lark, curse, anathema

I received another package that contained a poster for a one time showing of “The King in Yellow” and a burlap pouch with a pendant.

So before I open the pouch, I should go over the poster proclaiming the play to be enacted.

 First, reading the three act play, according to Chambers causes insanity.  The reader has to be placed into a mental institution, commits suicide, goes on a murderous rampage; combinations of two or sometimes all three occur.  

According to Lovecraft; the play is an invocation to bring forth a elder ‘god’ that eats towns, steps across mountains and doesn’t look down on the obliterated humanity it has voided: cause Hastur just don’t care.

So what would seeing the play acted live do to people, to say nothing of the actors; portraying, reciting and acting out the ‘ritual’?  

The movie ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ 1994 is great example what I am blogging about.  The movie is also about Lovecraft mythos (go watch it).

So the play will bring about a riot of vast proportions. 

Inside the burlap pouch is a pendant with the Yellow Sign.

 Here goes another tangent…

In Lovecraft mythos the Elder Sign ‘hides’ you from the cosmic entities whose mere sight will melt your brain; I am being literal.  The Elder sign traced on your door keeps dark,  slimy, squishy, hungry, smaller things from entering and eating you.   Chambers account of the Yellow Sign is the direct opposite.

And back to the blog…

I was sent a metaphysical signaling beacon/fog horn/lighthouse light that has a 101% chance of doing such horrible things to me that death will not stop the pain and suffering my soul will feel.  So I could not kill myself to help alleviate the terror coming for my eternal spirit. 

Gee, thanks.

Both Chambers and Lovecraft followed a theme; once you saw a sign or mystic words, a glimpse behind the curtain, so to speak, you as an individual are over with.  There is no ‘passing it on’, no way to un-see, now way to slow the coming horror.  The only "maybe" in the future is if you might go so completely insane that you will not be able to perceive what is being done to you, or you are barmy enough that you are not ‘you’.

Well...Shit.

inquiry, history, hypothesis

Thus I am back to investigating. 

Researching has dramatically changed since my first collegiate attempt.  I remember that the Library was the temple, the great sanctuary to knowledge, the modern Shrine to Seshat.  Only at the great repository could I gather the information I wanted to absorb.  If the information was not at my current library, I had to seek through the card files and make phones call to other institutions to locate an obscure manuscript.  I then waited as it was shipped to my depository.  After the manuscript arrives I needed to sign the material out and only be able to study it within the confines of the shrine, of course only during open hours.

When next I gave it the ol’ college try, research was done on my own computer, sifting across rants, trolls, lies and reviews.  I learned what was accepted: peer review, known sites that have an approval from institutional learning centers, and of course these are not free.  Citing a Wiki was not accepted nor allowed.  Google was a start, never a fact.  Seshat’s Shrine was only used for a quiet area to study, an empty area to meet, or a cheap copy center.   The great repositories are all online for a price. 

I did well and completed my graduate degree.  I am now ‘full of’ B.S.  This exploration was exciting. 

Then the letter.  

Online lookup, coupled up with opening boxes long ago put into storage.  This was a combination of the two.  I also wanted to ‘call out’ to whoever was doing this; a friend, an enemy or a conspiracy?

So I also had to look up a way to talk about this voyage and record this jaunt.  I reached out to some friends; authors and bloggers.  I imagined a blog was a way of combining the two.  Now I am learning how to blog, (still trying to acquire a way to button my blog so that it is easier to find).

Another package arrives. . . 

concocted, genuine, incantation

    The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers was first published in 1895.  The title is the name of a play that is only mentioned.   The play ties the short stories within the book together and has a theme of driving those who read it insane.  A name used in the book is Hastur; it could refer to the name of an entity, a place, or the king in yellow. 

    I bring this up as I recognize the name from my pastime of early American horror.  My favorite author is H.P. Lovecraft.  H.P. was a horror writer as well as a prolific correspondent; furthermore I own more books of his letters than his stories.  Lovecraft mentions Hastur in ‘The Whisperer in Darkness’ published in 1931.  It is unclear if Lovecraft's Hastur is a person, a place, or an object (such as the Yellow Sign) this ambiguity is recurrent from Chambers through Lovecraft.

     And now a great tangent…   
I learned about Lovecraft as I studied religions, mythos, and  many other cultish, spellish, and mystic ideologies.  I used the wondrous library system that links together all the public (and some private colleges) collectively.  I studiede very aspect of magic and mysticism I could get my hands on.  Of course I failed the classes I was actually assigned.  I did end up taking English and religious studies so that I could get credit for all the effort I had resolved to continue.  Here is some trivia for you the reader:  H.P. Lovecraft has a writing style and a gene named after him that is called lovecraftian.  
     Now back to the story at hand… 

    Lovecraft also makes mention of the play the King in Yellow in a letter referring to the play as an incantation for an eldritch being.   So was someone or some group setting me up?  Did they have knowledge of what my future address was to become?  Was this the second most elaborate lark I have been a part of? 

    Whatever the answer, I was opening books I had put away decades ago.  I was researching with multiple sources and plowing back into a quest that had been forsaken. 

instruction, scheme, ruse

timeline: Dec 2015

It started out as an unusual letter in our mail box.  

The envelope was properly addressed without a return address.  Inside was another envelope.  

The inner packet was addressed properly, however it was stamped “received undeliverable” with a date stamp of 05/03/00.  This is unusual because the address I live at was not purchased until ’11.

Now the questions arise and I look keener at the envelope.  I see the postmark from GLOS (Gloucester) with an English stamp.

Righto, you got my attention.  

The letter has a date of 4 February 2000.  The short of the letter is: ‘protect the stuff inside as others are trying to destroy this information’.  There are some pages of a play; The King in Yellow.

Well…shit.

Looks like I got some stuff to look up…

rant, start, type.

So, do I start at the beginning; when the first 'gift' was delivered, and the wonder of what was going on started a curiosity that I had lost for decades?

Do I talk about my curiosity? 

 Interest that began as a teenager and blossomed in college; then as jobs, the daily grind of living paycheck to paycheck strained my free time, my prying mind faded.  Until the concern I had, became apathy; just books, notes and papers packed away in boxes.

Well…shit.

 This is a blog.  I can take my time.  Write as a flow of consciousness, or just go back and forth as my mind journeys across memories.

As many authors have stated, just write something, anything.  Okay.

 It started out as an unusual letter in our mail box.