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Dromenon: The Best Weird Stories of Gerald Heard
Sewn hardback printed and bound by the Atheneum Press in blue wibalin cloth stamped in silver on spine and with Trabuco symbol on front board, with silver head and tailband and silk ribbon marker.
350 numbered copies.
(Out of print).
Contents:
Gerald Heard - Magic Mythmaker by John Cody
The Great Fog
Wingless Victory
Despair Deferred…?
Vindicae Flammae
The Eclipse
Dromenon
The Cup
The Chapel of Ease.
350 numbered copies.
(Out of print).
Contents:
Gerald Heard - Magic Mythmaker by John Cody
The Great Fog
Wingless Victory
Despair Deferred…?
Vindicae Flammae
The Eclipse
Dromenon
The Cup
The Chapel of Ease.
292 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2001
70 people want to read
About the author
Gerald Heard
62 books11 followersGerald Heard, born in London on October 6, 1889, of Irish ancestry, was educated in England, taking honors in history and studying theology at the University of Cambridge. Following Cambridge, he worked for Lord Robson of Jesmond and later for Sir Horace Plunkett, founder of the Irish Agriculture Cooperative movement. Heard began lecturing from 1926 to 1929 at Oxford University's Board of Extra Mural Studies. In 1927 he began lecturing for South Place Ethical Society. From 1929 to 1930 he edited "The Realist," a monthly journal of scientific humanism whose sponsors included H.G. Wells, Julian Huxley, and Aldous Huxley. In 1929 he published The Ascent of Humanity, an essay on the philosophy of history that received the prestigious Hertz Prize by the British Academy. From 1930 to 1934 he served as the BBC's first science commentator, and from 1932 to 1942 he was a council member of the Society for Psychical Research.
In 1937 Gerald Heard came to the United States, accompanied by Aldous Huxley, after having been offered the chair of historical anthropology at Duke University. After delivering some lectures at Duke, Heard gave up the post and soon settled in California where from 1941 to 1942 he founded and oversaw the building of Trabuco College, a large facility where comparative-religion studies and practices flourished under Heard's visionary direction. Trabuco College, 30 years ahead of its time, was discontinued in 1947, and the vast properties were subsequently donated to the Vedanta Society of Southern California.
During the 1950s, Heard's main activities were writing and lecturing, along with an occasional television and radio appearance. His broad philosophical themes and scintillating oratorical style influenced many people and attracted a legion of interested persons. But chiefly he maintained a regular discipline of meditation for many years, as the core of his mature beliefs centered around the intentional evolution of consciousness.
A prolific writer, Heard penned some thirty-eight books, the most important of which are his pioneering academic works documenting the evolution of consciousness, including The Ascent of Humanity (1929), The Social Substance of Religion (1931), The Source of Civilization (1935), Pain, Sex and Time (1939), and his last book, The Five Ages of Man (1964). He also wrote several popular devotional books, including The Creed of Christ (1940) and Training for the Life of the Spirit (1941-42). Under the name H. F. Heard (H. F. for Henry FitzGerald, his given name), he wrote a number of mysteries and fantasies, including A Taste for Honey (1941) and The Great Fog and Other Weird Tales (1944). Following five years of illness, Gerald Heard peacefully passed away at his home in Santa Monica, California, on August 14, 1971.
In 1937 Gerald Heard came to the United States, accompanied by Aldous Huxley, after having been offered the chair of historical anthropology at Duke University. After delivering some lectures at Duke, Heard gave up the post and soon settled in California where from 1941 to 1942 he founded and oversaw the building of Trabuco College, a large facility where comparative-religion studies and practices flourished under Heard's visionary direction. Trabuco College, 30 years ahead of its time, was discontinued in 1947, and the vast properties were subsequently donated to the Vedanta Society of Southern California.
During the 1950s, Heard's main activities were writing and lecturing, along with an occasional television and radio appearance. His broad philosophical themes and scintillating oratorical style influenced many people and attracted a legion of interested persons. But chiefly he maintained a regular discipline of meditation for many years, as the core of his mature beliefs centered around the intentional evolution of consciousness.
A prolific writer, Heard penned some thirty-eight books, the most important of which are his pioneering academic works documenting the evolution of consciousness, including The Ascent of Humanity (1929), The Social Substance of Religion (1931), The Source of Civilization (1935), Pain, Sex and Time (1939), and his last book, The Five Ages of Man (1964). He also wrote several popular devotional books, including The Creed of Christ (1940) and Training for the Life of the Spirit (1941-42). Under the name H. F. Heard (H. F. for Henry FitzGerald, his given name), he wrote a number of mysteries and fantasies, including A Taste for Honey (1941) and The Great Fog and Other Weird Tales (1944). Following five years of illness, Gerald Heard peacefully passed away at his home in Santa Monica, California, on August 14, 1971.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 22, 2017
It is because of Russell Kirk that I've decided to delve into Heard's fiction. Kirk, himself a master of ghostly tale, wrote this of Heard and one of his tales:
"Mr. Gerald Heard once said to me that the good ghost story must have for its base some clear premise as to the character of human existence—some theological assumption. A notable example of such a story is Heard’s own best piece of fiction, which I believe to be the most impressive supernatural tale of recent years: “The Chapel of Ease,” a long short story of a mystical Anglo-Catholic parson who prays for the tormented souls of gallows crows, their bones laid beneath his ancient and half-derelict chapel. Rising in the pews, their ghosts hate the man who struggles to save them; and in the end the pain of the contest is too much for the priest, and he dies. All this is told with a chilly power peculiar to a writer himself a mystic and a poet."
These stories are best described as philosophical fiction, or hermetic-theological fiction. Even those pieces who are outwardly science fiction hide mystical subtext. In "The Great Fog" Man's reckless play with nature produces peculiar new species that drastically transforms Earth's climate. Yet, those hellish new conditions reawaken mankind's respect for Nature and its dormant spiritual sense. In "Wingless Victory", story that almost reads like positive inversion of one famous Lovecraft piece, man discovers lost avian civilization on Antarctica, one that manipulates evolution in order to save species from specialization and impasses in pursuit of their spiritual goal. "Despair Deferred" is a philosophical satire about nihilistic feminist who ends up in this quite literal worship of death - single authentic action and escape, in her mind - and yet chooses life in the end. And then there are those openly mystical tales that make the bulk of this collection. Titular "Dromenon", story that mixes M. R. James like style and antiquarian backbone with Fulcanellian hermetic mystery, or “The Chapel of Ease” where cynical civil servant stumbles upon abandoned chapel and eventually encounters purgatorial scene that leads him into pursuit of the mystery behind the chapel itself and, eventually, to his own transformation. In "The Cup", art thief's pursuit of the titular Grail-like object leads him into witnessing the spiritual battle that will lead to his transformation. In "Vindicae Flammae", heretic's faith is vindicated, and souls of his executors are saved. All of these display enormous erudition and scholarship. This is particularly true of "Dromenon" and "The Chapel", both with their onslaught of theology and minuscule architectural detail as well as under-the-surface symbolism. Traces of Arthur Machen's positive mystical fiction can be detected, and subjects of Grail and of Celtic Christianity are invoked. All of these tales tend to be transformative, in one way or another. Reader will either posses the necessary sympathies and background in order to appreciate them, or will otherwise drop them as dry and tedious.
"Mr. Gerald Heard once said to me that the good ghost story must have for its base some clear premise as to the character of human existence—some theological assumption. A notable example of such a story is Heard’s own best piece of fiction, which I believe to be the most impressive supernatural tale of recent years: “The Chapel of Ease,” a long short story of a mystical Anglo-Catholic parson who prays for the tormented souls of gallows crows, their bones laid beneath his ancient and half-derelict chapel. Rising in the pews, their ghosts hate the man who struggles to save them; and in the end the pain of the contest is too much for the priest, and he dies. All this is told with a chilly power peculiar to a writer himself a mystic and a poet."
These stories are best described as philosophical fiction, or hermetic-theological fiction. Even those pieces who are outwardly science fiction hide mystical subtext. In "The Great Fog" Man's reckless play with nature produces peculiar new species that drastically transforms Earth's climate. Yet, those hellish new conditions reawaken mankind's respect for Nature and its dormant spiritual sense. In "Wingless Victory", story that almost reads like positive inversion of one famous Lovecraft piece, man discovers lost avian civilization on Antarctica, one that manipulates evolution in order to save species from specialization and impasses in pursuit of their spiritual goal. "Despair Deferred" is a philosophical satire about nihilistic feminist who ends up in this quite literal worship of death - single authentic action and escape, in her mind - and yet chooses life in the end. And then there are those openly mystical tales that make the bulk of this collection. Titular "Dromenon", story that mixes M. R. James like style and antiquarian backbone with Fulcanellian hermetic mystery, or “The Chapel of Ease” where cynical civil servant stumbles upon abandoned chapel and eventually encounters purgatorial scene that leads him into pursuit of the mystery behind the chapel itself and, eventually, to his own transformation. In "The Cup", art thief's pursuit of the titular Grail-like object leads him into witnessing the spiritual battle that will lead to his transformation. In "Vindicae Flammae", heretic's faith is vindicated, and souls of his executors are saved. All of these display enormous erudition and scholarship. This is particularly true of "Dromenon" and "The Chapel", both with their onslaught of theology and minuscule architectural detail as well as under-the-surface symbolism. Traces of Arthur Machen's positive mystical fiction can be detected, and subjects of Grail and of Celtic Christianity are invoked. All of these tales tend to be transformative, in one way or another. Reader will either posses the necessary sympathies and background in order to appreciate them, or will otherwise drop them as dry and tedious.
Displaying 1 of 1 review