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).