Arthur Machen and The House of the Hidden Light

[MadsPLP]

There is a review of the Tartarus edition of The House of the Hidden Light here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/incomingFeeds/article753078.ece

According to the review, the foreword suggests that it is more like a coded drinking diary.

Quote Originally Posted by MorganScorpion

I believe that both Machen and Waite were deadly serious about this.

I am not sure that that necessarily would exclude that it could also be an elaborate hoax.

[Evans]

Quote Originally Posted by MadsPLP

I am not sure that that necessarily would exclude that it could also be an elaborate hoax.

While that may very well be true I'm loath to take anything a mainstream newspaper says about this kind of thing with any degree of seriousness. Probably just me being cynical but I have in confidence on their ability to deal with matters like this. (Thanks for the link though)

I must say I would be rather surprised if it had been a one hundred percent serious venture on Machen's part. I allways thought he didn't think to highly of magical orders.

[MadsPLP]

Quote Originally Posted by Evans

Quote Originally Posted by MadsPLP I am not sure that that necessarily would exclude that it could also be an elaborate hoax. While that may very well be true I'm loath to take anything a mainstream newspaper says about this kind of thing with any degree of seriousness. Probably just me being cynical but I have in confidence on their ability to deal with matters like this. (Thanks for the link though) I must say I would be rather surprised if it had been a one hundred percent serious venture on Machen's part. I allways thought he didn't think to highly of magical orders.

While I agree with you in general, I think the newspaper is merely referring to the foreword of the Tartarus edition.

I remember reading somewhere - though I can't remember where - that Machen was never that much involved with The Golden Dawn, and lost interest in it rather quickly, though he remained friends with A.E. Waite.

[Steve Dekorte]

Quote Originally Posted by Evans

I must say I would be rather surprised if it had been a one hundred percent serious venture on Machen's part. I allways thought he didn't think to highly of magical orders.

I thought I read that he was devoted to the some sort of ancient death/rebirth magical order - I think it may have been called christianity(?)

Steve, that very witty remark is pretty much on the ball.

Machen was annoyed at the way Christianity had been turned into a school for "moral" conduct, rather than what he saw it as: namely the great Mystery religion.

Mark S.

[Evans]

Quote Originally Posted by mark_samuels

Steve, that very witty remark is pretty much on the ball. Machen was annoyed at the way Christianity had been turned into a school for "moral" conduct, rather than what he saw it as: namely the great Mystery religion. Mark S.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but wasn't Machen's form of Christianity pretty indvidualistic towards the latter part of his life?

I believe Machen was a regular High Anglican (or Anglo-Catholic) churchgoer as he got older (by regular, I mean each Sunday). Though he pushed off if the sermon contained too much of what he called "twopenny-morality", and hit the nearest pub. The sacraments were what it was all about, for him.

Mark S.

[paeng]

I just found out that I've a copy of The Great God Pan in a 1944 edition of Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. It's a well-written tale.

I've A Machen Omnibus in my wish list but it costs $50 and besides the work just mentioned includes only two others works. (I think the price is higher because it's a large print edition.) Should I wait for another hardcover anthology to come out?

[Evans]

Oww I forget to mention I managed to get hold of a copy of The House of The Hidden Light over Christmas, I've just finished it a few days ago.

Its a rather tragic book when you think what fate had in store for some of the participants. I never knew A.E. Waite's early life was so hard - I may read Gilbert's biography of him if I can get hold of it.

@paeng: The two Tartarus collections of Machen's short stories are a great place to start. If you have a little money to spend and want to get a good compendium of his novellas try and look for a second hand copy of The Collected Arthur Machen by Christopher Palmer - it has some very interesting non fiction stuff as well. I hope one day his autobiographical writings will be bound together in one volume.

[The New Nonsense]

Quote Originally Posted by Evans

Oww I forget to mention I managed to get hold of a copy of The House of The Hidden Light over Christmas, I've just finished it a few days ago.

Now that you've read it, do you think it is a whimsy game between friends or a coded occult manuscript? I'm of the mind that it could be both. I'm not sure what the original intention was (perhaps we'll never know), but it certainly could be interpreted as either.