Cosmicism without consolation
Restricted shelves, dubious authorities and badly lit staircases
A mildly self-indulgent side-archive for City of Dis material best approached as textual archaeology: imaginary books, forbidden oaths, hidden cults, disputed scriptures and other artefacts whose histories become less reassuring the more carefully one checks what the primary sources actually say.
The indulgence is intentional. One of the quieter ambitions of City of Dis is that, after sufficient wandering, it should become difficult to tell where serious philosophy ends and Lovecraftian madness begins. Ideally, the distinction should fail only after you have followed the citations.
Nothing here is presented as occult revelation. The governing rule is provenance: distinguish what Lovecraft and his contemporaries actually wrote from what later Mythos tradition, games and enthusiastic bibliographers subsequently supplied.
The restricted shelf
Each descent begins with the primary sources and stops where the evidence stops.
What H. P. Lovecraft actually tells us about the Necronomicon, stripped of later Mythos additions, occult hoaxes and cinematic furniture. Abdul Alhazred's grimoire turns out to be something stranger: a catastrophically premature scientific encyclopaedia.
Descend to the restricted shelfA source-critical reconstruction of Lovecraft's Pnakotic Manuscripts: copied in Lomar, carried into dreamland, partly unreadable through age, and ultimately linked to textual survivals from the Great Race itself.
Consult the pre-human archiveHow Lovecraft's Great Race of Yith gathers knowledge across time, preserves it at Pnakotus, leaks fragments into human cults and Pnakotic texts, then returns to read and annotate the forbidden books humanity assembled from the debris.
Enter the archive outside timeWhat H. P. Lovecraft actually says about De Vermis Mysteriis: Robert Bloch's Ludvig Prinn, Lovecraft's Latin title, a first edition in Attica, a Starry Wisdom copy, and an alien scholar who thought the book worth annotating.
Consult Prinn's unexplained volumeA source-critical examination of Robert E. Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten: Friedrich von Junzt, the book's fictional editions, its catalogue of surviving cults and Lovecraft's part in expanding its place within the Mythos.
Consult von Junzt's forbidden catalogueWhat Lovecraft actually lets us infer about Cultes des Goules: a nearly undescribed book read by Peaslee's alien secondary personality, familiar to Robert Blake and preserved by the Starry Wisdom sect - examined beside Lovecraft's unsettlingly material ghouls.
Go below the graveyardA reconstruction of what the Third Oath of Dagon might have contained, confined to Lovecraft's own stories and letters. No later Mythos catechism, no invented ritual manual - only what can reasonably be inferred from Innsmouth, Dagon, Hydra and the Order Lovecraft actually described.
Take the inadvisable oathHaving established what the Third Oath may have involved, bureaucracy naturally follows. Enter the initiate's name and personalise an Esoteric Order of Dagon Third Oath certificate, ready to print at A4 size.
Personalise the certificateFor those whose devotion to Dagon, Hydra and one another has survived the preliminary paperwork. Add both names, choose their typefaces and colours, set the ceremonial date, then save or print the finished marriage certificate at A4 size.
Enter the matrimonial bureauEstablish your place in one of Dunwich's less reassuring family trees. Select a claimed Whateley line - including possible descent from the unnaturally precocious Wilbur - then add the branch, ancestor, date and any marginal reservation the Registrar considers prudent.
Consult the family registerAcquire the academic distinction you plainly deserve from Arkham's most ill-advised institution of higher learning. Choose the graduate, degree, field of study, distinction and conferral date, then save or print the finished fictional diploma at A4 size.
Confer the degreeAppoint yourself, a colleague or a suitably dubious acquaintance to a Visiting Scholar position at Miskatonic University. Select the department, appointment dates, faculty sponsor and library privileges, then save or print the completed A4 certificate.
Accept the appointmentA source-critical survey of Lovecraft's organised devotions and occult networks: the Cthulhu cult, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, Starry Wisdom, witch-cults, Yuggothian collaborators and the awkward question of whether the HPLHS has finally made the joke institutional.
Join absolutely nothingProfessors, librarians, doctors, police, surveyors and archivists repeatedly discover that the impossible has left an excellent paper trail. A source-critical study of the machinery that makes Lovecraft's cosmic horror credible.
Refer to the relevant department →Lovecraft's deliberately collaborative Cthulhu Mythos compared with the growth of Christianity: Paul as a Derleth-like systematiser, Gospel redaction, Tatian's harmonisation, Irenaeus and Athanasius as canon-builders, and the point at which an open tradition acquires authorised boundaries.
Compare the competing canonsA straight-faced comparison of Lovecraftian pseudobiblia and Christian scripture: lost originals, vanished source-books, disputed authorship, textual variants, canon formation and the difference between a surviving codex and divine warrant.
Consult the disputed canon