“For all its flaws and idiosyncrasies, The Night Land is utterly unsurpassed, unique, astounding. A mutant vision like nothing else there has ever been.”–China Mieville writer of the New Weird genre

The Night Land, a weird alchemical blend of the eschatologies depicted in The Time Machine and the drama of cosmic angst playing out in The War of the Worlds, confects an occult and symbolically analogical landscape of the human psyche.

One of the keys perhaps in understanding the metaphysics behind the nature of the soul as conceived in Hodgson’s literary formulations and even just the basic concept of an “Electric Circle” in The Night Land in the first place, is, as we hinted previously in this series, probably found in Marie Corelli’s 1886 novel,  A Romance of Two Worlds.

Corelli in her A Romance of Two Worlds develops the concept of an “Electric Creed” which has for its central theme an “electric force” of the soul involved with an “Electric Circle” at the center of the universe—the ostensible home of God. ¹⁾ Contrast and compare this “centrality” notion, not only with the “Great Redoubt” and its “Electric Circle” but also Corelli’s journey through the universe with Hodgson’s cosmic “trip” and the spheres and “Green Star” in The House on the Borderland. (A Green Star is also in “The Plattner Story” by H. G. Wells)Corelli informs us that the “sphere” at the center of the universe is God’s sphere and that the “Electric Circle” acts as an instrument for the creation and absorption of the universe but that the soul goes on even if the entire universe is reabsorbed as a new universe will be created.²⁾The idea of “The Electric Theory of Creation” was a popular concept at the turn of the 20th century. For an indication of this see Invisible Light, or The Electric Theory of Creation by George W. Warder published in 1900. (On page 251 of this book he mentions Corelli’s concepts.) For recent cosmological ideas concerning electricity see Wallace Thornhill’s “The Electric Universe“.

This is perhaps the first time that Hodgson’s “Electric Circle” and perhaps by thematic extension his “Electric Pentacle”, in their core functioning concepts, as well as the “electric force” of the human soul and even reincarnated “Twin-Souls” idea,  ³⁾As see page 234 of A Romance of Two Worlds,  Borden Publishing Co. reprint edition of 1947are asserted as being influenced by a reading of Marie Corelli’s electric ideas as contained in A Romance of Two Worlds. Hodgson has taken the “circle” idea of Corelli and imagined it to be like a conjuror’s protective circle in his own created landscape. The way Hodgson treats “electric” things seems very similar to Corelli’s. Notwithstanding the way Hodgson treats the potential of the total destruction of the human soul, the electric sympathy of humanity with the Earth-Current (again a “World Soul”) and even the soul and technological connections seem to have resonance with the basic outline of Corelli’s “Electric Creed” notion. There are also similarities to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s ideas as well. We will explore some of these similarities in narrative and concept by invoking some quotations from noteworthy works of Corelli, Bulwer-Lytton and Hodgson.

⁴⁾The following quotations are from Corelli’s A Romance of Two Worlds, Borden Publishing Co. reprint edition of 1947, Zanoni by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Rudolf Steiner Publications; 1971 reprint of the 1842 edition, and The Night Land, online edition Project Gutenberg’s 2004. Some of these quotations are lengthy but necessary for our purpose. For additional insight into the potential “Theosophical” influences on Hodgson we will also quote from ” ‘Passing the Barrier of Life’: Spiritualism, Psychical Research, and Boundaries in William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land” By Emily Adler. ⁵⁾See the book Boundaries, edited by Jenni Ramone and Gemma Twichen; Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.

As Emily Adler notes,

“In The Night Land Hodgson explores the immortality of the human soul through aeons of time, attributed to the strength of eternal love.”

Love does indeed form the centrality of The Night Land narrative. It is the archetypal pining for union or even “Union”. In The Night Land, “union” is in the form of finding an eons lost love, although the narrator hints that occasionally the sundered souls have possibly re-encountered before in ages past.

On this particular point, Emily Adler writes in Boundaries page 135 of the emotional bond of eternal love as formulated by Frederic W.H. Myers (see also below):

“…the traditional boundaries of life and death and even the barrier of time have all been breached by the strength of emotional bond…”

And she adds that Myers calls this “Eternal Love”. This is also similar to what Marie Corelli wrote of about “Twin Souls”.

Hodgson also appears to be bonding the two souls of his narrative “electrically”.⁶⁾The mythological Eros in Theosophical lore is fundamentally connected to cosmic Fohat.

Adler sums of the salient points nicely:

“In this secular future world of technology, spiritual forces, and immortal bonds, Hodgson attempts his own reconciliation of scientific principles and spiritual faith, especially faith in the venerated endurance of love.”⁷⁾For additional insight into Hodgson’s thematic use of the “Love” motif, see “The House on the Borderland: On Humanity and Love” by Henrik Harksen in Voices from the Borderland by Berruti, Joshi, and Gafford, Hippocampus Press (2014) page 157

We can illustrate this notion with some ideas from The Night Land:

“I had also a knowledge, or memory, of this present life of ours, deep down within me; but touched with a halo of dreams, and yet with a conscious longing for One, known even there in a half memory as Mirdath…I had grown to listen for a voice that had not rung in mine ears for an eternity, and yet which sang sweet and clear in my memory-dreams; so that it seemed to me that Mirdath the Beautiful slept within my soul, and whispered to me out of all the ages…marvelling that my memory-dreams held the voice of a love that had been in so remote an age…I could fancy this aeon-lost One were whispering beauty into my ears, in verity; so clear had my memory grown…”

Now for comparison, page 216 of A Romance of Two Worlds:

“You speak with the assurance and delight of a spirit satisfied. But when I talk of death, I mean by that word the parting asunder of two souls who love each other; and though such separation may be brief, still it is always a separation. For instance, suppose—” he hesitated: “suppose Zara were to die?”
“Well, you would soon meet her again,” I answered. “For though you might live many years after her, still you would know in yourself that those years were but minutes in the realms of space—”
“Minutes that decide our destinies,” he interrupted with solemnity. “… how can I be sure that I shall be strong enough to live out my remainder of life purely enough to deserve to meet her again? And if not then Zara’s death would mean utter and almost hopeless separation for ever—though perhaps I might begin over again in some other form, and so reach the goal.”

If Hodgson had read Corelli’s novel, perhaps that would be the simplest explanation for his theosophical like ideas? Or maybe there is more?

Emily Adler suggests,

“While Hodgson does not seem to have been a practicing spiritualist, the biographical evidence for his awareness of the activities of spiritualists is supported by textual evidence linking Hodgson both to spiritualism and also to theories of the Society for Psychical Research, which were well-publicised [sic] in the 1880’s and 1890’s…The SPR, founded in 1882 by F.W.H Myers, Edmund Gurney, and Henry Sidgwick, aimed to investigate psychic phenomena on a scientific basis.”

Adler quotes from Frederic W. H. Myers’ book Human Personality and its survival of bodily death:

“Spiritual evolution:—that, then, is our destiny, in this and other worlds;—an evolution gradual with many gradations and rising to no assignable close”.

Adler continues:

“Myers’s choice of the phrase “spiritual evolution” is significant; if psychical ideas were, for the SPR, at the cutting edge of modern scientific debates, so too was evolutionary science, and the two must be looked at in conjunction. Darwinism and the evolutionary history of humans cast doubts for many over the existence of God, heaven, or the immortal soul, but spiritualism, to an extent, allowed these same beliefs to be incorporated into a scientific and materialistic world view.”

Also Emily Adler mentions Myers’ theory⁸⁾For a broader background on Myers see the Psi Encyclopedia article on him regarding the human spirit as “an almost mindless force of energy.” This is in stark contrast to Corelli’s concept of the electric force of the human soul. Unlike Corelli’s electric take on the immortal soul, the implications in Hodgson view had the ability of enormous “Watchers” and other psychic monsters (sound familiar to Lovecraft fans?) to destroy the sum total of the immortal life wave “current” if taken by his hints in The Night Land. Hodgson could have taken the idea of the electric force of Corelli, it seems, and added elements of a materialistic science to the notion as per Emily Adler’s “Society for Psychical Research” premise. ⁹⁾See her “ ‘Passing the Barrier of Life’: Spiritualism, Psychical Research, and Boundaries in William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land” from the book Boundaries, edited by Jenni Ramone and Gemma Twichen; Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. Such a science existed in the future days of the Great Redoubt, when technology and spiritual force were blended to such a point that human souls have a weird materialistic nature about them that they could even be actually and forever destroyed. (!)¹⁰⁾This reminds us a bit of an idea used in a novel published after The Night Land in 1920 entitled The Slayer of Souls by Robert W. Chambers.

Some examples from The Night Land:

“I would make clear that I speak less of the peril of the body, which is common to every state of life; but of the peril of the spirit…” “…even to awaken the Forces to work them some dread Spiritual harm, which was the chief Fear…” “…my heart stood quiet with fear, and the utter terror of this Monster, which I knew to be surely one of the Great Forces of Evil of that Land, and had power, without doubt, to destroy the spirit.”

More from The Night Land:

“…behold! there did be monstrous Black Mounds all along without of the Circle, and did rock and sway with a force of strange life that did set an horror into my soul as I ran; for truly they did be the visible signs of monstrous Forces of Evil. And did any Human have ventured outward beyond the Circle, then had that man been Destroyed in the Spirit, and lost utterly… And other voices did call that the Holy Light was gone from above; and likewise the Black Mounds from the outer part of the Circle. And there did be a monstrous noise of roarings in the Land, and all to come bewildered unto my brain, which did surely fail now with the grim and utter stress which had been mine so long.”

Hodgson emphasizes the spiritual destruction with a capital “D—Destruction” as opposed to regular “bodily” destruction with lowercase “d”.

Thus, the soul does have an “electric” like quality about it in The Night Land, much like Corelli’s “Electric Creed” idea, but with a twist…

And so it is with Theosophy, and the very same ideas that were informing the work of Marie Corelli. Adler again:

“…the Theosophical view of the nature of spirits and the spirit world is one more influence that must be taken into account when considering Hodgson’s treatment of the eternal survival of a human soul in The Night Land.”

On the point of Myers’ concept of the “human personality” and its survival, the concept that Blavatsky attempted to convey in her Isis Unveiled was actually that the personality does not survive for long after bodily death and only in rare cases does it actually reincarnate. It is rather the human spirit (or “Oversoul”) that projects emanations of additional personalities out of itself, which in turn continue to generate the “soul”. The soul in Blavatsky’s Theosophical cosmology is a bit complicated, and certainly different than the simple notion of the same personality reincarnating, yet, even in that context, there seem to be evidences of the ability to “remember”. ¹¹⁾H.P.B.s reincarnation clarification is in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings: 1888-1889 pages 215, 247-252, and also page 361 for more on HPB’s take on memory, dreams and reincarnation. The information therein is crucially connected to all these themes in their root ideation and we will focus on the details in the future.

Additionally, within the universe of The Night Land, there exists the ability to communicate telepathically. Such a notion, of course, was not new when Hodgson wrote The Night Land. Elsewhere Adler writes:

“Fredric Myers was the first to posit the concept of the subliminal self, similar to the unconscious, which he believed accounted for telepathic communication and the survival of the spirit after the death of the body.”

On the notion of telepathic communication a few quotations from both Zanoni and A Romance of Two Worlds are informative.

Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1842 novel Zanoni page 229:

“Mejnour professed to find a link between all intellectual beings in the existence of a certain all-pervading and invisible fluid resembling electricity, yet distinct from the known operations of that mysterious agency—a fluid that connected thought to thought with the rapidity and precision of the modern telegraph, and the influence of this fluid, according to Mejnour, extended to the remotest past,—that is to say, whenever and wheresoever man had thought. Thus, if the doctrine were true, all human knowledge became attainable through a medium established between the brain of the individual inquirer and all the farthest and obscurest regions in the universe of ideas.”  ¹²⁾On this point of an all pervading fluid and its connection to center as “God”, see the galvanic concept introduced by Godfrey Higgins in his 1836 tome Anacalypsis Vol. 1, pages 35 and 815. Also see Vol. 2 page 301 where the Rosicrucian Argheus is mentioned. In my estimation, this is a probable source of Lytton’s inspiration for his “all-pervading invisible fluid”. Spelling was not yet standardized as this is the Archeus of Paracelsus. Higgins source is footnoted but is from the 1797 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica Vol. 16 page 500. It can also be found in the Pantologia cyclopedia of 1813 under the article “Rosicrucians“. An early 1728 article on it can be found here. See also Isaac Newton’s “General Scholium” and William Whiston’s overall treatment of the “Divine Power” in his A New Theory of the Earth.

Page 170 of A Romance of Two Worlds :

“Granting human electricity to exist, why should not a communication be established, like a sort of spiritual Atlantic cable, between man and the beings of other spheres and other solar systems?”

From The Night Land:

“Yet, about me as I went, there was constant surging in the aether of the world; and it did tell unto me how that those, my people and kin, had continual mind of me, both in prayer and wishings, and in a perpetual watching. And the same gave to me a feeling as of being something companied; yet, in a time, it came to me that this disturbance of the aether should tell to some Evil Force how that I was there abroad in the Land. But how to stop this thing, who should have power?” ¹³⁾Cf. this also to the Faculty of Abrac.

Adler adds:

“Hodgson’s decision to set the novel so far in the future also has meaning in terms of the spiritual and psychical ideas he is eager to explore. The setting provides the vast temporal scope required to explore the Theosophical notion of a soul’s successive reincarnations, and allows him to create a society and a future breed of humans in which everything Myers could have hoped for has come true. The limits of human understanding have expanded, temporally and psychically, beyond previous actual or imaginative experience.”

Finally, Adler writes:

“The Night Land is an excellent example of how the imaginative potential of many of the ideas discussed by the SPR can emerge in fantastic fiction, and its use of psychical phenomena is tied closely to the particular spiritualist discourse of the 1890’s. The novel’s exploration of the boundaries of human mentality and spirituality is directly linked to some of the most topical cultural debates of the time, and is significant for the future development of science fiction as an emergent genre.”

Curious isn’t it all this Theosophical influence? As we have suggested earlier, the informing media of the Theosophical cosmological world view, not only as a seed ground for varied templates of systems theory, but as a major source inspiration for science fiction ¹⁴⁾ See Bleiler’s Science Fiction: The Early Years page 851. in general, requires us to re-examine the weird milieu surrounding H.P. Blavatsky. Her influence was more than a passing chimera—but to all that in due time.

Also, there is much in the way of interesting metaphysical matter in Corelli’s work that has sympathies with the cosmologies of both The Night Land and The House on the Borderland:

Page 187 of A Romance of Two Worlds:

[On Venus]”…no creature existed who did not believe in and worship the Creator. The same state of things existed in Jupiter, the planet we next visited, where everything was performed by electricity. Here persons living hundreds of miles apart could yet converse together with perfect ease through an electric medium; ships ploughed the seas by electricity; printing, an art of which the dwellers on Earth are so proud, was accomplished by electricity—in fact, everything in the way of science, art, and invention known to us was also known in Jupiter, only to greater perfection, because tempered and strengthened by an electric force which never failed.”

At this point in the story, Corelli has the main character describing a sort of interior creation which she herself is the god of: Page 192 of A Romance of Two Worlds:

“Then some of them advanced and began to question why they had been created, forgetting completely how their lives had been originally designed by me for happiness, love and wisdom. Then they accused me of the existence of evil, refusing to see that where there is light there is also darkness, and that darkness is the rival force of the Universe, whence cometh silently the Unnamable Oblivion of Souls. ¹⁵⁾Was this a particular inspiration to Hodgson for his use of the concept of an annihilation of the soul? They could not see, my self-willed children, that they had of their own desire sought the darkness and found it; and now, because it gloomed above them like a pall, they refused to believe in the light where still I was loving and striving to attract them still. Yet it was not all darkness, and I knew that even what there was might be repelled and cleared away if only my people would turn towards me once more.”

Page 197 of A Romance of Two Worlds:

“I am thy guardian,” it said. “I have been with thee always. I can never leave thee so long as thy soul seeks spiritual things. Asleep or awake on the Earth, wherever thou art, I also am. There have been times when I have warned thee and thou wouldst not listen, when I have tried to draw thee onward and thou wouldst not come; but now I fear no more thy disobedience, for thy restlessness is past. Come with me; it is permitted thee to see far off the vision of the Last Circle.”

Page 199-200 of A Romance of Two Worlds:

“Here,” said my guardian gently—”here ends thy journey. Would that it were possible, poor Spirit, for thee to pass this boundary! But that may not be—as yet. In the meanwhile thou mayest gaze for a brief space upon the majestic sphere which mortals dream of as Heaven. Behold and see how fair is the incorruptible perfection of God’s World!”

“My heart fails me now as I try to write of that tremendous, that sublime scene—the Centre of the Universe—the Cause of all Creation. How unlike Heaven such as we in our ignorance have tried to depict! though it is far better we should have a mistaken idea than none at all. What I beheld was a circle, so huge that no mortal measurements could compass it—a wide Ring composed of seven colours, rainbow-like, but flashing with perpetual motion and brilliancy, as though a thousand million suns were for ever being woven into it to feed its transcendent lustre. From every part of this Ring darted long broad shafts of light, some of which stretched out so far that I could not see where they ended; sometimes a bubbling shower of lightning sparks would be flung out on the pure ether, and this would instantly form into circles, small or great, and whirl round and round the enormous girdle of flame from which they had been cast, with the most inconceivable rapidity. But wonderful as the Ring was, it encompassed a Sphere yet more marvellous and dazzling; a great Globe of opal-tinted light, revolving as it were upon its own axis, and ever surrounded by that scintillating, jewel-like wreath of electricity, whose only motion was to shine and burn within itself for ever. I could not bear to look upon the brightness of that magnificent central World—so large that multiplying the size of the sun by a hundred thousand millions, no adequate idea could be formed of its vast proportions. And ever it revolved—and ever the Rainbow Ring around it glittered and cast forth those other rings which I knew now were living solar systems cast forth from that electric band as a volcano casts forth fire and lava. My Angel-guide motioned me to look towards that side of the Ring which was nearest to the position of the Earth. I looked, and perceived that there the shafts of descending light formed themselves as they fell into the shape of a Cross. At this, such sorrow, love, and shame overcame me, that I knew not where to turn.”

Page 201-202 of A Romance of Two Worlds:

“Listen!” added my Angel-guide. “Thou hast not travelled so far as yet to remain in ignorance. That burning Ring thou seest is the result of the Creator’s ever-working Intelligence; from it all the Universe hath sprung. It is exhaustless and perpetually creative; it is pure and perfect Light. The smallest spark of that fiery essence in a mortal frame is sufficient to form a soul or spirit, such as mine, or that of Azul, or thine, when thou art perfected. The huge world rolling within the Ring is where God dwells. Dare not thou to question His shape, His look, His mien! Know that He is the Supreme Spirit in which all Beauty, all Perfection, all Love, find consummation. His breath is the fire of the Ring; His look, His pleasure, cause the motion of His World and all worlds. There where He dwells, dwell also all pure souls; there all desires have fulfilment without satiety, and there all loveliness, wisdom or pleasure known in any or all of the other spheres are also known. Speak, Azul, and tell this wanderer from Earth what she will gain in winning her place in Heaven.”

“When thou hast slept the brief sleep of death, when thou art permitted to throw off for ever thy garb of clay, and when by thine own ceaseless love and longing thou hast won the right to pass the Great Circle, thou shalt find thyself in a land where the glories of the natural scenery alone shall overpower thee with joy—scenery that for ever changes into new wonders and greater beauty. Thou shalt hear music such as thou canst not dream of. Thou shalt find friends, beyond all imagination fair and faithful. Thou shalt read and see the history of all the planets, produced for thee in an ever-moving panorama. Thou shalt love and be beloved for ever by thine own Twin Soul; wherever that spirit may be now, it must join thee hereafter.”¹⁶⁾As the intuitive reader realizes, when the narrator has soared symbolically through the orbits of the alchemical planets, the elements of an allegorical initiatory journey finally culminate when we understand the “Electric Circle” is an allegorical journey inward, from the edge of the self (near the symbolical liminal reaches of personal reality) to reach the Self on a Cosmic scale. From the esoteric standpoint, each person is a universe, and Corelli in her own inner universe, like Ezekiel in his “wheels within wheels” vision (which Godfrey Higgins also realized in his Anacalypsis to be a symbolical concatenated solar system or Dante in his own depiction of the “universe”), communes with her own personal god.

Page 203 of A Romance of Two Worlds:

“All pilgrims from the Sorrowful Star must journey by that road. Woe to them that turn aside to roam mid spheres they know not of, to lose themselves in seas of light wherein they cannot steer! Remember my warning! And now, Spirit who art commended to my watchful care, thy brief liberty is ended. Thou hast been lifted up to the outer edge of the Electric Circle, further we dare not take thee. Hast thou aught else to ask before the veil of mortality again enshrouds thee?”

On page 207 of A Romance of Two Worlds Heliobas (A character apparently modeled after the Comte de St. Germain) says,

“Yours has been a most wonderful, I may say almost exceptional, experience. It proves to me more than ever the omnipotence of WILL. Most of those who have been placed by my means in the Uplifted or Electric state of being, have consented to it simply to gratify a sense of curiosity—few therefore have gone beyond the pure ether, where, as in a sea, the planets swim.”

Further on he says,

“When you have educated your Will to a certain height of electric command, you can at your pleasure see at any time, and see plainly, the spirits who inhabit the air; and also those who, descending to long distances below the Great Circle, come within the range of human electricity, or the attractive matter contained in the Earth’s atmosphere. You can converse with them, and they with you. You will also be able, at your desire, to see the parted spirits of dead persons, so long as they linger within Earth’s radius, which they seldom do, being always anxious to escape from it as soon as possible. Love may sometimes detain them, or remorse; but even these have to yield to the superior longings which possess them the instant they are set free. You will, in your intercourse with your fellow-mortals, be able to discern their motives quickly and unerringly…”

Page 213 of A Romance of Two Worlds:

“The dwellers in the Sun have ages ago lived their lives and passed to the Central Sphere. The Sun is nothing now but a burning world, burning rapidly, and surely, away: or rather, it is being absorbed back into the Electric Circle from which it originally sprang, to be thrown out again in some new and grander form. And so with all worlds, suns and systems, for ever and ever… “

Page 215 of A Romance of Two Worlds:

“As worlds are absorbed into the Electric Circle and again thrown out in new and more glorious forms, so are we absorbed and changed into shapes of perfect beauty, having eyes that are strong and pure enough to look God in the face. The body perishes—but what have WE to do with the body—our prison and place of experience, except to rejoice when we shake off its weight for ever!”

 

 

Had Hodgson lived longer and been given the opportunity to write additional stories of the “supernatural” he would have made clearer, in my estimation, the keys to understanding some of the things that are happening in The House on the Borderland, the love interest therein, the “Watcher-like” statues and the journey to the center of the universe reminiscent of Corelli’s narrative of journeying to the center of the universe. It was Hodgson’s first story “The Goddess of Death” that we begin to realize the notional relationships that exist between the stories that Hodgson is writing. The Hindu goddess of death occurs in The House on the Borderland. We also realize that his Carnaki stories were probably set in The Night Land universe and recent studies have indicated the relevantly related motifs. ¹⁷⁾See Voices from the Borderland by Berruti, Joshi, and Gafford, Hippocampus Press (2014) various essays.

In the Appendix material at the end of Lytton’s Zanoni entitled “Zanoni Explained” there are a number of definitions providing keys to the allegorical characters and subjects of the book. On page 409 the following definitions are given:

“DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD:—FEAR (or HORROR), from whose ghastliness men are protected by the opacity of the region of Prescription and Custom. The moment this protection is relinquished, and the human spirit pierces the cloud, and enters alone on the unexplored regions of Nature, this Natural Horror haunts it, and is to be successfully encountered only by defiance,—by aspiration towards, and reliance on, the Former and Director of Nature, whose Messenger and Instrument of reassurance is Faith.”

This also recalls some of the fear that was evidenced by “X” in The Night Land.

“AIDON-AI:—FAITH, which manifests its splendour, and delivers its oracles, and imparts its marvels, only to the higher moods of the soul, and whose directed antagonism is with Fear; so that those who employ the resources of Fear must dispense with those of Faith. Yet aspiration holds open a way of restoration, and may summon Faith, even when the cry issues from beneath the yoke of fear.”

For use of the relevant motif from Zanoni, here are a few examples. Page 228 of Zanoni:

“Amidst the dwellers of the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her tribe,—one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear…

PAGE 230 of Zanoni :

“The hour now arrives,” he said, “when thou mayst pass the great but airy barrier,—when thou mayst gradually confront the terrible Dweller of the Threshold.”

PAGE 236 of Zanoni:

“In the lamps of Rosicrucius the fire is the pure elementary principle. Kindle the lamps while thou openst the vessel that contains the elixir, and the light attracts towards thee those beings whose life is that light. Beware of Fear. Fear is the deadliest enemy to Knowledge.”

The key to the “Electric Pentacle” of the Carnaki stories is shrouded in what I called “the hideously enormous cosmic ritual occurring in Night Land” as suggested earlier in this series. The idea of the “Electric Pentacle” helping keep out the “Monstrosities” is similar in The Night Land, with the “Electric Circle” as the ultimate “Gateway”, in a sense, of the “Watchers”…

In the Carnaki story “The Gateway of the Monster” there is an MS. entitled the “Sigsand Manuscript” wherein is contained a particularly interesting statement:

“Thee mownts wych are thee Five Hills of safetie. To lack is to gyve pow’r to thee demon; and surlie fayvor thee Evil Thynge”

It is clear, as suggested in part 3 of this series, that there is a five-pointed pentacle formed by the positions of the “Watchers” even though they are outside the “Electric Circle”.

 

 

That was the first time that such a notion had been asserted about these “Watchers” in The Night Land. However, even though we realize The Night Land was written earlier, in the Carnaki mythos, the pentacle is a form of safety, it now appears that in The Night Land the “Five Hills of safetie” mentioned in the Sigsand MS. are the “Watchers” at the appropriate five points of the star and have become not “Hills of safetie” but hideous hills of horror lurking like cosmic “Dwellers at the Threshold” to destroy the last souls of humanity. This appears to be a sort of strange reversal, some inexplicable thing that must have happened in immemorial years gone by that assisted in keeping the “Watchers” at bay from the “Great Redoubt” by utilizing the “Earth Current” and at least, for a prolonged time, keeping the evil powers at bay until the “Protective Force” (to use words from the Carnaki stories) passes away.

From The Night Land :

“The evil must surely have begun in the Days of the Darkening (which I might liken to a story which was believed doubtfully, much as we of this day believe the story of the Creation). A dim record there was of olden sciences (that are yet far off in our future) which, disturbing the unmeasurable Outward Powers, had allowed to pass the Barrier of Life some of those Monsters and Ab-human creatures, which are so wondrously cushioned from us at this normal present. And thus there had materialized, and in other cases developed, grotesque and horrible Creatures, which now beset the humans of this world. And where there was no power to take on material form, there had been allowed to certain dreadful Forces to have power to affect the life of the human spirit. And this growing very dreadful, and the world full of lawlessness and degeneracy, there had banded together the sound millions, and built the Last Redoubt; there in the twilight of the world—so it seems to us, and yet to them (bred at last to the peace of usage) as it were the Beginning; and this I can make no clearer; and none hath right to expect it; for my task is very great, and beyond the power of human skill.”

From The Night Land:

“And there was afterwards writ a proper and careful treatise, and did set out that there did be ruptures of the Aether, the which did constitute doorways, as those more fanciful ones did name them; and through these shatterings, which might be likened unto openings—there being no better word to their naming—there did come into this Particular Condition Of Life, those Monstrous Forces Of Evil, that did dominate the Night, and which many did hold surely to have been given this improper entrance through the foolish and unwise wisdom of those olden men of learning, that did meddle overfar with matters that did reach in the end beyond their understanding.”

“…through hundreds and thousands of years, there grew up in the Outer Lands, beyond those which lay under the guard of the Redoubt, mighty and lost races of terrible creatures, half men and half beast, and evil and dreadful; and these made war upon the Redoubt; but were beaten off from that grim, metal mountain, with a vast slaughter. Yet, must there have been many such attacks, until the electric circle was put about the Pyramid, and lit from the Earth-Current. And the lowest half-mile of the Pyramid was sealed; and so at last there was a peace, and the beginnings of that Eternity of quiet watching for the day when the Earth-Current shall become exhausted.”

“And fresh and greater monsters developed and bred out of all space and Outward Dimensions, attracted, even as it might be Infernal sharks, by that lonely and mighty hill of humanity, facing its end—so near to the Eternal, and yet so far deferred in the minds and to the senses of those humans. And thus hath it been ever.”

Note the “sharks” here. Hodgson’s “Sharks of the Ether”. What a creepy larvae like ectoplasmic nightmare! ¹⁸⁾Sharks of course for Hodgson were something he dreaded from his time serving at sea.

Speaking of “Larvae”, from Zanoni page 243 when describing the Dweller on the Threshold (a personification of “Fear”):

“All fancies, the most grotesque, of monk or painter in the early North, would have failed to give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone. All else so dark,—shrouded, veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare so intense, so livid, yet so living, had in it something that was almost HUMAN in its passion of hate and mockery,—something that served to show that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy to material forms.”
¹⁹⁾ cf. to Comte de Gablis. A more extensive article is here.

What are the “Silent Watchers” of The Night Land doing? They are waiting. Waiting to destroy worlds and to destroy souls…
Creeping ever so slowly over hundreds of thousands (millions?) of years they are, in a real sense, as we noted in a previously, a more insidious and sinister version of Well’s War of the Worlds’ “vast, cool and unsympathetic” aliens “watching” us and surely “drawing their plans against us”. Hodgson’s “Watchers” will continue to watch and wait over millions of years until the “Earth Current” ceases to give life. These “Watchers”, like other “Evil Forces” in The Night Land, are telepathic and will bear an interesting sympathy with Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu” some years later. Wells’ aliens and Hodgson’s “Watchers” are so primal in archetypal fear that they are still with us. They seem to fill some strange need of the human psyche to rationalize the outré. Metaphysically impressionable in a sort of repressive and sublime way, they truly embody our manifest anxieties, we become arrested by this impression and we can’t shake it—especially in our hectic technological times. Where Wells’ aliens lived on a planet that humanity could see with technology, the “Watchers” come from outside space and time, inter-dimensionally materialized at the end of the world and curse humanity with their telepathic powers. As we suggested earlier, they are the “outer monstrosities” of the Carnaki cosmology which will ultimately fully materialize at the end of time around the Great Redoubt.

 

 

In the imagery Hodgson conjures up, we share an understanding what these great “Watchers” are by the way in which they are descriptively suggested. They are “Dweller”-like, in the Zanoni sense; shimmering reflective shadows in the astral light that hint by suggesting rather than specifically revealing what they are.  He may have looked at them as some manifestation of “the thing at the foot of the bed” writ large in a cosmic tapestry laced with a deft spiritually stifling atmosphere–he may have seen them in his mind’s eye different than we do. But the mana he utilizes in describing them makes each multifaceted monstrosity unique in each reader’s mind but they share a total imagery that can be SHARED.

The following text from “The Hog” gives us additional insight into the connections between the “Outer Monstrosities” of the Carnaki stories and The Night land’s “Watchers”.

“And then something seemed to be telling me not to shoot. This sounds perhaps a bit superstitious; but I meant to kill Bains in that moment, and what stopped me was a distinct message from the outside.”
“I tell you, it sent a great thrill of hope through me, for I knew that the forces which govern the spinning of the outer circle were intervening. But the very fact of the intervention proved to me afresh the enormous spiritual peril into which we had stumbled; for that inscrutable Protective Force only intervenes between the human soul and the Outer Monstrosities.”
“The moment I received that message I stood up like a flash and turned towards the pit, stepping over the violet circle slap into the mouth of darkness. I had to take the risk in order to get at the switchboard which lay on the glass shelf under the table top in the centre. “

“In the dead stillness of that room I got a strange sense that all eternity was tense and utterly still as if certain powers knew of this horror I had brought into the world…. And then I had an awareness of something coming… something from far, far away. It was as if some hidden unknown part of my brain knew it.”

Here, of course, Hodgson is using both the “Barrier” motif as well as the telepathy concept. Note also that the “Outer Monstrosities” have a psychic ability to communicate similar to the “Watchers’” telepathic ability.

“Something told me that it was making a final effort against the help that was coming. I saw the indigo circle was now some inches from the floor, and every moment I expected to see it flash into streams of indigo fire running down the pale slopes of the snout. I could see the circle beginning to move upward at a perceptible speed. The monster was triumphing.”

Whatever the “Watchers” may be, what they want to do or where they are actually from, these encroaching watchers must be kept at bay… We fear demons, we fear devils, their very existence, as a concept, concocts fear mechanisms and neuroses, as we are sure they must exist. ²⁰⁾The famous occultist Manly P. Hall has suggested in his various lectures that the more guilty we are of various offenses, the more these illusions of our own neurotic fixations seem real. Mr. Hall appears to follow Sigmund Freud’s lead in psychological matters on more that one occasion and scale them across and up into various metaphysical theories.

Thus a circle must be drawn, a precious protective barrier and a true “Ring-Pass-Not” of the Last Redoubt where the only sense of self, or Self, can be preserved in the night black accursed universe. It was the “Electric Circle”, a supernatural technological halo of hope, that ultimately kept out those hideous infernal cherubim encroaching at an unsettling proximity to the last remnant of humanity.  ²¹⁾For convenience, some of the text from the Theosophical Glossary is here provided: “A profoundly mystical and suggestive term signifying the circle or bounds or frontiers within which is contained the consciousness of those who are still under the sway of the delusion of separateness — and this applies whether the ring be large or small. It does not signify any one especial occasion or condition, but is a general term applicable to any state in which an entity, having reached a certain stage of evolutionary growth of the unfolding of consciousness, finds itself unable to pass into a still higher state because of some delusion under which the consciousness is laboring, be that delusion mental or spiritual. There is consciously a ring-pass-not for every globe of the planetary chain, a ring-pass-not for the planetary chain itself, a ring-pass-not for the solar system, and so forth. It is the entities who labor under the delusion who therefore actually create their own rings-pass-not, for these are not actual entitative material frontiers, but boundaries of consciousness…A ring-pass-not furthermore may perhaps be said with great truth to be somewhat of the nature of a spiritual laya-center or point of transmission between plane and plane of consciousness…The rings-pass-not as above said, however, have to do with phases or states of consciousness only. For instance, the ring-pass-not for the beasts is self-consciousness, i.e., the beasts have not yet been enabled to develop forth their consciousness to the point of self-consciousness or reflective consciousness except in minor degree…A general ring-pass-not for humanity is their inability to self-consciously participate in spiritual self-consciousness. 

From The Night Land:

”There was, as you do know, all around the base of the Pyramid, which was five and one-quarter miles every way, a great circle of light, which was set up by the Earth-Current, and burned within a transparent tube; or had that appearance. And it bounded the Pyramid for a clear mile upon every side, and burned for ever; and none of the monsters had power ever to pass across, because of what we did call The Air Clog that it did make, as an invisible Wall of Safety. And it did give out also a more subtile vibration, that did affect the weak Brain-Elements of the monsters and the Lower Men-Brutes. And some did hold that there went from it a further vibration of a greater subtileness that gave a protecting against the Evil Forces. And some quality it had truly thiswise; for the Evil Powers had no ability to cause harm to any within. Yet were there some dangers against which it might not avail; but these had no cunning to bring harm to any within the Great Redoubt who had wisdom to meddle with no dreadfulness. And so were those last millions guarded until the Earth-Current should be used to its end. And this circle is that which I have called the Electric Circle; though with failure to explain. But there it was called only, The Circle.”

As is perhaps obvious, the “Electric Circle” in The Night Land works as a “Protective Force” much like the “Electric Pentacle” as described in the Carnaki stories. In the Carnaki cosmology, the various circles have a phenomenology related to what Hodgson was attempting to convey by the “Electric Circle”. However in the Carnaki cosmology, rather than one final stand at a “Great Circle” it is rather a sophisticated series of concatenated spheres.²²⁾This is related to the Master Key concept of Manly P. Hall which we will focus on in the “Master Key” page elsewhere at this site. The Earth’s umbra indicates when the defenses are at their least. Imagine what can happen if the sun is gone, such as what has occurred in The Night Land, when these “Watchers” will be able to make their way onto the earth in Hodgson’s formulation! ²³⁾It would have really been interesting if Hodgson could have had the time to communicate what he was suggesting here by this. For it seems to indicate that at some point in the past of The Night Land’s milieu, these outer circles were crossed by the monstrosities to ultimately materialize on earth as mountain-sized telepathic demons! What a concept!

The idea of a “protective barrier” keeping away evil forces, demons etc. was certainly not novel at the time of William Hope Hodgson’s works, but he is taking these historical and arcane magic symbols and elevating them to form aspects of a technological science. Thus, the classic magic circle protecting the conjurer is now a sophisticated technological tool of advanced science.

The “Barrier of Life”, or “cushion” phrase, invoked by Hodgson to indicate a protective shield from outré things, or at least dimensional barriers, is reminiscent of an esoteric concept known by the phrase “ring pass not” in Theosophical doctrine, and certainly is related to what Corelli implied by her “Electric Circle” in her narrator’s vision of a symbolical inner journey. ²⁴⁾In Freemasonic symbolism, the dot in the circle represents the individual initiate and the circle the “boundary line of his conduct, beyond which he should never suffer any of his passions, prejudices, or interests to betray him on any occasion.” In esoteric and magical symbolism, it is the auric field which must be maintained in good order to not allow thought forms and emotion generated elementaries to invade the psyche. Very Carnaki like indeed! It is an analogical diagram that has many purposes as also see “Self in Jungian psychology”.

Crossing “borderlands” and “thresholds” is a common motif of initiation in occult lore and the way across these forbidden thresholds was often guarded by a chimerical sphinx.  Strange mysteries are promised beyond the thresholds of fear and irrational imagination stirring the astral light like twisting venomous serpents around enchanting flowers of illusion. Our own lives are said to end with a confrontation of this hideous “sin” body that we have constructed during our mortal lives and which we are attempting to disintegrate with each passing mortal incarnation. ²⁵⁾The planet Mars represents the sin body of our compound soul. The “Sphinx” is the dreaded “Dweller” and Mars is represented as his planet for a variety of reasons. This finally reveals a potential key into some of the most arcane lore concerning the pre-historic secrets of our solar system and the mysteries associated with the region of Cydonia, both symbolical and literal.As we fail to cross the threshold into a fuller existence, we are then swallowed, Typhon like, by the slimy creature symbolizing matter. This is explained as the soul, which knowing far more out of body while in, “sacrifices” a part of itself, Christ like, for another try at forging a “sword of quick detachment” like Manjushri’s, and like a “World Hero”, to plunge it into the “Dweller” and pass on to finally “journey” onward to the edge of time, symbolically represented as the orbit of Saturn, to reach the “circumference” of Eternity…²⁶⁾For more on all this information please consult pages 45-55 of Unseen Forces by Manly P. Hall; Philosophical Research Society; revised edition of 1978.

It’s entirely possible that Hodgson was aware of Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni, and it’s 4th book entitled “Dweller of the Threshold”²⁷⁾See page 200 in Zanoni by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Rudolf Steiner Publications; 1971. (See also the “explanation” of the “Dweller” on page 409 of the same book) however Hodgson’s notion of the “Watchers” is not dependent upon this as we are mentioning them in light of psychological themes related to occult legends surrounding the notion of “Dwellers” and “Guardians”, etc. ²⁸⁾Although the idea of a manuscript being found in some manner was already an old literary device by Hodgson’s time, it may prove additionally interesting that the idea of a manuscript being found with editor and all, as a fictive device, is part of Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni. This occurs in Marie Corelli’s works as well.

Emily Adler in her “Doorways in the Night” essay says,

“Hodgson’s stories often hinge on movement across a portal, sometimes represented as a door. Lori Campbell points out that ‘[a] portal is conventionally understood in literary fantasy as a door or gateway between worlds’, but is also ‘the place where one world not only physically borders but also engages another’ (6). Hodgson’s use of doorways to engage one world with another is…like the other worlds of occultism and spiritualism, a conflicting sense of horror and consolation.”

Much like a bridge of consciousness from one state to another via the “Ring-Pass-Not” of Theosophical cosmology.

This integration and blending of worlds which “touch” their surfaces in Venn diagram fashion are the past and the future, the inner and the outer, subject and object, good and evil, Heaven and Earth ad infinitum…²⁹⁾Cf. with the “Topological Metaphor” concept of Dr. Joseph P. Farrell in his various works. Especially see his The Giza Death Star Destroyed pages 222-245 “Appendix to Chapter Nine” section.

The vesica piscis represents, in a geometrical fashion, this crossing of the circle of the “Borderland”. It is the landscape of the guardian, the kingdom of the mysterious hybrid sphinx of secrets…³⁰⁾Recall, Oedipus revealed that the sphinx was man. See Manly Hall’s All Seeing Eye Vol 5 page 372.

Now, what was it that powered the “Electric Circle”?

The “Electric Circle”, while obviously electric, is powered by the “Earth Current”.

The “Earth Current’s”, greatest inspiration obviously arises from the concept of “telluric current”, a force which Hodgson was learned in from his experience at sea. The notion of the telluric current has fostered everything from the “ley lines” meme to full-blown global grid electro-magnetic lore. However, the “Earth Current”, for Hodgson’s formulation in The Night Land, is simply the “World Soul” in a technically feasible and scientifically accessible form rather than exclusively metaphysical although it is that as well. It bears sympathy with Bulwer-Lytton’s “Vril”,³¹⁾Cf. the power of the “Earth Current” and “Vril” with how Manly P. Hall paraphrases Georg von Welling’s descriptions of the Schamayim in Hall’s Secret Teachings of all Ages chapter 33. but it apparently has a more intimate “energy” connection to humanity and the earth’s geophysics in general. The “Diskos” of The Night Land has similarity with the “staves” from Lytton’s The Coming Race.³²⁾See Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race for the “Vril” power concept, an idea that subsequently inspired countless stories, as described on page 92 in Bleilers’ Science Fiction: The Early Years. (Bleiler fails to mention The Coming Race in his “Source Books” section where it should have been included.) Lytton’s novel was as inspiring as Jules Verne was in the cultivation of new literary ideas.

Although Hodgson was almost certainly aware of the “Vril” idea, he was probably not versed in the “World Soul” as conceived in the minds of Isaac Newton or William Whiston—the probable source of the “Vril” of Lytton in the first place.³³⁾Additional insights into the sources of Bulwer-Lytton’s “Vril” concept can be found in Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia by Brian Stableford page 150 in the article “Electricity”. Stableford mentions “galvanism” as well. Newton and Whiston’s particular take on the “World Soul” inspired concepts like the galvanic ideas of Godfrey Higgins’ Neoplatonic “to on” or “the one” at the center of everything. ³⁴⁾See Anacalypsis by Godfrey Higgins, Vol. 1, pages 35, 815, 826-828 et. seq index. Also see “spirit of the world” mentioned in Sir Thomas Browne’s The Garden of Cyrus  where also the “brasen Table of Bembus” is mentioned. (More on the table and its relationship to “World Soul” and it’s topological symbolism in a separate article.) The “to on” of Neoplatonic cosmology is our ancient source as “center” for God rather than the earth as the center. ³⁵⁾The ideas and themes that Hodgson plays with in The House on the Borderland, where the center and ends of the universe are revealed in the “to on” fashion, are explored by Brian Stableford in the book Voices from the Borderland by Berruti, Joshi, and Gafford, Hippocampus Press (2014) on page 49. (Corelli’s character in A Romance of Two Worlds drank an elixir that allowed for an astral travel of a cosmic sort.)

There has been some suggestion that The Night Land’s textual style is essentially a type of “Book of Revelations” linguistic mimicking text. ³⁶⁾Hodgson’s father was a pastor. This may have inspired Hodgson to conjure up the imagery such as the “Watchers”. The very name “Watchers” in the Bible gets the imagination going. Although on all this possibility we have to see how Hodgson’s fathers’ religion and understanding might have projected that vision onto his son. In other words, what were Hodgson’s religious views and how did they color his vision? There is much to support this idea—as the word “Watchers” themselves, as we intimated in part 3, is from the Bible and additionally they take on a type of literal “Beast” like imagery invoked from the “Book of Revelation”. Even Hodgson’s anti-Eden dystopia with the two significant characters of “X” and Inanna are reminiscent of an Adam and Eve at the end of time…and if reincarnation continues for ever…? ³⁷⁾Cf. Part 3 Thus, in a sort of literary imitation of the Bible, the “Book of Revelation”, which is taken by many to represent a sort of prophecy of the future, becomes, in Hodgson’s vision, a hybrid apocalyptic image from the Bible itself literally projected into the last stand of humanity against the “Beasts”. However the “Beasts” of “The Book of Revelation” are now no longer symbolic or allegorical. They are real, and they are the “Watchers”. Additionally, the “Watchers” remind us of the strange watching things in the “amphitheater of mountains” near the end of The House on the Borderland and even the “watchers of the living” in H.G. Wells’ “The Plattner Story”. They are true “Dwellers at the Threshold”. ³⁸⁾Though already mentioned, House on the Borderland itself embodies the liminal concept. Hodgson titles are usually not that abstract but they communicate well. Another threshold motif is embodied in “Gateway of the Monster”, with the story’s secret rites/liminal and boundary subject matter.

Taking the expansive influences of H. G. Wells and Marie Corelli in Hodgson’s work, as a totality, we understand that the barriers of The Night Land have been breaking down around the natural and supernatural world. The vast “Watchers” are basically implied to have always been there but due to the scientific and immoral genetic experimenting with natural laws, these barriers have broken down. ³⁹⁾Compare to the moral of the story of Atlantis and its varied polysemy The “Watchers” of The Night Land are a hideous compound of the “watchers of the living” from “The Plattner Story” and the “vast cool and unsympathetic” aliens of The War of the Worlds. Wells had a fleeting vision of these creatures of our inner psyche while Hodgson actually takes us to a whole new level. Hodgson’s, as well as Lovecraft’s “aliens”, were not just invading planets like the Wellsian “Martian”, they were invading minds and dreams and all the universe in space and time and messing with our souls as well.  ⁴⁰⁾Cf. Wells’ “Watchers of the Living” in “The Plattner story”.

Wells’ “Martians” are elementals or thought forms of the human mind. A manifested angst vs. the universe. Hodgson’s “Watchers” are the full-blown possession and manifestation of those etheric anxieties. Both metaphorically share, to use a “Night Landish” idiom, the “noises in the aether” that accompany the conjuring up of  suppressions that, Kraken like, brood under Atlantean-like waters of oblivion…