Saturday, January 12, 2008
SABBATEANISM TO CONSERVATIVE CATHOLICISM
From the Cthulhu Mythos timeline:
c. 1664: The Kaballist Nathan of Gaza circulates the Sepher ha-Sha'are ha-Daath among his brethren, which is a commentary on a work he calls the "Book of the Alhazred." (This is said by some to be a Hebrew translation of the Necronomicon.) ("The Necronomicon Anti-FAQ," Low)...
1666: Nathan of Gaza is discredited when the would-be Messiah Shabbetai Tzevi, whom he supported, converts to Islam. (Factual)
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The Great Cthulhu - Lovecraft's Necronomicon
The Old Ones
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange a eons even death may die."
- Abdul Alhazred, Necronomicon
(from H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu", 1926)
"Nathan of Gaza precipitated one of the most profound events in the history of Judaism. In 1665, while only 21 or 22 years old, he proclaimed that Sabbatai Tzevi was the Messiah."
Nathan also wrote theSepher ha-Sha'are ha-Daath, a commentary on the Book of the Alhazred. "Nathan's purpose appears to have been to develop a methodology for a systematic exploration of the realms of the Klippoth [husks or shells of materiality which ensnare the spirit], as part of his mission to redeem the sparks [concentrated shards of the original creation], using some of Alhazred's techniques. It is an extraordinary development of Alhazred's work, identifying the Klippoth with the primordial Old Ones."
"Nathan developed a huge following and for many years Judaism was riven with charges of heresy. Many prominent Rabbis and community leaders sided with Nathan, and it took most of a century for the drama to unwind. Eventually the Sabbatean movement went underground, and while it is a certainty that a copy of the Sepher ha-Sha'are ha-Daath exists in a private library somewhere, no one is admitting that they have it."
- Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
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Robert Anton Wilson's debt to Lovecraft:
The influence of H. P. Lovecraft on my fiction is rather obvious – mostly because I never tried to hide it. HPL appears in person as a character in The Golden Apple. Some of his Old Ones pop up in that book and in Leviathan and Masks of the Illuminati. The last-named book is written in a variety of styles, because James Joyce is one of its major characters and it seemed artistically apt to present Joyce in Joyce's own manner, changing "styles" and narrative voices rapidly as he did in Ulysses; but one of the voices is, of course, the typical Lovecraft narrator perpetually worried about what "nameless" or "blasphemous" secret is about to be revealed next. Even my autobiographical fragment, Cosmic Trigger, begins with a paragraph that is a deliberate parody of the standard Lovecraft opening.
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Campus Crusade for Cthulhu
The Campus Crusade for Cthulhu claims to be the oldest college club in the world, claiming that before Ancient Greece or Atlantis, even "before the first Illuminati attempts at world conquest," they had "tentacles" gripping the whole world. Worshiping the Great Old Ones, interstellar giants from the Necronomicon ofAbdul Alhazred, and/or the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Cult has existed even before humanity appeared on earth, and created the Campus Crusade at Miskatonic University (in Arkham, Massachusetts) early in this century, gradually adding chapters at Yale, New York University, State University of New York, etc.
Cthulhu, usually pictured as a slimy green octopus of mountainous size, may not be an attractive deity, but the Campus Crusaders insist that he has no worse morals or habits than most of the other gods people have worshiped.
The Campus Crusade at Binghamton, New York, plans to build a Ziggurat of Doom using slave labor if students cannot pay for it. Other branches have proposed a racial program of "ethnic cleansing," based on the proposition that "if everyone takes a bath at least once a year--whether they need it or not--we believe relations between the races will be much improved." In 1996, the Crusaders ran Cthulhu for president with the slogan "Why accept the lesser evil?"
The Cthulhists, like their rivals in the Campus Crusade for Christ, put out a variety of proselytizing pamphlets, but they have livelier titles, e.g., "Yog Sothoth Neblod Zin," "Abdul Alhazred was NOT mad," "Cthulhu fthagn," etc.
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Jimmy Akin's blog on Lovecraft:
The Mount....Visited!
It also appears to be the basis of the mound that is featured in H. P. Lovecraft's story The Mound, which he (appropriately enough) ghostwrote for a woman named Zealia Bishop.
The Mound is considered the most impressive of all of the stories that Lovecraft is known to have ghostwritten for others--so impressive, in fact, that it's often grouped with the stories that he published under his own name.
My comments are over there in the comments boxes.
