Occult Texts in 1920s China

A Note on Journals & Periodicals: Some occult magazines listed herein give bonuses per issue to a reader’s Occult score; some may see this as a means of ‘maxing-out’ their Occult stats in a short space of time: this is not the case.

Firstly, each issue of a magazine takes awhile to read and understand – at least a day or more where such esoteric philosophising is concerned; Secondly, the bonus is not automatic: after each issue is read, the player must roll above their current Occult score before adding the bonus, just as if they were rolling for experience. This reflects the period of study required and the fact that most periodicals have political or ideological agendas which must be sifted through, as well as distracting material which is rather beside the point (such as advertising). In any case, no-one can raise their Occult score above 50% in this fashion since periodicals are, by their very nature, reiterative.

*****

Bardo Thodol (‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’)

This is an exoteric textbook for ensuring the safety and positive reincarnation of dead souls. The work describes the process of entering the afterlife, the encounters that a dead soul will experience and the means to obtain a beneficial existence after reincarnation. Specific chants and incantations are designed to ward off monsters and other hazards which could prevent the soul from reincarnating; exercises prepare the reader for the experience, shortly after death and ready them for these encounters. To Western readers the work is dense and largely incredible, much like being given instruction in operating the tools in the ‘workshop of the afterlife’.

Tibetan (Lhasa / Ü-Tsang dialect); Author & date Unknown; 1/1d3 Sanity loss; Occult +10 percentiles

Spells: None

English; W. Y. Evans-Wentz: The Tibetan Book of the Dead; 1927; 0/1 Sanity loss; Occult +8 percentiles

Spells: None

De Situ Orbis (Chorographia)

“There is a fixed time for each Neurian, at which they change, if they like, into wolves, and back again into their former condition.”

-Pomponius Mela, Chorographia

Pomponius Mela was a Roman geographer of Spanish birth, writing around the year 43 AD. His summation of the known world is largely inferior to Pliny’s work on a similar subject, which cited Mela as a source, but it is notable for its use of Latin which has a pleasing and poetical cast. The work takes the form of an extended travel monologue travelling the coastlines from Roman occupied Spain around the Mediterranean, along the coasts of Africa and Asia and northwards around the coasts of Europe and Britain. Mela’s language during this extended itinerary is playful and engaging: he focuses not upon the famous structures and accomplishments of various countries but rather, concentrates on subjects anthropological, cultural and supernatural.

The book is of interest as an occult text due to the many apocryphal references said to be contained within its pages. Mela begins his narrative by describing the world as a ‘puzzle’ to be solved and invites the reader to embark upon a tour to ‘solve’ it with him. This, along with an extended passage describing a massive labyrinth in Egypt, seems to imply that the book is a key in and of itself to the discovery of some great revelation. It is said that this text makes reference to the Ixaxar Stone, mentioning its sacred meaning to degenerate races in the Libyan heartland; it is said also to locate the lost city of Niya in Western China: in actual fact the earliest publication of Mela dates from Milan in 1471 and makes no reference to either subject. Unless some other, earlier and unexpurgated text appears, these legends will no doubt pervade.

*****

Of course the above details are just so much hooey. A close reading of the source of this entry – “The Novel of the Black Stone” by Arthur Machen – reveals that the crucial text of that tale was not the Chorographia but was another text bound in with it, along with yet another geographical tract. This is a further instance where Mr Harms has read widely of his sources but not closely, whilst compiling the Encyclopedia Cthulhiana. Nevertheless, I include the spurious reference here for those Keepers who enjoy taking their players down tortuous and byzantine hallways of research.

Latin; Pomponius Mela: Chorographia; 43 AD; Sanity loss: 1/1d4; Cthulhu Mythos +4 percentiles; Occult +8 percentiles

Spells: None

Latin; Pomponius Mela: De Situ Orbis; 1471; No Sanity loss; Occult +8 percentiles

Spells: None

Latin; Pomponius Mela: De Situ Orbis; Publisher: Vadianus, Basel, 1522; No Sanity loss; Occult +6 percentiles

Spells: None

English; Pomponius Mela (Arthur Golding, trans.): De Situ Orbis; 1585; No Sanity loss; Occult +4 percentiles

Spells: None

Latin; Pomponius Mela: De Situ Orbis (in seven parts); Publisher: Tzschucke, Leipzig, 1806-7; No Sanity loss; Occult +6 percentiles

Spells: None

Latin; Pomponius Mela: De Situ Orbis; Publisher: G. Paithey, Berlin, 1867; No Sanity loss; Occult +7 percentiles

Spells: None

The Equinox – The Review of Scientific Illuminism

A semi-regular journal launched by Aleister Crowley and a major organ for the dissemination of his theories on Thelema and ‘magick’. First published in 1909, the work contains essays, discussions, and theoretical articles of import to Crowley’s magickal order, the A∴A∴, or ‘Silver Star’, the Thelemite organisation he created after leaving the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The journal is also of interest to members of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), the sister organisation of the A∴A∴.

The first volume of the Equinox took Crowley from 1909 to 1913 to complete; it was released in a series of 10 issues containing many treatises on subjects ‘magickal’, most of them written by Crowley himself under a bewildering variety of pseudonyms. It also contained short fiction and poetry, not only by Crowley and his Thelemite brethren, but also by such luminaries as Lord Dunsany and Katharine Susannah Pritchard. The completion of this first volume seriously drained Crowley both emotionally and financially and he declared the second volume would be a journal of “silence”.

The first issue of the third volume was printed in 1919 and released as a single hardbound tome. Printed under subscription, it was of primary interest to the OTO and further codified Crowley’s aims in his Thelemite teachings and explorations into ‘sex magick’. Due to its striking blue cover, it was commonly referred to as the Blue Equinox. Later issues from this volume trickled out sporadically in a more typical magazine format. Volume four contained only two issues and was largely compiled by Crowley’s adherents. After Crowley’s death other individuals took over the journal and it was still in print as of 1998.

*****

If, like me, you consider Crowley to be nothing more than the basest of hacks and charlatans, you may wish to pepper the libraries of your own similar crank NPCs with copies of this drivel, as an indicator that the individual is a snake-oil salesman of a similar stripe. Alternatively, if you’re convinced that Crowley, and Blavatsky like him, are the real deal, then copies of the Equinox might lead on to something far more sinister...

English; Aleister Crowley & other contributors; 1909-1930; No Sanity loss – although an Idea Roll might cause shudders when the player realises how much time they’re wasting; Occult +2 percentiles/issue

Spells: None, unless the Keeper deems otherwise

Les Jardin des Supplices (‘The Torture Garden’)

A product of the literary offshoot of the Symbolist art movement known as the Decadent Style, this book is moody and ethereal, filled with blood and nightmares. The narrative follows the journey of a jaded Parisian office worker who, sick of the casual corruption of the department for which he labours (a thinly-veiled metaphor of the Dreyfus Affair), escapes to China and meets a decadent woman journeying to the eponymous Garden where she hopes her craving for sadistic sexual fulfilment will be achieved. Octave Mirbeau wrote the book as a savage indictment of capitalist bureaucracy and the stultifying ennui of office drones finds an extended metaphor in the form of a garden divided into enclaves wherein torture victims and their tormentors carry on a daily round of hideous abuse in a similar bored vein. This is a work of penetrating psychological insight with brilliant flashes of Orientalist indulgence and is certainly not for the fainthearted.

French; Octave Mirbeau; 1899; 0/1 Sanity loss; Occult +0 percentiles

Spells: None

The New Revelation

With this title Sir Arthur Conan Doyle announced his belief in Spiritualism to the world. In it he describes the process whereby he moved from a sceptical viewpoint to one of acceptance of a life after death. He discusses the process of conducting a séance and the means of debunking fraudulent practitioners; he cites many cases of definitive spiritualist phenomena naming sources and locations of these events. This is a reasoned and logical analysis of the progress from scepticism to belief with much critical evaluation along the way.

English; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; 1918; No Sanity loss; Occult +3 percentiles

Spells: None

Ostara - Briefbücherei der Blonden und Mannesrechtler

A monthly magazine devoted to the teachings of Guido von List, Helena Blavatsky and their interpretations by Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, the editor and creator of the journal. Begun in 1905, the magazine ran in three series up until 1930 after which it was banned by Adolf Hitler, himself an avid collector of the material before his rise to power. Depending upon sources, there were either 110 or 121 issues in total.

Ostara deals with Lanz’s theories of racial purity and his model for a new Aryan society. Many of his theories (which he called ‘Theozoology’) are based upon Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, wrapped up in the new ‘science’ of Eugenics and von List’s visionary call for a return to a Teutonic German past (spiced with a whiff of homoeroticism). Many of Lanz’s plans for a return to ‘genetic purity’ were implemented by the SS, despite the ban placed on the organ by Hitler; SS officers and other enthusiastic Nazis still carried copies of the journal with them.

German; Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (Ed.); 1905 – 1930; No Sanity loss; Occult +2 percentiles/issue

Spells: None

*****

Prolegomena zu Einer Geschichte der Magie (Preliminary Remarks on the History of Magic)

A problematic text. Shortly before being released for sale, the entire print-run of this work was seized and destroyed by the Nazis. However, the standing type was left intact and it is presumed that a handful of copies, maybe as few as one or two, were quickly printed and hurried out of Europe. Hinterstoisser’s notes, draughts and galley-proofs were all destroyed in a mysterious fire thus preventing him from resurrecting the work after the War. Little is known of the book’s history apart from a reference to it being sought by covert US forces at the end of World War Two; many believe however that certain passages shed light on the Margary Affair of the previous century.

(Source: “Necronomicon: the Book of Dead Names”, George Hay, Ed.)

German; Dr Stanislaus Hinterstoisser; 1943; No Sanity loss; Occult +8 percentiles

Spells: None

Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes)

Guido Karl Anton List (October 5^th, 1848 to May 17^th, 1919) was a kind of German Aleister Crowley. Known more widely as Guido von List, he occupied a series of different roles before settling down as an occultist and the leader of the Teutonic Revival that was to cause so many nasty aftershocks after his death.

Von List’s focus was a blend of Blavatsky’s mystical blathering, notions of former Teutonic greatness and the feeble theories of the pseudo-science of Eugenics. He blended these all together into a philosophy that, on the one hand, inspired Richard Wagner to pen some of his greatest musical works, and, on the other to bring about the Nazi Holocaust. His main claim to fame was in resurrecting a magical system of runic lore which he derived from extant carvings and various bits of mystical impedimenta. So if you’ve ever tried “casting the runes” using a set of marked pebbles bought from your local New Age ‘hippy’ store, I’m afraid you’ve been messing about on the fringes of Nazi mysticism.

List’s book, Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes), formed the core of a syllabus of study required by members of the SS and the Hitler Youth. List’s theories of ‘Teutonic greatness’ informed the ‘body culture’ of Germany in the 1920s and ‘30s, promoting lots of naturist calisthenics and camp-outs – again, much of this ritually-channelled sexuality was inherited wholesale into the mystically-based activities of the SS. It was here that Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels ran into trouble when he tried to subvert these impulses into a homoerotic vein.

Das Geheimnis der Runen was initially published as an article in a magazine entitled “Neue Metaphysiche Rundschau” in 1906; it was later published as a standalone book in 1908. Players may encounter it in either form. The text outlines the nature of a runic system which List called the Armanen Futharkh which he reveals was based upon the Norse writing known as the Younger Futharkh along with some elements which List was “inspired” to incorporate. It’s possible that List had some Mythos help in this regard, either from doses of the Plutonian Drug, or by contacting some monstrous intelligences in his dreams.

Keepers who are keen to invest their campaigns with some Nazi mysticism should leave copies of this book littered about. There’s not a lot to it apart from grubby, outmoded theories about the ‘fitness of the Aryan race’ but then some small-minded people are easily amused.

German; Guido von List; “Neue Metaphysische Rundschau” Vol. 9, Issue No. 13, 1906; No Sanity loss; Occult +3 percentiles

Spells: None

German; Guido von List; Das Geheimnis der Runen, 1908; No Sanity loss; Occult +3 percentiles

Spells: None

*****