Transcribe
Translate
Acolyte, v. 2, issue 2, whole no. 6, Spring 1944
31858063101376_019
More information
digital collection
archival collection guide
transcription tips
EXCERPTS FROM THE BLACK BOOK OF CLARK ASHTON SMITH (A notebook containing used and unused plot-germs, notes on occultism, synopses of stories, fragments of verse, fantastic names for people and places, etc. etc.) -oOo- THE SORCERER DEPARTS (fragment of unfinished poem) I pass ... but in this lone and crumbling tower, Builded against the burrowing seas of chaos, My volumes and my philtree shall abide: Poisons more dear than any mithridate, And spells far sweeter than the speech of love.... Half-shapen dooms shall slumber in my vaults And in my volumes cryptic runes that shall Outblust the pestilence, outgnaw the worm When loosed by alien wizards on strange years Under the blackened moon and paling sun. -oOo- A man who is merely the emanation of a particular place or arrangement of scenic objects, into which he re-emerged when followed by someone who senses a mystery in regard to his personality. -oOo- A phantom shell -- face, hands, clothing, etc. -- which attaches itself temporarily to a living person, giving him the aspect of one long dead. -oOo- A remote mountain-region with lost cities and treasure, deserted by human beings, but guarded by strange clouds that take the forms of men, animals or demons. (Plot-germ of The Primal City, published in Fantasy Fan and Comet Stories. This idea had its genesis in a nightmare remembered by the author from early boyhood.) -oOo- BENSOZIA: A she-devil presiding over the medieval French Sabbats. Supposed to be the Diana of the ancient Gauls; also called Nocticula, Herodias and the Moon. Ladies went on horseback to her nocturnal revelries. They were forced to inscribe their names in a Sabbatic catalogue along with those of the sorcerers proper, and after this believed themselves to be fairies. (Spence's Encyclopedia of Occultists.) -oOo- Expansion and contraction of eye-pupil under light a test of obsession, since an obsessing or intruding spirit cannot secure control of the eye. (Rosicrucianism.() -oOo- THE NOCTUARY OF NATHAN GEAST. Geast, artist of the weird and macabre, find that he is gradually losing his faculty of seeing by daylight or even by artificial light. Correspondingly, he develops a nytaloptic faculty, and can see most perfectly in what is complete darkness, but his pictures are considered increasingly unintelligible by his friends and patrons. He seems to perceive (and render) new colors not discernable to others. Presently he begins to obtain glimpses of some occult realm lying amid, or beyond, the known world about him. His most frequent and persistent vision is that of a strange, vast pit or gulf, where a black but glowing monolithic pillar lifts from the dim depths. About this pillar, in aerial mazes of a weird dance of verti- --15--
Saving...
prev
next
EXCERPTS FROM THE BLACK BOOK OF CLARK ASHTON SMITH (A notebook containing used and unused plot-germs, notes on occultism, synopses of stories, fragments of verse, fantastic names for people and places, etc. etc.) -oOo- THE SORCERER DEPARTS (fragment of unfinished poem) I pass ... but in this lone and crumbling tower, Builded against the burrowing seas of chaos, My volumes and my philtree shall abide: Poisons more dear than any mithridate, And spells far sweeter than the speech of love.... Half-shapen dooms shall slumber in my vaults And in my volumes cryptic runes that shall Outblust the pestilence, outgnaw the worm When loosed by alien wizards on strange years Under the blackened moon and paling sun. -oOo- A man who is merely the emanation of a particular place or arrangement of scenic objects, into which he re-emerged when followed by someone who senses a mystery in regard to his personality. -oOo- A phantom shell -- face, hands, clothing, etc. -- which attaches itself temporarily to a living person, giving him the aspect of one long dead. -oOo- A remote mountain-region with lost cities and treasure, deserted by human beings, but guarded by strange clouds that take the forms of men, animals or demons. (Plot-germ of The Primal City, published in Fantasy Fan and Comet Stories. This idea had its genesis in a nightmare remembered by the author from early boyhood.) -oOo- BENSOZIA: A she-devil presiding over the medieval French Sabbats. Supposed to be the Diana of the ancient Gauls; also called Nocticula, Herodias and the Moon. Ladies went on horseback to her nocturnal revelries. They were forced to inscribe their names in a Sabbatic catalogue along with those of the sorcerers proper, and after this believed themselves to be fairies. (Spence's Encyclopedia of Occultists.) -oOo- Expansion and contraction of eye-pupil under light a test of obsession, since an obsessing or intruding spirit cannot secure control of the eye. (Rosicrucianism.() -oOo- THE NOCTUARY OF NATHAN GEAST. Geast, artist of the weird and macabre, find that he is gradually losing his faculty of seeing by daylight or even by artificial light. Correspondingly, he develops a nytaloptic faculty, and can see most perfectly in what is complete darkness, but his pictures are considered increasingly unintelligible by his friends and patrons. He seems to perceive (and render) new colors not discernable to others. Presently he begins to obtain glimpses of some occult realm lying amid, or beyond, the known world about him. His most frequent and persistent vision is that of a strange, vast pit or gulf, where a black but glowing monolithic pillar lifts from the dim depths. About this pillar, in aerial mazes of a weird dance of verti- --15--
Hevelin Fanzines
sidebar
