N'wraenomicon

Lovecraft dug deep into history for the inspirations for his stories. Or entities that go back deep in history reached far to inspire him. It's hard to say which. We know from his personal letters that he and his circle of writing associates laughed about how seriously some readers thought he believed the things he was writing. I'll trust his word that it was all just fun storytelling...on the surface. I think it was Stephen King who once said, "Fiction is the truth inside the lie." He might have been quoting someone else, but I'm pretty sure I read it from him, and it has stayed with me for years. Writing fiction often gives an author space to work out things they haven't recognized in themself. There are many reasons to believe Lovecraft didn't consciously believe the Old Ones actually exist, but also many reasons to believe pieces of what he created were manifestations of bigger things than just his own imagination. And maybe some of it was misguided gn

I've mentioned before that the 23rd of each month is a date that carries meaning in my practices. I consult the Temple of Abzu cards much more often than I talk about here, and I make sure I do so as part of these practices. A strange group of things came together for the 23rd of this month. The date came just a few nights after the peak of this year's Orionids meteor shower, a night before the dark moon, and during the time of year that is often described as being one of the times "the Veil is thinnest". I don't think of that Veil as being like a curtain, but more like a liminal space that cannot clearly be defined and is a boundary between worlds. A very real boundary...but not one that cannot be crossed, or that crossing it would be as simple as taking a step to go from one side to the other. It's much more than that. The Ancient Abyss An Ancestral Stargate To Stand Alone Before Eternity The Darkness Seems Light Blood Flows From The Dark Eye Dre

I'm reading Illuminations , the new short story collection from Alan Moore. A lot of my answer to the questiin, "Are the Old Ones real?" can be found in one of the stories in that book. The book just came out this month, so I don't want to give away too much and spoil a whole story for people. I'll be careful. In one of the stories, there's a small detail of a conversation between two characters about a metal ball that is a puzzle. One of the characters explains there is a whole story involved about some kind of lizard that can, essentially, go into extremely long term hibernation. Centuries of hibernation. And the puzzle of the ball is trying to figure out whether or not it's true that one of those lizards is sleeping inside the ball. The story is set in a world that isn't clearly identified, but there's enough description of things and oddities in interaction between characters that the reader can tell it's not our world. So do these lizards

I enjoyed editing the colors and lighting to turn a very plain photo of my new ring into a photo more suited to the feeling I aim for with pictures on this blog. Yes, in case you're wondering, that is a replica of the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings . It took some work to get everything situated for the photo so that the Elvish inscription would show. It isn't obvious and disappears, leaving a plain gold band, if everything isn't just right. At least I don't have to hold it to a flame. So why am I writing about a Tolkien ring on a Lovecraft blog? Well, it isn't really a Lovecraft blog. It's a Yog-Sothothery blog. We can discuss all day whether or not it's fair to identify the Mythos with the name of the man who laid the groundwork when most of the creation has been done by other authors. We can avoid that by identifying it with the most famous Old One in the mythos, but we also know Lovecraft himself wanted it identified with Yog-Sothoth. In

After making the notes on my thoughts of Nyarlathotep as a keyhole, I decided to see what the ToA cards might show me about this. I also wanted to see what messages I might get from the cards about something I keep experiencing in the dreamworld. To explain what I noticed in these two readings and how it may shift some things for me, I should explain the dreams first. Over the past week - ever since the ritual I participated in a week ago - I have had several experiences while asleep of spending time with someone I can't see. I can't see them because I don't look at them. I don't need to. It's like sitting next to a friend and looking in another direction while you talk. There is no doubt in my dreams that I know them. We are close, with a mental and emotional intimacy that is almost sensual or erotic just because of how very intimate it is. There isn't physical intimacy in the dreams, and no sexual tension. Nothing that feels like the intimacy is building until

I'm not sure where I'm going with this line of thinking yet. I mostly just need to scribble some notes down so I don't lose this if it does end up leading somewhere. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is also the key to the gate. For a while, when I first started reading Mythos stories, I had a hard tike distinguishing between Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth in my mind. Names, descriptions, roles they play in things...it was all too similar. Which one is asleep and has no clue that any of this is really happening, but also the only reason it's happening is because he's asleep and dreaming it? (That's Azathoth.) And which one is a lot like the sleeping one, but does know it's happening, knows why it's happening, kind of seems to be the Overseer of everything, and got Old Man Whately's daughter pregnant - possibly with more of Old Man Whately's help than I want to know? (That's Yog-Sothoth). Eventually, I started thing of them as being sort of like

There was weird work to be done tonight. I don't talk too openly about these things. I talk more openly, and in other places, about my worship practices. There are parts that are too private, too intimate, so I don't open up about all the details. I will talk pretty openly about worship, though, and one reason is that talking about it is part of those practices. Magical practices, though? I learned a long time ago that there are good reasons for keeping quiet that aren't about asking, "But what would people think?!" I'm not concerned about the opinions. I'd be a lot quieter about a lot more things if that was the case. Unless certain things were constructed for being made public, though, there is vulnerability in revealing too much. As a side note, I will say here that the pictures I take are not of the actual practices. Social media culture, algorithms, marketability...it all encourages us to share what we're doing. Sometimes it's bett