Book of Dzyan

The Book of Dzyan is a text that Theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky claimed to have seen in Tibet. It was incorporated into the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft, and has been subsequently cited by other Mythos writers.
According to Blavatsky, she saw the manuscript, which was guarded by an occult brotherhood, while studying esoteric doctrines in Tibet.Wikipedia, "Book of Dzyan". It was written on "a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air, by some specific unknown process."Cthulhu Universalis, "Book of Dzyan". Their language is Senzar, an otherwise unknown tongue that may be Atlantean in origin.Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, "Book of Dzyan, The", Daniel Harms (Chaosium, 1998). 
The word "Dzyan", according to Blavatsky, is pronounced "djan" and signifies "to reform one's self by meditation and knowledge". In her account, the book relates, among other things, the origins of humanity on the lost continents of Hyperborea, Lemuria, and Atlantis. Blavatsky said that much of the information in her major work, The Secret Doctrine (1888), derived from this book.
== In Lovecraft's Fiction ==
Lovecraft found Theosophy's mythology fascinating, even while referring to its advocates as "sophical charlatans".Selected Letters Vol. 2, by H. P. Lovecraft, p. 58. He tips his hat to Theosophy in a backhanded way when he includes the Book of Dzyan in the library of "mildewed, disintegrating books" Robert Blake discovers in the Starry Wisdom Church in "The Haunter of the Dark" (1936):[T]he titles of those books told him much. They were the black, forbidden things which most sane people have never even heard of, or have heard of only in furtive, timorous whispers; the banned and dreaded repositories of equivocal secrets and immemorial formulae which have trickled down the stream of time from the days of man’s youth, and the dim, fabulous days before man was. He had himself read many of them—a Latin version of the abhorred Necronomicon, the sinister Liber Ivonis, the infamous Cultes des Goules of Comte d’Erlette, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, and old Ludvig Prinn’s hellish De Vermis Mysteriis. But there were others he had known merely by reputation or not at all—the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the Book of Dzyan, and a crumbling volume in wholly unidentifiable characters yet with certain symbols and diagrams shudderingly recognisable to the occult student. Clearly, the lingering local rumours had not lied. This place had once been the seat of an evil older than mankind and wider than the known universe."The Diary of Alonzo Typer" (1935), a story Lovecraft wrote in conjunction with William Lumley prior to "The Haunter of the Dark", gives further background on the Book of Dzyan, in the form of lore learned from a manuscript written by 16th century occultist Claes van der Heyl: I learned of the Book of Dzyan, whose first six chapters antedate the earth, and which was old when the lords of Venus came through space in their ships to civilise our planet. 
== Other Writers ==
August Derleth picked up on Lovecraft's inclusion of the Book of Dzyan in the library of "black, forbidden things". In Derleth's "The Gable Window" (1957), the narrator finds a copy in his late cousin Wilbur Akeley's house, alongside the "Pnakotic Manuscripts, the R’lyeh Text, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, the Book of Eibon, the Dhol Chants, the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, Ludvig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis, the Celaeno Fragments, the Cultes des Goules of the Comte d’Erlette," and "a photostat copy of the Necronomicon".
In The Lurker at the Threshold (1945), Winfield Phillips borrows a copy from Prof. Seneca Lapham.
== In Other Media ==
In the Real Ghostbusters episode "The Collect Call of Cathulhu" (1987), the Ghostbusters consult the Book of Dzyan to learn more about the Cult of Cathulhu. 
== References ==
Category:Mythos Books (fictional)
Category:Artefacts Originating From Mythos-Adjacent Works