Philip K. Dick: Dreamer of the Mythos

John Carter

I must admit to some skepticism when I first read Peter Smith's "VALIS and the 23 Current". Admittedly, I was perhaps a little prejudiced, having spent at least as much time pouring over the works of Philip K. Dick as I had those of Lovecraft. Smith's assertion that Phil had misinterpreted his visions along gnostic Christian lines almost irritated me; why force the Lovecraftian filter onto somebody else's work when it seemed clear enough that a new and original force was involved? Smith cited VALIS' Sirian home as proof of his claimed Dagonic influence, but I thought myself the wiser for having read Dick's Radio Free Albemuth, the posthumously-published "prequel" to VALIS. It was in fact the original version of the events described later in VALIS. What had happened was that Phil's agent requested a few changes, and rather than butcher up his presumed masterpiece Phil took a few more years to come up with VALIS. Despite the error in judgement on his agent's part, I'm glad the original novel was rejected, for otherwise we would not have VALIS. Note that VALIS takes place in our world - presumably the real one - while Radio Free Albemuth does not.

In Radio Free Albemuth, Phil names the source of his visions as Fomalhaut, which he was told in a dream is called "Albemuth" by its natives. Fomalhaut is the fish's mouth, the alpha or brightest star in the constellation Piscis Australis, the Southern Fish. "Albemuth" is probably derived from the Arabic or Semitic "al-Behemoth", which itself seems to refer to a large fish. Between writing Radio Free Albemuth and VALIS, Phil read Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger; he says as much in the latter. Since much of the hidden Sirian cosmogony in VALIS is based on the mythology of the Dogon people, it is safe to assume that Phil learned of Robert K.G. Temple's The Sirius Mystery from reading Cosmic Trigger, and thought enough of it to make it a reality for the characters in his book. I was content to leave it at that, for I could see no other reason for Phil having moved VALIS from Fomalhaut to Sirius.

Retyping the Smith article got me to thinking a little more about the possible influences on Phil, so I re-read Radio Free Albemuth to satisfy myself that the Sirius connection was in this case an arbitrary whim of Phil's. To my surprise, I found on page 133 of the Avon paperback edition a dream of Phil's which involved crab-like beings from another world. The coincidence is significant, and in the context of the dream Phil realized that the crab-like beings were alternate representations of ourselves from another world.

No wonder Phil felt such an attraction to the crab-clawed ancestors of the Dogon, the great builders of worlds who came from Sirius. No wonder he was compelled to move VALIS from Fomalhaut to Sirius. The same dream is repeated in VALIS, but in a slightly modified from which brings it closer in line with Temple's book. Here is an example (note that "Zebra" is another name for VALIS), yet this is not the key for which we search:

In March 1974 at the time he had encountered God (more properly Zebra), he had experienced dreams about the three-eyed people - he had told me that. They manifested themselves as cyborg entities: wrapped up in glass bubbles staggering under masses of technological gear. An odd aspect cropped up that puzzled both Fat and me; sometimes in these vision-like dreams, Soviet technicians could be seen, hurrying to repair malfunctions of the sophisticated technological communications apparatus enclosing the three-eyed people. (VALIS, chap.7)

A sketch from Phil's Exegesis clearly shows the three-eyed "people" with their crab-claw hands. It is reproduced by Lawrence Sutin in In Pursuit of VALIS: Selections from the Exegesis on page 77 and also on page 220 of Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, Sutin's biography of PKD.

On pages 118 and 140 of the Avon edition of Radio Free Albemuth, Phil recounts further dreams he had during the course of his (involuntary) VALIS "Working". These are actual dreams he had, and they involve the appearance of astral texts. Phil dreamed repeatedly during the course of 1974 that someone - often himself - was holding up some obscure text for him to read, a book which contained the secrets of the universe. Sometimes he could make out words or phrases; other times he could only make out that the text was written in a foreign tongue. Often he could make nothing out but the appearance of the text itself, which was frequently burned around the edges. These dreams are also recounted in VALIS, in some of the letters collected by Underwood-Miller in their six volumes, and in the various biographies and interviews which exist. Seeing such astral books is a kabbalistic tradition, one that was deliberately sought by Jewish mystics using various dream-incubation techniques. It is also a practice taught in Eastern monasteries, where the texts are known as "termas". Here there is a definite parallel to the E.O.D.'s continuing search for the true Necronomicon.

Let us move away from the subject of dreams, and return to the specific stellar lore which Phil was inspired to use. Referring to Richard Hinckley Allen's indispensable Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, we find the following as part of the entry for the Southern Fish:

La Lande asserted that Dupuis had proved this [Piscis Australis] to be the sky symbol of the god Dagon of the Syrians, the Phagre and Oxyrinque adored in Egypt; and it has even been associated with the still greater Oannes.

Further down the page, under the entry for Fomalhaut itself, we find that this illuminating star was not always the fish's mouth, but was often referred to as the nearby eye instead. Thus we see that Phil's Albemuth could actually be interpreted as the eye of Dagon, a most startling revelation for one who set out to disprove such an association from even being possible. Phil was indeed influenced by the 23 Current; the proof is there for those willing to take the time to look.