Miskatonic University Monograph: Liber Oblitus


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A Study of a Mythos Tome

The HPLHS presents the latest addition to our series of academic monographs from Miskatonic University Press, Liber Oblitus: A Reading of an Unreadable Book. The discovery of a manuscript written in an unknown language puzzled its discoverers. A team from Miskatonic University undertook an analysis of the strange document.

Led by the art historian who discovered the manuscript, the team does its best to analyze the nearly 300 hand-written pages. Aided by an historian, a psychologist and a mathematician, the scholars look at the strange work from the points of view of their respective disciplines. Filled with breathtaking scholarship, copious footnotes, figures and color plates from the amply illustrated manuscript, the team teases out meaning from the mysterious document.

Fans of the Cthulhu Mythos, art history, psychology, astronomy, cryptography, mathematics, history and cryptical books like the famous Voynich Manuscript will be delighted with this painstaking recreation of an academic monograph of yesteryear. This monograph is ideally suited for collectors of mythos memorabilia and for role playing gamers looking for a prop that's able to withstand a high level of scrutiny. 

The standard monograph features 53 pages of text, figures, detailed footnotes and bibliography, a glossy 16-inch color centerfold and more. It is 5.5 x 8.5 inches, saddle stapled with a high quality green cover in the same style as our previous monographs.

The deluxe hardback facsimile version contains the complete text and figures of the monograph (minus the color plates), plus all 267 pages of the cryptical manuscript for a complete 302-page facsimile. The book measures 8.75 x 11.25 inches and is an inch thick, weighing over two pounds.

Bonus Fun: Liber Oblitus is a real manuscript and we hope to be able to offer fans full replica copies of it in the future. The hardback facsimile of Liber Oblitus also is a prop in a forthcoming Call of Cthulhu® scenario by the HPLHS called "The Spark Devil". Whether you're a gamer, or just into awesome mythos props, we think you'll find Liber Oblitus and everything connected to it to be a lot of fun. It's one part Voynich Manuscript, one part Necronomicon, and one part something you've never seen before.

FAQ

Q: Is this real?

A: It was published by Miskatonic University Press, the publishing arm of a fictitious university. We hope that answers your question. 

Q: The illustrations are interesting - what do the words say?

A: This entire book is an effort by scholars to understand a book that seems to be written in a language that no one can read.

Q: Wait a second, is Liber Oblitus real? 

A: We have the original manuscript here at the HPLHS office. It weighs nearly 11 lbs. We don't know what it says. Really.

Q: Are there more Miskatonic University monographs?

A: Yes. We have ones on the Codex Beltrán-Escavy, the Curious Sea Shanties of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, and the delightful The Discovery of Fragments of Kitab Al-Azif at Harran. We have several more titles in the works.

Q: Why doesn't the hardback version include the color plates? 

A: Because it has a full facsimile of the manuscript, making the color plates redundant and unnecessary.

Q: Does this monograph have more pages and footnotes than any previously published?

A: Why, yes. Yes it does.

Q: Are you really going to include a copy of the hardback version as a prop in an upcoming game?

A: That is the plan. If you think you might be interested in buying that game when it comes out, you might consider buying the standard edition of the monograph in the meantime.

Customer Reviews

Based on 12 reviews
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C
Charles Hess
A Reading of an Unreadable Text

In the long, winding corridors of scholarship—and I speak as someone who’s crawled through actual ones in the musty basements filled with the detritus of rotten texts —it is rare to encounter a document that so convincingly masquerades as both object and oracle. The Liber Oblitus, the latest fictitious monograph from the tireless craftsmen of the HPLHS Society’s Miskatonic University Press, is not merely a pastiche of academic research—it is a deliberate act of scholarly invocation.

Let me be plain: this is not just a book. It is a weaponized artifact of intellectual archaeology.

From the moment I laid hands on the moss-green cover—saddle-stitched with care and confidence—I was struck by the weight of authenticity. The typography, layout, and citations are not just “in character.” They are indistinguishable from the seminar-room mimeographs of a more disciplined era, when even imagined truths required peer review.

The premise is delightfully preposterous: a team of interdisciplinary scholars, led by a meticulous (and vaguely obsessive) art historian, has unearthed a handwritten manuscript in a language unknown to linguists, impossible to date, and yet chillingly familiar to anyone acquainted with the deeper registers of Lovecraftian epistemology. Think: Voynich Manuscript meets Gödel’s incompleteness theorem... with perhaps a whiff of The King in Yellow.

But where lesser mythos tributes trade in overt horror, Liber Oblitus thrives on insinuation. Each contributor—historian, psychologist, mathematician—wrestles not only with the content but with the concept of interpretation itself. Their divergent analyses do not so much converge as spiral, drawing the reader deeper into a vortex of half-revealed patterns, suggestive symmetries, and encoded madness.

The mathematical commentary deserves special mention. What begins as a structuralist mapping exercise quickly descends (ascends?) into a probabilistic commentary on recursive infinities. I was reminded of my own work on nonlinear failure modes in hydrologic design: when a system cannot be solved by standard means, one begins to suspect the system may not want to be solved.

Add to that a psychologist’s dive into symbology and shared delusion, a historian’s brave contextualization of nonexistent empires, and art historical observations that hint at forbidden geometries rendered in hauntingly familiar brushwork, and what you have is not just a fictional book—it’s an unstable document. The kind you store in an evidence locker, not a library.

The 16-inch centerfold—resplendent in glossy detail—is both a visual reward and a challenge. I strongly advise not staring at it under dim light after midnight.

Final Assessment:If you’re a collector of Mythos artifacts, a fan of deep-cut esoterica, or a player in roleplaying campaigns where the stakes are measured in sanity points, Liber Oblitus is indispensable. This isn’t just a prop. It’s a trapdoor—beautifully built and cunningly baited—for the curious mind.

In the words of an old field operations chief I once knew, “If you find yourself needing to explain it twice, it’s probably real.”

S
Simon Belcher
This z awesome and a New tome that has enough wriggle room for instant use

Well done

S
Steve Valerio
Great to have in my library

This is a supper fun book to include in my esoteric library. Great quality. Thanks.

R
Robert Barr
Excellent production!!!!

Amazing hardcover volume!

C
Christopher Kessler
MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY MONOGRAPH: LIBER OBLITUS

A scholarly work, painstakingly researched, which exceeded my expectations. The highest level of academic achievement is to be expected from Miskatonic University publications, and the authors more than meet these high standards. Yet the resulting monograph is quite accessible to the lay reader. It deserves a wider audience.