The

Cosmic Angle of Regarding:

Mathematics and the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft

Daniel M. Look
St. Lawrence University


Introduction

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human
mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in
the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should
voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto
harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge
will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position
therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the
deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. (The Call of
Cthulhu 201)

The above, from the opening of H. P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu, echoes
Lovecraft's unease with the implications of scientific progress. The notion that the
true horror is not going to be released by humanity misusing our increasing
scientific knowledge, but rather from our putting together enough of the puzzle to
reveal the horror that has been in front of us all along, unseen only due to ignorance.

Lovecraft lived in a time of great scientific and mathematical advancement. The late
1800s to the early 1900s saw the discovery of x-rays, breakthroughs in the
mathematical exploration of higher dimensions and alternate geometries, and, of
course, Einstein's work on relativity. From his work on relativity, Einstein
postulated that rays of light could be bent by celestial objects with a large enough
gravitational pull. In 1919 and 1922 measurements were made during two eclipses
that added support to this notion. This left Lovecraft unsettled. As he wrote to James
F. Morton in a 1923 letter:

My cynicism and skepticism are increasing, and from an entirely new cause
the Einstein theory. The latest eclipse observations seem to place this system
among the facts which cannot be dismissed, and assumedly it removes the
last hold which reality or the universe can have on the independent mind. All
is chance, accident, and ephemeral illusion - a fly may be greater than
Arcturus, and Durfee Hill may surpass Mount Everest - assuming them to be
removed from the present planet and differently environed in the continuum
of space-time. . . All the cosmos is a jest, and fit to be treated only as a jest,
and one thing is as true as another. (231)


Lovecraft's distress is that we can (it seems) no longer trust our most precious
means of understanding the world around us: our senses. If we cannot trust our
senses, what remains? This idea is used to create an essence of fear in Lovecraft's
stories by denying characters their sense of familiarity, creating a landscape
seemingly outside of human experience. In Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,
Lovecraft states that

Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected, so that
it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic
alienage and outsiderness without laying stress on the emotion of fear.
(135)

In The Call of Cthulhu the characters are denied something as basic to our human
experience as the laws of geometry. Rather than the geometric notions we are
accustomed to, Lovecraft describes geometries that are queer and non-Euclidean.
Although not all readers will understand the phrase non-Euclidean, it nevertheless
has a chilling effect, giving the impression of a break in the natural order, a common
theme in cosmic horror. Understanding the mathematics, interestingly, amplifies
rather than diminishes the horror. As we will see, an individual accustomed to a
universe that has a Euclidean geometric structure would find a non-Euclidean
setting quite disturbing...possibly disturbing enough to cause insanity.

There are several papers written on Lovecraft's use of mathematics. In particular,
Hull's H. P. Lovecraft: a Horror in Higher Dimensions is a nice introduction to the
mathematics in Lovecraft while Halopern and Lobossiere's Mind Out of Time:
Identity, Perception, and the Fourth Dimension in H. P. Lovecraft's `The Shadow out
of Time' and `The Dreams in the Witch House' contains, among other things, a
discussion of how and why Lovecraft used mathematics. The intent of this paper is
to provide an avenue for the non-mathematician to understand some of the
mathematical concepts utilized by Lovecraft. In particular, we will focus on
Lovecraft's use of geometry and dimension in Through the Gates of the Silver Key
(written by Lovecraft and Price), The Dreams in the Witch House, and The Call of
Cthulhu.

Cosmic Angle of Regarding

In Through the Gates of the Silver Key by H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price,
Randolph Carter (unsurprisingly) journeys through gates opened by a particular
silver key. After completing the rite of the Silver Key in a cave Carter experiences
things scarcely to be described in words (399). Carter's sense of space and time
become blurred as he finds himself beyond the gate, which leads from Earth and
time to that extension of Earth which is outside time" (400). Here Carter meets a
guide, who had been an entity of Earth millions of years before.

Beyond this gate Carter has only such shifting hints of form and position as his
whirling fancy supplied (401). Then, suddenly, Carter finds that the pageant of
impressions (401) that had assailed his senses began to stabilize. He describes
masses of towering stone that followed the laws of some unknown, inverse
geometry (401).

Carter is led close to the Ultimate Gate by his guide, where he encounters beings
he refers to as The Ancient Ones and discovers that he is intended to join them on
a pedestal that is at the intersection of oddly curved lines that are described as being
neither semicircle nor ellipse, parabola or hyperbola" (403). The guide proceeds to
lead Carter through the Ultimate Gate, where Carter realizes in a moment of
confusing fright that he was not one person, but many persons (405).

As Carter transcends his sense of self, he experiences himself in many places at the
same time (405). Carter was at once the small boy of his childhood in 1883 and the
man he became in 1928. Further, he finds that he is not constrained to these selfs.
Rather, he senses a limitless confusion of beings which he knew were as much
himself as the local manifestation now beyond the Ultimate Gate (405). (Here, the
local manifestation refers to the human Carter's existence.)

There were...Carters of forms both human and non-human, vertebrate and
invertebrate, conscious and mindless, animal and vegetable. And more, there
were Carters having nothing in common with earthly life. (405)

Carter was adrift in the currents of his (now) poorly defined concept of self, causing
him to reel in the clutch of horror as he realized that he was aware of his existence
yet knew he was no longer a definite being distinguished from other beings (406).
As Carter journeys further, he is allowed to see the Ultimate Mystery, a privilege
given to 11 beings of Earth (with only 5 of them being human). Here he learns,
among other things, that

what the denizens of few dimensioned zones call change is merely a function
of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic
angles. As the Shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the
angles of cutting - being circle, ellipse, parabola or hyperbola according to
that angle, yet without any change in the cone itself - so do the local aspects
of an unchanged - and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle
of regarding. (409)

Further, Carter is told that

Each local being - son, father, grandfather, and so on - and each stage of
individual being - infant, child, boy, man - is merely one of the infinite phases
of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle
of the consciousness-plane, which cuts it. (410)

Now for some mathematics. We begin with the analogy of the cone as the ideas
developed can be of use in understanding later topics. The reference to parabolas,
hyperbolas, ellipses, and circles refers to the classic geometric idea of conic sections.
When a plane intersects a cone, the intersection forms either a circle, parabola,
ellipse, or hyperbola. (One can also obtain lines, but we will consider those to be
degenerate hyperbolas.) A representation of this can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Conic Sections

In this analogy, the cosmic angle of regard is the angle of the plane, with each angle
generating a different intersecting curve. These intersecting curves are the
manifestations of Carter with the Carter archetype being the entire cone. As the
angle increases or decreases the intersecting curves seem to change. However, this
change is not really change if the object is viewed in its entirety. Time and space
seem to be tied to the angle of regard for Carter as his totality contains life from
across time and space.

There is another mathematical lesson that can be pulled from the angle of regard.
Imagine a creature trapped in a two-dimensional world; in this case, the plane in
Figure 1. A cone existing in three-dimensional space would intersect the plane in
one-dimensional curves that would exist in the same plane as our two-dimensional
creature. Now, rather than rotating the plane imagine it is fixed and the cone can
move freely. As the cone moves the curves in the plane will appear to morph and
sometimes disappear. (Not all movements cause morphing; if the cone happens to
move in a direction parallel to the plane the curves will only move, not morph.)
Further, the intersection can yield two unconnected, infinitely long curves (in the
case of non-degenerate hyperbolas), one closed curve (in the case of ellipses and
circles), or one infinitely long curve (in the case of lines and parabolas). This
visualization can give insight regarding how a creature inhabiting a four-
dimensional space might appear to an inhabitant of a three-dimensional space. This
creature would appear as intersections and may not even be connected; we would
see floating shapes that would appear to morph, disappear, and sometimes coalesce.
In Through the Gates of the Silver Key, Carter learns that we are, indeed, all beings
inhabiting more than three dimensions. In fact, the Ancient Ones tell Carter that

every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some
corresponding figure of one more dimension - as a square is cut from a cube
or a circle from a sphere. The cube and sphere, of three dimensions, as thus
cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions, which men know only
 through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five
dimensions, and so on up to the dizzy and reach less heights of archetypal
infinity. (408)

We explore this idea of dimensional interaction further in the next section, but first
we should note that Price, and not Lovecraft, seems to be responsible for many of
the mathematical concepts presented in Through the Gates of the Silver Key. In
Burelson's H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study it is posited that Lovecraft's final version
[of Silver Key] owes much in conceptualization to the mathematical notions
suggested by Price (190). However, although the mathematical ideas for this story
may have originated with Price, it was Lovecraft who reworked the concepts into
Lovecraftian prose (188).

Dimension

To understand the geometric and dimensional terms employed by Lovecraft, we
start with a story. In 1882 the memoirs of an individual we will call A. Square were
published by Edwin Abbott in his 1882 novella Flatland. A. Square inhabits
Flatland; a two-dimensional world inhabited by two-dimensional beings like A.
Square who is, unsurprisingly, a square. Through Abbott, A. Square describes how
inhabitants of Flatland perceive each other and organize their society. We will not
delve into those details (which comprise roughly half of the original novella) as we
are primarily interested in a particular meeting described in Flatland.

A. Square has a dream in which he visits Lineland; a land of people living in one
dimension. A. Square attempts to explain the concept of two dimensions to the
inhabitants of Lineland, but they are less than receptive, believing him a wizard and
a heretic. As the crowds of Lineland approach him from all sides (which is only left
and right in Lineland), A. Square awakes.

The next evening A. Square's grandson inquires about the physical interpretation of
cubing a number. If the number gives length and squaring gives area, what does
cubing give? This conversation ends with A. Square sending his grandson to bed
dismissing his ideas as nonsensical. (Although us Spacelanders (denizens of three-
dimensional space) will recognize that cubing gives volume, the inhabitants of
Flatland have no such concept.)

However, that night A. Square encounters a being claiming to exist in three-
dimensions; the two of Flatland and a third for which A. Square has no name, but
which the visitor, who we will call A. Sphere, calls height. When A. Sphere first
communicates with A. Square, he does so as a disembodied voice (as far as A. Square
was concerned). Then, a dot appears to A. Square, and that dot becomes a circle with
increasing radius which reaches a maximum then begins to shrink, becoming a dot
again prior to disappearing. This is highly confusing to A. Square, but can be
understood quite simply by Spacelanders.

Imagine Flatland as a piece of paper with the inhabitants drawn on it. (We will see
later when we discuss geometries that the global structure of Flatland may not
resemble a piece of paper.) This plane will actually extend infinitely and should be
viewed as having zero thickness (unlike the piece of paper). The inhabitants of
Flatland reside in this plane and cannot see anything not intersecting it. If we drew a
rectangle around an inhabitant of Flatland that poor individual would be trapped in
an inescapable prison. If we avoid the plane, we are invisible to the inhabitants of
Flatland. If we touch or put an arm through the plane, the inhabitants see only the
two-dimensional cross-sectional intersection(s).

There are several implications to this idea of three-dimensional beings interacting
with a two-dimensional space. For instance, if we put a finger through Flatland the
inhabitants will see a circular blob. If they try to capture this creature, they might
build a rectangular enclosure. To them, it is not possible to escape such a structure,
but we have access to a third dimension and can simply pull our finger out of the
plane and re-insert it outside of the rectangle. To the inhabitants, we will have
teleported. But in reality, we are only making use of a dimension they cannot see.

It is also possible for one being to appear as many. Rather than just putting one
finger through Flatland, put the four fingers from one hand through. To the
Flatlanders, four separate beings would appear, although in reality these beings are
only parts of a larger whole. We first saw this idea in our conversation on the
Cosmic Angle of Regard and conic sections. We can now understand A. Sphere's
appearance as described by A. Square. A. Sphere spoke to A. Square prior to
intersecting Flatland, he then crosses Flatland, first intersecting only at a point when
the sphere is tangent to the plane, then becoming a circle with varying radius when
the sphere is cut by the plane, then becoming a point again just before disappearing
as the sphere passes through the other side of Flatland. The original art by Abbott
can be seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Edwin Abbott's drawing of A. Sphere passing through Flatland.

As an example of these ideas in Lovecraft we consider The Dreams in the Witch
House. This story follows Walter Gilman, a mathematics student at Miskotonic
University, who rents a room in an old building that at one time housed a witch,
Keziah Mason. Gillman begins obsessing over the strange angles of one corner of his
room and is plagued by dreams and visits from Mason's familiar, a rat creature with
humanoid face and hands known as Brown Jenkin.

Keziah's witchcraft seems to be related to geometry:

[Keziah] had told Judge Hathorne of lines and curves that could be made to
point out directions leading through the walls of space to other spaces
beyond, and had implied that such lines and curves were frequently used at
certain midnight meetings in the dark valley of the white stone beyond
Meadow Hill and on the unpeopled island in the river......Then she had drawn
those devices on the walls of her cell and vanished. (359)

The longer Gilman remains in the house, the more obsessed he becomes with the
geometry of his room, which does not seem quite right. Naturally, Gilman begins to
combine his mathematical theories with occult ideas attempting to rediscover
Keziah's secret. (It is what any reasonable mathematician would do in his place.) In
the end, things do not work out well for Gilman as he is found with a hole burrowed
into his chest and his heart eaten by Brown Jenkin.

During one of Gilman's dreams, he observed a further mystery - the tendency of
certain entities to appear suddenly out of empty space, or to disappear totally with
equal suddenness (362). As we know from our earlier conversation, this could be
accounted for by a being inhabiting more than three spatial dimensions intersecting
with our three-dimensional space. If the creature pulls itself out of our space,
through a direction inaccessible to us, it would appear to disappear.

It is also possible that this notion provides an explanation for Keziah's escape from
her prison through strange angles. If Keziah's witchcraft included a perception of a
fourth direction, one perpendicular to all known directions, along with the ability to
move through this fourth dimension she would appear to vanish and would have
little trouble escaping a three-dimensional jail cell. Gilman posits that this is
possible and that if an individual had the requisite mathematical knowledge they
could

step deliberately from the earth to any other celestial body which might lie at
one of an infinity of specific points in the cosmic pattern. Such a step, he said,
would require only two stages; first, a passage out of the three-dimensional
sphere we know, and second, a passage back to the three-dimensional sphere
at another point, perhaps one of infinite remoteness. (363)

Further, in Through the Gates of the Silver Key Carter is told

how childish and limited is the notion of a tri-dimensional world, and what
an infinity of directions there are besides the known directions of up-down,
forward-backward, right-left. (408)

Figure 3 shows a direction that, to a Flatlander, would be perpendicular to all known
directions. In this figure, each plane is a separate universe (true parallel universes,
if you will). The known directions for the inhabitants of Flatland include the
directions accessible to them, North, East, South, West and all combinations of those
directions. Thus, the arrow pointing from one universe to the other is perpendicular
to each of the directional arrows contained in the first universe. In other words, this
direction is perpendicular to all known directions (for the inhabitants of Flatland).

Figure 3: To the inhabitants of Flatland, the direction from one plane to the other is
perpendicular to all of their known directions.


Geometries

The Dreams in the Witch House, The Call of Cthulhu, and Through the Gates of
the Silver Key all include uncanny geometric ideas. In each, there is mention of odd
angles and geometric figures not behaving according to the properties we ascribe
them. To understand these ideas we will explore some of the concepts of geometry;
in particular what is meant by a non-Euclidean geometry versus a Euclidean
geometry.

A beautifully accessible conversation similar to the one that follows can be found in
the introductory chapter of The Shape of Space by Jeffrey Weeks. To start we return
to Flatland. Intuitively, most people picture Flatland as a flat space, like the plane
we envisioned in the last section. However, this may not be the case. Perhaps
Flatland has an intrinsic shape that we would call a sphere. How would this appear
to the inhabitants of Flatland? We don't have to stretch our imaginations to picture
this as we already experience a version by living on a roughly spherical planet. What
we see around us looks flat; the curvature and size of the Earth relative to our size
makes the curvature unperceivable. Likewise, the inhabitants of Flatland wouldn't
necessarily see the curvature of their universe. What they would be able to do is
leave in one direction and, without turning around, come back to their starting
point. And why limit Flatland to a sphere? For all we know, the inhabitants of
Flatland could live on a torus, as shown in Figure 4.





Figure 4: Perhaps Flatland is a torus?

Notice that the torus has a few properties in common with the sphere; for example,
the landscape would still appear locally flat if the inhabitants were small enough
relative to the torus. Also, Flatlanders could still leave in one direction and come
back to their starting point. Are there differences that an inhabitant of Flatland
could detect? We see a giant hole in the middle, but the inhabitants of Flatland
would not see that as they are trapped on the surface. However, there are ways for
Flatlanders to detect that Flatland is not a sphere. Imagine two travelers leaving a
common starting point walking in a straight line in different directions until they
return to the starting point. On a torus it is possible that both could return to the
starting point without their two paths crossing, which is not possible in the similar
situation on the sphere. This is shown in Figures 5 and 6.

Figure 5: If we choose two directions and walk on a sphere, the paths must cross before
returning to the starting point.

Figure 6: If we choose two directions and walk on a torus, both paths can return to the
starting point without crossing.

These are only two of an infinite number of possible models for Flatland. Both the
sphere and the torus are objects we would intuitively call curved. Is there any way
the Flatlanders could determine if their universe is curved? The answer is that
theoretically it is possible but it may not be realistically detectable. (Well, as realistic
as we can get when discussing Flatland.) To this end, let's think about what a
triangle would look like when sketched in the sand on a spherical Flatland.

To imagine a triangle on a sphere, we need to understand what a line on a sphere
looks like since a triangle can be viewed as the region bounded by three distinct
non-pairwise parallel lines. If we change our intuitive definition of a line segment to
the shortest distance between two points, we can begin to see what lines on a sphere
must look like. When trapped on the surface of a sphere, the shortest distance
between two points always lies on a great circle containing those points, where a
great circle is a circle on the sphere whose center is also the center of the sphere. A
great circle will always split the sphere into two equal sized pieces, unlike a small
circle (a circle whose center is not the center of the sphere). Figure 7 shows a sphere
with a great circle along with two small circles. On our (roughly) spherical world the
lines of latitude, with the exception of the equator, are small circles while all lines of
longitude are great circles.

Figure 7: Two small circles and a great circle on a sphere.

Now imagine three great circles. Each great circle must hit each other great circle in
two spots. In Figure 8 we see three lines, a, b, c, intersecting at three points, A, B, C.
This defines a triangle on the sphere with interior angles x, y, z. (Actually, those
three lines divide the sphere into eight triangles, but we will only consider the
triangle with sides a, b, c.) From the picture it seems intuitively obvious that unlike
regular triangles, the interior angles for the spherical triangle sum to more than
180 degrees. So, if the residents of Flatland were able to construct a triangle, they
could measure the angles to see if their world was curved. Now, before we think this
is too easy we should keep in mind that this sphere is the entire universe for the
Flatlanders. Unlike a flat geometry, the interior measure of triangles on a sphere will
vary with the size of the triangle (although always remaining greater than 180
degrees). In order to make a triangle with interior angles whose sum is detectably
greater than 180 degrees, the poor Flatlanders may need to make a triangle almost
as large as their entire universe.

Figure 8: A triangle on a sphere. Note that the angles, x, y, and z add to more than 180
degrees.

As a side note, it is worth mentioning that the idea of curvature also exists in three
dimensions, although it is much harder to visualize. For example, there are possible
intrinsic shapes having properties in common with the spherical Flatland in which a
spaceship could fly directly away from the Earth in any direction and eventually find
itself returning to the Earth. (Well, if the Earth weren't itself moving.) The
mathematician Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss carried out an experiment related to the
curvature of the universe (although Gauss was attempting to determine the
curvature of the Earth and not the universe). Gauss used survey data collected
during his ten-year involvement in mapping the Kingdom of Hanover during the
years from 1818 to 1832, which included measurements of the interior angles of the
triangle determined by three mountain peaks (specifically, the peaks of
Hohenhagen, Inselsberg, and Brocken). Gauss determined that the angles (to the
accuracy of his instruments) did indeed add to 180 degrees, but it should be kept in
mind that the universe is huge. The universe could be curved with the interior
angles of that particular triangle summing to 180.00001 degrees, but such a small
difference may have been imperceptible using Gauss's methods and equipment.
Rather than discussing further what implications this would have for a three-
dimensional space (and what that geometry might look like), for now we'll stick
with the two-dimensions of Flatland.

How does this conversation relate to Lovecraft and angles that seem wrong? There
must be something occurring that makes this curvature (if that is what it is)
detectable to the characters...and not only detectible, but detectible on such a
magnitude that it is distressing. Imagine that Flatland is, in general, a flat plane.
However, there are some bumps on this plane, as in Figure 9. A resident of
Flatland far from these bumps would find that the interior angles of a triangle add to
180 degrees. However, if the curvature were curvy enough, then the same resident
could walk near one of these bumps and obtain triangles whose interior angles sum
to something other than 180 degrees (this sum could be more or less than 180, as
we will see in a bit). If this creature had lived its entire life in the flat portion of
Flatland this difference could be quite unsettling. The geometry of this place would
seem uncanny, the angles wrong.

Figure 9: A flat Flatland with some bumps.

What would it look like if our universe had pockets of varying curvature? This is
difficult/impossible to picture in the same way that we can picture a Flatland with
bumps, but the key idea remains. Namely, that if the curvature were high enough
near a particular local, we be able to discern a difference. One of these differences
being that angles would seem wrong or queer. We will return to this notion later.

So, are we discussing the infamous non-Euclidean geometries? Kind of, but not
exactly. In the next section we dip into this topic. We then return to Lovecraft and
briefly discuss some of the instances where these terms/ideas appear in his fiction.

Euclidean Geometry

A little over 2000 years ago, Euclid penned the famous Elements, his treatise on
geometry. In Elements Euclid lays down 23 definitions, five axioms (assumptions
that were considered self-evident) and five postulates (common-sense geometric
facts derived from experience). From this humble beginning Euclid was able to
prove more results, until there arose an immense number of geometric theorems.
And all of these theorems were based entirely, in theory, on these assumptions and
definitions. It is no surprise that Euclid is sometimes referred to as the Father of
Geometry. (We note, however, that one of the criticism of Elements is that Euclid's
list of assumptions was not exhaustive and some of his proofs involve implicit
assumptions not listed.)

Given that Euclid is almost synonymous with geometry, it is not surprising that
Lovecraft refers to Euclid when discussing geometries that somehow lie outside of
the normal laws of geometry. This occurs when Lovecraft references non-
Euclidean geometries, but there are other examples. Lovecraft invokes Euclid in At
the Mountains of Madness through a character's description of geometrical forms
for which an Euclid would scarcely find a name (460). Lovecraft's common theme
of removing the reader from familiar surroundings is present in this line, but there
is an added distance to the removal. A geometric shape that cannot be imagined is,
well, difficult to imagine. The impression here is that the object is simple, on par
with a square or a circle. However, it is somehow beyond our conception. Even
Euclid would not be able to categorize it.

Returning to the mathematics, the idea is to use as few axioms/assumptions as
possible when beginning a mathematical exploration. So mathematicians wondered
if it were possible to prove any of the five initial postulates using only the other four.
If it were, then four postulates would suffice. Time and time again the assumption
under scrutiny was the fifth postulate.

Euclid's Fifth Postulate: If a straight line falls on two straight lines in such a
manner that the interior angles on the same side are together less than two
right angles, then the straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that
side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.

This postulate is more complicated than the other four postulates which include, for
example, the postulate Between any two points a straight line may be drawn. This
original stating of the fifth postulate has been (luckily) shown equivalent to the
much easier to digest Playfair's Axiom, named after the Scottish mathematician John
Playfair.

Playfair's Axiom: Given a line and a point not on it, at most one line parallel to
the given line can be drawn through the point.

If we take this postulate in conjunction with the remaining four, it can be shown that
the result is the following (intuitive) result:

Given any line and any point not on the line, exactly one line can be drawn
through the point that is parallel to the first.

This is shown in Figure 10, where M is the only line through P that is parallel to the
line N.









Figure 10: Given a line, N, and a point, P, not on the line, the parallel postulate implies
that there is exactly one line, namely M, through the point parallel to the original line.

For centuries mathematicians (professional and amateur) tried proving the fifth
postulate from the other four...but each effort proved futile. Eventually another
approach was tried. If the parallel postulate is indeed independent from the other
four postulates, then we should be able to explore a geometry where we do not
assume the parallel postulate. If a contradiction arises, it may be that the fifth
postulate is indeed necessary. In particular, Gauss worked on this problem,
mentioning it to his friend Farkas Bolyai, who offered several (incorrect) proofs for
the parallel postulate. (Guass did not present his ideas to the general mathematical
community as he believed the fifth postulate was independent of the other four; an
idea that would cause a controversy, which Gauss avoided.) Bolyai taught
mathematics to his son, Jnos Bolyai, but warned him not to waste any time on the
problem of the fifth postulate. Of course, as any child would, Jnos did the opposite.
Jnos assumed that a geometry without the fifth postulate would be self-consistent,
and he pursued that notion. In 1823 he wrote to his father saying I have discovered
things so wonderful that I was astounded ... out of nothing I have created a strange
new world. Boylai's work (and that of other mathematicians) led to the discovery
that three entirely consistent categories of geometries were possible, depending on
the number of parallel lines:

If there is precisely one parallel line we say the geometry is Euclidean (since
it matches Euclid's original presentation).

If there are no parallel lines possible we say the geometry is elliptic.

If there are an infinite number of parallel lines we say the geometry is
hyperbolic.

It is interesting to note that these are the only cases. Given a line and a point not on
the line there are only three possibilities: infinitely many parallel lines through that
point, one parallel line through that point, or no parallel lines through that point. So,
it is not possible to have exactly two parallel lines through this point. We won't
discuss why this is the case, but it is worth noting as it is (in the author's opinion) an
interesting point.

We are now able to define Euclidean geometries and (one form of) non-Euclidean
geometries. A Euclidean geometry is one with exactly one parallel line. This is our
intuitive geometry. A non-Euclidean geometry has either no parallel lines or an
infinite number of parallel lines through the specified point. There are a few points
to make here. First, the bumps in our last Flatland example cause a change in the
local geometry, so we can't classify the geometry of that particular version of
Flatland as entirely Euclidean or non-Euclidean. Second, there are other forms of
non-Euclidean geometry that arise from relaxing certain conditions dealing with the
metric, or distance, function. We will discuss one particular model representing
each of elliptic and hyperbolic geometries. For the interested reader, it is easy to
find detailed material on Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries in many texts and
online. (For example, The Shape of Space serves as a wonderful introduction.)

Since Euclidean geometry is the standard geometry, we won't delve too deeply
into explaining it. The main concepts we will use are that there is always exactly one
parallel line through a given point not on a line and that the interior angles of a
triangle always sum to 180 degrees. In the following two sections we discuss the
two other possibilities.

Elliptic Geometry

We begin with the spherical model, which is an example of an elliptic geometry, as
we have already thought a little about this. The geometry on a sphere, which is
called spherical geometry, is not the only possible form of elliptic geometry.
However, the spherical model allows us to visualize one possible elliptic geometry
and we will forgo more complicated models and explanations in favor of this
intuitive approach.

Earlier, we mentioned that the equivalent of a line on a sphere is a great circle. To
make this more precise, we mention that the mathematical term for the shortest
distance between two points is geodesic. In Euclidean geometries, the geodesic is a
straight line. (Straight is in quotes to indicate our standard idea of a line, we have
not defined what it means to be straight.) On a sphere the geodesic is a great circle.
This is why airplanes travel along great circles; these are the shortest paths between
points on a sphere.

Recall that a great circle is a circle that has the center of the sphere as its center. If
one pictures two great circles on a sphere, it becomes clear that they must intersect,
as shown in Figure 5. Hence, if we take line" to mean great circle" then if one
considers a line and a point not on the line, every line through that point must
intersect the first line. This means that given a line on a sphere and a point not on
that line, there are no lines through the point parallel to the first.

Further, recall that Figure 8 shows what a triangle would look like if drawn on a
sphere. In this case, the interior angles add to more than 180 degrees. This is always
the case with spherical geometric model created in this manner. It is important here
to again mention that we are painting with a broad brush, picturing the geometry as
the geometry on a sphere (i.e. thinking of the space as being embedded in a higher-
dimensional space) is not necessary. There are a broad range of possible non-
Euclidean geometries with no parallel lines; the geometry on a sphere is but one
example.

Hyperbolic Geometry

The sphere made a nice visual for spherical geometry. There are four common
models for hyperbolic geometries. The most recognized and utilized is probably the
Poincar model, named for the French mathematician Henri Poincar. This model is
shown in Figure 11. Here, the curves are the geodesics. In this model, distance is
distorted as we approach the boundary of the disk.

Figure 11: The Poincar Model for a hyperbolic geometry.

We will not explore this particular model, but it is interesting to note that the artist
M. C. Escher created several pieces inspired by this model. One example is Escher's
Circle Limit I shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: M.C. Escher's Circle Limit I.

It is not difficult to understand the basics of the Poincar model, but there is a more
intuitive model similar to the spherical model from the last section. Rather than a
sphere, however, we use a hyperbolic paraboloid, sometimes referred to as a saddle,
as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13: A Hyperbolic Paraboloid.

In contrast to the geometry on the sphere, we won't go into detail regarding the
geodesics on the saddle. Here, for any geodesic M and point P not on M we have an
infinite number of geodesics passing through P and never intersecting M. Figure 14
shows how the geodesics appear on a saddle. Here, the induced geometry is
hyperbolic. (For technical reasons, the pictured geodesics are said to be
hyperparallel to M. There are two flavors of parallel on a saddle and we are only
picturing one.)

Figure 14: For any line M and point P not on M, there are an infinite number of lines
through P parallel to M.

Figure 15 shows a pair of parallel lines and a triangle on the saddle surface. In this
case we note that the interior angles of the triangle add to less than 180 degrees.












Figure 15: A hyperbolic paraboloid with a pair of parallel lines and a triangle.

Before closing this section, we should note that non-Euclidean geometries are not
the mad fancy of mathematicians attempting to break conventional geometry.
Although we only discussed two-dimensional models embedded in a three-
dimensional space, there are also hyperbolic, elliptic, and Euclidean geometries for
three-dimensional space. In fact, we don't know the shape of our universe. A priori,
our physical universe may have an induced hyperbolic geometry. In fact, one of
Einstein's models involves a three-sphere (a four-dimensional analog of our usual
sphere), which would imply a curved spacetime. As one can guess, there is active
research into the shape of our universe and spacetime. It is the advanced version
of the question Is the world flat? (For more information see The Shape of Space.)

Queer Landscapes

We have already seen mention of queer geometries in Through the Gates of the
Silver Key and The Dreams in the Witch House. We turn our attention now to
The Call of Cthulhu, which involves some of Lovecraft's most explicit use of
uncanny landscapes.

The Call of Cthulhu starts with some notes and newspaper clippings found among
the belongings of George Gammell Angell, an Emeritus professor of language at
Brown University, by Francis Wayland Thurston, a Boston anthropologist and
Angell's grandnephew, while Thurston was settling the late Angell's estate. In 1925
Angell had been approached by a sculptor, Henry Anthony Wilcox, who had been
plagued by dreams involving great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung
monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror (205).
Wilcox also reports hearing a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which
only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the
almost unpronounceable jumble of letters Cthulhu fhtagn (205). Wilcox had
recreated a bas relief seen in this dream, the sight of which, combined with the
telling of his dream, triggered a memory in Angell who had seen a similar bas relief
mentioned in conjunction with the secret cult of Cthulhu at a meeting of the
American Archeological Society. During this meeting John Raymond Legrasse, an
Inspector of Police, brought a similar bas relief recovered from cult members in
swamps surrounding New Orleans. Through Legrasse, Angell learns of the cult
centered around the being Cthulhu. A translation of a chant heard by Legrasse,
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, yields the confusing
statement: In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming (210). One of the
few cult members captured (and sane enough to give information) told of how
Cthulhu's followers were waiting for a time when the stars would align, R'lyeh
would rise from the Pacific ocean, and Cthulhu would wake.

Among Angell's newspaper clippings is a report of a derelict ship found in the Pacific
with one surviver, a Norwegian sailor named Gustaf Johansen who was discovered
in a half delirious state clutching a horrible stone idol of unknown origin (218).
Thurston is struck by the realization that this event relates to the Cthulhu cult and
begins his own investigation, traveling to speak with Johansen. Unfortunately,
Johansen dies before Thurston's arrival. However, he had left a long manuscript of
what he called technical matters. This manuscript tells of how Johansen and his
crew stumbled upon the risen Rlyeh, which had buildings of strange Cyclopean
masonry and eventually encountered and repelled Cthluhu. Although most of the
crew die, Johansen and a fellow crew mate manage to survive, adrift on the wrecked
ship. When the ship is discovered, only Johansen remains alive.

Mathematically, the interesting part of this story occurs while the crew is exploring
R'lyeh prior to encountering Cthulhu. Johansen's description of the city was
reminiscent of the dreams of Wilcox, with Thuston noting that:

Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very
close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite
structure or building, he dwells only on broad impressions of vast angles and
stone surfaces - surfaces too great to belong to any thing right or proper for
this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his
talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his
awful dreams. He said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was
abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and
dimensions apart from ours. (222)

Further,

Johansen swears [one of his crew] was swallowed up by an angle of masonry
which shouldnt have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if
it were obtuse. (224)

We have seen examples of triangles whose interior angles sum to more than 180
degrees. In such a triangle one could imagine seeing two angles that sum to 145
degrees. This means the remaining angle should be 35 degrees. However, in a
hyperbolic geometry the final angle could be 120 degrees; meaning it should be
acute, but behaves as if it is obtuse.

Johansen also describes a state of perceptual confusion:

The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the
polarizing miasma welling out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted
 menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of
carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed
convexity....As Wilcox would have said, the geometry of the place was all
wrong. One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal,
hence the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable.
(222)

To best understand this last description, we return to our model of Flatland with
bumps (Figure 9). Again, we imagine that the vast majority of Flatland is flat, but
a location exists with some bumps in the surface. A. Square could travel from a
region of Flatland with a locally Euclidean geometry to a region with a locally non-
Euclidean geometry by approaching and climbing one of the bumps. In this
model, the local curvature of A. Square's universe varies as A. Square moves across
one of these regions. If A. Square was accustomed to the flat regions of Flatland,
this change would be unsettling. Angles could seem to change in degree measure as
A. Square moves and usual constants (think of the flatness of the line of horizon for
us Spacelanders) would distort and change. Is it possible that R'lyeh was in a region
of bent space, causing Johansen to question his senses and give the above
descriptions?

In Tipett's Possible Bubbles of Spacetime Curvature in the South Pacific, the
author posits that all of the credible phenomena which Johansen described may
well be explained as being the observable consequences of a localized bubble of
spacetime curvature (1). Our quaint analogy of the surface with bumps fails us a bit
here as that example had a curved space; we made no mention of spacetime. We
won't delve into this distinction as a conversation on spacetime would bring us too
far afield. Rather, we will simply note that time itself is now tangled up in the
curving. One of the effects of a curved spacetime is gravitational lensing, where
the image of an object that lies outside a curved region will become distorted as
gravity bends the path of rays of light. This can be used to explain many of the
peculiarities in Johanson's report regarding uncertain perspective and geometric
confusion. The bending of light rays would cause the horizon to take a curved
appearance (which would make it difficult to tell if the sea and ground were
horizontal) while some objects on the horizon would be distorted (a circular sun
may thin as one moves, becoming elliptical in shape and continuing to thin as one
approaches the center of the curved space).

Another interesting effect of curved spacetime is time dilation. Basically, time will
move at relative rates depending on where one is relative to the bubble of curved
spacetime. Tipett offers this as a possible explanation for the Cthulhu cult's belief
that Cthulhu is neither dead nor alive. Perhaps Cthulhu is in a region of space where
the passage of time is exponentially slower than it is outside the region? This would
indeed happen at the center of the curved spacetime bubble the author describes.

Moving from The Call of Cthulhu, we see these ideas in both The Dreams in the
Witch House and Through the Gates of the Silver Key. Time dilation could
describe Gilman's comment that

Time could not exist in certain belts of space, and by entering and remaining
in such a belt one might preserve one's life and age indefinitely (376)

and the bending of light rays through gravitational lensing gives a possible
interpretation for Randolph Carter's description of

great masses of towering stone, carven into alien and incomprehensible
designs and disposed according to the laws of some unknown, inverse
geometry. Light filtered from a sky of no assignable colour in baffling,
contradictory directions...(401)

Although a model for such a geometry is presented by Tipett, he states that a type of
matter is required that is quite unphysical and has a nature which is entirely alien
to all of the experiences of human science (1). Clearly, though, we are not
considering the limits of human science. For example, Gilman brings a curious piece
of metal found in the Witch House to a certain Professor Ellery who finds

platinum, iron and tellurium in the strange alloy; but mixed with these were
at least three other apparent elements of high atomic weight which
chemistry was absolutely powerless to classify. Not only did they fail to
correspond with any known element, but they did not even fit the vacant
places reserved for probable elements in the periodic system. (375)

Conclusion

More often than not, Lovecraft's use of non-Euclidean geometry and dimension
seems to be an educated use. In many cases, the accompanying descriptions from
characters match at least one possible mathematical interpretation. However, there
are instances where Lovecraft uses mathematical phrases in ways that are difficult
to interpret. For example, in Dreams Gilman feels that he was certainly near the
boundary between the known universe and the fourth dimension (365). By most
interpretations of dimension, it is nonsensical to speak of being close to the fourth
dimension.

Lovecraft did not consider himself an adept mathematician. In fact, in a letter to
Maurice W. Moe in 1915 Lovecraft remarked:

Mathematics I detest, and only a supreme effort of the will gained for me the
highest marks in Algebra and Geometry at school. In everything I am behind
the times. (9)

Although Lovecraft professed to dislike mathematics, he was very interested in
astronomy and physics and picked up mathematical notions through these interests.
Lovecraft used these mathematical ideas, it would seem, in part, because he himself
found the toppling of Newtonian physics by Einstein's theory of relativity
unsettling. As Halopern and Labossiere state:

Rather than breaking the laws of science with supernatural means and thus
generating fear, [Lovecraft] creates a feeling of horror by showing that the
common sense views of physics and nature (that is, the old Newtonian views)
are the comforting fantasy. In contrast, the counterintuitive new physics,
the true scientific reality, provides the source of horror. (513)

When sight and time are relative, Lovecraft felt all perception was in question. He
described landscapes utterly alien to humanity by altering something as
fundamental as geometry. Our insignificance and ignorance were underscored by
the notion that we are not even able to perceive ourselves in our entirety. We exist
in a space much bigger than we imagined, with entire spatial dimensions we cannot
perceive, natural laws we cannot understand, and geometric forms so alien they
cannot even be described



























 Works Cited

Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. 3rd ed. New York: Dover
Publications, 1992. Print.

Burleson, Donald R. H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study. Wesport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1983. Print.

Hull, Thomas H. P. Lovecraft: a Horror in Higher Dimensions, Math Horizons
13.3 (2006): 10-12. Print.

Halopern, Paul and Labossiere, Michael C. Mind Out of Time: Identity, Perception,
and the Fourth Dimension in H. P. Lovecraft's `The Shadow out of Time' and `The
Dreams in the Witch House', Extrapolation 50.3 (2009): 512-533. Print.

Lovecraft, H. P. At the Mountains of Madness. Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales
of H. P. Lovecraft Ed. Stephen Jones. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2008. 422-503.
Print

---. The Call of Cthulhu. Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft Ed.
Stephen Jones. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2008. 201-225. Print

---. The Dreams in the Witch House. Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H. P.
Lovecraft Ed. Stephen Jones. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2008. 358-386. Print

---. Letter to James F. Morton. H.P. Lovecraft. Selected Letters 1911-1924. Ed. Derelth,
A. and Wandrei, D. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965. 231. Print.

---. Letter to Maurice W. Moe. H.P. Lovecraft. Selected Letters 1911-1924. Ed. Derelth,
A. and Wandrei, D. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965. 5-10. Print.

---. Notes on Writing Weird Fiction. Marginalia. Ed. Derelth, A. and Wandrei, D.
Sauk City, Wis.:Arkham House, 1944. 135-139. Print

Lovecraft, H. P. and Price, E. Hoffman. Through the Gates of the Silver Key
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft Ed. Stephen Jones. London:
Orion Publishing Group, 2008. 393-421. Print

Tipett, Benjamin T. Possible Bubbles of Spacetime Curvature in the South Pacific,
arXiv, (2012): n. pag. Web. 5 June 2013.

Weeks, Jeffrey R. The Shape of Space. 2nd ed. New York: CRC Press, 2012. Print.