Of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable realities

Like Lovecraft's protaganist Marinus Bicknell Willit, my delvings into the blackest pits of the internet have threatened to uncovered hints of obscure cosmic relationships of the most blasphemous and unspeakable kind:

Oddbod Junior from Carry On Screaming:



Robert Pattinson:



Separated at birth?

Happy Hallowe'en.

Lovecraftian Hyperdimensional Nazis...

It's been a busy week and not looking like I'm going to be posting anything substantial by the end of it, so just a quick rumination for now: as I write this, I'm in the middle of re-watching UFOs: The Secret Evidence (currently playing on the UK TV channel More 4) presented by Nick Cook, and based on his 2002 book The Hunt for Zero Point. Cook's thesis - premised in part on the work of Polish UFO researcher Igor Witowski (who appears in the documentary) effectively resurrects what has been called by Jocelyn Godwin, Nicholas Goodrich Clarke and other's 'The Nazi Survival Myth'. Cook's claim is that many modern UFO siightings might be the consequence of 'black project' technology derived from anti-gravity research supposedly developed by Nazi scientists towards the end of World War II, ultimately making its way into the hands of the US military via the infamous Project Paperclip.

Of interest to my ongoing research into what I'm coming to call 'the Lovecraftian Paranormal' is how Cook's claims link with the work of conspiracy theorist Joseph Farrell and his notion of 'Hyperdimensional Nazis'. Without going into too much detail here, the work of Farrell, Cook and Witowski form an interwoven thread of contemporary conspiracy theory which takes as its focus the speculated existence of 'The Nazi Bell': a device which Farrell refers to as 'gateway' technology in the sense that it was supposedly developed as a means of exploring A) the utility of torsion physics in a number of fields ('free' energy, weaponisation, etc.), and B) the relation of said physics to a very Lovecraftian sounding 'hyperdimensional geometry'. Also of interest are Farrell's connection with Richard Hoagland, another conspiracy theorist well know for championing the idea that ancient alien artefacts (many of which are also claimed as demonstrating hyperdimensional geometric properties) exist on the Moon, Mars, Phobos, etc.

Needless to say, Hoagland advocates a variant of the ancient astronaut hypothesis inadvertantly popularised by Lovecraft's work, whilst the Nazi occultism/survival myth finds some of its earliest roots in Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels and Bergier (both early champions of Lovecraft's work). Not sure if there are any really substantial links with HPL's fiction in all this, but some intriguing hints of how his work may have tangentially brushed off on another odd (and somewhat distasteful) thread of contemporary conspiracism.

Lovecraft as Proto-Chaos Magician?

Much has been made (especially by Donald Tyson in his recent book The Dream World of H.P. Lovecraft) of Lovecraft’s dalliance with Graeco-Roman paganism during his formative years, especially the claim that HPL had at least one visionary experience of fauns and satyrs. In a similar vein, whilst reading Joshi’s masterful I Am Providence, I was interested to note something Joshi highlights with regard to Lovecraft’s essay ‘A Confession of Unbelief’, and which indicates that HPL may have pre-empted the Chaos magickal methodology of paradigm shifting by some 80 years or so:

‘I read much in Egyption, Hindoo, and Tuetonic mythology, and tried experiments in pretending to believe in each one, to see which might contain the greatest truth.’

Of course, long-time readers will realise that the title of my post is a little misleading, as I don’t mean to entertain here the notion that Lovecraft was involved in any kind of formal 'occult' practice (indeed, in ‘A Confession of Unfaith’ Lovecraft follows the above statement immediately with ‘I had, it will be noted, immediately adopted the method and manner of science!’); also I think it extremely unlikely that Lovecraft’s words on this matter were in any way influential on early Chaos magick (despite other overt Lovecraftian influences on that particular genre of postmodern occulture).

Despite the flawed and usually speculative attempts by esotericists to establish formal links between Lovecraft and genuine bodies of occult lore (or, in the case of occultists such as Tyson and Grant, the inference that Lovecraft’s heightened capacity for dreaming meant he must have been attuned to some otherworldly reality), I think there are valuable anthropological insights regarding the human condition to be gained by examining the connection between speculative fiction, visionary experience, and the human propensity to construct hypothetical otherworlds through the medium of religion.

The capacity to formulate and communicate publically symbolic and abstract concepts is central not only to human social life in general, but is key to the transmission of religious and political ideologies, both of which - like much of speculative fiction - are premised on the construction of creatively imagined, alternative moral worlds. Here I’d direct interested readers to David Lewis Williams book on cognitive archaeology, The Mind in the Cave, and Steven Mithen’s The Prehistory of the Human Mind, both of which explore the close relationship between art and religion in the making of modern humanity (at least in a cognitive sense).

Literature is premised on the complex but everyday human capacity known as Theory of Mind, which for brevity’s sake I’ll simply define as the ability to put oneself in other people’s shoes (in terms of fiction, we may think that writers are are getting us to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist; but what is really happening is that the author is getting us to imagine being the author who is imagining being the protagonist!). Theory of Mind is a also central cognitive capacity in the production of religious concepts with regard to our ability to actually conceptualise or create mental representations of supernatural entities. Common to many religious systems is the engendering of the belief that powerful supernatural beings are thinking about what you as a believer are thinking about - very useful either as a system of social control and a means, as Scott Atran points out in his book In Gods We Trust, of discouraging defection from any social coalition.

Theory of Mind is also requisite capacity for roleplay - an incredibly socially useful activity which we all participate in (regardless of whether we play Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu or not!) . In relation to Lovecraft, I’ve mentioned in an earlier post his youthful propensity for a kind of activity which in contemporary gamer culture would pass as a kind of simulationist rpging/wargaming. That aside, the capacity for roleplay is something which we also engage in when reading fiction, but it is also a requisite capacity for ritual and ritualised enactments of communion with posited supernatural entities, whether in the form of communicating with an evoked entity, or through trance, possession, channelling, etc. In other words, many religious practices - especially where they involve supposed interactions with alleged supernatural beings - engage the (relatively mundane) functioning of our evolved cognitive architecture, and our capacity for the production of symbols, in forms of creative role-play which may not be that different from those used in the production of fantastic fiction, myth, etc.

In any case, some of these ideas will be explored in a bit more detail my book on the Lovecraftian paranormal (once I get back to writing the damned thing!).

Gratified to discover I'm not part of the problem...

I found this on Facebook earlier today:



I, for one, am immensely gratified to say that I have absolutely no idea who the woman on the right is. Extrapolating from the minimal context available my presumption is that she has something to do with reality TV...

As for the other bloke (of whom I'm a great admirer), I do believe that he would have found himself in good company had he ever met Lovecraft. A fact, I think, attested to by this and other quotations:

'It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.'

Nice.

A Fond Remembrance of Chaotist Demonology

Whilst browsing in one of London’s occult book shops recently, I was nicely surprised to discover reissued editions of Ramsey Dukes’ (pictured left) classic (and wonderfully titled) Chaos magick manuals: Blast Your Way to Megabucks Using My Secret Sex Power Formula: And Other Reflections on the Spiritual Path and Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed (perhaps better known as SSOTBME). In addition to which, one cannot fail to remember Duke's classic book (and a personal favourite of mine) What I Did In My Holidays: Essays on Black Magic,Satanism and Devil Worship.

I do hope readers of this blog will excuse the name dropping on this occasion, but the encounter with said books evoked a sudden and unexpected reminiscence of an experience about which I had almost entirely forgotten: a Summer’s afternoon in the late 1990s spent - as part of my doctoral research - in the company of Ramsey Dukes (aka Lionel Snell) discussing the finer points of Chaotist demonology and generally having a wonderful time being shown the sites of rural Oxfordshire from the back of Dukes' motorbike. Not only was Dukes a consumate conversationalist on that occasion, but a gentleman to boot. Ahh, Happy days.

Something a bit more substantive (not to say less self-indulgent) should make it's way onto the blog within the next week or so.

Richard Stanley and the Necronomicon

In a recent posting on his Terra Umbra blog, cult filmaker Richard Stanley discusses his recent short film Mother of Toads, based on the Clark Ashton Smith story of the same name (and set in Averoigne, Smith's fictionalised version of medieval souther France). By the sounds of things, Stanley has also added additonal Lovecraftian elements to his retelling of the tale.

Of interest to readers of this blog is a mention of the George Hay Necronomicon (portions of which appear elsewhere on the Terra Umbra website). In relation to which Stanley claims there are those within Southern France's esoteric community who believe the Hay Necronomicon to be based on an earlier Cathar grimoire, namely The Book of the Seven Seals. If I recall correctly, elsewhere Stanley also claims that this may have been one of the treasures supposedly smuggled out of the beseiged Cathar castle of Montsegur in 1244 - an event which has come to have a central bearing on many recent grail/holy bloodline conspiracy theories. Stanley also mentions a 12th Century carving containing what he believes to be 'the seal of Eibon', inferring this as possible proof of The Book of Eibon's actual existence. I'm not sure where all this is going, but Stanley has also made allusions to Lovecraftian elements underpinning the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau. Hopefully I'll be in a posiiton to provide additional commentary regarding this matter as I learn more.

Have You Seen the Harlequin?

Jason Offutt is something of a regular on paranormal podcasts and reports here (with, it seems, a degree of artistic licence) on encounters with an entity known as ‘The Harlequin'. Not exactly Lovecraft, but the Harlequin does feel like the kind of weird puppet-like entities that populate the works of Thomas Ligotti. For those interested, Offutt’s blog also offers accounts of strange black-eyed children in Norwich and Ireland, as well as an encounter with a gnome-like being somewhat reminiscent of Machen’s Little People.

Those looking for ‘paranormal’ entities in a more Lovecraftian vein might want to check out the Slender Man internet meme (which I’m sure most readers of this blog have at least a passing familiarity). Invented by Victor Surge on the Something Awful forums in 2009, Slender Man (probable inspiration for Dr. Who’s ‘The Silence’) is fast acquiring status as a new urban legend. Indeed, reports have apparently been emerging of real-world encounters with this being - some of which purportedly predate Slender Man’s documented invention. Given that this is the internet we are dealing with, it is difficult to ascertain whether such accounts are ‘genuine’, or just fueling the creepy Slender Man vibe. As other paranormal pundits have already commented, Slender Man may be an interesting variant of the account of ‘Philip’, supposedly an artificial ghost created as part of a psi-experiment in the 1970s (see I.R. Owens and M. Sparrow’s book Conjuring Up Philip, for more details of this classic case). As is hopefully evident from previous posts, I generally reject such paranormalist explanations of these kinds of 'entity' encounters.

Other interesting cases of ‘entity’ encounters - this time MiBs - are noted in an article by folklorist Peter Rojcewicz (‘The "Men in Black" Experience and Tradition Analogues with the Traditional Devil Hypothesis’ in The Journal of American Folklore, 100 (396): 148-160). Rojcewizc implies that such entity encounters tend to be conjured up by percipients in altered states of consciousness (a position I'm much more LIKELY to entertain). The article is also of interest in that it contains a first-person narrative of an encounter with an MiB. Presented pseudonomyously, apparently Rojcewicz later admitted that he was the actual percipient of this encounter. The Rocjewicz piece is also of interest with regard to the links it makes between MiBs and Judeo-Christian demonology, and is a cornerstone study in the emergent mythology of Demonic Ultraterrestrials theorised by Spooky Paradigm here. And more briefly here at the Mikatonic Museum blog.

In any case, I would certainly be grateful if anyone can point me in the direction of alleged accounts of encounters with Slender Man. Or, indeed, any other of the Lovecraftian entities that increasingly seem to form part of the discursive formations of contemporary occulture.

Nazi Occult Royalty are Spawn of Cthulhu Shocker!

Apologies for the rather bold and (at least to non-UK reader’s) ungrammatical header. Apropos the (largely unmourned) death of The News of the World, I felt that the UK readers might be cheered by a post header of tabloid proportions.

Needless to say, in the minds of some conspiracy theorists, aforementioned header is figuratively (if not literally) true. Certainly one area of research which is proving to be fertile in relation to my book are apparent links between Lovecraft’s fictive mythology and the whole Holy Blood, Holy Grail/Da Vinci Code shebang. David Icke’s claims – indirectly lifted from Robert E. Howard’s King Kull story ‘The Shadow Kingdom’ - that the ruling elite of the planet are constituted of a bloodline of shapeshifting extra-dimensional reptoids is already a well-established sidereal Lovecraftian take on this particular stream of contemporary esoterica. Another - which I’ve recently become aware of - is Tracy Twyman‘s claim that the sacred bloodline of Jesus goes back, a la 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth', to a hybridisation programme between humans and extra-/ultra-terrestrial beings akin to Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones. Here, however, Twyman takes a leaf out of the Simon Necronomicon (peppered with a heavy dose of Zecheria Sitchin filtered through Robert Temple and Kenneth Grant) by claiming that Lovecraft’s pseudomythology is also synonymous with that found in Sumerian mythology: that the Old Ones are identical with the Annanuki (and, indeed, with the Nephilim from The Book of Enoch). Indeed, Simon's Necronomicon is quoted at various points in one of Twyman’s books on the matter, Dead But Dreaming: The Great Old Ones of Lovecraftian Legend Reinterpreted a Atlantean Kings. So far so good - with ultraterrestrials, holy bloodlines, and ancient aliens we’re hitting some of the key signifyers of any contemporary conspiracy theory deserving of the name.

Sadly, Twyman appears not to have undertaken a particularly close reading of Lovecraft, as she submits the Cthulhu mythos to a very Derlethian interpretation (evident in the fact that she claims that in ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ R’lyeh sank because of the pride and destructive behaviour of Cthulhu et al offended God). In addition, any good Lovecraftian conspiracist worth their salt would immediately jump on the similarities between ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life as documented by Dirk Mosig (and the basis of Richard Tierney’s novel The Drums of Chaos).

Oh yes, and a rather strained etymological link between ‘Cthulhu’ and ‘Thule’ is made, bringing the Nazis into the picture for no other apparent reason than, well, they are Nazis (and any contemporary conspiratorial occult tale worth its salt needs to contain at least a passing mention of Nazis). In any case, an interesting end result of all this is the inference that Prince William may be a direct descendent of Sumerian/Atlantean/Cthulhoid ultraterrestrials. Not sure where the other red-headed step-child (namely, Prince Harry) fits into the picture. Though given his past proclivities for dressing up in SS uniforms, maybe the Nazi occultists can find something for him to do in the New World Order. Talking of red-headed people, did I mention that the Merovingians are, according to Twyman, also red-headed Aryans? That’s right: not only are the Merovingians hybrid descendents of Sumerian-Atleantean-Cthulhoid Extra-/Ultra-Terrestrials, they are also the Aryan sons of Jesus. Who is, in turn, a descendent of Satan (and thus, one presumes, Cthulhu-Shaitan in Kenneth Grant and Simon’s esoteric interpretation of Lovecraft). So we have it: a bizarre racialised Gnostic Luciferian re-imagining of human prehistory whereby a great war in heaven occurred between the ancient followers of Satan and Jehovah, subsequent to which the benevolent Satan has been depicted as evil by the usurping followers of the god of the Old Testament (i.e. Catholicism and Judaism).

Implicit in this aspect of Twyman’s exegesis of the holy bloodline as Cthulhu mythos is, I think, a common element of contemporary Lovecraftian occulture (and one I’ve documented in my own research): that the multi-dimensionality of the Great Old Ones represents an idealised state of human futurity. Thus the ‘summoning’ of the Great Old Ones becomes the symbolic means of re-awakening their genetic heritage within the human genome and thus allowing us (or at least those of the Great Old Ones’ bloodline) to participate in a transhuman and transcendent phase of being in which the illusory duality of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ will be dissolved in an Nietzschean apocalypse of the Will to Power writ on a cosmic stage. Did I mention that this may come about with the re-awakening’ of the ‘holy grail’ somewhere under Rennes-le-Chateau? And that said grail is none other than the originator of the holy bloodline (Satan-Cain-Cthulhu) who is thus ‘dead but dreaming’ deep beneath Southern France?

The notion of a trans-/post-human metamorphosis of consciousness is a central tenet of elements of contemporary Satanism. A point which, in this context, ties in broadly with Twyman’s generally libertarian outlook on the significance of the holy bloodline as that of the ignominiously maligned ultraterrestrial Satan-Cthulhu. It is a viewpoint evident in the work of her fellow researcher, the wonderfully named Nicholas de Vere von Drakenberg - bearing in mind I have yet to read any of his work. Taking that into consideration, my understanding (elaborated from Twyman) is that de Vere von Drakenberg advocates an explicitly genetic-occult elitism (which, in turn, appears to have its roots in the work of Laurence Gardner, whose work I’ve also yet to read) wherein the selfsame sovereign bloodline also traces its descent to ultraterrestrial God Kings of the primal earth. Who are also elves, apparently. Reading between the lines, I get the sense that both Twyman and de Vere von Drakenberg believe themselves to be inheritors of this genetic tradition.

Thus in an interview on Twyman’s own podcast, de Vere von Drakenberg views this bloodline as heir to a spiritual and political heritage of total and absolute freedom untrammelled by ordinary anthropocentric mores (unsurprisingly, de Sade was also apparently a member of this bloodline). The influence of Kenneth Grant again seems evident, as achievement of this state is interwoven with the evocation of ‘starfire’ via menstrual blood in some kind of system of Tantric magick which De Vere von Drakenberg refers to as ‘Royal Witchcraft’ (only attainable to those of the bloodline). However - and despite spiritual claims which are as grandiose as his title - de Vere von Drakensberg appears to be advocating a vulgar form of Crowley’s magical philosophy of ‘Do What Thou Wilt’. To this end, von Drakenberg also appears to be seeking recognition of his bloodline as a ‘transcorporeal’ sovereign state, with a view of somehow achieving recognition by the United Nations and attaining diplomatic status. The intention behind this - implied but not explicitly stated in the interview with Twyman - is to enable members of the bloodline to acquire immunity from the legal consequences of murder, rape, incest, etc. (all of which, as I understand it, are the ancient prerogative of the bloodline).

Ironically, de Vere von Drakensberg seems not to have considered the possibility that the transition to such a transhuman state might render such corporeal desires meaningless. Indeed, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Sovereign Grand Duchy of Drakensberg seems more inclined to envisage their ultimate spiritual goal in terms of a violently sexualised masculine fantasy.

This brings me to what I think is an important and up to now unrecognised aspect of 'holy bloodline' conspiracies: that they are reminiscent of British Israelism. British Israelism achieved popularity in England and elsewhere in Europpe during the 19th Century, and formed a precursor to the contemporary right wing white supremacist Christian Identity movement in the US. Interested readers are directed to Michael Barkun’s excellent Religion and the Racist Right for a detailed academic exploration of this relationship.

British Israelism is a complex phenomenon with many offshoots, but in brief elements of this belief system posit the notion that Northern Europeans are one of the 'lost tribes' of Israel, and the true inheritors of the covenant with the Judeo-Christian god of the Old Testament (admittedly this is not quite the same position taken by Twyman and de Vere von Drakenberg). Furthermore, forms of British Israelism also held that the aristocracy of England and Europe are themselves direct descendents of King David, and thus relations of Jesus (a point that is explicitly stated in the work of some bloodline researchers, including Twyman). Importantly, elements of British Israelism also held that Jewish people were not the true 'Israelites', but were presumed to be a racially and spiritually inferior group who usurped that covenent. In the context of the Christian Identity movement, this resulted in the notion that Jesus was not ethically, ‘racially’ or culturally Jewish, but ‘Aryan’ (In contrast to Twyman's work, the Christian Identity movement tends to treat Jewish people as being literally the spawn of Satan - but in this case the evil Satan and not the 'good' one). As indicated above, Twyman also seems to hold the view that the bloodline of Jesus is also 'Aryan'. Of course, these perspectives are not unique to British Israelism, but crop up in the racilaised aspects of Theosophy, as well as the Ariosophy movement documented by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in 'The Occult Roots of Nazism'

I’m sure a goodly number of ‘holy bloodline’ researchers such as Twyman are not pursuing an explicitly racist or anti-semitic agenda. However, sometimes one only needs to scratch beneath the surface to find significant threads of racialist and anti-semitic ideology running through many aspects of contemporary conspiracism and esotericism.

There are other obvious racialised aspects of this story which I have yet to explore, including: Otto Rahn’s quest for the grail (currently the focus of the Lovecraftian tinged work of Richard Stanley) as well as the fact that a few bloodline researchers do rely on a quote from the works of racist esotericists such Julius Evola and Miguel Serrano.

Another point of interest (though not perhaps the most appropriate word to use given the subject matter) are the links I'm discerning between all of the above and elements of racialised esoterism that I think are implicit in, of all things, claims about hoaxed moon-landing and other NASA-related conspiracies. This, I should add, seems to be related to (but goes beyond) the tired claims of a New World Order being brewed up by a global cabal of Jewish bankers, framing this in terms of a cosmic war between different groups of ancient aliens who were/are 'racial' enemies, the material remnants of which are to be found in so-called 'anomalous artefacts' said to be found visible on the Moon, Mars, Phobos, Titan, etc.

Finally, apologies for the lack of embedded links in this post - I'm still catching up on work, but wanted to get this post published even though links are missing. I'll try and add them later.

Back in the UK

The post header says it all: I finally got back to Blighty (after a gruelling 24 hours of travelling, having had to catch a flight to Minneapolis in order to get a flight back to the UK) late on the afternoon of Wednesday 31st August. Since then, I've spent a busy two days at work dealing with a bunch of exam marking, and have had some family-related events going on over the weekend, so haven't had much time to devote to the blog. However, something substantial on HPL, Tracy Twyman and the Merovingian bloodline should appear in the next few days, where I'll be returing to the issue of Lovecraft, conspiracy theories and race. As I've been delving into this, I'm digging up some highlighting interesting points of intersection between 'Holy Bloodline' conspiracism and forms of anti-semitism emergent from a 19th Century movement known as British Israelism (which also appears to have had an influence on the field of pyramidology and alternative archaeology).

I'll also be updating links in previous posts, and hopefully including some photos of my Providence trip.

Lovecraft Pilgrimage Update

Unfortunately updates on my Lovecraft pilgrimage will have to wait, due to the unfortunate circumstance of my being caught in the middle of a hurricane. The good news is that I managed to visit HPL's grave and do a tour of Lovecraftian Providence before rushing back to New York. Am now hunkered down in my hotel (the Waldorf Astoria, no less!) but have limited internet access. The likelihood is that I'll be here for another week before my flight is rescheduled, so I'll be trying to use the time to compose posts to be uploaded on my return to Blighty.

Lovecraft Pilgrimage, Day 2

Again, just a very brief update. Made it to the Nicholas Roerich Museum today - great to experience firsthand some of the paintings that inspired what I consider to be Lovecraft's greatest work. I also took the opportunity to pick up about 20 postcards of Roerich's eerily evocative art (mostly the mountainous landscapes for which he's famed), including my personal favourite 'Himalaya - Pink Mountain' and a piece entitled 'Tibet - Himalayas' (which seems to have been a key influence on the imagery in AtMoM - I'll try to emded images of these paintings later). All of which will look very nice on the walls of my study once framed. I also bought a very reasonably priced copy of Roerich's travelogue Altai-Himalaya. If I'm not mistaken, this is the book in which Roerich details what some consider to be an early/pre-Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting over Tibet.

Time constraints meant that I wasn't able to make it to Lovecraft's old apartment in Brooklyn today, so have scheduled that for tomorrow, along with shopping trips to various bookshops in NY. I'm also planning a trip to the Compleat Strategist game store just on the off-chance that they have a copy of Fantasy Flight Game's newest Lovecraftian offering, Elder Sign (though I suspect this won't have made it into FLGS' until next week).

Later posts will include photos from my trip, hopefully accompanied with some more insightful commentary on my travels.

Lovecraft Pilgrimage, Day 1

Just a quick update on my Lovecraft pilgrimage: made it to New York without incident, but am feeling extremely jet-lagged (first time this has happened to me on a relatively-long haul flight). After checking in to my hotel, spent a few hours wandering around downtown Manhattan before heading back to base. Tomorrow I plan to visit the Nicholas Roerich museum with a view to seeinging the originals of a few of the pieces that inspired At The Mountains of Madness, and probably the tenement block in Brooklyn where Lovecraft stayed during his New York sojourn.

Radio Host Interviews Nyarlathotep?!!

Apologies in advance - there are no embedded links to the source material mentioned in this post. I’ll add these when I’m back from my Lovecraft pilgrimage in a week’s time.

Readers of this blog will not be entirely surprised by the claim that Lovecraft’s work has, for some time, been informing the current conspiracy zeitgeist. Indeed, a very useful summary of affairs can be found in a post from the Spooky Paradigm blog (in which the author of which was also kind enough to mention my Treadwell lecture series) from a couple of months back. I have to say, I’m very much in agreement with Spooky Paradigm that the current centre of conspiratorial gravity seems to be drifting towards a Lovecraftian and interdimensionalist interpretation of phenomenon such as UFOs.

To date, one of the most controversial offerings regarding the matter of a grand occult interdimensional demonic conspiracy comes in the form of Nick Redfern’s fascinating book Final Events, detailing the apparent existence of government think-tank who seek to establish a right wing Christian theocracy in order to combat the threat of UFOs (demonic incursions from other planes of existence whose entrance into our realm was precipitated by the shenanigans of Aleister Crowley, Jack Parson and L. Ron Hubbard). On a related matter, there is a very good academic article looking at the roots of ufology in Christian demonology by Christopher Partridge. Conspiracy theorist Adam Gorightly has also posted an interesting article here concerning related matters.

I’ve already noted some Lovecraftian predilictions expressed in Redfern’s cryptozoological writings, but will have more to say on the matter in a later post - although he’s missed a rich vein of source material in the work of the late lamented Kenneth Grant (I don’t recall Redfern mentioning Grant in Final Events). Interested readers in the Grant/Crowley/Lovecraft/UFO thing as viewed from a conspiratorial perspective might find this article by Adam Gorightly of interest.

However, I digress. On listening to an episode of the US based internet radio show Ground Zero Live I was a little taken aback to hear host Clyde Lewis mentioning having interviewed on air an MiB either claiming to be (or perhaps just using the moniker of)Nyarlathotep! Apparently this may also exist as a recording online (if anyone is able to track it down, I’d be very grateful if you could furnish me with the link). Further investigations into the matter have uncovered two online articles by Lewis here and here which elaborate somewhat on the matter, including his claims - a la Redfern - that the US Government have been engaged in interdimensional research with the aim of contacting entities not dissimilar to Lovecraft’s Old Ones. In the second of these articles, the Simon Necronomicon is invoked (although Lewis seems to attribute the text to Lovecraft himself) and used to identify the Lovecraftian extraterrestrial Elder Gods with Sumerian deities as per Zecharia Sitchin’s theories regarding the Annunaki.

The Sumerian connection that crops up with alarming regularity up in a lot of contemporary ufology and conspiratorial discourse is a rather interesting phenomenon, as is the recent fascination with the Jinn of Islamic folklore amongst conspiracists and paranormal resrearchers - especially those of a right wing bent. In light of which, I find it difficult not to see these intriguing set of intersections as linked to the recent Orientalist post-millenial fears regarding Islam whipped up by the War on Terror. In the context of the ‘paranoid style’ of contemporary conspiratorialism, these fears concerning the West’s perceived assimilation by an 'alien other' are apparently being liberally and literally translated into a fear of alien gods. Almost inevitably, it seems, such fears also end up being conjoined with the toxic substrate of anti-semitism which seems to underpin so much of conspiracy culture. In this respect, it is sadly the case that the spectre of HPL’s racism lives on in modern day appropriations of his pseudomythology: even the British Nationalist Party have gotten in on the act (evidently there’s a talk on Lovecraft by BNP speaker Jonathan Bowden available on YouTube – I haven’t yet had the heart to listen to it). It is likely that I shall also have more to say on this matter when I come to examine Lovecraft’s influence on the contemporary Grail /’Holy Bloodline’ conspiracies.

Happy Birthday HPL!

Today being Lovecraft's birthday, I thought it would be propitious to announce the resurrection of Whispers from the Ghooric Zone. After nearly two years of inactivity (not including my rather enigmatic post from August 2010), the essential saltes have been gathered up, the requisite formulae incanted, and the inchoate ruminations of yours truly have once more been called up to ye liveliest awfulness from deep within the silent staring void that is the blogosphere.

This will form part of a wider phase of increasing creative activity and writing output (opportunities for which have been minimal over the past few years as I've had to focus on work). This creative resurgence will, I hope, also culminate in the completion of a book provisionally titled Lovecraft's Monsters: The Pulp Roots of the Paranormal. A preliminary outline has been drafted, with some initial work already started on the early chapters. More of this later as I present some of the ideas and source material relevant to book in forthcoming posts (which I hope to upload on a basis of around 2-3 weekly).

Needless to say, I shall also be using the blog as the means of inflicting my varied and curmudgeonly ruminations regarding Lovecraftian culture and occulture on anyone who cares to read them! It is also likely that the blog may include some ranting, fist-shaking and general bigotry regarding my current inability to win a game of my current obsession, Malifaux - a skirmish scale miniatures game which incorporates some Lovecraftian elements.

The provisio to all of the above is that, while I mean to try and post something substantial in the next day or so to get things started (possibly regarding an apparent encounter with Nyarlathotep), this coming Monday (22nd August) I'm flying to New York; thence to Providence on 25th August for my second pilgrimage to Lovecraft's grave (or rather the memorial in the Lovecraft plot at Swan Point). I'll be taking my handy little netbook with me and, if circumstances allow, will post updates regarding my travels. Otherwise, expect full service to be resumed during the last week of August.

Be seeing you.

Thought for the day

Ownership of a telescope is the first step in disabusing oneself of the fallacy that literal truth inheres in any religious system.

New Weird Class Warriors. Oh Really?

Though a long time advocate of M. John Harrison (though see my relatively recent post on Harrison on Lovecraft), I have found myself somewhat blindsided by a quote of Harrison's which, I believe quite rightly, this blogger has railed against

No doubt apologists will say that Harrison was being ironic or somesuch, but sadly, I feel his claim that 'it is undignified to read for the purposes of escape' is sadly all too indicative of broader attitudes emergent within the current 'New Weird' trend in speculative literature (of which, nonetheless, I still consider myself a fan). Especially so amongst a number of these genres' acedemic/philosophical exegetes, who would style themselves as revolutionaries without really - I mean really - having any experiential or conceptual understanding of what it means not to have come from anything other than a relatively privileged middle-class background.

Joshi's The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos

Beware that this post continues with the trend of curmudgeonly bitterness common to my earlier scribblings. Though hopefully what I have to say wont end up alienating what few readers this blog retains. In any case, I've finally started reading Joshi's The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos and, two chapters in, a couple of things jump out.

Most notable of which is the fact that Joshi doesn't offer up much so far in terms of a critical methodology. While he often points an accusatory finger at many mythos tales as having no literary merit, the manner in which this merit is to be measured (outside a set of rather conservative and unimaginative 'abstract aesthetic standards' that are 'widely accepted') lacks analytical depth. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh here, for in truth a lot of mythos fiction does tend to be a bit shit.

In any case Joshi doesn't really seek methodological support from contemporary (for which read 'faddish') literary theorists. In chapter 1, for example, he takes a snide dig at Robert M. Price's highly informed and theoretically rich insights into mythos fiction as the product of (a presumably suspect!) avante-gardism. Now, I'm not an expert in recent trends in literary criticism (though fortunately my sister is an academic who is) but it seems to me that Joshi is unfairly dismissive of some thirty odd years of developments in the field, many of which (far from being faddishly avante-garde) have come to inform the academic mainstream. In this respect it strikes me that Joshi, like Lovecraft, is a man out of his time.

Indications at this stage, then, are that anyone who doesn't tow a line that broadly recapitulates Joshi's own construction of Lovecraft are in for similar treatment - evident for example in Joshi's insistence that his is the absolute authoritative definition of the meaning of the word Necronomicon and one that brooks no argument - especially from Price. Joshi's literalism in this respect indicates a disappointing unwillingness to engage with wider developments in literary, critical and cultural theory.

That said, up to this point I'm finding the book insightful and enjoyable (when not infurating). More feedback as I delve deeper into the mouldering tome. By the way, if this does come across as rather elitist view of Joshi's work, fear not - look out for a forthcoming iconoclastic post which takes a pop at recent obscurantist co-options of Lovecraft from within academia. Nice.

Mark Samuels Sighted

A few weeks ago I believe I caught, from the corner of my eye, the spectral figure of Mark Samuels lurking around the Lovecraft section (where else?) of London's Forbidden Planet. Unfortunately I was in a rush to be somewhere else and (rather impolitely) didn't have the time to say hello. For those not familar with Mark, he is a writer of some outstanding weird fiction and 'mystical horror'. If you are a fan of Machen, Lovecraft and Ligotti chances are you will appreciate Mark Samuels' writing.

I can't claim to have known Mark very well, but became acquainted with him a few years ago via the London socials held by the Lovecraft Scholar's yahoo group, and once had the pleasure of being invited by Mark to a meeting of (what I believe was)the almost mythical Sodality of Shadows one Saturday evening in Highgate. As I recall, the last time I saw Mark was at a send-off do at London's Cittie of Yorke pub prior to his absconding to Mexico (from whence I understand he has recently returned).

In any case, this post is inspired by the fact that I've since discovered Mark has a new blog - while it's fair to say I'd probably disagree with some of the religious views expressed therein, it is definitely worth checking out for afficianados of the weird. Of particular note is Mark's April 7th post critiquing claims that it is the socio-political content of weird fiction which validates it as literature. Again, there's some points that Mark raises which I would probably take issue with, although I think he makes a valid argument that even the most materialist of weird fiction often ends up transcending its own materialism. Indeed, I believe I am taking a similar position vis-a-vis Lovecraft's 'non-supernatural cosmic art' in an article-in-progress (though on a personal note this doesn't constitute a revision of my own atheism; in fact I think it is eminently possible to maintain a fairly stalwart position of atheism without denigrating human religiousity or indeed the need to reject the 'naturalness' of religious ideas).

Go Mark!

Knowing (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS)

Greetings. Whilst the thick, gloopy strands of Azathothian entropy have entangled us further and drawn us deeper into the unreflective depths of cosmic ennui, we at Ghooric Zone are still making the occasional attempt - as the mood takes us - to pass on our reflections on Lovecraftian popular culture. In all probability no one is listening anymore, but being the good Lovecraftians that we are, we don’t care and will continue spouting our jibber-jabber into the audient void (often to the sound of atonal flutes and monotonous drumming).

On to business. If The Mist was purportedly a movie of existential horror with (as I have argued previously) an implicit moral message, then I’m about to suggest that Knowing is at its core a movie of existential, materialistic (and, dare I say it, Lovecraftian) horror masquerading as a ‘feel good’ movie (albeit one concerning the end of the world). Please be warned that the following contains major spoilers regarding the film's plot. In fact, I'm about to tell you how it ends.

Broadly speaking the film is a category (though not in the strictest sense) of what Brian Aldiss has elsewhere called a ‘shaggy god’ story , where religious or biblical themes and stories turn out to have science-fictional causes. It is also a film the where the ancient astronaut hypothesis is implicitly invoked; additionally, Knowing shares a certain kinship with M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, where an apocalyptic science fiction premise is actually concealing a spiritual message about hope subverting meaninglessness and the existence of life –after-death. In brief, Knowing is about how space aliens (who turn out to look a bit like angels) save some children from the end of the world and spirit them off to an Eden-like planet (replete with Biblical Tree of Knowledge) along with some pairs of animals (rabbits, actually - quite useful being the fast breeders they are and hence providing a potentially indefinite supply of protein) a la Noah (the film-makers certainly seemed to enjoy mixing their Biblical metaphors). Oh, and somehow along the way the atheistic astrophysicist Nicholas Cage (whose mechanistic materialism is a consequence of his wife meaningless death in a fire - a bit like Mel Gibson’s character in Signs) finally comes to believe in life after death (a bit like Mel Gibson’s character in Signs), helpfully reconciling with his pastor father before Cage, his remaining family and the rest of the Earth’s population die horribly in a conflagration caused by a massive solar flare.

The mirroring of the intervention of the aliens with the story of Noah seems to be the locus of this spiritual message - that there is hope, that death isn’t really the end, that there are more things out there than are dreamt of it our philosophy and so on. But wait a minute...the film implies that nothing happens without a reason - death isn’t a matter of random unthinking chance. Does this mean that the end of the world was itself part of a bigger plan? Given that in the film the space aliens - following the ancient astronaut hypothesis - are the secular analogue of God (or at least His angelic instruments) might this imply that they themselves instigated the apocalypse? Interestingly, when taking human form the aliens do seem to conform to the ‘Nordic’ or ‘Aryan’ extraterrestrials beloved of most right-wing ufologist crack-heads. Perhaps after all, they really were space-Nazis conducting a eugenics programme on a massive scale? Hmm...maybe they should have got Mel Gibson to play the part instead. At least the aliens had the good sense not to take Nicholas Cage with them.

On a more serious point, if as I suspect the film makers were trying to putting a re-enchanted New Age spin on things akin to what Shyamalan attempts in Signs, I wonder if this aspect of the film might not again unwittingly point to some of the more problematic aspects of Theosophical-New Age-ufological apocalypticism? Especially those tinged with the suspect racialist undertones of Victorian social evolutionism (if not the outright discourse of ethnic ‘cleansing’), and wherein the perfect ‘Nordic’ or ‘Aryan’ extraterrestrials are coming to save the chosen from an ‘impure’ world. In this respect, the children in the film who are ‘the chosen’ seem to have remarkable knowledge and innate telepathic abilities - perhaps a reflection of real-world New Age beliefs surrounding ‘indigo children’ (as well as some of the ideas regarding human-ET hybridisation emergent from alien abductee narratives) who are seen to represent a more ‘spiritualised’ step in human evolution. The rest of us, being unnecessary and 'impure' throwbacks can be consigned to the dustbin of history as the ubermensch forge ahead to create a perfect and 'pure' world. (I use the terminology of purity and pollution here purposely, as I think it perhaps one of the most powerful sets of symbols/metaphors that humans have deployed for social and political ends - especially in the discourse and practice of racism, ethnic violence and genocide).

I’m prone to put my own sly spin on what this movie might be about: that in fact its use of dodgy alien astronaut tropes actually undermines the very point it (seems) to be trying to communicate: that even the most secular of atheists must eventually abandon their disbelief and accept the comfort that there is ‘more’ (in a spiritual sense) to this world than this world itself. Cage’s character’s reconciliation with his religious father and seeming acceptance that death is not the end is problematic because the saviours appear to be aliens and not angels. The film seems to pushing toward a recognition that perhaps the aliens look like angels because perhaps they really are angels. But the other subtextual possibility that the film seems to contain is one emergent from the very same demythologising alien astronaut hypothesis that Lovecraft prefigured in his work: that there are, in fact, no angels; angels and other representations of the supernatural are simply the symbolic cloth in which we clothe the nuts and bolts matter of extraterrestrials. This seems to be supported by the fact that the ET’s craft first manifests in a form akin to the vision of Ezekiel which is referenced earlier in the film: all wheels within wheels. In any case, this infers that the ETs certainly have interfered before in human history. In other words, the aliens don't look like angels; rather it is the case that we have constructed our image of angels based on extraterrestrial interventions in our past history.

This being the case, there doesn’t seem anything to contradict the notion that the end of the world as it happens in the film is anything other than meaningless random chance. Or as suggested above, perhaps an act engineered by the aliens themselves. Indeed, the more I think about this the more I consider it to be a distinct possibility according to the logic that underlies the film: if the aliens possess the godlike power of fortelling the future, why could they not have stopped the solar flare with their technology? Given that they knew this was going to happen so far in advance and (presumably) harbour such altruistic attitudes towards humans, why didn’t they take the time to save all of the world’s population? In fact, their altruism only seems to extend toward children with special powers, not us ‘less evolved’ primates. Or maybe they weren’t fortelling the future but using their technology to manufacture it and pass their well-laid plans as ‘prophesy’ (here I’m of course following the Clarkean adage that any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic. Or in this case, religion). Cage, then, has simply (and understandably) fallen into the very human trap of manufacturing hope where there is none as a means of alleviating anxiety in the face of, well, a horrible death. Could I be right, then, that the belief that ‘this isn’t all there is’ turns out to be false consciousness (in this case, engendered by our alien overlords)?

I would like to think so. I’d also like to think that this was the subversive intention of the film-makers (especially in the context of the litigious New Age science-fictional clap-trap spiritualities that appear to be rampant amongst the Hollywood hoi-polloi - what happened to all the Satanists?), but I imagine that’s beyond the realms of possibility given that this is a movie starring Nicholas Cage, which is about unsubtle as you can get.

Harrison on Lovecraft via Houellebecq...Oh Dear.

A word of warning - this is something of a reactive post and as such probably not one that is not carefully considered to say the least. So something I'll likely return to as and when time permits.

Now down to business. To say I was rather disappointed with M. John Harrison’s recent review of the Lovecraft on the Guardian’s website is something of an understatement. It's not that I object to criticism of Lovecraft; rather it is Harrison’s (quite frankly lazy) reduction of Lovecraft’s considerable contribution to the literature of the weird to a piece of cod Freudianism : Lovecraft’s work represents in Harrison’s eyes ‘a last desperate clutch at the undependable maternal skirt’ and Lovecraft’s cosmicism consequently rendered as ‘ the terror and disappointment of not being the universe's favourite child’. This sweeping and ill-considered evaluation based, it seems, on a quote of Lovecraft’s (‘adulthood is hell’) taken from Houellebecq. Indeed, it is Houellebecq who (implicitly) seems to come in for most praise in the review as the ‘rehabilitator’ of Lovecraft.

Sadly, Harrison seems to have been bedazzled by a new (and in my mind often insubstantial) trend in Lovecraft scholarship which is emerging from within a relatively small group of contemporary academic philosophers. A trend which also seems to treat as unimportant or trivial many of the pre-Houellebecq academic engagements with the Lovecraftian milieu (especially those that are not informed by an impenetrably obscurantist category of poststructuralist Marxism). A point I shall return to when I get around to revising my ‘missing’ post.

In any case, Harrison ultimately deems Lovecraft’s work escapist. I’m somewhat ambivalent on this point; more worrying though is Harrison’s own views that escapism in the literature of the weird and the fantastic is politically irresponsible (bloody hell man - thats what hobbies are for!). Not only does this come off sounding very close to the preachiness of middle-class Guardian-reading liberals who are all too ready to lay the responsibility of any number of social ills at the feet of Grand Theft Auto, but by telling us that we should be spending our time more productively seems in its own way to reproduce some of the core values of capitalism.