Lovecraftian magic

Lovecraftian Magic

Introduction

Lovecraftian magic, a relatively 'new' genre of occult exploration draws its imagery and inspiration from the horror fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937).

Lovecraftian magic has arisen from several interweaving strands. The books of the British occultist Kenneth Grant have been influential in sparking occult interest in HP Lovecraft and Grant is also thought to have been the instigator of the Esoteric Order of Dagon - an international occult network of magicians (mostly of a Thelemic persuasion) interested in exploring Lovecraft from an occult perspective. The rise of Chaos magic has also been an influence, as an early Chaos Magic concept was the idea of magical work with 'fictional' entities.

Magical themes in Lovecraft

What's so attractive about Lovecraft's fiction from an occult perspective? Obviously, individual magicians are going to have their own answers for this question, but for general discussion I'm going to look at various themes that appear Lovecraft's fiction from a magical viewpoint.

Lovecraft's Landscapes

They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites.
HP Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror

Stories such as The Dunwich Horror and The Whisperer in Darkness are prime examples of Lovecraft's magical landscape. For Lovecraft, the wilderness is a place of brooding horror, where the presence of the cosmic Great Old Ones is never far away. This, in my view, is attractive for anyone who has an abiding interest in Fortean studies, Earth Mysteries, or folklore. Many 'historical' magical traditions have a strong connection with landscapes, and from his voluminous correspondence, we know that Lovecraft immersed himself at an early age in the myths of Classical Greece.

Lovecraft's Dreaming

Again, we know from Lovecraft's letters that he had, by any standards, an intense dream-life. Although he did not attribute any 'reality' to his dreams, he did draw on them for inspiration for his writings, and dream-sequences figure in tales such as The Dreams in the Witch-House. The magical efficacy of dreams is recognised in a wide variety of magical cultures, and the contemporary interest in the power of dreams ranges from psychoanalytic interpretations to techniques for lucid dreaming. Again, this makes for a strong interest factor in Lovecraft for magicians.

Hidden Lore

A key element in Lovecraft's fiction is his continual allusion to hidden lore. Critics of Lovecraft's literary style have noted how his protagonists seem to continually discover to same worm-eaten tomes in their quest to make sense of what's going on - the most infamous of course, being the Necronomicon. Not only did Lovecraft create a veritable library of hideous tomes, he encouraged his fellow authors (for example Clark Ashton Smith and Frank Belknap Long to use them too, with the result that many readers of the magazine Weird Tales (where most of Lovecraft's work was first published) began to believe that the books really did exist! Lovecraft also added to the fun by penning a spurious publishing 'history' of the Necronomicon. Yet what I find interesting about Lovecraft's use of these texts is that even when one of his protagonists gets to read them, they do not provide any clarity. They hint, they allude, they tease. According to magical author Don Webb, this narrative strategy itself is a magical technique - allowing the reader to glimpse "a partially obscured part of their own imagination" (Why Lovecraft Still Matters: The Magical Power of Transformative Fiction by Don Webb).

This for me, provides a key point to the magical 'power' in Lovecraft's fiction. It is fragmentary - a language of hints and signs - which can act as 'triggers' to the imagination.

The Cthulhu Mythos

The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was in all probability coined by August Derleth (although some authors have also fingered Clark Ashton Smith as a possibility). It was Derleth though, who took the bare bones provided by Lovecraft (the Great Old Ones, the Necronomicon, and the 'cults' of degenerate worshippers) and attempted to synthesize them into some kind of understandable 'system'. Let's take a look at Derlaeth's contributions.

Firstly, Derleth's "Mythos" is recognisably Christian. The Great Old Ones (Cthulhu et al) are the bad guys, eager to make a cosmic comeback with the aid of various human allies/dupes, and set against them, the "Elder Gods" who protect humanity. It's the old good guys vs. bad guys scenario, with humanity caught in the middle. Secondly, Derleth takes The Great Old Ones and 'fits' them into an elemental system. So Cthulhu, whom Lovecraft clearly describes as a star-creature (and technically, not actually one of the Great Old Ones) becomes a 'water being'. Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth, for no clear reason I can see, become 'earth beings'. Hastur, even though Derleth has him living at the bottom of the lake of Hali, becomes an 'air elemental', and to round out the schema, Derleth brings in his own creation Cthugha - a fire elemental.

Derleth's literary mangling of Lovecraft's original ideas into a 'system' echoes the approach of some contemporary occultists to 'fit' disparate magical traditions and systems into each other. Needless to say, the 'Cthulhu Mythos' has also found it's way mapped onto the spheres of the Tree of Life or analysed in terms of Tarot symbolism or Gematria.

Aog 13:48, 26 Nov 2003 (GMT)