The Witches of Appendix N: A. Merritt

Abraham Grace Merritt, also known by his byline A. Merritt, was a new name to me when I was reading through Appendix N for the first time many, many years ago. Not a surprise, really. He was a contemporary of Howard and Lovecraft, publishing in the same magazines, but he was older (20 and 10 years or so respectively) than both. He was also more successful in terms of publishing and earnings. However, he lacked what made Howard and Lovecraft household names: strong, recognizable characters. He had them, but they were largely cut from the same cloth.

In Appendix N, Gygax mentions three of A. Merritt's tales: "Creep, Shadow!" "The Moon Pool," and "Dwellers in the Mirage". He even said in the DMG, "The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt." That's a strong endorsement. 

In Merritt’s tales, you will find intrepid, but often normal, folk making their way out of the world they know and into territories subject to much older rules. Often "occult" in nature, with the "hidden" meaning of occult being the main focus. There are lost civilizations down in the earth, monsters that are holdovers from another time rather than simple beasts, ancient and forgotten religious practices, and a blurring of the line between sorcery and the super-science of antiquity. That same sort of imagination is at work in D&D’s underworlds and its odd ruins or cities that should not be there, right down to the dark domain of the drow and their queen. In a way, Merritt puts it into perspective: the dungeon is a threshold, not just a collection of rooms. 

Merritt was a collector of the odd, with an air about him that could have been plucked from one of his own tales. He would go traveling and come back with masks, carvings, weapons, and the like, or whatever unusual instrument he could find. At home, he put in order a private library of occult works that ran to several thousand volumes, and he even had a hand in growing plants with a history of poison, witchcraft, and visions.

I mention this because it goes some way to explaining the quality of his fiction. When Merritt put down a priestess or a lost god, he wasn’t working from the kind of thin pulp vocabulary you might expect. His head was full of folklore, botany, ritual, and the occasional nightmare, as well as his share of anthropology and occult theory. Read his best, and you get the sense of a room walled with forbidden books, each shelf suggesting a world far older and less human than we care to think. He was doing the same sort of research into writing his tales as I am doing into reading them.

For me, he feels like a go-to author for the ideas about "Occult D&D," a hidden world just behind the real world we all know. Even sometimes this hidden world is both metaphorically hidden, as in "Burn, Witch, Burn," and geographically hidden, as in "The Moon Pool." 

To explore this, I am going to go beyond the three tales Gygax mentions and into his other works; again, the focus here is not just on the contributions to AD&D/D&D but on how witches or witch-like characters appear in his stories.

Burn, Witch, Burn! (1932)

This is obviously an important one. 

In addtion to the titular witch(es) we get an idea that is very central to my notion of what occult magic needs to be in an AD&D game, namely an older form of magic. In "BWB" the witchcraft of the animated dolls is an older "Science" in Occult D&D witchcraft is an older magic. Both are occult in their nature. 

Based on his essays published at the time this story was heavily influenced by his own interest in witches, witchcraft and the plants used by witches. Madame Mandelip, the antagonist of the tale, gets her name from the Mandrake root used by witches and is also consequently seen as a miniature man. 

I was also impressed by his use of the nine-knot "witch's ladder" in the tale, a nice attention to detail. "Attention to detail" is key, Merritt's style includes a lot of detailed descriptions of what is happening and what things look like. 

The origin of the doll maker, Madame Mandelip, from Prague, reminds me of the tale of The Golem.

This story was also loosely adapted into the screenplay for the 1936 Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks) movie, The Devil Doll. 

A. Merritt on Modern Witchcraft (1942)

Appearing later on in his career, this brief reflection deals with a case he witnessed of Pennsylvania Dutch Powwowing, or Witchcraft. Here, an anemic child was tied to a bloody sacrificed ewe and was "miraculously" healed. Honestly, it would have been as likely to kill the poor girl, too, but as Merritt points out, there might be some hitherto unknown science going on here. 

While the "hex doctor" here could have negative connotations ("hex" = "evil") this is obviously the case of healing sympathetic magic. The blood, or even the life force, of the ewe is being transferred to the little girl. 

I should note that Merritt's description of his participation here parallels that of many of his protagonists: a man of reason thrust into a world dominated by the supernatural. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that such practices occurred in Pennsylvania Dutch, Appalachian, and European folk magic. Did Merritt actually see this happen? I have no idea, but I am willing to take him on his word.

The Doctor in both tales is named Dr. Lowell.

Special thanks to Chrisladams Bizarretales and the A. Merritt Fan Group on Facebook for helping track this article down. 

The Dwellers in the Mirage (1932)

Here we have a lost Alaskan valley, a cult that worships an octopoid godlike being, human sacrifice, and the whole notion of reincarnation. Then there is the modern hero who finds himself confused with, or drawn into, some mythic identity of yore. Here again is another lost world and one many have seen as the prelude to Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness."

Khalk'ru certainly feels like another name for Cthulhu. You can almost squint and see that the names are related. 

There is a lot here that is foundational to D&D from an Appendix N perspective. 

Lur the witch woman is practically flirting with me. Strong, powerful, red hair, blue eyes. She is like Larina's distant ancestor. She is called the witch woman, but she doesn't do much that is really witchy, save for talking to wolves and stirring up memories in Leif/Dwayanu, though that could also have been just him or the past-life memories.  Or a "subconscious intracutaneous retro-fold memory loop" as Donna Noble would have called it. 

Lur has a witchy quality by virtue of being part of the threshold; she is of the hidden world and remains so until the hero gets his head around it. She is privy to the names and old identities, the cultic duties, the wolf-roads, and the emotional underpinnings of a place that ought not to be here any longer. You could call her a fine Appendix N witch for that, spell-casting or not. Put it in D&D parlance: she is the one who has an idea of what the dungeon is all about long before the party has found the stairs.

Certainly, the cover of this edition could have influenced the cover of the most witch-coded of the original D&D covers, Eldritch Wizardry.

Still quite an engaging tale.

The Moon Pool (1919)

I remember picking up "The Moon Pool" many years ago, reading it, thinking it was very good, and then never reading anything else of his after that.  Which is too bad, because he is quite good, and he sits at a nice intersection of fantasy and horror. 

There are many elements here similar to those of The Dwellers in the Mirage. Lost lands, lost races, powerful entities, the battle of good vs evil. 

Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One, plays the role of the tempter witch here...sort of. She uses her beauty as a weapon, but it is not her only one. She participates in rituals (called a Witches' Sabbath) and channels the power of the Shining Ones. She has glamours and even something like an evil eye. So even though her powers seem more like lost science than magic, she has more witch-coded powers than Lur the Witch Woman. She is even called an evil witch at one point.

For D&D, what appeals to me is that Yolara is more than just a "female magic-user." You have a priestess and a politician in her as much as a seductress or an occult technician. She has a firm grasp on the rules of her world and how to put them to work. That is exactly where Merritt is useful for Witches of Appendix N. His women of power are not always witches in the fairy-tale sense, but they often occupy the same role a witch occupies in myth and gaming. They are the ones who can stand in the presence of old power and know how to talk to it.

Ship of Ishtar by Virgil Finlay

The Ship of Ishtar (1924)

Sharane, priestess of Ishtar, is another near-witch figure. She is the priestess of a lost and secretive religion. Sharane is a good example of the divine witch. She has witch-like magic and serves Ishtar in a supernatural environment. 

She is what I would call a Witch Priestess. 

Sharane is especially useful because she shows how close the witch and the priestess can be in Appendix N fantasy. To be sure, she is in service to a goddess, but you would not mistake her for some tidy D&D cleric in his mail armor with a cure spell on his lips and a holy symbol at hand. Her world is one of beauty and desire, of temple mystery and curse, of mythic time. She hails from a more ancient religious sensibility where the divine is as intimate as it is perilous, and love, magic and death are all facets of the same issue. Where you have Yolara the tempter or Lur the wild witch of the hidden valley, Sharane is the sacred witch; her authority is drawn from the goddess, from rite and old obligations.

We certainly get the Charm Person spell from here. Or at least one source of it.  

The Near Witches

These tales have women who are near witches. They are not witches per se, but live in a world where witches could live. 

The Women of the Wood (1926)

While not a witch per se, this tale offers another glimpse into the idea of a hidden world next to our own. In the French countryside, a man encounters a woman who is not what she appears to be and then is exactly what she appears to be. Also, if you are not playing your dryads like this, you are missing out. 

Seven Footprints to Satan (1927)

While not really Satan (or his he?), this tale treats the world of crime and its underground, akin to an occult underground. While there are no witches here, it is a great tale on how to possibly use a criminal organization. Again, here is Eve, who is not a witch, but she does have some occult, as in hidden, knowledge.

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You could say Merritt’s greatest gift to the concept of the Occult in D&D is his treatment of magic as an old science rather than a simple list of spells. He has put his stamp on it with the idea of an older order of powers just beneath the surface of what we know. You will find cults and priesthoods, forbidden things that have survived the ages, secret rites, odd plants, and ancient deities; modern folk may write them off as superstition because they can't think of anything better. A rational sort might come by this world, but he won’t find it easy to master. Case in point, nearly every Merritt hero. 

Then there are the Witches of Appendix N. Merritt presents the witch as one who stands at the threshold. Whether she is a villain or a queen, a living idol or a guide, she is the one who understands the world’s older rules ahead of the hero. Certainly, before the hero does. 

She might be Madame Mandilip in her shop with her murderous dolls, or Yolara, the priestess of the Shining One. Perhaps she is Lur, all red hair and danger in some forgotten Alaskan valley, or Sharane, Ishtar’s darling and victim to a divine curse you couldn’t put a date on. 

He didn’t hand D&D the witch class on a plate, but he has provided a shelf full of witch-shaped ideas for us. In my book, that is enough to work with.