Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories

The weird stories of Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) are supernatural in the truest sense. They testify to an awareness that the natural world is greater and more powerful than the puny destiny of man. Blackwood the nature-mystic holds the certitude that there are deeper forces at work in the universe, of which man is ignorant and before which he is helpless. These forces are not malignant per se, but are rather of such immensity of power and so mysterious in their purpose that before them man is but an insignificant microbe. The horror in Blackwood is the realization that modern man is insignificant to the degree that nature hardly deigns to perceive him, or perceives him only as a slight impediment in the fabric of the cosmos. Blackwood writes of a terrifying nature spirit or elemental ("The Wendigo") that haunts the great northern forests of North America, of the Danube willows which threaten to engulf two stranded campers on a island crumbling in flood ("The Willows"), and of the innate animalistic instincts of the atavistic soul ("Ancient Sorceries", which loosely inspired the film "Cat People"). Anyone with an interest in tales of the strange and uncanny ought to be acquainted with the stories of Algernon Blackwood. The Penguin Classics edition of Blackwood contains four fewer stories than the Dover publication misleadingly named The Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood, but does contain a useful introduction by S.T. Joshi, who has also compiled editions of the works of Lovecraft, Machen, and Lord Dunsany.

Having started reading Algernon Blackwood with the Dover-edition of his "Best Ghost Tales of..." I knew that there would be some overlapping between the books. This is indeed the case, and included in this book are the excellent tales that really hit home with me; "The Willows", "The Wendigo", "The Glamour of the Snow" and "The Man Whom the Trees Loved". All of the tales deals in encounters between an omnipotent nature, and what it contains, against spiritual man. "The Willows" details a canoe-trip in the swamps of Eastern-Europe, along the banks of the Donau, where the campers have quite an encounter with powerful forces. Decidedly one of my favourite horror-tales, right up there along several H. P. Lovecraft tales. Not for nothing that H. P. Lovecraft named this tale the greatest weird tale in existence. The other tales are also often very good, but they just lack a certain something in various ways. "Smith: An Episode in a Lodging-House", "The Insanity of Jones", "Ancient Sorceries", "The Man Who Found Out" and the final one "Sand". All of these are great, but "The Man Who Found Out" was not my type of tale. That being said, Blackwood has a very annoying habit of letting you know that the tale ends "happily" right in the middle of the action, which really destroys the tale in my opinion. If I wanted to read some unrealistic tale where I know the end before I start, I'd watch "James Bond" or some other rubbish. Included is also explanatory notes to the tales by renowned Weird literature scholar, S. T. Joshi, and in addition a very fine introduction and bibliography to Blackwood written by the very same scholar. The printing and paper is much better than the Dover-book, so that could be another good reason to buy it. He's no Lovecraft, but some of the tales are excellent nonetheless. Recommended.

Algernon Blackwood's stories are beautifully crafted, allusive, understated and often rather quiet in tone: their subtle and lasting impact upon the imagination resides in the eerie ability Blackwood possessed to evoke certain rare interactions with remote spheres of primaeval power long anteceding modern man and his circumscribed world of reassuring rationalism: AB's narratives reveal the domain of vast elemental beings and ancient presences haunting the outer spaces of woods and the wilderness of untamed nature and lurking behind the veil of appearances, emerging betimes from behind the facades of seeming normality, often to ensorcel and lure certain susceptible humans from this world into an unknown existence in secret realms of immense mystery. AB's tales, truly connoisseur-fare for the lover of supernatural terror, almost all concern the contact, whether intentional or inadvertent, with that which lies beyond the liminal borders of the mundane, pressing invisibly in upon us but unsuspected by the greater mass of humanity. 'The Willows' is unsurpassed in the genre, a genuinely unsettling story involving unseen alien potencies which threaten two men camping on a remote river island in Middle Europe. Likewise 'The Wendigo' reveals the fearful reality which underlies Indian folklore and dwells far beyond the familiar places of humankind, in the virgin forests of Canada. 'The Man Who The Trees Loved' is an exceedingly strange account of the secret arboreal world and its claim over a human soul and 'Ancient Sorceries' is possibly the best tale of Witchcraft i have ever read, capturing the furtive and oblique feline atmosphere of the hidden life which a sleepy French town conceals beneath it's deceptive surface. I should have liked to have seen some other old favourites included such as that wondrous story 'The Trod', the quiet and fog-bound lycanthropic horror of 'The Empty Sleeve', 'The Glamour of the Snow', 'The Doll', 'The Touch of Pan' and 'The Man Who Was Milligan' and the mysterious poetic conjurations of 'The House of the Past' and 'The South Wind'. I fell under the spell of these wonderful tales when i read AB's 'Tales of the Uncanny & Supernatural' in childhood around 1973. Their appeal has not diminished with the passing of the years but only grown stronger. AB's tales of spiritual terror will lead one into a truly disquieting ambience of the supernatural which will endure in your imagination for long years afterwards.

Algernon Blackwood really is the most frightening to me of all horror story writers. He has a way of capturing mood and setting that outdoes any of his many followers (among whom H. P. Lovecraft was proudly one of the most preeminent). The three most famous stories in this book--the title story, "The Wendigo," and, above all, "The Willows"--emblematize his skill. The title story is set in an ancient French town where the townspeople seem to have a peculiar habit of transforming into something else, and authentically captures the creepiness of medieval towns at night. Even more frightening is "The Wendigo": set in the North Woods, it realizes whatever fears you've ever had walking alone in the snowy woods. "The Willows" was Lovecraft's nomination for the finest horror story ever written, and it clearly may have inspired THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Two canoesmen traversing through the Middle European forests find themselves stranded on an island by unknown forces that won't let them leave. Part of the pleasure of Blackwood is that he never overdoes it: he has a marvelous light touch, and reads quite crisply at the level of the sentence.

These are profoundly unsettling stories that reveal the darker forces that co-exist in the world alongside mankind. These are literate and thoughtfully chilling tales, whereby Blackwood buildings a sense of unease and gradual terror through his careful and atmosphericly descriptive prose.Although this anthology features a couple of obvious choices ("The Willows" and "The Wendigo"), the editor has also added a few of Blackwood's lesser known stories, which is the reason that this collection is requisite. As usual, S.T. Joshi has done a splendid job of offering thorough and insightful notes about each tale at the end of the collection. Highly-recommended.