Tag Archives: algernon blackwood

Dark Company

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Dark Company: The Ten Greatest Ghost Stories [Amazon, Abebooks, Author, Local Library] ed and introduction by Lincoln Child, with stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, Henry James, M R James, W W Jacobs, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Oliver Onions, William Hope Hodgson, and H P Lovecraft.

Child Dark Company

I picked up this collection from the local public library in order to read Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night.” Since I had already read half of the contents under other covers, I decided to go ahead and finish the remaining ones. Dark Company is a sort of “best of the best” anthology. Although the subtitle boasts “Greatest Ghost Stories,” the selection really ranges across supernatural horror, regardless of ghosts. 

Editor Lincoln Child identifies probably the ten most lauded American and English authors of the genre from the 19th through the early 20th century, and then offers a “best” story from each. Many of these are obvious: Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher,” Machen’s “Great God Pan,” and Blackwood’s “The Willows,” for example. The stories are arranged in some sort of chronological sequence. In each case, Child gives the birth and death dates of the author, but he omits the (to me) more relevant and interesting date of the first publication of the story in question. A one-paragraph introduction to each story characterizes the author and gestures at situating the story in his oeuvre. 

The Hodgson is a remarkably brief and effective piece, notable for the naturalism of its horror, along with a certain shocking perversity of the outcome. After that, I was most interested to read “The Green Tea” by Sheridan Le Fanu and “The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions, two esteemed authors that I hadn’t yet read. In the case of the former, my cinematically-educated mind couldn’t help but picture the protagonist Dr. Hesselius as Peter Cushing, with Christopher Lee as the Rev. Mr. Jennings. The Onions story starts off in a somewhat Machen-like mode, but the final result is comparable to the blackest work of H. Russell Wakefield (an author who could easily have been the eleventh of this company).

The Lovecraft selection that concludes the book is “The Shadow Out of Time,” a perfectly representative piece to exhibit some of the features that make HPL distinctive, but not often held up as his best. In this case, Child’s introduction to the book and his preamble to the story both exhibit a Derlethian emphasis on the “Cthulhu Mythos” as a carefully-programmed system — a forgivable critical error in 1984, I suppose.

As a library book giving access to the canon of supernatural horror, Dark Company fulfills its task quite economically, in contrast to the short-fiction omnibi that now seem to be the vogue. It is possible to create a satisfying volume out of just ten stories, rather than fifty!

The Golden Dawn

The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites & Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order by Israel Regardie, in Llewellyn’s Golden Dawn series, the 1989 sixth edition paperback from Llewellyn Publications, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

Israel Regardie's The Golden Dawn from Llewellyn Publications

Apparently I purchased this on Dec 5, 1990, from Seattle’s old Astrology Et Al when it was on University Ave, according to the original receipt that is still bookmarking the LBRP. It’s extremely amusing to think about how long I dithered over finally making what was, at the time, a rather costly $19.95 purchase given what I’ve paid for other various volumes since … but, at the time, I recall it was quite a commitment. And, in case you hadn’t noticed before, check out the epilogue written back in 1986 by Hermetic Library fellow Sam Webster.

“AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL OCCULTISM

The Original Account of the Teaching, Rites and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as revealed by Israel Regardie, with further revision, expansion, and additional notes by Israel Regardie, Cris Monnastre, and others. A comprehensive index has been supplied by noted occultist David Godwin for this new edition.

Originally published in four volumes of some 1200 pages, this 6th Revised and Enlarged Edition has been reset in half the pages (retaining the original pagination in marginal notation for reference) for greater ease of use.

Corrections of errors in the original editions have been made, with further revision and additional text and notes by actual practitioners of the Golden Dawn system of magick, with an introduction by the only student ever accepted for personal training by Regardie.

The Golden Dawn, once a secret order, was one of the most prestigious groups flourishing at the turn of the century. Membership included such notables as W. B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Lady Frieda Harris, Brodie Innes, S. L. MacGregor Mathers, A. E. Waite, Evelyn Underhill and W. Wynn Westcott. Its influence on 20th century spiritual science has been enormous!

Today there are independent lodges practicing the Golden Dawn system of Magick all over the world, and the Knowledge Lectures included in this book are fundamental to nearly all aspects of Western Esotericism.

Also included are Initiation Ceremonies, important rituals for consecration and invocation, methods of meditation and magical working based on the Enochian Tablets, studies in the Tarot, and the system of Qabalistic Correspondences that unite the world’s religions and magical traditions into a comprehensive and practical whole.

This volume is designed as a study and practice curriculum suited to both group and private practice. Meditation upon, and following with the Active Imagination, the Initiation Ceremonies are fully experiential without need of participation in group or lodge.

The Golden Dawn, a system for perfecting the raw material that is humanity; a system for awakening the consciousness within and uniting with that of the universe itself.”

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

The White People and other Weird Stories

“The White People and other Weird Stories, By Arthur Machen” by Tim Cumming is a review of a new collection of Golden Dawn initiate Arthur Machen, The White People and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Classics).

“Machen was a bestseller in his day, a member of the Golden Dawn, and intimately acquainted with the spiritualism, occultism, mediumship and excesses of the Decadent era. The Great God Pan (strangely omitted from this collection) and The Three Imposters were published in the 1890s, shocking society, and attracting invitations to lunch from Oscar Wilde.

Machen had already lived in London more than a decade, as he plied a trade as a freelance writer, translating Casanova and writing an essay on tobacco, before an inheritance allowed him to write what he fancied. Aubrey Beardsley and, later, Austin Osman Spare illustrated his works. But Wilde’s 1895 imprisonment turned the moral tide against Machen’s tales of supernatural horror. It wasn’t until the 1920s that his books began selling in large quantities. Alas, Machen had sold the rights decades before. TS Eliot was among those who secured him a Civil List pension against the poverty of his later years.

His great stories, and the key works in this collection, date from the Decadent 1890s. The haunted, hallucinogenic mix of spell workings, witchcraft and disguised sex magic in ‘The White People’ was hailed by HP Lovecraft as the second greatest horror story ever written (after Blackwood’s ‘The Willows’), and it bears the imprint of one who believed in the ‘wild improbability’ of what he wrote.” [via]

Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God

So apparently there’s a new Sherlock Holmes novel out in which Sherlock and Watson consult Aleister Crowley. They also apparently consult with Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence. The first two chapters are up online, so you can check it out. Chapter one is an exclusive over at Fangoria. Chapter two is an exclusive over at IO9.

“Literature’s greatest detective joins forces with history’s greatest occultist in THE BREATH OF GOD, a new novel out today from Titan Books. Written by Guy Adams, it’s set at the close of the 19th century, when Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson team up with Aleister Crowley to solve a series of murders, and we’ve got an exclusive excerpt after the jump.

Following the discovery of a crushed body in the London snow with no footprints nearby, and a subsequent series of equally strange deaths, Holmes and Watson travel to Scotland to enlist Crowley’s help. Other prominent psychics and demonologists join the investigation—but will they be able to stop the gathering dark forces?” [link to Fangoria redacted for safe browsing]

“While you’re waiting raptly for the second installment of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films and the second season of Steven Moffat’s Holmes TV show, you can fill your Holmes cravings with a new novel — in which Holmes teams up with Aleister Crowley.

In The Breath of God by Guy Adams, published by Titan Books, a mysterious force is crushing to people to death — almost as if the very air itself were smushing them. So Holmes and his trusty amanuensis Watson are forced to travel to Scotland to consult the one man who can help them — Aleister Crowley. They also consult Psychic Doctor John Silence and demonologist Julian Karswell.” [via]

 

You may also be interested in checking out The Cadaver Synod: Esoteric Fiction and Fictional Esoterica for more fictional detectives or The Libri of Aleister Crowley for more mysterious forces.