The Secret War: Betrayal

A little experiment in fiction:

Betrayal

That Summer, the Warlock entered into an alliance with Pedro Gutierrez. Nobody was surprised that this resulted in a complete break between him and the Astrolooger, but nobody expected it would happen so quickly.

The Warlock didn't know who he could trust, so his first impulse was to hole up with his few trusted cronies and get rid of everyone else. He had a long message, full of names and places, delivered to the Metropolitan Police, and he went to hole up in a hacienda outside San Luis with his crew. By then he was too well-connected to need worry about where the investigation would lead.

The Astrologer's betrayal was already underway when the police started breaking down doors. He had started organizing when the Warlock had made his first forays into going legit. The Astrologer had no illusions about where a Polack like him would fit into Gutierrez' operation.

He had already determined who was loyal and had began to arm them properly. Procuring so many weapons--knives, guns, explosives, artifacts--without the Warlock's knowledge had been easier than he had expected.

There had been one final item. He hadn't anticipated the depth of the Warlock's cowardice and was sure the battle would come down to a close-up fight between the two. He didn't particularly like the odds of this, as he knew that the Warlock was as skilled with the Nineveh Evocations as any man alive, nor could he hope to match the Warlock's mastery of Enochian.

He had met Guillermo Alberto only three weeks ago at Cafe Serrano on Calle Gallardo. He had first learned of the librarian from a friend of the Harlequin's, whose father had been in elementary school with the librarian. They had a good conversation at the cafe and had quickly struck a deal. The Astrologer was impressed by Guillermo's grasp on the mechanics of the criminal underworld.

It had cost him a lot, for the librarian had not been particularly interested in barter (save for some rare drugs and chemicals which would not have come cheap) but the paper now guarded in his jacket pocket had been worth it. The librarian had been too canny to reveal which book he had copied it out of. Though it was only three long lines of crabby script, it had taken intense study to decipher them, learn them, memorize them. The words had settled unsteadily in the Astrologer's thoughts. Sometimes he thought he could still feel the words taking form in his mouth, like a strong taste that lingered. It was the first time he had encountered Aklo. And he knew it would be the first time the Warlock did, as well.

The Starry Wisdom

The Starry Wisdom is one of the more unique collections of Lovecraft-inspired fiction that I've come across. Instead of simply new variations on the seeker running into monstrous entities with unpronouncable names or even a collection of stories trying to bring Yog-Sothothery into the 20th (or 21st) century (a la The Children of Cthulhu), The Starry Wisdom's goal is to view the Lovecraftian mythos through the eyes of the sort of late 20th Century occultism which has itself been much inspired by the Old Gent. Or as editor D.M. Mitchell states:

My aim is to dig deeper and access the subterranean channels of archetype and
inspiration with which Lovecraft was connected... the current of semi-occult
symbolism and shamanic imagery.

While a worthy goal, the collection fails to consistently live up to it. As with a lot of collections, it's hard to avoid the feeling that some of it is filler. Far too much space is devoted to unengaging prose poems more interested in the connection between sado-masochistic impulses and Crowleyian notions of magick and the new aeon than to anything more Lovecraftian than the usual name dropping (Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Old Ones, etc.) Additionally, there are several stories of fairly good quality which seem almost wholly unconnected to Lovecraftian themes at all, further contributing to the sense of padding. That leaves about half the collection, which thankfully has some pretty strong pieces. Among the standouts were stories by Grant Morrison, Robert M. Price, Alan Moore, D F Lewis, Brian Lumley (although he seems much too convential considering the goals of this collection), Don Webb, and D.M. Mitchell's own "Ward 23". Additionally, there are three illustrated/comic book-style stories. John Coulthart's adaptation of "The Call of Cthulhu" is "worth the price of admission alone." The other two "Third Eye Butterfly" and "Pills for Miss Betsy" are less overtly Lovecraftian while still evoking a certain Lovecraftian dread. The book concludes with a collection of three essays concerning the relationship of Lovecraft's fiction to modern occultism, which will likely be of more interest to the student of ceremonial magick than to the casual Lovecraft fan.

One of the failings of the collection is a rather superficial handling of "the current of semi-occult symbolism and shamanic imagery" in Lovecraft's fiction. The stronger works, such as Morrison's "Lovecraft in Heaven," Moore's "The Courtyard," or Lewis' "Meltdown" approach HPL's imagery with a knowledge of the tradition of weird fiction which he was working in. The prose poems, on the other hand, seem to take Lovecraftian themes as an entry for dwelling on their authors' own "semi-occult symbolism" which could be interesting for someone interested in the psychosexual baggage of modern occultism, but is much less so for anyone interested in the Lovecraftian tradition.