Etidorhpa or The End of the Earth

Rating:
Summary: This book is an excellent read.
Review: " Etidorhpa " was written by John Uri Lloyd.He had some idealistic views of the way of the world.Though few would catch on to some of the opened minded visions of this world, all would be caught up in the reading.

Rating:
Summary: Rare ideas that are unique
Review: " Etidorhpa " was written by John Uri Lloyd.He had some idealistic views of the way of the world.Though few would catch on to some of the opened minded visions of this world, all would be caught up in the reading.

Rating:
Summary: This book is an excellent read.
Review: From beginning to end one is caught up in the storyline of this book. Mind boggling concepts become crystal clear and images dance in one's head as one delves deeper and deeper into this alternate reality; a reality alive and vibrant right under our feet, so to speak. This book seems way ahead of its time having been written in 1895.

Rating:
Summary: Journey to the Center of the Mind
Review: In 1993 the Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY held an exhibit of the works of the late San Francisco-based painter and collage artist Jess, among whose works was a rendering of a passage from Etidorhpa. Eleven years later I was inspired to read this book - and what a find it was!

Etidorhpa is a work of pharmacological and geological fantasy which progresses through a series of Masonic-style initiations into the mysteries of the earth, the mind and the inner soul of humanity. At times it is reminiscent of Dante's "Divine Comedy" with a slimy, sightless subterranean serving Virgil's role as cicerone and Etidorhpa herself as the Beatrice of the narrator's journey. By turns it evokes Homer's "Odyssey," DeQuincey's "Confession of an English Opium Eater," Coleridge, Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and of course, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Thru the Looking Glass. If you read this, you might find Ted Nugent and the Amboy Duke's "Journey to the Center of Mind" an appropriate musical accompaniment.

On a personal note, my coming to the book was something of a journey as well. Though I first became aware of the book in Buffalo and read it eleven years later in San Francisco, the action takes place in Cincinnati, the narrator's address and the scene of most of his mysterious interview taking place in 1895 somewhere in the downtown area of W. 8th Street and Western Avenue near St. Peter-in-Chains Cathedral (which is mentioned in the book). Some 90 years after the tale here narrated, I walked these streets daily for three years on my way to work. Bits of reality (the Cathedral) were thus mixed with historical imagination (trying to imagine that neighborhood 90 years before) as well as pure fantasy. As a result for me the story became both more real and more fantastic.

I am not exactly sure of all the lessons Lloyd sought to teach here. The story hints at several deeper truths. Near the surface is a lesson on the psychology of chemical addiction. At a similar depth there are warnings on the dangers of both extreme science and fanatical religion - making the book relevant to today's concerns with both stem cell research and jihad. More precisely, since the action in the book takes place in 1895, and the narrator is told to put the manuscript in a vault for 30 years (to 1925), I have to wonder if Lloyd did not see that science was headed for Nazi-style human experimentation as seen in the death camps. The author repeatedly and strongly warns of the dangers of unbridled science and to me, this would be the scenario we was concerned to warn against.

Excised from the MS:
"O, Science, what crimes are committed in thy name!" -- Gilbert Highet

There is a lot here: Good story, mystery, intrigue, bizarre initiations, the hint of secret knowledge, instructions on how to see your own brain tissue, in-depth discussions on matter, gravity, fluid dynamics, caves, fungi, drugs, medicinal plants, the possibility of human immortality, the potential of post-human evolution, life, love, the deepest secrets of the heart and the rather ambiguous and multi-dimensional "end of the earth" -

It's all here. But it will take many readings to mine all the ore.


Rating:
Summary: ETIDORHPA - APHRODITE or, "The End of Earth"
Review: John Uri Lloyd, a famous pharmacognocist (student of plant drugs and their properties) and pharmaceutical manufacturer in Cincinnati, wrote books while his cauldrons bubbled, and very interesting books they are in many ways, though the writing is not always of the quality that readers of today's novels have grown to expect. What seized the imagination of the public then, as now, is the quality of the ideas in the book: Lloyd dares to question the received scientific orthodoxy of his day. Many of the ideas he questioned are today considered outmoded. Some of the ideas he advanced are now accepted, but beyond that is something he is trying to say about science itself: Can science rest on dogmatic assumptions, or must it remain a free inquiry, and his work is a brilliant affirmation of the latter.

Though this book has been read by many as a straight fantasy, the purpose is, as the author stated many times, a serious one:
Lloyd wrote in a letter about the book dated 1895: "Some of us come into the world to teach, we cannot evade our destiny. Whether we teach from our own selves or from others, is of no moment, the important point is whether we teach properly. Will the result of our instruction tend to elevate the thought of others and thus lead to truth and self humility, to love and charity? Etidorhpa is not an idle creation. The mission of this book is unseen by most of its readers. The thought current will be felt though by every reader and it pains me to appreciate the fact that to some the beauties of the work will serve but to deepen their hatred of conceptions holy and sublime."

I have seen the MS of the book in the Lloyd Library, which he founded and endowed, and it is better than the book itself. Lloyd, who edited the MS, with the help of a few friends, and published it privately, kept adding and moving things about, till it is rather confusing to read; but this should not deter anyone who wants to learn from it. The book itself is better than the sum of its parts. It stands as a solid creation in the mind long after one has forgotten that the style is not quite good, that the execution is less than brilliant, that the plot seems often lost, and that the two interleaved MSS were not always well meshed.

Original first editions (and even copies of the twelve editions it went through in the half-dozen years after its first publication) are exceedingly rare. I have yet to see a copy Lloyd didn't sign. Anyone interested in the early history of the genre now called "science fiction" will recognize that this is the classic that pioneered the field. If you want to know more about Lloyd the man, and his works, go to google.com and type: John Uri Lloyd "The World is My University". You may find yourself wanting to know more about the studious little man who could write a book with the title "Aphrodite" in reverse.


Rating:
Summary: Etidorhpa
Review: No one but fools and the inept would consider this work fiction, I have read the "original" version published in 1895, and have personaly researched the book to the extent of visiting the cavern entrance, verifying dates, places, and the the story told within the book over a 20 year period, and it is TRUE.

Rating:
Summary: Etidorhpa
Review: No one but fools and the inept would consider this work fiction, I have read the "original" version published in 1895, and have personaly researched the book to the extent of visiting the cavern entrance, verifying dates, places, and the the story told within the book over a 20 year period, and it is TRUE.

Rating:
Summary: Not a throw away novel!
Review: This has to be one of the most unusual books that I've read. H.P Lovecraft, the Brilliant cosmic horror writer made reference to this book in his Selected Letters and Marginalia, noting that his visit to the endless caverns in Virgina made him think "above all else, of that strange old novel Etidorhpa once pass'd around our Kleicomolo circle". Anyway I think this book is great. Read it yourself and make up your own mind about it being a so called fictional book.

Rating:
Summary: Still A Mystery
Review: This is an extremely odd book. It was written by a well-respected pharmacist from Cincinnatti (whose reference works are still consulted and who created a pharmaceutical library that is still in use today), but the subject matter is not only fantastic but prescient.

The cover story that Lloyd presents is that he was presented with a manuscript whose author (Llewellyn Drury) was unable to publish, so Lloyd made arrangements to publish it himself. It concerns a man (Drury) who received a supernatural visitation from "The-Man-Who-Did-It" or "I-Am-The-Man", a renegade Mason interested in alchemy who transcended the Masonic system and was initiated into a deeper organization-- one that has contacts with the inhabitants of the Hollow Earth.

The details of "I-Am-The-Man'"s abduction coincide with the story of the possible murder of Captain William Morgan, a Mason who wrote a book 'exposing' the Masonic ceremonies and whose drowned body was found afterwards in Lake Ontario. "Etidorhpa" maintains (fictionally) that his drowning was faked and that Morgan went on to be initiated into a deeper (in every way) organization.

Most of the book deals with "I-Am-The-Man"'s experiences underground with his mentor, an eyeless human/amphibian creature, and their journey to the center of the Earth. It seems that at every turn, "I-Am-The-Man" comes across something he can't comprehend and his mentor helps him through his episode of cognitive dissonance. This sort of situation repeats itself when "I-Am-The-Man" has to explain things to Drury. I was especially interested in the chapter that deals with General Relativity-- which, if the book's chronology is correct, predates Einstein.

"Etidorhpa" had some resonance with H.P. Lovecraft, but Lovecraft's subterranean fantasies were scary-- while Lloyd/Drury's story is ultimately benign. "Etidorhpa" is "Aphrodite" spelled backwards, and Aphrodite is the goddess of love.

(P.S.: Drury/Lloyd left such a detailed description of his trip to the entrance to his mysterious cavern (near Mammoth Cave) that people have made field trips to the general area. This is getting interesting.)