u/SachaElven

[This doesn’t start with The Golden Dawn and it's pretty long but don’t worry, I get there. Also, while there is no smoking gun, that Golden Dawn connection is looking more and more likely. And, well, there’s even more smoke pointing towards Chambers having lit a sort of literary bonfire too.]

Just as the Discordians probably didn’t know that Robert W. Chambers had written a novel called Eris in 1923, I’m willing to bet that Anton LaVey, founder of The Church of Satan and his own brand of Satanism, didn’t know that R.W. Chambers had his number around 10 years before he was ever born. Or maybe he did. I’m sort of kidding but before I tell you about another weird resonance, let me set the table. So yeah, The King in Yellow is mentioned in Anton LaVey’s magnum opus. Wikipedia describes said magnum opus in the following terms: “The Satanic Bible a collection of essays, observations, and rituals published by Anton LaVey in 1969. It is the central religious text of LaVeyan Satanism, and is considered the foundation of its philosophy and dogma.” But to be fair, TKiY is only brought up by Michael A. Aquino in the introduction (we’ll get back to him): 

"The [Satanic] Bible is a most insidious document. One is strongly tempted to compare it with that obscure, malefic mythology The King in Yellow, a psycho-political work that supposedly drove its readers to madness and damnation."

But not to worry, there is ample evidence that LaVey was himself a fan of TKiY and LaVey’s Satanic Rituals, a companion to his bible, even quotes Cassilda’s Song. The section concerned with "L'air épais - The Ceremony of the Stifling Air" starts with it. And interestingly enough, that ritual is said by LaVey to have originated from Knight Templars and the influence that the Yezidis have had on them. I say interestingly, because Rick Lai once made a pretty convincing case for Chambers’ The Slayer of Souls being the ur-text of the unfortunately slanderous depiction of the Yezidis which had become very popular in American pulp fiction of the 20th century and which has sadly influenced real-life perception of them; and because both the Templars and the Yezidis are an important component of Chambers’ Erlik/Yian/Tenedos/Marmora Mythos (of which The Slayer of Souls is part of) which relates to the last living heir of a lost throne which was started by a Templar of Marmora and Tenedos (see The Girl Philippa). LaVey says that The Templars "entered the Courtyard of the Serpent [serpent and dragon are “wyrms”, Court of the Dragon anyone?] and the Sanctuary of the Peacock [meaning Melek Taus]” and there are a couple more things about the ritual that feel quite TKiY-coded (oh, and LaVey also connects Carcosa to the mystical Shamballah). Btw, Rick Lai tackles the Yezidi/Assassins/Erlik Mythos and the RWC influence in one episode of the Lovecraft eZine podcast, I thought it was one about RWC and couldn't find it again but I just remembered that it might actually have been an episode on R.E. Howard because a lot of the Slayer of Souls influence seems to have found greater reach through R.E. Howard’s repurposing of it (his track record for having accidentally influenced conspiracy theories is second to none; you can thank Maurice Doreal thinking that Howard’s serpent-men from Valusia were real for the whole reptilian thing) and later William Seabrook (who took the slanderous Yezidi stuff to new heights, at least in terms of popularity). I’ll make sure to identify the episode in question as soon as I find it again.

Later in Satanic Rituals, LaVey writes of the Illuminati, the Hell Fire Clubs (there is one Hell Fire Club in Chambers’ The Rake and the Hussy and a Fireside Club whose occultist and bohemian members are jokingly referred to as "the Ancient and Unmitigated Order of Talkers" in The Talkers) and of the Golden Dawn (an esoteric secret society which Aleister Crowley belonged to). Of course, LaVey is an occultist and what he writes has sometimes very little basis in fact, but it’s interesting to note that he identifies Robert W. Chambers as being a member of “the Order” alongside W.B. Yeats who was an actual confirmed member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Speaking of which, Chambers name-drops Yeats in Iole (a book which mentions “the talkers”), alongside Bernard Haw (a parody of George Bernard Shaw, a friend of W.B. Yeats) and a certain Fiona. Meaning probably Fiona Macleod aka William Sharp since they were also a friend of Yeats and there aren’t that many notable writers with that name. Like I said elsewhere, Sharp was one of RWC’s firstliterary champions but also, the mention of a Fiona in Iole happened only a few months (May 1905 vs December 1905) before Sharp died and it was revealed that Sharp/Macleod were one person more publicly.

Not a proof that Chambers was a member of the Golden Dawn by any means, but I’m kinda starting to think he was at least privy to some of its goings on. Especially since Chambers was apparently acquainted with Algernon Blackwood (according to Blackwood biographer Mike Ashley, "Blackwood must have met Chambers at this time [in the early 1890s when he was sharing a studio with Gibson for whom Blackwood was modeling]"; and Blackwood was a member of the Golden Dawn; also his The Dance of Death is rather similar to Chambers' The Case of Mr. Helmer) and that his later novel The Talkers is very occult heavy. In fact, it mentions Oliver Lodge (one character is in the possession of a machine invented by Lodge) and Arthur Conan Doyle in the same breath (both were members of The Ghost Club to which Yeats also belonged and so did Blackwood; plus Doyle was alleged to have been in the Golden Dawn), as well as William Crooke (a member of the Golden Dawn and the Ghost Club) and a plethora of other people involved in occultism such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Thomas Edison (the machine to communicate with the dead-thing), R.L. Stevenson (through a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde nod), Enrico Imoda, J.L.W.P. Matla and G.L. Zaalberg Van Zelst. Hell, the book is about apparitions and the supernatural and it mentions the Battle of Mons, there’s no way Chambers didn’t know about/have in mind the legend of the Angels of Mons when he wrote it. A legend which was conceived by Arthur Machen… another member of the Golden Dawn. Am I the only one who thinks that’s kind of a lot of Golden Dawn connections? I mean, nowadays we know a lot about that organization but back then you kinda needed to know the right people to know anything about it and its members.

And that’s not all! Casimir Sadoul, one of the two central occultists from The Talkers (the other is Dr. Sydney Pockman), is said to write for The Wasp… a magazine for which Ambrose Bierce was once an editor. Now, to my knowledge Bierce was not a member of any esoteric organization (although he was apparently a member of the Bohemian Club which is sometimes mentioned in his stories) but he definitively had an interest in the matter (Theosophy and Blavatsky are mentioned in his horror fiction and a handful of his writings are addressed to/mention the Society for Psychical Research which several of the people mentioned earlier were also members of). And he’s mentioned by LaVey in Satanic Rituals. Plus, LaVey actually met both Fritz Leiber and Clark Ashton Smith (there’s even photos of LaVey, Smith and another Cthulhu Mythos writer, Robert Barbour Johnson, together). And, well, Smith actually knew Bierce. I mention Fritz Leiber because he wrote a really weird book called The Pale Brown Thing/Our Lady of Darkness which involves several real-life figures like Clark Ashton Smith and Ambrose Bierce (and his Bohemian Club friends) being part of an occult group whose name is in the book itself explained to be a pied-de-nez to the Golden Dawn (their’s is the Order of the Onyx Dusk). And although it’s assuredly only a coincidence, the fictional writing of the leader of that group, Thibaut de Castries, concerns the “magical” powers of cities, and his magnum opus is called Megalopolisomancy. And, well, some of it sounds like how the protagonist of Chambers’ Outsiders sees and writes about New York. He calls it The Iron City of The Iron Altar and describes it as if it was a malignant living thing with a will of its own. Outsiders concerns a sort of Bohemian commune/not-so secret society called the Monastery (and its members have parody titles reflecting its “monastic” character) which you have to be invited into and which is described in a very Rabelaisian way.

 
One of its members is the only Sydney except Dr. Sydney Pockman in all of RWC. He’s called Sydney Jaune (Jaune is Yellow in French). As for Sydney Pockman of The Talkers, he is first introduced dressed as a king with yellow fluttering robes (and he is thrice described as wearing a pallid smirk). Despite not liking each other, Sydney and Oliver Locke (the hero of Outsiders) are referred to as friends. And Sydney Pockman, Sutton (the hero of The Talkers) and Sadoul are a kind of trio which profoundly dislike each other and yet are somehow deeply connected. Especially through Gilda Greenway (whose aunt has the same surname as the heroine of Outsiders; Wyvern) aka “Queen in Green”/”the girl with two souls”.
Now that’s enough connections to warrant an entire Illuminatus-like book taking these real-life connections, pseudo-connections and references, mixing them with fiction and taking them into truly weird places. One could go wild and posit that the Sadoul-Pockman-Sutton-Greenway four-way is about W.B. Yeats, Lucien Millevoye, RWC and Maud Gonne or something like that (especially considering Gonne’s children's names, Sylvère (surname of the 1st) and Iseult (first name of the 2nd), and their fates, both of which resonate with a few recurring things in RWC). Then again, maybe it’s weird enough as it is and fiction isn’t needed. I mean, for example, the first Hell Fire Club had for motto the François Rabelais’ quote “Do what thou wilt” which appeared on his fictional Abbey of Thelema, his “anti-monastery”. A motto which would later be reused by Aleister Crowley (who was in the Golden Dawn). If you wanted to get Eris involved in this, you could also take into consideration that The Talkers was also released in 1923 (at least in book form) and that a poor 23-years old man died at Crowley’s real-life Abbey of Thelema in 1923. But honestly that part is just depressing and sad (and so is the stuff about Maud Gonne and her children). These weird guru-led cults often have tragic consequences, less we forget because of the morbid fascination they hold over our imagination.

To go back to something less dark, let’s tackle why I said Chambers had LaVey’s number at the beginning of this thing. Well, there’s actually a character called Professor Le Vey (“a cracked-brained chemist”) who appears in Chambers’ The Crimson Tide. (Anton LaVey’s real name is Howard Stanton Levey, btw.) And that’s one of his few books which mentions Erlik, a Satanic figure from Mongol folklore (at least, Chambers links him to Satanism; and as we’ve seen, Chambers' Erlik/Yian Mythos features the Yezidis and Templars which LaVey likes so much, not to mention it distantly connects to the Yellow Mythos itself). Anyway, here’s how Le Vey is described: “The professor rose from one of the benches on the rostrum and came forward—a tall, black-bearded man, deathly pale, whose protruding, bluish eyes seemed almost stupid in their fixity.” That picture of Le Vey is not so dissimilar with how one might describe LaVey. The professor then goes on to say the following (I removed the dialog tags): 

“Words are by-products [...] and of minor importance. Deeds educate. T. N. T., also, is a byproduct, and of no use in conversation unless employed as an argument—[...]Tyranny has kicked you into the gutter, [...] Capital makes laws to keep you there and hires police and soldiers to enforce those laws. This is called civilisation. Is there anything for you to do except to pick yourselves out of the gutter and destroy what kicked you into it and what keeps you there? [...] Only a clean sweep will do it[.] [...] If you have a single germ of plague in the world, it will multiply. If you leave a single trace of what is called civilisation in the world, it will hatch out more tyrants, more capitalists, more laws. So there is only one remedy. Destruction. Total annihilation. Nothing less can purify this rotten hell they call the world!” 

He then unrolls a manuscript and reads a ten point communist-type manifesto (not quite the Nine Satanic Statements of LaVey’s bible). LaVey might not have liked the communist part but the Social Darwinist aspects of that previous speech probably would have appealed to him. Anyway, Professor Le Vey is made to leave the stage by the police but not before he says the following (in an "emotionless voice") : “I told you how to argue[.] Anybody can talk with their mouths.” And as soon as he leaves the stage, an unnamed man cranks up that Social Darwinism by declaiming: “There is only one real law in the world! The fit survive! The unfit die! The strong take what they desire! The weak perish. That is the law of life!” Very Arthur Desmond/Ragnar Redbeard-like. And you know what? Desmond's Social Darwinist self-help book was an influence on LaVey; he even thanks him in the Satanic Bible. In fact, Desmond's book also influenced the Industrial Workers of the World Workers' rhetoric in the early 20th Century. Which, who knows, might be what influenced Chambers' own depiction of industrial labor unions in The Crimson Tide. At the very least, Professor Le Vey is explicitly addressing the Workers of the World and his rhetoric is very Desmond-like. Here’s a thorough article on that aspect of it (note the Dreams & Dynamite essay title). Oh, and there's this bit in The Crimson Tide which I rather like and which I’ll quote because it concerns Satan: 

But already the eternal signs were pointing to the end. [...] Gradually it became apparent to the girl that the great conflagration was slowly dying down beyond the seas; that there was to be no chance of her returning; that there was to be no need of her services even if she were already equipped to render any, and now, certainly, no time for her to learn anything which might once have admitted her to comradeship in the gigantic conflict between man and Satan. She was too late. The world’s tragedy was almost over.

All of this is pretty wild, no? At least, I think it’s wild. And just to be clear, Chambers would probably have hated LaVey despite their shared anti-communism; and there’s even a few things that the voice of reason coded characters say in Crimson Tide that would be labelled as communistic in the USA of 2026. But this is already too long to get into that. Because this is not quite done! There’s also the Aquino connection to tackle. It’s interesting to note that he called TKiY a “psycho-political work” and that later, in his The Temple Set Books, Aquino writes that LaVey would keep the “pact” he made with Satan in a metal strongbox, one which also contained his copy of TKiY. Plus, Aquino quotes LaVey’s comments on TKiY:

“First on my list, as it is the work of a writer of cheap romances who became demonically possessed after being involved in espionage work of a delicate nature, the implications of which are still cycling. Chambers, in his literary emergence from the Impressionists of his day, cast a die for Lovecraft, Orwell, Huxley, and many others. Yes, the reading of The King in Yellow in its entirety can drive one mad, if one realizes the insidiousness of the thing.”

Before he himself writes that it “may be read by the non-Initiate with consequences no worse than confusion, but to the Adept this book is exceedingly dangerous if misapplied.”

What I find fascinating is that assuredly fabricated mention of espionage work. Perhaps influenced by the fact that Chambers would later write several books about espionage or that have important spy-fiction elements to them, including The Slayer of Souls which even has a recurring spy character which we first meet in the supremely weird In Secrets which partly takes place in Isla, Scotland (Isla[y]? Like the Islay which Sharp/Macleod loved to write about? Maybe. Lots of weird stuff going one with the letter “y” in RWC and in general there is a lot of one letter-away stuff in RWC (Auros/Auris; Ausone/Aulone; Ker-Is/Ker-Is; Ylven/Elven)). But LaVey and especially Aquino, who was “a specialist in psychological warfare for military intelligence and an officer in the U.S. Army” according to Wikipedia, could have pushed the fun even further if they had known more about Chambers and his “cheap romances”. To quote a recent comment by one of our most knowledgeable Chambersian, HildredGhastaigne on the subject of RWC’s wife: 

“She's [Elsie Vaughn Moller) quite the enigma: uncited assertions online say she was the daughter of a French diplomat, and I can confirm she was born in France to a French father and American mother, speaking French at home until emigrating to America at four years old. Very young, and both French and American: how could she possibly be more Robert W's type? They got their marriage license in Washington, DC, which fits with the diplomat story. But that's all I have: no parent names, and a trifling few events, like her solo presence on a ship manifest in 1923, probably returning from a visit to Robert H. [their son] at school in England.”

And well, those diplomatic/espionage aspects (which just to be clear are, like H.G. said "uncited assertions" and LaVey's claims are even more suspect) could have been mined very well for other tantalizing fabrications if LaVey/Aquino had wanted to (and if they knew about that stuff). Because there is a recurring character-type in Chambersian fiction of the woman spy with conflicting French/German affiliations. That type appears with variations but it’s still quite recognizable. You have Sylvia Elven (like in TKiY), aka Sylvenne Duhamel (a French woman whose caught in a web of diplomatic intrigue with Germany; she’s also an actress), from Maids of Paradise (a book which RWC introduces like it was a roman à clef), you have Ilse Dumont from The Dark Star (which forms a diptych with The Slayer of Souls and which is part of that larger Mythos) who is a spy for the German and also an actress and you have the very Ilse Dumont-like Helsa Kampf (who is German but mistakenly believed to be a French spy) from In Secrets. Already there’s something kind of suggestive with those Elsie-like names and the German aspects (Elsie Moller was French-American but her name definitively sounds Germanic). But there’s also the German Karen von Reiter in Who Goes There who is also an actress and who changes her name to Karen Girard (a French-sounding surname) and who is hiding a cipher (which is explained and resolved in the story) that contains sensitive geopolitical information. Not to mention that I think there are only three Wyvern(s) in RWC. In Outsiders and in The Talkers, like I said, but also in Who Goes There (it’s a boat in Who Goes There and it sinks if I remember correctly; lots of submerged identities/treasures/secrets in Chambers). 

I mean, what a missed opportunity to play that chord for more esoteric grandstanding! Especially since there’s an entire web of cipher-related stuff in Chambers which involves the Carcosa, Seventh Seal, The Seal of Solomon and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (I’ve written a little more about this here and in the document I link to). Now, I do think there’s something hiding behind those ciphers and that decade-long web of connections (like you don’t put those kind of connections in your work and make references to hidden secrets, the place of the artist in his work, ciphers, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry and clueless critics/readers for decades for nothing), but I’m thinking it’s more in the lines of a literary project (maybe a literary sigil, if you want to get esoteric) or at best a sort literary proto-ARG with elements of autobiography. Not geopolitical secrets.

But if I were a 20th Century occultist trying to look cool, I might have thought about playing that hidden Great Game secret chord and hint at the fact that there’s a lot of treasure hunting in late Chambers for a reason. Especially since there’s another Sylvia/Ilse/Helsa/Karen like character in The Moonlit Way called Nihla Quellen aka Thessalie Dunois, a dancer who is explicitly said to not be French but Alsatian (that German/French duality again). She is accused of spying because her husband used her name and signature to conduct his pro-Germany/Turkey spying business (a variation of that plot-point shows up in The Girl Philippa; Philippa being revealed to be the lost heir of the Marmora/Tenedos throne). That dancer escapes to America and is helped out by an American painter who lives in a Monastery-like complex (like the one from Outsiders, I mean) called Dragon Court. And, well, that book is full of little resonances with TKiY. And there’s a cat in it named after August Strindberg, another Bohemian/occultist. Like I said, no smoking gun but, like, that’s a lot. Still, all of it has an air of plausible deniability and a lot of that web of connection could be coincidences and apophenia. It would be cool to find something tangible but I’m not a code-breaker yet.

P.S.: Concerning other cool coincidences/synchronicities. Argento’s Suspiria and Our Lady of Darkness (which mentions LaVey and Crowley btw) came out the same year. Both are very indebted to Thomas de Quincey (who might also have been an influence on Chambers, see the Ann(e)/Out of the Depths thing from The Restless Sex) and both are very alchemy-influenced. And long-time Dario Argento collaborator Luigi Cozzi himself directed a meta-sequel to Suspiria called The Black Cat/De Profundis. There were also two related comic book series: Le adventure di Stella Holmes—Detectivo dell'occulto (1990-1991) and Il museo degli orrori di Dario Argento (c.1990s), which appeared in the Profondo Rosso/Dario Argento Presenta magazine, and which centered around the character of Stella Holmes (I wrote a little something about Italian Lovecraftian cinema which tackles that amongst other things). Both series were created by Cozzi and later continued by other authors and artists. One of the Stella Holmes stories is about La Terza Madre (the second sequel to Suspiria) and another one involves Thibaut de Castries from that Leiber book! A great idea to bring it full-circle like that. Kudos to Cozzi or whomever thought of that idea. Also, Leiber wasn’t even the first author to write a book called Our Lady of Darkness which starts with an epigraph that’s an excerpt from that bit from Suspiria de Profundis by De Quincey where Our Lady of Darkness is introduced. Bernard Capes also did so in 1899 and a quick overview of the book seems to reveal that it also mixes “genuine” occult stuff and fictional occult stuff. There’s even another one from 1910 by Albert Dorrington and A.G. Stephens!

P.P.S.: Also, I’ll get to it soon enough, but now that I’ve read it, I think Ambrose Bierce straight up lied about the other 1895 Carcosa-related book. I’m also probably going to write something longer about the Mcleod/Sharp-Chambers connections because at the very least they had a lot of interests in common. They even seemed to have been interested in the Ker-Is legend for the same reasons; meaning the duality of the Dahut/Ahès character. For Chambers there’s the water/fire duality of the Jeanne d’Ys/Jeanne-la-flamme types which recurs in his work (Michelle d’Aulone and Athalie, Countess of Elven being the most explicit ones) and Mcleod wanted to write two plays, one called Dahut the Red and the other, Ahès the White. I also found out that Chambers makes a weird reference to The Maids of Paradise in The Young Man’s Girl just as its characters come across the Saint Graal stream. No idea why, but there’s enough conspicuous mentions of bodies of water and submerged secrets in Chambers to make me wonder. In fact, characters (meaning Hastur and Piriou Louis and Michelle d’Aulone) come across a river called L’Ombre during a hunt in The Drums of Aulone and the context is also very conspicuous there (Hastur cries “Game afoot” and L’Ombre just so happen to be the name of a story that’s a variation of Demoiselle d’Ys (which you know, is where Hastur and Piriou Louis first appear) and which also mentions d’Ys). I kind of took it as a “clue” to something else but I go into details about that in that long-long document of mine. I think I’ll have to reread those two books at some point. Not sure when I’ll ever have time to but we’ll see.

[The beginning of this is going to read as a slightly redundant for those that have read some of my previous posts but there's a lot of new stuff in this and I think I've connected the dots in a much more convincing way (YMMV, of course).]

Hi! So, I’ve spent 1 1⁄2 years researching the work of R.W. Chambers (RWC), and reading all of his 87 books, and the last 2-3 months trying to refine how to present my findings. Turns out that The King in Yellow is the central point of a larger project that Chambers kept tinkering on for most of his career. And for some reason, probably partly out of frustration with the reception of his work (when someone takes every chance they get, over a period of almost 40 years, to include bitter rants about critics/the public in their novels, that feels like deeply held resentment), he didn’t seem particularly inclined to make this obvious to anyone. In fact, he went about it in the most bafflingly cryptic/puzzle-like way imaginable. It’s all extremely strange and complicated (it even involves ciphers) and I’ve written a document where I share what I’ve found/try to make it make sense. Let’s just say there are many very good reasons why this has flown under the radar until now and the fact that I’ve even partially excavated anything is mostly due to lady luck (and some hard-work too) and the disparate but crucial previous work a few individuals who have each uncovered some very key elements without which this wouldn’t exist. So here goes (read at least ‘till you reach the bit about Louis Aulone finding “his” own grave and I’m sure you’ll be intrigued and by the time I tell you about Katherine Husted’s yellow house and the actual Rosicrucian ref in Iole and the probable Golden Daw ref, also in Iole, well, you tell me):

The thing with RWC’s overarching project is that you need a few reading keys in order to open it up. Mostly books. Some of those are books that have influenced him, like Le Foyer breton (from which RWC even repurposed a minor character), a book which might have partially flown under the radar on account of never having been translated fully into English (but which Rick Lai still succeeded in identifying as an influence). But once you’ve read its specific version of the legend of the city of Ys/Is/Ker-Ys/Ker-Is (RWC uses all those; Souvestre also uses Kéris/Keris), the Breton Atlantis, it’s hard not see all the parallel it contains with what little we know of the story of Carcosa. But perhaps the most important “keys” are the ones that were written by Chambers himself. Let me illustrate this with The Drums of Aulone/The Fear of God (1927), I’ll use what I think are the most important Chambersian connections to open it up for you (much more so than I’ve done previously; in case you’ve already read some of my posts). That novel features both Hastur and Piriou Louis from TKiY (also a conspicuously named Madame Lambeaux/Tatters), as well as a curious one-letter away connection between its two main female characters, Michelle d’Aulone and her cousin Athalie d’Auris (Baroness of Elven), and a church called St-Cassilda (the only other Cassilda in RWC).

By that I mean that there is a church called St-Cassilda in The Girl Philippa (1916); it’s in the town of Ausone (the only mention of such a name). Not only that, but it can be reached via a street called d’Auros. Ausone/Aulone, Auros/Auris. Not to mention TDoA is part of a diptych with The Sun Hawk and that there's actually a character called Chevalier d’Auros in there. Does it mean anything that in Eris (1922), which contains the only non-TKiY mention of Aldebaran, the titular heroine tells her lover to change the “i” in her name for an “o”? Wait ‘till this all stacks up. 

Here’s a claim: TDoA is quite probably a retelling of the story of Carcosa in a historical fiction mode (which is only one layer of the Carcosa onion; it’s much more mysterious and unknowable than just what follows). And that’s something which is made much clearer if you have a lot of context in mind (which I provide in the doc.), including on Le foyer breton. But let’s see if I can’t make a convincing case with the barebones: There’s Gribouri (“spirit of the dead”) whose role is basically that of The Stranger (meaning both the Carcosa Stranger and the Ker-Is Stranger) and who’s introduced in the Spring Gardens of Versailles which is/are described as a thoroughly otherworldly “fairyland”, there’s a life-shattering unmasking scene during which the The Sun King’s (also referred to as le Roi soleil and as, obviously, Louis 14th) wrath falls upon our heroes (the heroine even lets out a desperate cry) and there’s a princess-like character who pines for the lands (Carcosa?) that her family has lost (they were taken over by the King) after a disastrous visit to Versailles (Yhtill?) which forces them to flee to Québec (à quand TKiY en joual?). And Michelle’s fiery  inner conflict is described in terms that echo both the imagery found in Cassilda’s Song and the fate of St-Cassilda (also; lots of eyes like stars and unshed tears dried by wrath in RWC). Meanwhile Athalie’s descriptions emphasize her doll-like lifelessness and water imagery. A similar dynamic at play in Ailsa Paige (1910) between the titular Ailsa and her cousin Camilla (the only other Camilla in RWC). (Yhtill, Athalie, The Lake of Hali… any relation to Ythali the water nymph from Beating Wings which includes mentions of twin suns in it, a dead Pierrot, Red Venice and Omar Khayyam?).

A coincidence? Perhaps. But I rather doubt that the following is a coincidence: In The Gold Chase (1927), released the same year as TDoA, there is Louis Aulone who goes camping alone in a place called Solitude (RWC is a bit on the nose with the names). What happens? He finds a grave marker with his own name on it or rather, his ancestor’s name which is also Louis (d’)Aulone. This marks the beginning of a treasure hunt (lots of those in later RWC) which ultimately brings about his death. And as you might know, Bierce’s An Inhabitant of Carcosa is about the titular inhabitant coming across his own tomb. Much more about all this in the doc. (“[T]he realm of which I speak of is of the Soul.”) including stuff about a recurring female archetype in RWC. A quick word on her: The platonic ideal of that archetype is a “beautiful wom[a]n of doubtful antecedents who inhabit[s] forest glades” (The Silent Land) who is also an orphan from a royal/noble line and who has been adopted by a mad/eccentric father-figure who is implicated in a story of familial vengeance/exile (or just immigration). But the various knobs on that sound console can be slid up or down. One could argue that the apotheosis of this character is either Gilda Greenway, nicknamed “The Queen in Green” and “The Girl With Two Souls” from The Talkers (a book which reveals the fate of Clifford and Rowden from TKiY; as for “the talkers”  (jokingly referred to as "the Ancient and Unmitigated Order of Talkers”) that’s an expression from a poem by Walt Whitman which is also used in The Maker of Moons), or Jacqueline Nevers, “The Girl in Armor”, from The Business of Life. Jacqueline’s dad has the same name as Jeanne-la-flamme’s dad, btw. That’s a Breton heroine who's mentioned in The Demoiselle d’Ys from TKiY. Jeanne d’Ys, aka Jeanne from a city which sinks under the sea, and Jeanne the flame. Jeanne-la-flamme fought in the war of The Two Jeannes (Joans). Athalie/Michelle? Camilla/Cassilda? And at one point, Jacqueline sings a song by Yu Lao about a night moth with green wings who bears the name of a queen.

But are those archetypes or lazy reusing of types? Let’s tackle that. From The Firing Line: “I care for no other epitaph than the names of counties, cities, streets which we have named with our names.” That book also features a character named Louis Malcourt who says he talks like an autobiography and who makes an occult will in which he gives away 18 Chinese idols to his loved ones (he makes a comment about his only friend Hamil being the 19th; Malcourt being the 20th), especially the women he loved. “[G]ilded idols”, “deities of secrecy” whose “commandment is, 'Thou shalt not be found out.’” It also has a joke that concerns Hamil, Malcourt (who ends up dying by his own hands), a key hidden under a yellow rose bush and Rosicrucians rites (the Rosicrucians are also mentioned by name in Eris, alongside Aldebaran and the Rosy-Cross, the only non-TKiY mention of it). Any other yellow roses in 87 books? Only in TKiY. Speaking of people who have the names of places (like Whistling Cat, Lorraine, Elven, Cintra, Ormond, et cetera) and places who have the name of people, there’s another Sylvia Elven in The Maids of Paradise. Chambers' preface to that book makes it sound like it’s a “roman à clef”. He writes that “certain localities and certain characters have been sufficiently disguised to render recognition improbable” and he ends the preface by wishing one of those persons well. But frankly, if that book is a roman-à-clef, all of his books could be. And maybe they are because he did seem to reuse the same rotating cast of “actors” over and over. But I haven’t systematized anything so I can’t say I’ve identified a definitive cast (but I do explore it). Although I’d bet it lines up with the characters in la commedia dell’arte (and real people that RWC knew; it’s his life), with the added caveat that everyone has their solar, lunar and ascendant signs (all color-coded since RWC has clusters of themes/places/things/people corresponding to certain colors (but of course, it’s rarely just one)). 

Is this starting to sound like RWC was playing some kind of literary game with his unknowing public? Well, there are ciphers too and they are part of an often pretty explicit web of connections. And since those connections are separated by decades, one might be forgiven for wondering if the ciphers don’t have a use outside of the stories they appear in. So,  this web of connection, it exists between two actual ciphers, The Four/Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse (aka The Stonish Giants, probably), The Seventh Seal (which lets loose the aforementioned horsemen if broken and brings about the apocalypse) and Solomon’s Seal (“some believe that the Beast of the Earth, which should appear near the Last Judgment day, will come bearing "the Seal of Solomon”” (Wikipedia)). I’ll keep this short but let me just say that it concerns the aforementioned The Talkers, The Maids-At-Arms but also:

The Silent Land (1896): The Seventh Seal and Carcosa are mentioned in the same breath (alongside a queen who makes everything green and The Man in Purple Tatters). In fact, it’s the last story where Carcosa is ever named directly. Which is thematically fitting considering that the breaking of the 7th seal “indicates that the first act of the mystery has ended, and another is about to begin” (and that it brings about a great silence). The Talkers include a very Silent Land-like interlude (“solitude is in the soul”) and a very conspicuous dictionary which is mentioned just before a passage which echoes all that stuff I just mentioned in The Silent Land (“The was once a king” in TSL vs. “There was once a queen” in The Talkers).

Solomon’s Seal (1906) and In Secret (1919): Solomon’s Seal is both the name of a story and of the cipher at its center. As for In Secret, it directly refers to The Seal of Solomon. And it's about a cipher breaker character called Evelyn Erith who serendipitously finds a man called Kay McKay from Isla (Is-là?/Is-there?) who knows the “Great Secret”. (In Solomon’s Seal, a cipher is broken in order to find a woman called Edith Inwood.) In Secret includes an absolute barrage of TKiY-like imagery and it has a completely different use of capitalization (unmotivated by context or character; stuff like “GOOD-evening” when nothing intense is going on) than is usually found in RWC. Also, the only code-book in all of RWC’s work (who is cryptography obsessed in case it needed to be said) is a dictionary from In Secret (“Maybe that’s the key? [...] “Why—why, it’s a DICTIONARY!”). The only copy I could find is in Saarbrücken. I also have a weird feeling that there is a red herring concerning the Seal of Solomon but it’s probably nothing (anyway, it’s in the doc.).

The Fifth Horseman (1930): In which we are told about the titular red-coded Fifth Horseman and in which the playwright protagonist finally completes the much anticipated 2nd act of the titular play (“There's your devilish second act”). He also says that he has hidden its real ending/third act. The final 5 words of the book are “The Apocalypse of the Commonplace” (it ends with it). Ah, good, so Maids-At-Arms confirm that the Horsemen are loose and this confirms that the Apocalypse has already happened. I guess we’re safe then.

Well, that’s long enough. You can check out the document if you want to know a lot more; including why I believe that there’s at least two lost/hidden KiY sequels that can be reconstituted. Tell me what you think if you ever read them and if you think it’s relevant that the words “the silent land” (in German) appear in the epigraph of one of those stories (in its magazine apparition only). I also wrote about why Hastur probably can’t be dissociated from the always forgotten Piriou Louis and who he/they might be. That part is more speculative though. But don’t worry, aside from stuff at the very end I’ve kept most of my more wildly speculative/exploratory/far-fetched ideas elsewhere (including why part of me still believes that the ciphers might hide you-can-guess-what… but that’s almost certainly just wishful thinking) So here’s the document (same name as this post to avoid confusion) which I’ve put on archive-dot-org (a website which has been absolutely essential in order to research this; all my sources and thank yous are in there too btw). Hopefully some of you will find this as interesting as I do. I’m off to celebrate being done with this (for now, I guess) by going to see the show of a singer whose name means golden in French. Feels appropriate.

P.S.: The line about the realm of the soul is from Snows of Yesteryears (I tackle why I think it was at the very least co-written by RWC and not just his son who is credited as the author). A story about the lost work of François Villon (RWC was crazy about medieval literature). He mentions that his magnum opus is 20 volumes long (20 Chinese idols? Friends, family, lovers?), that they are 10 cantos each (TKiY is 10 entries long and so are the two lost sequels, if you believe in them), that it is about love and that it is dedicated to the women he has loved. One of which could be said to correspond to the Queen in Green archetype on account of sharing her name (and red hair) with one of the most important examples of it (and who is saved in what amounts to a salvific suicidal fantasy by the most Malcourt-like character in all RWC), one has the same first name of Chambers’ older neighbor, Katherine Husted (RWC’s son published some of his stories under the name Robert Husted Chambers) and the last one is named after a flower and is implied to be deceased (the “lifeless” Athalie is compared to a water flower).

These three archetypes are in fact titular trio that makes up The Maids of Paradise: a deluded but kind and world-weary countess (who’s taken advantage off by a Gribouri-like figure), the fiery and morally complex Sylvia Elven and Jacqueline, the Flying Mermaid of Ker-Ys, who survives a practically supernatural feat of swimming. Also, there are couple romances with notable age-gaps in RWC, one of which is between Scott Seagrave and his ex-governess called Kathleen Severn (Severn, like the name of the character who finds the dead Sylvia Elven in TKiY). Also people called Katherine Husted’s place “the yellow house” and it had Italian gardens. In Iole, which partly takes place somewhere called Rose-Cross (like the Rosicrucian symbol of the Rosy-Cross which is also in Eris and Enter the Queen, a story which features characters from TKiY), there is a reference to The Firing Line in it (they share an opérette called The Inca) and not long after it appears, it talks about dead art being resurrected and it mentions “the talkers” and, later, it mentions the authors Yeats and Fiona. Perhaps W.B. Yeats and Fiona Macleod/William Sharp? Two authors who were part of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In fact, William Sharp/Fiona Macleod, who died the year Iole came out, was one of the first champions of Chambers’ writing. And well, the HOofGD was an esoteric order which was heavily influenced by Rosicrucian teachings and which had a color-coding system that rather resembles Chambers’ own. Maybe someone knowlegeable about the HOofGD might read The Talkers and recognize who its two central occultists, Casimir Sadoul and Dr. Pockman, might represent.