Today marks the start of the Lovecraftian Thing a Day's 'Lovecraftian Occult Week', where we will be examining and exploring various texts, artefacts and other ephemera relevant to uses of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos in contemporary esoteric theory and practice. First up is Kenneth Grant's Nightside of Eden - the fourth in his nine-volume series which constitues the 'Typhonian Trilogies' - which explores the Tunnels of Set: a 'zone of non-being' represented by the averse side of the qabalistic Tree of Life, and is coterminous with the 'nightside' of human consciousness as well as the habitation of Lovecraft's nightmarish extraterrestrial entities. Regardless of what one might think of Grant (and many occultists have taken him to task for his 'creative' use of gematria), he has had a huge influence on the contemporary occult scene; along with the Simon Necronomicon, Grant has been key in developing and indeed popularising occult exegeses of Lovecraft's fictive mythology. In this respect, I think Grant's work has also played a major role in informing esoteric understandings of the UFO phenomenon which, in the last decade or so, have also come to reshape aspects of contemporary UFOlogical conspiracy theories in a more Lovecraftian vein.
No comments:
Post a Comment