only a cad would point out that they’re not, techni-
cally speaking, there.

“Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out
the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labor
to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea farther; though a wise
man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.”
– Ecclesiastes 8:17

Mercury’s orbit wobbles, a fact which annoyed the famous mathematician-

astronomer Urbain Le Verrier to no end. When a fellow named Lescarbault saw
a round dot against the Sun on May 26, 1859,1 Le Verrier was all pumped up2
and announced that Mercury’s wobble could be explained by the intra-
Mercurian planet “Vulcan” which he, Le Verrier, predicted would be found by
1877. Le Verrier should have known something was wrong when the observa- 1 Le Verrier (1811-1877) also adduced
tional data indicated a mass too low to cause Mercury’s perturbation, or when observations in 1802, 1819, 1839, 1849,
the solar eclipse of 1860 revealed no planets, but Le Verrier was still hipped and 1862 as Vulcan sightings.
from predicting Neptune3 and ignored such trivia as beneath him. For the next
decade, astronomers frantically checked the Sun, some (notably a German 2 Le Verrier also (busy boy) reported
astronomer named Weber and a Swiss named Wolf) finding (and photograph- sightings of a cigar-shaped UFO by three
ing) round spots where Le Verrier predicted transits, or close enough. In anoth- witnesses on October 10, 1864. He didn’t
er solar eclipse in 1878, a fellow named J.C. Watson found two Vulcans, and call it a UFO, of course.
another fellow named Swift found a third one, none of which matched Le
Verrier’s Vulcan. That was the last anyone saw of Vulcan, really; apparently 3 Actually, it’s unclear to what degree Le
Verrier’s numbers correctly predicted the
Vulcan tired itself out appearing in three separate places. Coincidentally, Le
actual position, size, and orbit of
Verrier died in 18774 – no doubt his ghost stuck around for a year to make one Neptune. Le Verrier himself initially
last check.5 Vulcan was actually a mathematical anomaly caused by errors in denied that the first observations of
Newtonian mechanics; Einstein’s relativity explained Mercury’s wobble without Neptune fit his model.
invisible prankster planets.
4 Even more coincidentally, he died on
“Philolaus the Pythagorean says that Fire is at the center, calling it September 23, 31 years to the day after
the Hearth of the universe; second comes the Counter-Earth, and third the first optical observation of Neptune
using Le Verrier’s figures.
the inhabited Earth which in its revolution remains opposite the
Counter-Earth, wherefore the inhabitants of this Earth do not see those 5 For more connections between planets
of the other.” (real and fictional) and the dead, see
– Aetius, Doxography III, II, 3 p. 124.

101
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
6 For any number of very unsatisfactory
reasons (the most commonly adduced
being that salamanders sometimes hiber-
nate in old logs), Aristotle and Pliny
believed that the salamander was immune
to fire. This eventually became “puts any
fire out by its presence” or, conversely,
“lives in fire and controls it,” or (as on the
motto of King Francis I, patron of the
proto-Masonic Carbonari) both at once.
Paracelsus (see note 9, p. 65) named the
elemental being of fire the salamander,
but he was probably speaking metaphori-
cally here. As an odd side-note, fireproof
asbestos became known as “salamander
wool” to those imaginative medievals.
7 For Mu, see note 14 on p. 100.
8 For more Pythagoreanism, see note 12
on p. 24.
9 Hale Bopp’s illusory “trailing body”
(observed and popularized by astronomer
Chuck Shramek in the autumn of 1996)
seems to have set off the Heaven’s Gate
cult suicide in San Diego on the vernal
equinox of 1997.
1 0 For Immanuel Velikovsky, see p.
STi28, or his own Worlds in Collision.
1 1 Say what you want about Percival
Lowell (1855-1916), he was a man who
knew what he wanted. First, he wanted to
learn about the occult mysteries of the
East; having done that (see p. 99) he
wanted to build the finest reflecting tele-
scope in the clearest air possible, so he
built Flagstaff Observatory. Then, he
wanted to find proof of intelligent life on
Mars (having bullheadedly misread the
Italian astronomer Schiaparelli’s notation
of canali, or “channels,” as “canals”) and
he wanted to find Planet X. On
December 7, 1900, he and astronomer
William H. Pickering (1858-1938)
observed “code flashes” on the surface of
Mars. That same night, Nikola Tesla
reported receiving electrical transmissions
fromthe Red Planet. Of course, when I
see a Percival (note 18, p. 34) go on an
obsessive, even mystical Quest after
studying Eastern wisdom, I have to won-
der: What is the Holy Grail doing
on Mars?
102
Although Vulcan is wonderful, it’d be too toasty to support any life besides
salamanders6 and Fire Vampires. The Counter-Earth, on the other hand, is per-
fect for any kind of inhabitants from identical duplicates of humanity to hawk-
people wielding the lost sciences of Mu,7 since its orbit, gravity, and anything
else you’d like are exactly like those of the Earth The Counter-Earth begins, in
fact, as a mystical construct; the later Pythagoreans8 were tremendously excited
by the number 10, since it’s the sum of 1, 2, 3, and 4. (It took less to excite peo-
ple in the 5th century B.C.) Philolaus usually gets blamed for the theory of the
Antichthon, the counter-earth which matches Earth on the other side of its
orbit around the Central Hearth, and which had to be added to make the num-
ber of bodies come out to ten – five known planets, the Earth and moon, the
sun, Antichthon, and the heavenly fire of the fixed stars. Ever since then, the
Earth on the other side of our orbit, always invisible, has fired the imaginations
of conspiratologists (in the 19th century they thought They were hiding there;
now, they think They are covering its existence up) and pulp writers. The best
such story is Richard Lupoff’s Countersolar! which defies adequate description –
read it.
“Between Jupiter and Mars a planet must be interposed.”
– Johannes Kepler, 1596
Ever since Kepler noticed the unseemly gap between Mars and Jupiter
(which messed up his own Pythagorean notions of the ratios of the universe),
folks have been looking for planets in it. When Guiseppe Piazzi discovered
Ceres in 1801, folks were delighted – until they realized it was too small to be a
real planet, and only the first of thousands of asteroids. Rallying bravely, it was
decided that the asteroid belt is the wreckage of a planet which exploded, a dra-
matic notion which hasn’t let astrophysics slow it down one whit since. Its most
respectable current exponent is Tom Van Flandern, the former Head of the
Celestial Mechanics Branch of the U.S. Naval Observatory, who by now has
posited not just one, but three separate exploding planets between Mars and
Jupiter (one of which gave birth to Comet Hale-Bopp)9 and seems well on his
way to Velikovsky-like10 crackpot status. Eagerly waiting for him there is Alan
Alford, who calls the proto-planet Osiris in his tome The Phoenix Solution, and
says it was the key to ancient Egyptian civilization. Alford resolutely refuses to
hint that Osirian refugees from the explosion may have founded human civiliza-
tion, but leaves the question of how the ancient Egyptians knew about multi-
million-year-old exploded planets hanging in tempting fashion. The connec-
tions between the doomed planet (which some folks call Phaeton) and similarly
doomed Atlantis are suggestive indeed, andone can always blame the rubble of
Phaeton’s explosion for the various miracles/disasters in your favorite ancient
myth pattern.
“‘Why wasn’t Planet X discovered before?’ ‘Planet X is very dark.
We cannot observe it with telescopes.’”
– Reporter and Dr. Sakurai, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero
Planet X is the generic name for the tenth planet, which may or may not
perturb Uranus and Neptune just as Vulcan turned out to not perturb Mercury.
Despite a wide variety of possible locations, gravitations, etc., nobody found
anything until Percival Lowell11 (famous for popularizing the Canals on Mars)
decided to systematically grid the sky and look for the planet he named Planet
X. Lowell’s observatory did find Pluto, the ninth planet, (once in 1915, although
nobody realized it, and then for keeps in 1930) which didn’t fit anyone’s predic-
tions or match the data needed to perturb Neptune. Astronomers got all pettish
about it and stopped looking for awhile, but the lure was too great. In 1983,
NASA launched the IRAS satellite, which scanned the outer solar system look-
ing for planetary bodies; in 1987 NASA held an odd press conference to
 HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
announce that Planet X might or might not exist. (Classic conspiracy fodder.) 12 More prosaic recent astronomical the-
Our old buddy Tom Van Flandern still thinks there’s a planet out there, ory posits that our known giant planet,
although new measurements of Neptune’s orbit and mass taken by Voyagers 1 Jupiter, helps screen just those kind of
and 2 indicate that the perturbations aren’t there at all. life-killing cometary impacts by diverting
them into its own orbit (occasionally cata-
strophically, as with the Shoemaker-Levy
“I wrote Kepler’s laws of gravitational motion on the blackboard. The impacts). Without Jupiter, the thinking
major diameter of an elliptical orbit is the period of the orbit, in this goes, long-term evolution might be
case 26 million years, raised to the 2/3 power, and multiplied by 2. My impossible.
Hewlett-Packard 11C pocket calculator quickly yielded the answer:
13 Monstrator was, in fact, seen by M. de
176,000 astronomical units . . . about 2.8 light-years . . . That put the
Rostan at Lausanne repeatedly between
companion star close enough to the sun so it would not get pulled away August 9 and September 7, 1762. One
by other stars. Alvarez nodded. The theory had survived five minutes, M. Croste at Sole confirmed Rostan’s
so far.” observation.
– Richard Muller, Nemesis: the Death Star
14 Fort also mentions the five sightings of
Neith (named for the Egyptian version of
Nemesis is either a giant planet or a small star, possibly 2.8 light years away,
Tanith), the non-existent moon of Venus,
which shoots comets and asteroids at the Sun every 26 million years, catching between 1645 and 1767.
the Earth on the flipside and extinctifying the unlucky fauna
thereon. The Nemesis theory is pretty unlikely, especially
since the IRAS satellite hasn’t seen hide nor hair of any evil
death stars – but if there’s a giant planet out there trying to
kill the Sun, that’s the ultimate assassination plot.12

“I think that it would be credible enough to say

that many times have Monstrator and Elvera
and Azuria crossed telescopic fields of vision, and
were not even seen – because it wouldn’t be proper
to see them; it wouldn’t be respectable, and it
wouldn’t be respectful: it would be insulting to old
bones to see them: it would bring on evil
influences from the relics of St. Isaac to see them.”
– Charles Fort,
The Book of the Damned

Charles Fort suggested a different planet for every

genus of Odd Sighting in his very long list; Elvera was the
planet of tiny folk and tiny items, Monstrator the planet of
the giants, Azuria the planet of blue people. Many of them
were backed up by at least one real astronomical observa-
tion (Monstrator13 was a giant spindle 100,000 miles long!),
and the Fortean solar system is positively alive with planets
grinding away, vanishing and reappearing out of the etheric
murk, coalescing out of dust to drop cargoes of whelk onto
Sudbury and then speeding away behind the Sun. Possibly
the Fortean system holds the ghost of every planet ever
seen14 or imagined; or where all the alternate cosmoi inter-
sect and change orbits for Antichthon.

“Shining NIBIRU The crossroads of Heaven and

Earth he shall occupy Above and below they shall
not go across They must await him Shining
NIBIRU Planet which is brilliant in the heavens
He holds the central position To him they shall
pay homage.”
– Sumerian Epic of Creation

103
HIGH WEIRDISTAN: PECULIAR PLACES
On the edge of the system, Zecharia Sitchin15 places Nibiru “the twelfth
planet,” whence our creators and gods emerged seeking gold to replenish their
Atmospheric Engine. Nibiru moves in a very eccentric orbit, crossing in
between Mars and Jupiter every hundred thousand years or so before speeding
out to beyond Pluto. Given the troublesome habits and mystifying technology
there, Nibiru fits Lovecraft’s “Yuggoth” (home of different mining aliens who
may or may not have built humanity) better than Pluto does. On one trip,
Nibiru smacked into the planet Tiamat, creating the asteroid belt, and introduc-
ing an interesting theological enigma – are smashed planets good (Osiris) or evil
(Tiamat)? If they’re good, do they go to Planet Heaven, no doubt to join
Monstrator and Elvera?

15 Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles

series begins with The 12th Planet (which
sets the tone by being about the tenth
planet; the Moon and Sun make twelve),
and then adds The Stairway to Heaven, The
Wars of Gods and Men, The Lost Realms,
and When Time Began to the story of the
Nefilim (or “Nephilim,” for whom see
note 17 on p. 87) from Nibiru and their
Fell Doings between 445,000 B.C. (!) and
2024 B.C. The specifics of their evil plan
vary from book to book, but Sitchin is
always ready to translate more
Mesopotamian inscriptions to prove him-
self correct. See p. STi58, or check out
the “Cliff’s Notes” version, with all the
creepy gods and dreams and demons, in
Sitchin’s Divine Encounters.

16 For more Black Ops excitement, see

pp. 13-15.

“I have to dissipate myself in acceptance of a host of other worlds: size

of the moon, some of them: one of them, at least – tremendous thing:
we’ll take that up later. Vast, amorphous, aerial regions, to which such
definite words as ‘worlds’ and ‘planets’ seem inapplicable.”
– Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned

From each of these planets, whole campaigns could spring. Particularly odd
GURPS Space (or, more likely, relatively standard GURPS Atomic Horror)
missions could venture to their unknown surfaces to find the alluring maidens
and dangerous monsters that no doubt lurk thereupon. Deeply Illuminated
astrologers could husband the secret ephemerides for Vulcan, Monstrator, and
Planet X which alone can give the True Horoscope for conspiracies and kings.
The secret Strike Force Kepler probes to Nibiru can return photos of the
Golden Atmosphere Engine and fight off Grey saucers emerging from the ruins
of Phaeton in a properly cosmic GURPS Black Ops campaign.16 Having trou-
ble finding space on the ground to build something odd? Look to the skies.

104
 R
ather than weird explanations for
(mostly) mundane events like
the Moon landing or Marlowe’s
murder, this section riffs on subjects that
can withstand some heavy paradigmatic
pummeling. From the Grand Design,
through two days in April, and into stasis,
skulls, and death, these essays examine
archetypal concepts through the multiplex
lenses of High Weirdness.

Plumb Weird: Sacred Geometry ...............................................................................................106

Fooling Around ........................................................................................................................................109
Devil’s Prom Night: Walpurgisnacht Fun............................................................................113
Patterns in Amber .................................................................................................................................116
Be True to Your Skull ...........................................................................................................................119
Things to Do in Gaming When You’re Dead...................................................................122
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
Pyramid originally posted “Plumb Weird:
Sacred Geometry” on May 14, 1999. The
next essay in publication order is “Glozel est
Magnifique!” on p. 88.
1 Some very ingenious people have tried
to claim that Plato got Atlantis from real
Egyptian records of Minoan Crete (which
didn't sink) or Thera (which blew up and
never had an empire), neither of which
are beyond the Pillars of Herakles – nor
did the Egyptians have any records of
either catastrophe, as far as we know. For
coverage of these clever folks (as well as a
myriad of others proposing Atlantises
from Antarctica (see p. STi99) to Nigeria
to South Africa to Bolivia (see note 11, p.
94) to Ceylon), it's well worth reading
Richard Ellis’ Imagining Atlantis and (of
course) L. Sprague de Camp's Lost
Continents.
It’s possible that Plato took the
island from Homer’s magical islands of
Ogygia or Schaeria, and the germ of the
“sunken city” trope from the Greek city
of Helike, which sank into the Gulf of
Corinth 20 years before he wrote the
Timaios (the dialogue in which first
Atlantis appears), and the annihilating war
from the catastrophe of the Pelo-
ponnesian War (during which a wave
smashed up an Athenian fortress on the
island of Atalantë). But it's most likely
that he made it up, just like he made up
the floating sky-islands where giants lived
that he put in the Phaidon.
2 For more on Pythagoras, see note 12 on
p. 24.
3 Those would be the ley lines originally
described by Alfred Watkins in his 1925
study The Old Straight Track. (Watkins,
who thought they were ancient roads,
named them after the syllable “ley,”
which he thought appeared rather often
in the names of the places the lines passed
through.) They’ve also been called “drag-
on lines” or “ghost roads” and connected
not only with ancient sacred sites but with
dragon and lake-serpent sightings (espe-
cially in F.W. Holiday’s The Dragon and
the Disc) and UFO sightings (especially in
Aimé Michel’s Flying Saucers and the
Straight-Line Mystery). For specific sites
and their magics, Paul Devereux’ Secrets of
Ancient and Sacred Places is very nice as far
as it goes; for a more general study, I still
recommend Francis Hitching’s Earth
Magic and John Michell’s The View Over
Atlantis, The New View Over Atlantis, and
City of Revelation. Along with, of course,
pp. PM25-27.
106
Plumb Weird:
Sacred Geometry
“Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.”
– inscription over the gate of Plato’s Academy
Accustomed as we are to thinking of Plato as a font of rationality, or at least
logic, or at least boring philosophical stuff about the Nature of the Good and True
Forms, we sometimes forget that he was into a lot of dodgy stuff. Not only, for
instance, is he the father of Atlantis,1 but also the main channel for a lot of ideas
which, as “neo-Platonism,” became key foundation stones of the Western magical
tradition. And, as the motto of his Academy should remind us, one of them was the
Pythagorean2 mystical notion of the inherent virtue of numbers, expressed geomet-
rically. And this Pythagorean tradition has been sketched forward and back, with jus-
tification good and not so good, into the history of architecture and design, under
the general rubric of sacred geometry.
Sacred geometry is, in its purest state, the study of the inherent magic of angles,
shapes, ratios, and similar concepts. In some cases (like Aristotle’s “golden section” or
the Pythagorean octave) it approaches a theory of aesthetics – it’s magic because it’s
pleasant to look at or listen to. But, seldom are people (including, especially,
Pythagoras) satisfied to leave things at that. It’s gotta be magic because it recapitu-
lates the hidden Designs of the Universe; if you can tune your building, or temple, or
city, or countryside, to the same frequency at which the cosmos resonates (the
“music of the spheres”), then you can focus its power. And use it for magic. And,
hence, for gaming.
There’s a bunch of ways to invoke sacred geometry, but we’ll stick with four
basic ones for now. (For more details, let me recommend Robert Lawlor’s Sacred
Geometry.) Numbers are simple. If a temple wall extends for 23 cubits, or 666 feet, or
whatever, that’s significant – numbers have meaning, as we all learned in kabbalah
class. Shapes are also pretty simple; a black fane built on a pentagram is obviously
trying to evoke dark, cthonic powers; a sky-god temple built on a series of concentric
circles is obviously trying to connect the worshipers to the orbits of the planetary
archons. Ratios and angles come as sort of advanced numbers; a temple built to
Aristotle’s Golden Ratio embodies divine solar power; one built to a different ratio
(say, to one which matches a flat or discordant note in the music of the spheres) – not
so much. (And, of course, the numbers of the angles have meaning in their own
right, as the Mason-hunters who track down 33-degree angles can tell you.) Finally,
there are alignments; what your site points to (on earth or in the heavens), or is lined
up with or along.3 Folks who find such things find them everywhere; as the GM it
would be pointlessly self-effacing not to put them where you want them. An exam-
ple, then, and onward.
“The Great Pyramid, like most of the great temples of antiquity, was
designed on the basis of a hermetic geometry known only to a restricted
group of initiates, mere traces of which percolated to the Classical and
Alexandrian Greeks.”
– Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid
Finding sacred geometry in the Great Pyramid and its stony ilk has been in style
ever since a fellow named Greaves4 took pyramid measurements for the (proto-
Masonic) Royal Society in 1638. Run it through the four Sacred (geo) Metrics real
fast. Numbers? Any given base of the pyramid is 232 meters long; 232 = “let there be
light” = the motto of the Illuminati. (If you make up your own “pyramid inches” and
“royal cubits” you can get anything you want; Charles Piazzi Smyth said that the
 HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
number of “pyramid inches” in the Grand Gallery was the number of years until the 4 Specifically, astronomer and Oxford
Second Coming, which arrived right on schedule in 1881.) Shapes? It’s a pyramid, professor of geometry John Greaves
for crying out loud, it sharpens your razor blades and focuses your chi by recapitulat- (1602-1652). He clambered around inside
ing the Sacred Mountain at the Center of the World.5 Ratios? The pyramid side the Pyramid, descending into various
slopes at a 52- degree angle; 52 is both the Expanded Name of God (YWDHH- “grottoes” and taking really amazingly
WWHH) and the compact name of Magog. Alignment is even better; Robert Bauval accurate measurements with a specially-
and his ilk6 say that the Pyramids match the Belt of Orion, the four sides face the built London Guildhall measuring rod.
When he left Egypt, he gave the rod to
cardinal directions perfectly, the Giza Plateau is almost precisely dead centered in the
Tito Livio Burattini (1610?-1682), who
90 degree arc encompassing the Nile Delta, and Sirius shines right down one of the was to measure the Pyramids for
ventilation shafts on Isis’ holy day. And if any of the numbers don’t match (as indeed, Athanasius Kircher (from note 5, p. 37).
some of them might not; finding accurate pyramid numbers has been a problem for Although Burattini sent Kircher some of
folks considerably more modern and scientific than our pal Greaves), just mutter his results in letters, bandits robbed him
about the “missing limestone facing” or do what our vintage pyramidiot Piazzi in the Balkans, stealing his meticulous
Smyth did, and chip off the parts that don’t fit.7 notes on the Pyramids. Perhaps Some-
one didn’t want the Jesuits to have that
“The nethermost chamber was five cubits broad, and the middle was six information . . .
cubits broad, and the third was seven cubits broad: for without in the wall of 5 Which is probably one of those “high
the Temple he made narrowed rests round about, that the beams should not places” warned against in the Bible, and
be fastened in the walls of the Temple. And the Temple, when it was in mentioned on p. 87. Unless it’s
building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so Shambhala.
that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the
6 For whom, see note 13 on p. 51. John
Temple, while it was in building.”
Anthony West, meanwhile, in The Serpent
– I Kings 6:6-7 in the Sky, draws the Pyramid-Nile com-
plex as a “dragon road” replicating the
From Plato’s Atlantis through the Pyramid Builders, and thence to Pythagoras Milky Way and encapsulating Ancient
is the way these sacred geometry Secret Magical Traditions usually run. Often, Wisdom. The idea is not original to
there’s a stop off at Hiram Abiff,8 the legendary West, nor even to René Schwaller de
First Mason, and Master Architect of Lubicz (1887-1961), the Theosophist
Solomon’s Temple. As we see, he used no whose version of the Ancient Wisdom
iron (disrupts the magic, you know), but West says the Egyptians recapitulate.
instead used the Mason Word, or
7 According to anecdote, the Egyptologist
sacred geometric resonators, or the Sir Flinders Petrie caught Piazzi Smyth
Solomon Seal’s djinn control set- chipping pieces off the Pyramid of
ting, or aliens, or all four, to build Cheops so that his numbers would come
the Temple – from whence the out correctly.
Templars take their name, and
where they’re barracked in 8 For Hiram, see note 3 on p. 71.
Jerusalem.9 At which point, some-
body starts feeding Sacred 9 Just in time to dig up Warren’s Tunnel,
Geometry to the mysterious for which see note 4 on p. 71.
Compagnons des Devoirs, 10 and
10 In fact, the French stonemasons’ guild,
Gothic cathedrals spring up every-
the Compagnonnage, shows every sign of
where.11 Sometimes you get Pythagoras having drunk from the same legendary
feeding it to the Druids, and the Druids set- well as the Masons. The organization may
ting up their magic sites all ready to be cathedral- date to the 1200s, although like Masonry
ized in two millennia;12 occasionally someone drags in it traces itself to Solomon’s Temple. Its
the Roman architect Vitruvius, simply because he believed very strongly in founder, Maître Jacques, was treacherous-
Aristotelian aesthetics, and because the discovery of his book De Architectura jump- ly killed by five villains on the orders of
started the Renaissance. the treacherous Maître Soubise. A differ-
ent legend transposes the names and
rivalries to 1401, and adds Jacques’ last
“I behold London; a Human awful wonder of God!
name: Moler (or Molay).
He says: Return, Albion, return! I give myself for thee:
My Streets are my Ideas of Imagination. 11 Louis Charpentier, in the priceless The
Awake Albion, awake! and let us awake up together. Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral, avers that
My Houses are Thoughts: my Inhabitants; Affections . . .” the Notre Dame churches map out a rep-
– William Blake,13 Jerusalem: resentation of the constellation Virgo;
how apropros.
the Emanation of the Giant Albion, Plate 34
107
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
12 In The Holy Place, Henry Lincoln finds
a network of sacred geometry across
southern France pointing at a location
that the less restrained Richard Andrews
and Paul Schellenberger claim is The
Tomb of God.
13 There isn’t space in this note, or even
in this book, to do justice to the visionary
engraver, poet, radical, and mystic
William Blake (1757-1827). He saw
angels, believed in a kind of anthropo-
morphized pantheism, passionately sup-
ported the American and French
Revolutions, and possessed the ghost of
the poet Milton in his left foot. And that’s
just what everyone agrees on. His pan-
theon includes Orc, the spirit of freedom
and passion, and his opponent the archi-
tectural creator Urizen. Los is poetry and
inspiration; his female equivalent
Enitharmon is spiritual beauty. Albion is
the Fallen Man, the giant founder of
Britain and humanity; Atlantis is the mys-
tical joining of Britain and America. As
you can tell, Blake’s imagery is both idio-
syncratic and powerful; there’s really no
substitute for reading his poetry and other
works; David V. Erdman’s The Illuminated
Blake, while not doing the engravings jus-
tice, is a good start. For Blake’s symbolo-
gy, vocabulary, mythology, etc., A Blake
Dictionary by S. Foster Damon is the
court of first resort.
14 Mentioned in Keith Thomas’ sadly
outdated, but still vastly readable, Religion
and the Decline of Magic.
15 For Akhenaton, see p. STi28, or pp.
WWi14-15.
16 Himmler’s clairvoyant, Karl-Maria
Wiligut (1866-1946), tapped Wewelsburg
as the mystic center of Germany. Using
slave labor (and killing 2,000 workers),
the SS renovated the castle between 1934
and 1940 as a center for occult study,
moving in a 16,000-volume library of
occult lore, ancient heraldic flags, and
other treasures – eventually including the
Spear of Destiny (see p. WT38). In
March of 1945, Himmler evacuated some
of the major items; after a perfunctory
attempt at demolition, the SS left the
American soldiers to loot the castle to the
bare walls. See p. 80 for its role in
Lovecraftian un-sacred geometry.
17 On labyrinths, I recommend Mazes &
Labyrinths, by W.H. Matthews, now in a
solid reprint edition by Dover Press.
108
From whence we come to the Rosicrucians, the Masons, and so on. The best of
the lot, of course, is Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral in
London, who rebuilt the city after the Great Fire of 1666 (this isn’t really the place to
get into the notion that you can take a city’s horoscope by treating its fires as you’d
treat fevers in a human subject, and back-tracking from there, but it’s too neat not to
mention) 14 along, no doubt, alchemical and Rosicrucian lines. He designed
Greenwich Observatory deliberately with Vitruvian-solar methods, which leads some
folks to mutter about John Dee founding the British Empire and others to bring the
topic back around to astrology. Of course, who they should mutter about is Wren’s
assistant-cum-partner, Nicholas Hawksmoor, whose truly grim and overpowering
notions of sacred geometry show up in (in order) the six churches he built around
London, the wondrous but opaque Lud Heat by Iain Sinclair, and Peter Ackroyd’s
superb novel Hawksmoor. Logically, given the nature of alignments, we can apply
sacred geometry to urban design, as the Pharaoh Akhenaton15 may have for his city of
Akhetaton, and as the ubiquitous John Michell claims (in Twelve-Tribe Nations and the
Science of Enchanting the Landscape) that both the Israelites and Hadrian did for
Jerusalem. (And as Martin and Nigel Palmer demonstrate in Sacred Britain that
medieval urban planners likely did all over.) This can explain why some cities –
London, New Orleans, Arkham – seem more “magic” than others; their streets and
churches focus mana.
“. . . instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on
broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces – surfaces too great to
belong to anything right or proper from this earth . . . He had said that the
geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and
loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.”
– H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
But even Hadrian was using the awesome powers of sacred geometry for good.
(He also put up a magic obelisk, and laid Hadrian’s Wall out as a telluric circuit break-
er.) Hawksmoor’s churches are an example of Evil Sacred Geometry, say Sinclair and
Ackroyd. Even Good Sacred Geometry can be turned to Evil; Himmler supposedly
reconstructed the Teutonic Order’s Wewelsburg16 castle at Paderborn (very close to
the pagan ley-telluric Externsteine) to focus cthonic magical power into the 12 SS
knights of his black Round Table. (There’s a round table in Chartres cathedral’s floor
with a labyrinth17 in it; its diameter is exactly one tenth the length of the Great
Pyramid’s side. Thought you’d want to know that. Gate Spell, anyone? Amber-style
Pattern to infuse you with ley energies?) Himmler put German ley specialist Wilhelm
Teudt in charge of restoring the Externsteine to its pagan glory – and do I need to
remind you that Hitler was, among other things,a failed architectural draftsman?
“Look at the structure of this roof cap. It looks exactly like the kind of
telemetry tracker NASA uses to identify dead pulsars in other galaxies.”
“And look at this . . . cold-riveted girders, with cores of pure selenium.”
– Stantz and Spengler, Ghostbusters
Which brings us into the modern age; sacred geometry can still be found in whis-
pers around us, from Masonic cornerstone ceremonies at the local bank building to the
rise of feng shui consultants in Los Angeles (a city in desperate need of it) to the new
mania for lining everything up with the Face on Mars. In the digital age of CAD-
CAM, one hardly has to be reminded that numbers underly everything, and that pow-
erful numbers attract still more power. Consider modern architecture. Is it boldly insu-
lating its users from fiendish cthonic mana pools – or is it foolishly stultifying the tel-
luric flows needed for social happiness? Maybe “sick building syndrome” is magical,
and maybe a really clever megakorp will use sacred geometry in its next arcology and
reap a vast harvest of Hermetic power. Hermes was, after all, the god of merchants and
sorcerers. Invoke Hermes and his brother, oracular Apollo (god of architects), next
time you haul out the graph paper. If you build it, they will come.
 HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
Pyramid originally posted “Fooling Around”

Fooling Around in honor of April Fool’s Day, on April 2,

1999, the first issue of its second year and thus
of my second year of “Suppressed
Transmisssion,” making it the earliest essay
“I don’t mean to – get you bothered, but I had to do something to make in this collection. The next essay in publication
sure you’d talk to me. At least I didn’t visit you yesterday, right? It was order is “Nine is Not Enough,” on p. 101.
my day yesterday, and that would have been rude, visiting you with my
feathers on.”
– Dondi Snayheever, on April 2, in Last Call by Tim Powers
1 For Walpurgisnacht, of course, there’s a
It’s not quite Halloween, or even Walpurgisnacht.1 May Day gets the flow- whole essay on pp. 113-115.
ers and songs, and Christmas gets its own tutelary deity in fur-trimmed scarlet.2
But April Fool’s Day does come with one of the most prolix, bisociative, wild 2 That would be, of course, Santa Claus,
and open-for-anything sets of associations around, because it’s the day of the who got his scarlet coat with white ermine
Fool, the day that anything goes, the day when the rules relax, sacred to (and his jolly paunch) from Coca-Cola
Tricksters and Clowns and all manner of archetypal goodness. You don’t need to commercial artist Haddon Sundblom
put the Fool into your campaign all at once, or in all his forms, or all the time – beginning around 1931. Santa Claus, or
but what can one little day a year hurt? Read on and find out. Sinterklaas, or St. Niklaas, used to be a
grimmer fellow in a brown fur coat. (St.
Nicholas’ bishop’s robes, however, are
“The first of April, some do say red.) He traveled from house to house on
Is set apart for All Fool’s Day St. Nicholas’ Day, December 6, dealing
But why the people call it so out coins or sweets to good children and
Not I, nor they themselves do know abducting bad ones to take back to Spain.
But on this day are people sent His Moorish henchman “Black Pete” now
survives only as the “lump of coal” Santa
On purpose for pure merriment.”
threatens to reward bad children with.
– Poor Robin’s Almanack, 1790 St. Niklaas became Sir, or Lord, or
eventually Father, Christmas in England
in 1616 when Ben Jonson wrote Christmas
His Masque. The depiction of Father
Christmas also owed much to Dutch-
English contacts in the Tudor era; and
then transformed under the twin impacts
of Dickens and Americans into the mod-
ern Father Christmas that Britons know.
Meanwhile, the goddess Berchta (see
p. 114) delivered gifts (and kidnapped bad
children) on Epiphany (Twelfth Night,
for which see p. 42-43) in Germany.
German invasions of Italy brought her
south, then, as the white faerie Befana
(Epiphania).
Victorian anthropology is not dead,
however; in 1980, a scholar named Rogan
Taylor ascribed Santa Claus to Siberian
shamanic practices. The reindeer is a
characteristic animal of the Lapps and
Siberians, shamanic journeys involve
flights through the air, his red and white
robes match the colors of the hallucino-
genic fly agaric mushroom, and he comes
down chimneys in the same manner that
shamans’ spirits enter and leave through
the smoke-hole in the shaman’s yurt.
Combine that with the Christmas Tree as
the shamanic Tree of the World and
Santa’s elves as familiar spirits, and
though you may not have sound anthro-
pology, you’ve got a pretty cool secret
Santa origin.

109
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
3 The Feast of the Innocents, or
Childermass, commemorates the slaugh-
ter of infants by Herod. For which see
note 4 on p. 59.
4 For more on Misrule, see p. 42.
5 The Mummers appear in their opaque
glory on p. 43.
6 The earliest mention of the hobby
horse, which is an effigy horse paraded
about usually to amuse the commoners
and attract donations for the poor, seems
to be for the Misrule celebration at the
court of Edward VI in 1551.
A Misrule version of the hobby-
horse dance in Romania involves a Fool,
an Androgyne (note 13, p. 44), a Goat,
and a troop of dancers. The dancers in
question are a sworn brotherhood, and
precede the dance with an effigy horse
head and the number nine. Intriguingly,
the dance is called the calusar – an echo of
the Benandantist werewolves from p. 63?
7 Which, as Ronald Hutton demonstrates
with considerable verve in the below-cited
Stations of the Sun, was in most cases not
so much a “pagan survival” at all. Many,
even most, of these customs arose during
the late Middle Ages, embedded in a firm-
ly Christian context. But, as I’ve said
before, bad anthropology (or folklore
research) makes for some good gaming.
Or swell horror movies, as Robin Hardy’s
1973 Wicker Man demonstrates.
8 “Chess,” on pp. STi91-93.
9 The dollar sign has been explained as
the overlapping of “U” and “S” (for
United States), a sloppy numeral eight (as
in “pieces of eight,” from the Spanish dol-
lar), and as an overlapping of “P” and “S”
(for PeSos). You pays your money and
you takes your choice.
110
Perhaps in a kind of weird logic, April Fool’s Day used to happen in
December. The day for pranks, for setting someone foolish or innocent up as a
pretend figure of power, for senseless drama and marginally threatening beg-
ging, used to be the Feast of Innocents,3 December 28 (and indeed, in Mexico it
still is). This day spread through the whole Twelve Days of Christmas into a
time generally known as Misrule,4 a time of “magical reversal” when established
laws gave way to their reverse – the sun was dead, and while Christ’s away the
mice can play, or something of that sort. It was all tied together with Mummer’s
plays,5 and sword-dancing, and hobby-horse6 parades, and all the rest of that
superdeluxe “pagan survival” type stuff7 the British used to do so well before
they noticed that folklorists were watching. It may actually be a descendant of
the Roman feast of Saturnalia, which ran from December 17-24, and included
special feasts of horses, secrecy, effigy-burning, and inverted social ranks. (J.G.
Frazer, who sees human sacrifice everywhere, doesn’t need to try very hard at all
to see it in the Saturnalia.) And Misrule used to get pretty weird indeed, not just
dressing the village idiot up like the King or letting choirboys (Fool’s Bishops)
preach sermons from the high pulpit: Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln
and good buddies with medieval magus Roger Bacon, had to pass an edict in
1236 forbidding the priests from “inverting the proper order of worship and
pretending to praise demons at the New Year.” (Quote courtesy of Ronald
Hutton’s excellent Stations of the Sun, a calendrical guide to just this sort of
Foolishness.)
Exactly how all this fun wound up in April is still a little murky. April Fool’s
doesn’t exist in April in England before about 1680, and is prob-
ably an import from France, where April 1 used to be the
tail end of the New Years’ party which ran for eight days
from March 25 (close enough to the vernal equinox for
comfort). April 1 was the birthday of Venus to the
Romans, Hathor to the Egyptians, and Kali to the
Hindus (in a nice bit of spreading the wealth). There
is a trickster holiday in India even now on March 31,
which might be connected if you’ve a mind to do it that
way; it’s at least as reasonable as the silly notion that peo-
ple who didn’t remember that King Charles IX moved
New Years’ to January (in 1564, which at least fits with the tim-
ing) and celebrated it in April were mocked as “April Fools.” Especially since, in
France, you’re called a poisson d’Avril (“April fish”) if you fall for the old “Kick
Me” trick, which either refers to the sun moving out of Pisces around then, or
to the connection of April 1 and fish-eating Lent, where it pretty regularly falls.
The fact that Carnival (Mardi Gras to us) also featured a big celebration of
Foolish Misrule cemented the connection to Lent, anyway. Speaking of the
French, the chess-bishop in France is called Le Fou – “the Fool.” Ties to
Misrule, or to our mystic chess-workings from an earlier column?8
“The trial has at any rate proved that a plot against the Constitution
of the Reich is not considered a serious crime in Bavaria.”
– London Times April 2, 1924
It seemed like a pretty bad joke when Hitler was sentenced to a lousy five
years in prison on April 1, 1924; and you can argue that someone pulled anoth-
er fast one on Germany in 1815, when Otto von Bismarck (who started all that
trouble) was born, also on April 1. Eleanor of Aquitaine and Marvin Gaye both
died on April 1, and Iran proclaimed itself an Islamic Republic on April 1,
1979. On a nicely Discordian note, however, the dollar sign as we know it 9
may have been invented on April 1, 1778 by a fellow euphoniously named
Oliver Pollock. Or, of course, it may very well not, but the mystical connection
between Hermes, god of tricksters, and Hermes, god of merchants, is too good
to pass up.
 HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
“In a sense it is the spirit of the Fool which animates the entire Tarot 10 Well, maybe not. The first known
deck. In the earliest deck known he is shown towering over midget appearance of the Joker is in American
euchre and poker decks of the 1850s; he’s
human figures, a Giant of Folly and of super-rational sanity.
not even called the “Joker” until 1880 or
It is with his madness, that of the Fool of God, that the cards are thereabouts, before that being known as
illuminated; for in any reading of the Tarot, it is the Fool who asks the “token” or the “blank” or the “Best
and the Fool who answers every question.” Bower.” But it’s fun to pretend, isn’t it?
– Bill Butler, Dictionary of the Tarot
11 As my friend James Palmer points out
to me that Canadian novelist Robertson
But before we get to the gods, we need to take a detour through the arche-
Davies points out in The Lyre of Orpheus, 0
types. The Fool is one of the key trumps in the major arcana of the Tarot; he’s can also multiply any other Tarot trump
the only one to survive the transition to the regular deck of cards, as the tenfold by being added at the end.
Joker. 10 He represents innocence, stupidity, madness, purity, destiny, the
Quester, and the Idiot. His number is 0, the ineffable,11 and he can’t even be 12 Or like Robin Hood (pp. 53-56) used
pinned down by that – some decks put him, 0 and all, between Judgement (20) to wear.
and the World (21). The Fool is also known as the Madman, the Vagabond, the
Traveller, and the Fugitive. His first name, in Italian, was Il Matto, which sug- 1 3 The village of Gotham in
gests the Egyptian Maat, or Fate. (Indeed, in some decks, he faces that other Nottinghamshire served as the byword
Egyptian trickster, the crocodile, rather than the more familiar abyss.) The for foolish behavior in medieval England,
feathers he used to wear in his hair (remnants, perhaps, of the Saturnalia effigy- much as the village of Chelm did in
Jewish Poland, the province of Boeotia
sacrifice? Or of the Feather of Maat in Egyptian iconography?) have been
did in ancient Greece, Swabia did for the
replaced by the “feather in his cap”12 of Yankee Doodle, the American incarna- Germans, Galilee for the Roman-era
tion of the Fool. Jews, Poland did for 20th-century
Americans, etc. Washington Irving chris-
“There’s nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.” tened New York City “Gotham” in his
– Lon Chaney, Sr. (born April 1, 1883) 1807 work Salmagundi, from whence it
became applied to Batman’s particular
urban hell.
Another American Fool is the Joker, the mad clown
and psychotic killer (in this connection, should I note that
Gotham is the traditional City of Fools?),13 and heir to a
whole legacy of evil clowns from Poe’s “Hop-Frog” to
Pennywise from Stephen King’s It to John Wayne Gacy.
Remember, the Misrule release from constraints can also
bring forth monsters. The Clown comes to us from the
commedia dell’Arte where, as Harlequin, he plays a rather
ambivalent role. Mr. Punch himself (a descendant of the
Italian Puncinello, another commedia clown) when you get
right down to it, is pretty nasty work. Even as we root for
his victories over Ennui, the Law, the Hangman, and
Death itself, we can’t forget that he’s either killed Judy or
at the very least treated her extraordinarily badly. (Could a
longer Mr. Punch play show him beating or killing all the
other Tarot Trumps? What would occultist PCs do with
such a thing?)

“Upon May 28, 1881, near the city of

Worcester, England, a fishmonger, with a
procession of carts, loaded with several kinds
of crabs and periwinkles, and with a dozen
energetic assistants, appeared at a time when
nobody on a busy road was looking. The
fishmonger and his assistants grabbed sacks of
periwinkles, and ran in a frenzy, slinging the
things into fields on both sides of the road . . .
They were not advertising anything. Above all
there was secrecy.”
– Charles Fort, Lo!

111
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
14 Journalist Charles Hoy Fort (1874-
1932), freed from immediate financial
concerns by an inheritance, devoted the
last two decades of his life to collecting
anomalies, facts “damned” by science.
(He’d collected 25,000 such notes before
1916, but destroyed them as a fire haz-
ard.) His friend Theodore Dreiser got his
own publisher to bring out Fort’s first
book, The Book of the Damned, in 1919.
Fort followed up with New Lands (1923),
Lo! (1931), and the posthumous Wild
Talents (1932). Fort’s friend Tiffany
Thayer organized the Fortean Society
in 1931; Fort, characteristically, refused
to join.
Fort’s works have been collected as
The Books of Charles Fort, with a compre-
hensive index. Without it, you are lost.
The superb magazine Fortean Times has
been keeping an eye on falls of carp, lights
in the sky, phantom kangaroos, and the
rest of the Fortean experience since 1973.
1 5 For a trifle more on Comet Hale-
Bopp, see note 9 on p. 102.
16 Br’er Rabbit appears on p. 69.
17 Anansi and High John the Conqueror
get up to their tricks in notes 13 and 12,
both on p. 69.
18 For Percival, see note 18 on p. 34.
19 The Green Man appears in note 8 on
p. 54.
20 Robin Goodfellow (remember, he’s
not just any puck, he’s the Puck) appears
in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and on
p. STi86.
21 Robin Hood, again, appears on pp.
53-56.
22 Till Eulenspiegel, like High John the
Conqueror (note 12, p. 69), exists to
demonstrate the native wit and cleverness
of a despised, supposedly dim subgroup;
in this case, German peasantry. He wins
his victories (his “merry pranks”) over the
townsfolk, clergy, and petty nobility.
His canon dates back at least to the 14th
century; it was first printed as a chapbook
in 1515.
2 3 The Fool of God, or Wise Fool,
comes from the notion that “childlike
belief” is the most efficacious, tied up
with notions of innocence and purity,
with a soupçon of the old Islamic idea that
the mad are “touched by Allah.”
112
Charles Fort,14 something of an American trickster god himself, invented
the Mad Fishmonger as a possible explanation for the rain of periwinkles on
Worcester. Uncharacteristically, Fort didn’t treat the idea with the same serious-
ness he lavished on other notions – but the Mad Fishmonger definitely ties in
with our poissons d’Avril, those April Fish-Fools who traveled from town to town
putting on the Carnival plays and incarnating the Lenten Sacrifice removed
from Saturnalia to April. (And isn’t it interesting that the Mad Fishmonger of
Fort’s imagination has twelve disciples?) John Keel, among others, profitably
mines the notion of a mad deity (or at least, divine practical jokers) behind the
weird and Fortean events of the world in such books as Disneyland of the Gods,
and such Cosmic Jokers might make an interesting break from Malevolent CIA-
Backed Greys or Dolphin-Cuddling Space Brothers in a UFOlogical campaign.
In that connection, perhaps I should note that Comet Hale-Bopp15 reached
perihelion on April 1, 1997.
“It has seemed convenient to deal with these main forms of the idea of
the Fool, but no attempt has been made, or should be made, to prevent
the legends overlapping and coalescing. The variations in expression,
even when contradictory in appearance, should lead to an intuitive
apprehension of the symbol by the sublimation and transcendence of the
intellectual.”
– Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
Our final American Fool is, of course, the ultimate in Wise Tricksters, Bugs
Bunny. Bugs has a truly multiracial American lineage; Bre’r Rabbit 16 is the
African-American avatar of Anansi, the Spider-Trickster via High John the
Conqueror,17 while Rabbit was the Algonquin version of the Northwestern
Raven or the Southwestern Coyote (who also gets his own, more overtly
Foolish incarnation, in Bugs’ cast of characters – is there room for a
Toon Tarot?). Such totems combine both the elements of the culture
hero who brings fire to humanity, and the lazy thief who tries to steal
the meat cooked on it. Hermes, inventor of the fire-drill
and god of thieves, or even more directly, Loki – these
are the kinds of figures you have hiding behind the
simplicity of April Fools. The Fool is the Questing
Knight Percivale (who foolishly asks the wrong
question about the Grail), the Green Man19 (who
brings the spring and burns in the bonfires cele-
brating it), Robin Goodfellow 20 and Robin
Hood21 (who, like Bugs Bunny with carrots,
can’t resist an archery match), Jack the third
son in every fairy tale, Till Eulenspiegel22
and the Fool of God.23 In any of these
forms he might be suitable for a walk-on
in any game from GURPS Goblins to
GURPS Camelot – or, as Nyarlathotep,
the Trickster God With a Thousand
Faces, he might be behind something
far darker. For April 1 may seem
merely a day of pranks and mischief,
but it is at its heart a day devoted to
Misrule, to inverting the natural
order, to false bishops and the
Crawling Chaos.
No, not really. April Fool.
 HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
Pyramid originally posted “Devil’s Prom

Devil’s Prom Night: Night” on Walpurgisnacht, 1999. The next

essay in publication order is “Shades of Black,”
on p. 13.
Walpurgisnacht Fun
“Dear Mother, the wind and rain howls tonight,
It is the first of May, my child.
Dear Mother, there’s thunder over the Brocken. 1 Music by Johannes Brahms, of all
Dear Child, there are witches up there. people.
Dear Mother, I don’t want to see any witches.
Dear Child, they are seen often enough. 2 At the time I wrote this essay, the editor
Dear Mother, but even in town? of Pyramid was Scott Haring. Hence the
fun of discovering Vital Information
They’re even closer, my child.” about Walpurgisnacht from Wilhelm
– from Walpurgisnachtlied, by Wilhelm Häring1 (1798-1871) Häring. Synchronicity, as we all know,
has causation beat hollow for fun.
The euphoniously named Wilhelm2 was definitely on to something: they’re
even closer than we think. Or at least, closer than your players think, especially 3 Where he was thrown in 1131 by the
on Walpurgisnacht, when the doors of reality gape off their hinges and anything Saracens, who just didn’t appreciate
can come in from magical oil to to cathode rays, illuminating dog-goddesses and Christian saints for some odd reason.
Grey aliens alike. How, exactly, did a nice Devonshire girl like Walburga get
mixed up in all of this? And who else can we drag in while the gates of time are 4 Another odd triple year, to go with 222,
1666, and 1888 in our Ripper-magic the-
open? Read on, and find out.
ory on p. 71. (And with our whole triplici-
ty theme in note 9, p. 59.) While I’m near
“St. Willibald laid her to rest beside St. Winibald, and many wonders the topic, the last Merovingian king,
were wrought at both tombs. St. Willibald survived till 786, and after Dagobert II, married an Irish princess
his death devotion to St. Walburga gradually declined, and her tomb Mathilde in 666, the sorceror-Pope
was neglected. About 870, Otkar, then Bishop of Eichstadt, determined Sylvester II (p. STi29) acceded to the
Throne of St. Peter in 999, one Robert
to restore the church and monastery of Heidenheim, which were falling d’Artois attempted to murder King Philip
to ruin. The workmen having desecrated St. Walburga’s grave, she one VI of France by sorcery in 1333, and
night appeared to the bishop, reproaching and threatening him.” Nostradamus published his Centuries in
– Catholic Encyclopedia 1555. If we’re not wedded to dry old
Historical Facts, 444 is a dandy year for
St. Walburga (Bugga to her friends) wasn’t born on April 30, didn’t die on the Merovingians to get their “sea-born”
April 30, and isn’t even supposed to be associated with April 30 at all. (That day magical Bloodline grafted on, and it
would just be too neat if St. Brendan
is supposed to be reserved for St. Adjutor, who would be very put out about the
(note 12, p. 94) discovered the Earthly
whole thing if he weren’t at the bottom of the Mediterranean somewhere.)3 St. paradise in 555 A.D. (that being the magi-
Walburga (or Walpurgis) was canonized (supposedly) on May 1, which is why cal number of God, and perfection, and
that is St. Walburga’s Day and why the night before is Walburga’s Eve – so on).
Walpurgisnacht. Unless you’re a stuffy old Benedictine type and celebrate her
day on the anniversary of her death, February 25, in which case you’re reading 5 There are three Norns, which brings up
the wrong column. Walburga (or Vaubourg, or Waltpurde, or Gauburge) was good old triple-goddess Hecate from
born in Devonshire around 710 AD, and if sainthood ran in families (as the note 7 on p. 71.
Prieuré de Sion believes it does, come to think of it), it would have run in hers.
Her father was St. Richard, underking of Wessex, her brothers were Sts. 6 With still dodgier linguistics, she could
Willibald and Winibald, and most importantly of all, her uncle was the greatest become St. Wilgefortis, the purely mythi-
cal virgin who prayed for a beard rather
of the British missionaries to Germany, St. Boniface his own self. Boniface
than marry the King of Sicily. When her
needed nuns to staff the monasteries and convents he was establishing across wish was granted, her irate father had her
Germany, and he called on his very holy and learned niece for the service. She crucified. She, of course, is the way we
did a fine job at the abbey of Heidenheim (“Heathen’s Home” – she had her can drag that Mystical Androgyne (from
work cut out for her) and died in 777.4 At some point (the traditional date is note 13 on p. 44) in here. In an interest-
May 1, 870, unless it’s September 21 – the autumnal equinox, for those paying ing link to the Wild Hunt on the next
attention) her remains were transferred to Eichstadt, following her appearance page, it was the medieval English custom
from beyond the grave to Bishop Otkar. At Eichstadt, the next bishop, one to offer oats to St. Wilgefortis, in hopes
Erchenbold, noticed (again, traditionally on May 1) that Walburga’s body exud- that she would provide a horse for unkind
ed a miraculous oil. Walburga’s canonization was a sure thing after that, and she husbands or fathers to ride to the Devil.
was made patron saint of rabies, dog bites, mad dogs, and storm-tossed sailors.
113
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
7 The Wild Hunt, in general, is a spectral
band of huntsmen, horses, and hounds
that roam the earth (or fly across the sky)
hunting the souls of the wicked (or of
witches, or of anyone outside on
Walpurgisnacht). Often the huntsmen are
ghosts; in other versions, they are faeries
(or as the Sluagh, both); in some stories,
they are humans returned from Fairyland
after centuries, and unable to dismount
without crumbling to dust.
The leader of the Hunt varies, being
identified as Herla (an ancient king taken
by faeries), Arthur, Odin, Dietrich of
Bern (a German folk hero based on
Theodoric the Great), Wild Edric (the
Saxon version of Dietrich), the Devil,
Cain, the Wandering Jew, King Herod,
Dando (a Cornish Flying Dutchman sort
who foolishly promised to “ride to Hell”
to get more wine), Wild Darrell, Dewer,
Tregeagle, Cheney (all locally infamous
figures), Sir Francis Drake, Roland,
Charlemagne, King Valdemar of
Denmark, or the archangel Gabriel,
depending on the source.
8 The Brocken, or Blocksberg, is the
highest point (3,747 ft.) in Germany’s
Harz Mountains. When the sun is low, it
magnifies shadows cast from the moun-
tain’s bald granite peak and throws them
onto the fog or low clouds in a phenome-
non known as the “Brocken bow” or
“Brocken specter.” This, obviously, goes
some way to explaining its reputation
as a haunt of witches and other livelie
awfulnesse.
It’s not entirely impossible that the
theme of women dancing on the moun-
tain in praise of a forbidden deity is an
actual pagan survival in this case.
Athenian women of good birth met the
women of the oracular city of Delphi on
the slopes of Mount Parnassus every two
years during the Lenæa (January 6, from
p. 44) to dance the Dionysian ritual
dance, the oreibasia, in the bitter cold.
This well-attested practice, at least, lasted
well into the 2nd century A.D.; existing
cults of Dionysos can be definitely located
as late as the early 6th century, though
not necessarily in Germany.
9 And alma mater of Victor Frankenstein,
as we learned on p. 66.
10 In their Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert
Anton Wilson and Robert Shea postulate,
tongue-in-cheek, that Adam Weishaupt
killed George Washington and took his
place as first President of the Masonic
Republic of America (note 2, p. 31).
114
“The Witches’ excursion takes place on the first night in May . . . they
ride up Blocksberg on the first of May, and in 12 days must dance the
snow away; then Spring begins . . . Here they appear as elflike, godlike
maids.”
– Jakob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology
The whole cult of St. Walburga is screwy. Numerous German folktales
mention her, most often written into roles played in earlier versions by Faeries
and goddesses. Her connection to dogs almost certainly derives from the dogs
associated with old Teutonic goddesses such as Nehalennia (widely and ancient-
ly worshiped in the Low Countries, which also shelter the only widespread
Walburga-cult outside Bavaria), the Norns5 (associated with the spindle and
mirror, another two of Walburga’s icons), Frigga (whose tree, the linden, grows
around the oldest Walburga chapel in Bavaria), and the interestingly named
Berchta. Berchta (“the shining”) was an important triple-goddess of winter (as
the hag), spinning (as the housewife), and corn (as the white maiden). Wal-
berchta would be “slain Berchta” – a dead dog goddess, reminiscent of
Walburga’s postmortem appearances to Otkar and Erchenbold. (Wælbyrga,
meanwhile, would be “hollow hill of the slain.”6 This keeps getting better.)
These goddesses, or rather, this Goddess under her various aliases and
avatar forms, held May Day (Beltane, in Britain) especially sacred, the day of
spring fertility defeating evil winter (often in the form of a wolf). The day
before May Day, then, May Eve, was the last chance for the forces of evil to get
their licks in, when the world was turning on its hinge. These “between times”
are magically powerful ones; washing your face in May Day dew gives you sec-
ond sight, and anything with accumulations of evil (old clothes, effigies repre-
senting sins and errors) gets burned in the May Eve bonfires, and you need to
leave a gift of honey and wheat (two more symbols of St. Walburga) out for the
“Windhound” to avert storms (just as St. Walburga averts storms from sailors).
The Windhound, by the way, is the last hound from the Wild Hunt,7 and
there’s a German legend of a farmer sheltering St. Walburga from the Wild
Hunt on May Eve and finding his barley turned to gold in the morning. This
legend used to be told about a faerie called the “Moss Wife”; this fay held her
revels on (wait for it) May Eve, revels that became the witches’ sabbat on the
Brocken8 with only the addition of the Devil.
“Just this very afternoon, Barton was reading through a [Jayne]
Mansfield biography and observed the date of Mansfield’s first studio
tryout: April 30, 1954. ‘Things are always turning up like that.’
[Anton] La Vey said, unsurprised. ‘It’s the little things that are the big
things.’”
– Lawrence Wright, “True Believers”
Our modern devil, Adolf Hitler, remains inextricably linked to
Walpurgisnacht – he shot himself on April 30, 1945, a day before Stalin took
Berlin on his own Marxist-magical May Day. Said May Day is associated with
international socialism because, say those who know, the Bavarian Illuminati was
founded on May Day, 1776 – no doubt after a Walpurgisnacht ceremony in
Ingolstadt, in the heart of the Bavarian Walburga-cult.9 Speaking of the
Illuminati, George Washington (or was it Weishaupt by then?)10 was inaugurat-
ed the first President of the United States on Walpurgisnacht, 1789. Jefferson
bought Louisiana (and its occult capital New Orleans) on Walpurgisnacht,
1803. In a coincidence absolutely pregnant with magical significance in any
proper Urban Fantasy, the first commercial television broadcast in America, the
NBC/RCA broadcast at the New York World’s Fair, lit up the orthocon tube on
April 30, 1939. Sliding down rapidly, President Nixon ordered the “Saturday
Night Massacre” on Walpurgisnacht, 1973, and the U.S. evacuated its Saigon
 HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
embassy on Walpurgisnacht, 1975, with another Communist army waiting to
celebrate May Day in a ruined capital. The astrologer William Lilly and the
enigmatic Kaspar Hauser11 both have Walpurgisnacht as a birthday, as do
Karl Friedrich Gauss and, even more innocuously, Grampa Munster.
Meanwhile, Casey Jones 12 died in that train wreck on
Walpurgisnacht, 1900 (does his train whistle its own Wild Hunt
across the skies of the West now?) and George Balanchine, who
choreographed a ballet based on the Walpurgisnacht revel in
Gounod’s Faust, died (in 1983) on Walpurgisnacht.

“On April 30, 1964, the first communication

between these aliens and the U.S. Government
took place at Holloman Air Force Base in New
Mexico. Three saucers landed at a prearranged
area and a meeting was held between the aliens
and intelligence officers of the U.S. Government.”
– statement of John Lear

If John Lear is to be believed, American independence

died then as well when the Majestic-12 Men in Black sold us
down the river to the UFOs. Did these aliens come from
Sirius, the Dog Star? From Zeta Reticulum (in the constella-
tion of the net, sacred to Nerthus, yet another version of
Nehalennia)? Do the three Grey saucers echo the three Grey
Sisters, the Norns who spin Walburga’s (or Berchta’s) spindle
and peer into her three-sided mirror? Holloman AFB was
selected, no doubt, not just for its evocative and ley-powered
New Mexico location, but for its name. The “hollow man”
recalls the effigies burned in May Eve bonfires, or perhaps
“Holda’s Men” referring to the ancient Germanic goddess of
witchcraft. (The Greys as effigies? The MIBs as Hollow Men?)
Interestingly, Holda was believed, even in Christian times, to be in
command of the “lords of air and darkness” (the Faerie, or airy
demons, or the Greys, depending on your parallax), and queen of “a third
part of the whole world” as Holda Abundia.13

“There is clearly a rich lode of material here which, when combined

11 Kaspar Hauser (1812?-1833) appeared
with the many folk-customs, can be mined for ideas about . . . in Nuremberg in 1828 dressed in tattered
celebrations and rituals in our time. One can easily find a basis for finery, unable to speak, and unfamiliar
anything from a solitary, mystical rite, to a women’s magic-working, with common items such as fire. He
a lovers’ tryst, a . . . bonfire on a mountain, . . . or a large, uproarious claimed to have been locked in a tower his
festival, depending on one’s inclinations . . .” entire life. He eventually died in a knife
attack, his identity still a mystery. See
– Winifred Hodge, “Wælburga and the Rites of May”
Colin and Damon Wilson’s Encyclopedia of
Unsolved Mysteries.
If you’re running any game of magic set in or around Earth, give some
thought to celebrating Walpurgisnacht in your own game world when it rolls 12 John Luther “Casey” Jones (1863-
around. It doesn’t even have to be magic per se; the Faerie and witches can easi- 1900) is another of the American gods
ly morph into Greys and Men In Black – and even more easily on from p. 69.
Walpurgisnacht. So often all the elements in your campaign can point in the
direction you set for them; it’s sometimes more interesting (and, if the word 1 3 Holda is also the Mistress of the
means anything in this context, realistic) to have something happen just because Venusberg, the Queen inside the
it’s time for it to happen; the players aren’t connected to it except as witnesses or Mountain, celebrated in the legend of
Tannhäuser. Like Diana (note 1, p. 61),
victims, and the same with the villains or whomever. The feast day of the dog-
Venus rapidly became associated with
goddess, saint of Heathen’s Home and hostess of the Zetan Greys, makes an local female spirits after the fall of Rome.
excellent time to pop something in that doesn’t come from anywhere except Holda sometimes appears in folk belief as
Out There. Tell ‘em Bugga sent you. Herodias, sister of King Herod.

115
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
Pyramid originally posted “Patterns in
Amber” on February 25, 2000. The next
essay in publication order is “History on the
Rocks: Alternate Ice Ages,” on p. 7.
1 See, if you can snag a copy, Irene Franck
and David Brownstone’s marvelously
accessible To the Ends of the Earth: The
Great Trade and Travel Routes of Human
History.
2 Avram Davidson did so in one of his
superb Adventures in Unhistory, collected
by Owlswick Press. See p. STi65.
3 The Golden Fleece story has also been
explained as a zodiacal initiation tale (into
the Age of Aries from note 3 on p. 23), a
description of the yellowing effect feeding
laurel leaves to sheep has on their wool, a
romanticized pirate raid, a saffron trading
voyage, and a concealed reference to
Sirian activity on the Earth. Jason’s help-
meet in acquiring the Fleece, the sorcer-
ess Medea, is traditionally considered a
priestess of Hecate, whom we met in note
7 on p. 71.
4 Philip Klass is something of the “angry
prosecutor” for the skeptic’s side of
UFOlogy. His books, such as UFOs –
Identified! and The Real Roswell Cover-Up,
seem to take people’s belief in goofy
things from the skies as a personal affront.
I prefer a more mythological, folkloric
approach such as that in Jacques Vallee’s
books, or Curtis Peebles’ Watch the Skies!
5 Foo fighters, basically WWII-era UFOs
seen by both sides, got their name around
1943 from a Smokey Stover cartoon
expression, “Where there’s foo, there’s
fire.”
6 For Nazi saucers, see either pp. STi77-
80 or the other sources in note 2 on p. 49.
7 Nazi saucers were bronze-colored
because they were coated with the “mira-
cle metal” Luftschwamm, a porous bronze
that simultaneously defeated the “bound-
ary effect” and made a cool UFO
Theremin whine. Could Luftschwamm
actually be Atlantean orichalcum, from
note 9 on p. 84?
8 For vril, see note 19 on p. 87.
9 Although I’m sure there’s some techni-
cal meaning to it, I’m using “scalar” here
in the same way the Tesla-cultists do, as a
magic word to make things sound cool.
It’s never a bad idea to mix a little tech-
nobabble into your magickal lingua ignota.
116
Patterns in Amber
“Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever
in amber, a more than royal tomb.”
– Sir Francis Bacon, History of Life and Death
It is immortality in death, the sun’s tears and the moon’s fire, lost treasure
and secret power. It is amber, the bedrock of the oldest trade route1 known to
man, stretching from classical Rome far back into the Neolithic era. In its lumi-
nous depths, we can find everything from dinosaurs to flying saucers. That is, as
always, if we look hard enough.
Looked at through the pitiless lens of reality, amber is fossilized tree (mostly
pine, cedar, and sequoia) resin. Insects, leaves, flowers, fungi, worms, and other
passengers trapped in the sticky blobs millions of years ago can still be seen
frozen in their prehistoric death throes. This, of course, is what gave the mad sci-
entist of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park the notion of cloning dinosaurs from
blood DNA in the belly of amber-encased Cretaceous biting flies. Even if the
fossilization process didn’t break DNA chains beyond any hope of repair (at least
without alien hypertech or good old GURPS Atomic Horror knowhow), most
amber only dates back to 20-50 million years ago, too recent for dino blood.
However, Canadian and Lebanese amber both predate the dino doom, and it’s
not impossible that other isolated deposits exist. (A site in New Jersey discovered
in 1996 revealed over 100 previously unknown Cretaceous and Jurassic species;
insects, plants, spores, etc.) Rather than release velociraptors, however, perhaps
your amber-popping mad scientists can release prehistoric plagues; researchers
have claimed successful breeding of 25-million-year-old bacteria from amber,
and an amber-borne virus would make an interesting change.
“And all around the maidens, the daughters of Helios, enclosed in tall
poplars, wretchedly wail a piteous plaint; and from their eyes they shed
on the ground bright drops of amber . . . But the Celts have attached
this story to them, that these are the tears of Leto’s son, Apollo, that are
borne along by the eddies, the countless tears that he shed aforetime
when he came to the sacred race of the Hyperboreans and left shining
heaven at the chiding of his father.”
– Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautika, Book IV
And an interesting resonance, since the ancients identified amber as the
tears of sacred maidens weeping for their slain brother, although the brother is
variously named as Meleager and Phaeton, both solar heroes killed by fire.
(Perhaps the virus causes a high fever?) Amber, of course, burns, and was used as
incense in the worship of solar gods such as Apollo, whose tears also come into
play here. (Although, since amber washes up with the tide, it was also associated
with frozen moonlight.) Apollo’s tears are associated with the Hyperboreans,
who lived in the “land beyond the north wind.” There, with Apollo as their
king, they lived in a sunny paradise, which Avram Davidson has cleverly pointed
out2 may derive from the fact that obviously tropical plants can be seen clearly
embedded in “Hyperborean” amber. That golden amber came south from the
Baltic Sea through the Russian and East European river networks, into the
Black Sea and thence to Greece. Which has led not a few scholars to wonder if
perhaps the “Golden Fleece” for which Jason searched (which was also kept in a
paradise associated with the Black Sea) might not have been a sacred chunk of
amber.3 Amber, you see, attracts wool when rubbed, because amber raises a
powerful static charge. That charge gives electricity its name, since amber was
elektra to the Greeks.
 HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS

10 The iconography of the goddess Isis

links the moon and mirrors, as does
Central Asian lore calling the moon “the
mirror of the World.” See pp. STi94-97
for more mirrorolatry.

11 The Teutonic Knights, or technically,

“I don’t know if you know anything about UFOs, but all the the Order of Knights of the Hospital of
characteristics of a typical sighting are shared with nocturnal Holy Mary of the Teutons in Jerusalem,
insects swarming through an electrical air field: the sudden appearance of were the German national variant on the
a colored, glowing light hovering in the night sky, moving in a Templars (note 5, p. 31). Founded in Acre
in 1190, the Teutonic Knights soon
nonmechanical matter, possibly humming, creating interference with diverted their attention from the Holy
radio and television signals, then suddenly disappearing.” Land to more profitable territories in
– Bambi Berenbaum, in The X-Files, Eastern Europe. Between 1211 and 1224,
“War of the Coprophages” the King of Hungary granted the
Teutonics dominion over Bürzenland, in
And when you combine insects (even preserved in amber) and electricity, you Transylvania, but expelled them when
they seemed ready to colonize it.
spark the gap to UFOs. Both believers and debunkers (most notably Philip Klass)4
After gaining the patronage of the Grail-
have characterized UFOs as powerful clouds of atmospheric electrified plasma,
sponsoring, occultist Emperor Frederick
generated by murkily obscure means involving weather inversions (debunkers) or II, the Order began a new crusade in
secret Tesla technology (believers). This theory goes all the way back to the “foo Prussia, Lithuania, and Livonia (see p. 62;
fighter”5 sightings over WWII Europe, some of which seemed to be intelligent werewolf country!), eventually absorbing
ball lightning. Rumor spread that Hitler’s mad scientists (who, had they only the Livonian Knights of the Sword and
known, could have been raising an army of dinosaur warriors for the Reich instead) ruling the entire Baltic region.
had created the “feuerball” or the “kugelblitz” to knock American planes out of the In 1308, faced with accusations of
sky. Since we’ve learned all about the Nazi flying saucers,6 it’s interesting to realize witchcraft similar to those against the
that they (and the initial “flying saucers” sighted over Mount Rainier in 1947) were Templars, the Order removed its head-
explicitly described as brass-colored.7 Or, rather, the color of amber. If the Nazis quarters to Marienburg, in Prussia. Here,
their independence was so complete that
developed some magical or Tesla-technical way to release the inherent elektra (or
even the anathematized German
vril,8 or scalar9 plasma, or antigravity ions) within amber, they’d need a lot of it to
Templars openly joined the Teutonics
create a UFO fleet capable of taking down the Allied air forces. without fear of sanction or arrest. Much
as the Templars sponsored troubadours,
“The hovel, containing the lost Amber Room (Yeltsin keeps insisting that the Teutonics endowed the minnesingers,
he knows where it is, the Bernsteinzimmer, of which only with much intermingling between the two
photographs remain) and the History of the World, stood on a traditions. However, a massive defeat at
Tannenberg in 1410 crippled the Order
freakishly shaped knoll, very far from the sea.” militarily, and it lost first its independence
– Peteris Cedrins, The Penetralium and then its military commands after
1697.
So it’s a good thing they had the Amber Room. Built in 1712 for King The Teutonic Knights finally
Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia, it took six tons of Persian (likely Lebanese) amber became a small group of nobles (some-
to construct it. The entire 1,000-square-foot room was paneled, decorated, and times no more than 20), always in military
furnished with amber to create a golden chamber suffused with an eerie, almost service in the German states down
magical light. In 1716, Friedrich Wilhelm gave it to his guest and ally, Tsar Peter through World War One. At this point,
the Teutonics bisociate. Himmler report-
the Great of Russia, who removed it to the imperial palace of Tsarskoye Selo south
edly referred to the 12 inner members of
of St. Petersburg. Catherine the Great added four marble Florentine mosaics (from
his occultist SS group as his “Teutonic
the villas of the also amber-collecting Medici) and numerous mirrors (to reiterate Knights,” believing that each one of them
the moon connection?)10 to the Room in 1775. In 1941, with the Nazis advancing was such a Knight reincarnated. On the
on the palace, the Soviets disassembled the Amber Room and packed it for ship- other hand, the von Stauffenbergs were
ment east – when the Germans attacked and it fell into Nazi hands. The Nazis one of the noble families within the post-
reassembled it in the old Teutonic Order capital of Königsberg, which is interest- 1697 Knighthood. Thus, some authorities
ing given that the Teutonic Knights11 (contemporaries and rivals of the Templars) hypothesize that the 12 conspirators
jealously held the Imperial monopoly on harvesting amber from the Baltic. against Hitler in 1944 were the inner
Heinrich Himmler, of course, was obsessed with the occult heritage of the directive of the pure, Grail-seeking
Teutonic Knights, rebuilding their castles according to mystic geometries all across Teutonic Order. Perhaps it’s thus bisocia-
tively fitting that the colors of the
Germany – including Königsberg. Which just may be why the Amber Room dis-
Teutonic Order were black and white.
appeared without a trace in April of 1945. One of the Medici mosaics has resur-
faced in Bremen, but the trail to the Amber Room itself remains a dead end.
117
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
12 If I couldn’t do Blake justice, there’s no
way that I’m going to go into the story of
Ezra Pound (1885-1972), founding father
of modern poetry and a radical conspiracy
theorist. His 824-page Cantos vastly con-
fuse even Pound scholars; they begin as a
ringing defense of individualism, take a
dog-leg into Fear of the International
Banker Conspiracy (with the sadly nigh-
inevitable anti-Semitic grotesquerie that
follows such ranting), discuss Chinese
aesthetics, and end with a plea for forgive-
ness. In between, he praises Mussolini, for
which FDR’s government threw him in a
madhouse.
13 The Loi, from pp. AH44-51, are also
the Nordics from the Glossary.
14 The Mantids, insectile aliens, appear
on p. STi83, and in Grant Morrison’s
brilliant comic book The Invisibles.
15 See pp. 106-108.
16 For the qlippoth, see note 15, p. 86, or
p. STi83.
17 Peter the Great (1672-1725), it turns
out, was the Antichrist. Or at least an
Antichrist. Or so said the Russian
Orthodox Church. For Peter as Satan, see
note 17, p. 76.
18 Either U-530 or U-977, both of which
left Germany right before Hitler’s final
collapse and surrendered in Buenos Aires,
Argentina in August of 1945 – three
months after V-E Day. Again, for more
resources on this topic, see note 2, p. 49.
19 Not to be confused with the evil tech-
nocratic JASON Society of which
William Cooper’s conspiratorial classic
Behold A Pale Horse warns us (among
other dangers). They, it seems, plan to
hijack the American space program to
send a nuclear-powered probe into
Jupiter, causing it to undergo fusion and
become a second sun, thus fulfilling
Luciferian-Masonic promises of an Age
of Light.
They may be somehow tied to the
knightly (Prieuré front?) Order of the
Golden Fleece founded in 1429 by Duke
Philip the Good of Burgundy (who cap-
tured Joan of Arc on p. 57) to celebrate
his marriage to the sister of Prince Henry
the Navigator (a crypto-Templar from p.
32). William St.-Clair, who built Rosslyn
Chapel (note 12, p. 33), was also a Knight
of the Golden Fleece. The Order fis-
sioned in 1701 between its Spanish and
Austrian branches. Both still exist.
118
“Midonz, with the gold of the sun, the leaf of the poplar, by the light of
the amber,
Midonz, daughter of the sun, shaft of the tree, silver of the leaf, light
of the yellow of the amber,
Midonz, gift of the God, gift of the light, gift of the amber of the sun,
Give light to the metal.”
– Ezra Pound,12 “The Alchemist:
Chant For The Transmutation of Metals”
A chamber made completely of amber, vanished from view in the midst of a
desperate retreat. Surely in any decent game, there’s yet more to this story.
Amber’s magic is powerfully bisociative and alchemical, being both solar and
lunar simultaneously. The Egyptians used it as a dessicant in some mummies,
identifying it with death and preservation. The Scythians may have used it as a
lamp for the dead, a rare frozen piece of sunlight that could follow a shade into
the afterworld. The Romans believed that it cured diseases, especially of the
neck and throat.
So let’s see what we can do with amber in a good old fashioned game of
alien conspiracy. Some of the amber contains nanotechnological control matri-
ces left by the Reptoids before the asteroid hit 65 million years ago. Some of it
contains the powerful chemically-engineered secretions (tears?) of the godlike
ancient-astronaut Loi13 (such as Apollo), which can be released through para-
chemical or psychic means. Some of it contains miniature clone warriors of the
Mantid14 ultraterrestrials, the feared Insect Gods who dwell in the interstices of
the dimensions. Ancient tribes used its magic; on his quest for the Golden
Fleece, Jason stole it and gave birth to the West. The Loi plotted revenge from
their Hyperborean fastnesses (and of course, since both Hyperborea and Thule
are amber countries in
the ultimate
north, that Loi-
Nazi connection
begins as strong
as ever), manipu-
lating the barbar-
ians to sack Rome
and consolidating
power through the
amber-collecting
Teutonic Knights. In
1712, Friedrich Wilhelm
constructs an Amber Room
using mystical geometry15 to
unleash the layered scalar
energies of the elektra but
recoils at the powers he has called up, the Insect Gods from the qlippothic16
realms. He passes it to Peter the Great17 in a midnight ceremony; Peter and his
heirs attempt to control its powers but have only intermittent success. Himmler
seizes it, and fears not its wrath; the Amber Room reveals to him the secrets of
the “kugelblitz” and the electrostatic Nazi saucer fleet is born. The Amber
Room becomes the saucers’ power source, using stolen Tesla broadcast plasma
power designs. Before the Soviets can destroy it, a U-Boat18 ferries it to Nazi
Antarctica, where it lurks in an ice cave at the foot of the world, a new
Hyperborea in the uttermost south. Can a GURPS Black Ops Strike Force
Jason19 brave the cloned dinosaur dragons in the Nazi Redoubt, and steal the
new Golden Fleece – the Amber Room – for a new birth of heroism? Or is it a
trap, which will freeze them all in the glaciers of Antarctica like so many ants
in amber?
 HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
Pyramid originally posted “Be True To Your

B e True To Your Skull Skull” on June 11, 1999. The next essay in
publication order is “Crypto *** Icon: The
Voynich Manuscript,” on p. 35.
“Some lay in dead men’s skulls; and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
As ‘twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems . . .” 1 Well after I wrote this essay, I found
– Shakespeare, Richard III, I:iv:29-31 Chris Morton and Ceri Louise Thomas’
The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls, which is a
Gems and skulls. It’s creepy enough if you’re William Shakespeare, or some delightful wallow in New Age earnestness
with wise Native Americans and secret
Mayan priest encrusting the human headbone with jade and obsidian. How
Atlantean traditions and curses and whis-
much creepier is it when the gem is a skull, or vice versa? A lot of people seem pered cover-ups at the British Museum.
to get good vibrations from the crystal skulls which dot both museum collec- Plus beautiful color pictures of many of
tions and Newage seminars around the globe. But it’s more fun in games if the the Crystal Skulls, including the Mitchell-
crystal skulls channel dangerous power – power to boil your blood and destroy Hedges Skull in mid-trance. I whole-
whole nations. There’s a reason, after all, that the most famous crystal skull is heartedly recommend it to anyone
called the Skull of Doom.1 Let’s look, then, and see if we can’t see, as T.S. Eliot preparing to run a Crystal Skull-centric
says, the skull beneath the skin. game.

2 Frederick Mitchell-Hedges (1882-1959)

“We took with us the sinister Skull of Doom of which much has
was a passionate believer in Atlantis. For
been written. How it came into my possession I have reason for not you Bloodline-trackers out there, his
revealing.” daughter Anna was an adopted orphan.
– F.A. Mitchell-Hedges,2 Danger My Ally
3 Mordant satirist Ambrose Bierce (1842-
Which, of course, is why Mitchell-Hedges (rumored to be, among other 1913?) is probably best known either
things, a con man, a spy, a mercenary, and an archaeologist) told so many differ- for his Devil’s Dictionary or for his not-
particularly mysterious disappearance into
ent versions of how it came into his possession. According to the Standard
war-torn Mexico in 1913. He should be
Version, his adopted daughter Anna (or, in the extra cool version, a not-yet-dead known for his brilliantly dark horror fic-
Ambrose Bierce)3 found the Skull in either 1924 or 1927 (the story changes) tion, including two stories about mysteri-
while they were excavating a Mayan (or Phoenician, or Templar) 4 site at ous disappearances, both of which sparked
Lubaantun, in Belize. (Unless he got it from Pancho Villa.) The discovery of the urban legends.
Skull (and three months later, its jawbone – unlike most Crystal Skulls, the Skull
of Doom has a movable jaw) induced religious mania and glossolaliac fervor in 4 See pp. 31-34 for more Templar sites in
the Mayan workers. Later, the Skull induced visions in sensitives nearby, reveal- America.
ing secret knowledge, visions of the past, and dark predictions of the future: psy-
chic Carole Wilson (née Davis) has heard the Crystal Skull prophesy (or threat- 5 In the form of predictably tiresome
en?) death and holocaust for Earth.5 Edgar Cayce-influenced “earth changes,”
complete with a Pole Shift. It does sound
The Mitchell-Hedges Skull (a name that happy Crystal Skull acolytes give
pretty awful, and her book The Skull
it, since “Skull of Doom” is kind of a bummer) is not the only such artifact lurk- Speaks (edited by Brian Hadley-James)
ing about – although its superb workmanship, clarity (most Crystal Skulls are rather oversteps its
made from cloudy or colored quartz) and dramatic origin story makes it the bounds with a subtitle that
king of skulls to this day. (Or queen, actually – at only 175 cubic inches and 11.7
pounds, it may be a female skull.) New Age legend (now suddenly buttressed by
Amerind shamans on the skull circuit) speaks of a sort of “council” of 13 skulls,
of varying size and construction but all tied to the magical powers inherent in
the breed.
Among the 13 are the British Museum and Paris Crystal Skulls, both
brought out of Mexico by unnamed soldiers of fortune. (The Paris Crystal Skull
may have belonged to the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian.) A Mayan priest
brought two skulls to America in 1979 and 1982: the Maya Crystal Skull and the
Amethyst Skull. There’s a “Light of Christ” one cut for a crucifix in France, two
more Amethyst Skulls (in Marin County and San Jose, Mexico), a secret skull
under the control of the Peruvian government (or vice versa), and an 18-pound
monster in Texas named “MAX” who came from a Tibetan lamasery. Shui Ting
Er, an amazonite skull from Mongolia, a rose quartz Scythian mound skull, a
“Jesuit” skull, and a rumored giant skull in Brazil round out our Thirteen,
although there are enough others to make up at least another coven’s worth.

119
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
6 Specifically, the town of Idar-Oberstein,
a center of ornamental carving since at
least the 15th century. When the local
mines played out, many Idar-Obersteiners
emigrated to Brazil, where they discov-
ered huge crystal deposits (left over from
the Atlantean El Dorado colonies on pp.
91-94?), shipped them back to the home
town, and created a boom in crystal skull
carving that continues to this day. A good
one costs about $50,000.
7 This being the “crystal skull worship” I
alluded to regarding the San Luis Valley
on p. 95 (see note 3, p. 96).
8 Whose website, at www.crystalskull-
society.org, is everything you could ask
from such a propitious URL.
9 See note 5 on p. 31 for details on the
Templars, and sources for their innocence
of the crime of craniolatry.
1 0 The word “Baphomet” is usually
explained as a medieval corruption of
“Mahomet” (Mohammed), possibly con-
flated with “Bahamut” (Behemoth, the
monstrous beast of Job). Others trace it to
the Arabic Abufihamet, “the Father of
Wisdom”; or to the Gnostic Sophia,
“Wisdom” run through the ancient
Atbash Cipher.
11 See p. 34.
12 Caribbean pirates supposedly referred
to themselves as the “Brothers of the
Coast,” an assertion completely unsup-
ported by the historical record. If any-
thing, the frères de la côte were the people
on shore to whom the pirates turned for
markets, recruits, and (occasionally) loot.
For more piratical fun, though, see
pp. 82-84.
1 3 Skull and Bones (also known as
Chapter 322) is an exclusive fraternity at
Yale University founded in 1832 as an off-
shoot of “an older German order”; its
membership has included Presidents Taft
and Bush. Lyndon LaRouche says that
Bonesmen are British royalist agents (note
19, p. 25); pamphleteer-conspiratologist
Antony C. Sutton says that the “older
German order” was the Bavarian
Illuminati.
14 You’d be surprised at the number of
people who think Julian Jaynes’ thesis,
that human beings only became fully-
integrated sentients some time at the
dawn of the classical era, has any basis
whatsoever in fact.
120
“Bid at Sotheby’s sale, lot 54, 15 x 43 up to 340 [pounds] (Fairfax).
Brought in by Burney. Sold subsequently by Mr. Burney to Mr. Mitchell-
Hedges for 400 [pounds].”
– note in British Museum of Sotheby’s auction, 1944
All of which makes it kind of depressing to learn that Mitchell-Hedges bought
his skull at auction in 1944, and that its cousins in London and Paris, when tested in
1996, showed machine tool marks and stratiography similar to crystal from south-
eastern Germany6 – where a local quartz-carving glass works had been turning out
crystal skulls as novelty items since the 1860s or so. As with so many ancient artifacts
that we’re told breathlessly “modern science can’t reproduce,” modern science pretty
much can, although it doesn’t normally bother. In fact, there’s quite a cottage indus-
try in Crystal Skulls in Germany, as well as (inevitably, now) in Mexico. A hobbyist
skullcrafter in Denver threw one of his failures out, and it started a cult when a New
Ager found it in the road.7 The “ancient legend” of the council of 13 skulls is actual-
ly a vivid dream that Nick Nocerino (head of, my hand to God, the Society of
Crystal Skulls, International in New York)8 once had. Like so many things, although
few so interesting ones, much of this goes back to Edgar Cayce’s maunderings about
crystal Atlantean power – and just possibly to a 1944 Shadow Magazine adventure
called “The Mystery of the Crystal Skull.”
“Item, that in each province the Order had idols, namely heads, of which
some had three faces, and some one, and others had a human skull. Item,
that they adored these idols or that idol, and especially in their great
chapters and assemblies. Item, that they venerated [them]. Item, that [they
venerated them] as God. Item, that [they venerated them] as their Savior
. . . Item, that they said that the head could save them. Item, that [it could]
make riches. Item, that it gave them all the riches of the Order. Item, that
it made the trees flower. Item, that [it made] the land germinate.”
– from the Articles of Accusations against
the Templars, August 12, 1308
And thus, as always, we flee from the harsh light of reality into the comforting
embrace of colorfully-embroidered lies. Such as the ones that the Inquisition told
about the Templars9 – accused of worshiping a head known as Baphomet.10 Could
Baphomet have been the Crystal Skull, smuggled across the ocean with the Templar
Fleet11 to be secreted in Lubaantun? The skull crops up in neo-Templar Masonic
symbolism along with the crossbones (the Templar cross?), from whence it winds up
somehow on the black pirate flag. Were the Brothers of the Coast12 also Brothers of
the Temple? The Master Masonic oath, goes the ritual, “will make you brother to
pirates and corsairs.” And, of course, brother to Presidents and some vast chunk of
the CIA, if you’re in the Skull and Bones13 neo-Masonic fraternity at Yale, as was
President Bush. On the interesting coincidence watch, one legend of the Bonesmen
is that they keep Pancho Villa’s skull in their crypt – the same Pancho Villa
who killed Ambrose Bierce – or gave him the Skull of Doom to pass along to
Mitchell-Hedges.
“Herodotus (4:26) speaks of the practice in the obscure Issedones of gilding
a head and sacrificing to it. Cleomenes of Sparta is said to have preserved
the head of Archonides in honey and consulted it before undertaking an
important task. Several vases of the fourth century B.C. in Etruria depict
scenes of persons interrogating oracular heads. And the severed head of the
rustic Carians which continues to ‘speak’ is mentioned derisively by
Aristotle.”
– Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind14
 HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
The legend of Templar head-worship has been quite clearly traced, by folk-
lorists, to the myth of Perseus and the head of the Gorgon. But many severed heads
are actually pretty keen stuff to have around. Not just the oracular Brazen Heads15 1 5 The story in basic outline: Magus
built by Vergil Magus, Pope Sylvester, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon16 (unless wishes to know Things Man Was Not
Meant To, etc. He builds a magickal
they were all the same head – or Skull), either. Bran the Blessed’s severed head did
brazen Head to prophesy to him of such
everything for Britain17 that the Inquisition accused Baphomet of doing for the Things. He leaves it in the care of the
Templars. The Celts (in pre-Templar country), of course, went nuts for heads – not stereotypical sorcerer’s apprentice, who
only did they have Bran but also Lomna the Fool, the “fair god” Canainne, and neglects some important instruction (to
Fergal Mac Maile Duin, all of whom prophesied and granted magical lore after wake the magus, to tend the fire, to write
decapitation. In the Mabinogion, Peredur18 sees the Grail as a severed head – con- down the Head’s utterances, etc.) with
spiracy theorists hint that the Templars worshiped John the Baptist and that’s why catastrophic results. The story was such a
the venerated severed heads,19 even though they didn’t. Mimir the Giant’s head gave good one that it became part and parcel of
runic knowledge to Odin – which may be why Norse-descended types toast one medieval legendry, to be applied to
another with “Skoal” (“skull”) when drinking deep of inspirational draughts. whomever the creepy scholar of the week
Speaking of skull-drinking, Lord Byron had a goblet made from a human skull, and turned out to be. For details, see p.
STi29, or E.M. Butler’s dated but useful
speaking of poetry, Orpheus’ severed head continued to sing and prophesy after
The Myth of the Magus.
Mænads tore his body off. Are we detecting a pattern, yet?
To cultures as diverse as the Borneo Dayaks (who forcibly adopt the heads of 16 See pp. 36-37 for Roger Bacon’s role in
their enemies into the tribe) and the Jivaro of Ecuador, the severed head holds the equally enigmatic Voynich Manuscript.
magic, luck, and fertile power. As the very symbol of the dead head, skulls came in
for their own share of this mojo. Skulls partake of the power of the dead; they are 17 Until that big goof Arthur dug it up from
conduits for necromantic forces. Many old churches in England turn out to have under White Hill in London, that is.
skulls carefully buried under the west (death-side) wall, one hopes after their owners
were suitably, and no doubt accidentally, dead. The powdered skull of an unburied 18 Peredur appears again in note 18, p. 34.
criminal made an excellent remedy for epilepsy and other illnesses of the head
(bringing echoes of Hamlet, pretending madness, talking to the skull of a Fool) – 19 See note 5, p. 8.
Irish skulls were most prized. (The Irish also buried horse-skulls under various
20 For the hobby-horse, see note 6, p. 110.
sacred places, like breweries, for luck and power, although this gets us into the
hobby-horse20 and a whole different delusion.) Even as late as the 1930s, some doc- 21 Former circus ringmaster and founder of
tors were still defending phrenology, the concept that the shape of one’s skull pre- the Church of Satan Anton LaVey’s (1930-
dicted (or paralleled) one’s character. 1997) Law of the Trapezoid, while I’m
thinking of it, covers the Lovecraftian
“The altars of violence and sacrifice: the temples of the Maya and Aztec notion that certain geometries, trapezoids
magicians [were] formed of trapezoids and sustained by the sacrificial blood prime among them, help to focus evil power
(like on p. 108). Why trapezoids? I haven’t
of the chosen ones, the truncated pyramids upon which hearts were cut from the faintest idea, except that there may be
living victims and held aloft and hot to Quetzalcoatl and Hapikern. The some connection in Lovecraft-fan (see p. 80)
same temples made visible in the striations of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal LaVey’s mind with the “Shining
skull . . . And the tower in Lovecraft’s “Haunter of the Dark”, wherein the Trapezohedron” from the short story “The
shining trapezohedron beams its influence and the Great Old Ones from Haunter In The Dark.”
Intriguingly, Anton LaVey was born in
the brine harken and send forth their earthly emissary.”
the Streeterville district of Chicago, on the
– Anton Szandor LaVey, “The Law of the Trapezoid”21 very spot (if rumor is correct) where the
world’s largest trapezohedron, the 1,127-
We know that the Crystal Skull can predict the future, tap foot tall Hancock Tower, stands today.
into cthonic powers, drink blood, control minds, cast magic
spells, and reveal the Akashic Records.22 But what can its dan- 22 For the Akashic Records, refer to that
gerous ilk do for your game?23 Mitchell-Hedges, or someone portion of them encapsulated within p. 24.
like him, is born to be part of a GURPS Cliffhangers cam-
paign, of course. Crystal doesn’t rot, or decay, or alter meaning- 23 To start with, of course, read pp. WT46-
47. If that doesn’t give you about 80 super
fully at all over millennia of time – the Crystal Skull can show up
ideas, you need more than a crystal skull
in any historical-fantasy, horror, or occult campaign. Although can give.
GURPS Aztecs pops to mind, the pirate connection can have inter-
esting repercussions on GURPS Swashbucklers – stick the Mitchell- 24 In Sandman #29, “Thermidor,” in fact. If
Hedges Skull in the next dead man’s chest and enjoy the novel sight of I haven’t done so before now, let me take a
players fleeing the treasure. As Neil Gaiman realized in Sandman,24 oracular heads moment here to praise Hy Bender’s
and the GURPS Scarlet Pimpernel era go together like baguettes and Brie. Sandman Companion as an erudite gem for
Regardless of where you put it, the Skull of Doom can make a great McGuffin, a fans of Sandman, writing, or comics.
powerful artifact, or even the villain! Heads, you win.

121
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
Pyramid originally posted “Things To Do In
Gaming When You’re Dead” on February
11, 2000. The next essay in publication order
is “Patterns In Amber,” on p. 116.
1 Semtex is one of the better-known plas-
tic explosives, and thanks to the former
Czechoslovakian secret police and
Moammar Khadafy, every terrorist cell in
the world got all of it they could possibly
want in the mid-1980s.
2 Such as you might play as the mirror-
image of the Civil War campaign frame
on p. 12.
3 Interestingly enough, as close as anyone
can tell, Lao-tzu’s “leaving for the West”
corresponds almost exactly, chronologi-
cally speaking (531 B.C.), with the
appearance of the itinerant mystic and
philosopher Pythagoras (see note 12, p.
24). Maybe there’s something to the leg-
end that Lao-tzu was immortal.
4 Tir Nan Og, of course, easily equates to
the Isles of the Blest that St. Brendan (in
note 12, p. 94) sought out. And to the
Rosicrucian Arcadia of John Dee’s aspira-
tion (see note 5, p. 39). Could Dee and
Raleigh have been attempting to sail to
the Land of the Dead?
5 The Sword Bridge, or the bridge so
narrow and sharp that to cross it is to be
cut in half (or to fall off into the Abyss), is
a common theme in shamanic initiation
and in later legendry. Sir Lancelot must
cross a Sword Bridge into the kingdom of
Gore (“from which no man returns”); the
Finnish hero Väinämöinen faces a similar
challenge; Iroquois ghosts must cross an
impossibly narrow bridge to the Afterlife;
Zoroastrian, Christian, and Moslem holy
writings speak of bridges between Heaven
and Hell “narrower than a hair’s
breadth”; and so on.
122
Things To Do In Gaming
When You’re Dead
“But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?”
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet, III:i:78-82
Is there any better way to start a story than with a mass death? Well, proba-
bly, but roleplaying game worlds being the high-fatality zones they are, and
roleplayers being the heedless kamikazes that they can be, it’s always good to be
prepared. And if you can be so prepared, while at the same time throwing the
characters for an enormous loop, well, that will just teach them to be more care-
ful with the Semtex1 next time. The following, then are a quartet of possibilities
for PCs in their afterlife. I’ve avoided the relatively obvious possibility of drag-
ging out GURPS Undead and starting up an all-ghost campaign.2 It can be fun,
but bright folk like you hardly need to read a whole column on the notion. For
similar reasons, in games with a well-defined afterlife (such as the occasional
fantasy game sunk more deeply than most into a cosmological narrative), you’re
probably better off sticking to the script. Conversely, if you intend the death or
deaths to serve as heroic-tragic counterpoint (as in Pendragon perhaps), empiri-
cal evidence of the cosmos’ uncaring nihilism (as in Call of Cthulhu), or simply
as a really salutary lesson about keeping the red wire away from the blue one
when you’re scooping the aforementioned Semtex into some lucky bunker’s air
slit, well, feel free to let the PCs remain a noble memory or a smear on the
countryside. But if you’ve been running a relatively “straight” game – ideally, it
seems to me, of relatively modern suspense, action, or conspiracy – well, here
are some notions for what lies across yon bourn.
“The Bodhi-dharma has left for the West.”
– Taoist saying
In Taoist legendry, when a sage like the Bodhi-dharma or Lao-tzu dies,3 he
doesn’t really die like you or I do. He “leaves for the West,” traveling over the
mountains to, well, an undiscovered country and so forth. This odd habit of
leaving for the West encompasses most of your brighter pagan and post-pagan
traditions, who notice pretty early that the sun sets there. Hence, the Celtic
underworld Annwn and the paradisiacal Tir Nan Og4 lie to the west, as do the
Field of Bulrushes (and all those necropoli) in Egyptian myth, and so on and so
forth. But what’s to stop you from assembling the newly-dead PCs at the mouth
of a mountain pass with the rising sun behind them, describing the wide plain
stretching forth ahead of them? One minute they’re gleefully planning ad hoc
urban renewal, and the next they’re walking westward and brushing plastic
explosive taggants out of their hair. Make this journey as purely allegorical as
you’d like. It can have the Ferryman, the Sword Bridge,5 the Cave, or any other
archetypical spirit realm furniture you’d like. Or, it can resonate with echoes of
your own campaign. If, say, they spent much of their career harassing Dynamic
Aerospace, perhaps their primary foes (or allies) in the afterlife ride giant eagles,
or bats, or pterodactyls. Corporate logos can recur in the heraldry of spectral
knights; dead ringers (heh heh) for old mentors or sidekicks can show up as beg-
gars, mysterious strangers, guides, or what have you. Get all your Epic Fantasy
Quest juices flowing, although try to keep it to sort of “peripheral vision
 HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
fantasy” unless you just want the poor PCs to die all over again, this time of 6 The name Hell comes from the
cognitive dissonance. But, sure, throw in a Doomed Tower, a true princess, a Teutonic goddess Hel, whose name prob-
magic sword, one ring, dark riders, the whole megillah. Just reinterpret those ably originally meant either “the Hidden”
archetypes in terms of your earlier campaign (when the PCs were alive) and of or “the Hollow” (in an echo of Holle, or
the nature of your particular Western afterlife. Speaking of Westerns, of course, Holda, from p. 115).
the mythic American West complete with ghost towns and gunslinging emis-
saries of death would make a fine environment for a properly evocative fantasy 7 Gehenna was, originally, the Valley of
quest. So go West, young dead man. Hinnom, the city garbage dump for
Jerusalem (previously, where burnt offer-
ings were made to Baal and Moloch).
“Kill them all; God will know His own.”
– Arnaud-Aimery, abbot of Cîteaux, at the siege of Bèziers (1209) 8 Tartarus, to Homer and Hesiod, was
the deepest pit of Hades (named for its
Of course, you can vastly increase the fantasy flavor of the postmortem lord, the god Hades, literally “the
experience by sending the PCs to Hell.6 Not, I hasten to add, to Dante’s or unseen”) reserved for the punishment of
Milton’s or any of them classy Hells. More like a bastard spawn of Evil Dead III the Titans and particularly evil sorts.
Virgil seems to be using it as a name for
and Warhammer Hell; full of backstabbing orcs and spell-hurling demons and
Elysium (from eleusis, “arrived”), the field
giant cannibalistic skeleton-monsters. Season it with oceans of flaming sulfur
of heroes. The best guess I’ve found for
and a perpetually-lowering sky shooting luckless NPCs with the occasional the derivation of Tartarus (which isn’t
azure lightning bolt. (For some reason, I’m flashing on GURPS Myth as provid- very good) is that it may be from the
ing the ideal flavor for this sort of afterworld.) The point of this campaign arc is Cretan word for “far West.” Which
for the PCs to carve out their little corner of Gehenna7 by might, menace, or brings us back to Tir Nan Og, just as
Machiavellianism. How do a squad of recently-demised Black Ops deal with Elysium was bringing us back to Arcadia.
armies of goblins, demon lords, skull-headed fire-shooting liches, and giant cas- Which is the Greek province, as it turns
tles of basalt? (Answer: recruit, kill, evade, and usurp, respectively.) If you’ve out, where the River Styx (see note below)
shown a tendency to overemphasize games of subtle research and stealthy infil- was said to surface.
tration, perhaps a little mayhem with bang-stick and bastard sword is just what
9 Avernus, on the other hand, was an
the doctor ordered. (That would be the Malevolent Doctor G’krang, Lord of
actual lake nine miles west of Naples,
the Horde of the Sharpened Bones.) This is just the kind of Hell that always has
considered to be an entrance to the
a convenient portal opening back into the World of Flesh, although usually in underworld.
some distressing era like the Hittite Empire, or post-holocaust Tennessee.
1 0 The River of Tears is technically
“Here patriots live, who, for their country’s good, known as the Cocytus (“lamentation”).
In fighting fields, were prodigal of blood: Along with Lethe (“forgetfulness”),
Phlegethon (“burning”), Acheron
Priests of unblemish’d lives here make abode,
(“woe”), and Styx (“hate”), it’s one of the
And poets worthy their inspiring god; five Rivers of Hell.
And searching wits, of more mechanic parts,
Who grac’d their age with new-invented artsä . . .” 11 Dis (a contraction of dives, “wealthy”)
– Virgil, Æneid, Book VI was a Roman god of the underworld,
whose name Dante (and others) later
applied to the capital city of Hell. The
If you like your afterlife a little classier and a little clearer, try popping your
name Pluto, the Greek god of the dead,
recently-deceased party into a Virgilian Tartarus,8 peopled with the great
also means “rich,” as in “plutocrat.” This
heroes and worthy foes of the past. Again, this is a great place9 to put familiar was because buried treasure, gold mines,
figures from the “living” section of the campaign – such as that archvillain the and all kinds of goodies come from
PCs finally killed after a year and a half of game play. GURPS Riverworld, beneath the earth. Cf. note 3 on p. 91.
either played straight or as an inspirational structure for your own fantasy
milieu, is the sort of direction in which this passage points. Another is Janet 12 Eryx was the name of two separate
Morris’ Heroes in Hell series of shared-world novels and stories. You can have a mountains in Sicily, both of which were
lot of fun throwing your defunct party of GURPS Illuminati FBI agents up sacred to Venus in one of her more
against Agamemnon’s Myceneans, or Queen Elizabeth’s floating court on the Cybelean aspects (see note 9, p. 71). The
River of Tears.10 (This is the kind of setting where you can really get your nick- connection with the Astarte (see note 3, p.
46) of the “high places” (see note 22, p.
el’s worth out of the GURPS Who’s Who books, too.) Or mix and match;
87) should be obvious. The underworld
Alexander the Great leads a mixed force of Comanches and Black Watch against
connection comes when the post-classical
the walls of Dis!11 Nikola Tesla tries to harness the Fire Falls of Eryx12 to Venus moves below-ground to assume the
power the industrial-alchemical plant of James Watt and Paracelsus! All while role of Persephone, Queen of the Dead,
your players try to keep Skorzeny from assassinating Lorenzo de’ Medici and and to become a kind of dark goddess of
throwing the whole balance of postmortem power out of whack. riches and temptation, as in note 13,
p. 115.

123
HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT WEIRDNESS: CLASHING SYMBOLS
13 The theosophical notion of the planets,
and Mars particularly, as an abode of the
dead or of spiritual entities, goes back a
surprisingly long way. Though not, likely,
as long as Bruce Rux thinks it does in
Architects of the Underworld, where he pos-
tulates connections between Egypt's Duat
(the land of the dead) and Mars. But, it's
interesting to point them out. A papyrus
of Princess Nejmet refers to the journey
to Duat as the “Ascending” to the
“Imperishable Star,” and the Duat is also
known as the Red Land to the West – a
common term for afterworlds from the
Hopi to the Celts to the Chinese. Mars,
of course, is the paradigmatic Red Land;
and as we all know, it possesses enigmatic
Pyramids and a sphinxlike Face. Is it pure
coincidence that one of Mars' largest
regions is called Elysium, the afterworld
of the Greeks?
1 4 In 1896, a Swiss medium named
Catherine Élise Müller (1861-1929) (bet-
ter known as Hélène Smith) explored
Mars in trance through astral projection
and communicated with the Martians.
(She’d previously contacted Prieuré
Nautonnier Victor Hugo in the afterlife,
in 1892.) She found the planet bedecked
with canals, and transcribed much of the
Martian language, which turned out to be
“an infantile travesty of French” (not at all
like the language of Glozel, on p. 88-90,
or Voynichese, on pp. 35-37). The pio-
neering psychologist Théodore Flournoy
(1854-1920) wrote up the case in From
India to the Planet Mars, which is now back
in print from Princeton Paperbacks.
15 Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910),
the “Seer of Poughkeepsie,” coined
Summer-Land, the general Spiritualist
term for the afterworld. Davis placed
Summer-Land somewhere “in the Milky
Way.”
1 6 That would be Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky (note 8, p. 84). Her spirit mas-
ters, the Mahatmas, were uncharacteristi-
cally cagy about Mars, variously affirming
it as part of the Chain of Planets, and
denying that its entities had anything in
common with the Earth. (Angel contactee
Emmanuel Swedenborg reported discus-
sions with "masked men from Mars" in
1758.) It's obvious, then, that the
Martians are powerful spirit beings con-
nected to the dead, that they're ambigu-
ous and perhaps actively deceitful, and
that astral (or ghostly) travel will get you
to a Mars of canals, Pyramids, and other
excitements more like a vision quest than
a Mars Observer photo.
124
“If these gatekeepers were not supplied the proper passwords by the
human soul on its return journey to heaven, they would turn away a
person and prevent that soul’s progression to the upper realms. Without
knowledge of the passwords, the soul, having a specific gravity, would
be pulled into the rotation of the sphere to revolve there forever or until
an amnesty was given. An unfit soul might be forced to pass through
the body of the constellation Draco, reptilian Lord of Karma . . .”
– Claire Watson, “Ritual for the
Portal of Planetary Ascension”
Or, you can treat your party’s death as the beginning of some High
Strangeness Indeed. The always-reliably-clothheaded Edgar Cayce served as the
bridge between bizarre 19th-century spiritualism and vagrant 20th-century New
Age theosophy when he postulated the notion of the “planetary sojourn.” In
Caycean mythopoeia, when you die, you travel “between lives” to the various
planets,13 in what one can only hope is an unconscious steal from Dante’s
Paradiso. All you have to do is make it true. You can spackle the Bradburyesque
jewel deserts of Mars14 or the Sargassos of fizz-water Venus with angels, the more
weird and pacific class of dead person (Beethoven, Shakespeare, Marie Antoinette,
and the rest of the past life crew), and lots of American Indians (whom spiritualists
all seemed to regard as Hermetic psychopomps through the Summer-Land15
beyond theVeil). This setting can drift more toward the “contactee” UFO mythos
of a GURPS Atomic Horror complete with
blonde aliens and metal spheres. Or, it
can amp up the metaphysics a la C.S.
Lewis’ Space Trilogy. The important
thing here is for every NPC to be
really annoyingly calm and positive
about the situation (“You’ve
passed over, now; here in
Summer-Land we need no food;
your Aunt Mildred is here.”) while
you slowly drop hints that this
might all be some kind of vast other-
worldly Potemkin village.
Perhaps the kindly
White-Robed Ones lead
away the ghost of that
nice French aristocrat
when he tries to warn the
PCs about something
under the Crystal Gate of
Mercury. Or perhaps they
all fear the mysterious power
of “Helena,”16 and the players
discover that Summer-Land is at
the mercy of a psychic madwoman who rules them with an iron mind in the
name of the Hidden Mahatmas. Lots of puzzles and clues, like a particularly
absinthe-ridden game of Myst, all pointing to purpose and construction. (If you
simply must have combat, fencing might carry the right flavor; or archery. Or
duels of flowers.) Once they’ve figured it all out, and forced things to a final
confrontation, have the PCs wake up in a hospital. They miraculously survived
the Semtex detonation, and they must have been delirious (or comatose) for the
past week. But that’s understandable, given everything they’ve been through.
Why, if that nice Mrs. Helena hadn’t made sure they got to the hospital, they
might have died. Cue Twilight Zone music – or the theme from The Prisoner.
Imagine the fun, if the players suddenly fear that they can’t die . . .

I
n the first volume of Suppressed
Transmission, a Bibliophany occupied
this space as a means of easing the
reader into the source material from
whence such things spring. Rather than
replicate that effort, in this volume I’ve
compiled a Glossary of key terms (or at
least oft-repeated ones, especially those
defined in the previous volume) that will
Ahnenerbe: The Nazi SS
“Ancestral Research” division, which
carried out a great deal of well-
documented research into magic, the
occult, and the paranormal. See pp.
STi34 and STi80, or Unholy Alliance,
by Peter Levenda.
Airship: When capitalized, refers
to the cigar-shaped UFO sighted
across the American West in 1896-
1897. See pp. STi43-45, p. TI114-118,
or The Great Airship Mystery, by Daniel
Cohen.
Androgyne: Combining male and
female; the “Mystic Androgyne” repre-
sents the Philosopher’s Stone, and
“Chymical Wedding” (between Red
and White, or Sun and Moon) is a
major element in alchemy and
Rosicrucianism (q.v.). Androgyny has
magical significance in many tradi-
tions. See p. STi38, or Alchemy, by
Titus Burckhardt.
Antarctic Space Nazis: Nazi
UFO pilots based out of Antarctica or
a Hollow Earth accessible therefrom,
according to some UFOlogists.
Possibly the same as the Nordics (q.v.).
See pp. STi77-80, or Subterranean
Worlds, by Walter Kafton-Minkel.
Arcadia: A region of central
Greece; later the poetic, pastoral
“Earthly Paradise,” an unspoiled,
peaceable, holy kingdom. A major
theme in Rosicrucian (q.v.) imagery,
especially the phrase Et in Arcadia ego;
“I (death or mortality) am also in
Arcadia.” See p. STi41, or Holy Blood,
Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Henry
Lincoln, and Richard Leigh.
hopefully help new readers climb on
board without boring the old eliptonic
hands silly. For each entry, I’ve tried to
compress the Crucial Knowledge down
to a sentence or two, with a page refer-
ence to the first volume, any relevant
GURPS books, and a source for further
reading and investigation for those seized
by the desire to Know More.
Bavarian Illuminati: See Dawn became a pre-eminent ritual
Illuminati. magic study group, with membership
Bisociation: Simultaneous (or including W.B. Yeats, Aleister
interlocked) perception of a thing, situ- Crowley, Arthur Machen, and others.
ation, or idea in two self-consistent but The Order splintered repeatedly after
fundamentally incompatible frames of 1900. See p. STi44, or R.A. Gilbert’s
reference. The Key To It All. See pp. The Golden Dawn.
STi108-111, or Arthur Koestler, The Graves, Robert: (1895-1985)
Act of Creation. Poet, novelist (I, Claudius), and mysti-
Black Ops: Elite alien-hunting cal theorist much influenced by J.G.
action heroes. See GURPS Black Ops, Frazer (q.v.), using whose ideas he
by Jeff Koke and S. John Ross. compiled The Greek Myths. See
Dee, John: (1527-1608) Court p. STi63, or Graves’ own The White
astrologer, mathematician, cosmogra- Goddess.
pher, and possibly spy for Elizabeth I. Greys: By now, the “default” alien
Encouraged scientific-philosophical type in the Western world, thanks to
research and advances in navigation Spielberg, Strieber, and The X-Files.
and exploration. All this and angel- The Greys are most often associated
magic, too. See p. STi11, pp. WWi68- with Roswell and elements of the
69, or John Dee by Peter French. Coverup (cf. Majestic-12). See p.
Forteana: Unclassifiable (almost STi81, pp. BO84-88, or Whitley
by definition) weirdness; things that Strieber’s Communion.
should not be, named for madcap Hermes Trismegistus: Greco-
researcher Charles Fort (1874-1932). Egyptian syncretic figure based on the
The rain of carp from a clear sky is the deity Thoth-Hermes, supposedly the
archetypical Fortean event. See pp. author of all magical (or “hermetic”)
STi112-115, p. WT104, or The Books knowledge. His Emerald Tablet con-
of Charles Fort. tains all wisdom. See p. STi16, pp.
Frazer, Sir James George: WT42-43, or the translation of “his”
(1854-1941) Folklorist and anthropol- Hermetica, by Walter Scott.
ogist who popularized the archetype of Illuminati: In general, any group
the sacred king and the general notion of conspiratorial Secret Masters claim-
of the evolutionary relationship of all ing special knowledge, or “illumina-
myth and ritual in The Golden Bough. tion.” In specific, the pseudo-Masonic
See that work, p. STi96, or the alter- Order of the Bavarian Illuminati
nate history novel King of the Wood, by founded by Adam Weishaupt (q.v.) on
John Maddox Roberts. May Day, 1776, along with its hypo-
Golden Dawn, Hermetic Order thetical antecedents and descendants.
of the: Founded in London in 1887 by See pp. I5-8, or Arkon Daraul’s A
William Wynn Westcott, the Golden History of Secret Societies.
125
GLOSSARY
Kabbalah: Mystical Judaism,
specifically (in this case) the insight
that the Divine Creation is expressed
in the numerical patterns of the world,
primarily in the numerological values
of the Hebrew alphabet, specifically
the Torah. See p. STi113, Godwin’s
Cabalistic Encyclopedia (for the quick-
and-dirty version), or Gershom
Scholem’s On the Kabbalah & Its
Symbolism (for the more mystical
version).
Lemuria: Originally, the specula-
tive lost continent in the Indian Ocean
proposed to explain how lemurs made
it from India to Madagascar. Lemuria
has, by now, been conflated with
“Mu,” the even more imaginary lost
continent beneath the Pacific Ocean.
See p. STi89, pp. PM13-14, or
L.Sprague de Camp’s Lost Continents.
Ley Lines: Usually invisible,
usually straight, lines of magickal (or
spiritual, or ch’i, or telluric-magnetic)
energy connecting ancient sites, monu-
ments, or power vortices. See p.
STi55, pp. PM25-27, or Francis
Hitching’s Earth Magic.
Majestic-12 (MJ-12): The
alleged secret government conspiracy
established by President Truman in
1947 to cover up, exploit, and study
the UFO problem following the
Roswell crash. See pp. STi26, pp. Y42-
43, pp. WT68-71, or Top Secret/Majic
by Stanton Friedman.
Merovingians: The ruling
dynasty of France between 481 and
755 A.D., whose mystical “water-born”
Bloodline (down to the present) has
been associated with that of Christ
and/or ultraterrestrials. See also
Prieuré de Sion; and p. STi119, pp. I57-
58, or Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by
Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and
Richard Leigh.
Nommos: A race of demigods in
Dogon tribal lore; hence the amphib-
ian, possibly Reptoid (q.v.), aliens from
Sirius (q.v.) the myths of said demigods
refer to. See p. STi58, or The Sirius
Mystery, by Robert K.G. Temple.
Nordics: An angelic-appearing
alien, or ultraterrestrial (q.v.) race
often encountered by UFO contactees
in the 1950s and 1960s; so-called
because of their height, white skin, and
blond hair. They may be shapeshifted
Reptoids (q.v.). See p. STi82, pp.
AH44-51, or Extra-Terrestrial Friends
and Foes, by George Andrews.
Pole Shift: A sudden, catastrophic
alteration of the Earth’s axis. Such a
Pole Shift is symbolically used to mark
126
the end of the Golden Age, leading
some to speculate that a Pole Shift
drowned Atlantis, et al., and will even-
tually destroy our civilization. See pp.
STi53-55, or Arktos: The Polar Myth in
Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival,
by Joscelyn Godwin.
Prieuré de Sion: Also known as
the Priory of Sion (or Zion), a secre-
tive order supporting mystical monar-
chy in Europe, often tied to the Grail,
the Templars, and/or the bloodline of
Christ. See p. STi41, pp. I60-62, or
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael
Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard
Leigh.
Reptoids: Also Nagas, or
Saurians; these reptilian ultraterrestri-
als are only occasionally contacted in
UFOs but may have been secretly
manipulating human history from the
earliest times. See p. STi82, or The
Biggest Secret, by David Icke.
Rosicrucianism: A complex of
alchemical images and mystical
concepts centering around the “Rosy
Cross.” A series of pamphlets between
1614 and 1616 invited Europe’s elite
to apply for membership in the
ancient, secret, and invisible
Rosicrucian Order. See The Rosicrucian
Enlightenment, by Frances Yates.
Saint-Germain, le Comte de:
(1710?-1784) A wandering impostor,
charlatan, and/or Ascended Master in
Enlightenment Europe who claimed to
possess alchemical powers and (per-
haps) immortality. See pp. STi67-69,
pp. WWii70-71, or the novel Foucault’s
Pendulum by Umberto Eco.
Shambhala: The mystical land of
perfection somewhere in Inner Asia
inhabited by mystic adepts, best known
to Westerners as “Shangri-La,” a name
created by novelist James Hilton. Its
evil reflection is Agharti, unless it’s the
other way around. Arcadia (q.v.) may
be its Western reflection. Shambhala’s
Nine Unknown Masters may be the
Mahatmas of Theosophy (q.v.). See p.
STi77, p. PM54, or Arktos: The Polar
Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi
Survival, by Joscelyn Godwin.
Shangri-La: See Shambhala.
Sirius: Brightest star in the sky,
key emblem of Egyptian sky-worship,
likely home to at least one breed
of Reptoids, and traditional source of
ancient astronauts. See p. STi58,
or The Sirius Mystery, by Robert K.G.
Temple.
Tesla, Nikola: (1856-1943)
Croatian-born electrical engineer, the-
orist, and inventor of AC power and
radio. His wilder ideas, including free
energy, death rays, and antigravity,
are regularly ascribed to alien advice
and described as practical, but sup-
pressed by Them. See p. STi24,
p. WWi110-111, or Margaret
Cheney’s Man Out of Time.
Theosophy: A doctrine of mysti-
cal evolution over eons involving a
series of vanished Root Races inhabit-
ing a series of lost continents, promul-
gated by H.P. Blavatsky (1831-1891)
on the instruction of secret spiritual
Mahatmas. See p. STi81, or The
Theosophical Enlightenment, by Joscelyn
Godwin.
Thule: A northern land discov-
ered by Pytheas of Massilia around 300
B.C. Considered a Teutonic Atlantis
or Arcadia (q.v.), often cited as the so-
called “Aryan” homeland in the white
north. May be mythical Hyperborea.
See p. STi99, or Joscelyn Godwin’s
Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science,
Symbolism, and Nazi Survival.
Thule Society: German occultist
“study group” founded in Munich in
1918 by one “Baron von
Seebottendorff.” Its workers’ auxiliary
became the Nazi Party. See p. STi80,
or Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s The
Occult Roots of Nazism.
Ultraterrestrials: Any entity,
being, or manifestation from outside
our conventionally-experienced space-
time. “Ultraterrestrial” is a catch-all
term intended to embrace Faerie,
ghosts, aliens, anomalous creatures like
Bigfoot, Men In Black, UFOs, angels,
phantom kangaroos, and so forth. See
pp. STi81-83, or The Complete Guide to
Mysterious Beings, by John Keel.
Venus: Planet often identified
with the Nordics (q.v.) and Tesla
(q.v.) by early UFO contactees.
Symbolized by the mirror. See
p. STi96, or The UFO Book, by Jerome
Clark.
Weishaupt, Adam: (1748-1830)
Lapsed Jesuit law professor and
Freemason who founded the Order of
the Bavarian Illuminati (q.v.), with the
expressed aim of social reform by con-
spiratorial revolution. See pp. I5-8, or
the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea
and Robert Anton Wilson.
Adepts of Hermes, 44, 48.
Agreda, Sr. Mary Jesus de, 96.
Aguirre, Lopé de, 91-92.
Airship of 1897, 78-80, 97, 125.
Agartha, 37.
Ahnenerbe, 9, 125, see also Nazis.
Akakor, 93-94.
Akashic Record, 24-25, 91, 121.
Akhenaton, 108.
Albert Victor Edward, Prince, 72.
Alchemy, 10-11, 14, 35, 37,39-40, 44,
47, 51, 56, 58, 64-66, 77, 84, 93-
94, 108, 118, 125-126.
Alexander the Great, 10, 14, 84, 123.
Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 72.
Alphabets, weird, 13, 21, 26-29, 35-
37, 77, 80, 88-90, 100, 124; see
Alternate History, 4, 6-12, 16-18, 20,
also Enochian, Kabbalah.
26-29, 84.
Amber, 116-118.
Amber Room, 117-118.
America, discoveries of, 8, 27-28, 31-
34, 94, see also Brendan.
Anansi the Spider, 69, 112.
“Anastasia, Princess,” 98.
Ancient astronauts, 88, 90-91, 94,
104, 118, 126.
Andrea, Johann Valentin, 44.
Androgyne, 42, 44, 47, 59, 110,
113,125.
Angels, 20, 36-37, 44, 85, 87, 114,
124, 126, see also “Nordic” aliens.
Annunaki, 100.
Antarctica, 33, 49, 106, 118, 125.
Antichrist, 22, 47, 118.
Antigravity, 49, 117, 126.
Anti-Semitism, 27, 60, 77, 80, 118.
Apollo, 15, 33, 51, 108, 116, 118.
Appleseed, Johnny, 68-69.
April Fool’s Day, 109-110.
Arcadia, 34, 39, 50, 63, 122-123, 125-
126.
Area 51, 51.
Ark of the Covenant, 21, 31, 85, 99.
Armanen Initiates, 80, 90.
Armoises, “Dame Claude” de, 60.
Arthur, King, 14, 34, 43, 56, 67-69,
114, 121.
“Aryans,” 66, 94, 126, see also
As You Like It, 39.
“Nordic” aliens.
Ashlars, 51.
Assassins, 23, 25, 31, 36, 38-40, 48,
56, 99, 113.
Astarte, 46, 71, 123, see also Cybele.
Asteroids, 21, 102.
Astrology, 23, 35, 42-43, 47, 51, 65,
92, 104, 108, 110, 116, 125.
Atheism, 38-40, 92.
Atlantis, 3, 9, 17, 20-21, 31, 34, 36-
37, 39-40, 42, 48, 50, 82-84, 86,
90-91, 93-94, 100, 102, 106-108,
116, 119-120, 126.
Aum Shinri Kyo, 98-99.
Avalon, 94.
Azuria, 103.
Babylon, 24, 47.
Bacon, Roger, 24, 36-37, 46, 110,
121.
Bacon, Sir Francis, 40-41, 46, 48.
Baphomet, 33, 120-121.
Bavarian Illuminati, see Illuminati.
Beckford, William, 85.
Benandanti, 15, 61-63, 79-80.
Berchta, 61, 71, 96, 109, 114.
Bermuda Triangle, 32, 48, 100.
Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 31, 79.
Bettelheim, Bruno, 76-77.
Bierce, Ambrose, 119-120.
Bigfoot, 3, 126, see also Giants.
Bimini, 48.
Bismarck, Otto von, 9, 66, 110.
Bisociation, 35, 41, 49, 76, 82, 84, 88,
90, 97, 117, 125, see also Forgery.
Black Dragon Society, 98-100.
Black Mass, 58.
Black Ocean Society, 99.
Blackbeard (Edward Teach), 77, 83-
84.
Blake, William, 107-108.
Blavatsky, H.P., 37, 72, 84, 87-88,
124, 126.
Bloodline, 32, 34, 45, 56, 59-60, 62-
63, 72, 79, 83, 92, 100, 113, 119,
126, see also Hapsburgs,
Bluebeard, 57, 76-77.
Merovingians, Sinclair/St.Clairs.
Bohemia, 36-37, 39, 43.
Borges, Jorge Luis, 37, 63.
Bran the Blessed, 121.
Brazen Head, 31, 36, 121, see also
Brazil, 7-8, 34, 73, 90, 92-94, 119-
Skulls.
120.
Brendan, St., 94, 113, 122.
British royal family, 25, 46, 72, 83,
120, see also Bloodline, Occult
imperialism, Prieuré de Sion,
Britomartis, 21, 23, see also Cybele.
Reptoids, Rhodes.
Brocken, 87, 113-114.
Bruce, James, 87.
Bruno, Giordano, 37, 40.
Bugs Bunny, 112.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 87.
Bunyan, Paul, 67-69, 92.
Burckhardt, Johann, 87.
Burton, Sir Richard Francis, 86-87,
92-93.
Butterfly effect, 7, 29.
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 8, 11,
66, 121.
Cabot, John, 32.
Cagliostro, Count, 78.
Cahokia, 78.
California, 25, 94.
Calusari, 63, 110.
Canary Islands, 10, 90, see also Dog-
Cannibalism, 10, 23, 33, 37, 55, 58,
headed men.
68-69, 84, 90, 96-97, 123, see also
Carbonari, 102.
Jack the Ripper.
Cargo cults, 89.
Carroll, Lewis, 73.
Catacombs, 97, see also Tunnels.
Cathars, 35, 37, 77, 83, 90.
Cattle mutilations, 73, 95-97.
Cauls, 61-63.
Cayce, Edgar, 48, 119-120, 124.
Chambre Ardente, 46, 58.
Channeling, see Spiritualism.
Chaos, 7.
Charles VII of France, 32, 57, 59-60.
Charles XII of Sweden, 65.
Chess, 86-87, 110.
Chicago, 9, 21, 69, 74-77, 95, 121.
China, 7-8, 10, 12, 14, 21, 36, 96, 98-
99, 118, 124.
Chrétien de Troyes, 43.
Christopher, St., 84.
Chronovisor, 22-25.
Churchward, James, 3, 37, 91, 94,
100.
Cibola, 97, see also El Dorado.
CIA, 23-24, 37, 51, 77, 95-96, 112,
120.
Civil War, American, 12, 15, 17, 122.
Clarke’s Law, 63.
Clement V, Pope, 31, 36.
Coca-Cola, 63, 89, 99, 109.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 63.
Columbus, Christopher, 31-34.
Commies, 12, 24, 36, 49, 51, 87, 96,
98, 114-115, 117-118.
Compagnons des Devoirs, 107.
Conspiracy, 4, 23-25, 27, 32, 37, 38-
40, 45-46, 48, 49-51, 56-60, 62-63,
66, 70-72,83, 93-94, 96-100, 102,
115, 118.
Counter-Earth, 102.
Crete, 20-21, 106.
Crockett, Davy, 67-69.
Crookes, Sir William, 12, 15.
Crowley, Aleister, 37, 45, 71-72, 79,
125.
Crusades, 14, 16-17, 31, 33, see also
Crystal Skull, 33, 83, 95, 119-121, see
Templars.
Cthulhu Mythos, 9, 19, 24-25, 37, 48,
also Skulls.
67, 69, 74, 77-80, 85-88, 91, 100,
104, 108, 112, 121.
Cupid, 54, 77.
Cybele, 15, 63, 71, 77, 79, 123, see
Cydonia, 20-22, 50, 108, 124, see also
also Hecate.
Da Gama, Vasco, 32.
Mars.
Da Vinci, Leonardo, 8, 17.
Daath, 79, 86-87.
Dagobert II of the Franks, 113.
Damanhurian Federation, 23.
Däniken, Erich von, 91.
De Molay, Jacques, 36, 107.
Dead Sea Scrolls, 34.
Dee, John, 23, 31, 34, 36-37, 39-40,
43, 92, 108, 122, 125.
Defoe, Daniel, 83.
Delawar, George, 23, 25.
Demons, 24, 35, 58, 63, 79, 86, 104,
110, 115, 123, see also Satan.
Deros, 66, 87, 90, see also Hollow
Devil, the, see Satan.
Earth.
Dietrich of Bern, 114.
Dillinger,John, 69.
Dinosaurs, 12, 15, 29, 50, 93, 103,
116-118, 122.
Dionysos, 42, 44, 54, 62, 65, 69, 77,
114.
Dippel, Johann Konrad, 65-66.
Discordians, 48, 83, 110.
Djinn, 14, 86-87.
Doctor Faustus, 40.
Dog-headed men, 82, 84-85, see also
Dollar sign, 110.
Werewolves.
Donnelly, Ignatius, 3.
Doppelgängers, 44, 76-77, 122, see
Dora, 49.
also Impostors, Mirrors.
Dracula (Vlad Tepes), 64.
Dragons, 7, 48, 64-65, 71, 84-85, 100,
106-107, 118, see also Reptoids.
Dragon’s Triangle, 100.
Drake, Sir Francis, 114.
Dramaturgy, 23, 39-44, 47, 53-54, 56,
58-59, 66, 109, 121.
Dream, 10, 13, 42, 61-63, 66, 78-80,
84-85, 87, 94, 104, 120, see also
Druids, 13, 24, 56, 77, 107.
Hallucinogens.
Ecuador, 90-91, 93, 100, 121.
Edison, Thomas A., 9, 15, 18.
Egypt, 7, 10, 16, 24, 32, 37, 44, 46,
50-51, 62, 78, 80, 90, 92, 94, 101-
103, 106-107, 118, 122, 124.
Egyptian Rite Masonry, 51, 71, 78.
El-Baz, Farouk, 51.
El Dorado, 39, 86, 91-94, 97, 120.
Electronic voice phenomena, 22.
Eligius, St., 24.
Elizabeth I of England, 14, 36, 38, 40,
43, 46, 92, 94, 123, 125.
Elvera, 103-104.
Emerald Tablet, 10.
End times, 9, 22, 35.
Ennius, Quintus, 23.
Enochian, 36-37, 43, 80; see also
Ernetti, Pellegrino, 22-24.
Alphabets, weird.
Erratics, 25.
Espinoza, Felipe, 96-97.
Estotiland, 32, 34.
Ethiopia, 42, 85, 87.
Faerie, 13, 49, 51, 55, 59, 78, 90, 97,
109, 114-115, 126, see also
Fates, 16, 42-43, 113-114, see also
Ultraterrestrials.
Fawcett, Col. Percy, 92-93.
Hecate, Triplicity.
Fenians, 72.
Fermi, Enrico, 23-25.
Finn MacCool, 68.
Foo fighters, 116-117, see also UFOs.
Fool, 39, 42-44, 54, 68, 109-112, 121,
Forgery and Fraud, 8, 10, 12, 27, 34,
see also Trickster.
36-39, 46, 50-51, 55, 60, 65-66, 79,
82-84, 88-90, 94, 99, 119-120, see
Fort, Charles H., 21, 81, 88, 101, 103,
also Impostors.
111-112, 125.
Francis I of France, 102.
Franj, 16-17.
Frankenstein, Victor, 11, 66, 114.
Frankensteins, 64-66.
Frankincense, 85-86.
Franklin, Benjamin, 11, 31.
Frazer, Sir James George, 7, 10, 54,
63, 71, 110, 125.
Frederick II Hohenstaufen, 117.
Frederick V of the Palatinate, 39, 44.
Freemasons, 23, 31, 33-34, 36-37, 40,
43-45, 51, 56, 62, 70-72, 77, 83,
87, 100, 102, 106-108, 114, 118,
120, 126.
Friuli, 61-62.
Garter, Order of the, 55.
Genghis Khan, 100.
George, St., 55, 65, 71.
George III of England, 11.
George IV of England, 8.
Ghosts, 12, 17, 22, 61, 63, 69, 78, 83,
97, 99, 101, 106, 108, 114, 122,
126.
Giants, 67-69, 84, 87, 92, 103, 106,
111, 121.
Gimbutas, Marija, 63.
Glooscap, 33.
Glozel, France, 88-90, 124.
Gnomes of Zurich, 15, 25, 48.
Gnostics, 8, 34, 44, 79, 83, 86, 90,
120.
Goddess-boats, 47, 88.
Godzilla, 12, 102.
Golden Dawn, 71, 125.
Golden Fleece, 23, 116, 118; Order of
the, 118.
Gotham, 111.
Gothic cathedrals, 33, 54, 107-108.
Grail, see Holy Grail.
Gran Qivira, 97, see also El Dorado.
Grateful dead, 64.
Grave-robbing, 10-11, 40, 65, 74.
Graves, Robert, 49, 61, 63, 76, 90,
125.
Gray Wolves, 98-99.
Greaves, John, 106-107.
Greek mythology, 16, 23, 39, 42, 46,
51, 54, 65, 68, 116, 121.
Green Man, 54-56, 68, 112.
Greene, Robert, 40.
Greys, 13-15, 20, 49, 63, 73, 88, 97,
104, 112-113, 115, 125.
Grigori, 87.
Guiana, 14, 92, 94.
Gull, Sir William Withey, 72.
GURPS Aliens, 20; Alternate Earths,
6, 20, 26, 49; Alternate Earths 2,
6, 26; Arabian Nights, 32, 86;
Atomic Horror, 12, 20, 49, 97,
104, 116, 124, 126; Aztecs, 33,
121; Black Ops, 13-15, 20, 49-50,
63, 97, 104, 118, 123, 125;
Camelot, 112; Celtic Myth, 13, 68-
69, 89-90; Cliffhangers, 21, 46,
85, 87, 90, 94, 98, 121; Conan, 7;
Cthulhupunk, 19; Cyberpunk, 98;
Dinosaurs, 12; Egypt, 94;
Espionage, 21; Goblins, 112;
Greece, 69; Grimoire, 63;
Illuminati, 11, 20, 32-33, 48, 70,
90, 97, 123, 125-125; Japan, 98;
Mecha, 20; Myth, 123; Places of
Mystery, 86-87, 97-98, 106, 126;
Old West, 97; Psionics, 63;
Riverworld, 123; Robin Hood, 53;
Russia, 15; Scarlet Pimpernel, 11,
15, 121; Space, 19-21, 104;
Special Ops, 9, 12; Steampunk, 8;
Swashbucklers, 8, 10, 14, 32-33,
82, 84, 94, 121; Time Travel, 24,
89; Timeline, 125; Undead, 10, 12,
122; Uplift, 21; Voodoo, 24, 63,
84; Warehouse 23, 66, 87, 96, 108,
121, 125-126; Who’s Who 1, 64-
65, 80, 86, 123, 125; Who’s Who
2, 126; Y2K, 22, 126.
Haggard, H. Rider, 93.
Hale-Bopp, Comet, 102, 112.
Hallucinogens and drugs; ergot, 14;
frankincense, 85; laudanum, 11;
LSD, 69; mushrooms, 109; opium,
46, 99; peyote, 15.
Hamlet, 23, 121.
Hapsburgs, 8, 12, 36.
Hariot, Thomas, 40, 92.
Harpe, William and Wiley, 74.
Hauser, Kaspar, 115.
Hawksmoor, Nicholas, 71, 108.
Heads, see Skulls.
Hecate, 40, 44, 59, 61-62, 70, 113,
116.
Heinlein, Robert A., 49.
Helicopters, black, 96.
Heliogabalus, 71-73.
Hell, 13, 62, 68, 71-72, 122-124.
Henri IV of France, 36.
Henry the Navigator, 32, 34, 118.
Hermes, 40, 42, 68, 108, 110,
112,124.
Hermes Trismegistos, 10, 37-39, 42,
125, see also Thoth.
Herne the Hunter, 54-55.
Herod, 58, 110, 114-115.
High John the Conqueror, 69, 97, 112.
Hildegard of Bingen, St., 37.
Himmler, Heinrich, 12, 108, 117-118.
Hiram Abiff, 70-71, 83, 90, 107.
Hitler, Adolf, 49, 66, 80, 87, 108,110,
114, 117, see also Nazis.
Hobby-horses, 110, 121.
Hoder, 7, 55.
Hogg, James, 76.
Holda, 61, 115, 123.
Hollow Earth, 9, 37, 64, 66, 87, 90,
97, 125.
Holmes, H.H., 65, 74-77.
Holy Grail, 14, 23, 31-34, 38, 43, 51,
56, 60, 85, 94, 97, 102, 112, 117,
121, 126.
127
INDEX
Horror, 4, 10-12, 46, 55, 58, 64-66,
70-80, 85, 119, 123-124.
Huntingdon, Earls of, 53, 55-56.
Hy-Brasil (Hy-Breasal), 94.
Hyperborea, 32-33, 116, 118, 126.
Ice Ages, 7-9.
Illuminati, 11, 24, 35, 48, 56, 66, 83,
98, 106, 114, 120, 125.
Illyria, 42-44, 62.
Impostors, 14, 32, 36-37, 42-44, 60,
65, 72, 83, 98, 115, 126.
Incas, 10, 71, 91-92.
India, 8, 24, 28, 32, 42, 48, 83-84, 94,
124, 126.
“Insiders,” 46, 48, 88.
Irem, 14, 79, 85-87.
Isis, 35, 37, 44, 47, 51, 62, 71, 107,
117.
Ivan the Terrible, 14-15.
Jack the Ripper, 70-74, 113.
James I of England (VI of Scotland),
92.
Japan, 7-9, 12, 14, 20, 26, 47, 98-100.
JASON Society, 118.
Jefferson, Thomas, 31, 114.
Jerusalem, 31-32, 70-72, 107-108,
117, 123.
Jesuits, 10, 36-37, 77, 92, 107, 119,
126.
Joan, Pope, 47.
Joan of Arc, St., 32, 40, 57-60, 71,
118.
John the Baptist, St., 8, 42-43, 121.
John the Divine, St., 22.
John Paul I, Pope, 23.
John Paul II, Pope, 23, 99.
Joker, 111.
Jomon, 100.
Jones, Casey, 69, 115.
Jonson, Ben, 109.
Ka’aba, 85.
Kabbalah, 24, 32, 37, 44, 47, 70, 80,
83, 86-87, 106-107, 125.
Kappa, 100.
Kennedy, John F.,4, 16, 28.
Kepler, Johannes, 37, 102-103.
KGB, 24, see also Commies.
Khazars, 27, 35.
Kircher, Athanasius, 35-37, 107.
Kirlian photography, 12, 86-87.
Knights Hospitaller, 14, 19, 39.
Knights of Christ, 31-32, 94, see also
Knights of Malta, 58, 97, see also
Templars.
Knights Templar, see Templars.
Knights Hospitaller, CIA.
Koestler, Arthur, 27, 35.
Koran, the, 17, 85.
Kundalini, 48.
Labyrinths and mazes, 74, 86, 108.
Lao-tzu, 122.
LaRouche, Lyndon, 25, 46, 120.
LaVey, Anton, 80, 114, 121.
Lawrence, T.E., 86-87.
Laws of Magic, 10.
Le Verrier, Urbain, 101.
Lees, Robert J., 72.
Lemuria, 23-25, 37, 84, 87, 100, 125-
126, see also Mu.
Leopold II of Belgium, 72.
Levi, Eliphas, 66.
Ley lines, 48-49, 87, 106, 108, 126,
Libertatia, 62, 82-84.
see also Sacred geometry.
Lincoln, Abraham, 15, 17, 28.
Livonia, 62-63, 117.
Llorona, La, 96.
London, 21, 23, 38-40, 46, 48, 70-73,
98, 107-108, 119, 121.
Los Angeles, 108.
Louis XIV of France, 14, 58.
Lovecraft, H.P., 19, 63, 67, 69, 77-80,
85, 87, see also Cthulhu Mythos.
Love’s Labours Lost, 39-40.
Lowell, Percival, 99, 102.
Lusitania, S.S., 46, 48.
Macbeth, 59.
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 8, 17, 27.
Mad Fishmonger, 111-112.
Madagascar, 82-84, 126.
Madoc of Wales, 33-34.
Mafia, 23, 51.
Magi, Three, 42-45, 59, 90.
Majestic-12, 21, 97, 115, 126, see
Mana, 7.
also Greys.
Mandeans, 34.
128
Mandeville, Sir John, 84, 88.
Mandrake, 37.
Manoa, 92, 94.
Manticore, 55.
Mantids, 118.
Maps, weird, 32-33, 94, 99.
Marconi, Guglielmo, 93.
Marlowe, Christopher, 38-41, 59, 63,
71.
Mars, 15, 20-22, 37, 50, 99, 102, 108,
124.
Masons, see Freemasons.
May Day, 43, 54, 56, 109, 114, 125,
Mayans, 33, 100, 119, 121.
see also Walpurgisnacht.
Maybrick, James, 72.
Measure for Measure, 40.
Mecca, 17.
Medici, 34, 117, 123.
Megaliths, 48, 54, 56, 79.
Melanesia, 7, 89.
Men In Black, 13, 21, 59, 115, 126.
Merlin, 40, 55.
Meteorites, 51, 71-72, 85-86, 96.
Merovingians, 15, 45, 72, 79, 92, 99,
113, 126.
Mexico, 8, 15, 33, 36, 50, 119, 121.
Midgard Serpent, 48.
Midsummer, 43, 54, 97.
Midsummer Night’s Dream, A, 43,
112.
Mind control, 14, 19, 24-25, 36, 45-
46, 51, 121, 124.
Mirrors, 22, 24-25, 43-44, 73, 76, 99,
114-115, 117, 126.
Misrule, 42-44, 62-63, 110, 112.
Mission, Captain, 82-84.
Mitchell-Hedges, F.A., 119, 121.
MJ-12, see Majestic-12.
MK-ULTRA, 24, 45-46.
Monstrator, 103-104.
Montauk, N.Y., 23, 25.
Moon, 21, 46-47, 49-51, 63, 71, 79,
94, 116-118, 125.
Morgan, Gib, 69.
Morgan, J.P., 46.
Morocco, 8, 83-84, 98, 109.
Mosby, Col. John S., 12.
Mu, 3, 37, 50, 91, 94, 100, 102, 126,
Mumler, William, 12, 23.
see also Lemuria.
Mummers, 43-44, 110.
Mummies, 10, 46, 118.
Münchausen, Baron, 15, 69.
Munday, Anthony, 53.
Muribeca, 92, 94.
Murray, Margaret, 55, 59, 63.
Mussolini, Benito, 9, 23, 93, 118.
Napoleon I of France, 23, 31, 66.
Napoleon III of France, 27.
Nashe, Thomas, 38-39.
Nazis, 9, 12, 25-28, 49, 51, 60, 66, 77,
80, 86-87, 91, 93-94, 96, 98, 116-
118, 125-126.
Necronomicon, 37, 79-80, 86, see
Necrophone, 15.
also Cthulhu Mythos.
Neith, 46, 103.
Nemesis, 103.
Nemo, Captain, 48, 83.
Nephilim, 87, 104.
Network, the, 48.
Nevada, 12, 15, 51.
New Mexico, 12, 15; Dulce, 49, 97;
Holloman AFB, 115; Roswell, 13,
21, 37, 51, 88, 125; San Luis
Valley, 95-97, 120; White Sands,
73.
New York City, 12, 16.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 44, 51, 56, 101.
Nibiru, 100, 103-104.
Nicholas, St., 109.
Night Hag Syndrome, 63.
Nodier, Charles, 66.
Nommos, 62-63, 74, 79, 88, 92, 100,
126, see also Reptoids.
“Nordic” aliens, 8, 12, 63, 66, 84,
93,118, 124-126, see also
Norns, see Fates.
Reptoids.
Nostradamus, 32, 113.
Northumberland, Earls of, 40, 56.
Norumbega, 33-34.
NSA, 37.
Oak Island, 33-34.
Occult imperialism, 31, 39, 46, 87,
108.
Odin (Woden, Wotan), 48, 55, 68-69,
114, 121.
Okhrana, 27.
Olympic, S.S., 46-47.
Ophir, 94.
Oprichnina, 14-15.
Orgone, 96.
Orichalcum, 84, 99, 116.
Orion, 20-21, 39, 51, 54, 69, 107.
Orpheus, 121.
Osiris, 51, 54-55, 71, 102, 104.
Oswald, Lee Harvey, 28.
Oxford, Earls of; 17th Earl (old), 45;
1st Earl (new), 83.
Pan, 79.
Paracelsus, 65, 102, 123.
Paradise, 25, 34, 39, 44, 68, 77, 82,
86, 94, 113, 116, 122-126, see also
Pareidolia, 22.
Arcadia, Hyperborea, Shambhala.
Paris, 14-15, 31, 58, 66, 119.
Patiti, Lake, 92, 94.
Pecos Bill, 67-69.
Percival/Peredur, 34, 43, 102, 112,
121.
Percy, Sir Henry, 40.
Peru,10, 90-93, 119, see also Incas.
Peter I the Great of Russia, 76, 117-
118.
Phaeton, 102, 104, 116.
Philadelphia Experiment, 25.
Philby, Harry St.-John and Kim, 86-
87.
Philip II of Spain, 10.
Philip IV of France, 31.
Phillips, Whipple, 78.
Photography, weird, 12, 22-25, 86-87,
95.
Pirates, 10, 14, 32-34, 38, 56, 62, 77,
82-84, 94, 116, 120, see also
Pius XII, Pope, 23-24.
Raleigh.
Planet X, 102-104.
Planets, extra, 101-104.
Plato, 3, 83-84, 106-107.
Pluto (Yuggoth), 19, 79, 102, 104,
123.
Poe, Edgar Allan, 63, 67, 74, 76, 111.
Pole shift, 23, 50, 126.
Polidori, Dr. John, 8, 66.
Polo, Marco, 84.
Portugal, 23, 31-32, 36, 92, 94.
Pound, Ezra, 118.
Presley, Elvis, 68.
Prieuré de Sion, 8, 32, 34, 38-39, 44,
47, 50, 56, 59-60, 62-63, 66, 72,
79, 83, 87-88, 96, 113, 124, 126.
Process Church, 77.
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 27,
49.
Psychological warfare,19, 51, 80; see
Puck, 55, 112.
also Mind control.
Punch, 111.
Pykrete, 9.
Pyramids, 20-21, 33-34, 50-51, 54,
80, 99-100, 106-108, 121, 124.
Pythagoras, 16, 22, 24, 37, 44, 56, 66,
101-102, 106-107, 122.
Qlippoth, 86-87, 118.
Quatermass, Professor, 12.
Quetzalcoatl, 33, 92, 121, see also
Ragnarok, 9, 48.
Dragons.
Rais, Gilles de, 57-60, 76-77.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 31, 39-40, 91-92,
94, 122.
Ramesses II of Egypt, 10.
Reich, Wilhelm, 96.
Reilly, Sidney, 98.
Renaissance, 8, 17, 32, 35, 40.
René of Anjou, 32, 34, 60.
Rennes-le-Château, 60.
Reptoids, 49, 63, 65-66, 77, 83-85,
87, 92-93, 100, 118, 126, see also
Rhode Island, 33, 78-80, 84.
Dinosaurs, Dragons.
Rhodes, Cecil, 25.
Roanoke, 31, 39-40, 92.
Robertson, Morgan, 47.
Robin Hood, 39, 53-56, 59, 68-69,
111-112.
Romanovs, 98.
Rome, 16, 20, 23, 38, 47, 63, 77-78,
97, 116, 118.
Romeo and Juliet, 40.
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 9, 34, 118.
Roshaniya, 99.
Rosicrucians, 31-32, 34-35, 37-40,
44, 50, 60, 71, 84, 87, 92, 94, 108,
122, 125-126.
Rosslyn Chapel, 33, 37, 56, 118.
Roswell, see New Mexico.
Round Table Conspiracy, 48.
Rudolf II Hapsburg, 36-37.
Runes, see Alphabets, weird.
Ryukyu Islands, 100.
Sacred geometry, 20-21, 24, 31, 51,
54, 86-87, 92, 106-108, 117-118.
Saint-Germain, Comte de, 15, 62, 78,
89, 126.
Salamanders, 102.
Sallee Rovers, 83-84.
Samos, 20-21, 24.
San Luis Valley, 95-97, 120.
Santa Claus, 54, 109.
Saracens, 14, 31, 113, see also Djinn,
Sarras, 14.
Irem.
Satan, 36-37, 40, 4 5, 55, 58, 61, 69,
76-77, 80, 83, 96, 113-114, 118,
School of Night, 14, 40.
see also Serpents.
Scotland, 11-12, 31-33, 51, 53, 56,
87.
Secret History, 4, 13-15, 31-37, 41-
44, 47, 53-56, 58-59, 61-63, 71,
77-80, 82-84, 87-90, 92-94, 99-
104, 106-108, 113-118.
Semtex, 122, 124.
Serendip, 82.
Serial killers, 57-60, 67, 70-77, 96,
111.
Serpents, 65, 84-85, 92-93, 107, see
Servants of Cthulhu, see Cthulhu
also Dragons, Quetzalcoatl.
Shakespeare, William, 34, 39-44, 55,
Mythos.
119, 124, see also individual plays.
Shambhala, 23, 96, 107, 126.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 8, 11,
65-66.
Shangri-La, 25, 48, 98, 126, see also
Shroud of Turin, 8.
Shambhala, Tibet.
Sidney, Sir Philip, 38.
Sinclair/St. Clairs, 33-34, 56, 60, 118.
Sirius, 21, 51, 61-63, 100, 107, 115-
116, 126.
Skorzeny, Otto, 12, 123.
Skrying, 24-25, 36-37, see also
Skull and Bones, 62, 120, see also
Mirrors.
Skulls, 33, 83, 90, 97, 119-121, see
Skulls.
Smith, Cordwainer, 19.
also Crystal Skull.
Smith, Hélène, 37, 124.
Solomon, 33, 71, 86-87, 90, 94, 107.
Space program, 19, 21, 29, 49-51,
104, 118.
Spalding, Baird T., 23, 25.
Spear of Destiny, 108.
Spiritualism, 12, 15, 37, 72, 108, 119,
124.
Stanley, Sir William, 41-42.
Stead, William T., 46.
Steampunk, 8-9, 11, 15, 18, 23, 50.
Steinmetz, Charles, 23, 25.
Stephen, J.K., 70, 72.
Stonehenge, see Megaliths.
Stonemasons, 14, 107, see also
Strange, Lord Fernando, 40-41.
Freemasons.
Strike Force Calusari, 63;
Changeling, 13; Chronos, 13;
Copernicus, 49-50; Jason, 118;
Kepler, 104.
Stukeley, William, 56.
Sufis, 83-84.
Sukyo Makahari sect, 100.
Superheroes, 16-18, 67-69, 111.
Swedenborg, Emmanuel, 69, 124.
Sword Bridge, 122.
Sylvester II, Pope, 113, 121.
Symmes, Cpt. John Cleves, 9.
Taiping Rebellion, 8-9.
Takeuchi documents, 99-100.
Tamerlane, 10.
Tarot, 47, 56, 111.
Tarshish (Tartessos), 42, 84, 90.
Templars, 8, 31-34, 36-38, 43, 51, 55,
70-71, 77, 83, 88, 90, 94, 107, 117-
118-121, 126.
Tesla, Nikola, 24-25, 49, 93, 99, 102,
116, 118, 123, 126.
Teutonic Knights, 64, 108, 117-118.
Tew, Thomas, 82-84.
Theosophy, 24, 34, 37, 72, 84, 91, 99,
107, 124, 126.
Thoth, 33.
Thule, 48, 64, 66, 80, 96, 98, 118,
126.
Thyestes, 23, 47.
Tiamat, 104.
Tibet, 25, 95-96, 119.
Tihuanaco, 9, 50, see also Peru.
Till Eulenspiegel, 112.
Time travel, 13, 19, 22-25, 27, 29, 47,
84.
Titanic, S.S., 45-48, 88.
Titicaca, Lake, 91-92.
Transylvania, 55, 64-65, 90, 117.
Trapezohedrons, 80, 91, 121.
Trickster, 33, 40, 55, 69, 109-112, see
Triplicity, 40, 42-43, 59, 62-63, 70-
also Fool, Forgeries, Impostors.
71, 77, 80, 113-115.
Tunnels, enigmatic, 9, 49, 70-71, 75,
80, 87, 90-91, 97, 107.
Twelfth Night, 41-44.
Ubar, see Irem.
UFOs, 21, 25, 37, 44, 48-51, 62-63,
73, 77, 78-80, 88, 90, 95-97, 99-
101, 106, 112, 116-118, 124-126.
Ultraterrestrials, 8, 36-37, 59, 66, 92,
96, 118, 126, see also Demons,
Greys, Reptoids, UFOs, individual
Uskoks, 62.
deities.
Vampires, 15, 58, 65, 97, 121.
Vatican, the, 23-24, 31, 62, 97, see
Velikovsky, Immanuel, 102.
also Jesuits.
Venezuela, 91-93.
Venice, 22-25, 32-33, 62, 98.
Venus, 17, 21, 25, 37, 71, 84, 101,
103, 110, 115, 123-124, 126.
Verrazano, Giovanni da, 8, 34.
Vespucci, Amerigo, 34.
Vichy, 60, 88, 90, see also Nazis.
Victoria of England, 27-28, 54, 72.
Villa, Pancho, 119-120.
Viracocha, 92.
Virgil, 63, 87, 121, 123.
Vitruvius, 107-108.
Vlad Tepes, see Dracula.
Von Braun, Werner, 9.
Voodoo, 69, 84.
Voynich Manuscript, 35-37, 46, 90,
121, 124.
Vril, 66, 87, 116-117.
Vulcan, 101, 104.
Walburga, St., 63, 113-115.
Walpurgisnacht, 43, 61, 109, 113-
115.
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 38, 40.
Wandering Jew, 65, 114.
Warren, Sir Charles, 70-71, 107.
Washington, George, 11, 23, 31, 69,
114.
Weishaupt, Adam, 11, 66, 114, 125.
Wendigo, 68-69.
Werewolves, 12, 55, 57, 61-62, 69,
99, 117.
Westcott, William Wynn, 71, 125.
Westerns, 15, 18, 67, 122-123.
Wewelsburg, 80, 108.
White Stag, 53.
White Star Line, 45-47.
Whitsuntide, 39-40, 54, 59.
Wild Hunt, 54, 63, 97, 113-114.
Wilgefortis, St., 113.
William of Orange, 83.
Winter’s Tale, The, 39-41.
Witches, 14, 39-40, 44, 46, 54-55, 57-
59, 61-63, 77-78, 80, 96-97, 113-
115, 117.
Woden (Wotan), see Odin.
Wren, Sir Christopher, 108.
Xerxes, 29.
Xtul, 77.
Yale University, 36-37, 120.
Yeats, William Butler, 68, 125.
Yonaguni, 100.
Zeno brothers, 32-33.
Zeppelins, 26, 28-29.
Zeta Reticulum, 115.
Zurich, Gnomes of, see Gnomes of
Zurich.
 Kenneth Hite is back! He's ducked
under government's radar, evaded the
mind-control lasers, and outwitted!
Illuminati surveillance to present 34
more selections from his weekly
column in Pyramid Magazine.
Very chapter has been annotate
uding references to the first
Suppressed Transmission, where appropriate), and
there's an extensive conspiratorial glossary.

Hike through "History on the Rocks.," Amuse your

children with "An Alternate-Historical Alphabet."
Turn the pages of the "Frankenstein Family Album!".
Try to map 'The Fractal Valley." And, since not
everything works out for the best, explore "Things
to Do in Gaming 'When You're Dead."

"SUPPRESSED TRANSMISSION is an entertaining

romp through the borderlands of history, cons piracy,
and magic – Kenneth Hite takes all the good parts out
if the books They don't want you to read, and juggles
them together at mind-bending speed."
– David Hatcher Childress, author/explorer

by Kenneth Hite
Edited by Scott Hating,

Steven Marsh,
and Steve Jackson

www.sjgames.com