Dec 28, 2012
Care Frater G.,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As I earlier suggested to you that I might, I am undertaking a survey of published recreations that may have value in a course of occult training. In years past I found one in particular that seems to be very close kindred to my own unpublished — and in many respects unwritten — occultist pseudo-LARP V.I.T.R.I.O.L. In fact, the author of the Lovecraftian horror-through-correspondence “game” De Profundis indicated that he had left much of that unwritten as well, and he described its genesis in an experience “in the dreamwoods of Hypnos and Shub Niggurath.”
I have just read the second edition of De Profundis, which includes a great deal of additional material that plays up game-style mechanics, such as tables of keywords and inventories of archetypal characters and scenarios. Nevertheless, I think it is best appreciated as an engine for para-literature, rather than as a “roleplaying supplement,” as the nominators for the Diana Jones Award (whatever that is, indicated in the jacket copy) would have it. The material production of this volume is solid (and far superior to the staple-bound first edition!), and the translation/Englishing has resulted in an engaging English text from the Polish original.
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