After his early morning appointment with the cops, Thelonius headed straight back to his townhouse to bang out an article on the kidnapping of the Swami, the death of Millie and the investigation of Gerloch's home. Thelonius was careful to include only those details that he shared with the police. He was saving the lurid occult angle until after he had a chance to follow up on the leads discovered in Gerloch's home.
The typing served two purposes; it helped Thelonius organize his thoughts on the incident and it also produced a document that along with his photographs would (hopefully) provide the cash for last month's bills. When the article was finished, he gathered up his photos, the vials of silvery material, and his notes on the whole Swami affair and headed out on the streets of New York.
He made a brief stop at one of the semi reputable publishers of true crime stories and left his manuscript and photographs with the young secretary. Thelonius had done business with this publisher before, and he was almost certain that they would purchase his material for publication.
From there he made his way over to the library, and began the day long process of cross referencing the terms and place names mentioned in the ashen scraps from Gerloch's home. He was certain the pages referred to a comparative discussion of Germanic and Slavic occultism, and he was hoping to find mention of a book or books that the pages may have been taken from.
After a day of research, Thelonius unfolded himself from the cramped study carrel on the third floor of the New York Public library. He stretched his legs and reflected back over the day's activities. It had been a long day, and it still wasn't over yet.
Before returning home, Thelonius made a final stop back to the unremarkable alley door that was the portal to Spider's demense. Entering the cluttered antechamber, he approached the boy sitting behind the over sized desk.
"I'm here to honor my part of the bargain." He said, withdrawing one of the vials from his pocket and placing it on the desk before the boy. "I'm not exactly sure if this is the ectoplasm he wanted, but it's the silvery stuff in my photograph....at least I think it is." Anyway, I hope he considers the debt paid."
Without waiting for a response, Thelonius turned and headed outside. Something about that place made him ill at ease, and although he was not claustrophobic being inside that building felt suffocating somehow.
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When he sat down in the library at about noon, the first thing Thelonius did was to find a reliable German-English dictionary and translate the remaining fragments of paper.
Hour two. "Is there any book from which these passages are taken?" (Passed library roll.) There seemed to be nothing about anybody named Leonis or any planks with Slavic runes on them. However, the New York Public Library did, for some reason that Thelonius would have to ponder later, have copies of Lanz's magazine, Ostara. Therein, Thelonius found an article published by Niklas Abendroth, a student of Lanz's. Why, this was the very article mentioned in Gerloch's scraps! It briefly related an amateurish narrative about the discovery of a second century gravestone in Obebeyern, Bavaria. The inscription on the stone was in Old High German language, written in the letters of the Elder Futhark alphabet. Per Abendroth's translation the inscription was:
for Olaf
I know that I hang on a windy tree
For days and nights,
Wounded on his axe, the hammer of THURON,
Only myself, he
-[broken stone]-
I know THURON when I see,
Up in a tree,
-[broken stone]-
Just as stated in Gerloch's notes, Abendroth claimed that the inscription was useful as an incantation. Speaking the inscription in the Old High German tongue would allow one to, according to the article, divine the future of the Hyperborean lineages, which in this context seemed to be synonymous with "Aryans". Abendroth goes on to discuss how the Hyperborean lineages – the Aryans – were in a period of decline. Predictably in line with his mentor's opinions, he suggested selective breeding among Germans as the only viable solution to the problem.
(Successful idea roll.) Thelonius recalled that Gerloch was doubtful that Abendroth could actually translate Elder Futhark runes. In one scrap, Gerloch wrote that Bull claimed that the actual content of the language was less important than the cadence and the sounds made. Nevertheless, Gerloch saw fit to reconstruct his own version of Abendroth's inscription by crossing it with bits from Leonis', likewise dubious, translation of the supposed Slavic planks and then translating the whole thing in Old High German. Who was right, Bull or Gerloch?
(Subsequent successful idea roll.) Maybe if Thelonius somehow could piece Gerloch's incantation together from the fragments that he had of it – then maybe he could, just as Gerloch himself had done, use pieces from the other poems to complete the missing sections of Gerloch's incantation . . . ?
Hour three. After exhausting the available resources and determining that Gerloch's comparison was likely his own original work, the most pressing topic at hand seemed to be the Hyperboreans, for it was access to their future that Abendroth's spell offered. (Passed a library use check.) Well! Takes on the Hyperboreans were plentiful enough, so plentiful that Thel thought to group them into two categories, either (a) "references in Classical Antiquity" or as (b) "references in the occult".
(a) In Pablo Grivale's The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Thelonius found a nice summary piece. (Posted to main blog.) Leaving the dictionary behind, he determined that the Hyperboreans had been identified with many different peoples – Gerloch himself gave a list of many of these nations in his scraps. Thelonius also learned that, just as Gerloch had written in his scraps, the only known ethnographic work on the Hyperboreans was the lost dissertation piece by Hectaeus of Abdera.
(Clarifications for terms in Grivale's text:
- Scythians: (Successful history roll.) Generally identified as the ancestors of the Russians and Slavic peoples
- Delos: (Successful history roll.) A sacred island in the Cyclades island chain, near Mykonos in the Aegean Sea
- Dodona: (Failed history roll, successful archaeology roll.) An Greek island oracle.
- Carystos: (Failed history roll, failed archaeology; you can find information on Carystos with an hour of library use.)
- Euboea: (Successful knowledge roll.) The second largest Greek island
(b) In occult usage, the Hyperboreans figured most prominently in (just as Thel expected) Theosophy and Ariosophy. In Theosophy they were considered to be a race of spirit beings, which had degenerated (by way of becoming flesh-and-blood material beings) into apelike forms that, in turn, slowly evolved into humanity. The Ariosophic interpretations were broadly similar. They considered the Hyperboreans to have been an ancient race of perfect humans, or near-gods. Most Ariosophic authors, of course, consider Germans to be the most direct and purist descendants of the Hyperboreans. Even in the work of Ariosophists who, like Lanz, didn't have much use for the term "Hyperborean" itself, the notion of a degenerated race of god-like humans is prominent. Those occultists who bothered to conjecture about their geographic location of the mythic country inevitably put it in the polar regions north of Europe.
Hour four. So who was Hectaeus of Abdera? (Successful library roll.) Hecataeus was a little know Greek historian, philosopher, and literary critic. Thelonius learned that he was generally accepted by historians to be a real person who lived in the late 4th century BCE, during the time of Alexander and his satraps. None of Hectaeus' works survived to the present day, though large portions of them could be found in the work of Diodorus Siculus, Apollonius of Rhodes, and Pliny the Elder. His lost dissertation, On the Hyperboreans, was held to be the definitive text on Hyperborean religion and statescraft.
Hours five through eight. How about some of those gods mentioned by Gerloch?
(a) Perun: Perun was a Slavic god. The Slavic pantheon, like almost every other pantheon of deities from Europe's pre-Christian days, was surprisingly uncertain, so little was really known about Perun. (The exceptions to the rules among European pantheons, as it turned out, and much to Thel's edification, were the Nordic pantheon, which benefitted from Scandinavian resistance to Christianization for several centuries, and those of the Greeks and Romans, who were largely reconstructed by Enlightenment scholars from ancient libraries.)
- Perun was a good candidate for the chief god of the Slavic pantheon, though he was often described alongside a twin, Volos or Veles.
- Perun was usually represented as a bearded Thor-like fellow or as an oak tree.
- He was a thunder god and even in contemporary times, Slavic homes still bore "gromoviti znaci," or thunder marks, to protect against lightning. In contemporary Slavic languages, "perun" means "thunder".
- References to Perun tended to characterize the Slavs as a henotheistic people – which is to say that though they believed in the existence of many gods, they only worshipped one, Perun. In this way, the ancient Slavs were similar to the ancient Jews.
- Perun was identified by modern academic with Thor (Nordic) and Indra (Vedic).
(b) Rod/ Svang Rod: Rod, according to Thel's research, was even more little known than Perun. His name meant pretty much what it sounded like, a rod, a symbol of authority. He was considered to be the creator god of the Slavic pantheon. In contemporary Slavic languages, "rod" was the word for "kin" or "birth".
(c) Thunor: Thunor was a god from the mostly-lost Germanic pantheon. In Old High German he was known as Donar. Scholars did not seem to differentiate between Thunor and Thor, except for linguistic purposes.
(d) Thor: Thelonius was already familiar with the name Thor, but he decided that this was a good time to really dig up as much information on him as possible. So, by seven o'clock on the 25th of April, Thelonius had reacquainted himself with all the major tales of the Thunderer.
- Thor was second in power to, and son of, Odin. His mother was Jord, Earth, and he was married to Sif, a little known goddess.
- Thor's hammer had a name, Mjolnir. Once the king of the giants stole Mjolnir. With the help of Loki and Freya, he discovered the hammer's whereabouts, but when Loki went to the Giant King to retrieve the hammer, the King refused to give the hammer back without a trade. What did he want to trade? He wanted Freya's hand in marriage. When Freya refused, Thor had no choice but to dress up as a bride and travel to the giants' kingdom to retrieve the hammer. The ruse worked; Thor got Mjolnir back and immediately set things right by beating every giant around into a pulp.
- He usually traveled in a chariot pulled by two black goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjostr.
- In the future, in the great final battle between gods and giants known as Ragnarok, Thor will battle the serpent Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent. He will kill the serpent, but take only nine steps before he himself is overcome by the serpent's poison.
- Thor was identified with Perun (Slavic), Indra (Vedic), Jupiter (Roman), Zeus (Greek), Agasthya (Vedic), and St. Elijah (in the Eastern Orthodox Church).
(If you'd like to pop out a journalistic piece, or piece of a piece, I can use Byakhee to put it in a newspaper article-like format for posting to the main blog.)
At Spider's shop, the kid snatched the sample and put it in a drawer. "Fine. The master'll be in touch if he needs anything."
Outside, the cool night air was a relief from Spider's stuffy shop. It was beginning to drizzle in that light, misting way that adds a romantic caste to even New York's ground-down streets. Thel fondled the vials in his pocket and wondered what to do with them. Surely, Henri and Cati would be interested in his findings at the library, and if he was going to get their help to piece together Gerloch's incantation, he'd have to provide the two non-German speakers with English versions of the fragments. Then again, was it worth getting them any more involved? He had already seen how dangerous these cultists could be.
He could decide in the morning. Thelonius needed a night to stretch his legs, to unwind, and to shake off the aura of weirdness. If that sort of thing could be shaken off, like rain drops on his crumpled hat.
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