Etidorhpa or The End of the Earth [Paperback]

John Uri Lloyd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1992

The Strange History of a Mysterious Being and the Account of the Initiate's Remarkable Journey. This edition contains the expanded and enlarged version. This is the most fascinating, fictional, alchemical work, of Freemasonry. Join this student and his Adept Guide on an alchemical journey to the "End of the Earth." Contents: My Purpose is to Tell the Truth; Never Less Alone than When Alone; A Search for Knowledge-The Alchemist Letter; Writing of My Confession; Kidnapped; I am Prematurely Aged; A Lesson in Mind Study; My Journey Towards the End of Earth Begins- Adepts' Brotherhood; My Journey Continues-A Cavern Discovered Punch-Bowls and Caverns of Kentucky-A Zone of Light Deep Within the Earth; Enchantment; I Rebel Against Continuing the Journey; I-Am-The-Man, "You Can Not Disprove, and You Dare Not Admit"; "Lead Me Deeper Into This Expanding Study"; Sleep, Dreams, Nightmare-The Living Brain; Primary Colors are Capable of Father Subdivision; I cease to Breathe, and Yet Live; Drunkenness; Further Temptation-Etidorhpa; Misery; Eternity Without Time; My Heart Throb is Stilled, and Yet I Live; The End of Gravitation-In the Bottomless Gulf; Hearing Without Ears-My Weight Annihilated-"The End of Earth."; The Last Farewell; Illustrated by J. Augustus Knapp, who illustrated the Secret Teachings Of All Ages by Manly P. Hall. For an excellent book on the author's homeopathic remedies, see our other book by Dr. Eli Jones, called, "Definite Medication: Containing Therapeutic Facts Gleaned from Forty Years Practice (1911).

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing; Revised edition (January 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156459243X
• ISBN-13: 978-1564592439
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #919,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ETIDORHPA - APHRODITE or, "The End of Earth", September 10, 2004

By 

Reference Librarian (Kentucky) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Etidorhpa or The End of the Earth (Paperback)

John Uri Lloyd, a famous pharmacognocist (student of plant drugs and their properties) and pharmaceutical manufacturer in Cincinnati, wrote books while his cauldrons bubbled, and very interesting books they are in many ways, though the writing is not always of the quality that readers of today's novels have grown to expect. What seized the imagination of the public then, as now, is the quality of the ideas in the book: Lloyd dares to question the received scientific orthodoxy of his day. Many of the ideas he questioned are today considered outmoded. Some of the ideas he advanced are now accepted, but beyond that is something he is trying to say about science itself: Can science rest on dogmatic assumptions, or must it remain a free inquiry, and his work is a brilliant affirmation of the latter.

Though this book has been read by many as a straight fantasy, the purpose is, as the author stated many times, a serious one:
Lloyd wrote in a letter about the book dated 1895: "Some of us come into the world to teach, we cannot evade our destiny. Whether we teach from our own selves or from others, is of no moment, the important point is whether we teach properly. Will the result of our instruction tend to elevate the thought of others and thus lead to truth and self humility, to love and charity? Etidorhpa is not an idle creation. The mission of this book is unseen by most of its readers. The thought current will be felt though by every reader and it pains me to appreciate the fact that to some the beauties of the work will serve but to deepen their hatred of conceptions holy and sublime."

I have seen the MS of the book in the Lloyd Library, which he founded and endowed, and it is better than the book itself. Lloyd, who edited the MS, with the help of a few friends, and published it privately, kept adding and moving things about, till it is rather confusing to read; but this should not deter anyone who wants to learn from it. The book itself is better than the sum of its parts. It stands as a solid creation in the mind long after one has forgotten that the style is not quite good, that the execution is less than brilliant, that the plot seems often lost, and that the two interleaved MSS were not always well meshed.

Original first editions (and even copies of the twelve editions it went through in the half-dozen years after its first publication) are exceedingly rare. I have yet to see a copy Lloyd didn't sign. Anyone interested in the early history of the genre now called "science fiction" will recognize that this is the classic that pioneered the field. If you want to know more about Lloyd the man, and his works, go to google.com and type: John Uri Lloyd "The World is My University". You may find yourself wanting to know more about the studious little man who could write a book with the title "Aphrodite" in reverse.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Journey to the Center of the Mind, October 4, 2004

By 

Scott Snyder (Northern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Etidorhpa or The End of the Earth (Paperback)

In 1993 the Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY held an exhibit of the works of the late San Francisco-based painter and collage artist Jess, among whose works was a rendering of a passage from Etidorhpa. Eleven years later I was inspired to read this book - and what a find it was!

Etidorhpa is a work of pharmacological and geological fantasy which progresses through a series of Masonic-style initiations into the mysteries of the earth, the mind and the inner soul of humanity. At times it is reminiscent of Dante's "Divine Comedy" with a slimy, sightless subterranean serving Virgil's role as cicerone and Etidorhpa herself as the Beatrice of the narrator's journey. By turns it evokes Homer's "Odyssey," DeQuincey's "Confession of an English Opium Eater," Coleridge, Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and of course, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Thru the Looking Glass. If you read this, you might find Ted Nugent and the Amboy Duke's "Journey to the Center of Mind" an appropriate musical accompaniment.

On a personal note, my coming to the book was something of a journey as well. Though I first became aware of the book in Buffalo and read it eleven years later in San Francisco, the action takes place in Cincinnati, the narrator's address and the scene of most of his mysterious interview taking place in 1895 somewhere in the downtown area of W. 8th Street and Western Avenue near St. Peter-in-Chains Cathedral (which is mentioned in the book). Some 90 years after the tale here narrated, I walked these streets daily for three years on my way to work. Bits of reality (the Cathedral) were thus mixed with historical imagination (trying to imagine that neighborhood 90 years before) as well as pure fantasy. As a result for me the story became both more real and more fantastic.

I am not exactly sure of all the lessons Lloyd sought to teach here. The story hints at several deeper truths. Near the surface is a lesson on the psychology of chemical addiction. At a similar depth there are warnings on the dangers of both extreme science and fanatical religion - making the book relevant to today's concerns with both stem cell research and jihad. More precisely, since the action in the book takes place in 1895, and the narrator is told to put the manuscript in a vault for 30 years (to 1925), I have to wonder if Lloyd did not see that science was headed for Nazi-style human experimentation as seen in the death camps. The author repeatedly and strongly warns of the dangers of unbridled science and to me, this would be the scenario we was concerned to warn against.

Excised from the MS:
"O, Science, what crimes are committed in thy name!" -- Gilbert Highet

There is a lot here: Good story, mystery, intrigue, bizarre initiations, the hint of secret knowledge, instructions on how to see your own brain tissue, in-depth discussions on matter, gravity, fluid dynamics, caves, fungi, drugs, medicinal plants, the possibility of human immortality, the potential of post-human evolution, life, love, the deepest secrets of the heart and the rather ambiguous and multi-dimensional "end of the earth" -

It's all here. But it will take many readings to mine all the ore.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Discard Bias And Fasten Your Seat Belt, February 27, 2006

By 

Paul A. Tatman "Pablo" (Ocotillo Wells, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Etidorhpa or The End of the Earth (Paperback)

This book must be considered as the ultimate anathema to the "science-myth" debunker crowd. Written by a man of science as well as imagination, it tells the story of what really happened to a historical figure - a man named Captain William Morgan, who was "apparently" murdered by freemasons in 1826. This act itself sparked a noteworthy social movement. It was the author's intent that this book would spark a different kind of movement - away from blind faith in orthodoxy and a rekindling of thirst for pure knowledge and discovery. Sadly, that has not happened as yet. Witness the iron grip of secrecy surrounding government research projects in general and the facts about UFOs in particular. Forced ignorance of the population at large is the order of the day. But if you can put aside your prejudices, read this book in one sitting, and reflect on the changes it has made in you. Consider the challenge it poses to the materialist view of reality, and the cohesive theory of its own it presents, by implication. Mere fantasy? Think again. Also read "Moongate" by William Brian, and reconsider the finality of current theories on the morphology of the Earth and the planets. You will be at once surprised, amazed, piqued and outraged, but not in the way you thought you would be. Highly recommended reading from one of the most gifted minds in scientific American history.