Back in my early days of playing Call of Cthulhu, I would generally shun any non-Mythos contributions, out of the perspective that much of it was antithetical to Lovecraft’s vision and not very good in quality.  This is true, of course, but it’s equally true of much Mythos-based material for the game as well.  It took some time to get over this impression, with Pagan’s Coming Full Circle doing much to aid in my rehabilitation.

At the time, then, I would have steadfastly avoided a non-Mythos Call of Cthulhu campaign like Our Ladies of Sorrow from Miskatonic River Press, even if it was the work of veteran CoC author Kevin Ross.  If I had, I would have been truly missing out on a great campaign.

Our Ladies of Sorrow draws upon De Quincy’s short story, “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow” (truncated in the book by accident), as its prime source of inspiration.  It has further literary roots in the works of Fritz Leiber, Clark Ashton Smith, and Carlos Castaneda, and the movies of Dario Argento and Hideo Nakata are also clear sources of inspiration.  Ross blends together these sources into a mix that is unique and undeniably creepy.

Ross provides us with three scenarios set in modern times and built around a dark trinity of female figures – the Lady of Darkness, the Lady of Sighs, and the Lady of Tears.  The first scenario, “House of Shadows,” brings the investigators through a mysterious suicide to an apartment building in which dark forces are at work.  The second, “Desert of Sighs”, involves a manhunt for missing hikers in the deserts of the Southwest.  A small Midwestern town threatened by floodwaters and tormented by a mysterious apparition is the focus of “River of Tears.”  The book wraps up with “The Final Cut,” an epilogue drawing the themes of the other three adventures together, allowing investigators to meet or avoid their fates.

Everything here is top-notch – the writing, the situations, the plot, the villains, and the atmosphere.  My only concern was the organization – at times, it’s hard to tell what’s supposed to happen when in an adventure, and a timeline might have benefited.  Nonetheless, this is a definite pick-me-up for those who like to run or read Call of Cthulhu products.

The latest offering from Llewellyn is Donald Tyson’s The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, which I picked up a few weeks ago.  A companion volume to his popular annotated version of The Three Books of Occult Philosophy, this work reprints the six treatises translated into English and published by Robert Turner in 1655, including the Fourth Book itself, the Heptameron, and the Arbatel.

As there is already a modern printing of these works edited by Stephen Skinner, readers might ask what this edition brings to the table.  Tyson provides a great deal of information for the reader, including annotations of the more uncommon phrases, individuals, and concepts from the book, along with a section of analyses (which, in most cases, are actually summaries and explanations) for each of the sections.   These appear to be intended for a broad audience unfamiliar with the topics yet eager to find away to practice them.  Tyson largely succeeds in this goal, though some of the sections on geomancy and creation of sigils could have benefited from more examples.

The scholarship, in some places, isn’t quite up to what I’d like to see, especially in areas in which more recent work has been done – such as the new edition of Abramelin, or Carlos Gilly’s background work on the Arbatel.  For the most part, though, Tyson covers the bases.

If you’re already familiar with the Fourth Book, or the topic of Renaissance magic in general, or if you’re interested in it from a scholarly and not a practitioner’s perspective, this book might not be worth quite as much to you.  Those who fall outside that category will likely find this a valuable work.

While reading Tyson’s new edition of the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy of pseudo-Agrippa, I was reminded of the Liber Spirituum, or Book of Spirits. Such a work is not a grimoire in the strict sense, but rather a tool that a magician might use to quickly call upon particular spirits without the rigamarole of fasting, prayer, and elaborate conjurations typical of the grimoires.  The book itself needed to be consecrated and, in some cases, signed by each spirit mentioned therein.

The Fourth Book contains the following passage, quoted from Joe Peterson’s e-text:

And this book must be inscribed after this maner: that is to say, Let there be placed on the left side the image of the spirit, and on the right side his character, with the Oasth above it, containing the name of the spirit, and his dignity and place, with his office and power. Yet very many do compose this book otherwise, omitting the characters or image: but it is more efficacious not to neglect any thing which conduceth to it.

Some have insisted that the Liber Spirituum practice originated in the Fourth Book, but what that work actually states is that this is a pre-existing tradition, with enough variation to cause arguments about how it should be properly done.

If this is the case, then, why have we found so few of these books?  I’ve been trying to come up with an example of an honest-to-goodness Liber Spirituum, and I can’t recall one that was ever reported.  Of course, this would have been a magician’s most treasured work, and many would have been quickly consigned to the flames if found, but the lack of these works baffles me.  Any thoughts?

It’s been a while hasn’t it?

The group has made it through the terrors of the Ozarks, encountering a snake handling church and a beast Lovecraft did no more than hint at.  I’ll gloss over this, as this is a fun scenario that I want people to enjoy.

Later, one of the characters went mad while reading a book woke up near the murdered body of a local Yig cultist (who seemed relatively harmless).  The rest of the group discovered they were being monitored with a camera from a nearby hotel room.  Upon breaking in, they found nothing but a scrubbed laptop and a sacred serpent of Yig.

They then followed their next lead to Oklahoma, where they hoped to uncover another trace of the mysterious cult they were chasing.  They found it – and much more than they hoped.  This was the deadliest encounter of the whole campaign.  They all made it out alive, due to one lucky skill check and a quick-thinking player.  He often surfs for clues on his PDA (as his character would do), so he suddenly made a connection between a hint from a few sessions before and the present situation.  He quickly alerted the group, and everyone headed out.  One player will start the next session in the hospital, but they were a very fortunate group all told.

Greetings to one and all!

Last night, we had a very small Halloween party at the Undisclosed Location (in keeping with its size).  M. did a great job with festooning the place with black and red, along with pumpkin lights and a curious beetle sculpture we found in the brightly-lit corner of a chain home goods store.  M. was a witch, and I went as Sherlock Holmes (sans pipe, I’m afraid).  Little Yig came out for a brief while, under the overprotective guardianship of her dad.  The hippo, now freed from his imprisonment, swathed himself in a couple socks and appeared as a ninja.

Some wanted to play The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but we never got to it.  Instead, I decided to maintain the holiday spirit with some classic black and white films – White Zombie, Last Man on Earth, and Nosferatu.  (By the way, if anyone knows of a good still of that contract perused by Renfield in the latter, please let me know.)

You can also check out my Halloween party iMix.  As with most mixes, it omits a great deal that iTunes does not have in its library, but it seems the essentials are present.

My interview with Warlock Asylum about the Necronomicon – unedited and complete, just as he promised, can be found at his site.  Frequent visitors here have likely heard much of it before, but it’s a good introduction to my perspectives on a number of topics related to Lovecraftian spirituality.

Rather unbidden, Keith Richmond of Teitan Press offered to send me a copy of The Progradior Correspondence to review.   This book collects letters to Frater Progradior, known in the outer as Frank Bennett, from Aleister Crowley and many people in his circle.

I’m not going to pontificate too much on this topic – despite my secret membership in the OTO, I don’t have great knowledge of Aleister Crowley.  I’ve read a few of his books over the years, along with Sutin’s biography, and I have a basic knowledge of his philosophy and the outline of his life.  Nonetheless, you won’t find me collecting the works of or seeking out rarities of a man who, by my judgment, was really bright but tended to objectify the people around him.

Bennett was a student of Crowley’s from early years in London.  He moved to Australia and dropped out of contact with Aleister for a while, picking up the acquaintance when Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis was just beginning.  He became a loyal Thelemite, until the letters petered out – as so often happened with Crowley’s followers, it seems that the Beast asked Bennett for too much  too often.  (I was particularly struck with the “Hey!  Things are screwed up at Cefalu!  Come over here and help!” communique.)

This handsome book collects the correspondence sent to Bennett by Aleister Crowley, Leah Hirsig, Charles Robert Stansfeld Jones, Norman Mudd, and others.  Bennett’s own side of the correspondence is mostly lacking, and gaps in the collected letters leave us with an incomplete picture.  Nonetheless, the correspondence really brings the participants to life in the way that biographical works can hardly do.

I should also note that this seems to be a companion volume to a work entitled Progradior and the Beast, which I have not seen.

I recommend this book for people more interested in Crowley than I am, and those interested in the history of the OTO and the Thelemic movement.

Donald Tyson’s annotated edition of The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy is now shipping.  From the blurb:

I think I’ll have a copy by tomorrow, at which point it will go into the Review Pile.

It’s been busier than lately in non-blogging areas, but I did want to thank Morrisville Community College for all of its hospitality that it provided M. and I for my “Horrors of Upstate” talk.  The audience was lively and full of questions, and the dinner at the Copper Turret afterward was simply wonderful.   The drive back to the Undisclosed Location was dark and filled with wind and swirling leaves, the perfect setting for lovers of the weird.

More later.

For our thousandth post – no, really! – I’ll be reviewing the Cthulhu Britannica supplement for Call of Cthulhu, which Cubicle 7 was kind enough to send to me for review.

The book includes five scenarios from a range of periods.  Disappointingly, none of the scenarios here take place in the classic Twenties area, but one does come from the mid-Thirties, a time frame into which more recent CoC adventures seem to be moving.  Only the first two seem to have a distinctly British flavor, which could cut either way in terms of their usefulness.

The first scenario, “Bad Company” by Alan Bligh, is a welcome addition to the small number of Gaslight scenarios.  The investigators are asked to help a wealthy government official avoid scandal by uncovering the whereabouts of his son.  Making their way through London’s seamy underbelly, they soon come across a mysterious woman whose influence taints all who cross her path.  If a group can get into the proper mindset of playing upper crust investigators intent on avoiding embarrassment, this should quite a good time with plenty of shady characters and some of the most terrifying creatures to haunt any scenario.  The central figure gets short shrift – a page or two on interacting with her would not be amiss – and it is unclear how the investigators will allow at the final solution, with the dearth of clues pointing to it.  Nonetheless, this is a compelling piece.

“Darkness, Descending” by Mike Mason brings us to a Cambridge archaeological dig in 1934 where dark secrets of a particular Old One are unearthed.  The archaeological dig has become a common setup in Call of Cthulhu scenarios, and it has been handled much better than it has been done here, with no real characterization, setting, or other elements to distinguish it from the others.  At best, this is a workmanlike effort.

“Wrong Turn” by John French sends a television crew to an old abandoned radio telescope installation for a location scout.  As darkness falls, the phantoms of a failed dimension-breaching experiment return to bring madness and death to the hapless intruders.  It took me a little while to warm to the setting, but French’s excellent suggestions for creating and maintaining mood as the story proceeds really made this for me.  This is an excellent scenario in what Trail of Cthulhu players call the “purist” mode.

Keary Birch’s “King” starts strong, with a group of patients recovering from an eye surgery trapped in a secret lab where more has happened to them than they realize.  This is a solid scenario, damaged by an insistence upon piling one Mythos baddie upon another upon another, until what would work well as a straight mystery with a supernatural aspect ends up just being baffling.

The book rounds out with Paul Fricker’s “My Little Sister Wants You to Suffer,” a scenario set in the near future.  If you read the title and said, “Boy, that sounds rather gonzo and over the top,” you’d be right, and your mileage will likely vary based on how your group reacts to such things.   For my part, I can’t decide whether it’d be highly amusing or highly annoying for my players.  It’s difficult to see how to integrate this scenario into a regular campaign.

Overall, I’d have to say Cthulhu Britannica is a mixed bag in terms of era and use of the British setting, and the quality is uneven, though it veers toward the positive overall.  Aside from the second scenario,  all of these have a special twist or innovative technique that sets them apart from standard fare.  That’s certainly a good reason to keep an eye on this publisher and its offerings for Cthulhu.