I am haunted by recollections
Of places where mad perfections
In horror were brought to birth;
Where pylons of onyx mounted
To heavens with fire embowered,
And turrets and domes uncounted
O’er the terraced torrents towered.
—H. P. Lovecraft
in his 1925 poem “Primavera”

Although it is outside the scope of this series to get heavily into the literary influences involved behind Hodgson and Lovecraft, it is, as was indicated in part 1, a necessary query into the workings behind the subconscious and any possible connection to an anamnesis of a cataclysmic end to a pre-historic Martian civilization. If there were ever such a civilization, given all the other possibilities we are exploring here at Suburbs of Heaven, it would pervade the entire solar system, not just Mars. Presently, we are focusing on Hodgson’s The Night Land as a vague and inchoate subconscious memory of Mars. With the potential pervasiveness of a pre-historic advanced civilization, the “cyclopean ruins”, on Earth and other worlds, that are often mentioned in 19th and early 20th century science romances etc. (and that Lovecraft speaks of, as well as many other writers of the weird) require some examination of the possible sources of inspiration.

How much of an influence did Hodgson (or even H.G. Wells for that matter) actually have on H. P. Lovecraft? Although it’s remotely possible that Lovecraft had read some of Hodgson’s work earlier in his life and had forgotten it and potentially those influences cryptomnesically sublimated later in his life, it is more likely he did not encounter Hodgson’s work until 1934. Indeed, it is apparent that Lovecraft did not even know of Hodgson’s work when the first drafts of his “Supernatural Horror in Fiction” were written, but he does mention Hodgson in a later version. H.C. Koenig was said to have loaned works of Hodgson to Lovecraft, but this was not until 1934. There are rumors that Lovecraft had encountered the Boats of the Glen Carrig some years earlier and if he did, it is not clear what subconscious influences, if any,  Hodgson may ultimately have made on Lovecraft. ¹⁾Perhaps Hodgson’s influence on Lovecraft is another one of those “concealed influences” of the author of the Cthulhu Mythos as is maintained by Christopher Knowles? Until further evidence on this Hodgson/Lovecraft inspiration matter is presented, it’s anyone’s guess–aside from that which we already do know concerning the influences. It seems unlikely Lovecraft ever encountered Hodgson before 1934, given all the inspirations mentioned in the “Supernatural Horror in Literature” essay written by Lovecraft, unless a situation such as that mentioned by Christopher Knowles is in effect.²⁾See also “Shadow out of Hodgson” By John D. Haefele, in Voices from the Borderland by Berruti, Joshi, and Gafford, Hippocampus Press (2014) page 193.

The one possible area of real influence of Hodgson on Lovecraft would have been Hodgson’s use of reincarnation in The Night Land and the emphasis on the device of memories. ³⁾ We mentioned in part 3 a book by Chauncey Thomas entitled The Crystal Button wherein Hodgson may have got his idea of large pyramidal structures, but it also relates the story of a man remembering the future. For an overview of the book, The Crystal Button see Bleiler’s Science Fiction, the Early Years, page 735. Even if Lovecraft had already worked with the reincarnation theme a bit, The Night Land may have re-awakened the need to emphasize the key ingredient in a story that Lin Carter called Lovecraft’s masterpiece and contained what S.T. Joshi suggested as “one of the most outre moments in all literature.” The psychological chiller entitled “The Shadow Out of Time“. ⁴⁾For detailed background on the inspirations behind this story see The Shadow Out of Time: The Corrected Text, edited by Joshi and Schultz, Hippocampus Press, 2003, pages 7-24. Also, see the Wiki article of the story.

In the “Shadow Out of Time” we are confronted by a reincarnation model that seems to be a twisted version of that in The Night Land. We realize in “Shadow Out of Time” that we are being given a detailed version  of reincarnation only hinted at in the Theosophical laden story “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”:

“All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal “Carter” outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case.”  ⁵⁾See pages 198-199 of the Ballantine edition of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. BTW—The initials of Randolph Carter are, of course, “R.C.” We wonder if Lovecraft did this on purpose with a relationship to “Rosicrucian”. Was this a “tongue in cheek” play on initials?   Interestingly, although Lovecraft probably did not know the fact, “R.C.” is also  known as “C.R.C.” and is considered as a symbol of the soul and it’s topology. (See Codex Rosae Crucis by Manly P. Hall, Philosophical Research Society (1971) page 110. See also here.)

The above quotation, I believe, gives us a better insight of what is lurking in the horror mechanism of Lovecraft’s cosmology when the mind swapping Yithians in “The Shadow Out of Time” take over poor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee’s consciousness. In a sense, Peaslee’s experience as a Yithian in “The Shadow out of Time” is comparable to Randolph Carter’s experience as only one aspect of a particular consciousness plane, or facet, of the “topological” superficies of an  “Supreme Archetype” that is presented in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”. ⁶⁾ UPDATE: For an additional insight into the metaphysics involved in Lovecraft’s story “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” see the article “Metaphysics to the Multiverse” at the Lovecraftian science blog. As such, Lovecraft’s jaundiced view of the occult doctrine of Archetype and Oversoul is illustrated. Note the boundless Azathoth of Lovecraft’s conception is a negative contrast to the Neoplatonic boundless “to on” at the center of everything. Thus Lovecraft, ostensibly through his collaborations with E. Hoffman Price, was casting a shadow over Neoplatonic metaphysics as was his wont to do on idealistic systems of philosophy. “Azathoth” is a negative “to on” and was mentioned in “Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath” and the name seems to suggest, in fictional terms at least, and not accurate as etymon: “crazy thought”. (“Aza” as a possible fictional etymon for “crazy” and “Thoth” as thought. The actual name may derive from “Azazel” and “Thoth”.) Azathoth is a symbol of the blind and idiotic materialistic universe knowing not from which it came and knowing not to which it shall go. ⁷⁾Here at the Suburbs of Heaven it is hoped a cheerier notion of the universe is ultimately illustrated. For a recent book that deals with the moral ambiguity of the universe, especially for its treatment of authors and subject matter related to what is explored here at Suburbs of Heaven, see Gary Lachman’s Caretakers of the Cosmos. 

“Through the Gates of the Silver Key” is a virtual complete rewrite of E. Hoffman Price’s “The Lord of Illusion” concept and has apparent Neoplatonic and Theosophical overtones with Lovecraft achieving one of his best visions through Price’s basic idea. Although the idea of Peaslee’s finding a manuscript in his own handwriting goes back to 1930, ⁸⁾As see The Shadow Out of Time: The Corrected Text, edited by Joshi and Schultz, Hippocampus Press, 2003 page 12 the 1930 note of Lovecraft mentioned by Joshi and Schultz seems to be in a time travel context and not strictly in an reincarnation/memory theme. Lovecraft’s own opinion concerning the memory model is curiously evident by the way he describes some  of his own dreams. ⁹⁾Contrast for instance page 14 and page 53 of The Shadow Out of Time: The Corrected Text, edited by Joshi and Schultz, Hippocampus Press, 2003.   It is also noted in biographies of Lovecraft that he pined for a colonial New England and this could be very interesting if reincarnation were to be proven some day. ¹⁰⁾In a future article series we will explore the “Oversoul” model as it was viewed by various occultist’s, as well as some recent ideas concerning it such as Ken Wilber’s The Atman Project.

Lovecraft years before used another Night Land like “memory-dream” concept in his 1925 poem “Primavera”:

I am haunted by recollections
Of lands that were not of earth,
Of places where mad perfections
In horror were brought to birth;
Where pylons of onyx mounted
To heavens with fire embowered,
And turrets and domes uncounted
O’er the terraced torrents towered.

Very Night Landish/Cydonian indeed!

Memories are key to the preservation of individual self-identity. Lovecraft, possibly influenced by Hodgson’s strange out of time reincarnation device, was pushing the “threshold” of the speculations concerning the ontology of the human soul through the simple notion of memories cast over multiple superfices of consciousness and form.  The idea of reincarnation in literature as used by Hodgson and Lovecraft is not necessarily unique per se, even Clark Ashton Smith used similar imagery in his poetry etc. But it is the notion of a singular soul being incarnated into non-human and alien forms that drives the hideous nature of what Lovecraft attempted to convey; an anti-concept of Hodgson’s “X” seeking union with love over millions of years of incarnations. A literary device associating human consciousness with a non-human identity. ¹¹⁾The esoteric and Theosophical cosmologies also associate mankind with “non-human” coporeality but assign “humanity” a priori to a spiritual, rather than a materialistic, telos. cf. Manly Hall’s Esoteric Anthropology.  Lovecraft’s purpose, apparently, is an attempt to make any kind of immortality absurd—even if immortality of the soul (not just the body) can be achieved. Frightening conception indeed!

The key to understanding the metaphysics behind the nature of the soul as conceived in Hodgson’s formulation and the concept of the “Electric Circle” in The Night Land are, as we hinted in part 1, probably found in Marie Corelli’s A Romance of Two Worlds.  ¹²⁾We will explore this in a future installment in this present series. Even the idea of a “Twin Soul” or soul mate is used in Corelli’s work. Hodgson apparently picked up on this idea in his epic adventure of “X” finding his long lost love. We realize in The Night Land that “X” has incarnated many times, over and over, seeking his lost love and occasionally an incarnation fleetingly finds her.

As we have mentioned in part 3, Hodgson’s use of a lost love in the House on the Borderland is a sort of intra-related theme in his works, just as we also indicated the intra-related themes of Hodgson’s use of an “electric” pentacle and an “electric” circle in the connections of “The Night Land cosmology” and the “Carnaki cosmology”.

“Borderland’s” time scales are on a scope reminiscent of Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker but written decades earlier. ¹³⁾Compare also the similarities of the speculated boundaries of consciousness in Star Maker,  The House on the Borderland and Marie Corelli’s A Romance of Two Worlds to the vision of consciousness in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”.  For insights in Stapledon’s philosophy see here and here. One could argue that Hodgson, and even Lovecraft, were playing with an early 20^th century version of some of our contemporary ideas in fictional works involving quantum superpositioning as, for example, in the game Bioshock Infinite where Quantum aspects and superpositioning are involved. Lovecraft plays with this concept in a particularly devilish way in the manner of his having the protagonist of his “Shadow Out of Time” fragmented into alien identities, rather than just human identities as in The Night Land and in Bioshock Infinite.  ¹⁴⁾ For more on the human soul  as symbolically fragmented and the esoteric connections to an exploded planet, Big Bang, etc. see here.

Lovecraft, like many other authors spelunking “the Deep” for an idea, had taken many theosophical concepts and worked with them and indeed twisted many occult and esoteric notions into his fictional cosmology. As can be intimated by the first 2 paragraphs of “The Call of Cthulhu”, Lovecraft was aware of Theosophy. His idea of the mind swapping Yithians is also a kind of theosophical “Root-Race” idea, denuded of any symbolical intent, and instead lent to concepts of spirits inhabiting various evolutions of biological form. ¹⁵⁾Compare this also to the Theosophical ideas in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”. I have not yet had the chance to read any of Lovecraft’s letters but I am sure Lovecraft, E. Hoffman Price et. al. probably had some interesting discussions on these types of theosophical ideas.

Christopher Knowles at The Secret Sun blog argues that Lovecraft concealed his influences, such as Alice Bailey’s theosophical works. This is entirely plausible and has a number of valid points to it although there has been a rebuttal to Knowles’ premise and a rebuttal to the rebuttal. ¹⁶⁾See the Wikipedia article on Cthulhu for more on its etymology. On Knowles point about “Cthulhu” the name, it seems far more convincing that its root is derived from the word “Chthonic“, although the “khul” phonetic could have been added to it as suggested by Knowles. However, as Knowles also realizes, the subject of “theosophical influences” on not just Lovecraft, but the entire weird tale genre, has been known for many years, by many literary researchers. Even James Joyce was influenced by theosophic ideas as see his Ulysses, page 295-297, American Edition, Random House 1934, and also in several places in his Finnegan’s Wake. The science fiction encyclopaedist, Everett Bleiler, in 1990, codified a whole range of influences fostered by H.P. Blavatsky ¹⁷⁾ See Bleiler’s 1990 book Science Fiction: The Early Years page 851(as well as by Bulwer-Lytton) indicating she was a significant contributor to the background inspiration for the ENTIRE weird and “science romance” genre, not just as a godmother of an entire New Age influencing people such as Bailey, Besant, Steiner and many others. ¹⁸⁾The “Blavatskian” significance of theosophical notions influencing fields of thought widely ranging the entire gamut of systems theory up to and including Ken Wilbur to the inspirations for supernatural and science fiction literature, “at just the right moment” in history to kick all this inspiration off, is more than passing curious. A subject for our “Tricks of Light and Shadow: The Secrets of H.P. Blavatsky” article series.  Everett Bleiler (who is perhaps the best literary taxonomist of supernatural and science fiction) stated that her material served as “background” to:

“…unusual ideas. The first volume [of The Secret Doctrine] …has not had much influence on fantastic fiction, perhaps because it is mostly incomprehensible. In the second volume…the ideas expressed…have been important in early science-fiction, since they served as novel and colorful motifs.” ¹⁹⁾See Bleiler’s 1990 book Science Fiction: The Early Years page 851

Blavatsky, herself a sort of weird writer of fiction, ²⁰⁾ As see her Nightmare Tales  with her “Secret Doctrine” started a fire in multiple fields that has not yet been extinguished.

As we explored in some detail in part 2, the mystery of time itself is the great theme of The Night Land. From obvious influences of Wells’ conception of time in his epic The Time Machine, the hallmarks of that unforgettable story’s influences left their indelible mark on Hodgson including probably the love interest themes. In contrast to Wells’ treatment of time, time becomes, in Hodgson’s view,  a slow arduous decay, a ceaseless entropy into an inevitable breakdown of life, meaning, and everything else when finally the “Watchers” will get through the precious protective barrier (a true “Ring-Pass-Not”) of the Last Redoubt. ²¹⁾For further insights into Hodgson’s treatment of entropy and the allegorical nature of the Platonic world of Ideas in Hodgson’s works with oppositional dialectics and polysemous narrative, see “William Hope Hodgson” by Brian Stableford in Voices from the Borderland by Berruti, Joshi, and Gafford, Hippocampus Press (2014) page 49, et. seq. and “The Long Apocalypse” by Brett Davidson on page 189 of the same book.

H.P. Lovecraft is said to have read The Time Machine in 1925. ²²⁾See The Shadow Out of Time: The Corrected Text, edited by Joshi and Schultz, Hippocampus Press, 2003, page 20 Although time travel story telling was not a unique creation of H.G. Wells, his The Time Machine drove and popularized the time meme into a vast literature of time as the vehicle of eschatology, the vehicle of “End Times” or final meaning to everything in the universe. Time as Alpha and Omega of the universe.

We have already mentioned Wells’ “Alien” as an inspiration for Hodgson’s “Watchers”, but by contrast, Wells’ description of his Martians in The War of the Worlds is a bit hokey. Nevertheless, as was evidenced by a recent remake of the story, Wells’ Martians, with an appropriate amount of suspended dis-belief, stand the “test of time”. Wells’ Morlock “culture”, living underground with their “large eyes” to see in the dark, still cozies up to mankind’s deep unconscious and nightmarish fear of the “other” and survives today in the large eyed “Grey” aliens of today’s contemporary alien abduction mythos, itself apparently an extension of Richard Shaver’s Dero mythos. ²³⁾This is a subject that is explored in Jason Colavito’s work Cult of Alien Gods.  Wells’ “Morlock” is, in a sense, still with us. Small wonder then that such an haunted archetype might well up from the “waters of Atlantean oblivion” or be used, as some conspiracy theories would have it, to cast doubt and fear into civilization as a tool for social engineering and the corralling and coddling of a frightened humanity which has been palsied, enfeebled and easily controlled by that catalyzing agent that Lovecraft understood all too well: FEAR. The more fear we exercise, the more war mongering and actual war we wage, and the more we feed the Atlantean subconscious guilts and neuroses that Manly Hall so often spoke of. ²⁴⁾ cf. this subject with that discussed at paragraph 29 in part 8 of the “Tricks of Light and Shadow; The Secrets of Carl Sagan” article series.

Near the conclusion of The Time Machine, the time traveler encounters in his final journey to the future, a small, slimy creature, presumably the only living thing inheriting the Earth at the end of the world. Perhaps this is meant as a pathetic image of the meaningless march of evolution. H.P. Lovecraft would later, in his own stories, scale up those slimy and tentacled eschatological inheritances into hideous and evil manipulative powers of the universe. Cthulhu, a “vast, cool, unsympathetic” tentacled face, is an chimerical aberration of the human face itself and humanity’s need for symmetry. A personification of the unmeaning of the universe come home to roost as a diabolical cosmic irony and teleological joke on existence. The response to the question concerning the moral ambiguity of the universe is answered in the hideous evil of Cthulhu. Very resonant with Hodgson’s “Watchers” indeed!  ²⁵⁾The moral ambiguity of the universe was a “beef” with God that Herman Melville struggled with.  See his Moby Dick etc. Now, the sea creature at the end of the world in The Time Machine belongs to the sea of the universe as an evil god with slimy tentacles and all. A fitting allegory of the notion of the “something not right” with humanity and the universe theme. ”Tentacles” and “slimy things” resonated deeply throughout the alien and outré 20th century science fictional genre. We realize, profoundly and archetypally, that this “Alien” is a deeply rooted thought form of our own inner demons and existential angst sublimating like some monstrous Kraken surfacing from the “dark backward and abysm of time’s” oblivion. Ironically, it’s from slime, illus ²⁶⁾ Although “illus” (root etymon of illusion?) or “ilus” has a deeper esoteric connotation. See Man Grand Symbol of the Mysteries by Manly Hall, Philosophical Research Society (1972) page 108 et. seq. and “wriggling little things” from which emerge, not only human life, but biological life in general. Wells’ small pathetic creature is a statement far different than the all powerful Cthulhu of Lovecraft by conveying the pathos of all living systems at the end of the Earth. Hodgson sustains, for a “time” at least, the living, while the earth current lives on, but we know the final end is a planet overrun with sentient and non-sentient monsters. In a strange sense, Lovecraft affirms “living” systems but in hideously horrific reincarnational guises–especially when viewed in the context of such stories as “The Shadow out of Time” or “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”. In contrast, Hodgson’s vision has glimmers of hope in the mention of “Good Powers”. ²⁷⁾It was August Derleth, not Lovecraft, who is said to have introduced “good powers” into the Cthulhu Mythos.

Although The Night Land was initially published in 1912, it may very well have been Hodgson’s first written novel, if Sam Gafford’s Internet essay entitled “Writing Backwards: The Novels of William Hope Hodgson.” is accurate. Much of the imagery and motifs that occur in other stories by Hodgson can be echoes of what was probably written earlier in The Night Land. In other words, Hodgson continues to explore those themes and ideas and mysteries that are part of The Night Land as we have already explored in this series. The Carnaki pentacle and sharks of the ether etc. in Hodgsonian cosmology evince that the great threats will one day manifest as the Watchers themselves. The very name “Watchers” in the bible is evocative enough to inspire nightmare dreams and a general paranoia of the universe resonant with H.G. Wells’ “vast cool and unsympathetic” aliens who “watch” us and surely “drew their plans against us”. Indeed, this motif of H.G. Wells almost certainly invoked Charles Fort’s angst for cosmic conspiracy whose resonating notes continue to throb in the temple of fear in which humanity is ensconced.

The Night Land is definitively a proto-Cthulhu cosmic horror with its own potential to have a much larger cosmology when internally related contexts are examined to Hodgson’s broader works in general. Lovecraft was keen enough to work out similar and better thought out contexts for his own stories. It is not lost on those of us who have read and studied Hodgson that he anticipated the cosmic panorama of Lovecraft. There can be no doubt that Lovecraft was breathing in a similar archetypal vapor before he may have read “Night Land”.  But from what oracle, from what “cave” did those vapors arise?

 

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