The Return of the Lloigor

"The Return of the Lloigor" is a story by Colin Wilson that first appeared in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Arkham House, 1969). The story turned Lloigor, August Derleth's minor Great Old One, into an alien species of psychic vampires--a depiction that has influenced subsequent writers, including Robert Anton Wilson, Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison.
Wilson's story follows Paul Lang, a 72-year-old professor of English literature at the University of Virginia. Lang makes a breakthrough that allows him to decipher the Voynich Manuscript--a real-world tome written in an unknown scriptWikipedia, "Voynich manuscript".--and finds that it is the text of a book called the Necronomicon. This leads him to the (supposedly) fictional work of H. P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen, and the Machen connection takes him to Wales, where he meets Colonel Lionel Urquart, author of The Mysteries of Mu. (Urquart is a fictionalized version of "Colonel" James Churchward, a Devonshire engineer who concocted the lost continent of Mu.Wikipedia, "James Churchward".)
Urquardt tells Lang about the Lloigor, alien entities, probably from the Andromeda galaxy, that "existed as 'vortices' of power in their natural state." The Lloigor enslaved humanity on Mu before becoming weakened and retreating underground and beneath the oceans. They still have the power to cause great violence--they are responsible for the destruction of not only Mu but Atlantis, and for the ruin of various lost cities around the world, including the two great ruined cities of North America, Grudèn Itzà, now sunk beneath the swampland around New Orleans, and Nam-Ergest, a flourishing city that once stood on the land where the Grand Canyon now yawns.The Lloigor also have the power to incite violence in individual people--"[m]urder, cruelty, rape, every possible kind of sexual perversion"—and are particularly powerful in certain locales--notably Caerleon in Wales, and Cohasset, Massachusetts,Wikipedia, "Cohasset, Massachusetts". which is presented as the real-life counterpart of Innsmouth. 
After being menaced by Ben Chickno, a "thorough degenerate" Romani allied with the Lloigor, Lang and Urquardt become convinced that the aliens are "planning a major attack on the inhabitants of the earth." The story closes with a note from Lang's nephew, Julian F. Lang, explaining that his uncle and Urquardt disappeared while flying in a small plane over Virginia, on their way to a meeting Lang's old classmate, Senator James R. Pinckney, had arranged with the Secretary of Defense.
==The Lloigor ==
Urquardt tells Lang that the Lloigor, although infinitely more powerful than men, were also aware that optimism would be absurd in this universe. Their minds were a unity, not compartmentalised, like ours. There was no distinction in them between conscious, subconscious, and superconscious mind. So they saw things clearly all the time, without the possibility of averting the mind from the truth, or forgetting.Urquardt compares them to "those suicidal romantics of the nineteenth century, steeped in gloom, convinced that life is a pit of misery, and accepting this as a basis for everyday life."
The Lloigor are said to have retreated under the earth and sea, in order to concentrate their power in stones and rocks, whose normal metabolism they can reverse. This has enabled them to cling to the earth for many thousands of years. Occasionally, they accumulate enough energy to erupt once again into human life, and the results are whole cities destroyed.
==External Links ==
* "The Return of the Lloigor" review at The Lovecraft Reread
* "The Return of the Lloigor" review at Cthulery
==References ==
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Colin Wilson works