This is a slightly edited version of an article published in the CthulhuPalooza Zine (to get more info about the zine visit their myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/cthulhupalooza. A modified version of that article has also appeared in other zines.


Introducing The Temple of Abzu deck – by Howler

"The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination." - H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Frank Belknap Long, 1931

This article is about the Temple of Abzu deck which is a set of 99 cards created for people into Lovecraftian occultism and related areas but also for all people who at some point has been fascinated by the Yog-Sothothery evoked through his writing. Lovecraft heard the call from the depths and made it surface through his dream inspired style of storytelling full of strange and wondrous visions or alien and inhuman dark realities where ancient bubbling blasphemies moves about. Now this dark side has always existed beyond the known but Lovecraft was a master in calling it into the light so that his readers at least could get glimpses of the weird or forbidden things that lurks in the dark. This deck is created in the spirit of this and is a tool to explore this inner darkness.

But before going into the cards to deeply I think some background about how the deck came into existence might be interesting so lets say we start there and at some point I'll reconnect to the deck and explain more about it and it's uses.

There was this strange dream I had a few years ago about spirals and fractals that inspired me to create and experiment with a numerology system based upon the famous Fibonacci sequence. Now there are many interesting things one could go into about this famous numerical sequence but for this article let me just mention that it shows up in patterns all over nature and that it also comes up a lot in chaos theory. After finding a suitable mapping against the English Alphabet rather quickly, I tested it out and then put it aside as I was in the middle of some other big projects at the time. Little did I know what I had found.

Some time later there was this discussion in a forum about applying gematria (numerology) to the works of H.P Lovecraft. Well I dusted the system of and started to work with it together with people from the group. Over time it slowly dawned to me that there was something special with this system and some results was almost telling me outright: "Hey you got something good here!" Now, before we go further I must clarify a few things. First of all with work I mean calculating through words and phrases and searching for interesting patterns. Secondly with interesting patterns I mean things that excites the mind somehow and therefore from the view of the magician is energized and can by used by him (or her) to direct the will. The 'found patterns' can be looked at as a mind map upon were one's magical universe can be built and interestingly, as the patterns are based upon stuff mainly related to Lovecraft, one could actually look at this as a map of his writing and, by taking this one step further, a map of the things that inspired him and thus as a way into the dark wonders and horrors that spawned through him.

There is one big downside to working with gematria and that is that many people don't like to go into the calculating part more deeply than, for example, calculating the value of one's name and comparing it with calculations already done by others. This means that they never get the feeling for the interesting patterns that has been found.

But then one day after working with the system for like a year I got this idea has that made the findings accessible to all in a more intuitive way. What I'm talking about is the obviously the Temple of Abzu Deck.

Let us first dwell on the name. Abzu is an old name for the Abyss that in ancient Mesopotamian belief was looked upon as an freshwater ocean under the earth. Abzu therefore was the source of all streams, lakes, rivers and wells. The Lord of Abzu is the god Enki (later known in forms like Oannes and Dagon) who is closely associated with wisdom, arts and crafts and also with the practice of the magical arts. Enki had a Temple in Eridu that was known as E.abzu, "the temple or house of Abzu”.

I hope you can see what a great representation this underwater sea, the source from where the waters of the earth flows forth, is for what exists and moves beyond our conscious awareness and sometime comes to view in dreams or moments of inspiration and so on and thus influences us from beyond. This is the realm from were Lovecraft drew his inspiration, this is the realm were whispers are heard from strange shadows and it is from this place the Great Old Ones moulded the dreams of the first man.

Now there exist some numerical reasons for the name too and even though I'm trying my best to stay away from calculations in this article let us at least examine this briefly. Abzu has the same numerical value as the name of the gematria system we already have touched (it's called the 'All-in-One' gematria) and another word with this value is 'Fibonacci'. Notice how the name for the gematria system 'All-In-One' is also a title for Yog-Sothoth (the All-in-One and the One-in-All). A variation of the spelling of Abzu (Apsu) happens to have the same value as various names for the Abyss like the word 'Abyss' in itself but also like 'Abussos' (abyss or bottomless pit). The value in question is 11 and if you're at all into occultism you could hardly have missed how closely connected this number is to knowledge, magic and the 'false sephira' Daath and interestingly the word for 11 ( 'eleven') has the same value as the previously mentioned words: 'Abzu', 'All-in-One' and 'Fibonacci'. Finally 'Magic' = 11 and 'Knowledge' that has the value 29 becomes by standard numerological reduction 11 too ( 2 + 9 = 11).

The cards in the deck each have two phrases (printed on the top and bottom of the card) and in the middle some art. Both the art and phrases are in some way connected to the number of the card but they still leave much of the interpretation to the user (sort of in the spirit of the Rorschach inkblot test used in psychology) and this has been one of the main ideas when creating the deck. This means that the deck is perfect for intuitive readings. When you use the cards you will call forth inner pictures and feelings that can be used to further explore them and the inner dimensions they are connected with. Users will through this experience how closely connected to the underlying forces of Lovecraft's work this deck really is. Using it evokes ghostly scenes or entities from the realms beyond our 'normal' awareness and I look at the cards as links or gateways to those astral areas. When I created the deck I looked at it as the creation of a tool that could be used to explore Lovecraftian occultism, art, dreams and so on, and I'm sure people will come up with many other interesting ways to use the deck too.

If you want to know more about the deck check out [THIS] page.

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