Category Archives: Underworld

Archetypal Anamnesis, Cydonia, Dwellers on the Threshold, Face On Mars, Night Land, Polysemous Narrative, Richard Hoagland, Underworld

Dwellers on the Threshold:The “Night Land” and the “Anamnesic Imagination” Part 6: Opening the Gate

Image courtesy of Keith Laney of the Hidden Mission.

 

“I called to remembrance the brasen Lyons, in Salomons Temple, which were of such fierce countenances, as that they would bring men to forgetfulness…”—From Hypnoteromachia Poliphili

“the flood of the First Noah took place on Mars. The garden (of Eden) was located in the Northern Hemisphere not far from the polar regions…The waters rushed down into the conduits and drowned all the original Adam-II people there.” —From “The Sky People” (originally published in 1961)

“…as I stood there in the vast embrasure, I had also a knowledge, or memory, of this present life of ours, deep down within me; but touched with a halo of dreams”—From “The Night Land”

Although The Night Land takes place on Earth in an imaginative future aeons away, I had already surmised the eerie rapport with Cydonia and the landscapes of the planet Mars when I initially read The Night Land in 1990. 1) Some of this I briefly mentioned in the November 4th 2015 open-lines episode of Richard C. Hoagland’s Other side of Midnight radio program. In this installment we will focus briefly on those resemblances and where it appears I am not alone in sensing them. Continue reading Dwellers on the Threshold:The “Night Land” and the “Anamnesic Imagination” Part 6: Opening the Gate →

References

References
↑1 Some of this I briefly mentioned in the November 4th 2015 open-lines episode of Richard C. Hoagland’s Other side of Midnight radio program.
Archetypal Anamnesis, Archetype, Dwellers on the Threshold, Mythology, Night Land, Polysemous Narrative, Underworld

Dwellers on the Threshold:The “Night Land” and the “Anamnesic Imagination” Part 3–Invoking the Muse.

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“Watcher of the South East” Artwork by Steven E. Fabian. Published in “The Dream of X”

 

Spirits of earth and air,
Ye shall not thus elude me: by a power,
Deeper than all yet urged, a tyrant—spell,
Which had its birthplace in a star condemn’d,
The burning wreck of a demolish’d world,
A wandering hell in the eternal space;
By the strong curse which is upon my soul,
The thought which is within me and around me,
I do compel ye to my will. Appear!–From Lord Byron’s “Manfred”

 

The Night Land, mixing supernatural and science-fiction elements, blends technological and supernatural worlds in a weird topological landscape of meaningful and meaningless images where the mind, scared of its own shadow, fills in the rest. Then, proto-typically stirring the same cauldron from which the macabre cosmic images of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu would be steeped in, The Night Land set the stage for the 20th century’s “Dying Earth” theme. Continue reading Dwellers on the Threshold:The “Night Land” and the “Anamnesic Imagination” Part 3–Invoking the Muse. →

Archetypal Anamnesis, Archetype, Cydonia, Dwellers on the Threshold, Face On Mars, Initiation, Jacob Boehme, Lucifer, Night Land, Time, Underworld, Von Welling, War in Heaven

Dwellers on the Threshold: The “Night Land” and the “Anamnesic Imagination” Part 2–Janus and Time.

 

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Alciati Emblematum, Emblema XVIII

“Two-faced Janus, you who know the things that have already passed and the things to come, and who can see the grimaces behind you just as well as those before, why do they fashion you with so many eyes and why so many faces? Is it because your image teaches men to have kept an eye open all around them?”–Alciati Emblematum, Emblema XVIII

“But the Great Spy-Glass…had eyes of it upon every side of The Mighty Pyramid, and did be truly an Huge Machine”–From The Night Land

“Time-released aspirin…”–Richard C. Hoagland

 

Fear of the deep future (or the deep past) suggests a morally ambiguous universe that goes on without us. All activity within it continues without a care for human dreams or aspirations to heaven or a damning to hell. Grinding all into entropic detritus time with it’s continual unending and unforgiving forward motion invokes a sense of despair. It’s one thing that we die but, if meaning itself dies, this conjures up more complex ontological problems drowned by a simple one: that there is no meaning, the unknown rules supreme and that we exist in the deep past of some unholy future. Continue reading Dwellers on the Threshold: The “Night Land” and the “Anamnesic Imagination” Part 2–Janus and Time. →

Archetypal Anamnesis, Cydonia, Dimensions, Dwellers on the Threshold, Night Land, Underworld

DWELLERS ON THE THRESHOLD: THE “NIGHT LAND” AND THE “ANAMNESIC IMAGINATION” Part 1

nightlesserredoubt
“The Lesser Redoubt”. Artwork by Steven E. Fabian. Published in “The Dream of X”

 

138 years ago today, a person was born who would make a significant, if not seminal, contribution to the so-called “weird” tale. That person was William Hope Hodgson. In this series of articles we will examine some of the inspirations and influences in his works, specifically, the one work which is considered his flawed but darkly brilliant “masterpiece”, “The Night Land” which I was fortunate to have first read in 1990 and realized, even then, the sub-conscious connections with the planet Mars and the mysterious landscapes of Cydonia. Continue reading DWELLERS ON THE THRESHOLD: THE “NIGHT LAND” AND THE “ANAMNESIC IMAGINATION” Part 1 →

Archetypal Anamnesis, Atlantis Symbolism, Bock Family Saga, Cydonia, Dante, Exploded Planet, Jacob Boehme, Lucifer, Polysemous Narrative, Ragnarok, Rosie Crucians, Templars, Time, Underworld, Von Welling, War in Heaven

Ragnarök, Lucifer and the War in Heaven Part 2: Dante’s Lucifer and the Mesopotamian Nergal

CORNELIS GALLE'S ENGRAVING OF DANTES LUCIFER
CORNELIS GALLE’S LUCIFER FROM SAN FRANCISCO FINE ARTS MUSEUM

“Now mark how vast must be the whole of him

To be in scale with parts of such proportions!

If he was once as fair as now he ‘s foul

Yet lifted up his brows against his Maker,

Well should all tribulation come from him:

And what a monster he appeared to me

When I perceived three faces on his head!

The one in front was of a crimson hue…”

From Dante’s Inferno, L.G. White Translation

What in the medieval Hell is going on here!? Is this simply a political satire or an Anti-Trinity of the Godhead as is generally assumed by scholars? Is Dante rather describing a private nightmare he had of the “evil one”? Is he describing something he is under duress or mandate to describe akin to the three faced Baphomet of the Templars? Continue reading Ragnarök, Lucifer and the War in Heaven Part 2: Dante’s Lucifer and the Mesopotamian Nergal →