The Smokey God (tome)

The Smokey God (AKA The Smoky God, or A Voyage Journey to the Inner Earth, Norwegian Den røykfylte Gud) is based on an actual book (hoax?) written by Willis George Emerson in 1908.

Description

The Smokey God (Norwegian title Den røykfylte Gud) is an early source for the belief in the underground civilization of Agartha is the 19th-century biography of a Norwegian sailor named Olaf Jansen, whose sloop sailed through an entrance to the Earth's interior at the North Pole, to wreck leaving him to leave for two years with the inhabitants of an underground network of colonies whose inhabitants were a full 12 feet tall and whose world was eternally lit by a hazy "sun" of living fire. The tome depicts the rulers of Agartha and its capitol as "Undying Chinamen" who rule the Earth via influencing the Drams of surface-dwellers, from within a pyramid city amongst the eternal beating of drums and clattering of bells and gongs. The tome contains a description of Agartha, its capitol city Shambhala, the Vattanian language spoken by its people, and the people themselves.

The Smokey God, Norwegian

• Language: Norwegian (Den røykfylte Gud) by Olaf Jansen, 1886
• Physical Description: Hardcover. Octavo. 186pp. Blue cloth-bound cover, black titling to upper board and spine, with illustrations.
• General Content: The book presents itself as a true account of the adventures of one Olaf Jansen, a Norwegian sailor who found himself accidentally sailing through a gateway to the Earth's interior that was hidden at the North Pole. Illustrations include a map of Agartha, a drawing of Shambhalla, and the Vattanian alphabet used in the language of Agartha.
• Number of known copies and location (if rare): (Unknown)

The Smokey God, English

• Language: English translation, translated by Willis George Emerson, 1908
• Physical Description: Pale blue cloth-bound cover illustrated with a schooner in dark blue, red & white on both boards, red titling to upper board and spine, with color frontis & illustrations.
• General Content: A fairly complete translation from the Norwegian, the book presents itself as a true account of the adventures of one Olaf Jansen, a Norwegian sailor who found himself accidentally sailing through a gateway to the Earth's interior that was hidden at the North Pole.
• Number of known copies and location (if rare): (unknown)

Heresies and Controversies

• The tome is based on a real book of the same name, which in turn was a hoax purporting to describe the discovery of an actual Hollow Earth world which would only later be called Agartha, after the book sparked a flap of Hollow Earth conspiracy theories. The tome is an only slightly exaggerated version of the real book. The account is possibly a fictionalized account of a very real Hollow Earth civilization that the author actually encountered - perhaps Cave World, K'n-yan, or the like.
• "What the police did extract, came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the Cult of Cthulhu in the mountains of China.... Remains of the Great Old Ones, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific...." - H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu (fiction), apparently inspired by Ossendowski's account of Agartha, populated by Chinese, Indian, Tibetan, or Mongolian mystics who had, with the Incas and other peoples on the fringes of encroaching civilization, supposedly retreated underground into the hidden Eden of Shambhala in the Hollow Earth beneath remote mountains from the advancing modern era and invasions from lesser mortal races, taking their secret occult arts and treasures with them?

Related Mythos Content

• setting: Hollow Earth
• location: Agartha
• race: People of K'n-yan, "Deathless Chinamen"
• race: Deros, Ghouls, or any other subterranean humanoids
• cult: Cult of Cthulhu

Keeper Notes

Mythos Content

• Sanity Loss: (minimal)
• Mythos Knowledge: (minimal, focused on a poorly-understood version of the Hollow Earth)
• Occult Knowledge: (minimal, relating to Theosophy)
• Spells: (probably none, though it does describe the location of at least one entrance to Agartha, and it might also conceivably include "spells" for contacting the Hidden Masters of Earth via meditation, astral projection, or other such means.)

References

• treatise: Willis George Emerson's The Smoky God (1908)
• treatise: (Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre's Theosophical treatise, Mission de l'Inde en Europe 1886 but lost, edited and published again in 1910)
• treatise: Ferdynand Ossendowski's Beasts, Men and Gods (treatise) (1926)