Sociologist Christopher Partridge employs the term ‘occulture’ as a heuristic device for thinking through some of the new ways we have come to engage with religion and spirituality in an increasingly medialised world - one in which ‘new’ and ‘alternative’ spiritualities both resource and are resourced by popular culture (2004: 4). Thus for Partridge occulture constitutes
‘the environment within which, and the social processes by which particular meanings relating, typically, to spiritual, esoteric, paranormal and conspiratorial ideas emerge, are disseminated, and become influential in societies and in the lives of individuals. Central to these processes is popular culture, in that it disseminates and remixes occultural ideas, thereby incubating new spores of occultural thought’ (2014: 116).
The emergence and popularisation of forms of occult belief and practice inspired by the pop-cultural pulp-fictions of Lovecraft and others - not to mention the seemingly-pervasive presence of Cthulhu memes within various popular cultural media platforms - being obvious examples of the kind of incubation Partridge is talking about. Indeed, some of the earliest examples of this occultural production originate with Lovecraft himself, by way of his use of verisimilitude: citing, for instance, the very real Dr John Dee as a translator of the entirely fictive Necronomicon as part of a process of world building - collectively supported by the cross-referencing of entities such as Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep amongst other Weird Tales authors - which contributed to some early readers of Lovecraft’s work believing that the Cthulhu mythos constituted an extant, ‘real world’ mythology.
Conversely, a number of contemporary authors of weird fiction have begun to incorporate some of the locales and figures cited as part of the emergent mythology of Lovecraft-inflected occult ufology I have been exploring in previous posts. For example, Jack Parson’s occult influence upon the development of NASA’s attempts to penetrate into the endless darkness between the stars is a cornerstone of Christopher Slatsky’s novella of cosmic horror, Palladium at Night (which is being reprinted in Slatsky’s forthcoming collection, The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature). Parsons also appears as a character in Douglas Wynne’s novel of the Cthulhu Mythos, Smoke and Dagger. Rendlesham also gets a chilling mention (by way of Margaret Thatcher) in the epilogue to Neil Spring’s The Watchers; whilst inspired primarily by Nick Redfern’s sensationalist conspiratorial take on an element of the Ultraterrestrial hypothesis, Spring’s novel nominally touches upon at least one element of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Whilst I don’t think Rendlesham receives a mention in its various supplements, the Delta Green setting for the Call of Cthulhu rpg also incorporates contemporary ufo mythologies into a modern reframing of the Cthulhu Mythos. As another example of occulture, elements from the Delta Green series of books have made their way into the narratives of a number of online conspiracy theorists (Douglas Dietrich comes to mind). In any case, I anticipate we will see more of the same as the new decade unfolds.
The emergence and popularisation of forms of occult belief and practice inspired by the pop-cultural pulp-fictions of Lovecraft and others - not to mention the seemingly-pervasive presence of Cthulhu memes within various popular cultural media platforms - being obvious examples of the kind of incubation Partridge is talking about. Indeed, some of the earliest examples of this occultural production originate with Lovecraft himself, by way of his use of verisimilitude: citing, for instance, the very real Dr John Dee as a translator of the entirely fictive Necronomicon as part of a process of world building - collectively supported by the cross-referencing of entities such as Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep amongst other Weird Tales authors - which contributed to some early readers of Lovecraft’s work believing that the Cthulhu mythos constituted an extant, ‘real world’ mythology.
Conversely, a number of contemporary authors of weird fiction have begun to incorporate some of the locales and figures cited as part of the emergent mythology of Lovecraft-inflected occult ufology I have been exploring in previous posts. For example, Jack Parson’s occult influence upon the development of NASA’s attempts to penetrate into the endless darkness between the stars is a cornerstone of Christopher Slatsky’s novella of cosmic horror, Palladium at Night (which is being reprinted in Slatsky’s forthcoming collection, The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature). Parsons also appears as a character in Douglas Wynne’s novel of the Cthulhu Mythos, Smoke and Dagger. Rendlesham also gets a chilling mention (by way of Margaret Thatcher) in the epilogue to Neil Spring’s The Watchers; whilst inspired primarily by Nick Redfern’s sensationalist conspiratorial take on an element of the Ultraterrestrial hypothesis, Spring’s novel nominally touches upon at least one element of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Whilst I don’t think Rendlesham receives a mention in its various supplements, the Delta Green setting for the Call of Cthulhu rpg also incorporates contemporary ufo mythologies into a modern reframing of the Cthulhu Mythos. As another example of occulture, elements from the Delta Green series of books have made their way into the narratives of a number of online conspiracy theorists (Douglas Dietrich comes to mind). In any case, I anticipate we will see more of the same as the new decade unfolds.
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