Full Details of Lovecraft Lectures

A reminder that seating for these talks is limited and it is recommended that tickets are booked in advance via Treadwell's Bookshop.


17 January 2007 (Wednesday)
HP Lovecraft and the Occult (Series of Four)
Evening One: The Man, the Myth, the Magic
Dr. Justin Woodman (University of London)
£5 in advance
7.15 for 7.30pm start

Treadwell’s presents Dr Justin Woodman’s series of four talks analysing aspects of HP Lovecraft (1890–1937), the author best known for the creation of the Cthulhu mythos, a fictional mythology detailing monstrous powers “from beyond”. Tonight, Woodman casts a critical eye on the “magical” context of Lovecraft’s life and work. He then explores some of the myths surrounding the man and his fiction. This first talk also begins to examine the powerful influence that Lovecraft’s unique literary creations have exerted over the contemporary occult imagination.


31 January 2007 (Wednesday)
HP Lovecraft and the Occult (Series of Four)
Evening Two: Legends of the Necronomicon
Dr. Justin Woodman (University of London)
£5 in advance
7.15 for 7.30pm start

In part two of this series, Justin Woodman explores the history of the legendary Necronomicon in fact and fiction, and ponders its continuing relevance to contemporary occult cultures. Penned by the Yemeni poet and mystic Abdul Alhazred circa 700 CE, the dreaded Necronomicon is perhaps one of the most powerful and alluring of HP Lovecraft’s creations: a grimoire able to rend apart the very fabric of reality and bring forth the Great Old Ones themselves. Although a work of fiction, the Necronomicon has yet achieved a social and physical reality with more than twenty versions having been published since the 1960s.


14 February 2007 (Wednesday)
HP Lovecraft and the Occult (Series of Four)
Evening Three: Chariots of the Dark Gods
Dr. Justin Woodman (University of London)
£5 in advance
7.15 for 7.30pm start

Many of H.P. Lovecraft’s best known tales of the Cthulhu mythos intimate that the human species is nothing but a by-product of extraterrestrial interventions in Earth’s prehistory. His idea predates the “Ancient Astronaut” theorists and “alternative archaeologists” by over thirty years. Woodman demonstrates that Lovecraft is a pervasive (but often unacknowledged) influence upon ufology and UFO religions. In the second part of the lecture, Woodman speculates further on the relationships that have developed between imaginative fiction, Forteana and contemporary occult cultures.


28 February 2007 (Wednesday)
HP Lovecraft and the Occult (Series of Four)
Final Evening: Chaos, Cthulhu, and Contemporary Consciousness
Dr. Justin Woodman (University of London)
£5 in advance
7.15 for 7.30pm start

Tonight’s talk concludes the series exploring the relationship between Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos and contemporary occult cultures. Woodman here focuses on Chaos magic and other recent movements, and considers the claim that Lovecraft was a “mythographer of modernity”. It can be argued that he was a writer whose enduring vision is consonant with the claims of cutting-edge magic and theoretical physics; moreover, Woodman suggests, his work intimates something about the current trajectories of Western culture and consciousness.

Dr Woodman lectures in anthropology at Goldsmiths College, Birkbeck College, and the University of Westminster. He has contributed articles on Lovecraftian themes to Strange Attractor and The Journal for the Academic Study of Magic.

Lecture Series on Lovecraft at Treadwells

I'm giving series of four linked lectures on H.P. Lovecraft and the Occult at Treadwell’s bookshop in Covent Garden, London. The series will present a sceptical and critical assessment of the influence of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos on contemporary ‘occultures’ (including Thelemic and Chaos magick, new religious movements, ufology and other fortean subjects) to suggest that Lovecraft’s work continues to offer a challenging point of reflection on the trajectory of modern culture and consciousness in the 21st century. The talks will also use Lovecraft’s writings as a springboard for exploring the relationship between the evolution of human cognition and imagination, the literature of the weird and the fantastic, and the nature and origins of magico-religious ideas. The first lecture is on Wednesday 17th January, and tickets cost £5.00. Dates and times of later lectures can be found at Treadwell's Bookshop.

Space is limited, so if you're interested, I'd suggested booking in advance (my last talk at Treadwells sold out).

I am Lovecraft's disciple!

Things have been progressing slowly but surely on The al-Hazred Legacy. In the interim I've received some good news from John Ford at Rainfall Records & Books: John has kindly agreed to publish my short story 'The Sparkling Darkness' in issue 7 of Lovecraft's Disciples, due out Christmas 2006. Although not the first time my work has seen print, this will be my first published piece of fiction, and I'm well pleased about it.

A note on site content: The al-Hazred Legacy

I've been something of a roleplayer for well over 25 years (I even remember when the original D & D white box set was still available!). Sadly, I've had little time over the past 18 months to pursue my interest, resulting in my recently having to (yet again) let down a good friend of mine down after promising to run a Delta Green campaign for the umpteenth time. So, in lieu of actual gaming, I now intend to use this blog as a means for detailing initial development of my Lovecraftian indie rpg, tentatively titled The al-Hazred Legacy. If you're not sure what an 'indie' rpg is, check out The Forge for more info.

This will be my first attempt at game design, so I'm not sure how it will pan out; even so, I hope to have a rough-and-ready version available as a free pdf download by December 2006 (which I'll link to this site as and when). Clearly, I'm not going to be in much of a position to undertake rigorous playtesting of the initial version of the game, but I hope to address this problem post-December 2006.

The idea for The al-Hazred Legacy began as an attempt to put a Cthulhoid spin on Ron Edwards' Sorcerer rpg, but I've decided instead to take the bull by the horns and design the damned thing as an original game from the ground up. For the moment, all I can say about the game is that it will (hopefully) be something more than just an indie re-working of Chaosium's classic Call of Cthulhu rpg.

Ghooric Zone undergoing...transformation

Apologies, dear reader, for the lack of content thus far. Hopefully this will change over the next week or so as Whispers from the Ghooric Zone undergoes some minor transformations, and I find a way of getting the site map (whatever that is) recognised by Google. One piece of news, though: my talk at Treadwells went down a treat, it seems, and at the suggestion of one Mr. Ash I have decided to expand the talk into a series of four lectures which will take place during January and February 2007.

Tell Me, Have You Found the Ghooric Zone?

Whence comes the title of my blog? Seasoned Lovecraftians will already know; but for that small minority who a) actually end up reading my blog and b) are even interested, the Ghooric Zone is first mentioned by Lovecraft in his The Fungi from Yuggoth sonnet cycle, and later in his epistolary meanderings. However, my first encounter with this malign realm of abject extraterrestrial horror was in Richard Lupoff's story 'Discovery of the Ghooric Zone'. Originally published in 1977, Lupoff's tale did not see print again until a version was included in the Golden Anniversary edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos issued by Arkham House in 1990. Thankfully, the story is now available online (see my links). This is one of my favourite Lovecraftian tales by an author other than the Old Gent of Providence, and manages to be both intimate and touching at the same time evoking an unearthly sense of cosmic awe worthy of HPL himself (though what he would have made of the interplanetary cyborg sex with which the tale opens is another matter entirely...). Also included is a link to Charles Stross' 'A Colder War'. Stross' recent collection The Atrocity Archive is strongly recommended, and this online tale gives a taste of the unique way the writer combines Le Carre with Lovecraft to create a new genre: the Cthulhoid spy thriller. Read and enjoy.

Yrs most cordially,

Justin

Lovecraft Scholars & yog-sothoth.com

I've just posted links to two of my favourite sites: the Lovecraft Scholars mailing list (which I co-moderate) at yahoo groups and yog-sothoth.com, a site dedicated to the Call of Cthulhu rpg. Check them out for crunchy scholarly Lovecraftian debate and cthulhoid gaming goodness.

Yrs in the Magnum Innominandum,

Justin

Welcome to the Ghooric Zone

Welcome to the Ghooric Zone - my blog concerning all things Lovecraftian. Hopefully this site will also be host to an occasional podcast, but more on that as and when it happens. For now, though, I'd just like to mention my forthcoming talk at Treadwell's bookshop in Covent Garden (London, UK) on Thursday 31st August at 7.30pm. The talk is titled 'Primal Sources: The Lovecraftian Roots of Contemporary Occultures', and will be a somewhat whirlwind overview (with a Q&A session to follow) of Lovecraft's influence on esotericism, ufology and things fortean. Tickets are £5.00, and be advised to book in advance as seating is limited. I'll add a link to the Treadwell's website in the meantime. That's it for now.

Yog Sothoth Neblod Zin,

Justin