Lin had originally intended to spread the events of this story over two tales. The first would have been “The Papers of Stephenson Blaine”, a collation of Mythos data derived from (= divided among) various sources, including Copeland's journals, ancient grimoires, etc., much of which probably wound up in "The Horror in the Gallery"/"Zorh-Ommog" instead. The second was “Out of the Ages”, of which the notes say, “Abhorrent idol from the waters off Ponape, brought back in 1937 by Stephenson Blaine from his expedition to Yhe, causes strange dreams of weird landscapes and curious suggestions ... this too is from the Blaine papers.” Here Blaine would have been a doublet of Copeland, rather than, as he turned out to be, the inheritor of the aftermath of Copeland’s discoveries.
Let no one think that the obvious borrowing of the title “Out of the Ages” means Carter unimaginatively copied from Lovecraft’s "Out of the Aeons." The similarity is so obvious that surely we are meant to mark it and to understand it as a salute to the flagship revision tale which has inspired the whole Xothic cycle. This tale first appeared in the Arkluim House anthology Nameless Places in 1975.
Out of the Ages
by Lin Carter
THIS manuscript was found among the papers of Dr. H. Stephenson Blaine, then Curator of Manuscripts at the Sanbourne Institute, in 1928. It would seem to be pages from a journal or diary which Dr. Blaine had been keeping shortly prior to his unfortunate collapse. A note by Mr. Arthur Wilcox Hodgkins, Dr. Blaine's assistant, who later succeeded him to the Curatorship, suggests that the material seemed to have some bearing on the deterioration of his health in the months prior to his nervous breakdown. Mr. Hodgkins therefore passed the manuscript along to the physician in charge of Dr. Blaine’s case, from whom this copy was obtained.
AS Curator of the Manuscripts Collection at the Sanbourne Institute of Pacific Antiquities in Santiago, California, it was my pleasure and duty to conduct a general inventory of the Copeland Bequest, which was awarded the Institute by the estate of the late Professor Harold Hadley Copeland in 1928, two years after his lamentable demise in a mental institution in San Francisco.
The bequest was long and eagerly anticipated by the members of the staff at Sanbourne, and, in particular, by myself. When it arrived at last, we discovered the bequest to consist of several large trunks of miscellaneous and unsorted papers (including at least one book-length unpublished manuscript), and a modest but highly selective collection of artifacts which the Professor had accumulated over the many years of his long, distinguished career.
Dismissing my assistants, I devoted the remainder of the day to cataloguing the contents of the trunks and boxes. I decided to examine the artifacts and antiquities first of all, as the Directors of the Institute were most anxious to place the more choice and interesting articles from the Copeland Collection on public exhibition during the forthcoming 1928 season. With excitement and great anticipation, I began my work.
I opened the packing case containing the artifacts collection with mingled emotions. Beyond mere curiosity as to what I should find therein, my predominant feelings were chose of regretful respect. The Professor had been twice my own age, and I had never known him on a personal level, but no scientist can work in any area of the prehistory, archeology, myth patterns, or folklore of the Pacific islanders for long without encountering the work of Harold Hadley Copeland. His is undoubtedly the most distinguished name in the young field of the study of Pacific antiquities, and such has been the case ever since the first publication of his monumental book, Prehistory in the Pacific: A Preliminary Investigation with Reference to the Myth Patterns of Southeast Asia (1902), a book which remains the classic of its field and which has proved a source of inspiration to at least two generations of scientists, including myself. And there is much that is admirable, even brilliant, in his Polynesian Mythology, with a Note on the Cthulhu Legend Cycle (1906), although, as I have written elsewhere, "it reflects his unfortunate and growing enthusiasm for questionable occult theories, which led to the regrettable erosion of his scholarly reputation and is perhaps indicative of the mental aberration which dominated his declining years", to which I added that it "remains to this day a massive work of scientific research."
From that high-water mark, however, the Professor rapidly declined. His unfortunate mania centered about a bygone Pacific civilization of extreme antiquity, of which the mysterious stone images on Easter Island and the megalithic ruined cities of Ponape are mere vestiges. From what little I then knew of his mania, it focused upon certain patterns of myth found commonly throughout Micronesia and most of the more populous Pacific islands, which concerned a numerous pantheon of gods or devils or evil spirits of extraterrestrial origin who came down to this world in remote ages and dominated the planet in the pre-Pleistocene.
In particular, he was interested in those deities who had their dominion over his beloved ancient Pacific. Native legends described them as completely non-human. unlike even the beasts, and as generally aquatic in nature. They had fought some sort of war with another group of cosmic gods from the stars, had been defeated, and, in some manner, thrown either into exile or into trance-like slumber, from which at some unknown future date they would awake, arise, and attempt the conquest of the earth again. A ludicrous myth, surely, although with a surprising sophistication to it; not at all the sort of thing one would expect from the imagination of primitive islanders.
With Professor Copeland's third major text, alas, it became obvious that his obsession had assumed the overwhelming proportions of a mania. Still, there is much that can be admired in that book, The Prehistoric Pacific in the light of the Ponape Scripture (1911), and it is a monumental work of sheer scholarship. Two years following publication of this book, he led an expedition into the depths of Asia, and in 1916 he published, in a privately printed brochure, his "conjectural translation" of the ancient stone tablets he had found in the comb of a prehistoric central Asian shaman. The shocking and blasphemous nature of his Zanthu Tablets led co official suppression; the Professor himself was asked to resign from the archaeological association of which he had been cofounder and past president. His decline from that point on was rapid.
Unpacking the artifacts, I found a typed list in a file folder, which described and attempted to date them. I reproduce it here.
1) Tapa cloth, Tonga Islands, circa 1897. Note 5-pointed star motif. (Eld. Sign?)
2) "Fisherman's god" image, Cook Islanders, about 1900. Native name: Zataniaga (? Zatamagwa—ref. #7)
3) Sepik River Valley figure, New Guinea, date unk. bur after 1895. Note cone-shaped torso, suggestion of tentacles, mane-like hair.
1) Carven shell pendant, Papua. 1902? Occopoidal head.
5) Carven stone door-jamb or talé. New Caledonia, circa 1892. Note 5-pointed star motif in conjunction with serpent-maned head—native name "Hommogah”