2020 - The Year of Lilith; The King in Yellow

I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens, where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the pallid mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth - a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow

 

The King in Yellow, Robert Chambers

We've known for quite a while now that The Destruction Team have a liking for the world of H.P. Lovecraft, movies being flooded with the symbolism and style of the Cthulhu Mythos - Bird Cage, Lovecraft Country, Cold Skin, Annihilation, True Detective - alongside actual direct renderings to the screen i.e. The Colour out of Space.   ''Lovecraftian Magick'' a la the Necronomicon has always been a slightly strange ''field'' in the history of magic as it often overlaps the ideas of Chaos Magic i.e. that you can summon fictional entities such as Cthulhu or Batman with historical record of the worship of literal entities, such as Dagon/Dagan from Mesopotamian and other world history-  so when you do summon Cthulhu are you summoning something all that fictitious? Although not as crazy as Enochian Magick, ''Lovecraftian Magick'' edges towards upper tier weirdness as far as the magical community is concerned which mainly busies itself these days with the slightly less weirdish worlds of Ancient Greece, Fairies and Catholicism - or, as is the trend.

THE KING IN YELLOW  

The King in Yellow is a series of short stories by the writer Robert Chambers and its material was included in the Cthulhu Mythos as after reading the book in 1927, Lovecraft made various references to it throughout his own work. The first four stories of the series are connected by the following devices: a play script called The King in Yellow; a malevolent entity bearing the same name; a strange symbol called The Yellow Sign (linked to the entity Hastur by H.P Lovecraft).  I first recalled this title when I came across The Yellow Sign in the Unifying Colour Theory of Malkuth at the beginning of 2019, and am now reminded of the King, once more, as we are drawn into the folds of the final embrace of 2020.  Although we have another four weeks of the Green Phase left, and certainly enough time for one of the wackier suggested events, the Yellow King is now rising.  Trump and Boris Johnson would be the Kings of our Yellow Spirits, but is this enough of an argument to pin this ultimate eldritch title on their yellow scalps?  What would it mean to de-yellow them?

THE PLAY CALLED THE KING IN YELLOW

The play, the King in Yellow, bends the reality of the actors exploring it and allows Hastur, or possibly Nyarlathotep to enter through them, to cross the line between fiction and fact.  The play is said to have spread like an infectious disease through the population, governments taking various measures to tackle its transmission - the original print bore the insignia of a golden salamander on its cover.  The play recounts the events of the final days of a fading dynasty on a distant world, the arrival of a stranger to the city, a masked ball and then the final, disastrous arrival of the King in Yellow.  Are we now unwittingly playing a part in that self-same masquerade that welcomes our destroyer?  There are said to multiple versions of this play and that the play is the lived reality of that dimension as opposed to it existing anywhere in fact, in space - these demons are creeping off the literal page. This cursed play lures its readers with a first act which is ordinary, mundane even - while the second act then drives them insane with revealed cosmic truths - it is this play that is the Killing Joke.  ''The very banality of the first act only allowed the blow afterwards to fall with more awful effect...''

Along the shore, the cloud-waves break

The twin suns sink behind the lake

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa

Strange is the night where black stars rise

And strange moons circle the skies

But stranger still

Is lost Carcosa

Songs that the Hyades shall sing

Where flap the tatters of the King

Must die unheard 

In lost Carcosa

Song of my soul, my voice is dead

Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

Shall dry and die

In lost Carcosa

Reflecting on this, and some of the syncs we can see crystallising out of the solution here, to what extent have the Yellow Spirits (nationalist, populist, rural ,Brexiteers, Trumpists - older people mainly) been gulled by the ''banality'' of the first act of Lilifluenza is something I am both curious about and dread to witness in reality.  For instance, if I was going to, say, drop a biological weapon targeted specifically at the older sections of the population for senecidal purposes, to free up a lot of dead money in the economy as well as reducing my health care, pension budgets etc, alongside reducing the population most resistant to the New World Orders' post-human vision of the future it might be a good idea to do this in a series of waves.  Let the first wave be a fairly mild strain of the virus (remember you have a considerable selection of blends or so after twenty years of experimentation in the lab), control social media and get them all to think we are shutting down the economy to protect them for no reason ''because it's a hoax'' and have them wander around like chickens without masks or other protection and then release the second strain under the cover of the first one.  Accompanying news headlines would be - ''the virus has mutated, the virus is now airborne, the virus is more lethal in the Fall/Winter because of the dark'', etc - and the target, these Yellow Spirits - either go out there undefended and die in their pride in that second wave, or they finally get the fear, swallow the pride and shut down the economy themselves by refusing to go out in the final gusts of the plague winds.  If you went straight out of the gates with a really lethal lilifluenza, the reaction would have been hazmat-ed boomers all over town (I guarantee it) and that would have severely reduced your death count - anyone who has played Plague Inc, knows the way in that game to victory is stealth.  Remember this has been extensively war-gamed in advance, with far better equipment than Plague Inc, and both sides of the debate over The Pallid Mask are ultimately manipulated and controlled.

THE PALLID MASK

Another scene from the book contains the following enigmatic dialogue:

Camilla: You sir, should unmask
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed it's time.  We have all laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: No mask? No mask!

The extent to which the mask divides us fascinates me, to think an instruction to temporarily wear a simple piece of cloth over our faces when in public settings would have provoked such a vociferous reaction - when we follow so many other fairly absurd laws and experience much more galling privations regularly, daily.  Its a fascinating study from both perspectives - the ones who absolutely love it and love enforcing it, and the ones for whom it causes an egoistic agony that is pushing them towards insurrection, sedition.  We cannot underestimate the extent to which various dark forces are driving that division, galvanising and antagonising both sides to foment greater and greater political instability - its not one side or the other that should win, the battle needs to be sustained, division and cognitive dissonance are the prize of this war.  Those people who resist the mask are constantly ranting about it, the thought alone obsesses them.  When the mask is finally removed, whether worn or no, there is no face beneath, for the mask has become the face

HAVE YOU FOUND THE YELLOW SIGN?

The Yellow Sign is a mysterious sigil capable of exerting fascination over viewers and manifesting sinister powers such as mind control and possession - and anyone who owns a copy of this sign opens themselves to its malevolent power.  The Unifying Colour Theory elicits a similar response, it fascinates us with its predictive power, but we have to ask continuously whether or not we are genuinely witnessing an occult revelation of profound intricacy and mystery or merely confirming our own biases via algorithm induced madness.  It wouldn't be Lovecraftian Magic, if it didn't test the minds to the limits.  We see the Yellow Sign now beginning to appear in movies - Tenet, Kingsman 3, Wonder Woman - like other researchers' minds see the One Concealed Eye of the Secret Sun, everywhere, the Open Eye being our own Star Revealed.  Like a maddened Hamlet we cry - ''The play is the thing, wherein we will catch the conscience of the King.'' 

Hated the Player, Loved his Craft.

The ambition of Napoleon and Caesar pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men, and controlled even their unborn thoughts.  He is a King, whom Emperors have served.

 

The King in Yellow, Robert Chambers