The Beyond's Eibon Symbol

[Cydeous]

I was wondering if anyone knows the origin of the Eibon symbol in Fulci's The Beyond. Did he make it up or did it come from someplace else?

I don't remember what the symbol looked like, but The Book of Eibon comes from Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

[DVD-fanatic-9]

Originally Posted by Rockmjd

I don't remember what the symbol looked like, but The Book of Eibon comes from Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

It looked like this:



Like the number 24. Sort of.

I'm willing to bet it was taken from somewhere else. It's a pretty simple symbol, so the chance that it wasn't used until the 1970's is pretty bad. Fulci used a very similar (if not the same) symbol on the warriors forehead in Conquest.

It always reminded me of the hiragana for "mi" in Japanese.

[The Chaostar]

Maybe it was just a piss pattern of Dardano Sacchetti...

[Crystal Plumage]

It's the symbol for Jupiter I'd say:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimed...ll_symbols.jpg

[X-human]

Good ole Wiki:

The book was written by Eibon, a wizard in the land of Hyperborea. It was an immense text of arcane knowledge that contained, among other things, a detailed account of Eibon's exploits, including his journeys to the Vale of Pnath and the planet Shaggai, his veneration rituals of Zhothaqquah (Eibon's patron deity), and his magical formulae—such as for the slaying of certain otherworldly horrors. Unfortunately, only incomplete fragments of the original are thought to exist, though there are translations in English, French, and Latin—Liber Ivonis is the title of the Latin translation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu...#Book_of_Eibon

I'm not too familiar with Smith, I'll have to check him out.

In H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos (1928–...), Jupiter was the one-time home of the flying polyps.

It may be that this edition was sourced from them.

As for Smith, whom I'm only dimly aware of, wrote "in the ivory-sheeted books of Thule there were blood-writ runes that would call the demons of the fifth and seventh planets, if spoken aloud in the hour of their ascent'' ("The Double Shadow").

Thule is the "other" lost continent, the one Hitler was looking for. So it may be that someone from Thule obtained the book from the flying polyps, being the demons mentioned by Smith. Since it's a book of runes/symbols it makes sense that the rune on the cover is from the source.

[KR~!]

It's cool and funny that these amazing writers made all this stuff up, none of it ever existed and yet to this day people believe that it was real. I also can not name too many objects from horror books that been use in so many films, music, video games, etc. It would be like seeing the Hellrasier box in other films 100 years from now.

[X-human]

^ Not sure if you referencing Hitler's belief in Thule or not, but that's an ancient legend not specific to Cthulhu.

But I definitely agree the Cthulhu Mythos is a rich universe. The communal writings they had at the time of its creation really helped cement these ideas, the Cthulhu Mythos was adopted by so many writers that it ended up being the dominant universe. Because of corporate greed we won't see something like Clive Barker or Stepehen King's universes expanded by other writers unless money is exchanged.

But who knows, in one hundred years we may see that happen if they hit the public domain. We may see that in our lifetimes with the Universal Horrors, which begin to enter into the public domain in 2031 I believe.

[Cydeous]

I was watching La Terza Madre a few days ago and the symbol appeared in Michael's son's room. It was exactly the same as in The Beyond except it was upside down. I guess that it's the symbol for Saturn since Jupiter's symbol was also there. It's not exactly the same as the Saturn symbol but it's pretty close and the meaning would suit the film.

[vampyr789]

>>It's the symbol for Jupiter <<

why would he pick Jupiter, is there some special meaning of it to Lucio?

[DVD-fanatic-9]

I don't think there was any meaning to anything Lucio Fulci did. Well... nothing truly ambitious.

[Lurio Fulgento]

I'm fairly sure that Lucio's daughter got that symbol as a tattoo and, in response, he decided to use it as the demonic symbol for the movie. I dunno, kind of like revenge I guess.
(also, new to these forums, hello everybody)