A Thin Veil Imagined: Poe’s “Thule”

By a route obscure and lonely,   
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,   
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly   
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
       Out of SPACE—Out of TIME.

In October, a few things happen; it starts to get cold here in New England, apple orchards become crowded and oh yeah, the veil gets really thin. You may recognize shadows crossing your line of vision or wisps of light from the corner of your eye. You may hear the voice of the deceased whispering in your ear. During this time, I enjoy walking through my local graveyard. The leaves start to fall and the skies darken to a dreary fog. This sudden change encompasses a particular mood and I’m inspired to write.

I started reading Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry. Upon reading the poem “Dream-land,” a word reached out to me. It wasn’t something that I recognized and clearly right there on the page, unforgiving and important.

Thule. I grasped onto the word between my lips. I quickly looked up the word and it was described as an island or region, identified as one of the Shetlands, Iceland or Norway. In another words, Thule was the most Northern region of the world.

So what exactly does that mean? And what did it mean to Poe? To mention such a word not commonly used in modern English?

Cold, desolate, dark, mysterious, untouched lands filled with the unknown. For those not familiar with such a landscape, what dark things lurk within the cloud of night? What is it that we don’t know which scares us so?

In today’s modern world, the most Northern region of the world is Antarctica. The word Thule still holds true. There is not much that we know about Antarctica. In fact, there are legends created about the land we know little about. Hollow Earth. Aliens. Ruins of Ancient cities. It is still a mystery.

A part from there being a psychological torment from a place we don’t understand, there is a symbolic meaning. A gateway to the Spirit-land, or has Poe states, Dream-land. The ultimate dark unknown.

This word, Thule raises a few questions. What did Poe know of spirits and dreams? Psychological torment and esotericism? Somehow reading work from writers of a certain age, one questions their beliefs. Were they masters of the night themselves? Did they spend time studying the Paranormal and the litany of spirits? Did they dream?

As far back as I could remember, I’ve been intrigued by dreams. Meeting people, seeing places and images non-existent within the waking world. It has become a source of inspiration into the occult.

There is another world and it is vastly different. But has anything changed?

Perhaps writers in general are Oracles of such information. Perhaps we are linked to Thule, or at the very least, have an ability to communicate with the dead. Perhaps it is through writing about the unknown wilds that we can truly express ourselves. We are still connected to the dead.

Even though the dead are neither tangible nor visible, we are forever connected.

“…In the grave all is not lost.

Else there is no immortality for man.

Arousing from the most profound slumbers,

we break the gossamer web of some dream.

Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been)

we remember not that we have dreamed.”