Just Random Info: The Old Ones and the mysterious Brian Ward
pg 112
In 1978 a book by an English occultist named Peter James Carroll was published. That book wasLiber Null, the text that is widely considered to have given birth to Chaos Magic. It was followed in 1982 by the book Psychonaut. From 1987 onwards these two books were published in one volume ( Liber Null & Psychonaut), which is still an essential primer for anyone desiring to get to grips with the theory and practice of Chaos Magic.
pg 116
When I first read the book back in 1992 in my bedsit in Roath, I was struck by the illustrations by an artist named Brian Ward that appear in Psychonaut. They were said to be portraits ofLovecraft’s dreaded Old Ones, at least in the urban legends surrounding the book, of which there were already quite a few by the end of the 1980s (back in the days before online shopping).
pg 120
Certainly this correlation between Ward’s images and the Old Ones was re-enforced by the pseudo-esoteric comic strip Zenith where obvious imitations of Ward’s images were used to portray entities clearly derived from the preternatural deities of the Cthulhu mythos.
pg 124
And yet there is little actual evidence to confirm any relation between these images and the Old Ones, other than that some of them (particularly the illustration on page 168) bear an uncanny likeness to Cthulhu and his ilk.
pg 128
We don’t know for certain who they are are what their titles are, with the exception of the rather different illustration on page 172, which is clearly the Mithraic leontocephaline.
pg 146
Surprisingly – considering the cult status of Liber Null & Psychonaut – none of these images (with the exception of the leontocephaline on page 172) can be found online, or have been marketed at all outside of the covers of the book. I’m not sure how many fans of the book would buy them in the form of T-shirts, posters, models or cards, but I imagine quite a considerable few would.
pg 168 – Cthulhu?
Brian Ward – despite his obvious talent – does not appear to have any online presence at all. So, giving in to curiosity I decided to email the book’s author – Peter Carroll himself – and ask him to clarify who or what were the subjects of Ward’s illustrations. I didn’t expect a reply, but I got one anyway.
pg 172 – Mithraic leontocephaline
In his reply Peter explained that the identity of the images are unknown to him (“I selected them because I liked the look of them…It all remains a bit of a mystery……..”); that he hadn’t seen the artist in “decades”, and had originally met Brian Ward “only briefly” describing him as “a strangely secretive character”,
pg 178
Given the mystery surrounding the artist, I guess we can feel fortunate that Peter chose to employ these images in Psychonaut, as otherwise we would most probably never have encountered them at all. Who knows what other gems this otherwise unknown artist has produced? Just like the identities of these illustrations, we may never know.
pg 190
