In some places they was little stones strewed abaout—like charms—with somethin’ on ’em like what ye call a swastika naowadays. Prob’ly them was the Old Ones’ signs.

• H. P. Lovecraft, "The Shadow over Innsmouth" (written Nov-Dec 1931, published by Visionary Publishing in 1936)

The Swastika or hooked cross 卐 goes back to prehistoric times in India & elsewhere, while various cruciform types figured so largely in Aztec-Mayan religious iconography that the Conquistadores thought the natives were half-turned to some variant of Christianity!

• H. P. Lovecraft to Kenneth Sterling, 6 Oct 1935, Letters to Robert Bloch and Others 251

Religion was a leading interest in Tsath, though very few actually believed in the supernatural. What was desired was the aesthetic and emotional exaltation bred by the mystical moods and sensuous rites which attended the colourful ancestral faith. Temples to Great Tulu, a spirit of universal harmony anciently symbolised as the octopus-headed god who had brought all men down from the stars, were the most richly constructed objects in all K’n-yan; while the cryptic shrines of Yig, the principle of life symbolised as the Father of all Serpents, were almost as lavish and remarkable. In time Zamacona learned much of the orgies and sacrifices connected with this religion, but seemed piously reluctant to describe them in his manuscript. He himself never participated in any of the rites save those which he mistook for perversions of his own faith; nor did he ever lose an opportunity to try to convert the people to that faith of the Cross which the Spaniards hoped to make universal.

• H. P. Lovecraft, "The Mound" (ghostwritten for Zealia Brown Reed Bishop in Dec 1929-Jan 1930, published Weird Tales Nov 1940)

Sort of a continuum of thought here I've been meditating on - Lovecraft never talked a great deal about iconography, but his letters and fiction are extensive enough that you can tease out bits like this - it being remembered that Lovecraft was around when the swastika was just a generic good luck charm, before its adoption by the Nazis, and he was aware of efforts by anthropologists and the like to find common underlying motifs between different religions, as exemplified in works like The Golden Bough. In the decades after World War II and the revelations of the Holocaust, of course, the swastika reference (and Lovecraft's general racism, anti-Semiticism, subscription to eugenics, and approval of some aspects of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis' political and cultural programmes) has occasionally been overblown a bit.

I've been meditating more on Yig today, however - Lovecraft's depiction being in line with anthropological theories about the sexual origins of "serpent worship" - Robert E. Howard once wrote to Lovecraft:

For my part, I am too little versed in antiquities to even offer an opinion, but I am inclined to think that these figures represent a pre-Christian age and have some phallic significance. I am especially inclined to this view by the consistent use of triangles in the stone figure. Phallic worship was very common in Ireland, as you know — the legend of Saint Patrick and the snakes being symbolical of the driving out of the cult — and in almost every locality where phallic worship thrived, small images representing the cult have been found, in such widely scattered places as Africa, India and Mexico. Though of course the workmanship of the images differs with the locality and I have never seen or heard of, figures just like these of yours. At any rate, they are fascinating and open up enormous fields of dramatic conjecture. I am sure you could build some magnificent tales out of them.

• Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, Oct 1930, CL2.95

Howard's source for this was probably Otto A. Wall's Sex and Sex Worship (1919), one of those quasi-anthropological sexology works that limped past the censors in early 20th-century America under the guise of being a serious academic work - I go into it a bit here.

Anyway, just a bit of a ramble through dead men's letters.

I wrote two pieces (one for my blog, one for the Washington Post) a few weeks ago on the history, and policy, behind US presidential unilateral authority on nuclear weapons. These generated some interesting comments (and some uninteresting ones...), and so this morning I posted a little discussion about some of the issues that it raised for other people, and my thoughts on them: The President and the Bomb: Redux.

Since I can never seem to get around to posting in the Saturday Readings threads, I'll go ahead and post what I've been reading lately here.

I completed James Kloppenberg's massive Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought a couple of weeks ago. It's one of those truly rare books that can change the way you look at the world. I know for me it definitely provided me with a bit more confidence in democracy after a year in which my confidence had declined considerably. The only knock I have on the book is that Kloppenberg really breezes through Europe after the 1830s.

I also finished Hew Strachan's The First World War yesterday. I've heard it's the go-to overview of the war but I thought that he got lost in the weeds to much with military maneuvers which I couldn't follow due to the lack of maps. There were also a few cases where he assumed the reader had a basic level of knowledge about the war that I didn't have; I don't know if that reflects poorly on me or Strachan. Overall, it was decidedly average. If any one has any suggestions for other good overviews, preferably with a greater focus on politics and diplomacy, I'd love to hear some recommendations.

Thirdly, after 200 pages I have given up on Richard Evans' new book, The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914. This was an absolutely maddening book to read, primarily because Evans is so obviously overwhelmed by the amount of material he has to get through. The book badly needed a better editor that would have made Evans write in a more coherent, structured manner. He blazes through names, dates, places, and events (often numbering in the double-digits in a paragraph) without discussing them. He also obviously had trouble coming up with a solid argument to tie the book together, which meant that after reading a portion of the book you're left without a clear understanding about the topic's significance. He does lay out a thesis, alluded to with the book's title: 19th century Europe was an era in which Europeans of all stripes--state leaders, the working-class, peasants, women, etc.--vied to gain power. He never defines exactly what power is. Obviously, that argument is so vague as to be meaningless. The same argument can be made about literally any other time and place in history. Evans also falls into the unfortunate trap of simply moving from one country to the next without tying it all together. There's way too much of "This happened in Belgium [paragraph]...It also happened in France [paragraph]...Similarly, it occurred in Britain as well...[paragraph]." I'm surprised at how bad this book is, especially after having seen how good Evans is at writing other well-written overviews with his Third Reich trilogy.

Finally, to replace Evans' book I've started reading Rod Kedward's La Vie en Bleu: France and the French since 1900. I'm only 30 pages in but so far it's been a great book.

What do you think are the best museums in London?

Happy Holidays!

Me (2016) in Friday Free-For-All, super late.

What would The Philippines look like today if it never invaded by any foreign power? Would it still unite itself or come to the modern age with a a dozen fully independent states? (Native Filipino here btw).