“On Cykranosh” (July 1934). Not actually a postcard from Lovecraft this week, but rather an example of the sort of sci-fi postcard-print that Robert Barlow might have sent to his friend in the mid 1930s.

Barlow built this up over a real-world ’empty’ photo (possibly of Florida tree-tops, presumably by Barlow). In the Mythos ‘Cykranosh’ = the planet Saturn, which Mythos encyclopedias inform is the home-planet origin of Smith’s Tsathoggua. Encyclopedia items for “Cykranosh” have failed to also notice Lovecraft’s space-leaping Cats of Saturn, but it must also be their home. In Dream-Quest these alien cats are deemed “large and peculiar”, and have an affinity with the cosmic darkness on the Dark Side of the Moon. But the creature here is more of eel-like, a flying alien ‘eel-gannet’, and thus probably not meant to be one of the Cats of Saturn.

The scan of the card is from the small Barlow collection at Brown University. Looking through this again I find an update to my recent ravine post. Lovecraft’s own sketch map of Providence confirms my research. Two paths around the edges of York Pond, to a narrow ravine then running far back from the shoreline, and into a long oval which appears to indicate a narrow flooded area that was likely the “frog-haunted ponds” he later recalled. My feeling is the arrow may be, following mapping conventions, an indication of a steep incline. Rather than the western starting point of the ravine as he knew it. Note the importance he assigns to it here.