Test
KAYVEN
and researcher of the Cthulhu Mythos Cycle, Titus Crow, died during a freakish
storm that destroyed his house on the outskirts of London. While our world has
changed considerably since that time, there are still many who feel that Titus
Crow's untimely demise deprived us of a brilliant man and an intelligent
scholar whose wisdom is sadly lacking in today's world of instant gratification
and shallow sensory pleasures.
With that in mind, I've undertaken to compose a small and poorly done sketch on
Crow's life and work.
TITUS CROW: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE
All over the world, but particularly in Western Europe, there are now to be
found devotees -- occultists, authors, artists, and amateur archeologists --
whose work acknowledges a special debt to Titus Crow. Few people, however, know
who Titus Crow was. To them, he remains an obscure figure that seems to only
have importance in a bygone age. Yet such an assessment is too quickly made
when one realizes the full range of Titus Crow's life and influence.
*******
Titus Crow was born January 2, 1916, on the outskirts of London. (1) Little is
known of Titus Crow's early life, presumably by Crow's own choice since he
frequently stated his own feeling that his life didn't take any particular
direction until W.W.II. He was baptized on December 19th at St. Magnus Church
and was notable for being the last to be baptized in the ancient baptismal
chambers that had dated back to the time before the Roman occupation of
Britain. Records of the church show the Crow family to have been members and
benefactors of the church for several generations. (2)
Much of Titus' youth was spent traveling along with his father, a respected if
not well-known archeologist who worked with the Oriental Institute, on his many
trips to the Middle and Far East. In 1934, Titus Crow decided to attend the
University of Edinburgh and study archeology to obtain a formal degree. (3) It
was during the spring of 1935 that an event occurred that would dictate the
rest of Titus Crow's life. It was the discovery and purchase of a rare copy of
the Cthaat Aquadingen (4) While Titus had always had an interest in the occult
(an interest he blamed on an over active curiosity), it wasn't until his
obtainment of the tome did he approach the subject with serious scholarship.
While Crow never went into any detail as to how he came across the book,
claiming as he did that the story was innocent enough for telling but too full
of unlikely coincidence for the hearing (5), it was his discovery that much of
the information in the book's text and illustrations were in accord with recent
discoveries in the field of archeology that struck him most. The revelation to
him that occult lore seemed to be a tradition reaching far back into humanity's
past inspired Titus Crow to perform critical examinations of grimoire and books
of hidden history using the intellectual tools of research and science. It was
this interest that made Titus Crow the first to catalogue by specialized
subject the magical texts contained in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.
It was also the Cthaat Aquadingen that forced Crow into the study of
cryptography. While part of the book were written in plain Latin, other parts
were written in a code and only alluded to by the normal text.(6) Crow
attempted to break the code and wrote a paper for a professor on the use of
numerology in the construction of sixteenth century manuals of magic that would
one day find its way into the hands of the British Government.
For several years, Titus Crow would live as a pauper in Edinburgh while
traveling by train during the weekends to London to stay with his parents.
While at Edinburgh, Titus Crow became best friends with a chemistry student
named Taylor Ainsworth. Together Crow and Ainsworth would analyze and
reconstruct formulas and chemical compounds mentioned in the texts that Crow
was studying. A hobby that almost turned into disaster in the winter of 1937
when both Crow and Ainsworth almost burned down the Old College building. (7)
During the spring of '37, Crow came down with a serious illness which caused
him to be bedridden. Unfortunately for Titus, his father was about to conduct
an expedition to the site of Megiddo in Palestine and he was unable to join
him. It would be the last time that Titus Crow would see his father alive. (8)
In 1938, a young boy of 14 sent from America to London would once again change
Titus Crow's life. That boy was Henri-Laurent de Marigny, the only son of the
great New Orleans mystic Etienne-Laurent de Marigny. It was this famous mystic
that paid for a grey stone house in the Highgate area of London for Henri and
paid for a Mr. and Mrs. Adams, a professional butler and maid, to look after
him. (9) The reasons behind the elder De Marigny's actions have never been
clearly understood, especially by his own son. The only instructions given to
Mr. and Mrs. Adams was that Henri would be raised to be a proper gentleman and
the only thing given to Henri was a letter of introduction to Titus Crow. From
that moment on, Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent de Marigny became fast friends and
Mr. and Mrs. Adams would deplore Crow's influence over the boy with his ghost
stories and slight-of-hand tricks. For the rest of Crow's life, he would
consider Henri his best friend.
The next year, 1939, saw the start of the Second World War and Titus Crow's
decision to not complete his studies. (10) It was during this self-imposed
exile from academia that Titus Crow was approached by the War Department and
asked if he would be willing to consider working for their code-breaking
division. Apparently, an old professor of Crow's had had enough forethought to
keep Crow's paper on codes and then pass it along to a friend in British
Intelligence when the war broke out. Titus Crow jumped at the chance and that
December he formally joined the War Department as a consultant to the
Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchly Park. (11)
Unknown to Titus Crow at the time, events in Germany were conspiring to make
Crow's knowledge of the occult an essential part of the war. Josef Goebbels,
the Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany, had commissioned in November of that
year a Swiss astrologer named Karl Ernst Krafft to decipher the verse quatrains
of Nostradamus in such a way to indicate the success of Nazi aggression upon
Europe. Soon after this, a Romanian official living in London wrote to Krafft,
an old friend, asking him if his decipherment of the quatrains was refelective
of his own beliefs. When Krafft wrote back saying that they were and that he
was working for the Nazi hierarchy, the Romanian quickly passed this
information to the War Department. By August of 1940, it became obvious that
the Nazis were as interested in the occult for their war effort as they were
about guns and gasoline. British Intelligence found that the Nazis had set up
in 1935 an organization devoted to tracking down magical and occult tomes under
the name of Special Unit H (Sonderkommando H) and were heavily involved in
archeological digs under the department known as Ahnenerbe. A call quickly
went out by the War Department for their own experts in occultism and
archeology. As might be expected, Titus Crow fit the requirements wonderfully.
A group of occultists were brought together under the auspice of Ludwig von
Wohl, a Hungarian astrologer who had written several religious books and knew
some of the Nazi astrologers and occultists personally. For the rest of the
war, Titus Crow worked with the Cryptography and the Occult sections of the War
Department. (12)
After the war, Crow refused to divulge much of what happened during those
years. What we do know is that he mostly worked at the British Museum for both
divisions in the Rare Books Department. (13) There he would seek solutions to
codes in olden textbooks on the subject that Britain's enemies had hoped the
world had forgotten, and Crow would also look up obscure references that would
be found among the Nazi occultist's papers when and if they were smuggled out
during the war years. Titus Crow was also responsible for the inclusion of a
few dark allusions to be found within an astrological magazine called DER ZENIT
that was secretly distributed in Germany with the hope that its predictions for
German defeat and false attacks by the Allies would become effective propaganda
devices.
Only one specific incident of those years is known to us today apart from the
hints and suggestions of recently released documents. That incident is the
Nazi's acquisition of the fabled Necronomicon. In the early summer of 1944, a
coded message was intercepted on its way to Heinrich Himmler by an undercover
agent. The code used in the missive was of a sort never seen before and
eventually it found its way into the hands of Titus Crow. After a few days,
Crow eventually discovered that the code was a variant of a code used by the
Carbonari, a secret society popular in both Germany and Italy during the early
1800s. What the message said, however, took a bit more detective work since it
merely told of how a scholar of pre-Germanic languages had killed himself
during the translation of the "Gothic text of the 700s" and that the unit was
requesting another scholar for their needs. What puzzled Crow was that there
shouldn't be any books from the 700s written in Gothic since that language
hadn't been in use since 200 AD! After another week of research, however, Titus
Crow discovered what the "Gothic text" was and the answer chilled him to the
bone. In a work by Joachim Kindler called _My Understanding of the Great
Book_, Kindler refers to a copy of the Necronomicon written entirely in Gothic.
What is worse, this particular version of the Necronomicon is free of allusion
and allegory making it easy to use the devastating spells and knowledge
contained within. The news that the Nazis had gained possession of the
Necronomicon and worse a powerful version of that forbidden text, caused Crow
to panic and he went to inform the heads of the War Department in person. Crow
was adamant that the book had to be tracked down and destroyed. Eventually,
many years after his first telling of the tale, Crow revealed that the
destruction of the Gothic Necronomicon was never confirmed, but that it was
known that Hitler had a copy of the Necronomicon hidden in his bunker where he
took his own life. Whether this copy was the Gothic version or a personalized
translation from the Gothic, Crow was never able to say, or willing to
speculate about. (14)
Once the war finished, Crow found himself without work. (15) Penniless and
depressed, Titus Crow eventually took on a job with a man in Surrey named
Julian Carstairs and known as "The Modern Magus." Carstairs had developed a
reputation during the First World War as an advocate for using magical rituals
against the enemies of Britain. (16) Throughout January 1946, Titus Crow spent
time with Julian Carstairs until his employer disappeared on February 1st.
After a police investigation, Julian Carstairs estate was divided up according
to his will. Interestingly, though Carstairs predictably bequeathed his land
and magical items and books to his coven, he had given almost his entire
financial holdings to Titus Crow. With his newfound wealth and his newfound
opportunity to pursue his archeological and occult interests, Titus Crow spent
the next decade exploring the world and acquiring dozens of rare texts and
objects d'art. (17)
During the 1950s, Titus Crow gradually built a reputation of being an expert
upon grimoires and pre-20th Century works of magic. Scattered throughout
various publications, one can find the name Titus Crow either as the author, or
more often than not, as a personage thanked in the bibliography for his help
and knowledge. Such mentionings could be found in archeology journals, occult
publications and even in an article on aesthetics! It was also during this time
that Crow began to correspond with various individuals such as Wingate Peaslee
in Arkham, Massachusetts and Wilhelm Reich in Rangely, Maine.
In 1950, during an amateur archeological investigation around Hadrian's Wall
near the town of Sunderland, Titus Crow met with a 13 year old Brian Lumley who
was visiting the area with his father. (18) Later, during the 70s after Crow's
unexpected death, Lumley would come to record and publish the memoirs of Titus
Crow as a series of short stories.
In 1953, Titus Crow purchased from an auction house a strange clock called De
Marigny's Clock. According to the auctioneer, the clock was the same clock
involved in the Swami Chandraputra episode of 1932 and owned by Etienne-Laurent
de Marigny. It was a strange device that resembled a grandfather clock except
for its haunting coffin shape, its four hands and how it ticks out of rhyme.
Crow would spend the remainder of his life researching and trying to understand
the clock. (19) If his fragmentary notes on the subject recovered after his
death are any indication, the clock's loss during the same localized freak
storm that killed Crow is a loss for science and history.
It was also during the 50s when Titus Crow eventually bought Blowne House. A
sprawling bungalow located at Leonard's Walk Heath just outside of London, it
was built in 1892 on a site of local folklore. Supposedly, it was here that a
hanging of William Fovargue, an accused wizard, was committed in 1675 on his
way to London for a trial. A tree at the site was known locally as Billy's Oak
and was considered haunted. Needless to say, the Victorian attitude of
enlightened skepticism won the day and cut the tree down to make way for the
house. The two owners of the house prior to Crow claimed that the spirit of
William Fovargue was present in the house. A sentiment shared by Titus Crow
himself, though he claimed the spirit was benign and more a conversation piece
than anything harmful. (20)
By the time the 60s came into being, Crow had become something of an
established personage in the occult. There are numerous incidents where Crow
was consulted by writers, occultists, scientists and curiosity seekers. His
most famous accomplishment was prior to the sixties when Crow found himself
face to face with the most infamous black magician in London at that time,
James Gedney. Gedney had started a small nightclub known as the Demon Club
though records of the time show that the Club itself was owned by a Geoffrey
Arnold. In any case, the Demon Club was known as Gedney's place and he used
the locale to recruit and maintain a devil cult dedicated, it was said, to the
powers of sin and Satan. Various witnesses attested to the fact that Gedney and
Crow had exchanged harsh words at the Demon Club previous to the discovery by a
cult member of Gedney's corpse laying upon the front seat of his car in front
of his house. An autopsy performed on James Gedney gave the cause of death to
be heart failure by natural causes. Though the police cleared Titus Crow of
any involvement, a rumor quickly went through the occult community that Crow
and Gedney had become embroiled in a magical duel that ended with Gedney's
death. Years later, after Crow's death, Brian Lumley published an account of
the incident claiming that Gedney had attempted to kill Crow through the use of
an old spell and it was Crow's quick thinking that turned the curse back onto
the sender. Whatever the truth of the matter, it was to become the most
familiar exploit of Titus Crow. (21)
In 1961, Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent de Marigny became involved in the
mysterious death of the noted archeologist Benjamin Sorlson. Sorlson had
become known as something of a maverick archeologist in the field of pre-Roman
Britain. Early in 1961, Sorlson claimed to have gotten a lead in tracking down
a burial site for a Viking warlord in northeast Britain. Unfortunately,
Sorlson never accomplished his goal of finding the burial site due to a heart
attack on his way back to London. Needless to say, the coincidence of Titus
Crow being involved in another case of heart failure lead to a through police
investigation that once more turned up nothing incriminating. (22)
It is during this time that Titus Crow begins to have his fictional stories
published in well read magazines. In 1961, its his story "Yegg-ha's Realm" in
an issue of the pulpish GROTESQUE. The story caused an uproar when Crow
subtitled it "a short story based on a true event." For the next three issues,
GROTESQUE became a battleground over the story in its letters page. To his
credit, Crow never backed down from his original statement and replied to each
complaint in the manner he himself was addressed in. (23) It was also this
story that brought Titus Crow and the brilliant artist Chandler Davies
together.
Titus Crow had long known of Davies and would himself author a study of the
man's paintings. (24) Now, thanks to the furor over "Yegg-ha's Realm," Titus
Crow and Chandler Davies met and agreed to work together on Crow's next book.
Unfortunately, Davies died in May of 1962 and was not able to complete his
illustrations for Crow's book though its eventual publication saw more than 7
original Davies illustrations included within. (25)
In 1963, Titus Crow found himself the subject of a chapter in Gerald Dawson's
FORBIDDEN BOOKS!. (26) Its style gave Crow the air of being far more mysterious
and sinister than in reality, but it did honestly attempt to present Crow's
position on why certain books should and would continue to be kept from the
public at large. While Titus Crow himself found fault with the book (feeling
that its presentation encouraged dangerous tampering with such books), he never
publicly made a fuss over it and even presented a signed copy to his friend
Henri-Laurent de Marigny that same year.
Late in 1963, Titus Crow became involved with a peculiar incident involving the
then recent eruption of Surtsey. Apparently a researcher, named Thelred
Gustau, had discovered a metallic capsule that had arisen from the sea floor at
the same time as the volcanic island. Upon opening the capsule, Gustau found
various items such as a small monkey-like skull with one eye-socket, a dagger
made from the tooth of an enormous beast, a silver whistle and a few other
small treasures. But it was what was contained at the bottom of the container
that drew Gustau's attention most. Runebooks and scrolls and documents all of
fine skins no thicker than paper but lubricated in a way which left them
supple. Thelred Gustau asked Titus crow with help in translating the ancient
documents and books. After spending a couple months on a partial and
incomplete translation, Crow claimed that the document was a work entitled
Legends of the Olden Runes and it was supposedly written at a time 20 million
years ago by a humanlike wizard named Teh Atht who lived in a forgotten land
called Theem'hdra. It was, if it could be proved, evidence enough to change
every history book in the world. (27) Luckily, Crow didn't go out on a limb
with his reputation in claiming the validity of the work since a carbon dating
in 1968 showed that the manuscripts were no more than 20 years old. Crow
accepted the evidence with a shrug and suggested that the chemical solution
used to maintain the books over the centuries could have very well affected the
dating process. In any case, Crow was willing to accept the carbon dating of
the scientists if they were able to identify the animal whose skin was used for
the pages of the books. Titus Crow's challenge has not yet to this day been
answered.
During the early spring of 1964, Henri-Laurent de Marigny would later claim
that Titus Crow was behind the death of the international industrialist Sturm
Magruser V due to Crow's belief that Magruser was the most recent incarnation
of the Antichrist! Magruser was the original genius behind the notion of a
Strategic Defense Initiative for a country against nuclear weapons. His plan
was to create a dome of force that would complete enclose the British Isles
from outside attack once activated. Magruser seemed to have ample evidence from
experiments among the Pacific Islands, but he claimed that the technology level
of the time was not sufficient enough to allow his "dome of force" to exist
without an excessive amount of energy released. For this reason, Magruser
needed seven atomic bombs to be used to produce the energy needed and these
were promised to him. But before he was able to furnish a workable "dome of
force" Sturm Magruser V died suddenly the very same night the atomic weapons
were delivered and the entire project was called off. It wasn't until 1982
when Henri-Laurent de Marigny's account, originally written in 1980, was
published that any connection between Titus Crow and Magruser's death were
made. (28)
For the rest of the 60s, Titus Crow and De Marigny found themselves involved in
various adventures. From an encounter with an individual claiming to be Count
Dracula to the breaking of a code nearly two thousand years old, the years
continued to bring them face to face with various supernatural occurrences and
dangers. (29) By 1968, Titus Crow found himself considered by many to be an
expert in the fields of the occult, amateur archaeology, paleontology,
cryptography, antiques and in particular studies of the works of art by
individuals such as Aubrey Beardsley, Chandler Davies, Hieronymous Bosch and
especially Richard Pickman. (30)