Mark Chemtrail Episode VII:Shadow of Vengeance

Pulpy Sweet Covers

More awesome covers from the 1930s pulptastic "Astounding Stories!" Critter designs are pretty spectacular and awfully original...to bad the quality of the contents rarely rises to the occasion (man, what a jerk!).

Mark Chemtrail, Episode VI: A New Hope

The International Space Station Library Catalog

Multiple media are available for borrowing from the Library of the International Space Station.  Lots of Sci-fi, though the music selection is fairly anemic.  I like that they've got a set of some of Analog Magazine's sci-fi stories, and how about the Wodehouse Omnibus!?  Nifty.  Were I an author of one of those works, I think I'd briefly feel immense pleasure to think of my work in orbit around the Earth...then I'd see Dan Brown and Piers Anthony on the list, and quickly change my mind.

Christ, can you imagine when, having destroyed out civilization in an atomic holocaust, all that remains of our material culture will be some goddamn Xanth paperbacks?  Grim, really.

Pulpy Goodness

Man, can you imagine the poor bastards having to slap together these paintings for the covers of Astounding Stories...I mean they send you a sentence, and you gotta paint up a weird scene.

A Smugly Happy Robot

This robot looks like he'd be a real jerk, you know?

From "Astounding Stories", January 1931.

A Rollicking Party

Looks like fun, doesn't it?

From "Astounding Stories", December 1930.

Astounding Stories Covers

Some awesome covers from the great sci-fi pulp "Astounding Stories"!

First up, from January 1930, a man fights a beetle while some lady looks on in horror.  Is he tiny, or are the beetles huge?  WE MAY NEVER KNOW (unless you read the story).

From February 1930, a melty puddle monster menaces a prop plane and its pilot. Goopy!

And, from October 1930, a dude throttles a mostly invisible fellow, who apparently doesn't understand how guns work. STORIES OF SUPER-SCIENCE, indeed! 

Volumes from the Crimson Hexagon: Urban Ecosystem Disruption: Theory and Practice

Urban Ecosystem Disruption: Theory and Practice

Author: Zeno Citium (pseudonym) 1962

Page Count: 424 pages + 45 page unusable index with incorrect page numbers and nonexistent topics

Publication History:

-1962: Originally hand-published and distributed by counter-culture groups based largely in California, Chicago, and Toronto; first recorded occurrence was at the conclusion of a “Guerrilla theater” performance outside the La Brea Tar Pits by a group called “The Wonderworkers”.

-1964: (run of 250) the “Orange Edition”, published by Calabaza Press, a now-defunct “alternative press” in San Francisco.  This edition included a foreword by someone claiming to be Jean-Paul Sarte; this “pseudo-Sarte” was actually proven to have been Arnold Lee Westerfield, a philosophy graduate student at UCLA.

-1967: The entire book (sans index) is published as 10 articles in the February-November issues of “Ch!nga” (v.2, issues 2-11), a radical leftist magazine published by Aleph Press (defunct).

-1971: 100 unbound copies of the “Orange Edition” are discovered in a storage unit in Bakersfield, CA.  These are bound and sold mail-order through magazine ads by an individual identified as “G. O. D. Harp”, though without “Sarte’s” intro.

-1976: Barzai Press (Toronto, Canada) publishes the “Black Edition” in a run of 1000, with the “unusable index” bound upside down.  Only ~500 volumes were ever distributed, as the RCMP raided their offices and confiscated all remaining copies.

-1977: Direct Action Press (Chicago, USA) puts out a 250-page abridged version apparently taken from the Ch!nga articles, excising most of the “theoretical” chapters in favor of the more “practical” methods sections.  An initial run of 200 volumes sells out quickly at their Chicago area bookstore, and a second run of 600 volumes was ordered, though never delivered.

-1981 to 1986: Xeroxed, hand-stapled copies of the original 1962 “Wonderworkers” edition are advertised in the backs of numerous left-wing and survivalist magazines and pamphlets, sourced from a P.O. Box in Bozeman, Montana.

-1989: a text file edition of a work titled “Urban Disruption” appears on-line on several different bulletin boards; these editions quickly become intermingled with other author’s works and writings, resulting in multiple iterations of less-than-faithful copies of the original.

-1994: The “Handbook on Urban Disruption” is offered from Anachronism Press (Los Angeles, USA), a reprinting of Direct Action’s abridged edition plus a collection of largely unintelligible essays on “occulto-anarchism” written by a “St.-G.”.

-2002: digital copies in a variety of formats and of various official and un-offical editions of “Urban Ecosystem Distruption: Theory and Practice” are made available online.     

HISTORY OF “URBAN ECOSYSTEM DISRUPTION: THEORY AND PRACTICE”

“Direct Action” methods are those that attempt to proactively force social change, often through embracing Mao’s famous quote about power growing from the barrel of a gun.  The history of the countercultural movement in America can be viewed as a constant give-and-take between nonviolent, peaceful demonstrators and those for whom violence becomes a means to an end.  The history of many individuals within the countercultural movement can also be seen as a similar ebb-and-flow between these two poles, with some exhibiting greater or lesser flexibility for the use of direct action over the course of their careers.

The strategies, tactics, and methods employed by those bringing direct action into their social movements are a relatively little studied aspect of the history of the 1950s-80s.  To the FBI and CIA, it was clear that most of these techniques were ultimately sourced at the Kremlin as soviet agitprop and covert disruption operations, utilizing American-born counter-cultural warriors as tools for the spread of communism.  In some cases this may have been the case; afterall, some of the countercultural groups were explicitly communist, Marxist, or Maoist in political philosophy, and had contacts or members with international ties.  However, it is similarly demonstrable that some direct action techniques were gleaned from returning Korean and Vietnam War veterans who, having grown disillusioned with American Imperialism and military adventurism, simply transferred their government training to new spheres of operation.  Finally, it is likely that a great number of these techniques were developed experientially, hard won wisdom and skill gleaned from years of battling with the authorities on the streets. 

Occasionally, however, it appears that some proponents of direct action took it upon themselves to organize and disseminate advice and theory.  Indeed, for some groups, their entire purpose was seen as distributing manuals on social subversion; that is to say, teaching direct action techniques became their countercultural act.  Often these were in the form of hand-typed pamphlets, sometimes detailing the philosophical aspects of rebellion, but more often providing brutally efficient treatises on one of more “practical” fields of social disruption, including bomb-building, police evasion techniques, and breaking-and-entering guides.

One text, however, produced only in intermittent, limited runs, had a disproportionate effect on direct action groups.  This text, “Urban Ecosystem Disruption: Theory and Practice”, continues to be a source of information for anarchists, radical groups on the left and right, and rank criminals today.  A simple internet search provides numerous digitized versions available for free download.

In part, this longevity may be ascribed to the text’s rigorously tested practicality; unlike many so-called “cookbooks”, the techniques, practices, devices, and plans provided in “Urban Ecosystems” largely work as advertised.   However, an additional difference between it and its paler imitators may also explain its popularity, specifically the fact that “Urban Ecosystems” combines its practical chapters with intensely researched and well-written “theoretical” sections.  Thus, in a copy of the book, one may learn the art of lock-picking in one chapter, and then read a discussion on the philosophy and history of infrastructural integration in fast-growing cities.  Chapters on bomb-making are interspersed with chapters on the similarities between tropical forest ecosystems and urban ecosystems, complete with “trophic” energy flow charts and diagrams.  To be sure, even the theoretical chapters were written in the service of practical goals of social change and urban chaos.  For instance, the “trophic flow” of Urban Ecosystems helpfully points out bottlenecks in vital services that could be exploited, should one be so inclined.  Even so, these theoretical and academically rigorous sections provide a philosophical and moral, albeit a twisted one, underpinning to practical direct action largely absent in the other media on the same topic.  Similarly, while “anarchic-philosophy” tracts were thick on the ground in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, few of them also provided useful, practical guides alongside the bloviating.  For these reasons, “Urban Ecosystem Disruption: Theory and Practice” has remained the gold standard in direct action manuals.

Authorship of the text is in some doubt; obviously “Zeno Citium”, a reference to a famous ancient Greek Philosopher often touted as one of the first true anarchists, is a nom de plume.  Textural analysis of the chapters has revealed that there must have been at least four authors, although there is no clear pattern to who wrote what.  In other words, the same “author” is as likely to write about bombs and hotwiring cars as they are to deal with the underpinnings of kinematic wave theory for traffic planning. 

Additionally, the anarchic nature of counter-cultural book publishing as well as the subsequent explosion of digitally published versions of the book has resulted in some rather dramatic “mutations” in the text.  Some sections have been removed or edited or annotated by subsequent authors, sometimes to point of producing an unrecognizable “edition” of the book.  For the purposes of this brief history, however, we will adhere to the history of officially published versions of Zeno Citium’s magnum opus, with one important exception.

The first instance of the text being publically distributed was as a hand-bound book at a performance art event in southern California.  A “guerilla theater” group staged an un-licensed, un-permitted, and apparently sexually explicit performance of “Oedipus Rex” with live actors and puppets outside the La Brea Tar Pits.  Preceding the show, members of the troupe handed out approximately fifty copies of the book.  After the police arrived, a further fifty copies were tossed to the crowd and various bystanders along the troupe’s path of flight.  It is to these first hundred copies that all subsequent editions of the book trace their origins.  

Copies of this book, handbound with either thread or glue and cardboard, soon began to show up in other major centers of the counterculture, including Chicago, Toronto, and New York, and were similarly subject to “guerilla” distribution techniques (themselves described in the Book in a chapter titled “Spreading the Bad News”).  Importantly, these early editions included no forward or introduction, but did include the famously unusable Index, with incorrect page numbers and non-existent and bizarre topics making up the bulk (for example, “Lemuria” as a topic is cited on dozens of pages, but never once is actually mentioned in the text; similar treatments can be seen for such disparate topics as “Ethnobotony of Leng”, “Political Necrophilia”, and “Yarn”, to name a few).

In 1964 Calabaza press, a small-run “alt press” based in San Francisco, offered the famous “Orange Edition” with a Forward by “Jean-Paul Sarte”.  This dubious claim was immediately doubted by anyone actually familiar with Sarte’s writings, although it did gain the text some notice in the mainstream press as well as stern denunciations by commenters on the right, who used it as further evidence of the decadent and ultimately destructive politics of liberal higher education.  Eventually, authorship of the Forward would be determined to belong to a philosophy graduate student who, a few years after publication of the “Orange Edition”, would vanish in the Chihuahuan desert.

Calabaza Press would shut down in 1966, though one of its editors, Jane Athene Pisaro, founded Aleph press in Los Angeles, a radical leftist publishing house most famous for their magazine “Ch!nga”, which ran from 1966-1970.  Working off her own annotated “Orange Edition”, Pisaro would publish a series of 10 articles (under the penname Athene Loyolla) in the ’67 run of Ch!nga on “Urban ecosystem Disruption”. 

 These were largely verbatim sections of the original work, edited down and with some of the more dangerous instructions removed, and often bookended by her own introductions and conclusions expanding on her own ideas regarding direct action techniques.

In 1971, several boxes of unbound copies of the old “Orange Edition” were found in a storage unit in Bakersfield California.  Whose copies these were, and how they got there, remained a mystery, although Pisaro did have family in the oil town of Taft, not far from Bakersfield, and as such seems the most likely candidate.  Similarly, it seems possible that Pisaro herself was “G.O.D. Harp”, the individual who had the copies bound and offered for sale in a variety of publications, although that is only speculation as her movements after Aleph press folded in 1970 are unknown.   Pisaro died of a drug overdose in 1980.

Regardless, the “Harp Edition” was an important moment in the book’s history, as up to that point it had mostly only moved through left-leaning circles.  Advertisements for this edition, however, included journals and magazines on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as the more politically neutral publications of the then nascent green living/survivalist/primitivist movement. 

Based on typographical errors and word choice, it is believed that one of the “Harp Editions” served as the base for the 1976 “Black Edition”, a volume put out by Barzai Press in Canada.  It is believed that this is the largest ever print run for the work, as Barzai ordered 1000 volumes of the book (sans the “Sarte” introduction). 

It was the “Black Edition” that brought the book to the attention of the law enforcement community.  First, copies of it were found in police raids on suspected “subversive” groups in both the pacific northwest and American south.  Second, it played a part in the famous “White River” murders, where pages of this book were used to wrap body parts and organs sent to the police in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  The pages used for this grisly purpose were exclusively taken from the more theoretical sections, including chapters on psychogeography, ecosystem theory, and liminality in the urban landscape.  At least nine individuals were murdered in the still unsolved case, and the “weird” nature of the wrapping paper fueled speculation about the murderer’s politics.  As a result of the largely negative publicity, the RCMP raided the offices and warehouses of Barzai Press and removed 500 copies of “Urban Ecosystem Disruption”.  It is believed that these copies were destroyed.

Direct Action Press put out a heavily abridged version of the book in 1977, apparently taken from the 1967 Ch!nga articles.  This slim volume was more concerned with the practical lessons to be taken from the book, and excised most of the more theory-heavy sections of the articles.  The initial run of 200 volumes sold out quickly, as “Urban Ecosystem Disruption” had by that point become something of a collector’s item for the counter-culturally inclined.  An additional 600 copies were order, but never delivered, as Direct Action press was shut down as part of a large-scale COINTELPRO operation in 1978, with most of its editors serving jail time for a variety of drug trafficking and obscenity charges.

Intermittently, Xeroxed copies were made available for sale in the backs of many “fringe” magazines, most of them coming out of Bozeman, MT in the early to mid-80s.  Most were apparently based on the Barzai Press Black edition.  The advent of Bulletin Board Systems in the late 80s saw the book’s transformation into the digital realm, the first instance of which was as a text file on a government conspiracy BBS titled, simply, “Urban Disruption”.  Subsequent versions of the file, as well as other iterations, soon began to make the rounds, culminating in the internet boom of the 90s, where heavily edited and annotated “editions” begin to pour from a variety of websites.

The most recent physical iteration of the book was offered by Anachronism Press out of L.A. in 1994, although its relationship to the original versions is noticeable strained by a number of bizarre and heavily occultic essays that have been added.  Most of these have a decidedly millennial or apocalyptic character, and deal with the author’s (a “St-G.”) synoptic and highly idiosyncratic worldview that ties government conspiracy, magic and occultism, and alien abduction phenomena into one overarching master theory.

As mentioned above, the text has enjoyed a relatively long life, a trend that will undoubtedly continue as we transition into a data-age maturity.  Indeed, it is largely this book’s history that has given it its cultural capital on what is otherwise a medium noted for its ephemerality.  The internet has also facilitated its sharing, well beyond the heyday of do-it-yourself printing and binding in the 60s and 70s.  It has been subjected to much editorial control beyond its originators sight, although this seems appropriate given its status as primarily a messenger of anarchy, both literary and otherwise. 

Reproduced below is the table of contents from the original Orange Edition, Calabaza Press, 1964:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FORWARD by J-P. Sarte………………...……………………………………….vii

Psychogeography of the Urban Landscape: Reconnoitering the Enemy’s Territory…1

Picking Locks 101.............................................................................…32

Tricks for Scaling Fences.................................................................................41

Urban Ecosystem Theory: Form…....................................................................48

Picking Locks 201……………………...……………………………………….65

Urban Ecosystem Theory: Function………………………………...……………………70

Infrastructural Analysis……………………………………………………………..……95

Building a Redbox…....…………………………………………………………………..111

Hotwiring a Car……….….………………………………………………………………133

Spreading the Butter Thin: Disrupting Emergency Services……………...…………136

Manufacturing KNO3 for Fun and Profit.………………………………………………145

Distillation……………………………….………………………………………………..150

Fuses, Primers, Fun………………………………………………………………………160

Lingua Legis: Police Codes and Terminology…..………………………………………164

Napalm, Just Like Mom Used To Make Back On The Farm…..………………………172

Institutional Aggression and The Individual………....………....………………………..180

Fake IDs…..………………………………………………………………………………..195

Chemical Equivalencies…..………………………………………………………………203

A List of Slang and Cant……………………………………………………………………209

Molotov Variants…………………………………………………………………………..214

Tennis Ball Bomb…………………………………………………………………………..225

Liminal Acts in Liminal Spaces: A Primer of Urban Decay……………………………….229

Forbidden Communications….……………………………………………………………..260

Gaming the System: Post Offices, Phone Booths, and Public Address Systems…..278

Smoke Bombs……………………………………………………………………………296

Improvised Weapons………………………………………………………………………313

Evading Surveillance………………………………………………………………………..330

Flash Powder………………………………………………………………………………343

Black Powder……………………………………………………………………………..346

Weird Drugs……………………………………………………………………………….350

Co-opting a Demonstration………………………………………………………………..357

Co-opting a Movement……………………………………………………………………369

Spotting a Narc………………………………………………………………………………377

Raiding a Lab…………….....……………………………………………………………….383

Spreading the Bad News…………………………………………………………………..387

Some Basic Tradecraft……………..………………………………………………………394

Urban Ecosystem Collapse……………………………………………………………….400

INDEX……………………………………………………………………………………..424

Mark Chemtrail, Episode III: The Destruction of Jared Syn

A Diabolical Pact

Here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is a page written in backwards Latin, supposedly codifying the agreement between Catholic Priest Urbain Grandier and a whole bunch of Demons, including Lucifer, Satan, Astaroth, and a few others.  Apparently, in exchange for his soul, Grandier would become completely irresistible to women, would have the friendship of the rich and powerful, and would himself receive more than his fair share of worldly power and pleasure.  This document was used as evidence for Grandier's diabolical powers in his trial, eventually sending him to be burned at the stake.

Mark Chemtrail EPISODE II: The Legend of Curly's Gold

Always Judging...

Oooooowww!

Huh!?

Mark Chemtrail Episode I: The Awakening

Introductions

Ouch!

Une Geographie Infernale - Gedsbry Abbey, Northumberland, England

From its rough perch on The Giant’s Hill, the tumbledown ruin of Gedsbry Abbey frowns down over the River Coquet, a reminder of old days and ancient practices long forgotten. The Poor Brothers of St. Christopher settled in the rough hill country of Northumberland sometime in the late 1090’s or early 1100’s, though the specific c date of their arrival is uncertain. We do see their Monastery included in the accounting of Sheri ff Odard for the Great Roll of the Exchequer in 1131, allowing us to place them roughly in the early 12th Century.  The land, including the famously haunted hill upon which the Brothers built their monastery, was granted them by the King.  Perhaps the Norman conquerors hoped that the famously rebellious people of Northumber country would be calmed by the presence of God-fearing monks? Unasked at the time, however, was the question of which “God”, exactly, the Poor Brothers feared?

The Brothers venerated Saint Christopher who, among other things, was the patron saint of epilepsy, a malady long associated with prophecy and occult vision. Apparently they got something out of the deal, since the Brothers soon gained a reputation for divining the future with unusual accuracy. One Brother Oswulf, noted for his prognosticatory abilities, was said to have prophesized the calamitous storm of 1192 that collapsed the roof of a local lord’s hall, killing everyone within. The unfortunate Lord’s land was quickly
bought up by the Abbey. Similarly, an Abbot Martin accurately foretold of the catastrophic fl ooding of the Tyne in the spring of 1215. This warning was ignored by the people of adjacent villages, who subsequently suffered great loss of life and property while the Brothers, having moved their fl ocks to higher ground, enjoyed something of a monopoly on wool and mutton for many years after. Soon, commoners and potentates alike would travel to the Abbey, seeking an audience with its mystical Monks that saw the future in strange trances. Thus, while bereft of the relics normally associated with a wealthy abbey, the Brothers of Gedsbry did a brisk enough trade in fortune-telling to buy up numerous properties up and down the valley.

Rumors of the source of these visions all seemed to point to a distinctly non-Chrisitian origin, however. The Giant’s Hill, upon which the abbey is built, has had a long history of haunting and mysterious events. These began with the first Roman chronicles from the area, who noticed that the site was of particular abhorrence to the native Celts known as the Votadini. One Severus Magnus, a Legionnaire of equestrian rank, wrote of the mysterious rites of the Picts who, slipping across the border on moonless nights, would hold unholy sacrifices atop a place he termed the “domum gigantes”. Here, he wrote, their wild chants would be answered by terrible voices coming up from the ground that, in exchange for blood, instructed pictish shamans in all the secrets of the earth.

The retreat of Rome and the advent of the Dark Ages did little to lessen the weirdness of the locale. The Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria, dominant in the 7th and 8th Centuries, left many chilling tales that found their way into the libraries of many monasteries. The most famous tells of the hellish vision of a young man named Oswiu. Lost and wandering in the dark, he came upon a hill lit with unholy flame and circled round by a horned serpent that whispered blasphemies to the stars. Tending the fire atop the hill was a giant man blue with woad and girt with wolfskin, while naked celebrants danced and writhed in the relight. Among the more human celebrants, Oswiu is said to have recognized neighbors and prominent land-owners. He fled the scene, and reported all to the King. In the subsequent weeks, many people were rounded up by King Ceolwulf and drowned in the North Sea for the “grievous sins” of sorcery, necromancy, false prophecy, and paganism. Shortly thereafter Ceolwulf himself, perhaps hounded by the horrors he had heard and witnessed at the trials, abdicated the throne and retired to a monastery for the rest of his days.

By the time the Poor Brothers of Saint Christopher came on the scene then, we see that the Giant’s Hill had already become a grisly haunt of ghosts and goblins. Why then did these strange Monks from the continent settle there? Some scholars believe that their choice was not in spite of these rumors, but rather because of them.  Although the record is muddled, it appears that the Brothers were not entirely naïve about occult topics, for in all the pertinent records we fi nd the Poor Brothers wrapped in a cloak of mysticism and
rumored diabolism. For starters, whence came the Poor Brothers?  By their own accounts, they had fled persecution “in the east”, and that their order was originally from the first missions sent to Egypt, perhaps making them Coptic. What secrets had they learned in that ancient land?

This Egyptian connection is important, and it may be that the Brothers had already tipped their hand. As noted above, the Brothers of Gedsbry Abbey had a special enthusiasm for Saint Christopher. In some traditions, St. Christopher was said to have been one of the cynocephali, strange creatures mentioned by Herotodus and Ctesias in the Ancient World, and by Paul the Deacon in his “Historia gentis Langobardorum” in the Middle Ages.  Specifically, St. Christopher was believed by some to have had the head of a dog. A dog-headed figure associated with holy death and mystic visions? A similarly figure is found among the Egyptians in the form of the most occult Anubis, the ancient dog-headed God of the Dead.

It is recorded that, when the Poor Brothers of St. Christopher traveled up the River Coquet to their new home, they carried with them an icon or statue of their Saint in the form of a robed, dog-headed man. Beyond this similar iconography, there is an additional piece of evidence linking the Poor Brothers of St. Christopher to Egyptian mysticism and the Cult of Anubis: mummies.

Anubis, in his role as the God of Death, was often portrayed by the Egyptians as an embalmer. It was Anubis who gave the Egyptians the art of preserving and protecting the bodies of the dead, a central component Egyptian religion. Northumberland is, of course, far to damp a place for traditional mummi fication. However, though it lacks the dry wind and sand of the African deserts, the north of England is rich in peat bogs, which are just as capable of working the magic of mummification on the remains of mortal men and women. Buried deep in the acidic muck of the bogs, the bodies of the dead are cured and the soft tissues preserved with an excellence that would arouse the envy of a Pharaoh. Skin, hair, cloth, all well preserved, though of course the bones of the dead quickly dissolve away, leaving a distorted and disturbingly sack-like bog mummy behind.

These mummies are common in Northumberland, associated with both the Celtic and Norse settlements of Late Antiquity and the early Dark Ages. Internment in the bogs was of a clearly ceremonial nature, the individuals having been fed a final meal of bread baked with ash before being ritualistically killed via strangulation or, less commonly, bludgeoning. The mummies are also often found in association with offerings of iron weapons or tools, an extravagant waste of rare metal that speaks to the importance of these bog burials. Christianization of the North resulted in a marked change in burial practices, of course; after the sixth or seventh century C.E., one does not find bog mummies.

Except…there is a period where bog mummies become common again, temporally and spatially coinciding precisely with activity at Gedsby Abbey. Beginning in the mid 1100s, and continuing on until approximately the late 1300s, bodies were being inhumed in the swamps five miles north of The Giant’s Hill. These remains, their bellies stuff ed with ash-laden bread, limbs bound, and throats slashed, are often found with small iron statues of a dog-headed man. It is a remarkably consistent return to form after many hundreds of years without, apparently, any intervening continuity.

In 1244 C.E., a combined secular and ecclesiastical enclave was convened to address the concerns expressed by locals regarding the unnaturalness of the Brothers of St. Christopher. Fortune telling was bad enough, but it seems that people were disappearing with alarming regularity, never to be heard from again. Additionally, witnesses remarked on the strange, midnight processions to the northern swamps the Brother’s seemed so fond of taking, particularly around Walpurgisnacht and Samhain. Finally, the cemetery around the church, sacrosanct land that was the special charter of the Brothers, was being disgracefully neglected. The conclave went even further, citing the Brothers for heresy and “un-christian” burial practices. The Abbot, along with key Brothers, were “removed” (and almost certainly burned as wizards), while a new hierarchy of Dominican Brothers were brought in to “correct” the unorthodox members of the community.

It would appear, however, that these overseers met with little success, and indeed may even have become converts to the particular practices of the Brothers, as the rumors, disappearances, and bog mummifications continued until 1388. Indeed, stories from the period immediately after the Censuring Conclave become markedly grisly, as the Brothers apparently reasserted their control over the area. The vanishings continued, and local shepherds learned to travel always in well-armed gangs, choosing to combine their fl ocks rather than make themselves vulnerable among the lonely hills. Strange, inhuman figures would appear and disappear along the banks of the river, while blood curdling screams and moans seemed to echo up from the Earth. This lead to the belief, common even today, that the area around The Giant’s Hill is riddled with caves and passages through which evil things stalk.

The horrors eventually came to a head in the spring of 1388, with a particularly gruesome discovery. A peat cutter, draining some of the bogs in search of fuel, uncovered a whole cache of mummies, carefully arranged in a circle around a central body that had been tied to a heavy iron chair. This central mummy was a particularly horrific jumble of remains, and only partly human. According to the tale, the head of this poor victim had been removed, replaced by the skull of large hound or wolf, strapped in place on the stump of the corpse’s neck and surmounted with an iron crown. On this unusual piece of headwear was stamped the following phrase, recorded in the annals of the village priest, Father Osric: “Fraternitatem presertim leges Mors Canisque”, Latin for “Brotherhood of the Sainted Dog of Death. Furthermore, around the neck of this composite mummy was found an amulet bearing the insignia of St. Christopher.

Imagine the furor such a discovery must have wrought! All the tales of hellish idolatry, black magic, and demoniacal evil confirmed in an instant! What happened next is difficult to piece together, for those involved seemed to have made an effort to efface their subsequent actions from the historical record. However, this much is known. It seems that, having summoned Father Osric and some of the more important local land-owners, it was decided that the Poor Brothers must be apprehended or driven from the area. To this end, they summoned the local Undersheri ff and his men and, under cover of darkness, they came upon the Abbey unawares in the night.

It is not clear whether they had planned to confront the Brothers with this evidence, or if they had simply decided to attack. Regardless it seems that, despite being surprised by the sudden assault, the Brothers attempted some violence in their defense. A melee soon developed in which many on both sides were killed, some in a particularly horrible and “indescribable” way, at least according to a letter sent by the Undersheri ff after the fact. Some Brothers seemed to have fled into the swamps, while the Abbot and many of the Brothers seemed to have died in a fire that consumed the main church, screaming defiance and blasphemies to the end. I write “seemed to have died” since, apparently, no remains were ever found, not even a charred bit of bone. Also, one must remember the tales of the tunnels rumored to have turned the bedrock into Swiss cheese. Did these “Brothers of the Sainted Dog of Death” escape into the subterranean world?

The ruins remain to this day, a Historical Heritage Site registered with the U.K., though visited only rarely by tourists of the Occult. Strange lights are sometimes seen, illuminating windows briefly as they flit through the Abbey. People have told tales of a huge black dog that stalks through the ruins silently on moonless nights, and at least one man, a poet of unusual sensitivity, went mad after spending the night there in the early 1930s. None have found the tunnels and chambers rumored to lie beneath the hulk of the Abbey, though in truth few have tried. I myself visited it in the mid 1980s, and can attest that there is something unearthly about the place, a brooding watchfulness that seems to resent the clumsy footfall of intruders from the wider world. Still, it is a lovely bit of ruins in a landscape noted for its rugged beauty, and should not be missed by my fellow travelers. Go in the daytime, however, and make sure you leave yourself plenty of time to get back to the village before twilight.
 

From Samizdat, V.1 n.1

Volumes from the Crimson Hexagon: A History of The Necronomicon

Necronomicon

PUBLICATION HISTORY

- Written by Abdul Alhazred in ~730 C.E.
- Yazzid III outlaws the Al Azif in 745 C.E.
- Theodorus Philetas translates Al Azif into Greek in 950 C.E., giving it the name “Necronomicon”, meaning    “A Study of the Dead”
- Patriarch Michael orders all copies of the Necronomicon burnt.  Arabic copy believed lost.
- Olaus Wormius produces Latin translation in 1228.
- Pope Gregory IX suppresses both Latin and Greek translations.
- Greek Edition Published in Germany (1440s), quickly outlawed.
- John Dee produces an English Translation in 1575, though it is never published.
- Th e Sussex Manuscript, a partial and very incomplete English translation of the Necronomicon, is published    in very limited numbers in 1597.
- Latin reprint issued in Spain in 1661

A HISTORY OF THE NECRONOMICON

The danger of the written word lies in its longevity; long after the author is dust their thoughts continue to exist, a bridge between different times and different ways of thinking. This danger has long been recognized by those in power, who have enough trouble controlling the lives and thoughts of the living let alone those of the dead, who are beyond the reach of even the direst of threats.  Often the only recourse available to those in power is to transfer their threats and censure onto the works themselves, banning and burning as quickly and as completely as possible in hopes of stemming the tide. Of course there is the danger that, by reacting too violently against a book, you enhance its mystique and demonstrate its potential to those watching.

The Necronomicon is, in many ways, the archetype of such banned and condemned volumes. Written in Damascus in 730 C.E., this volume soon gained a truly fearsome reputation. This is likely a result of its having been penned by a truly Faustian character, Abd al-Azrad (or, more romantically westernized as Abdul Alhazred The Mad Arab), a wizard, alchemist, occultist, mystic, and proto-scientist all rolled into one.

Alhazred lived a remarkable life. He studied in the ruins of Old Babylon, where he is said to have had a nameless thing in a well as a master. He traveled to Memphis, where he learned much forbidden lore from Priests of the Old Gods. He traveled to the Empty Quarter in modern day Saudi Arabia, where he claimed to have discovered Irem the Lost, City of Pillars. More remarkable still was the manner of his death; killed in broad daylight before a horrified crowd, ripped to shreds by an invisible monster.

Before his untimely dismemberment, Alhazred had penned his magnus opus, Al-Azif, a book of hellish magic and terrible prehistory. This volume was quickly outlawed by the Caliph of Damascus Yazid III, although apparently many copies were smuggled both West and East during the chaos of the Abbasid Revlution in the late 700s.

The work reemerged in Constantinople in 950 C.E., translated into Byzantine Greek by the scholar Theodorus Philetas. It is from this translation that the name we all know and love today came: The Necronomicon, roughly translated as “A Study of The Dead”.  The work was quickly damned by the Patriarch Michael around 1050.

The book remained relatively obscure until Olaus Wormius produced his famous Latin translation in 1228 C.E., a volume quickly condemned and ordered destroyed by Pope Gregory IX. As is often the case, this order dramatically increased interest in the work, and numerous copies were produced and disseminated throughout Europe. A new Greek edition, back translated from Wormius’ Latin version, was produced in Nuremburg in 1440, while the famous John Dee produced an expurgated English translation in 1575. Perhaps most famously, the scholars of Toledo, Spain produced a Latin translation in 1661, apparently from an original Philetas Greek volume.

Today, rare copies of the work can be found all over the world. Copies of the 1661 Spanish volume can be found at the Biblioteque National in Paris, in the Miskatonic University Library in Arkham, Mass, at the Widener Library at Harvard, and at the library of the University of Buenos Aires. Two copies of the German
Greek editions are extant, one at the British Museum in London, and a second at the Wallace Library at Shaver University, California. All are heavily restricted.
                                                                                                                                                           (From Samizdat, v.1, n.1)