Theology and H.P. Lovecraft (Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture) 1978711700, 9781978711709

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Theology and H. P. Lovecraft

Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture Series Editor: Matthew Brake The Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture series examines the intersection of theology, religion, and popular culture, including, but not limited to television, movies, sequential art, and genre fiction. In a world plagued by rampant polarization of every kind and the decline of religious literacy in the public square, Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture is uniquely poised to educate and entertain a diverse audience utilizing one of the few things society at large still holds in common: love for popular culture.

Titles in the series Theology and H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Austin M. Freeman Theology and Breaking Bad, edited by David K. Goodin and George Tsakiridis Theology and the Star Wars Universe, edited by Benjamin D. Espinoza Theology and Black Mirror, edited by Amber Bowen and John Anthony Dunne Dread and Hope: Christian Eschatology and Pop Culture, by Joshua Wise Theology and the Game of Thrones, edited by Matthew Brake Theology and Spider-Man, edited by George Tsakiridis René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture, edited by Ryan G. Duns & T. Derrick Witherington Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination, edited by Brandon R. Grafius and John W. Morehead Sports and Play in Christian Theology, edited by Philip Halstead and John Tucker Theology and Westworld, edited by Juli Gittinger and Shayna Sheinfeld Theology and Prince, edited by Jonathan H. Harwell and Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins Theology and the Marvel Universe, edited by Gregory Stevenson

Theology and H. P. Lovecraft Edited by Austin M. Freeman

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom Copyright © 2022 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Freeman, Austin M., 1989- editor. Title: Theology and H.P. Lovecraft / edited by Austin M. Freeman. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, [2022] | Series: Theology, religion, and pop culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Theology and H.P. Lovecraft engages with the work of horror author H.P. Lovecraft from a theological perspective. With responses ranging from admiration to critique, the contributors explore the dark uncharted regions of Lovecraft’s dark mythology in the service of theological truth”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022024541 (print) | LCCN 2022024542 (ebook) | ISBN 9781978711709 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978711716 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips), 1890-1937—Criticism and interpretation. | Theology in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. | Essays. Classification: LCC PS3523.O833 Z874 2022 (print) | LCC PS3523.O833 (ebook) | DDC 813/.52—dc23/eng/20220526 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022024541 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022024542 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To Phillip and George, two gentlemen.

Contents

Acknowledgmentsix Introduction: The Stars Are Right Austin M. Freeman

1

PART I: LOVECRAFT AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 1 Biblical Cosmicism? Religion and Cosmic Insignificance in Old Testament Wisdom Literature and H. P. Lovecraft Eric Ortlund

11 13

2 Dagon and Idolatry: Lovecraft’s Use of the Bible in “Dagon” and The Shadow over Innsmouth 29 Alexander P. Thompson 3 Concerning the Hidden God Who Surpasses all Understanding: Lovecraftian Meditations on Christian Theodicy David K. Goodin PART II: LOVECRAFT AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY

45 59

4 “A Dark Poem”: Lovecraft’s Puritan Aesthetics and the Vice of Curiosity 61 Geoffrey Reiter 5 August Derleth and the Christianization of the Cthulhu Mythos J. S. Mackley 6 The Lurker at the Threshold of Interpretation: August Derleth and the Debate Over Lovecraftian Dualism Justin Mullis vii

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Contents

PART III: LOVECRAFT AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY 7 When God Goes Mad: Lovecraft, Von Balthasar, and the Split between Transcendence and Goodness Lyle Enright and Nick Bennett 8 One God Further: Lovecraft and the Critique of Ontotheology Ryan G. Duns

119 121 143

9 Mythos and Mythopoeia: Lovecraft and Tolkien on the Transcendent Function of Fantasy Austin M. Freeman

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PART IV: LOVECRAFT AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY

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10 Haunted Steeples and Horrible Peoples: Church and Cult in Lovecraft Neal Foster

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11 Lovecraft’s Gods: Cosmic Anxiety and Racist Hatred Michael Spence

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12 Sudden Onset Belief: The Brutality of Conversion in Lovecraft’s Stories Robert Grant Price

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PART V: LOVECRAFT AND OTHER RELIGIONS

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13 Lovecraft the Pagan?: Lovecraft and Classical Religion Katherine Kelaidis

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14 Prophet of the Mythos: H. P. Lovecraft, Muḥammad, and Arabic Scriptures Andrew J. O’Connor

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Index271 About the Contributors

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Acknowledgments

Thanks go to Matthew Brake and Gayla Freeman (no relation, unfortunately) for taking this project on. Thanks to all of the contributors and to the peer reviewers who offered their helpful suggestions. Thanks to the scholarly community who provided encouragement and excitement for seeing this book come to print. Thanks to Dr. Henry Armitage of Miskatonic University for his help in procuring certain hard-to-find texts essential to my research and to the trustees of the university for their generous grant of my sabbatical leave, without which this book could not have been written. To my students: rest assured that this was indeed a sabbatical and had nothing to do with any rumors of a nervous breakdown, psychiatric disorder, paranoid delusions, or any other such unpleasantness.

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Introduction The Stars Are Right Austin M. Freeman

What hath Arkham to do with Jerusalem? Such is the question many no doubt ask of the contributors to this book—scholars of faith who find ourselves beguiled by the weird tales of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. An atheist who looked condescendingly down his patrician nose at any notion that human beings might have ultimate significance in the vast, uncaring cosmos, Lovecraft scorned both organized religion and personal faith. So why a book dedicated to Theology and H. P. Lovecraft? What could theological scrutiny find in Lovecraft’s writings other than critique, and what could Lovecraft have to say to theology other than “Get thee behind me, Shoggoth?” This sort of reasoning already begs the question that theology cannot benefit from critique, and that those who personally reject it may not have some worthwhile conceptions with which the academic might tinker. So, much in the vein of those who study David Hume, or perhaps more fittingly Friedrich Nietzsche, we who compose this book believe in the value of a good, honest opponent— and in the value of finding common ground on which to build dialogue. We are also, to be quite honest, ourselves individually fascinated with the world, the atmosphere, and the ideas that Lovecraft brought to light from unplumbed Stygian depths. This book exists to celebrate the impact of these things. But the title is chosen deliberately. We are not writing about “H. P. Lovecraft and Theology,” but about Theology and H. P. Lovecraft. In other words, theology is the ruling paradigm here, and Lovecraft is the conversation partner. The study of God is the norma normans, and Lovecraft (at least in this book) is present to illuminate those truths. But Lovecraft was a literary man first and a philosopher second, so in order to set the squamous stage for the rest of this forbidden tome, let us first examine the major themes of Lovecraft’s writings before addressing why exactly 1

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so many scholars of faith find themselves drawn to wander under the distant, malignant stars of the Cthulhu Mythos. THE MAN AND THE MYTHOS: LOVECRAFT AND HIS THEMES One might be forgiven for assuming that anyone who has begun to peruse a book with the name “Lovecraft” inscribed upon it is already passingly familiar with the author and his work. We can afford to dispense with the biography and instead address some of the key themes and problems in Lovecraft’s corpus. A brief clarifying word about the term “Mythos,” though. Lovecraft did not use the term “Cthulhu Mythos” himself, instead preferring various other terms. It was originally coined by August Derleth.1 There have been serious debates over how intertextually consistent Lovecraft himself intended his writings to be, over whether “Cthulhu Mythos” is an appropriate name, and over a host of other issues.2 Given the fact that the term serves perfectly well to pick out a thing in the world, namely, the stories and ideas set in an atmosphere either written or inspired by Lovecraft, we will not qualm to use it here. It seems evident, regardless, that Lovecraft’s works all orbit a central nexus of ideas. If the Greek poet Archilochus is to be believed regarding foxes and hedgehogs, then Lovecraft is certainly a hedgehog: he knows one big thing.3 Usually labeled as “cosmicism,” I suggest that Lovecraft’s worldview encompasses these four theses: 1. God does not exist. The physical universe and its deterministic laws are all that there is. 2. Because of our feeble understanding and experience, the reality of existence, though bound by laws, is incomprehensible and therefore terrifying. 3. Human beings and their values are insignificant in the vast scope of the universe. Rationality, objective goodness, and beauty are illusions cultivated only within the small bubble of human civilization. 4. Despite this, human happiness is best achieved through cultivating an aesthetic appreciation for the life of the mind and for higher culture. This entails the rejection of anything perceived to harm that goal, including “lower” races or cultures considered to be “inferior” to the highest ­(Classical Western) culture. Lovecraft is a clearer thinker than most, but possessed of no great philosophical acumen. This should be immediately evident from the above.

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How can (1) be known with certainty if (2) is true? How can (2) be true if (1) is? If (3) is the case, why ought the judgments of (4) be upheld? But it is from this central core that Lovecraft’s major themes develop. Xenophobia, atavism, the inbreaking of incomprehensible entities, and even his love for his native Rhode Island culture can all be traced here. Let us examine a few of these in turn. Xenophobia, the fear of the other, can be parsed either racially (based on appearance) or culturally (based on shared practices and values). Lovecraft himself felt both versions of this fear and instantiated this feeling within his stories. There is no denying that Lovecraft was a racist, denigrating other nonwhite American peoples as closer to animals than human beings. Many of our authors will explore this theme in their work in this book, so I will here only offer some justification for the academic consideration of Lovecraft’s work in light of this fact. First, it is a sad fact that Lovecraft’s attitude was not uncommon during the age in which he lived and for many centuries before. We cannot afford to dismiss every thinker that was born before the Civil Rights movement, lest we fall victim to our own form of xenophobia—the fear of engaging with other ideas. Academic (and theological!) discourse exists in order to describe exactly the reasons for holding certain judgments, including judgments about things we reject. If such discourse is abandoned, or merely assumed, then progress falters. To say that a subject is not worth dignifying with debate is to create a silence in which future people find themselves with no readily accessible reason to assent to current cultural norms except that they are popular. The rejection of racism and xenophobia must be a conscious choice, not a default position created by unreflective pressured consensus. And in this, Lovecraft can still teach us something. Atavism, the degeneration or return of genetic stock to an ancestral state, also permeates Lovecraft’s writing. This is likely a result of his views of white Europeans and Americans as the most advanced form of human over and against the more primitive or bestial Other.4 But this fear is also more fundamental than that. Lovecraft’s atavistic themes also deal with the uniqueness of humankind as a whole. His exaltation of culture and the aesthetic dimension of life is bad faith, and he knows it. What, in the grand scheme of the universe, separates Bach’s cantatas from the bubbling, grasping proliferation of the slime mold? There is no qualitative difference in the astronomical scales by which Lovecraft reckons. Humanity and all its civilized trappings may be merely a thin veneer over something mindless, savage, instinctual— and ultimately, like everything else, meaningless. But even he cannot abide by the sweeping nihilism of his worldview. So he consciously cultivates mental affectations that can help him stave it off, instead expressing his genuine belief about the universe in his fiction. If, as it is for Lovecraft, culture is the one piece of flotsam we can grasp to avoid the abyss of nihilism and despair,

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then anything that calls its value into question may rightly be an object of terror. Perhaps this even functions as a sort of apotropaic ritual for him, allowing him to expel his own deep fears on the page in order to set them aside in everyday life. Both of the above issues, as well as the signature irruption of alien beings who shred our limited concepts of rationality like mist, arise from Lovecraft’s commitment to his core metaphysical view: he thinks and writes as an atheist. And his arguments for atheism cover no new territory. He inevitably returns to the apparent insignificance of humankind and the stock case for scientific materialism. This is especially surprising if we can believe his own account, in which he became an agnostic at age six, a faux devotee of classical religion at eight, and a materialist at nine. He declares that he had formed virtually all the particulars of his mature worldview by seventeen.5 This in itself should raise alarm bells in anyone who remembers the quality of their judgment as a senior in high school. Despite long-standing and charitable debates with friends and acquaintances about theism, Lovecraft never encountered any piece of argument that forced him to alter this initial cynicism and skepticism. One surmises that this is because Lovecraft’s stance was at its root aesthetic rather than logical. His first impression of the vastness and (to him) meaninglessness of the cosmos and of humanity’s place in it, the seemingly ironclad laws of physical determinism (despite their challenge in the new science just then emerging), took such imaginative hold of the young man that he held to it ever afterward. One also bemoans the lack of qualified apologists within Lovecraft’s ambit, if the bits we can piece together from his controversy over theism in the Transatlantic Circulator are any evidence.6 It is not our task here to combat materialism directly, but it does seem strange that Lovecraft would base his religious outlook on the physical category of size. Our insignificance is measured only in terms of the quantifiable scales of time and distance. And anyway, as scientists now tell us, we are right about midway in the scale of things in the universe, between the quarks and the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. Further, if the B-theory of time is true, or if the immortal soul exists, then the scant years of our life on earth are also irrelevant to significance. But in terms of other meaningful measurements, such as beauty, intelligence, and love, earth is as far as we know it the only game in town. C. S. Lewis has admirably dismantled the argument from the size of the universe in his study Miracles,7 but I will supplement it here with some remarks—satisfyingly apropos—on the nature of infinity. If an infinitely powerful and infinitely knowing God exists, then to say that a single human being is too small to merit God’s attention is nonsensical. The judgment “too small” implies that it would be inefficient or unwise for God to focus attention

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on X, since by doing so God is neglecting other more important objects. But this concern for efficiency of selection or exclusion of objects of attention only applies to an agent with finite time or power; God is infinite in all of these respects. God can be infinitely concerned with every particle of hydrogen in the universe and in every possible universe and still be no worse off in terms of mental resources, since they are unlimited. Lovecraft’s assertion that God would not care for us in fact operates on an anthropomorphized understanding of God as too like a human being with finite capacities. Quite ironic for a thinker determined to reject all anthropomorphism. At this point we may well ask the question with which we began this introduction: if Lovecraft is so diametrically opposed to faith and so wrong in his philosophical appraisals, what could there be in his oeuvre worth reading? We shall find that in fact it is precisely this extreme opposition that makes Lovecraft such an effective horror author.

WHISPERER IN DARKNESS: WHY DOES LOVECRAFT FASCINATE PEOPLE OF FAITH? First, Lovecraft is direct and forthright in his writing. He is as far removed from the unreflective consumer of mass media culture as Carcosa is from Innsmouth. His willingness to face down the implications of his worldview is refreshing, even if his positions are alien ones. Like Nietzsche or Hume, theists can admire Lovecraft for his intellectual honesty. But more than this, in substantial agreement with the theist, Lovecraft understands that if God does not exist, then the world truly is the universe of horror he depicts it to be. And here Lovecraft finds common ground with believers in considering the question to be important. Unlike a Dawkins who blithely continues on with a comfortable Oxford life in the face of the consequences of materialism, Lovecraft, like Nietzsche’s Madman, is deeply troubled by such a universe and recognizes that if there are no golden gods atop Olympus, the world is poorer for it. Second, Lovecraft creates a specific sort of terror founded in substantive ideas, a more cerebral form of horror. He is a wide reader, or at least a wide referencer, making use of the same cultural, literary, and philosophical touchstones as do the theologians, and in that sense is a much more intellectually rewarding read than many similar authors (and imitators). Not content to trot out the same grotesques and goblins as his folkloric or Gothic predecessors, Lovecraft deliberately seeks to create existential dread rather than mere fright. He works to remove our security in reason, meaning, morality, human significance, and the value of civilization. More traditional forms of horror leave these intact, a sort of background existential comfort blanket. If I am

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being chased by the man with the chainsaw, I can at least take comfort in the fact that he might be caught and punished. If I fall victim to vampirism and am condemned to dwell in endless night, I at least know that, elsewhere, people are enjoying their morning coffees. Lovecraft, by contrast, offers no balm in Gilead, no recourse save confronting a truth we shudder to face. The monster is not Cthulhu; it is the universe. Whereas the brighter stream of Western thought offers us truth, goodness, and beauty reigning serenely over an ordered universe, Lovecraft gives us a picture of what we might call the dark transcendentals. Truth brings horror and insanity. Goodness is a provincial illusion maintained only by our own petty customs. Beauty is mere opinion, a fluke of the evolutionary biology native to this small corner of the cosmos, outside of which lurk shapes more loathsome and repulsive than we have ever imagined. We read Lovecraft because he is a horror writer, and a good one. He is good at it because he understands what is most deeply terrible is an acephalous universe. In this, he meets and confronts the person of faith at the point of greatest fear. He gives us what many other horror authors cannot: something we should truly be afraid of.

SUMMARIES OF CHAPTERS This book unfolds in more or less the traditional ordering of any theological treatment of a certain topic, beginning with the biblical material in part I, moving into the historical adoption and reaction to the biblical material in part II, and then to the systematic ordering of these thoughts in part III. Part IV focuses on the lived experience of these truths, and part V includes two chapters on theological analysis of Lovecraft from outside of Christian theology. Part I, “Lovecraft and Biblical Theology,” opens with Eric Ortlund’s chapter, “Biblical Cosmicism? Religion and Cosmic Insignificance in Old Testament Wisdom Literature and H. P. Lovecraft.” Here Ortlund argues that Lovecraft’s philosophy of cosmicism, far from undermining the biblical picture, finds significant consonance within it. The wisdom literature that reminds us of our smallness before the majesty of the infinite God strikes the same chord as Lovecraft’s own work, though with a markedly different resolution—God’s unmerited favor to humanity in offering knowledge of himself. Passages like Psalm 8, Job 28, and Ecclesiastes show that such a chastening of our sense of self-importance can sit alongside an equal insistence on God’s desire for relationship with his creatures: a biblical cosmicism. Alexander P. Thompson, “Dagon and Idolatry: Lovecraft’s Use of the Bible in ‘Dagon’ and The Shadow over Innsmouth,” analyzes God’s triumph

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over Dagon (the Philistine version) in 1 Samuel 5, demonstrating how this corresponds with a larger rhetoric against idolatry coursing throughout both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. After answering to what extent Lovecraft would have been conscious of this biblical portrayal of Dagon, he shows how the same figure used to create a socio-theological enemy in 1 Samuel is now reversed to illustrate the horrifying triumph of that socially foreign enemy in Innsmouth. Blending biblical concerns with historical development and providing a transition into our next section, David K. Goodin offers the chapter, “Concerning the Hidden God Who Surpasses All Understanding: Lovecraftian Meditations on Christian Theodicy.” Goodin returns to Job to argue that God’s depiction as the terrifyingly incomprehensible one who refuses to resolve Job’s questions about evil stands in line with other related texts depicting monstrous beings, from the Watchers to Leviathan. This God of the awful sublime engenders a hesychastic silence that drives those who cannot accept it into Gnostic paths of esoteric forbidden knowledge. Geoffrey Reiter begins part II, “Lovecraft and Historical Theology,” with an examination of Lovecraft’s engagement with the theological situation of early America titled “‘A Dark Poem’: Lovecraft’s Puritan Aesthetics and the Vice of Curiosity.” Here Reiter examines Cotton Mather’s writings on witchcraft, and more importantly, his hesitancy to offer any detailed description of occult practice. Mather refuses to give his audience an avenue through which to indulge the sin of curiositas or inordinate knowledge. Lovecraft, while disapproving overall of the Puritan project, professed a sort of admiration for their commitment to a way of life, and more importantly echoes their cautions against curiositas in his own tales of the dangers of forbidden lore, such as “Pickman’s Model.” The next two chapters function somewhat in tandem and take as their object the foremost popularizer (and proselytizer) of Lovecraft’s worlds, August Derleth. Derleth is a controversial figure in Lovecraft studies, to put it mildly, and J. S. Mackley’s “August Derleth and the Christianization of the Cthulhu Mythos” outlines Derleth’s involvement in Lovecraft’s Mythos and to what extent it is a creation of Derleth rather than of Lovecraft. Derleth’s schematization of an elemental struggle between good and evil rather than the cold cosmic indifference of Lovecraft’s own stories Christianizes the Mythos, but in so doing adds an element of metaphysical security that lessens its effect. Justin Mullis, “The Lurker at the Threshold of Interpretation: August Derleth and the Debate over Lovecraftian Dualism,” takes a contrary position and argues that far from corrupting Lovecraft’s vision, Derleth continues it in line with what Lovecraft himself suggested. Mullis systematically addresses the common charges laid against Derleth: that he manufactures a structured

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‘Mythos’ instead of the inchoate atmospheric backdrop Lovecraft intended, that he steals or otherwise unethically yokes his own work to Lovecraft’s, and that the unique take outlined by Mackley above contradicts Lovecraft’s own intentions for his stories and characters. Mullis concludes that Derleth has perhaps been treated too unfairly by the Lovecraftian community. Part III, “Lovecraft and Systematic Theology,” moves into more philosophical and doctrinal areas, articulating Lovecraft’s relation to Christian concepts such as the nature of God and reality. The first chapter in this part, Lyle Enright and Nick Bennett’s “When God Goes Mad: Lovecraft, Von Balthasar, and the Split between Transcendence and Goodness,” brings Lovecraft into conversation with a preeminent modern Catholic theologian to argue that a traditional stress on God’s sovereignty and absolute freedom results in a sort of Protestant aniconicity, a divine formlessness with which the human mind cannot naturally cope. This reaction against a shapeless, hidden, totally Other God, which ought to be countered with a stress on the embodied revelation in Jesus Christ, is ripe for the sort of horror Lovecraft employs. Ryan G. Duns, “One God Further: Lovecraft and the Critique of Ontotheology,” takes Richard Dawkins’s jibes against belief in Odin and Zeus as a starting point, but sets off on a journey through several of Lovecraft’s stories to demonstrate that far from demolishing true Christian faith, Lovecraft helps us to smash the reductionist idols of God we often fashion in our own image. God is greater than what we can think, higher than being, as Heidegger and modern theologians William Desmond and Herbert McCabe remind us. My own chapter, “Mythos and Mythopoeia: Lovecraft and Tolkien on the Transcendent Function of Fantasy,” focuses on a complex of doctrines such as creation and redemption. Tolkien believes that the creative impulse is a reflection of God’s own creative activity and that the desire to create worlds other than those we see also reveals an innate longing for transcendence. Lovecraft, too, feels this longing, but develops it in an antithetical direction. Despite his overt leanings, however, Lovecraft finds his ostensible rejection of the happy ending ensured by God’s rescue of the universe undermined by the Christian structure of story itself. The social and experiential aspects of faith take the forefront in part IV, “Lovecraft and Pastoral Theology,” focusing on the life of faith (or anti-faith, as it were) and one’s entrance into and growth in it. Neal Foster, “Haunted Steeples and Horrible Peoples: Church and Cult in Lovecraft,” offers an exhaustive overview of sites and practitioners of organized worship in Lovecraft’s corpus, from the forsaken churches of Innsmouth to the diabolical subterranean vaults of “The Horror at Red Hook.” Foster observes that Lovecraft’s cults are also frequently coded as racially other, serving to reveal Lovecraft’s own revulsion

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toward the foreign. Further, Lovecraft’s cultists are frequently pictured in community, while his doomed protagonists are often isolated. Michael Spence, “Lovecraft’s Gods: Cosmic Anxiety and Racist Hatred,” takes a similar tack but turns the lens on Lovecraft’s most famous creations: the black pantheon of gargantuan and unnamable entities lurking beyond the threshold of our everyday world. Spence summarizes five existing readings of Lovecraft’s gods: ancient aliens, atheist polemic, symbols of cosmicism, critique of established religions, and parody of esotericism. He then offers a sixth reading, by which Lovecraft inverts the previously welcome otherness of God into an expression of his racism and xenophobia. Robert Grant Price, “Sudden Onset Belief: The Brutality of Conversion in Lovecraft’s Stories,” begins with the observation that true conversion is a startling awakening to the truth. Taking the often sentimental and gentle conversion narratives of contemporary Christianity to task, Price argues that Lovecraft’s own dark revelations and the tremendous psychological toll they take on his protagonists in fact offer a more biblically grounded picture of what conversion looks like—with Paul’s Damascus road not the least example. Finally, part V, “Lovecraft and Other Religions,” offers two approaches to Lovecraft’s thoughts from outside the ambit of Christianity. Katherine Kelaidis, in “Lovecraft the Pagan?: Lovecraft and Classical Religion,” argues that Lovecraft’s youthful fascination with Greek and Roman mythology (manifested in his short story “The Tree,” for example) ought to be understood in light of other developments in classical reception at the time, such as the Romantic fascination with the Mystery cults and the goat-god Pan, manifested in Machen’s The Great God Pan. Lovecraft’s idealization of a strong pagan culture over and against the effeminate Christian one (pace Nietzsche) led him to endorse totalitarianism as the best way of preserving a robust culture. Andrew J. O’Connor’s chapter, “Prophet of the Mythos: H. P. Lovecraft, Muḥammad, and Arabic Scriptures,” ties Lovecraft’s orientalist adoption of Arabic names and themes such as Abdul Alhazred and his Necronomicon to the native meanings of such ideas in the context of historic Islam. He argues that Lovecraft intentionally bases his abominable tome and its author on the Qur’an and its own prophet. But this depiction is itself refracted through anti-Muslim Western polemics and Lovecraft’s personal views on religion and its ills.

CONCLUSION: STRANGE AEONS Here in the twenty-first century Lovecraft is now more widely known than he ever was in his native twentieth. Easily accessible story collections,

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big-budget prestige television shows, plush collectibles in shopping mall chain stores, and even a Nicolas Cage film mean that although the average American citizen may never have heard of the man from Providence, the blasphemous name of Cthulhu or the noisomely suppurating tentacled horror from the black gulfs are staples in our cultural consciousness. But there has been a dreadfully scant attention paid by the theological community, despite a widespread appreciation. We have brought Lovecraft into the academy in courses on literature, politics, and media, but not in theology or religious studies. And this despite the loathsome fecundity of ruined churches, degenerate priests, deranged cults, vile prophecies, and alien gods. What could be the explanation, save that the vast conspiracy that has seen the Old Ones rise ever further in our minds and in public esteem fears the Elder Signs that we wield? We are thus pleased to offer this book in defiance of the eldritch forces arrayed against us. The stars are right for a change, and you know what they say about strange aeons. NOTES 1. For an overview, see J.S. Mackley, “The Shadow over Derleth: Disseminating the Mythos in The Trail of Cthulhu,” in New Critical Essays on H.P. Lovecraft, ed. David Simmons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 119–34, and his further chapter in this book. 2. See S.T. Joshi, “The Cthulhu Mythos,” in Lovecraft and a World in Transition: Collected Essays on H.P. Lovecraft; A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft (Cabin John, MD: Wildside Press, 1996), 127ff; Robert M. Price, “Introduction,” in Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos (New York: Del Rey, 1992), xi–xxvi. 3. Cf. Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay on this score, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953). 4. Lovecraft’s white Appalachian hill-people are to him horrifying precisely because they revert from their racial superiority into the bestiality and primitivism of the racial Other. 5. H.P. Lovecraft, “A Confession of Unfaith,” Howard P. Lovecraft Collection, Brown Digital Repository, Brown University Library. https://repository​ .library​ .brown​.edu​/studio​/item​/bdr​:709536/, 18, 21–22. 6. See selections from this debate in H.P. Lovecraft, Against Religion, ed. S.T. Joshi (Sporting Gentlemen, 2010), 55ff. 7. See “A Chapter of Red Herrings.”

Part I

LOVECRAFT AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

Chapter 1

Biblical Cosmicism? Religion and Cosmic Insignificance in Old Testament Wisdom Literature and H. P. Lovecraft Eric Ortlund

Readers familiar with the weird fiction of H. P. Lovecraft may find the title of my chapter paradoxical or even contradictory. This is because the philosophy of cosmic insignificance and indifferentism expressed in Lovecraft’s fiction1 was articulated in such a way as to exclude religious belief as a matter of definition: if human beings are insignificant in an indifferent universe, then there cannot be any higher spiritual realm which would grant some transcendent meaning or goal to human life. In Lovecraft’s mind, one can either face the truth of our real position in the universe or hide in religious illusions, but not both. Lovecraft’s position is held by many, both in his day and in ours, and it is easy to enjoy his fiction without questioning it. But Lovecraft’s articulation of the relationship between religion and cosmicism is arguably too simple. As part of a larger project exploring the relationship between Lovecraft and theology, the goal of this chapter is to challenge Lovecraft’s binary and complicate the relationship between religion and cosmicism—in this case, ancient Israelite religion, and especially as that religion is expressed in wisdom literature. I will argue that key aspects of Lovecraft’s cosmicism are both discernible in Old Testament wisdom texts and even taught directly as part of one’s training in wisdom. Surprising as it might sound, OT wisdom insists on the human insignificance which Lovecraft would later explore in his fiction if one is to be truly wise in God’s world. To see how this is the case, Lovecraft’s cosmicism will need to be defined more carefully, as well as the way in which Lovecraft interpreted the significance of human religion within this larger framework. It is against the 13

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background of Lovecraft’s articulation of the relationship between cosmicism and religion that the transformation of this relationship in certain biblical texts will become apparent with appropriate sharpness. LOVECRAFT’S ARTICULATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COSMICISM AND RELIGION Lovecraft’s philosophy essentially concerns the insignificance of human life: within his atheist-materialist worldview, there is no greater or grander telos or meaning to human life (or anything else in the universe). Nothing exists for any reason beyond itself, and when it is gone, it is gone forever. Lovecraft came to this position early in life. His studies in astronomy as a teenager led him to conclude against the existence of any god from an early age; he once wrote that “[a] mere knowledge of the approximate dimensions of the visible universe is enough to destroy forever the notion of a personal godhead.”2 But the size of the universe plays more than a negative role in Lovecraft’s thought; S. T. Joshi comments that Lovecraft’s cosmicism was “engendered” by his study of astronomy. For Lovecraft, the infinitesimal smallness of humanity in the universe “relegated the entire history of the human race to an inessential nanosecond in the realm of infinite space and time” and disproved the idea of any cosmic meaning or ultimate purpose to humanity.3 For materialists like Lovecraft, modern scientific discoveries render impossible any hopes of humanity standing as the product of divine design and special purpose. This idea recurs within Lovecraft’s fiction, perhaps most memorably in the exploration of the alien city in At the Mountains of Madness, in which Dyer and Danforth find stone murals depicting the creation of human beings by aliens not for some noble purpose, but as a kind of court jester—a joke or an afterthought. Although the poem does not specifically refer to human beings, the same sense of purposelessness on a cosmic scale is aptly expressed in Lovecraft’s poem “Nemesis,” quoted at the beginning of “The Haunter of the Dark”: I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim, Where they roll in their horror unheeded, Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.

The phrase “without knowledge” raises an important corollary of human insignificance in Lovecraft’s philosophy, that of the incomprehensibility or

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inscrutability of the world. If human beings could epistemologically master our environment, it would be more difficult to believe we were insignificant; but Lovecraft’s fiction frequently gestures toward incomprehensible powers and forces of which most humans are unaware, and those few who catch a glimpse of them struggle to retain their sanity. The crucial point is that these powers are not just unknown but unknowable,4 and as Lovecraft’s characters are confronted with vistas and forces that cannot be comprehended, the comprehensibility and orderliness and meaning of their own lives shatter. This breakdown of the orderly before the unknown is perhaps most famously articulated in the opening paragraph of “The Call of Cthulhu,” which names “the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents” as “the most merciful thing in the world.”5 The same note is echoed when the narrator of At the Mountains of Madness speaks of how his Antarctic journey “marked my loss [. . .] of all that peace and balance which the normal mind possess through its accustomed conception of external Nature and Nature’s laws” before “a hideously amplified world of lurking horror.”6 In Lovecraft’s mind, the inscrutability of the world is both a fact and a mercy. Our insignificance is not an easy thing to bear. It is important to emphasize in a discussion of a horror writer that cosmicism does not imply a hostile universe, for hostility might grant humanity some level of importance. Rather, the universe is indifferent toward us. We are not big enough to matter—to even be noticed at all. Indeed, there is nothing out there to notice us! In a letter from 1929, Lovecraft wrote, “Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist—that is, I don’t make the mistake of thinking that the [. . .] cosmos [. . .] gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.”7 As stated above, Lovecraft thought of his cosmic pessimism as a necessary result of modern scientific discoveries and, concomitantly, as a truth which destroys any validity to religious faith. But to say only this is to fail to do justice to Lovecraft’s interpretation of religion as a human phenomenon within his materialist philosophy. Lovecraft was aware of a certain rapprochement between his approach to cosmic horror and the approach to the unknown taken by primitive religions. He went so far as to write that a sense of cosmic dread is “coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspects of it.”8 This is because religion and atheist cosmicism have the same source, namely, awe before our unknown universe. Lovecraft hypothesized that ancient peoples, not understanding the world around them, personified the universe and imagined personal agents to guide the weather, the rising and setting sun, the stars, and so on. “So rose the awesome race of anthropomorphic gods, destined to exert so long a sway over their creators.”9 Religion

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is thus perfectly explicable within a materialist atheist worldview; indeed, Lovecraft thought it was impossible for ancient humans to develop without these “false impressions.”10 In Joshi’s words, Lovecraft thought that ancient cultures were “merely bad philosophers who misapprehended the true nature of phenomena.”11 Lovecraft has these false impressions specifically in mind as he attempts to evoke the desired atmosphere of cosmic dread in a number of his stories. In “The Call of Cthulhu” and At the Mountains of Madness, for example, Lovecraft intended to address the same subject as primitive religion—our unknown universe—while exposing the falsity of ancient religious personification of natural forces and portray the cosmos as it really is (according to the discoveries of modern physics and biology). In other words, these stories were written consciously as “anti-mythologies,”12 aimed at destroying any sense of human significance which religion might give. Where ancient religion shored up a sense of the significance of life by providing a connection between humanity and its gods, Lovecraft aimed to sever this relationship and show our true position in an immense and uncaring universe.13 Whatever unknown forces exist in the universe, they are not gods and do not care about our worship. This is why Lovecraft peopled his stories with cults, while his narrators tend to be more scientific and analytical in their outlook; he was showing one understandable but mistaken approach to the outer unknown forces in our universe.14 We can see all this play out when the cultists captured by Inspector Legrasse in “The Call of Cthulhu” speak of Cthulhu as a priest whom they will help to liberate when the stars are right;15 but when the sailors of the Emma happen across Cthulhu’s island later in the story, there is nothing priestly about Cthulhu, and the cult has nothing to do with Cthulhu being accidentally awoken.16 The cultists know about Cthulhu, but misapprehend him through their religion. This is, in summary, Lovecraft’s articulation of the relationship between cosmicism and religion. I will argue below that Lovecraft’s account is too simple. This is done not to criticize Lovecraft himself—indeed, this chapter is written in admiration of Lovecraft and his insights into the human condition.17 At the same time, however, it is not inappropriate to note two weaknesses in the particular way Lovecraft has formulated these ideas. The first is that Lovecraft’s conclusion from the size of the universe about the lack of a Creator, however understandable at an emotional level, does not follow logically: the mere fact of a gigantic universe does not of necessity negate some kind of Creator. Indeed, if God’s creation is meant in some way to reflect the Creator, an unfathomably vast universe is a suitable way to hint at the greatness of its architect. (Would a smaller universe convince atheists it was a thing created?) This conclusion is also not very well informed historically. Lovecraft portrays modern scientific discoveries rendering ancient

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theological ideas untenable and points to the size of the universe as one example of this. But C. S. Lewis points out how the second-century astronomer Ptolemy, in a text standard throughout the Middle Ages, concluded that the earth, in relation to the stars, was so small as to be a “point with no magnitude.”18 The vastness of the universe has been studied with more precision in modern times, but it is not a modern discovery, and was accepted in deeply religious ages. Second, Lovecraft’s understanding of religion lacks nuance. He lumped together Christianity with other ancient religions in this regard, but did not reflect on the strangeness of an insignificant Semitic people writing about a totally different kind of deity—not a storm or river god, but a self-existent, totally independent God for whom no idol is adequate (an unknown idea in Israel’s religious environment). In other words, the ways in which the OT breaks with its ancient Semitic pagan culture complicate and problematize explanations of ancient religion as only personification of natural phenomena. The OT has much more to say about the world—and our strange place in it— than projecting human faces onto impersonal forces, a fact Lovecraft never seems to recognize.

COSMIC INSIGNIFICANCE IN PSALM 8 Psalm 8 might seem like a strange place to turn when discussing elements of cosmic insignificance and inscrutability in the Hebrew Bible.19 Certainly the psalm’s tone and trajectory are very distant to Lovecraft’s sustained (but not all-pervasive) atmosphere of horror before the unknown: while Lovecraft can achieve a kind of dream-like whimsicalness in his fantasy stories,20 Psalm 8 is positively redolent of joy as the majesty of God’s name is not confined to heaven but obvious and substantial in the earth. This redolence is achieved by the repetition of the opening refrain at the poem’s ending (vv. 1, 9), the implication being that both human speech (v. 2) and humanity’s God-given vocation of ruling over all creation (vv. 3–8) are the means by which God’s name is made majestic in the created realm. It is the second part of the psalm which concerns us here. Out of all that could be said about these memorable verses, it is striking that David21 does not look on humanity’s God-given role as vice-regents in his creation as some inherent or obvious right, as if God recognizes intrinsic human worth and significance in a way that leads him to confer on us the role of ruling his world.22 The tone in these verses is rather one of surprised gratitude for this role. There is nothing in human beings per se that would even draw divine attention (v. 4), much less prompt God to give us to rule over all the work of his hands, placing all things under humanity’s feet (v. 6).

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Furthermore, it is specifically the heavenly host (v. 3) which prompts David to reflect on human smallness. For all his chronological and cultural distance from Lovecraft and modern Western readers, it appears that the psalmist had an experience common among us of looking into the night sky and experiencing an overwhelming sense of personal smallness. It is not misleading to call Ps. 8:4 an evocation of the cosmic insignificance of humanity, for David sets humanity’s insignificance in relation to the heavenly bodies, the moon and the stars. The ancient psalmist did not know as much about the mind-boggling size of the observable universe as we do now, but that did not mute the experience for him. David feels utterly unworthy of even being noticed by God, much less given some significant role in the ordering of God’s world. Lovecraft drew a radically different conclusion from the size of the observable universe, as we saw above; but the experience was one he shared with the ancient psalmist. Setting the ancient Israelite psalmist and Lovecraft side by side on this matter, the differences between the two become as striking as the similarities. Both agree on our innate and natural insignificance. But David does not conclude from this, as Lovecraft does, that there is no Creator God. He rather joins innate human insignificance with humanity’s exalted role in God’s ordering of creation, instead of moving from human smallness to human purposelessness: although there is apparently nothing inherent in human beings that would compel God’s attention, we are nevertheless given an undeservedly significant and even unique role in God’s world. Lovecraft would not have liked this at all, of course. S. T. Joshi notes that the anti-teleological dimension of Lovecraft’s atheistic materialism was especially important to him, and that arguments in favor of humanity enjoying some divine or cosmic purpose “caused him to unleash all his rhetorical weapons with a vengeance.”23 But David does not state cosmic human insignificance as some kind of concession against the rising tide of scientific discoveries that cast doubt on theological certainties. Rather, it is precisely within his theocentric view of the world, believing the moon and stars to be the very handiwork of God (v. 3), that David is nevertheless compelled toward the same position as Lovecraft. In Psalm 8, there is nothing innately special or noteworthy about human beings. If we stand in the image of God and rule over his world, this is pure gift. He joins together what Lovecraft separates and preserves both as he does. Comparisons between unequal entities can always run the risk of overstating similarities, so it is just as well to emphasize again that the common theme of cosmic insignificance is set in glaringly opposite contexts in Lovecraft and Psalm 8: on the one hand, fear and horror before the sight of our vast and uncaring universe, and on the other, joyful worship at the spreading majesty of God’s name in all the earth (v. 9) because of human rule

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under our divine King (vv. 3–9). The OT also affirms that man is created in God’s image as vice-regent over God’s world: we image God by extending his blessed and ordering rule over the world in a quantitatively smaller but qualitatively similar way. In other words, Psalm 8 claims a special privilege and meaning for human life, an idea which Lovecraft rejected utterly. Despite these profound differences, I cannot detect any significant difference between Lovecraft’s insistence on human insignificance and David’s sense of cosmic smallness before the sun, moon, and stars. Nor can I detect any tension created by the presence of the theme in Ps. 8; it is embedded without disturbance in the unfolding of the poem. Indeed, it may even be an essential part of the poem’s unfolding. To the extent that Hebrew poetry works by suggested (but not explicit) connections between parts,24 this poem apparently implies that it is only when we make the overwhelming discovery of our insignificance that we are fully able to appreciate the magnitude of our status as royal image bearers. In Psalm 8, the majesty of God’s name in all the earth is linked precisely to his elevation of such insignificant creatures to so exalted a role. Even if it is not often repeated in the Psalter, cosmic human insignificance is not outlier or misfit in the theology of the psalms. It is crucial to human selfunderstanding and understanding our role in the world.

COSMIC INSCRUTABILITY IN JOB 28 We noted above the element of inscrutability as an important aspect of Lovecraft’s cosmicism: a sense of the vast impenetrability of our universe pervades Lovecraft’s fiction and his prose.25 The poem of Job 28 reveals some striking resonances with this idea while simultaneously being embedded in an entirely different context. The argument of this chapter can be summarized in the following way: human beings demonstrate amazing ingenuity in mining all kinds of precious metals and gems from the earth (vv. 1–11), but wisdom escapes us (vv. 12–22); we do not even know where to look (vv. 12–13, 20–22), and those methods by which humans normally acquire precious gifts are useless when it comes to wisdom (vv. 15–19). But this does not mean that wisdom is a chimera or only a human projection onto a chaotic and meaningless world. Wisdom is there, but God alone knows where it is found because he alone can see the whole of things, whereof we see the part (vv. 23–28). Within the spatial framework of Job 28, wisdom is not so much one more place in creation as an emergent property within the whole—but only the Creator has that comprehensive perspective on all things and can see it (v. 27). “Wisdom” here means both an insight into the nonobvious complexities of the created order and a skill at engaging with them; theory and practice

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are united in a single facility which enables humans to live successfully and blessedly within a complex world.26 This means that the very mention of the word “wisdom” implies an impenetrability to the world that human beings are not naturally able to transcend without that facility which other texts describe as a gift from God (see Prov. 2:1–6). In other words, wisdom implies human finitude and fallibility that only a gift from on high can relieve. What is most striking about Job 28 is the way it presents wisdom as achievable for human beings, but not by pointing us toward that one part of creation where wisdom can be found. The final verse of the poem only directs us back to God himself. This means that the secret to the riddle of existence is not revealed to us in Job 28. We are only pointed to the one person who possesses wisdom, and our only wisdom is found in fearing him. A paradox emerges as a result, such that wisdom is achievable, together with that blessing and good success which Proverbs promises to those who find wisdom (Prov. 3:1–12). At the same time, however, grasping wisdom does not mean all the mysteries of creation are instantly unveiled for us. In a sense, we remain forever ignorant of what God sees in Job 28:25–27.27 In Lovecraft’s imaginative universe, insight into the true nature of reality tends to drive his characters insane; most human beings cannot bear the truth of our insignificance. The opposite happens in Proverbs and Job, where insight into God’s created order leads to blessing. But even this happy result does not relieve our epistemological limits (cf. Prov. 30:1–4). Even the wisdom which comes from fearing the Lord does not give humanity that comprehensive perspective which only God has (Job 28:25–27). Whatever insights into the order of creation wisdom gives, mysteries remain, such that even seasoned sages need to keep learning (Prov. 1:5). In other words, even with the fear of the Lord, human beings do not know the place where wisdom is found (Job 28:20). Furthermore, it is appropriate to call this a cosmic inscrutability, for not even the primeval abyss (tehôm, v. 14) contains the secret of wisdom, nor Abaddon and Death (v. 23). Wisdom is not to be found in the deepest and most chaotic regions of the created order. As with Psalm 8, the consonance with Lovecraft’s cosmicism is noteworthy even while occurring within an utterly different context.

INSCRUTABILITY AND FUTILITY IN ECCLESIASTES No discussion of this sort would be complete without turning to Ecclesiastes, the one place in the OT where human insignificance and the world’s inscrutability are insisted upon most strongly. As above, these themes are embedded in a context opposite to Lovecraft’s philosophy and lead toward entirely different conclusions; but, as above, themes central to Lovecraft’s cosmicism

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are taught not as muted concessions, but as an essential part of wisdom. In Qohelet’s28 philosophy, you must squarely face up to your own insignificance and inability to penetrate the world in which you find yourself if you are going to be wise. Two passages in particular emphasize inscrutability.29 In Eccl. 8:17, Qohelet says, “I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.” Qohelet is not a cynic or an antirealist; there are things of which he is certain (see his “I know” statements in 1:17, 3:12, 8:12), and he confirms other conclusions by personally witnessing them (see “I saw” in 1:14, 2:24, 3:10, 5:18, 9:13). But these certainties exist under a far greater ambiguity. God is at work in everything—but Qohelet cannot decipher it. A pall of impenetrable ambiguity surrounds Qohelet’s wisdom. He can interpret a few things under the sun, but his profound limitations surround these. Qohelet goes further in 3:11, 14: “God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (v. 11). [. . .] I saw that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him (v. 14).” Out of so much that could be said about these crucial verses, three things should be noticed.30 First, God has put an impulse in the human heart toward eternity, an “above the sun” perspective. Although God makes every season beautiful in its time, he prevents us from getting too comfortable within the normal passing of the seasons of life (3:1–8). We want something more. Second, God simultaneously frustrates that impulse—no matter how we strain to grasp comprehensively the work of God “from beginning to end,” God prevents us. Third, God’s reason for putting us in this awkward position between time and eternity is to drive us to fear him. This is not some cold genuflection before a distant sovereign; all the rich connotations of “the fear of the Lord” in wisdom literature should be understood here.31 God beautifies human life within time, under the sun, but prevents perfect contentment within it, all so that we will turn to him in love, obedience, and worship. Qohelet does not tie inscrutability to the immense size of the universe, as Lovecraft does. But Qohelet’s sense of impenetrable mystery takes on nearly cosmic proportions as he reflects on our position under the sun, while allowing for an “above-the-sun” reality, of which we are dimly aware, but can never penetrate. As above, this does not sound terribly different from Lovecraft’s articulation of our limits, even though his atheism is worlds away from Qohelet’s celebration of life as a gift from God, despite it being full of futility (2:24–26, 3:12–13, 5:17–18, 8:15–16, 9:7–10).

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Ecclesiastes 3:11–14 resonates with Lovecraft’s thought in another way. In a letter to August Derleth from 1930, Lovecraft writes movingly of how he can express his reasons for not committing suicide only with difficulty, and says that these reasons are linked with certain atmospheres evoked by “architecture, scenery, and lighting and atmospheric effects” which provoke “vague impressions of adventurous expectancy coupled with elusive memory.”32 Still struggling to say what exactly this would involve, he can only point to “some ethereal quality of indefinite expansion and mobility, and of a heightened perception which shall make all forms and combinations of beauty simultaneously visible to me” in which he could “sail through the varied universes of space-time as an invisible vapour might [. . .] upsetting none of them, yet superior to their limitations and local forms of material organisation.” Lovecraft concludes the passage by worrying it will sound “damn foolish” to anyone else, but in light of Ecclesiastes 3:11–14, he need not have worried. Is it too much to hear in Lovecraft’s words a resonance with Qohelet’s diagnosis of the human condition under the sun? As we journey through beautiful seasons (3:1–8), we long for a higher perspective—an “expansion,” a “heightened perception” in which “all forms” can be “simultaneously visible”—but can never grasp it.33 Again, while the larger contexts could not be more different, the rapport between the ideas is striking. So much for inscrutability in Ecclesiastes. Human insignificance forms a crucial theme in this book as well, but since Qohelet ties this not to our microcosmic finitude in the universe but to the impermanence of our lives and work, we will be briefer on this score. Qohelet opens his book by pointing to the lack of any permanent gain from our lives and our labors (1:3); without denying small victories along the way, the net result of all our work is (from a non-eschatological, “under the sun” perspective) zero.34 We are building sandcastles on the beach and the tide is coming in, and soon it will be as if we never existed: “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (1:4). Qohelet reacts in frustration to this, naming life under the sun “vanity” or “futility.”35 God has imposed a kind of screwiness or twistedness on human life which we cannot straighten (1:15); effect does not line up with cause in any expected way (9:11). Our inability to master our existence means that permanence eludes us. Although life is still a good gift from God and to be enjoyed to the hilt (e.g., 9:7–10), it passes away quickly and we are gone (12:1–8). “Insignificance” is perhaps not quite the right term for this central tenet in Qohelet’s diagnosis, but Qohelet’s relentless focus on futility and impermanence would (I think) have pleased Lovecraft—or at least not provoked him to unleash his rhetorical weapons in response.

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BIBLICAL COSMICISM: CONCLUSION A number of wisdom texts have been examined to demonstrate that central aspects of Lovecraft’s cosmicism, such as human finitude and insignificance and our inability to epistemologically conquer the world, find strong commendation in OT wisdom literature. They are not grudgingly allowed as potentially undercutting the theological program of the OT, but explicitly taught as essential parts of wisdom and piety. Furthermore, this does not generate any inconsistencies in OT wisdom. Nothing in the OT’s larger trajectory concerning growth in wisdom (or—to turn our attention outside of wisdom literature— God’s redemption of fallen creation, or the prophetic hope of the conversion of the nations) necessarily destroys this agreement with Lovecraft’s philosophy. Even when the larger context within which these doctrines are embedded is entirely different from Lovecraft’s articulation of them—the cosmic fear which Lovecraft thought was our oldest and strongest emotion and the fear of the Lord in wisdom literature are as different as can be—this is a surprising and striking resonance between two very dissimilar bodies of writing. It appears that cosmicism is not necessarily tied to atheism. Wisdom texts insist on it. It hardly needs to be said that the above discussion of elements of cosmicism in the OT could easily be expanded. After all, the OT story begins with cosmic chaos and darkness (Gen. 1:2) and peoples the horizon with some fearsome chaos monsters (Job 40–41, Isa. 27:1, etc.). The sense of cosmic chaos breaking in on the ordered universe also surfaces in OT poetry in those prophetic descriptions of the sun, moon, and stars falling into abysmal darkness (e.g., Joel 2:1–10). But since the presence of cosmicism in the OT has already been demonstrated, it is appropriate at this stage to reassess Lovecraft’s strong disjunction between cosmicism and religion. On the one hand, of course, religion is a diverse enough phenomenon that it is difficult to call Lovecraft’s dichotomy strictly false. Even within Christianity, there are doubtless examples of watered-down theology which are attractive only because they offer an escape from reality: what C. S. Lewis called “Christianity-and-water,” “the view which simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right.”36 But this is not biblical Christianity, nor is it good theology. It appears we need a category of “biblical cosmicism” which is able fully to reckon with insignificance and inscrutability without jettisoning God and humanity’s covenant relationship with him. Indeed, Lewis himself, in another context, strikingly points out that it is a profound mistake to imagine that Christianity ever intended to dissipate the bewilderment and even the terror, the sense of our own nothingness, which come upon us when we think about the nature of things. It comes to intensify

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them. Without such sensations there is no religion. Many a man, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realize for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to man, and who perhaps abandons his religion on that account, may at that moment be having his first genuinely religious experience. Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man.37

The relationship between cosmicism and religion turns out to be more complicated than Lovecraft thought: religious belief not only allows for but, in a sense, demands cosmicism of a sort. Instead of excluding each other, the two stand in a supportive and fertile relationship. It could even be suggested that Lovecraft’s fiction itself bears unwilling witness to this complicated relationship. This witness is suggested by the religious language and imagery of which Lovecraft avails himself to evoke the desired atmosphere of cosmic dread.38 Religious language and imagery is not the only way that Lovecraft achieves this effect, of course, but the language of temples, blasphemies, gods, worship, and rituals recur in his revelations of outer unknown forces. Furthermore, religious language and imagery is present in Lovecraft’s fiction not only in relation to those ignorant characters who are misapprehending strange cosmic forces; it is also found in the mouth of scientifically minded narrators, or as part of the worship in which aliens engage, or more simply as part of the fabric of the story.39 In other words, Lovecraft did not seem able to contain the references to religion in his fiction to the misguided cults he imagined. His fiction shows a tendency to depend on religion as one way (among many others) to evoke and conjure an atmosphere of cosmic dread. Lovecraft sometimes depended on the thing he rejected, even when he wrote self-consciously to unmask it.40 I am not here accusing Lovecraft of flat contradiction. These are only touches in his stories; they add to the atmosphere. Some stories have none of it, such as The Shadow out of Time. But there are traces in Lovecraft’s fiction of the more fraught relationship between religion and cosmicism witnessed to in OT wisdom texts. I mentioned above my admiration of Lovecraft’s achievements as a writer. Even though I do not share his philosophy, it has always seemed to me that his fiction gets at something essential about the human condition in a way which few other writers do. Lovecraft has served me in another way: entirely contrary to his intention, he has made me a better reader of biblical wisdom literature by sensitizing me to certain themes in the OT which I might otherwise have missed. Awareness of these themes is crucial if we are fully to appreciate humanity’s position in God’s universe, both exalted and existing within profound limits. Wisdom requires nothing less than fully acknowledging both sides of this paradox.

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NOTES 1. The edition of Lovecraft’s fiction cited in this chapter is The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Chartwell, 2016). 2. Cited in S. T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon, 1996), 209; see also 78–79. 3. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft, 205, and 203–206 more generally. 4. Vivian Ralickas, “‘Cosmic Horror’ and the Question of the Sublime in Lovecraft,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 18 (2007): 364. 5. Complete Works, 381. 6. Ibid., 798. 7. Quoted in Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft, 483; see also 212, 484, 644, and Ralickas, “Cosmic Horror,” 366–67. 8. Supernatural Horror in Literature (reprint; New York: Dover, 1973), 13, and 12–14 more generally. 9. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft, 208–209, quoting Lovecraft’s essay “Idealism and Materialism—A Reflection,” published in National Amateur in 1919. 10. Ibid. Lovecraft thinks ancient religions guided conduct and gave “emotional satisfaction” not available elsewhere, and still can be useful among “the herd” (ibid., 209–10). 11. H. P. Lovecraft, 209. 12. Ibid., 404. 13. Ibid., 404–405. For more on Lovecraft’s “atheist apologetic” in his fiction, see Thompson’s “Dagon and Idolatry” in the present book, 36–38. 14. H. P. Lovecraft, 404, 488–89, 492. 15. Complete Works, 393. 16. The same occurs when Dyer discerns a genealogical connection between Asian temples, which were modeled on certain aspects of the alien city in At the Mountains of Madness (Complete Works, 799). 17. This is not because Lovecraft was never inconsistent. Even so admiring a critic as S. T. Joshi admits that when Lovecraft tries to articulate an ethic on the basis of his cosmicism, he cannot resolve a contradiction: on the one hand, Lovecraft must admit that (within his philosophy) all ethics are relative to an individual, but on the other hand, Lovecraft wanted to make tradition a fixed point or anchor which guided human behavior (see H. P. Lovecraft, 210–12, 484–85, 583–84). Even worse is when Lovecraft (in Joshi’s words) “lapses into the paradox of offering an absolutist ethic of his own while at the same time scorning others for so doing” (ibid., 484). 18. C. S. Lewis, Miracles (reprint; London: HarperCollins, 2016), 77–78. 19. All biblical quotations are from the ESV. 20. For example, “Polaris,” “The White Ship,” The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, among others. The attempt to sustain a certain kind of mood is again noticeable, but in these other stories, it is one of dreamy wonder and impossible, airy heights which can be achieved only at some distance from normal human existence

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(in dreams) and are sometimes lost. My impression is that, for Lovecraft, happiness occurs mostly in dreams and is as insubstantial as the form in which he experienced it. 21. I assume Davidic authorship as plausible for most, if not all, of the psalms bearing his name, without insisting on the matter. The Hebrew preposition le- can mean either “by” or “about,” but we know from other sources that David was a musician and poet (1 Sam. 16:16–23, 2 Sam. 23:1–7). See more discussion in Bruce Waltke, “Psalms, Theology of,” in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Willem VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 4:1101–102. 22. The source for this idea is, of course, Gen. 1:26–28. For more on the relationship between these two texts, see John Goldingay, Psalms 1–41 (Baker Commentary on Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 158–61. 23. Ibid., 205. 24. See Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (rev. ed.; New York: Basic, 2011), 8–19. 25. See, for example, the opening lines of “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family,” Complete Works, 122; “From Beyond,” Complete Works, 132. In Supernatural Horror in Literature (reprint; New York: Dover, 1973), Lovecraft describes his aim as creating a sense of dread before outer, “unknown forces” (15, emphasis mine). 26. Scholarship on wisdom literature is so voluminous that one hardly knows where to begin, but I have been especially helped on these matters by Michael Fox, Proverbs 1–9 (Anchor Bible 18A; New Haven: Yale, 2000), 28–38, and Bruce Waltke, Proverbs 1–15 (New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 88–109. 27. Most commentators agree that Job is not speaking in this chapter, but that the poem stands somewhat apart from the debate between Job and his friends and comments on it from the outside; the chapter’s orderliness and basically positive outlook stand far apart from Job’s agonized protest against God’s perceived injustice (see, for example, Norman Habel, The Book of Job [OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985], 391–92, and the citations listed there). This means that the perspective on wisdom in this chapter takes on a more normative status within the book; it is disassociated from the friend’s rigid theorizing (which God rejects in 42:7–8) and Job’s condemnation of his former protest against God (42:5–6). 28. Qohelet is not the author, but a Solomon-like persona which an anonymous author adopts to speak hard truths which readers might otherwise reject. Insisting on the under-the-sun futility of our lives could easily prompt resistance from the audience, but putting this in the mouth of a powerful king prevents us from saying, “If only I had more time and resources to do what I really wanted, I’d be content.” Qohelet had all these in spades and was terribly depressed; it was not his failures, but precisely Qohelet’s successes, which forced him to conclude all his great achievements were in vain (2:9–23). For more on Qohelet as a literary persona, see Michael Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 363–73.

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29. But see also passages such as 6:12; 7:14, 23; 9:1, 12: 11:2, 5. The theme is not an occasional one in Ecclesiastes. 30. I am indebted to C. L. Seow on this passage (Ecclesiastes [Anchor Bible 18C; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 162–65, 172–74. 31. See further Bruce Waltke, An Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 483. In Deut. 10:12–16, fearing God is paired with loving, obeying, and trusting him. 32. Joshi quotes the letter at length in H. P. Lovecraft, 584. The whole passage is one of the most poignant junctures in all of Lovecraft’s writing. 33. In “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” Lovecraft says that “[c]onflict with time seems to me the most potent and fruitful theme in all human expression” (ibid), another striking harmony with this passage in Ecclesiastes. 34. Eccl. 1:3 refers to yitrôn, from ytr, “to be left over” or “remain” (cf. Exod. 10:5). Qohelet is asking not about smaller gains, but the total result of the whole of our lives. 35. Hebel in Hebrew, literally “breath,” but how exactly the word is to be translated in Ecclesiastes is deeply debated, for it is apparent that he uses the word in ways different from the rest of the OT (e.g., in 8:14, the success of wicked lives is not a “breath”). For reasons too involved to unfold here, I think “vanity” or “futility” is a good translation. See further the helpful discussions, Fox, Time to Tear Down, 27–42, and Seow, Ecclesiastes, 101–102. 36. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (reprint; London: HarperCollins, 2016), 40. 37. C. S. Lewis, Miracles (reprint; London: HarperCollins, 2016), 81. 38. Lovecraft held the creation of a certain atmosphere as a central goal of his weird fiction. In “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” he writes that “[a]tmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction,” and that “all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood.” The mood is one of horror before the unknown, of “shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or ‘outsideness.’” (First published in Amateur Correspondent, 2, No. 1 (May–June 1937), 7–10; accessed on 21/8/20 at https://www​.hplovecraft​.com​/writings​/texts​/essays​/nwwf​ .aspx. Emphasis in the original.) 39. Some examples: when the narrator in “Nyarlathotep” enters “the sightless vortex of the unimaginable” at the story’s end, “only the gods that were can tell” exactly what that vortex is—named later the “gigantic, tenebrous, ultimate gods” (Complete Works, 140). The narrator also discerns “half-seen columns of unsanctified temples” are part of his final vision, despite being “colder and more scientific than the rest” (ibid., 139). In “From Beyond,” as Tillinghast’s “resonance wave” stimulates the narrator’s pineal gland, in addition to seeing “jellyfish monstrosities,” the narrator fancies himself “in some vast and incredible temple of long-dead gods” (Complete Works, 134–35). At the end of The Shadow over Innsmouth, as Robert Olmstead changes into one of the Deep Ones, he dreams of “praying monstrously at their sea-bottom temples” (Complete Works, 921). Temples also form a part of the earlier history etched on the walls of the cyclopean alien city which Dyer and Danforth explore in At the Mountains of Madness; the “traditional sacredness” of the region for its original alien inhabitants is also commented upon (Complete Works,

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835–37). Sorcerous rituals and spells are practiced both by Wilbur Whateley and used to destroy his twin brother in “The Dunwich Horror.” Furthermore, why are so many things in Lovecraft’s fiction described as “blasphemous,” when blasphemy has no traction as a concept in a materialist universe? Finally, Lovecraft’s critical essay on horror is titled “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” As a literary term, the adjective is entirely appropriate, for it distinguishes the particular genre which interests Lovecraft from that in which the main horror is only physical danger. But Lovecraft does not believe that any such supernature exists. This creates tension; his conjuring of the desired atmosphere shows some reliance on the religion he rejects. 40. Eric Link, in his introduction to the Chartwell edition of Lovecraft’s complete works, writes that there is “no simple answer” to the “puzzle” of Lovecraft writing so often about rituals, gods, and spells, when his philosophy rejected this so decisively (Complete Works, xvi).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. Revised edition. New York: Basic, 2011. Fox, Michael. A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. ———. Proverbs 1–9. Anchor Bible 18A. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Goldingay, John. Psalms 1–41. Baker Commentary on Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006. Habel, Norman. The Book of Job. Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985. Joshi, S. T. H. P. Lovecraft: A Life. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon, 1996. Lewis, C. S. Miracles. Reprint. London: HarperCollins, 2016. Lovecraft, H. P. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction.” Amateur Correspondent, 2, No. 1 (May–June 1937): 7–10. ———. The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. New York: Chartwell Books, 2016. Ralickas, Vivian. “Cosmic Horror and the Question of the Sublime in Lovecraft.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 18 (2007): 364–98. Seow, C. L. Ecclesiastes. Anchor Bible 18C. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Waltke, Bruce. An Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007. ———. Proverbs 1–15. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. ———. “Psalms, Theology of.” In New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, edited by Willem VanGemeren, 4: 1101–2. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997.

Chapter 2

Dagon and Idolatry Lovecraft’s Use of the Bible in “Dagon” and The Shadow over Innsmouth Alexander P. Thompson

“Dagon an’ Ashtoreth—Belial an’ Beelzebub—Golden Caff an’ the idols o’ Canaan an’ the Philistines—Babylonian abominations—Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin—.”1 This stream of biblical allusions is old Zadok Allen’s drunken explanation of the strange religion depicted in H. P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth. Pride of place in these references to Israel’s idolatrous neighbors goes to the god Dagon, whose name shows up throughout the story and is the eponym of an earlier story by Lovecraft. Of course, references to gods are not uncommon in Lovecraft’s work. One of the hallmarks of Lovecraft’s legacy, for better or worse, is the creation of a pantheon of deities (e.g., Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep) that have spawned numerous devotees among readers and writers alike. While it would be inexact to call these “gods” since Lovecraft later depicts them as extraterrestrial creatures, the humans in Lovecraft’s works often worship them as gods as a way to avoid dealing with the harsh terror that their existence is meant to convey. In the wake of growing scientific advances, Lovecraft sought to terrify by invoking human insignificance on a vast cosmic scale. Such cosmicism fueled the creation of these godlike aliens, who functioned for Lovecraft as a kind of anti-mythology meant to inspire fear in the reader.2 While the appearance of such “gods” can be found in several of H. P. Lovecraft’s works, Dagon attracts attention because he is not a purely fictive creation. Dagon was a Philistine deity who played a minor role in the Hebrew Bible where he is associated with the opponents of Israel and Israel’s God. Besides a number of passing references to Dagon associated with Philistine worship (Josh 19:27; Judg 16:23; 1 Chron 11:4), there is a memorable tale 29

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about Dagon in 1 Samuel 5:2–7 where the ark of the God of Israel is captured and placed before the statue of Dagon. The confrontation between the ark and Dagon results in the toppling of the image of Dagon in prostration before the presence of Yahweh. This story captures central tenets of Jewish and Christian theology: the worship of one God (monotheism) and the rejection of all other gods (idolatry). While this biblical framework was antithetical to Lovecraft’s atheistic philosophy, his use of Dagon is suggestive of possible biblical influence. Could the biblical use of Dagon have informed these two Lovecraft stories? And if so, how does Lovecraft’s telling represent a creative reversal of the biblical rhetoric against idolatry? This chapter will offer a reading of Lovecraft’s two stories about Dagon in conversation with the theme of idolatry found in 1 Samuel 5:1–12. After sketching the biblical rhetoric against idolatry and discussing Lovecraft’s possible indebtedness to the Bible for the figure of Dagon, I will explore the way that Lovecraft’s stories repurpose Dagon in his anti-mythology. I will then close with a brief reflection on how Christian theology might respond to Lovecraft’s reuse of Dagon today.

THE BIBLICAL RHETORIC AGAINST IDOLATRY The Bible’s rhetoric against idolatry opens the Ten Commandments. After Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, the God of Israel made a covenant with the people to set them apart from other nations. The mark of their unique identity was their worship of God and obedience to God’s law. The Ten Commandments serve as a kind of epitome of Israel’s law and begin with two interrelated commands: Israel shall have no other gods before God and shall not make or worship any idols (Exod 20:1–6). While later biblical texts depict Israel’s struggle to worship God alone, the theological trajectory of the Hebrew Bible was toward the exclusive belief that there is a single God who alone is worthy of worship. The same monotheistic belief shaped the later Christian tradition, albeit reworked around Jesus the Messiah (1 Cor 9:6; Matt 28:19). The worship of God alone and the rejection of idolatry also played a pivotal sociopolitical role in shaping identity. The rejection of idolatry created a dynamic rhetoric whereby Israel could characterize their own religious practices against the practices of their neighbors. For instance, the destruction of the Canaanites commanded in Deuteronomy was predicated on the fact that these nations do not worship God but idols (Deut 12:1–7). The New Testament used the same rhetoric against idolatry in a different context as the church formed around the death and resurrection of Jesus set itself up against the polytheistic Gentiles. The apostle Paul commended the Christians

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in Thessalonica because they “turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead” (1 Thess 1:9–10). The rejection of idolatry united the people of God against those who worshipped idols. The biblical writers further used this rhetoric against idolatry in order to construct the other as unfaithful, wicked, evil, demonic, and destined for destruction. A range of metaphors and images supported this othering. Since Israel or the church was metaphorically God’s bride, the Bible depicted idolatry as an act of marital unfaithfulness (Hos 2). It also regularly developed a contrast between the living God of Israel and the dead idols. The Lord declares in Isaiah that “I am the first and the last; apart from me there is no God” (Isa 6:6) before explaining that “all who made idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame” (Isa 6:9). The Bible associated idolatry with the demonic, characterizing the other as united to the supernatural forces of evil (Deut 32:17; 1 Cor 10:20; Rev 9:20). The same rhetoric also utilized eschatological categories. While humans were created in the image of God and would be redeemed to reflect God’s glory, those who worship idols were destined to become like what they worship and face judgment (Ps 115:8; Rev 21:8).3 The diversity of images and metaphors shows the pervasiveness of the rhetoric against idolatry in the Bible as it shaped the other in theological and social-political categories. However, the Bible does not solely use the rhetoric against idolatry to characterize the other in relation to Israel and the church. It used the same rhetoric to critique the people of God. An early example occurred in Exodus 32 when the Israelites worship a golden calf and rejected God’s commandments. Similarly, the condemnation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel is attributed to their rejection of God and the worship of idols (2 Kings 17:7–18). As Israel often struggled to be faithful to God alone, their own prophets rebuked their struggle with idolatry (Jer 3:8–10; Ezek 6). Similarly, the Gentile Christians in the New Testament struggled with the ongoing role of idolatry in their own life as they tried to worship God and Christ (1 Cor 8). To worship an idol was an act of disobedience that invited God’s judgment even for the people of God. The encounter between Dagon and the ark in 1 Samuel 5:1–12 utilizes many of these facets of the biblical rhetoric against idolatry. The ark was a wooden chest containing holy objects that sat at the most holy place of Israel’s tabernacle. The Bible depicted it as the throne of God and a symbol of God’s presence with Israel.4 The ark accompanied Israel into battle (Josh 6:6), an act that reinforced the link between Israel’s religious and social identity against their opponents in a way similar to the rhetoric against idolatry. While the Israelites had brought the ark to battle in order to defeat the

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Philistines, the Philistines managed to defeat them and capture the ark (1 Sam 4:1–11). This constituted a theological and political challenge for the Israelites that questioned their identity.5 If Israel could lose to the Philistines, does it mean Israel’s God was defeated by the Philistine gods? 1 Samuel 5:1–12 offers a resounding ‘no’ to this question as the ark is able to dethrone the Philistine deity Dagon. While scholars have debated the association of the Philistine god Dagon with rain, grain, or fish based on etymological links to Hebrew words, what is clear in this story is that the placement of the ark in the temple of Dagon is a Philistine attempt to subordinate Yahweh to Dagon.6 Yet this situation quickly backfires when the priests enter the temple on the first morning and find the statue of Dagon on his face before the ark. The priests prop the image back up, but when they return the following day, Dagon is again face down before the ark. But this time his hands and head have been cut off. The theological message is clear: Yahweh is superior to Dagon. As the Philistines themselves declare, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us; for his hand is heavy on us and on our god Dagon” (1 Sam 5:7). Although Israel lost the ark in battle, the God of Israel still defeated the Philistines and their idol. The story encapsulates the biblical rhetoric against idolatry in the Bible as summarized in three theses. First, the biblical rhetoric of idolatry makes an explicit theological claim that the God of Israel has no equal. All other gods will bow before God. For Israel, such rhetoric is a word of hope in the face of their defeat. The God of Israel is more powerful than the false gods of Israel’s enemies. Second, the biblical rhetoric of idolatry creates a sociopolitical contrast between the people of God and their opponents. This rhetoric of otherness establishes a sharp contrast: God vs. Dagon parallels Israel vs. Philistines. Third, the same ability of the rhetoric against idolatry to other opponents of God also critiques the people of God who claimed allegiance to Yahweh. The Bible’s rhetoric against idolatry contained the power of self-critique. Thus, this story sounds a cautionary note for Israel. Ultimately, Israel does not control God. They cannot use the ark to their own advantage in battle. While God has elected Israel, God is not subservient to Israel but remains sovereign over Israel as over all nations. Unlike the idols made by hands, humans do not control the God of Israel.7 The biblical rhetoric against idolatry has the power to other, but this power can also be turned against Israel as a reminder of God’s freedom.

LOVECRAFT AND THE BIBLE Was H. P. Lovecraft inspired by the stories of Dagon in the Bible when composing his two short stories “Dagon” and The Shadow over Innsmouth?

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While definitive proof of influence is not possible, H. P. Lovecraft’s life and work suggest a number of possible streams of exposure to the biblical figure. These streams build on significant influences on Lovecraft such that familiarity with the biblical Dagon in all likelihood did influence these two short stories. The first stream of influence is the reading of the Bible itself. While Lovecraft was a committed atheist for the majority of his life, there is little doubt that he was familiar with the Bible.8 In an article written in 1920 for The United Amateur on sources of literary inspiration and technique, Lovecraft urged, “an excellent habit to cultivate is the analytical study of the King James Bible. For simple yet rich and forceful English, this masterly production is hard to equal . . . it is an invaluable model for writers on quaint or imaginative themes.”9 The quote from The Shadow over Innsmouth that opened this chapter illustrates that Lovecraft had taken his own advice. For he has Zadok Allen juxtapose Dagon with other characters and tropes associated with idolatry in the Old and New Testament: Ashtoreth (1 Kings 11:5), Belial (2 Cor 6:15), Beelzebub (Mark 3:22), Golden Calf (Exodus 32), and the phrase mene, mene, tekel, upharsin (Dan 5).10 In the earlier short story “Dagon,” the narrator consults an ethnologist “with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God.” Lovecraft here connects Dagon to the biblical Philistines, suggesting a clear biblical dependence.11 Such connections show, as Will Murray noted in 1985, that “the Bible is a likely source. Lovecraft was certainly familiar with it in detail.”12 But this was not Lovecraft’s only possible stream of exposure to the biblical story. Lovecraft was a voracious reader and had likely encountered Dagon in other literary, philosophical, and weird works. In Paradise Lost, John Milton references Dagon briefly as a demon-like sea monster, whose image was decapitated before the ark (Paradise Lost 1.457–66). Lovecraft notes his familiarity with a version of Milton’s classic work illustrated by Gustave Doré that he encountered as a child and whose weird images left a lasting impression.13 He also compares the landscape in his story “Dagon” to “curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost” and the discovered obelisk as “the envy of Doré.”14 These references invite one to read “Dagon” in light of Lovecraft’s experience of Paradise Lost’s reworking of the biblical Dagon as a sea monster. Lovecraft likely also encountered the figure of Dagon when reading philosophical works related to myths and religion. Lovecraft had read John Fiske’s Myth and Mythmakers and was convinced by Fiske’s argument that ancient myths can be explained anthropologically as primitive human’s attempts to explain their experience of the world without science. In this book, Fiske references Dagon twice.15

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Alongside such philosophical works, Dagon was also a suggestive enough figure for other weird tales of the period. The most notable example is Herbert Gorman’s The Place of Dagon which Lovecraft celebrated as a “highly effective creation.”16 While this tale was written later than “Dagon,” it might have encouraged him to return to the figure in The Shadow over Innsmouth.17 These examples show that in Lovecraft’s day the Bible still retained prominence across literature and was part of the cultural knowledge Lovecraft imbibed. But the association of Dagon with a place in New England in Gorman’s weird tale points toward another possible stream of exposure to the biblical Dagon. The Puritan Christian settlers of New England left a religious legacy that exerted an enormous influence of Lovecraft’s imagination and figured prominently in his reading and writing.18 One example is the works of the Puritan Cotton Mather which discussed the supernatural in colonial New England using biblical language that included references to Dagon. For instance, in book 4 of Magnalia Christi Americana, Mather warns persecutors that their fate will be like Dagon: first, they will be cast down before God and the second time there will be nothing left but a stump.19 Lovecraft knew Mather’s work as he used it multiple times in his stories and even owned a first edition.20 But Dagon was not just a biblical allusion in Puritan New England. Will Murray has shown how Puritans referred to the town of Merrymount, founded by Puritan exile Thomas Morton, as the Mount of Dagon due to its association with the so-called paganism that resulted from locals marrying natives. Lovecraft himself referenced this tradition of Thomas Morton briefly in a letter.21 What is important about Puritan references like these is that they already show how the biblical Dagon could be extended through the rhetoric against idolatry to new contexts in New England. Dagon was already a rhetorical figure used to characterize the terrible other. These are all possible avenues through which Lovecraft could have encountered Dagon and the biblical rhetoric against idolatry. But how does his own treatment of Dagon compare to this rhetoric against idolatry? In order to see that, one must carefully consider the two short stories that feature Dagon.

THE RHETORIC OF IDOLATRY IN “DAGON” AND THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH Dagon has a marked presence in two of Lovecraft’s short stories. The first example is “Dagon,” an early work published in October of 1925 for Weird Tales. It is written as a first-person account of a series of events that brought the protagonist in contact with a strange creature in the Pacific. A German

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sea-raider in the Pacific had captured the protagonist, but he managed to escape in a small boat. After floating for several days, he lands upon a slimy, black shore vomited up from the ocean depths by some volcanic upheaval. As he explores the dark landscape, he finds a giant monolith “whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.”22 Hieroglyphics based on aquatic life cover the monument as do images of fish-like men who worship at an underwater shrine. Although the images are grotesque, the narrator takes an anthropological tack and decides “that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe.”23 But then he encounters something truly terrifying: “Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sound.”24 Although the narrator manages to escape and return to America, the encounter slowly drives him mad. Connecting his experience to the Philistine god Dagon does not set him at ease, for his dreams continue to remind him of “the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likeness on submarine obelisks.”25 The story ends when the crazed narrator, convinced that the end is near and that the creature has come to finish him off, throws himself out of the window. What “Dagon” foreshadows about Lovecraft’s cosmicism, the second tale to feature Dagon develops into one of the high points of Lovecraft’s strange fiction. Written in 1931, The Shadow over Innsmouth recounts the visit of a young man to the seaport of Innsmouth during a traveling tour of New England. Prior to his arrival, the ticket office worker recounts the rumors whispered about Innsmouth and the shady deal that Captain Obed Marsh made with the devil.26 However, the real rumor, the worker explains, is “simply race prejudice” as the folk of Innsmouth had intermarried with people from “queer ports in Africa, Asia, the South Seas, and everywhere else” and now have a strange fish-like appearance.27 But Innsmouth does have two things to its credit. There always seems to be good fishing off its shores and the town produces the strangest gold jewelry. The narrator sees a piece of this jewelry and remarks on its “queer other-worldly quality” that suggests workmanship “of another planet” and images that overflow “with the ultimate quintessence of unknown and inhuman evil.”28 Religious worship in Innsmouth is now enshrined in the “Esoteric Order of Dagon” that has replaced the traditional, orthodox churches of the city, further reinforcing the wicked characterization of the city. This dense description of the outsiders’ view of Innsmouth echoes the biblical rhetoric against idolatry. Innsmouth is associated with Dagon, devil-worship, evil, and racial prejudice. Innsmouth is the other to conventional New England life and religion.

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Once the narrator arrives in the decaying town of Innsmouth, he seeks out Zadok Allen who is known to share openly about the secrets of the town when drunk. Because of his age, Zadok provides a firsthand account of the utterly bizarre history of the town. Captain Obed Marsh had encountered a culture on an island in the Pacific who worshipped strange gods in exchange for fish and gold. As he traded with them, he learned about their underwater deities, the human sacrifices offered to them, and the intermarriage occurring between the gods and the islanders with the promise of a transformation to immortality. The destruction of the islanders in 1838 delivered a huge loss to Marsh’s trade. As Innsmouth fell on hard times, Obed cursed the Christian God and suggested that Innsmouth find new gods. He forced the Christian ministers out of town and replaced them with worshippers of the strange sea god Dagon. Under the veil of darkness, he called on these gods and offered them human sacrifice. In 1846, the townsfolk confronted Obed only to suffer a bloody attack from the creatures several nights later. Since that terrible night, Obed has instituted changes in the town including the worship and the swearing of oaths to Dagon. But that is not the end. The sea creatures are now intermarrying with the Innsmouth folks and causing grotesque changes in their appearances. As the town decays, the people slowly become more fish-frog-like in anticipation of their aquatic immortality.29 The protagonist’s initial reaction to this story is to treat it as a “sort of crude allegory based upon the strangeness of Innsmouth.”30 Yet Zadok Allen’s tale is proved true that evening. When he tries to leave town, the bus is broken and he is forced to stay the night in Innsmouth. Dread and terror set in for the remainder of the story as the inhabitants come to take him away in the middle of the night for “some strange rite connected with Devil Reef.”31 The protagonist enacts a harrowing escape out of town in which he narrowly avoids “the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design.”32 He then reported Innsmouth to the authorities who, as we learn in the opening of the tale, took decisive action in arresting the townsfolk and demolishing Devil Reef. But this is not the end of the story. For the protagonist decides to follow up some genealogical questions about his heritage.33 To his own horror, he learns that he is related to the Innsmouth people! With this terrible self-knowledge, he yields to his ancestral fate. The narrative closes with his promise to develop the Innsmouth look and return to the sea where he can worship the Deep Ones “amidst wonder and glory forever.”34 The true horror of the story is not only the encounter at Innsmouth, but the narrator’s gloomy fate. Shadow over Innsmouth is a stark depiction of degeneration: of the town, its inhabitants, and ultimately its narrator. It is also overlaid with a strong moralistic tale that stresses the negative effects of intermarriage (miscegenation),

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a point that reflects the racism of the early twentieth century that Lovecraft actively perpetuated.35 What is important for this chapter, however, is how the biblical rhetoric against idolatry functions throughout the tale to support the theme of degeneration. Lovecraft depicts Innsmouth as a terrible other both racially and religiously by association with Dagon and devil-worship. This characterization hinges on a contrast with Christianity. The strange worship of Innsmouth has “engulfed all the orthodox churches” and replaced them with temples of the Esoteric Order of Dagon.36 As Brandon Reynolds notes, “The occupation of former churches by the followers of the fish-god Dagon symbolizes paganism rising above Christian opposition.”37 What was merely suggested by the monolith and creature in “Dagon” is now depicted explicitly. The other has arrived and has engulfed traditional New England life and religion. Obed Marsh had actively perpetuated this characterization in his explicit rejection of Christianity when he encourages the people to “git better gods like some o’ the folks in the Injies—gods as ud bring ’em good fishin’ in return for their sacrifices, an’ ud reely answer folks’s prayers.”38 Lovecraft has depicted Innsmouth as a shadowy alternative to Christianity with its new gods and strange worship. But in order for this to horrify the reader, he relies on the biblical rhetoric against idolatry. The reader is expected to reel at Innsmouth’s abandonment of orthodox Christianity and preference for idolatry, for such idolatry brings with it the judgment of God. The terror is effective because it assumes the cultural cache of the biblical rhetoric against idolatry. Lovecraft also reinscribes the biblical rhetoric of idolatry through the physical degeneration of the Innsmouth people. The Bible often notes that those who worship idols become what they worship. This is enacted in the bodies of the Innsmouth inhabitants as their worship of Dagon results in their interbreeding with the fish-frog creatures of the sea. The protagonist himself yields to this bodily transformation as he seeks to live forever in the sea, a decision depicted as horrifying for the reader (not least for Lovecraft who would baulk at such miscegenation). There is a clear parody here of biblical religion where eternal existence with God is replaced by “physical degeneration into Innsmouth’s fishlike people coupled with an eternal undersea existence for the rebirth of paganism.”39 Rather than the biblical depiction of the triumph of God in the presence of the temple of Dagon, the story shows the triumph of Dagon in the absence of the biblical God, if not through the town’s longevity (as the authorities destroy it) at least through the concluding conversion of the protagonist. What is fascinating in both of these stories is how Lovecraft maintains aspects of the biblical rhetoric against idolatry even as he props up Dagon as an alternative to the biblical God. The horrors of Dagon repulse the reader in large part because of the culture cache of the biblical rhetoric

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against idolatry. Innsmouth is associated with the devil, false worship that has rejected orthodoxy, and the physical degeneration of bodies. Dagon is a shadowy other that invites terror because it subverts the biblical rhetoric. Yet the horrors of Dagon are still dependent on the biblical rhetoric against idolatry and the recognition of this rhetoric heightens the terror of the stories.

THE SHADOW OVER IDOLS: A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE But what was Lovecraft’s rationale for reusing the figure of Dagon and this biblical rhetoric against idolatry in these stories? From the outset, one must be clear it was not because Lovecraft himself was a Christian or even a theist. As Lovecraft himself stated on multiple occasions, he was a convinced atheist. His philosophy was a mechanical materialism that rejected God, the soul, and the afterlife. Lovecraft was convinced that the universe was not progressing toward some particular goal but was inextricably bound by natural laws. Rather, his use of deities was an anti-mythology meant to critique religious beliefs.40 Lovecraft’s use of the biblical rhetoric against idolatry was an appropriation of the Bible to express something unbiblical, a kind of turning the Bible against itself. The biblical rhetoric fuels his broader critique of religion. This is seen in the way that Dagon is invoked in both of these short stories. In “Dagon,” the protagonist’s attempt to understand his horrific experience by asking the ethnologist about the ancient Philistine fish-god is mocked as conventional.41 Similarly, it is humans in The Shadow over Innsmouth that connect the Deep Ones to the figure of Dagon as a means to understand the bizarre. While characters paint the encounter with Dagon in the biblical rhetoric of idolatry, Lovecraft himself demythologizes Dagon. Lovecraft’s Dagon becomes a way to philosophize with a hammer, to borrow an expression from one of Lovecraft’s philosophic influences, Friedrich Nietzsche.42 Dagon, like a hammer that smashes idols, is clothed in the biblical rhetoric against idolatry in order to dismantle all religious claims. But there is something striking about Lovecraft’s attempt to reuse the biblical figure of Dagon in order to smash the biblical religions. For in the Bible, is it not the ark of the covenant which is responsible for the destruction of the idol? Is it not the freedom of God that critiques and challenged the worshippers of Dagon and the Israelites? While Lovecraft has tried to hide his atheistic and scientific critique of religion in the figure of Dagon, 1 Samuel 5 actually highlights God as the one who both smashes the idol of Dagon and critiques the Israelites. This is inherent in the third thesis about the rhetoric against idolatry. While Lovecraft tries to use Dagon against the God of the

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Bible, the Bible itself notes the ways that the one God was already involved in critiquing both those outside and inside the faith. There is no need for Lovecraft to invert the rhetoric against idolatry because the rhetoric already contained in it the possibility for self-critique. While space will not allow a detailed theological response to Lovecraft, a brief reflection on Karl Barth’s engagement with Ludwig Feuerbach offers a helpful analogy to what could be gleaned and what ought to be resisted from Lovecraft’s use of Dagon. In his Essence of Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach laid out a perspective not unlike Lovecraft’s own view of the anthropological origin of religion. Feuerbach argued that all religion was essentially anthropology as humans projected their deepest longings and fears onto God.43 While Feuerbach saw this as a noble attempt to help humanity achieve its deepest longings, Lovecraft argued that this projection is a human illusion that fails to face the harsh reality of cosmic existence. While the ends are different, the technique of projection is largely the same. The Christian theologian Karl Barth praised Feuerbach’s reading of Christianity as exposing the brokenness of much liberal Christian theology in the nineteenth century. Barth saw Feuerbach’s critique as exposing the tendencies of humans to make idols even within their own religious tradition. In its place, however, Barth did not promote the end of God as Lovecraft does. Instead, Barth called for a recovery of God as the one who is Wholly Other and completely free from human constraint.44 In the terms of 1 Samuel 5, it was God (not Dagon) who was free to break the idols of the Philistines and the Israelites. Barth’s assessment offers a way for Christianity to approach Lovecraft’s philosophical use of Dagon as idol-smasher. One can appreciate Lovecraft’s use of Dagon as a figure that critiques the ways humans often use religion to avoid the truths of reality. While the Christian theologian will hardly follow Lovecraft’s strong atheistic cosmicism, nevertheless one can learn much from Lovecraft’s willingness to challenge humans who have often used religion as a retreat from reality and the results of scientific advancement. But like Barth, Christian theologians ought also to be willing to turn this same critique back on all human projects, even those of Lovecraft himself. For Dagon will never be Wholly Other because he remains merely a literary device that reflects Lovecraft’s philosophical position. Indeed, the limits of Dagon as idol-smasher are seen explicitly in the way Lovecraft’s own rhetoric against idolatry reinscribes an appalling racial rhetoric. Dagon remains a projection of Lovecraft’s own philosophical position rather than Wholly Other. Instead, the radical freedom of God ought to critique Lovecraft’s antimythology. For if God is free from human religious limits, God will also not be limited by nihilistic materialism or racial bigotry. To encounter a truly radical Other, Lovecraft must be willing to let even his philosophical perspective come under the judgment. All idols will be smashed before

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the freedom of God. This indeed might generate some terror (or perhaps mysterium tremendum) but theologically it will be a terror grounded in what is Wholly Other, the God who will not be limited by human projects of any kind. Christian theologians can both appreciate and critique Lovecraft’s use of Dagon. They can utter a yes to his critique of idolatry but a no to his expression of what is truly other. Or perhaps better, Lovecraft’s Dagon can help us better grasp the significance of Dagon’s collapse before the one God of the Bible.

NOTES 1. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 832. 2. On the category of “anti-mythology” to describe Lovecraft’s work, see Mariconda, 188–98. 3. See discussion of this theme in Beale, 15–311. 4. Cf. Sparks, 88–92. 5. Birch et al., 227. 6. Holter, 142–47. 7. Birch et al., 228. 8. On Lovecraft’s atheism, see Joshi, A Dreamer and a Visionary, 130–33. 9. Lovecraft, “Literary Composition,” 120. 10. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 832. 11. Lovecraft, “Dagon,” 26. 12. Murray, 66. For two other possible traces of the Bible in Lovecraft’s stories, consider Price, 12–13. 13. Joshi, A Dreamer and a Visionary, 18. 14. Lovecraft, “Dagon,” 25–26. 15. On Lovecraft’s familiarity with the book, see Joshi, A Dreamer and a Visionary, 131–32. For references to the Philistine Dagon in Fiske’s work, see John Fiske, 19, 24. 16. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” 1078. 17. Ibid. Gorman’s novel was written in 1927 and could not have inspired Lovecraft’s “Dagon” which was written in 1917. However, The Shadow over Innsmouth was written in late 1931 so it could have been reinvigorated by Gorman’s novel. See Murray, 66–67. On the date of stories, see Joshi, A Subtler Magik, 7–12. 18. For a more robust discussion of Lovecraft’s relation to Puritanism and the figure of Cotton Mather, see Reiter’s contribution in this book, 61–78. 19. Mather, 50. 20. References to Mather and his writings can be found in Lovecraft, “The Picture in the House,” 126; “The Unnamable,” 258; “Pickman’s Model,” 383–84; “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” 515; “Dreams in the Witch House,” 859. On owning a first edition of Mather, see Joshi, Introduction to “The Unnamable,” 256.

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21. See Murray, 67–70. Thomas Morton is also prominent in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The May-Pole of Merry Mount.” Lovecraft was familiar with this story because of his review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales. See Joshi, Subtler Magik, 53. 22. Lovecraft, “Dagon,” 25. 23. Ibid., 26. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 27. 26. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 809. 27. Ibid., 810. 28. Ibid., 813–14. 29. For Zadok Allen’s narrative, see Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 827–37. 30. Ibid., 831, Rather ironically, most scholars seen in this story a kind of allegory of Lovecraft’s own racial prejudices. 31. Ibid., 847. 32. Ibid., 853. 33. The question is foreshadowed through the work by the discussion of the protagonist’s eyes that resemble Captain Obed Marsh. See Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 828, 855. 34. Ibid., 858. 35. Joshi, A Dreamer and a Visionary, 305–306. For a critique of Lovecraft’s racism, consider the inventive retelling of Ruff, Lovecraft Country. For a related discussion of Innsmouth and the racial other, see Neal Foster’s contribution to this work. 36. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 814, 819. 37. Reynolds, 100. 38. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 828. 39. Reynolds, 108. 40. Joshi, A Subtler Magik, 132. 41. Lovecraft, “Dagon,” 26. 42. On the influence of Nietzsche, see Joshi, A Dreamer and a Visionary, 130–31. To read a similar use of the hammer analogy in conversation with Heidegger, Dawkins, and Lovecraft, see the contribution of Ryan Duns in this work. 43. Feuerbach, 13–14. 44. Barth, “An Introductory Essay,” xxix. See also Barth, Protestant Thought, 355–61.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barth, Karl. “An Introductory Essay.” In The Essence of Christianity, edited by Ludwig Feuerbach, translated by George Eliot, x–xxxii. New York: Harper & Row, 1957. Barth, Karl. Protestant Thought: From Rousseau to Ritschl, translated by Brian Cozens. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959.

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Beale, G. K. We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008. Birch, Bruce C., Walter Brueggeman, Terence E. Fretheim, and David L. Peterson. A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005. Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity, translated by George Eliot. New York: Harper & Row, 1957. Fiske, John. Myth and Mythmakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology, 8th ed. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1886. Holter, Knut. “Was Philistine Dagon a Fish-God?” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 1 (1989): 142–7. Joshi, S. T. A Dreamer and a Visionary: H.P. Lovecraft in His Time. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001. Joshi, S. T. A Sublter Magik: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft, 3rd ed. Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 1996. Joshi, S. T. “Introduction to ‘The Unnamable.’” In The Complete Fiction, 256. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2008. Lovecraft, H. P. “Dagon.” In The Complete Fiction, 23–27. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2008. Lovecraft, H. P. “Literary Composition.” In United Amateur, January 1930, reprinted in Writings in the United Amateur, 1915–1922. http://www​.gutenberg​.org​/files​ /30637​/30637​-h​/30637​-h​.htm​#Page​_119. Lovecraft, H. P. “Pickman’s Model.” In The Complete Fiction, 380–90. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2008. Lovecraft, H. P. Shadow over Innsmouth. In The Complete Fiction, 807–58. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2008. Lovecraft, H. P. “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” In The Complete Fiction, 1041–98. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2008. Lovecraft, H. P. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. In The Complete Fiction, 490– 593. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2008. Lovecraft, H. P. “The Dreams in the Witch House.” In The Complete Fiction, 859–88. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2008. Lovecraft, H. P. “The Picture in the House.” In The Complete Fiction, 124–30. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2008. Lovecraft, H. P. “The Unnamable.” In The Complete Fiction, 256–61. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2008. Mariconda, Steven J. “Lovecraft’s Cosmic Imagery.” In An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by David E. Schutz and S. T. Joshi, 188–98. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 1991. Matther, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana, Volume 2. Hartford: Silas Andrus & Son, 1853. Murray, Will. “Dagon in Puritan Massachusetts.” Lovecraft Studies 11 (Fall 1985): 66–70. Price, Robert M. “Two Biblical Curiosities in Lovecraft.” Lovecraft Studies 16 (Spring 1988): 12–13.

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Reynolds, Brandon. “Lovecraft’s Avatars: Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Dagon, and Lovecraftian Utopia.” Lovecraft Annual 3 (2009): 98–108. Ruff, Matthew. Lovecraft Country. New York: HarperCollins, 2016. Sparks, K. L. “Ark of the Covenant.” In Dictionary of the Old Testament: Historical Books, edited by Bill T. Arnold and H. G. M. Williamson, 88–92. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2005.

Chapter 3

Concerning the Hidden God Who Surpasses all Understanding Lovecraftian Meditations on Christian Theodicy David K. Goodin

The message and promise of Christianity is that there is but one God and that this God is overflowing in philanthropic love for humankind. It is encapsulated in the often repeated words of the Gospel of John that, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (3:16, NKJV). True, Christians also know that this is a God of wrath, as the Hebrew Bible makes especially clear. But the New Testament testifies that this harsher aspect of God is only expressed, at least now, in executing justice against the wicked, for “God is love” through and through (1 John 4:7). This is, put simply, the “good news” of the gospels. And yet there is an older tradition where the identity and motivations of God are much more terrifying. The book of Job reveals a God who is unsettlingly misanthropic—not only in His apparent unconcern for the suffering of human beings, but also in authorizing the afflictions of Job in the first place; this supposedly loving God gave another supernatural figure known as the “adversary” (Satan) permission to persecute Job as he pleased. The book of Job also reveals that this God openly holds converse with monsters of the sea and land, Leviathan and Behemoth, respectively—terrifying creatures who are shown in the narrative as underscoring human triviality in the cosmological schema (Job 40 and 41). This God likewise takes the form of a great, fearsome whirlwind of smoke and flame (Job 38:1, cf. Exodus 19:18). The unmistakable message is that the happiness of humanity is an afterthought for God, if at all, and more to the point for the Joban author(s), that we must 45

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sacrifice all hubris and pride before the incomprehensible intelligence and unquestionable authority of this all-powerful Being. And so, we are confronted with an unsettling discordance with the depictions of God in the Judeo-Christian scriptures. It leaves the reader with a disquieting unease about whether God truly has our best interests in mind, and whether human beings are but a minor concern in the destiny of angels, devils, monsters, and nonhuman life throughout Creation. Never stated, but it is always a lurking fear (if I may borrow a Lovecraftian reference for a moment) within Christian devotional life. The words of Mark 9:24, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (NKJV), apply here too. All Christians want to believe that God is Love. But living in this Joban world of senseless pain and omnipresent evils of every kind, from ordinary everyday pettiness to the wanton cruelty perpetuated by those made in God’s image, constantly tempts us to suspect otherwise. These are the same fears and unease that H. P. Lovecraft brought to the fore, giving new names and images to what is disturbingly familiar, crafting a vocabulary to what otherwise would have to go unsaid and unimagined. It is here, in the fantastic Mythos he created, impious thoughts are finally allowed to be entertained in their Lovecraftian facsimilia. Even so, it is the Judeo-Christian scriptures that are the true splinters festering in the psyche of the reader, becoming irresolvable existential aporia that drive our fascination toward forbidden, blasphemous truths. Yet, is this actually the case? Exploring these dramatic tensions is one aim for this chapter. The approach will be to document the correspondences of Lovecraft’s misanthropic cosmos with the Judeo-Christian scriptures, taking as its focus the aforementioned book of Job. I then approach the subject of theodicy and Lovecraft’s challenges to it. That Lovecraft relied on biblical themes in the creation of his Mythos is explicit in an early work, “Dagon,” which takes its name from a Philistine god mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (1 Chronicles 10:8–10, Joshua 15:41, and elsewhere). But biblical themes will be shown to be present in many of his later works as well. In all this, Lovecraft is challenging the Christian belief in the rational governance of the cosmos by a benevolent God. What is more, I argue his readership only grew because his books resonated deeply with these troubling questions on the problem of evil.

THE DYING ZEITGEIST The works of Lovecraft during his own life catered only to a highly specialized clientele in horror fiction in the tradition of such forerunners as Robert W. Chambers, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe. Tragically, Lovecraft died

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nearly destitute and in relative obscurity. But his legacy was kept alive by a dedicated few, particularly August Derleth who founded Arkham House Publishers. He collected and presented his works in a series of books. Yet all exhibited limited sales—that is, until another world war awoke a newly receptive readership from its self-assured slumber. The unsold backlog of the first four published volumes of his collected works “gained momentum in sales by the end of 1943 and [. . .] would be sold out by 1944.”1 The ghastly brutality of this new war prepared the way for the ascendency of Lovecraft in the public imagination, a trajectory that has only increased in the subsequent decades, and in the unending wars and technological terrors that followed. War shaped the literary career of the young author, his prophetic warnings only later resonating by a shocked populace finally ready to listen. It all began with the so-called Hundred-Year Peace, inaugurated with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, that came to a shockingly horrific and bloody end with the outbreak of a world war. Science, the supposed sword of humankind’s reclaimed dominion over the earth, and the hopes of a new Edenic age of prosperity in the idyllic imagination of Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), instead became an indiscriminate scythe of slaughter ravaging Europe with mechanized ease. But even then, the tenuous hope was that this time it would be the end to all wars. It was into this troubled world that Lovecraft introduced his Mythos of eldritch terrors, his words being heard by those few who were ready to recognize the cruel lies of modernity. The disturbing message he heralded was that the universe was not only misanthropic, but also overtly hostile toward us—a most blasphemous truth, to be sure. But it could no longer be refuted with the outbreak of yet another world war, this one even more terrible than one fought at the dawn of the century. Horror and brutality were not the exceptions; it was becoming the ascendant ethos for an aberrant species that had lost all claims to humanity. What Lovecraft had written of in fictive extravagance began to be recognized as being more real and more true than the lies the “wisest” species, Homo sapiens, had been telling about its spiritual destiny. The holocaust left no questions with respect to this charade. Degeneracy, more so than a biological or evolutionary possibility, became a spiritual reality—and what is more, an even greater fear had to be confessed. It was the realization that the cosmos was not benevolent at all, and the God(s) who ruled it may not care about these upstart hominids pretending to be enlightened and civilized.

THE JOBAN HORROR What helped situate this recognition was that Lovecraft was not the first to describe such a hostile cosmos. The aforementioned book of Job also tells

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of inhumanity, eldritch beings of malice, and ancient monsters that roamed the earth long before the advent of our species. It is, in fact, one of the few books of the Hebrew Bible that speaks to the events prior to Eden, when a fearful war raged in heaven itself. We are not told precisely what happened. What we have instead are obscure scriptural inferences. In the books of Isaiah and Ezekiel, we learn of a supernatural being known as Lucifer, a cherubic angel who was cast out of heaven for daring to think that he could rule in God’s place, and who now resentfully wages war on humankind instead (Isaiah 14: 12–21 and Ezekiel 28: 14–15). In the book of Job, he is renamed the “adversary” Satan (Heb. ha-satan, Gk. tou diabolou). Yet this is not the only evil upon the earth. After Eden, evil spread throughout the world by Satan’s willing accomplices, first by Cain who slew his brother, and then all who have since followed after his murderous example, generation after generation, each heeding his or her own disordered desires, with only a few righteous exceptions like Abraham, Job, and Moses in that history before Christ. And yet, the book of Job tells us other preternatural evils exist too. Whereas the personification of evil in the Bible could possibly be dismissed as poetic idiom at times—for example, in Genesis 4:7 where sin is described as crouching by the door, desiring to rule over the unwary—the book of Job shows these beings to be very real indeed. We find Destruction, he apouleia (ruin, loss, waste, perdition), and Death, thanatos, as sentient entities in Job 28:22. Most curiously, they are shown as corrupted or degenerated from a former exalted state, such that they can only half-remember what is now only known to God. Elsewhere, we also learn of beings known as the “Watchers” who seduce impressionable women and teach them witchcraft.2 They are described as some kind of otherworldly beings different and more powerful than the life of the world, but far inferior to the might and majesty of God in the heavenly kingdom. They are said to inhabit a metaphysical realm of “powers and principalities” (Ephesians 6:12) that somehow interacts with our world. Collectively, they are the fallen who, together with Lucifer, wage war against those in God’s image, humankind. But even here it must be recalled that most evil takes the form of suggestion and corruption. Put simply, there is a pedagogy behind the actions of Satan; people must learn to love what they should not desire. This is exactly what Satan attempted to do in the book of Job. He wanted to afflict Job with all kinds of pain and suffering in order to entice him to curse God for allowing it to happen. This last detail is, in actuality, more disturbing than the actions of Satan, who little more than an intermediary in God’s plan. This is a God who wanted to see how Job would respond to the satanic afflictions, the murder of his loved ones, and the unbearable suffering of disease. To all worldly sensibilities, it is hard to see how this God had the best interests of Job in

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mind. It is a God content to use this innocent man as some kind of pawn in a cosmological contest with the fallen angels. Job’s name (‘Iyyob), while uncertain in meaning, appears to translate as “The Persecuted One,” and that is exactly what he becomes in a game he cannot possibly win. Instead, he only suffers, powerless to do anything to fight back, mitigate his losses, or even—at least at first—plead his case before God. So disturbing are the implications of the story that a revisionist account was later made. It is a curious piece of intertestamental literature known as the Testament of Job, written sometime between the first century BC and the first century AD. It elaborates the biblical story of Job, with the added detail that Job now heroically defeats Satan through the virtues of patience and acceptance. But there is no indication of this in the canonical scripture that shows him as nothing more than a passive victim. Job is certainly not aware he is being called upon to battle against the devil without aid or assistance. Yet Job is finally given an audience before God, who he complained against for allowing the innocent to suffer—but he never outright cursed God, which was the aim of Satan’s attacks. While this gave God victory over Satan, God still rages against Job for daring to question his ineffable justice. The climax of the poem has Job suffering under a thunderous harangue from a theophany manifested as a terrifying tornado, a blistering chastisement from a God seemingly unsympathetic to his losses and pain. The responses from God also take the unexpected form of lessons in humility taken from the natural world. Gordis describes the animals within the God speeches as having “their own independent reason for being, known only to their Creator.”3 Davis concurs, and argues that all the animals discussed are “utterly useless” to people and untamable, excepting only the warhorse which, Davis noted, is desirable because its wild nature prevents complete domestication.4 She then goes further and concludes that the dominion originally bequeathed to Adam has been reassigned to a creature known as the Leviathan, who is named “king over all the children of pride” (Davis 216; Job 42:34 NKJV). This preternatural terror sneers disdainfully at paltry human strength, and yet is still God’s servant, for “everything under heaven is Mine” (Job 41:11). Humankind, it seems, lost everything after Eden.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL TERRORS The God who takes the form of a tornado and associates with sea monsters all speaks to a philosophical phenomenon known as the sublime. The innocuous name conceals its true reality, for it is an overwhelming surge of primal intuitions that comes before the intellect has a chance to put the experience into words. Sometimes it’s pleasant, such as a breathtaking vista of natural

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beauty. Other times it is the terror of beholding your own approaching death before an incomprehensible threat—like Job cowering before God as the tornadic whirlwind. Much of what Lovecraft describes in this works is of this latter category, and so I should take a few moments to discuss this peculiar phenomenon in detail. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) once declared that “intuitions [from the senses] without [accompanying rational] concepts are blind.”5 It is a curious statement and quite noteworthy. What he is saying is that much more comes to the rational mind than the intellect can fully comprehend. Stated another way, Kant is conceding that people are actually blind to the full experience of the natural world because of the brain’s limited perceptual capacities. But those sensory intuitions still exist. They just do not correspond to an isolatable and discrete rational concept fully available to the analytical mind—and are thus, technically speaking, “The Unnamable” (to use a Lovecraftian example). Put simply, it is the vast and terrible impression that comes over a person when confronted by the incomprehensible, when rational consciousness is obliterated before an inhuman and unfathomable power. Kant refers to this as the dynamical sublime. A similar feeling of raw selfless perception can also arise when beholding the enormity of a phenomenon, such as a huge vaulted cathedral—or, as we may say, using again a Lovecraftian example, an ancient cyclopean temple and the colossal Cthulhu ravening with delight as it pursues hapless sailors. This is the mathematical sublime. The sense of self momentarily evanesces in sheer wonderment and awe in such settings; in effect, the intellect steps aside (as it were) and the sensory experiences are intuited pre-rationally. Only later do we come up with words and descriptions that attempt, however inadequately, to convey to others what we experienced. And so, while Kant documented the existence of this super-sensuous substratum of experience that is beyond all measure of human senses, Lovecraft brought these terrors into stark relief in the minds of his readers. It is not fanciful, for the epistemological impossibilities of Lovecraft’s narratives, such as in “The Colour Out of Space,”6 do indeed exist at the periphery of the possible. Yet there is yet one more epistemological terror that must be addressed before we can move on.

THE APOPHATIC SILENCE Lovecraft ends his horror serial, “Herbert West—Reanimator,” with a most curious sentence. “But I might not be mad if those accursed tomb-legions had not been so silent.” It is a rather unexpected remark, since it would seem that the opposite would be true. Silence would testify to all of it being a hallucination, and as such, a symptom of insanity. But the narrator makes the

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contradictory claim: the silence made the apparitions of the undead more real to him. The apparent tensions are resolved when we consider how Lovecraft describes silence in his Mythos. As it is elsewhere, silence is simply not a surrogate for the unknown, the forbidden, or for even death itself. Rather, we see something else being revealed to the reader. In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” Lovecraft (building on an initial draft written by E. Hoffmann Price) makes silence the proxy for otherworldly existence. “A sudden shutting-off of the waves left Carter in a chilling and awesome silence full of the spirit of desolation. On every hand pressed the illimitable vastness of the void, yet the seeker knew that the BEING was still there.” That ENTITY is suggested to be none other than Yog-Sothoth, an indescribable primal god, the progenitor of both Cthulhu and Hastur the Unspeakable. For Lovecraft, this silence suggested an unfathomable and most terrible presence of the Beyond-One. It is an apophatic theme that appears throughout his works, even his earliest: “Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity” (“Dagon”). This silence serves as a stark denial of human intelligibility, testifying to the ineffable that exist beyond the empirical. What is most curious is that there is a theology of silence and presence in the Orthodox East, where such encounters with the ineffable divine are likewise seen as portentous and potentially dangerous. This theology first appears in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch (d.c.107 AD), a key figure of the subapostolic church linking the New Testament with the first systematic theologian of Christianity, Irenaeus of Lyon (130–202 AD).7 Ignatius wrote of this special silence in his Epistle to the Ephesians: “Moreover, insofar as when one sees (blepei) the Bishop in silence (sigounta), be greatly afraid (phobeisthou) of him” (6:1). The reason, Ignatius explains, is that the bishop is the only one who is allowed to commune with the very mind (gnome) of God (3). The silence, thus, signifies those times when the bishop is in communion with the divine, and mystically experiencing that inexpressible presence—which explains the juxtaposition of the oppositional terms “seeing” and “silence” by Ignatius: silence testifies to the absolute incomprehensibility and unfathomable presence of God. This theology would become the foundation for the hesychast tradition in Orthodoxy, where monks pursue visions of God through meditative stillness (hesuchia) and the silent prayer of the heart. The aim was apophatic revelation—meaning, an experience of divinity without direct knowledge being imparted to the seeker. But, why, we may ask, are we to be afraid of such pursuits according to Ignatius? The answer comes from the context of his times. Ignatius instructed the faithful to flee from forbidden “gnostic” knowledge that was then being preached by the enemies of the church; he warned that

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only the bishop may commune with God this way, and only in silence—thus it is not something that would impart “special revelation” outside of the Holy Scriptures, which was exactly what the Gnostics claimed to have discovered. Yet in the Lovecraftian Mythos we find the protagonist Randolph Carter driven to know this forbidden knowledge for himself, despite the threatening silence, and with tragic ends for him personally. If, as I suggest, the story of Randolph Carter, in particular, mirrors that Orthodox fear of these ancient heretics, what, we may now ask, was the exact nature of the forbidden knowledge that the Gnostics sought? One who would investigate this question was Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), whose work, The Gospel of the Alien God (1924), details the theology preached by an erstwhile bishop of the early church, Marcion of Sinope (85–160 AD), who later embraced the path of forbidden gnostic revelation. The heresy of Marcion was to describe this visible world of flesh and material substance as the creation of Satan, who he called the Demiurge. The true God, he claimed, was a stranger to this fallen, evil world—for true God, he claimed, manifests spiritually only. Even so, he admitted, the two worlds, of matter and spirit, coexist together; it is a place where humanity must choose its path toward either salvation or damnation. Harnack describes Marcion’s theodicy this way: Man stands in this world; coming into being out of fleshly lust and of unutterably base copulation, burdened with a body and chained to it, he is dragged down by it into the natural drives, and the great mass of humanity conduct themselves in all sorts of shameful behavior and vice, living in animal self-centeredness, wickedly, shamelessly, and as “heathen.” The God who created them does not will them to be as they are. He wants them to be “righteous”; and he planted in them a sense of what is righteous and good and seeks to lead them to this.8

Gnostic theodicy, then, as expressed in Marcion, has our present world wholly satanic and corrupted. It is a world that the righteous must flee from through spiritual life. As such, the evils of present life, with all its suffering and injustice, served for Marcion as irrefutable confirmation that the world was indeed given over to demonic forces. It is this gnostic speculation about hidden forces of evil that control our lives that takes the fore in Lovecraft’s Mythos. The story of how this came to be the de facto Christian theodicy is, in its own right, very revealing. CHRISTIAN THEODICY Christianity had to contend with pantheons of older gods in each new land that it sought to convert. In the Latin West, Christianity had to establish

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itself in relation to pagan Roman beliefs in the Fates and Fortune, who were personified as the gods Parcae and Fortuna (respectively). It created an interesting tension, for on one hand, the poet Ovid had represented Jupiter and the other pagan gods as ruled by Fate. Virgil, however, held that civilization arose by heroic human will triumphing through divine favor; now, Roman “civic character” was one who exercises his duties to the gods, who in turn rewarded worthy and pious individuals with “felicity” (happiness and fortune). The paragon of this was Caesar Augustus who founded the Roman commonwealth and inaugurated the Pax Romana, a 200-year long reign of peace and prosperity throughout the empire. Fortuna did indeed seem to favor the bold, as the Roman proverb held. All of this became the historical and cultural contexts for the Roman citizens to reflect upon after the sacking of the “eternal city” of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 AD. The tragic event cast doubt about whether the new State religion of Christianity was truly in accord with the divine will, and if this tragedy was instead retribution by the Roman gods for apostasy from paganism. These questions defined the crisis faced by the Western Church. In response, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) felt he had to reject explicitly and absolutely both the impression that the Christian God could be controlled by the pagan Parcae, as well as the idea of “works righteousness” in his City of God, lest the Visigoth king Alaric I be seen by the people to have triumphed through divine favor. Instead, he would insist that the Christian God is the Master of both fate and fortune: Therefore that God, the author and giver of felicity [that is, fortune and what is seen as luck], because He alone is the true God, Himself gives earthly kingdoms both to good and bad [people]. Neither does He do this rashly, and, as it were, fortuitously—because He is God not fortune—but according to the order of things and times, which is hidden from us, but thoroughly known to Himself.9

It is a theodicy as defined by its reaction to Ovid and Virgil as it was to the Holy Scriptures, with the larger questions of providence being hidden behind a convenient mystery. While such a theodicy succeeded for many centuries in convincing the people about the supremacy of the Christian God, the flaws of its strained logic slowly began to be revealed and rejected. This is because, in this paradigm, God becomes the sole puppet-master of history, and this necessarily makes Him an accomplice and coconspirator in perpetuating evil—and, moreover, one who hides behind poor scapegoats who never had a choice in the matter. This flaw is showcased by John Milton (1608–1674) in Paradise Lost, where he presents Satan as a tragic and sympathetic figure. God’s control of fate becomes the dramatic tension and appeal of the epic poem, being

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revealed when the rebellious angels were cast out of heaven. Now in hell, the poem has the demonic Belial warning his fallen comrades that God’s might cannot be resisted (Book 2, lines 188–193): My voice disswades [sic];10 for what can force or guile With him, or who deceive his [another’s] mind, whose eye Views all things at one view? he from heav’ns highth All these our motions vain, sees and derides; Not more Almighty to resist our might Then wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles.

Another demon, Beelzebub, counters by asserting that the providence of God, if it cannot be defeated, can, at least, be corrupted (Book 2, lines 378–385): Thus BEELZEBUB Pleaded his devilish Counsel, first devis’d By SATAN, and in part propos’d: for whence, But from the Author of all ill could Spring So deep a malice, to confound the race Of mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell To mingle and involve, done all to spite The great Creatour?

The demonic host then rose and counterattacked, seeking to “confound” God’s plans by corrupting humankind, turning that earthly paradise into another hell. But Milton himself interjects here with an aside for the reader, writing that all their spite and evil plans will only serve to augment the Glory of God when all is said and done (lines 185–186). Satan, Beelzebub, Belial, and all the rest of the fallen angels are thus nothing more than hapless pawns in a cosmic game they can never win. They are victims, through and through, since everything, and every contingency, has been fully accounted for in God’s deterministic control of heaven, earth, and even hell itself. Many today have sympathy for the devil for these same reasons, and it is not Milton’s fault for glamourizing what it all too obvious in this misbegotten Augustinian paradigm. Lovecraft, however, takes this one step further, presenting personified evil, not as sympathetic, but as an insurgent power overthrowing this Augustinian charade of a mysterious divine plan that justifies why this supposedly loving God permits pain and suffering in the first place. THE LOVECRAFTIAN CHALLENGE TO THEODICY It is not a coincidence that the Second World War brought in its wake the “Death of God” movement of the 1960s, representing a radical rejection of

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traditional theology and the apparent absence of God in worldly affairs.11 But that movement was by no means sui generis; its antecedents were apparent after the First World War as well. Lovecraft was one of those who gave those incipient fears voice in his fantastic narratives of eldritch terrors. Yet he would only rise to prominence during the course of next world war, and most especially in its aftermath. Kant once dreamed of an enlightened age of perpetual peace, and the Hundred-Year Peace after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 appeared to confirm its possibility. But the twentieth century was another story, and now seems we live in an age of endless war. For his readers, Lovecraft came to be recognized as no longer being just an author of horror fiction, but one who revealed the lies of both modernity and theodicy. It is said that the failure of theology to provide an answer to the problem of evil is the greatest weapon of the atheist against the existence of God—or rather, it has to be said, against the existence of a good God concerned at all about human well-being.12 Lovecraft channels these disquieting thoughts about the providence of the cosmos, revealing a world where the Christian God is marginalized, dismissed, and even ridiculed. Case in point comes in the novella, The Shadow over Innsmouth. The character Zadok Allen, “the half-crazed, liquorish nonagenarian,” recounts to the protagonist Robert Olmstead the secret history of the town. He tells of a Captain Obed Marsh who, back in the 1840s, founded a cult known as the Esoteric Order of Dagon. The reason, as explained by old Zadok, is that Obed began to see Christians as “stupid” for devoting themselves to a meek and pitiful God, that the people needed “better gods” who would actually answer prayers and bring prosperity. Fascinatingly, the fictional gods of the Lovecraftian Mythos, as told by old Zadok, are said to coexist alongside demonic beings of the JudeoChristian scriptures, including Belial and Beelzebub. Such a juxtaposition could only arise if Lovecraft did indeed begin to question the efficacy of Christianity with the outbreak of the First World War.13 Into this apparently godless void, Lovecraft sent his pantheon of misanthropic, eldritch horrors, with his readership growing over the decades. In this, he is echoing the ancient Gnostics who were also troubled over this world of suffering and pain. Yet Lovecraft preached no otherworldly escape, as they did. Instead, he presented forbidden gnostic knowledge as a doorway to even more terrors and dire consequences—as Randolph Carter found out, only much too late.

CLOSING THOUGHTS The path to forbidden knowledge to explain the secrets of divine providence has been closed off, first by Ignatius and subsequent church tradition, and

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later by Lovecraft who has all such illicitly obtained lore locked away in that damnable tome, The Necronomicon. We will get no answers, at least none that will bring anyone who searches therein any peace or consolation. Likewise, the assurances that there is a mysterious master plan of a benevolent God that justifies the suffering of the innocent became decidedly unconvincing with the outbreak of two world wars in the twentieth century. This explains why and how an author who died in near obscurity has since arisen to cyclopean heights of renown. Lovecraft named the unnamable within ourselves, giving voice to the blasphemous fears that have been lurking, uneasily, beneath our self-assured faith. Yet he does not offer us a new theodicy, fully rejecting all attempts to assuage these ancient fears regarding the evils that plague our lives. Instead, he accentuates them, brings them to the fore, and gives them new names. The Lovecraftian Mythos thereby became a fictive surrogate for the horrors that his readers now feel about the governance of the world. In this, he became a true prophet of the postmodern, and simultaneously an iconoclast for the false idols of theodicy that are still adored by a diminishing few within the Christian narrative. It now remains to be seen whether Christianity can articulate a true theodicy capable of speaking to these Lovecraftian fears.14 NOTES 1. “About Us,” Arkham House Publishers, accessed December 30, 2020. http:// www​.arkhamhouse​.com​/mm5​/merchant​.mvc​?Screen​=ABUS. 2. There is a noncanonical text known as the book of Enoch that is only accepted by the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches. Yet the canonical Epistle of Jude includes a very brief midrash of its eschatology (v.14–15). The book of Enoch is remarkable for its description of certain fallen angels known as the Watchers, who defiled themselves through sexual relations with earthly women and taught them sorcery (1 Enoch 7:1). The presentation of evil in this text takes the form of impurity, witchcraft, and is personified in abominable offspring of these sexual unions, the Nephilim, who seek the destruction of humankind (1 Enoch 15). 3. Robert Gordis, “Job and Ecology (and the Significance of Job 40:15),” Hebrew Annual Review 9 (1985): 189–202, 195. 4. Ellen Davis, “Job and Jacob: The Integrity of Faith,” in Reading between the Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Danna Nolan Fewell (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 215. 5. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 93; CPR B75/A51. 6. There are well-documented phenomena known as impossible colors and chimerical colors that are a product, not of direct sensory experience as such, but fantastical brain constructs emerging from peculiar or antagonistic stimuli; the result is the perception of nonexistent colors such as bluish-yellow or reddish-green, or

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more bizarre possibilities as stygian colors, self-luminous colors that emit no actual luminesce, and hyperbolic colors. For further discussion, see Hewitt D. Crane and Thomas P. Piantanida, “On Seeing Reddish Green and Yellowish Blue,” Science 221, no. 4615 (1983): 1078–80); Vincent A. Billock et al., “Perception of forbidden colors in retinally stabilized equiluminant images: an indication of softwired cortical color opponency?” Journal of the Optical Society of America 18, no. 10 (2001): 2398–403; and Paul Churchland “Chimerical Colors: Some Phenomenological Predictions from Cognitive Neuroscience.” Philosophical Psychology 18, no. 5 (2005): 527–60. Lovecraft was certainly ahead of his time in describing such phenomena. 7. Ignatius writes of an encounter with Onesimus, who was a freed slave mentioned in correspondence between the Apostle Paul and Philemon in the New Testament. Onesimus, whose name means “useful” (a slave name), would later become the bishop of Ephesus where he met Ignatius. Ignatius was also contemporary with Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, who taught a young Irenaeus before he, in due time, became a bishop. 8. Adolf Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 139–40. 9. Augustine, City of God, trans. Marcus Dods, 4.33. 10. This poem from the seventeenth century exhibits archaic spellings no longer in use today. I will refrain from pointing out every instance of divergence. I have only included this one note to alert the reader. 11. See, for example, Thomas J.J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism by Thomas J.J. Altizer (London: Collins, 1965). 12. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006), 108. 13. The psychology of Lovecraft is hard to fathom with certainly. Still, aside from a teenage work penned in 1908 (“The Alchemist”), it can be asserted that his first true works, “Dagon” and “The Tomb” (1917), written when the First World War had been raging Europe for three hideous bloody years, influenced the author greatly. The inhuman barbarity of this war, including the murder of helpless civilians in lifeboats, even becomes the backdrop for his wartime story, “The Temple.” And so, while the subject of earlier works like “The Tomb” and “The Alchemist” is merely the uncanny in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe, “Dagon” and later works reveal that the Lovecraftian Mythos was indeed inspired by the war, at least in part. In this, the older conception of the Judeo-Christian God ordering the rational providence of the cosmos comes under attack, and in its place, a new pantheon of eldritch terrors comes to the fore to undermine traditional theodicy—constituting what Bernard Schweizer has termed “misotheism,” which is a literary device disguising narrative themes of what otherwise would be considered blasphemous for their implications (Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism [Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010]). 14. Articulating such a theodicy is not possible within the scope of this chapter, though I will direct readers to David Goodin, Confronting Evil: Theodicy and the Eastern Patristic Tradition (Montreal, Canada: Alexander Press, 2021) if they are inclined to read further. In brief, I examine the historical theodicy of the Eastern Patristic tradition, arguing that while people experience “evil” as Epicureans (i.e., fearing pain, loss, and discomfort, and desiring only for their alleviation, if not lives

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of pleasure), God instead values only virtue and moral uprightness as the “good” to be pursued by all. Thus, the problem of evil is, in actuality, a tension between worldly sensibilities and divine perspectives on the true destiny of humankind. The challenge for the theologian, therefore, is to bridge these two “worlds” and bring reconciliation and healing for loss and trauma through religion. There, in the Orthodox East, a theodicy does indeed exist that fully addresses and redresses the moral and natural evils that plague our lives.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Altizer, Thomas J. J. 1965. The Gospel of Christian Atheism. London: Collins. Arkam House Publishers. N. D. “About Us.” Accessed December 30, 2020. http:// www​.arkhamhouse​.com​/mm5​/merchant​.mvc​?Screen​=ABUS. Augustine. City of God. Translated by Marcus Dodds. Billock, Vincent A., Gerald A. Gleason, and Brian H. Tsou. 2001. “Perception of Forbidden Colors in Retinally Stabilized Equiluminant Images: An Indication of Softwired Cortical Color Opponency?” Journal of the Optical Society of America 18 (10): 2398–2403. Churchland, Paul. 2005. “Chimerical Colors: Some Phenomenological Predictions From Cognitive Neuroscience.” Philosophical Psychology 18 (5): 527–560. Crane, Hewitt D., and Thomas P. Piantanida. 1983. “On Seeing Reddish Green and Yellowish Blue.” Science 221 (4615): 1078–1080. Davis, Ellen F. 1992. “Job and Jacob: The Integrity of Faith.” In Reading Between the Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible, edited by Danna Nolan Fewell. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press. Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press. Goodin, David K. 2021. Confronting Evil: Theodicy and the Eastern Patristic Tradition. Montreal, Canada: Alexander Press. Gordis, Robert. 1985. “Job and Ecology (and the Significance of Job 40:15).” Hebrew Annual Review 9: 189–202. Harnack, Adolf. 2007. Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. Kant, Immanuel. 2007. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. 2016. The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. New York: Chartwell Books. Milton, John. 2001 [1667]. Paradise Lost. DjVu Editions E-books. Schweizer, Bernard. 2010. Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Part II

LOVECRAFT AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY

Chapter 4

“A Dark Poem” Lovecraft’s Puritan Aesthetics and the Vice of Curiosity Geoffrey Reiter

Initially, one would not expect H. P. Lovecraft to have much in common with Puritanism. Lovecraft’s cosmicist blend of mechanistic materialism presupposes a militantly atheist perspective on the universe, while Puritanism was an ardently Reformed Protestant faction of the Anglican Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one whose emphases included an insistence on the supreme sovereignty of God. And indeed, perhaps unsurprisingly, Lovecraft frequently did find himself ideologically at odds with Puritan principles. Yet in some surprising ways, Lovecraft’s personal writings and his corpus demonstrate a curious affinity for Puritanism, particularly its American variety. This affinity becomes somewhat less surprising when one examines Lovecraft’s life and intellectual philosophy in more depth. There are, indeed, many ways in which his worldview overlaps with that of his English forebears and their American counterparts. While many of these are themselves problematic and thus to be rejected, some of the intersections of Lovecraftian and Puritan thought are worth further investigation. Of particular note is their treatment of the foundations and implications of witchcraft, especially its bearing on questions of human curiosity and the licit (or illicit) boundaries of human knowledge. The Puritan witch-hunting project and Lovecraft’s aesthetic project share a key element: both endeavor to pursue dark true knowledge to a certain extent, but then to prohibit it beyond that point. Both erect a barrier against dark forces. In the case of the Puritans, those dark arts represent the contested knowledge. In Lovecraft, the contested knowledge is the nihilistic implications of his very cosmicism. In his fiction, those implications are symbolized by the pantheon of the Cthulhu Mythos, and since the characters who seek full knowledge of that pantheon are depicted frequently as magicians, 61

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sorcerers, or witches, Lovecraft the atheist paradoxically sides with Cotton Mather and Puritan-style witch-hunters. Christian readers of Lovecraft need not accept all of his (or the Puritans’) understandings of witchcraft or its implications to acknowledge the ways in which his narratives draw attention to an oft-neglected theological vice: illicit curiosity.

THE PURITAN IN HISTORY Puritanism is notoriously hard to define, even among specialists. Writing for the Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, Carl Trueman observes, “There is no real scholarly consensus on what exactly it is that constitutes the essence of Puritanism,” which, he suggests, “indicates its eclectic nature as a movement.”1 The very term Puritan was seldom if ever used by its adherents, as its origins were derogatory in nature, which likely adds to its amorphousness. Still, in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Mark Noll suggests that “Puritanism generally extended the thought of the English Reformation, with distinctive emphases on four convictions: (1) personal salvation was entirely from God, (2) the Bible provided the indispensable guide to life, (3) the church should reflect the express teaching of Scripture, and (4) society was one unified whole.”2 This fourth qualification is historically significant, since Puritans on the one hand saw themselves as a pure or set-apart people yet also sought a religious and civil transformation of surrounding society to whatever extent possible. This had transatlantic implications, first in the foundation of the New England colonies by those who left England for America, and later for those who remained to found English Protectorate and Commonwealth following the English Civil War. As a historical movement, its origins date to the mid-sixteenth century, roughly coincident with the birth of the Church of England. Its terminus in England can be dated either from the demise of the Commonwealth and Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 or the Toleration Act of 1689, while it may be said to end in America around either the close of the seventeenth century or the early decades of the eighteenth century. It is important to add, however, that these delimitations become even blurrier when examined in the context of H. P. Lovecraft. Though an aficionado of early American history, Lovecraft would be less impressed by the finer points of Puritan doctrine, and his invocation of eighteenth-century New England often shares theological emphases with the more overtly Puritan seventeenth century. While tracing certain aspects of Puritan thought will be relevant for understanding Lovecraft’s literary agenda, it must be viewed as merely a point of embarkation, beyond which readers will soon find themselves rather far afield. Thus, the term “Puritan” will be used even more

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loosely (chronologically and theologically) when applied here to Lovecraft’s writings. Beyond a generic usage suggesting killjoys or prudes, American Puritanism has been identified for centuries with one signature event: the Salem witchcraft trials. This is in many senses unfortunate. Occurring as they did in 1692, these trials occurred at the tail end of a movement over a century old, and they were merely one part of a broader cultural wave that had been sweeping across Europe ever since the Protestant Reformation. Keith Thomas notes the paradox that witchcraft trials became increasingly prevalent even as belief in magic waned following the medieval period. Thomas maintains that Reformation-era church officials began clamping down on support for church rituals, especially those that could be associated with superstition or magic. Yet the overall populace retained its fear of dark occult supernatural forces. As a result, fear of witchcraft increased significantly, as the church increasingly abdicated its role in protecting its adherents from baneful spiritual practices. As he notes, “after the Reformation, the barrier was withdrawn. Ecclesiastical magic crumbled, and society was forced to take legal action against a peril which for the first time threatened to get dangerously out of hand.”3 This was a wide-ranging phenomenon of the era: Thomas observes of English Puritans that “a simple equation of strong Protestantism with a strong desire for witch prosecution will not work,” and “there is no reason to think that the prosecution of witches owed much to Puritan zeal.”4 And what was true in England was likely true in New England as well. American Puritans were no less heavily invested in removing the ceremonial and superstitious trappings of ecclesiastical authority, while their insistence on biblical precedent ensured their belief in the existence of witches. If, however, Puritans were hardly unique in their civic prosecution of sorcery, their witchcraft trials cannot be regarded as aberrant or tangential aspects of their belief system either. Katherine Howe is likely correct that “[b]elief in witchcraft was not an anomalous throwback to late medieval thought by provincial colonists, nor was it an embarrassing blip on an otherwise steady march to an idealized nationhood. It was not a disease. It was not a superstition.”5 Howe reads the witchcraft trials in sociological and gendered terms—the (mostly female) accused witches were often cultural outsiders who could serve as scapegoats, permitting “the consolidation of power and the enforcement of religious and social norms” “[f]or upper echelons of society,” while providing ordinary townsfolk a means of rationalizing “quotidian unfairness and misfortune.”6 But while witchcraft trials certainly had this effect, and it was doubtless partially deliberate, even Howe does not necessarily deny that many or most citizens actually believed in the existence and malevolent power of witches.7

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And it is this belief that is preeminently of note here. When Lovecraft’s fiction interacts with New England witchcraft trials, he is not primarily interested in their sociological implications, nor their gender dynamics (Lovecraft’s sorcerous characters may be male or female). Rather, he is interested in early modern witchcraft as a pursuit of transgressive supernatural (or at least apparently supernatural) knowledge. And he is interested in what, if anything, might be an appropriate response to those who would seek and wield such knowledge. What is thus relevant to Lovecraft’s deployment of witchcraft motifs is to discern just how Puritans, theologically and historically, attempted to address these questions. The historical record of Puritan responses to witchcraft is, of course, quite well attested, most obviously for Salem but also for the various other individuals tried before and after Salem. The theological grounding for such responses is at once straightforward and complex. On the one hand, Puritans opposed witchcraft because, like countless generations of Christians before and after them, they believed the Bible condemned it. Howe claims that “the Bible is strangely quiet about witchcraft,”8 but this is only true assuming a sharply gendered distinction from magicians and sorcerers. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery notes the greater theological concerns in witchcraft: The witch is one type of practitioner of magic. Magic differs from religion in that magic is manipulative while religion is supplicative. Magic might involve an appeal to God, but in a deviant way—being selfish, not being dependent, not making a humble entreaty. On the other hand, the practitioner might be directly violating the first commandment in one of two ways: (1) by making an appeal to another god, acting on the assumption of pantheism or polytheism, or (2) by making a conscious appeal to Satan or his demons, which is treason—trafficking with the enemy. . . . In general, then, witchcraft represents a selfish lust for power, social malevolence, and deviance from biblical worship.9

For all these reasons, witches (or any other practitioners of condemned magical arts) are trafficking in forms of proscribed knowledge. Such proscription plays a major role in the analyses of witchcraft penned by arguably the most famous (or infamous) Puritan writer on the subject, Cotton Mather. In Wonders of the Invisible World (1693), Mather’s immediate follow-up to the Salem trials, he expounds significantly on his views about witchcraft and sorcery. This text now languishes under an ignominious reputation for Mather’s purported ambivalences toward the question of “spectral evidence” at the trial—that is, “legal testimony claiming that a witch in ghostly form is accosting and tormenting a victim.”10 The abuses permitted by the acceptance of such testimony indeed represented one of the most insidious miscarriages of justice in Salem. But

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more pertinent to Lovecraftian thematic concerns is Mather’s connection of witches’ illicit magic to curiosity—the temptation to seek out forbidden knowledge. For instance, Mather condemns individuals “that have used most wicked Sorceries to gratifie [sic] their unlawful Curiosities, or to prevent Inconveniences in Man and Beast; Sorceries, which I will not Name, lest I should by Naming, Teach them.”11 Here, Mather is concerned specifically with the question of knowledge that is intrinsically deleterious—sorcery—but also with the process by which that knowledge is first acquired—“unlawful Curiosities.” Indeed, he is so concerned that he insists he “will not Name” them. He returns to this theme later in the book, enjoining his readers that they “let not only all Witchcrafts be duly abominated with us, but also let us be duly watchful against all the Steps leading thereunto. There are lesser Sorceries which they say, are too frequent in our Land.”12 Those who pursue such arcane arts seek “to learn the things for which they have a forbidden, and an impious Curiosity. ’Tis in the Devils Name, that such things are done; and in Gods Name I do this day charge them, as vile Impieties.”13 While Mather launches numerous broadsides against witchcraft and sorcery themselves in Wonders of the Invisible World, passages like these demonstrate that he sees such actions as the culmination of seemingly more innocuous explorations, with “impious” or “unlawful” curiosity at their root. This naturally sounds unduly censorious to contemporary ears—perhaps exactly what might be expected from stereotypical “puritans.” But Mather’s condemnations must also be read in the context of American Puritan intellectualism. While the Puritans certainly placed immense emphasis on the Bible as the primary source of epistemology and on a “plain style” in sermons and other writings, they were historically quite learned across the liberal arts. As Francis Bremer has detailed, “Out of the blend of Puritan ideology and New World environment there emerged an intellectual life that, if sometimes provincial, was nonetheless deeply rooted and broadly based.”14 One need look no further than Harvard College’s original curriculum to recognize the broadbased academic rigor of America’s early colonists, who often hailed from well-to-do and well-educated families. This was certainly true of America’s first major published poet, Anne Bradstreet, a first-generation settler, who, though now best regarded for her homelier or more domestic verse, was at the time respected for lengthy poetic expositions of history and philosophy. And indeed, few American Puritans exemplify the habit of promiscuous learning better than Cotton Mather himself. In science and medicine, Mather was an early and prominent advocate of smallpox inoculation. In his writings, he profusely invokes literary, historical, and philosophical authors. The Wonders of the Invisible World hardly confines itself to biblical proof-texts but cites a dizzying array of sources.

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This may be even truer of his magnum opus, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702).15 Ostensibly a history of colonial New England, the Magnalia is in fact a popular yet scholarly and highly structured literary product. It is arranged thematically into seven books first printed in two volumes, a daunting mass of text; Bremer contends that “Mather’s erudition intrudes upon the reader’s consciousness and detracts from the author’s purpose.”16 The Magnalia certainly does show off Mather’s learning,17 a fact of which Mather himself was quite conscious,18 but it was also designed for popular fare, as eighteenth-century readership was hardly averse to florid prose or classical name-dropping.19 And while it is seldom read today, the Magnalia was both popular and influential, not only in its own day but for centuries to come.20 In other words, the Puritan reticence toward ritual occultic learning was specific and tactical, by no means part of a more wide-ranging disapprobation toward all extra-biblical learning, such as may be found in some conservative Christian circles today. And it is doubly significant that the Cotton Mather who warned against the dangers of such “curiosity” is the same Mather who would praise “salting” his text with knowledgeable allusions in the Magnalia. For Magnalia Christi Americana is not only an important book in American history generally, it is an important text for American Gothic horror specifically. Dorothy Z. Baker has surveyed its influence in this vein, from Edgar Allan Poe to Edith Wharton, particularly the influence of Book VI, which (unlike the exemplary mode of the previous five books) constitutes an extensive catalog of wonder, miracles, and terrors. One author Baker does not mention is H. P. Lovecraft, which is an understandable but unfortunate omission,21 for few American Gothic horror writers have been more overtly and consciously influenced by Mather’s text than Lovecraft. Indeed, Lovecraft’s interactions with Magnalia Christi Americana provide a useful point of embarkation for examining his approach to American Puritanism. LOVECRAFT’S PURITAN AESTHETICS Lovecraft’s experience of Puritanism was more visceral and artistic than it was directly theological. Aside from a brief, unhappy stay in New York, he was a lifetime resident of Providence, Rhode Island, and traced his family heritage back several generations to England—so Puritanism was, in a sense, in his blood.22 Lovecraft’s extensive personal library included numerous volumes of New England history, as well as John Fiske’s more philosophically oriented The Beginnings of New England, or The Puritan Theocracy in Its Relation to Civil and Religious Liberty.23 Fiske believed that “we can learn something from the stumblings of our forefathers, and a good many things

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seem quite clear to us to-day which two centuries ago were only beginning to be dimly discerned by a few of the keenest and boldest spirits,”24 and Lovecraft may have shared some of this mixed reaction to American Puritanism. S. T. Joshi suggests that Fiske’s Myths and Myth-Makers was a major source leading to Lovecraft’s anthropological view of religion as a natural evolutionary development25—it was certainly important in shaping some of his fiction26—though Fiske’s overall philosophy may have been too agreeable to theism for Lovecraft’s tastes.27 But far and away the most relevant work in Lovecraft’s collection was his ancestral first edition of Mather’s Magnalia. The book was not just an heirloom—it figures prominently in such stories as “The Unnamable,” “Pickman’s Model,” “The Festival,” and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.28 Baker contends that Book VI of the Magnalia was well suited to horror writers in a post-Puritan age, when Mather’s sensational accounts of remarkable occurrences became extracted from Mather’s ministerial/historical assertion of God’s guiding providence, as she notes in the works of such Lovecraft antecedents as Edgar Allan Poe29 and Nathaniel Hawthorne.30 While clearly proud of his family copy of the Magnalia, Lovecraft cursorily shows all the disdain for Cotton Mather that one would expect from a zealous atheist. In a letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer, after an early dismissal of seventeenthcentury New England for its “pioneer crudity and theological obsession,”31 Lovecraft notes of his tale “The Unnamable,” “The paragraph in Mather’s Magnalia (of which I possess an ancestral copy) on which the tale is based is a bona-fide one, and represents the extremes of credulity to which this strange character went in considering vague popular rumours. There was such a fantastic horror in the thing he suggested I felt it simply demanded a story.”32 In the actual story, the narrator, Carter,33 goes on a length diatribe against Puritanism, but especially as it is manifested in the sixth book of Mather’s Magnalia, “which no one should read after dark”:34 “The thing, it was averred, was biologically impossible to start with; merely another of those crazy country mutterings which Cotton Mather had been gullible enough to dump into his chaotic Magnalia Christi Americana.”35 The eponymous artist Richard Upton Pickman similarly excoriates him: “Mather, damn him, was afraid somebody might succeed in kicking free of this accursed cage of monotony—I wish someone had laid a spell on him or sucked his blood in the night!”36 Such vituperations must be taken in context, however. Elsewhere in his letters, Lovecraft is somewhat more charitable toward the Puritan mind-set, claiming at one point that they “unconsciously sought to do a supremely artistic thing—to mould all life into a dark poem; a macabre tapestry with quaint arabesques and patterns from the plains of antique Palaestina. . . . On shifting humanity they imposed a refreshing technique, and to an aimless and

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futile cosmos supply’d artificial values which had real authority because they were not true.”37 If this “supremely artistic” task sounds odd coming from Lovecraft, it is actually somewhat in keeping with other aesthetic statements he made, such as this assault on his contemporaries: Art has been wrecked by a complete consciousness of the universe which shews that the world is to each man only a rubbish-heap limned by his individual perception. It will be saved, if at all, by the next and last step of disillusion; the realisation that complete consciousness and truth are themselves valueless, and that to acquire any genuine artistic titillation we must artificially invent limitations of consciousness and feign a pattern of life common to all mankind—most naturally the simple old pattern which ancient and groping tradition first gave us.38

For Lovecraft, then, Puritan artistry is “unconscious” because the Puritans genuinely believed in their project, even though it was factually “not true”; yet it was artistic because of its structure: its “technique” and “values,” which parallel the “limitations” and “patterns” of the subsequent quotation. The freedoms increasingly asserted by modern “artists” in Lovecraft’s day, to him, are in fact intrinsically inartistic. Yet how can Lovecraft the mechanistic materialist countenance such a paradox, seemingly asserting that Puritans are more artistic than modern poets or painters? The answer becomes evident when one more closely analyzes the roles that Puritans play in his own artistry, his fictional tales. Arguably the clearest exemplification of Lovecraft’s principles comes in one of his most heavily Puritan-inflected works, “Pickman’s Model.” The tale is fashioned as a conversation between the narrator, Thurber, and his friend Eliot, discussing the disappearance of Thurber’s friend, the painter Richard Upton Pickman. As a painter of monstrosities, Pickman in some regards represents the kind of artistic figure one might expect in a weird horror story. Significantly, though, when Pickman is giving Thurber a tour of his “studio . . . where I can catch the night spirit of antique horror,”39 the reader learns he has divided the upper level into two rooms, while he actually paints in the cellar. The division between the two rooms is important. The paintings in the first are certainly horrific, filled with bizarre creature not unlike what one might expect from Lovecraft’s own fiction:40 “blasphemous horror,” “madness and monstrosity,” “demoniac portraiture.”41 Yet these depictions are primarily symbolic or allegorical; the art in the second room, on the other hand, “brought the horror right into our own daily life.”42 While still replete with “vile things” and “mephitic monsters,”43 this second set of canvases shocks Thurber because he understands that they are no mere imaginations but must be based on models of actual existing terrors: “it was pandemonium

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itself, crystal clear in stark objectivity.”44 It is in Pickman’s mysterious cellar that he encounters the beings whose images haunt the second room, as Thurber learns in the end when he sees one of Pickman’s photographs: “What it showed was simply the monstrous being he was painting on that awful canvas. It was the model he was using . . . it was a photograph from life.”45 “Pickman’s Model” thus emblematizes Lovecraft’s very aesthetic project, one extrapolated out of his atheism. The very real horrors of the cellar stand in for the horrors of the godless, meaningless, valueless cosmos that humans inhabit according to his worldview. The two rooms represent two possible aesthetic approaches to revealing the truth about these horrors. The first room—terrible yet bearable—is the symbolic or allegorical approach. This would thus be Lovecraft’s own aesthetic,46 using Cthulhu and his other chaotic beings as representations of an indifferent cosmic existence. The second room, which “brought the horror right into our own daily life,” portrays the bleak response to nihilism in cultural modernism and the direct representation of despair in the realism of his day—the exact kind of “art” that Lovecraft hated. Read this way, then, Lovecraft’s artistic endeavor performs a tense balancing act. Out of intellectual honesty, he cannot simply look away and pretend that the void of existence has a meaning that it lacks; yet this very truth is so ghastly that it cannot be looked at directly without the perceiver lapsing into self-destructive despair. This is the horror so memorably captured in perhaps Lovecraft’s most famous passage, the opening lines to “The Call of Cthulhu”: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents.”47 As Barton St. Armand observes, Lovecraft’s “rationalists become emblems of human reason seized by the irrational nightmare of man’s insecure and essentially ephemeral place in a universe which is, at best, glimpsed through a glass, darkly.”48 His more investigatory protagonists, like Thurston (who pens those lines in “The Call of Cthulhu”) or Thurber in “Pickman’s Model” or Malone in “The Horror at Red Hook,” may choose to try to ignore the full implications of the terror they have learned. But the matter is less straightforward for Lovecraft’s artistic figures. To Lovecraft, the artist must expose enough of this reality to disabuse people of their illusory conceptions such as religious, moral, and ethical truth. Yet the artist dare not push too far; his efforts must also buttress humanity against the full impact of the resultant despair. Some attempt to do this within appropriate limitations, like Erich Zann in “The Music of Erich Zann,” who has apparently warded off the darkness for quite some time. Other figures transgress those limitations, like Pickman does in his second room of paintings—a transgression that consumes him.49 Pickman’s transgression suggests that he should not be read as an idealized Lovecraftian artist—in writing the story, Lovecraft himself stays in the

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allegorical first room, as it were, by making Pickman’s terrors preternatural monstrosities connected to his own Mythos. Unlike the naïve Carter in “The Unnamable,” Pickman’s scorn for Cotton Mather comes not from the clergyman’s ostensible gullibility but precisely the opposite; Pickman is himself descended from an executed Salem witch and charges that Mather “knew things he didn’t dare put in that stupid Magnalia or that puerile Wonders of the Invisible World.”50 But witch or sorcerer characters are almost always negative in Lovecraft’s oeuvre; in his fiction, he desires neither to promote some valorized neo-paganism nor (perhaps surprisingly) to debunk witchcraft claims with rational, naturalistic responses. Colonial-era figures like Keziah Mason from “The Dreams in the Witch House” or Joseph Curwen from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward are legitimate threats because they dabble in proscribed knowledge and invoke forbidden powers; by identifying with his witch ancestor in pursuing such transgressions, Pickman makes himself similarly objectionable.

LOVECRAFT AND FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE If witch-hunting is the superficial theme that Lovecraft appropriates from Wonders of the Invisible World and Magnalia Christi Americana, it is not the more foundational theological concern. After all, while he may have used sorcery as a motif, Lovecraft did so to further his artistic agenda, not because he thought real witches with supernatural powers did exist in Salem or elsewhere. The deeper question instead revolves around the Puritanical and Lovecraftian approach to the pursuit of knowledge. Lovecraft’s villains, and often even his self-destructive heroes, may share with Mather’s sorcerers an intense desire “to gratifie their unlawful Curiosities.” One can roundly reject the unjust proceedings at Salem, and even Lovecraft’s atheist assumptions, and still legitimately pose the questions: Can curiosity be a vice? Are there domains of knowledge that should be rejected? This is a question that long predates the Puritans. While the English term “curiosity” now has generally positive (or at least neutral) connotations, such has not always been the case.51 Augustine, a frequent commentator on the subject (though hardly the first), attacks curiosity as a form of “gratification of the eye,” as in Confessions 10.35, when he remarks, “This futile curiosity masquerades under the name of science and learning, and . . . derives from our thirst for knowledge.”52 Christians (and some pagans) in late antiquity distinguished between two forms of human intellectual appetite, one licit (studiousness) and one illicit (curiosity). In his book Intellectual Appetite, Paul Griffiths notes that these English cognate terms do not fully correspond to their Latin counterparts, studiositas and curiositas,53 though he retains

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their usage. This skepticism toward curiosity, then, while certainly characteristic of the Puritans, simply shows them to be not anti-intellectual outliers but well within the lineage of Christian thought. Witchcraft was of course excluded in this early Christian condemnation of curiosity: Griffiths observes that “astrological knowledge and skill in various forms of magical technique were the standard examples” of “damaging . . . bodies of knowledge.”54 But while the content of the body of knowledge was not insignificant, the danger of curiosity lies more in its posture toward knowledge than in the content of the student’s knowledge. And it is here where Griffiths’s analysis proves particularly helpful, because his definition of the relevant terms is concerned primarily with their orientation toward knowledge (and that knowledge’s source). For Griffiths, dangerous curiosity is “appetite for the ownership of new knowledge, and its principal method is enclosure by sequestration of particular creatures or ensembles of such.”55 The studious, on the other hand, “do not seek to sequester, own, possess, or dominate what they hope to know; they want, instead, to participate lovingly in it, to respond to it knowingly as gift rather than as potential possession, to treat it as icon rather than as spectacle.”56 Studiousness, then, is an “appetite for closer reflexive intimacy with the gift,” a gift which is “open to and participatory in the giver.”57 The understanding Griffiths provides assumes the created world as a gift from a divine giver and is thus intrinsically Christian (or at least theistic) in nature. Participating with the giver, however, does not mean that studious knowers must manufacture some contrived Christian application in order to justify their learning. While critical of experiential novelty, Griffiths notes that studiousness can be deeply compatible with certain forms of wonder, in which “delighted astonishment” at certain objects of knowledge can lead to “a passion for intimacy with them”:58 “As we have developed the technical capacity to grant leisure for study to a larger and larger portion of the human race, so our knowledge of the particularities of human creatures has increased to a staggering degree, an increase that all Christians should celebrate because it is an increase made possible by the unusual depth of our participation in its giver.”59 Thus, if the content of Lovecraft’s sorcerous villains’ learning (and that of their Puritan antecedents) is problematic, their posture is perhaps the true tragic flaw in their curiosity. The categories of magic and science, now clearly distinct, overlapped substantially during the early Modern era when the Puritans lived,60 and they both shared at their worst a predilection toward Griffiths’s understanding of curiosity, a utilitarian “appetite for the ownership of new knowledge,” a knowledge that would not be received as a gift from the giver. If such an understanding makes sense of Lovecraft’s villains, it complicates yet ultimately clarifies an interpretation of his heroes. St. Armand aptly points out that “[a]ll Lovecraft’s heroes are Puritanically

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predestined; their fates are immutably decreed by their own exotic temperaments and insatiable, Faustian curiosity.”61 Does Lovecraft view this curiosity as a vice? Joshi suggests that human hubris in the pursuit of knowledge may be a theme in Lovecraft’s early work but less so later, when he sought to expunge moralizing commentary. Whether or not curiosity is a moral vice in his protagonists, it leads to damaging effects, “a comment not on the evil of knowledge but on the feebleness of humanity’s psychological state.”62 Yet the dark fate—whether physical or psychological—met by so many of his characters proceeds naturally from the fact that in Lovecraft’s philosophy, there can be no studiousness. His protagonists or ancillary research characters may reject the purely utilitarian “ownership” claims of raw curiosity—indeed, to suggest otherwise in the vast, indifferent universe is pathetic—but they can never know right wonder or intimacy with the object of knowledge. To do so, they would need to affirm the world as gift with a source in the giver, a conception utterly antithetical to Lovecraftian philosophy. So, as St. Armand suggests, Lovecraft’s heroes (like all people in his cosmos) can really only ever be curious, and they must be damned for it. Christians (Puritan and otherwise) may sometimes be critiqued by those outside the faith for their posture toward knowledge, if they suggest that there might indeed be limits on the subject matter (or at least the means and motivations) in pursuing it. Yet even if one accepts the distinction between studiositas and curiositas, the former category may allow expansive room for wonder or “delighted astonishment,” so long as knowledge is not pursued out of an “appetite for ownership.” For the atheist working from Lovecraft’s mechanistic materialist philosophy, on the other hand, the pursuit of knowledge, if done honestly, cannot lead to wonder in the Christian sense Griffiths has identified; any experience of it as such is moving beyond the boundaries of what that philosophy can accommodate. Lovecraft’s questers learn that knowledge is not a gift from an infinitely loving giver but a curse inherent in a vacant and chaotic universe. In his fiction, this is dramatized by the myriad grotesque entities of his Mythos, who may pose as gods but offer no true consolation, only abject horror. To the denizen of Lovecraft’s cosmos, only the ignorant receive mercy; it is best not to know.

NOTES 1. Carl R. Trueman, “Puritanism,” in Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. Ian A. McFarland et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 2. Mark A. Noll, “Puritanism,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 2nd ed., ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2013).

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3. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England, 1971 (London: Penguin, 1973), 594. 4. Thomas, Religion, 595, 597. 5. Katherine Howe, The Penguin Book of Witches (London: Penguin, 2014), xii. 6. Howe, Penguin, xiii. Even here, the situation was complicated. For a more nuanced and extensive breakdown of the demographic and socioeconomic backdrop of accused witches in Puritan New England, see Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: Norton, 1998), 46–116. 7. Howe acknowledges that witches “were thought to have pledged themselves to the Devil in exchange for the power to work their will through invisible means.” Howe, Penguin, xiii, italics added. 8. Howe, Penguin, 3. 9. “Witch,” in Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, ed. Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010). 10. Paul Melvin Wise, “Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World: An Authoritative Edition” (PhD diss., Georgia State University, 2005), 37, n. 13. 11. Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World, 1693 (London: John Russell Smith, 1862), 20, italics original. 12. Mather, Wonders, 96, italics original. 13. Mather, Wonders, 96, italics original. 14. Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards, rev. ed. (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 1995), 186. 15. The Latin title means, roughly, The Wondrous Works of Christ in America. 16. Bremer, Puritan, 190. 17. Gustaaf Van Cromphout has written extensively about Mather’s classical references in the Magnalia. See “Cotton Mather as Plutarchan Biographer,” American Literature 46, no. 4 (January 1975); “Cotton Mather: The Puritan Historian as Renaissance Humanist,” American Literature 49, no. 3 (November 1977); “Manuductio ad Ministerium: Cotton Mather as Neoclassicist,” American Literature 53, no. 3 (November 1981). 18. Mather anticipates that some readers “will reckon the style embellished with too much of ornament, by the multiplied references to other and former concerns, closely couched, for the observation of the attentive, in almost every paragraph; but I must confess that I am of his mind who said, Sicuti sal modice cibis asperses Condit, et gratiam saporis addit, ita si paulum, antiquitatis admiscueris, Oratio fit venustior.” Magnalia Christi Americana, Volume 1 (Hartford, CT: Silas Andrus and Son, 1855), Book I, 31, italics original. Perry Miller translates Mather’s Latin as, “Just as salt discreetly sprinkled on food flavors it, and adds to the pleasure of the relish, so if you mingle a little of antiquity, the oration is made more lovely.” The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), 73. 19. For a survey and analysis of the Magnalia’s literary and popular features, see Dorothy Z. Baker, America’s Gothic Fiction: The Legacy of Magnalia Christi Americana (Columbus, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007), 14–36.

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20. For an important treatment of the significance of the Magnalia, see Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975). Of particular note on its posthumous influence, see “Chapter 5: The Myth of America,” 136–86. 21. Baker acknowledges openly that many writers besides the ones she analyzes were influenced by Mather’s Magnalia, and since her focus is nineteenth-century Gothic, one would not expect Lovecraft to afford a major place in her treatment. Baker, America’s, 12. 22. For a full account of several generations of his family in America, see S. T. Joshi, A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time, “Chapter 1: Unmixed English Gentry” (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), 1–7. 23. This was one of three Fiske books Lovecraft is known to have owned, the others being American Political Ideals Viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History and Myths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology. See S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft’s Library: A Catalogue, 2nd ed. (New York: Hippocampus, 2002), 61–62. 24. John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, or The Puritan Theocracy in Its Relation to Civil and Religious Liberty (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1889), vi. 25. Joshi, Dreamer, 131–32. See also S. T. Joshi, A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft, 2nd ed. (Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside, 1999), 33–34; For further discussion of Lovecraft’s appropriation of Fiske’s philosophy, see Alexander P. Thompson’s contribution in this book, 33. 26. Fiske’s book formed a significant part of the background to “The Shunned House.” H. P. Lovecraft, The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories, ed. S. T. Joshi (London: Penguin, 2004), Joshi, 420, note 39. 27. Fiske’s four-volume Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy might sound superficially appealing to Lovecraft, but Fiske’s “cosmism” was specifically a “cosmic theism,” a philosophy that approached God through naturalistic means. 28. For further discussion of Lovecraft’s use of the Magnalia, see Alexander P. Thompson’s contribution in this book, 34. 29. Baker, America’s, 37–64. 30. Baker, America’s, 87–118. 31. H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters II: 1925–1929, ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1968), 134. 32. Lovecraft, SLII, 139. 33. This is presumably Randolph Carter, one of Lovecraft’s recurring semiautobiographical characters. 34. Lovecraft, Dreams, 85. 35. Lovecraft, Dreams, 84. 36. H. P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, ed. S. T. Joshi. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001), 81. This line may represent an ironic desire on Pickman’s part to regard Mather himself as sorcerous; Wonders of the Invisible World, for instance, cites Richard Bernard’s contention that “a witches Mark . . . is upon the Baser sort of Witches; and this, by the Devils either Sucking or Touching of them.” Quoted in Mather, Wonders, 35, italics original.

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37. H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters I: 1911–1924, ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965), 275. 38. H. P. Lovecraft, “Lord Dunsany and His Work,” Miscellaneous Writings, ed. S. T. Joshi (Sauk City: WI: Arkham House, 1995), 110. 39. Lovecraft, Thing, 82. 40. In the text, Thurber explicitly contrasts the art to that of Lovecraft’s correspondent and fellow Weird Tales contributor Clark Ashton Smith, who also painted, sketched, and sculpted. Pickman’s art has “none of the trans-Saturnian landscapes and lunar fungi” of Smith, instead depicting the kinds of New England scenes one expects from Lovecraft’s regional horrors: “old churchyards, deep woods, cliffs by the sea, brick tunnels, ancient panelled rooms, or simple vaults of masonry.” Lovecraft, Thing, 83. 41. Lovecraft, Thing, 83. 42. Lovecraft, Thing, 85. 43. Lovecraft, Thing, 85. 44. Lovecraft, Thing, 86. 45. Lovecraft, Thing, 89. 46. See, for instance, Maurice Lévy’s contention that “Lovecraft’s gods are transparent allegories” of his mechanistic materialist philosophy. Maurice Lévy, Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic, trans. S.T. Joshi (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 81. 47. H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, ed. S. T. Joshi (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999), 139. 48. Barton L. St. Armand, H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent (Albuquerque, NM: Silver Scarab, 1979), 49. 49. Pickman technically becomes a ghoul in the Dreamlands, as described in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, but this distinction hardly seems meaningful in the context of “Pickman’s Model.” Lovecraft, Dreams, 185–87. 50. Lovecraft, Doorstep, 81. 51. For a brief discussion of the transition of curiosity from vice to virtue, see Paul J. Griffiths, Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 9–18. 52. Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), 241. Griffiths deliberately orients his own discussion of the topic in relation to Augustine’s thought. Griffiths, Intellectual, 6. 53. Griffiths, Intellectual, 9–10. 54. Griffiths, Intellectual, 13. In the Confessions, Augustine notes his early rejection of sorcery while also condemning his own forays into astrology. Augustine, Confessions 4.2–3. 55. Griffiths, Intellectual, 20, italics original. 56. Griffiths, Intellectual, 21. 57. Griffiths, Intellectual, 21, italics original. 58. Griffiths, Intellectual, 128. 59. Griffiths, Intellectual, 128–29. 60. Cf. Thomas, Religion, 767–800; C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Harper, 2015), 75–79. Tolkien makes a similar comparison in passing in “On

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Fairy-Stories.” J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine, 1966), 41. 61. St. Armand, H. P. Lovecraft, 49. 62. S. T. Joshi, Primal Sources: Essays on H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Hippocampus, 2003), 72.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Augustine. Confessions. Translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961. Baker, Dorothy Z. America’s Gothic Fiction: The Legacy of Magnalia Christi Americana. Columbus, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975. Bremer, Francis J. The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards. Revised Edition. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 1995. Fiske, John. The Beginnings of New England, or the Puritan Theocracy in Its Relation to Civil and Religious Liberty. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889. Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Howe, Katherine, ed. The Penguin Book of Witches. London: Penguin, 2014. Joshi, S. T. A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001. ———. A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft. Second Edition. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside, 1999. ———. Lovecraft’s Library: A Catalogue. Second Edition. New York: Hippocampus, 2002. ———. Primal Sources: Essays on H. P. Lovecraft. New York: Hippocampus, 2003. Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: Norton, 1998. Lévy, Maurice. Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic. Translated by S. T. Joshi. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988. Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. New York: Harper, 2015. Lovecraft, H. P. Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by S. T. Joshi. Sauk City: WI: Arkham House, 1995. ———. Selected Letters I: 1911–1924. Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965. ———. Selected Letters II: 1925–1929. Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1968. ———. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. Edited by S. T. Joshi. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999. ———. The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories. Edited by S. T. Joshi. London: Penguin, 2004.

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———. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories. Edited by S. T. Joshi. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001. Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana. 2 Vols. 1702. Hartford, CT: Silas Andrus, 1853–1855. ———. The Wonders of the Invisible World. 1693. London: John Russell Smith, 1862. Miller, Perry, ed. The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. Noll, Mark A. “Puritanism.” In Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Second Edition. Edited by Walter A. Elwell. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2013. St. Armand, Barton L. H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent. Albuquerque, NM: Silver Scarab, 1979. Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England. 1971. London: Penguin, 1973. Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Fairy-Stories.” In The Tolkien Reader, 33–99. New York: Ballantine, 1966. Trueman, Carl R. “Puritanism.” In Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, edited by Ian A. McFarland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Van Cromphout, Gustaaf. “Cotton Mather as Plutarchan Biographer.” American Literature 46, no. 4 (January 1975): 465–481. ———. “Cotton Mather: The Puritan Historian as Renaissance Humanist.” American Literature 49, no. 3 (November 1977): 327–337. ———. “Manuductio ad Ministerium: Cotton Mather as Neoclassicist.” American Literature 53, no. 3 (November 1981): 361–379. Wise, Paul Melvin. “Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World: An Authoritative Edition.” PhD Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2005. “Witch.” In Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, edited by Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010.

Chapter 5

August Derleth and the Christianization of the Cthulhu Mythos J. S. Mackley

Born in Sauk City, Wisconsin, on February 24, 1909, August Derleth was a prolific writer and publisher, selling his first piece entitled “Bat’s Belfry,” a vampire story, to Weird Tales at the age of fifteen. Throughout his lifetime he wrote short stories and novels in a variety of genres, as well as poems, reviews, and nonfiction articles on subjects such as history and nature. In addition, he wrote the Sac Prairie saga about a Wisconsin farming community. As well as his Lovecraft-inspired (and his questionable ‘posthumous collaborations’ of weird tales with H. P. Lovecraft), Derleth wrote a series of Sherlock-Holmes-style pastiche stories featuring Solar Pons, a character he created while studying at the University of Wisconsin (1925–1930), where he was later a lecturer in Regional Literature (1939–1943). However, it is for his contribution to publishing Lovecraft’s stories and his expansion of Lovecraft’s pseudo-mythology, where he controversially aligned the chaotic pantheon of cosmic horrors with the structured order that corresponded with his own Christian beliefs, that Derleth is chiefly known. Derleth was just one of many people with whom Lovecraft corresponded during his lifetime. He first wrote to Lovecraft in 1926, aged seventeen, asking the author for information about publications Lovecraft had cited in a letter written to the Weird Tales magazine. Lovecraft replied days afterward, acknowledging he was already familiar with Derleth’s short stories published in Weird Tales. Over the course of the next decade they corresponded through hundreds of letters, even though they never met.1 Lovecraft developed his Mythos of ancient deities over the course of his work: they were first seen in his second published story, “Dagon.” Through the series of stories and novellas, Lovecraft gradually unveiled aspects of the Mythos, most particularly in the stories “The Call of Cthulhu” and in 79

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At the Mountains of Madness where it is revealed these are cosmic beings who were then worshipped as gods by the human cults trying to facilitate their return. Lovecraft read and commented on Derleth’s unpublished writing and encouraged him, along with his other correspondents, to write using his Mythos as a backdrop against which their own narratives could take place. These early stories, such as “The Space-Eaters” by Frank Belknap Long (1928), dovetailed with Lovecraft’s writing and he referenced some of his correspondents’ material in his work. This said, as David E. Schultz has argued, Lovecraft wanted writers to make only allusions to elements in his Mythos rather than exploring them in detail, just as Lovecraft himself referenced materials from the writings of Arthur Machen and Lord Dunsany.2 As Lovecraft explained in relation to his grimoire of arcane lore, the Necronomicon, its mystique remained in it having only obscure references: “if anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon, it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it.”3 While it appears from these scholars that Lovecraft wanted his references to remain as “mystique” and “obscure,” Mullis takes an opposing standpoint, observing that Lovecraft was “encouraging” writers to engage with his Mythos, just as other writers had done, and even supports Derleth after Farnsworth Wright, the editor of Weird Tales, accused Derleth of lifting “whole phrases” from Lovecraft and that Derleth had “aped” Lovecraft’s material.4 After Lovecraft’s death in 1937, Derleth founded the Arkham House publishing company with Donald Wandrei, chiefly with a view to making Lovecraft’s writings accessible to a wider audience than the “pulp” magazines. This was a controversial move: S. T. Joshi, among others, notes Derleth had no right in assuming this role and Robert H. Barlow was Lovecraft’s chosen literary executor.5 Derleth, misconstruing Lovecraft’s ideas of referencing the Mythos in his stories, encouraged writers to expand on the foundation of Lovecraft’s Mythos. However, this meant he maintained an editorial control over what was being added, and he actively encouraged some writers while discouraging others. Derleth’s dominance over Lovecraft’s publications, along with him deciding who could and could not contribute to the developing Mythos, gave the impression that the posthumous publications represented exactly what Lovecraft wanted. Scholars such as S. T. Joshi, David Schultz, and Richard L. Tierney have argued this is not the case. In The Mask of Cthulhu, Derleth describes his stories as “a postscript in tribute to the creative imagination of the late H.P. Lovecraft,” although his critics are not so generous.6 There have been many discussions in favor of what Derleth did to promote Lovecraft and his writing, most particularly the fact that he saved Lovecraft’s stories from the obscurity of the pulp magazines and made them available to a wider audience; however, it is noted that Derleth’s

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editions of Lovecraft’s work were filled with errors and he should have left the material well alone. Haefele argues Derleth is “one of the more important figures of the weird tale genre,”7 while Joshi argues “August Derleth is now an irrelevance in the study of H.P. Lovecraft.”8 It is indisputable that Derleth developed the concepts that Lovecraft introduced, structuring his stories of cosmic chaos into a systemic order.9 Arguably, there is nothing in either Lovecraft or Derleth’s writings reflecting the Christian concepts of God or Heaven and Hell. However, Derleth systemized Lovecraft’s pantheon of cosmic chaos and replaced it with forces of cosmic good and cosmic evil and aligned these creatures with the four elements all of which are motifs in Christianity.

LOVECRAFT’S “BLASPHEMOUS” MYTHOS While it is impossible to know how Lovecraft would have expanded on the Mythos had he lived longer, Joshi argues that what Lovecraft wrote is a reaction against the religious upbringing he had in Providence, as well as his own interests in classical literature and the sciences.10 Lovecraft describes himself as “an atheist of protestant ancestry”11 and this feeds into his writings. In particular, he highlights the unsettling moods surrounding New England, specifically its colonial past and puritanical beliefs, contrasting with superstitions and the suspicions of witchcraft: Lovecraft based the town of Arkham on Salem. That said, despite Lovecraft’s secular and scientific approach to the (as yet unnamed) Mythos, his first named creature is Dagon named after an Old Testament god of the Philistines (Judges 16:23; 1 Samuel 5: 2–7). Etymologically, the biblical deity was linked with fertility, although another interpretation links him with a fish-god: Lovecraft uses this to anticipate the “Innsmouth look,” where residents’ apparently amphibian physical features have evolved through the interbreeding between humans and the Deep Ones. Lovecraft’s pantheon developed over the course of his stories, but most notably “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Dunwich Horror.” In these texts, Lovecraft describes his extraterrestrial deities as “Great Old Ones” and later, in At the Mountains of Madness, he describes them as “Elder Things.” He perceives them as a manifestation of chaos, and his descriptions are suitably enigmatic: the adjectives he uses include “unnamable,” “indescribable,” “non-Euclidian.” In a letter to Frank Belknap Long, he explains the principal message of what he flippantly termed as his “Yog-Sothothery” is the “sense of outsideness” pervading his texts as the characters become slaves to their own curiosity and discover a past that should have been forgotten.12 What is striking about these deities is the irrelevancy of humanity in Lovecraft’s universe, contrary to humanity being the pinnacle of the created order in orthodox Christian theological understanding. Van Leavenworth

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points out Lovecraft’s stories are founded upon two mythical concepts, namely, the loss of control or cosmic fear, and humanity’s inability to understand cosmic knowledge.13 When Lovecraft resubmitted “The Call of Cthulhu” to Weird Tales, he explains in his letter to the editor, Farnsworth Wright (July 5, 1927): Human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the cosmos-at-large. [. . .] To achieve the essence of real externity, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.14

In At the Mountains of Madness Lovecraft reveals more details about his Mythos: the Antarctic explorers discover evidence of what the Necronomicon describes as the Elder Things, an alien race who created slaves out of protoplasm. These slaves, “a shambling primitive mammal,” were then used as food or for the capricious enjoyment of the Old Ones.15 Thus, Lovecraft presents a complete denial of Christian norms in which humanity is not created by God in His own image (Genesis 1:27). Furthermore, these Great Old Ones are now presented as a “cosmic horror” rather than “gods,” even though they are worshipped as such. Yet, they are indifferent to the world they inhabit; Lovecraft explains, “Lack of interest in the world beyond the inner mountains would account for its non-reconquest of the sphere.”16 Ramsey Campbell notes Lovecraft never saw his Mythos as a fully formed pantheon, but detailed only sufficiently to present a convincing backdrop against which Lovecraft could play out the theater of his terrors.17 Lovecraft felt suggestion was a more effective means of conveying terror.18 By providing significantly more information about both the pantheon and other Lovecraftian devices such as the town of Arkham, Miskatonic University, and the Necronomicon, Derleth removes the veils of uncertainty and obscurity that Lovecraft leaves shrouding his Mythos. In effect, Lovecraft occupies a position analogous to the mystic, exploring the nature of the universe through an apophatic model, that which cannot be fathomed. Derleth, to the contrary, seeks to cast matters in a cataphatic manner, that of revelation through what is. Lovecraft encouraged Derleth, and many others, to write stories against the weird backdrop of his Mythos. As part of his early contribution, Derleth promoted the idea of naming this group of stories as “The Mythology of Hastur” to Lovecraft in 1931;19 it is generally accepted that Derleth coined the term “The Cthulhu Mythos,” and more specifically, as Tierney argues, he “developed the attitude that goes with that term.”20 Commenting on Derleth’s story “The Pacer” in 1928, Lovecraft wanted Derleth to use “striking novelty & originality” to describe the monster, explaining “I spent enormous pains

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thinking out Cthulhu, & still more in devising the two blasphemous entities that figure in my new ‘Dunwich Horror.’”21 Lovecraft’s use of “blasphemous” underscores his efforts to present an otherworldly race that is both profane and sacrilegious.22 While engaging with the cosmic horror in his own stories, Derleth sought to recodify the imagery Lovecraft employed. THE DERLETH MYTHOS Tierney, Joshi, Schultz, and others observe that systemizing the supernatural elements of Lovecraft’s writing is entirely Derleth’s vision of the Mythos and should be referred to as “The Derleth Mythos.” Derleth’s expansion of the pantheon was to take the chaos Lovecraft presented and to align it with what is often referred to as his “devout” Catholicism.23 However, in a letter to Ramsey Campbell, Derleth describes himself as an “anticlerical” Catholic24 and was keen to distinguish between the two. When Cardinal Spellman accused former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt of “anti-Catholicism” for opposing federal funding to parochial schools in her column in TIME Magazine (August 1, 1949), Derleth wrote to her noting “the Catholic faith is one thing, and . . . the men in it are another.”25 Campbell notes, “It was this philosophical difference which led him to turn Lovecraft’s expression of awe and terror at the vastness of the universe into a confrontation between good and evil,”26 although Derleth claims the good-evil parallel is “unconscious.”27 All this suggests that Derleth opposed the institution of the Roman Catholic Church when expressing or seeking worldly power, but supported the fundamental teaching of the Bible and Roman Catholic doctrine and sacramental practice, making a distinction from between being a “Catholic author” and, as he saw himself, an author who was Catholic.28 It is this distinction one sees in Derleth’s writing. Derleth presented to Lovecraft his ideas for how the Mythos could be expanded with the 1932 publication of his story “The Lair of the Star-Spawn” (co-written with Mark Schorer). Here, the narrator is told how “long before the time of man, strange beings from the stars—from Rigel, Betelgeuse—the stars in Orion, lived here. And some of them—live here yet!”29 The Elders were followed by “those who had been their slaves on the stars, those who had been set up in opposition to the Elder Ones. The Ancient ones fought these evil beings for possession of Earth, and after many centuries, they conquered. [. . .] The Old Ones, the Elder Gods, returned to the stars of Orion, leaving behind them ever-damned Cthulhu, Lloigor, Zhar, and others.”30 Furthermore, these cosmic evil ones left seeds to spawn a race of pygmy humanoids to await their return.31 Derleth provides more details to his mythology in “The Return of Hastur” (1939) where Haddon, the narrator,

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is told the root of the Mythos “springs from a common source with our own legendary Genesis” but is likely to be far older than the biblical description as the entities are “cosmic and ageless.” Haddon is also told of the good and evil natures of the creatures. By realigning the Mythos of the Ancient Ones and suggesting a common source with the book of Genesis, it applies allegorical tropes to the Mythos which describe creation. However, these tropes are as valid to humanity as they were to the Elder Gods and thus any divine plan into which humanity and the Mythos creatures are placed is more a theist construct than a Christian one, as it reduces humanity to a merely divinely created race without the intention of superiority. In this way the concurrent mythologies place humanity back into the divine plan, and partially erase Lovecraft’s explanation in At the Mountains of Madness that the “Elder Things” were responsible for the creation of humanity. Here the Old Ones are “nameless, but their power is and will apparently always be great enough to check that of the others,” whereas the Evil Ones are subdivided into groups relating to the four elements, and yet “transcending them.” Finally, the narrator is told the Evil Ones were banished and imprisoned, but they had created their disciples to enable to return from their exile.32 In order to justify the expansion of the Mythos, Derleth provides further details in his 1962 story, “The Seal of R’lyeh”: by revealing more details, the Mythos becomes more familiar to the reader and Derleth weakens the texts’ otherworldly terror. While Derleth developed the Mythos to correspond with his own beliefs, he assumed this was what Lovecraft himself did when he adapted or incorporated ideas developed by authors such as Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, and Robert W. Chambers. However, Derleth attempted to apply some of his ideas retrospectively as if they had been initiated in Lovecraft’s own writings. In H.P. Lovecraft: Some Notes toward a Biography, Derleth describes the Cthulhu Mythos as “basically similar to the Christian Mythos, particularly in regard to the expulsion of Satan from Eden, and the power of Evil to survive”33 which suggests “he had come to view Lovecraft’s creation in terms of his own use of it.”34 Indeed, in “The Shadow out of Space,” Derleth describes how elements of the cosmic Mythos in turn influenced early Judeo-Christian mythology.35 As Haefele argues, by linking the Mythos to a recognizable series of religious motifs, Derleth was changing the focus of the threat. The cosmic horror was no longer indifferent to humanity. It had become a part of the battle between good and evil, although, unlike Lovecraft’s version of the Mythos, Derleth describes how humanity now had guardians to defend them.36 As has been argued elsewhere, the oft-cited “Black Magic quotation” has been proved to be false and was written neither by Lovecraft nor Derleth, but by another of Lovecraft’s correspondents, Harold Farnese. It claims “this

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world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled,” but it suited Derleth to use it to substantiate his organization of the pantheon and his alignment of the mythology of gods of the Cthulhu Mythos sharing a common source with the book of Genesis, notably the Fall of Man and expulsion of Satan from Heaven.37

CHRISTIANIZING THE MYTHOS Despite Derleth’s insistence that there was a similarity between Lovecraft’s pantheon and Christian monotheism, Lovecraft’s creatures, as he imagined them, are totally dissimilar to the pantheon that Derleth presents. Lovecraft conceived these beings as cruel and amoral, but they are unconcerned with humanity, aligning with Paul Draper’s Hypothesis of Indifference where he argues, “If supernatural beings do exist, then no action performed by them is motivated by a direct concern for our well-being.”38 Consequently, Draper’s argument continues, this race of ‘gods’ has “created the universe and [. . .] has no intrinsic concern about the pain or pleasure of other beings.”39 This fundamentally contradicts the book of Genesis which not only describes God’s love for the world, but also His relationship with humanity which continues to be outworked through the Christian metanarrative. Adam and Eve may have been exiled from the Paradise of Eden because of their sin, but they are not abandoned. They first witness the serpent’s punishment and are then given garments (Genesis 3: 14, 21); thus, they experience the consequences of sin themselves and witness God’s punishment regarding the serpent. By eating the fruit from the Tree of Life, humanity recognizes the concepts of good and evil, and despite being banished from the Paradise, God still protects them. Consequently, when Lovecraft describes his pantheon of Great Old Ones in terms of cosmic horror, he removes the godlike supernatural element and they become creatures of the universe. The Great Old Ones did not create the universe; they simply exist within God’s creation. Even though Derleth refocuses the direction of the Mythos, he cannot erase the details Lovecraft includes in At the Mountains of Madness, the most serious of his blasphemies: humanity was not created by God in his own image at all, but is an evolutionary product of ancient alien monstrosities, as food or as the objects of their cruel sports. Accepting Lovecraft’s creatures as cosmic horror removes the spiritual—albeit demonic—element from the stories. This also creates a separate argument concerning theodicy in that God permits such evil to exist.40 On the other hand, this may be a comfort to humanity: the cosmic horrors exist beyond our scope of understanding, but they still exist—in the same way as the Devil exists—because God allows it. There may be cosmic

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evil in the universe, but, as far as Lovecraft was concerned, it is indifferent to humanity. For Derleth, the Creator, who loves, sustains, and nurtures us, remains in control of the destiny of the universe. The fact that the Great Old Ones exist means, in the way Derleth presents the Mythos, that they are part of the Divine Plan.

THE END TIMES In Derleth’s interpretation of the Mythos, there is a cosmic balance of good and evil, and this is shown through the Elder Ones’ intervention on behalf of humanity. The fear that Cthulhu, Hastur, and their ilk will return “when the stars are right” is analogous to the Apocalypse as described in the book of Revelation. If the parallels with the Bible had been drawn in Lovecraft’s own writing while he described his pantheon as deities, then their apocalyptic return would be terrifying: the deities would remain indifferent to humanity and the biblical promise of salvation would be negated. Lovecraft does allude to what will happen when the Old Ones returned to earth, notably in “The Call of Cthulhu,” The Shadow over Innsmouth, and “The Dunwich Horror.” In this last text, Armitage describes how the Old Ones would “wipe out the human race and drag the earth off to some nameless place for some nameless purpose,”41 and the true horror, the despair he feels, is reflected in his utterances having read Wilbur Whateley’s diary: “But what, in God’s name, can we do?”42 However, as Derleth has demoted the Elder Gods to be part of God’s plan, rather than the creators themselves, then they parallel the return of Antichrist. The cults preparing for, and even facilitating, the Evil Ones’ return are seen in Revelation 13:4 as the people who worship the dragon and the beast. This verse may be considered as metaphorical, but in the context of the Cthulhu Mythos, it can be taken quite literally. Likewise, the Evil One may form a part of God’s plan by becoming the embodiment of Gog and Magog, Antichrist’s lieutenants as seen in Revelation 19:19. Whatever the case, by drawing them in as part of God’s plan, it expands the horizons of Revelation: the earth is no longer the whole focus of Judgment Day, but, if the Evil Ones were to rise again, then the fate of the earth will be the same as the rest of the whole universe. Derleth depicts the cosmic battle between the Elder Ones and the Evil Ones in one of his earliest Mythos stories, ‘The Lair of the Star-Spawn.’ In this tale, the narrator finds himself in the fabled city of Alaozar inhabited by the Tcho-Tcho, a race created by two of the Great Old Ones, Zhar and Lloigor. The Tcho-Tcho worship these creatures and attempt to facilitate their return. Dr. Fo-Lan, a scientist who was kidnapped by the Tcho-Tcho and is now their slave, tells the narrator how ‘the Ancient Ones fought these evil

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beings for possession of Earth, and after many centuries, they conquered’ with Hastur banished into space and Cthulhu trapped in the sunken city of R’lyeh.43 Fo-Lan explains he has “tried to call for help with the force of my mind [. . .] to those who alone can help in this titanic struggle. [. . .] I am suggesting that by telepathy I will summon help from those who first fought the things imprisoned below us.”44 This attempt at communication is like astral projection; however, the projection of thoughts to a being that appears divine, and asking for help in this situation—trying to prevent evil from rising—sounds very much like prayer. This invocation proves effective: Fo-Lan initially summons “hordes of strange, fiery creatures” of a “monstrous” size, carrying tube-like weapons. These “Star-Warriors,” as Fo-Lan describes them, have returned in answer to his pleas, and their destruction of the fabled and accursed city of Alaozar is akin to the annihilation of Gomorrah. The ruin of Alaozar is completed when the Ancient Ones arrive, described as “great, writhing pillars of light, moving like tremendous flames, coloured purple and white, dazzling in their intensity.” As Robert M. Price notes, such ‘pillars of light’ echo the imagery of the pillars of fire of God made manifest in the book of Exodus.45 “These gigantic beings from outer space descended swiftly, circling the Plateau of Sung, and from them great rays of stabbing light shot out toward the hidden fastnesses below.”46 With destruction of the blasphemous city complete, several media outlets report on the strange sights that have been witnessed, but inevitably describe what was an epic battle between good and evil by dismissing it as “a curious electrical display.”47 Yet, it is noteworthy this instance of an “Ancient God” appearing as a deus ex machina to save humanity from the Elder Ones does not appear in Derleth’s later writings. This said, Mullis argues that this motif may also appear in an earlier story, written in 1931 and first published in 1940 as “The Evil Ones.”48 Derleth appeared unhappy with a pantheon which consisted only of nameless entities; consequently, he added Nodens, Lord of the Abyss, to be the benevolent leader of the Ancient Ones. As Nodens is traditionally depicted as a Celtic God of healing, it is understandable why Derleth chose to include him.49 Having a named God as leader is significant: elsewhere Derleth observes, as in many cultures, the Elder Gods were not often named.50 However, by using Nodens, a named god, as leader of the pantheon for Cthulhu Mythos, he parallels the Judeo-Christian God who has the titles of Jehovah or Yahweh. Derleth uses a single, named deity to represent the focus for humanity. A named God then aligns the Ancient Ones with a monotheistic tradition, while the others, who remain unnamed, become part of a celestial hierarchy which includes Angels, Archangels, Cherubim, and Seraphim. In the case of the named Elder Gods, they represent the orders of Satan and his ilk, who, as demonstrated in the book of Enoch, can be controlled when one discerns their true name.

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Nodens appears twice in Lovecraft’s works, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and “The Strange High House in the Mist”; however, Lovecraft himself has lifted Nodens from Arthur Machen’s story “The Great God Pan.”51 In Lovecraft’s stories, Nodens appears without compassion: in The DreamQuest Lovecraft describes Nodens as their Lord, and mentions: “mindless guardians of the Great Abyss whom even the Great Ones fear, and who own not Nyarlathotep but hoary Nodens as their lord.”52 However, there is little evidence of Nodens’s benevolence. Derleth bases Nodens’s magnanimous nature on a quotation from “The Strange High House” where “hoary Nodens reached forth a wizened hand and helped Olney and his host into the vast shell.”53 In addition, in The Dream-Quest, Nodens gives a “howl of triumph” as Nyarlathotep is “baffled by a glare that seared his formless hunting-horrors to grey dust,” which allows Randolph Carter to descend to his magnificent city.54 In Lovecraft’s writings, then, Nodens does not intervene in the affairs of humanity, not even in the Dreamlands. However, in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” Lovecraft also describes the “malignant” Ancient Ones who might “pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak a wrath upon mankind.”55 It appears Derleth chose Nodens as a leader based on the description of him as Lord and a benign force which could be the focus of prayer and supplication instead of having the Ancient Ones as a mass of nameless entities. “The Seal of R’lyeh” (1962) provides one of the most comprehensive discussions of the Mythos surrounding the Ancient Ones and the Elder Gods as Derleth imagined it, and it also provides an opportunity for him to align this mythology with his beliefs. The narrator of this story, Phillips, reading through a book of newspaper and magazine clippings found in his uncle’s library, discovers this revised pantheon’s ancient mythology and draws a parallel between the cosmic theology and what he terms as “Christian Mythos.” Phillips reads “All religious belief, all myth-patterns, no matter what systems of culture, are basically familiar—they are predicated upon a struggle between forces of good and forces of evil,” thus assuming the Great Old Ones are inherently a force of “primal good” and the Ancient Ones “primal evil.” Phillips also understands the battle between good and evil forces is as prevalent in their natures as it is within humanity: the Ancient Gods rebelled against the Elder Gods, and most were banished accordingly, although Cthulhu is imprisoned at R’lyeh, not expelled. Notably, it is Derleth alone who makes this distinction as to Cthulhu’s fate: having Cthulhu expelled would align the imagery with the Fall of Satan. Phillips discovers that the Elder Gods now fight among themselves “in a ceaseless struggle for ultimate domination.”56 However, he then reads that the parallels are closer than he thought: “The Elder Gods could so easily have become the Christian trinity: the Ancient Ones could for most believers have been altered down to Sathanus and Beelzebub, Mephistopheles and Azariel. Except that they

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were co-existent, which disturbed me, though I knew that systems of belief constantly overlapped in the history of mankind.”57 Unfortunately, this is as much information as Derleth imparts. Despite the easy correlation with the Ancient Ones as demonic and devilish entities, he does not elaborate on how these gods align with the Holy Trinity. In “The Shadow out of Space,” however, Derleth describes the “Great Race” who had also existed on earth and had occupied earth and other planets “billions of years before recorded history” and who become involved in the Elder Gods and the Ancient Ones. Humanity’s race memories of this elemental battle accounted for the parallel with Christian Mythos.58 From this, he concludes the Cthulhu Mythos is similar in many ways to the War in Heaven described in Revelation 12: 7–10, but the Cthulhu Mythos is significantly older than what Derleth terms as the “Christian Mythos” and it still survives in cults that live in remote areas in the world.59

THE ELEMENTAL GODS Derleth’s other major addition to the Mythos was to subdivide the Elder Gods and align them according to the principal elements—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Derleth names Cthulhu as one of the Water Beings, Nyarlathotep as one of the Earth Beings, and Hastur banished to the bottom of the Lake of Hali, in outer space “where the black stars hang.”60 While this was a highly controversial decision on Derleth’s part, primarily because there is no such correlation in Lovecraft’s works, Haefele notes this idea originated with Algernon Blackwood, who discusses elementals in stories such as “The Nemesis of Fire.”61 However, even though Derleth aligned his cosmic horrors with the elements, there was nothing initially that corresponded with the element of fire. This absence from the expanding Mythos was pointed out by Francis Towner Laney, the editor of The Acolyte magazine, so Derleth retrospectively invented Cthugha, who first appears in “The Dweller in the Darkness” (1944), to cover an element he argued that Lovecraft had ‘failed’ to include.62 However, Schultz argues that Lovecraft did not ‘fail’ in this respect; he had kept his descriptions of the Mythos suitably vague: “Lovecraft never intended for there to be such entities.”63 Thus, with this addition, and because each of his stories was written to be read independently, Derleth recapitulates that each member of the pantheon of the Elder Gods is aligned with elementals. That said, Haefele suggests this is nothing to do with their cosmic nature and “Derleth’s elementals [are . . .] beings or forces already present in or on our world, which wound up eons ago under the sway of more powerful alien gods.”64 In “The Seal of R’lyeh” he describes how “each had its element—Cthulhu of water, Cthugha of fire, Ithaqua of air, Hastur of

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interplanetary spaces; and others among them belonged to great primal forces . . . in a sense the fountainhead of evil.”65 Derleth’s alignment of the pantheon with the elements was challenged by Tierney who highlighted the way that Derleth’s ideas contradicted those of Lovecraft by making Cthulhu and his minions water beings, whereas “The Call of Cthulhu” has them coming down from space and building their cities on land; only later are their cities submerged by geological upheavals, and this is a catastrophe which immobilizes the Cthulhu spawn. Hastur is portrayed as an “air elemental,” while at the same time Derleth implies that he lives on the bottom of the lake of Hali. Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep, probably the two most purely cosmic of all Lovecraftian entities, are squeezed into the “earth” category; while, finally, he invents the fire elemental, Cthugha, to round out his menagerie of elementals.66

The inclusion of Cthugha ensures that each of the elements is represented; however, critics such as Dirk W. Mosig have argued that Cthulhu should not be classed as a water elemental as he is imprisoned in the sunken city of R’lyeh.67 In addition, there is no clear reason why Nyarlathotep, the “crawling chaos,” should be classed as being aligned with earth, unless it is a reference to The Rats in the Walls which describes “grinning caverns of earth’s centre where Nyarlathotep, the mad faceless god, howls blindly to the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players.”68 Even so, Derleth is eager to overlay a blanket of his beliefs across Lovecraft’s vague pantheon, and the elements, while bringing some order to the chaos of Lovecraft’s ideas, also link directly with the suggestion that there are parallels between the alien cosmology and the book of Genesis. The first image in Genesis: Chapter 1, verse 1 explains that God created the Heavens and the earth; verse 2, God created light, or fire; verse 3 God created a vault between the waters, called ‘sky’ or air, and in verse 4, the water is gathered in one place, as seas. In addition, where the elements are vital for the creation of the earth, they also endure until the end days. Peter’s Second Epistle describes how “the heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare” (2 Peter 3:10). By describing the Ancient Ones as beings created from the same elemental matter that the Bible describes God using to create the world and humanity, Derleth is suggesting they too are a product of the Divine Creation and, despite their chaotic nature and the destruction they may bring to humanity, they are still subject to God’s will because they are a part of His plan. This is what Derleth has been trying to highlight through the expanding of Lovecraft’s pantheon and its alignment with Christian imagery. However, by

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aligning the Cthulhu Mythos with Judeo-Christian mythology, it becomes more familiar, and in so doing, the Mythos’s chaotic and sinister setting is diluted as it becomes more structured and commonplace and consequently loses some of its powerful effect.

CONCLUSION August Derleth will always be a controversial figure in terms of his ‘contribution’ to H. P. Lovecraft’s work. On the one hand, he ensured Lovecraft’s stories were not confined to the archives of obscurity, to be lost among others of his contemporaries who were also published in the ‘pulp’ magazines. On the other hand, by controlling who could write for the stage Lovecraft had created and by remodeling Lovecraft’s atheistic nihilism and replacing it with imagery that was closer to his Catholic faith, Derleth took the Mythos in a direction Lovecraft may not necessarily have approved. Lovecraft’s stories gradually reveal the nature of the gods as cosmic entities who had once lived on the earth; these horrible beings eventually created mankind as slaves, entertainment, and food, but at the same time they were indifferent to humanity. It was never meant to be a fully formed pantheon, but a backdrop against which he and his correspondents could write. However, in his own stories, Derleth reenvisioned Lovecraft’s pantheon by laying his personal beliefs over Lovecraft’s ideas. Derleth moved away from the nihilism and divided the cosmic entities into Ancient Ones and Elder Gods, representing forces of good and evil, with the Ancient Ones as protectors of humanity. Derleth also aligned the Elder Ones with the four elements of earth, air, fire and water, which are at the foundation of Judeo-Christian mythology. This alignment with the elements and the mythology suggested that the cosmic deities and humanity were all a part of God’s plan, linking them with both Genesis and Revelation, and partially obscured Lovecraft’s suggestion that humanity was created by the Great Old Ones. August Derleth will always have his supporters and his critics; without Derleth, Lovecraft’s works may well have suffered the fate of many other pulp writers and his works would not have received the recognition they now enjoy. However, in doing so, he replaces Lovecraft’s pantheon with his own interpretation of how the works should have developed. Derleth takes the vision away from the desolation pervading Lovecraft’s Mythos and replaces it with his own message of hope; there may be an ancient and cosmic threat, but humanity also has its defenders, whose Mythos resembles a familiar message from Judeo-Christian mythology, and these defenders will return to protect humanity. However, by making this alignment, he loses some of the mystique surrounding the Old Ones and the Ancient Ones and, by making

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these elements more familiar, as a consequence the Mythos loses much of its effect. In addition, although we can never know the plans Lovecraft had for his chaotic pantheon, we can be certain he would have preferred that the descriptions remained vague and maintained the sinister and cosmic nature of his Mythos, so that his readers would continue to shudder at the cryptic references to it.

NOTES 1. David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi, Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth: 1926–1931 (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2013), 27. 2. David E. Schultz, “Who Needs the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’?” Lovecraft Studies 13 vol. 5, no. 2 (Fall 1986): 43–53, 44–45. 3. Cited in S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 187. 4. Justin Mullis, “The Lurker at the Threshold of Interpretation: August Derleth and the Debate over Lovecraftian Dualism,” 97–117 in Austin M. Freeman (ed.), Theology and H.P. Lovecraft (Washington, DC: Lexington Books, 2022), 101–105. 5. S.T. Joshi, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1996), 641. 6. August Derleth, The Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1997), 112. 7. John D. Haefele, A Look behind the Derleth Mythos (Cimmerian Press, 2014), 15. 8. S.T. Joshi, “Review of John D. Haefele: A Look behind the Derleth Mythos,” accessed November 13, 2020. http://stjoshi​.org​/review​_haefele​.html. 9. Richard L. Tierney, “The Derleth Mythos,” 52–53 in Darrell Schweitzer (ed.), Discovering H.P. Lovecraft (San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 2001), 52. 10. S.T. Joshi, “The Cthulhu Mythos,” 97–128 in S.T. Joshi (ed.), Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 99. 11. Schultz and Joshi, Essential Solitude, 70. 12. Schultz and Joshi, Essential Solitude, 12. 13. Van Leavenworth, “The Developing Storyworld of H. P. Lovecraft.” 332–50 in Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan Noel Thon (eds.), Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2014), 335. 14. H.P. Lovecraft, “Letter from Lovecraft to Farnsworth Wright, 5 July 1927,” in August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (eds.), H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters II, 1925–1929 (Sauk City: Arkham House, 1968), 150. 15. H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Chartwell Books, 2016), 830. 16. Schultz and Joshi, Essential Solitude, 337.

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17. Ramsey Campbell, “Introduction,” 9–11 in Ramsey Campbell (ed.), New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (London: Grafton, 1988). 18. S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 187. 19. Joshi and Schultz, Encyclopedia, 336; Robert M. Price, “The Mythology of Hastur,” i–xi in Robert M. Price (ed.), The Hastur Cycle (Oakland, CA: Chaosium, 1993), i. 20. Tierney, 52. 21. Schultz and Joshi, Essential Solitude, 155. 22. Robert M. Price, “Lovecraft’s Concept of Blasphemy,” Crypt of Cthulhu 1 (1981): 3–15, 11. 23. John D. Haefele, A Look behind the Derleth Mythos (Cimmerian Press, 2014) 20. 24. Campbell, xi. 25. Alison M. Wilson, August Derleth: A Bibliography (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1983), xix. 26. Campbell, xi. 27. Haefele, 338. 28. “August Derleth (1909–1971): Biography,” accessed November 13, 2020. http://www​.catholicauthors​.com​/derleth​.html. 29. August Derleth and Mark Schorer, “The Lair of the Star-Spawn,” Magazine of Horror 3, no. 2 (Winter 1966): 2–28, 16. 30. Derleth and Schorer, 16. 31. Derleth and Schorer, 18. 32. Derleth, Cthulhu Mythos, 121. 33. Cited in Campbell, xi. 34. Campbell, xi. 35. H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, The Watchers out of Time (New York: Ballantine Books, 2008), 103. 36. Haefele, 340. 37. August Derleth “A Note on the Cthulhu Mythos,” 253–56 in The Trail of Cthulhu (London: Grafton, 1988), 253; Schultz 1986, 47. 38. Paul Draper, “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists,” Noûs 23, no. 3 (1989): 331–50, 332. 39. Draper, 347. 40. Draper, 340. 41. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 712. 42. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 701. 43. Derleth and Schorer, 18. 44. Derleth and Schorer, 19. 45. Price, “Myth-Maker,” 17; Exodus 13: 21–22. 46. Derleth and Schorer, 27. 47. Derleth and Schorer, 27. 48. Mullis, 102n26.

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49. James MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 306. 50. Derleth, 1997, 241. 51. Derleth, Cthulhu Mythos, 446. 52. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 495. 53. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 425. 54. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 525. 55. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 968. 56. Derleth, Cthulhu Mythos, 241. 57. Derleth, Cthulhu Mythos, 241. 58. Lovecraft and Derleth, 103. 59. Derleth, Cthulhu Mythos, 241. 60. Derleth, Cthulhu Mythos, 122. 61. Haefele, 329. 62. Cited in Schultz, “Who Needs the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’?”, 49; Haefele, 138. 63. Schultz, “Who Needs the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’?”, 46. 64. Haefele, 331. 65. Derleth, Cthulhu Mythos, 241. 66. Tierney, 53. 67. Dirk W. Mosig “H. P. Lovecraft: Myth-Maker,” 104–12 in S.T. Joshi (ed.), H.P. Lovecraft Four Decades of Criticism (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1980), 108. 68. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 272.

BIBLIOGRAPHY “August Derleth (1909–1971): Biography.” Accessed November 13, 2020. http:// www​.catholicauthors​.com​/derleth​.html. Campbell, Ramsey. “Introduction.” In New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by Ramsey Campbell, 9–11. London: Grafton, 1988. Derleth, August. “A Note on the Cthulhu Mythos.” In The Trail of Cthulhu, 253–256. London: Grafton, 1988. ———. The Cthulhu Mythos. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1997. ———. “The Pacer.” Magazine of Horror 1, no. 6. (November 1964): 81–92. Derleth, August, and Mark Schorer. “The Lair of the Star-Spawn.” Magazine of Horror 3, no. 2 (Winter 1966): 2–28. Draper, Paul. “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists.” Noûs 23, no. 3 (1989): 331–350. Haefele, John D. A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos. Odense: The Cimmerian Press, 2014. Joshi, S. T. Lovecraft: A Life. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1996. ———. “Review of John D. Haefele: A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos.” Accessed November 13, 2020. http://stjoshi​.org​/review​_haefele​.html.

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———. “The Cthulhu Mythos.” In Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares, edited by S. T. Joshi, 97–128. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Joshi, S. T., and David E. Schultz. An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Leavenworth, Van. “The Developing Storyworld of H. P. Lovecraft.” In Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology, edited by Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan Noel Thon, 332–350. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2014. Long, Frank Belknap. “The Space-Eaters.” Weird Tales 12, no. 1 (July 1928): 49–68. Lovecraft, H. P. “Letter From Lovecraft to Farnsworth Wright, 5 July 1927.” In H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters II, 1925–1929, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1968. ———. The Complete Fiction of H. P, Lovecraft. New York: Chartwell Books, 2016. Lovecraft, H. P., and August Derleth. The Watchers Out of Time. New York: Ballantine Books, 2008. MacKillop, James. Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Mosig, Dirk W. “H. P. Lovecraft: Myth-Maker.” In H.P. Lovecraft Four Decades of Criticism, edited by S. T. Joshi, 104–112. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1980. Mullis, Justin. “The Lurker at the Threshold of Interpretation: August Derleth and the Debate Over Lovecraftian Dualism.” 97–112 in Theology and H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Austin Freeman, 92 and 95. Washington, DC: Lexington Books. Price, Robert M. “‘August Derleth: Myth-Maker’. Lovecraft’s Concept of Blasphemy.” The Crypt of Cthulhu 1, no. 6 (1982): 17–18. ———. “Lovecraft’s Concept of Blasphemy.” Crypt of Cthulhu 1 (1981): 3–15. ———. “The Mythology of Hastur.” In The Hastur Cycle, edited by Robert M. Price, I–XI. Oakland, CA: Chaosium, 1993. Schultz, David E. “Who Needs the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’?” Lovecraft Studies 13 5, no. 2 (Fall 1986): 43–53. Schultz, David E., and S. T. Joshi, eds. Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth: 1926–1931. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2013. Tierney, Richard L. “The Derleth Mythos.” In Discovering H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, 52–53. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 2001. Wilson, Alison M. “August Derleth: A Bibliography.” In The Scarecrow Author Biographies, No. 59. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1983.

Chapter 6

The Lurker at the Threshold of Interpretation August Derleth and the Debate Over Lovecraftian Dualism Justin Mullis

Wisconsin-based writer August W. Derleth was born in Sauk City on February 24, 1909.1 From an early age Derleth showed a propensity toward supernatural fiction and sold his first short story, “Bat’s Belfry,” to the May 1926 issue of Weird Tales magazine which was at that time the primary venue for the fiction of Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard, Californiabased poet Clark Ashton Smith, and cosmic horror author H. P. Lovecraft. Shortly after the publication of his debut short story, Derleth reached out to Lovecraft inquiring where he might obtain a certain rare book which the Providence writer had mentioned in a Weird Tales letter column. Lovecraft replied to Derleth’s inquiry and soon the two men were regularly exchanging multiple missives every month on a variety of topics, as well as manuscripts of in-progress stories, looking for feedback from each other on their respective work.2 Lovecraft, a prodigious letter writer, penned nearly 400 letters to Derleth: more than any other correspondent who was not a biological relative. Eventually Lovecraft came to regard the younger Derleth as a protégée of great potential, while Derleth likewise came to consider Lovecraft his literary mentor (as reflected in his 1959 essay, “Some notes on H.P. Lovecraft”).3 When H. P. Lovecraft died unexpectedly on March 15, 1937, at the age of forty-six, Derleth was deeply affected. Upon learning that Lovecraft had no legally binding will to ensure the posterity of his work, Derleth mortgaged his home and, along with Lovecraft’s friend Donald Wandrei, founded the publishing firm Arkham House in order to ensure that his late colleague’s work stayed in print.4 However, despite Derleth’s crusade to keep Lovecraft’s writings from slipping into obscurity, the majority of prominent scholars dealing 97

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with Lovecraft have tended to regard Derleth as a heretical figure: the Judas of Lovecraft’s disciples. This negative assessment of Derleth among those involved in Lovecraft scholarship began the year after the Wisconsin writer’s death in 1971 when author Richard L. Tierney penned his essay “The Derleth Mythos,” in which he accused Derleth of Christianizing what he considered to be Lovecraft’s otherwise ostensibly atheistic mythology.5 In the ensuing decades the majority of prominent Lovecraft scholars found cause to echo Tierney’s sentiments in subsequent essays such as Dirk W. Mosig’s “H.P. Lovecraft: Myth-Maker” (1976) and David E. Schultz’s “Who Needs the Cthulhu Mythos?” (1986). The most sustained and detailed repudiation of Derleth, however, is S. T. Joshi’s comprehensive study The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos (2008). Of notable Lovecraft scholars only Robert M. Price has been willing to read Derleth charitably and defend his interpretation of Lovecraft’s work via a spattering of articles published in his own Crypt of Cthulhu journal and later collected in the book H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos (1990); though even Price still concludes that Derleth ultimately “polluted” Lovecraft’s vision.6 This disparaging assessment of Derleth has subsequently seeped into Lovecraft fandom so that many fans tend to treat Derleth’s name as if it were a four-letter word.7 Any attempt to address all of Derleth’s alleged sins with regard to Lovecraft would constitute a book itself, which is exactly what John D. Haefele has done in his A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos (first pub. 2012, rev. 2014). Coming in at just over 500 pages, this spirited defense of Derleth is primarily a refutation of Joshi’s claims about Derleth as presented in The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos. However, Haefele’s book has received mixed reviews, perhaps best summed up by W. Scott Poole, who writes that while its underlying thesis has merit, its lack of scholarly rigor and propensity to resort to ad hominem attacks on Joshi damages its standing as an academic work.8 Furthermore it’s not clear to me that all of Derleth’s alleged transgressions should be defended. Some seem undeniable, at least in their tackiness, such as his decision to compose various “posthumous collaborations,” like the novel The Lurker at the Threshold (1945), based on notes left behind by Lovecraft but then sold with only the late author’s name on the byline.9 However, lest Haefele’s book be dismissed entirely, it should be noted that his arguments were substantive enough to prompt Joshi to revise his 2008 study as The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (2015) in order to address them.10 Chief among Derleth’s purported Lovecraftian heresies, and the one I am interested in here, is Tierney’s original charge that Derleth knowingly distorted Lovecraft’s fundamentally indifferent fictional universe by presenting it instead as a Christian-style dualistic system in which beneficent Elder Gods are pitted against sinister rival deities identified with Lovecraft’s Great

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Old Ones. It is this dualistic interpretation of Lovecraft’s stories that Derleth repeatedly puts forth in the forwards he penned for numerous collections of his mentor’s work as well as in his own Lovecraftian pastiches.11 Such an interpretation runs counter to the “cosmic” understanding of Lovecraft’s fiction which since the 1970s has become the orthodox interpretation among prominent Lovecraft scholars. These scholars cite as the basis of this interpretation a July 5, 1927, letter by Lovecraft to Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright in which he explains that his story “The Call of Cthulhu” is based “on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-atlarge.” Wright had previously rejected “Cthulhu” for publication, claiming the story was overly philosophical, prompting Lovecraft to offer up an explanation regarding his endeavor to write a story set in an amoral and unsympathetic universe. As Lovecraft himself put it: “To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.”12 This worldview does, in fact, reflect Lovecraft’s own as evidenced by numerous letters he penned to various correspondents in which he outlines and argues for not merely atheism but a conviction that since the universe is utterly indifferent to humankind that the most logical position a person can adopt is likewise one of indifference.13 When interpreted this way, the impression one gets is that Lovecraft’s extraterrestrial gods and their cults, despite their desire to wipe humanity off the planet, are not really evil, but merely unsympathetic to humankind’s existence, thus reflecting Lovecraft’s own conception of the universe. As a result of this new Lovecraftian orthodoxy, Derleth’s dualistic interpretation of Lovecraft’s fictions has become a heresy for most prominent Lovecraft scholars (like Joshi and Schultz) leaving those with dissenting voices (like Price and Haefele) in the minority. That being said, this negative assessment of Derleth’s relationship to Lovecraft’s work should not be taken as criticism of Derleth as a creative. Even S. T. Joshi, despite his many harsh words regarding Derleth, has acknowledged the Wisconsin writer’s importance in the history of American horror as indicated by his inclusion of Derleth’s short story “The Lonesome Place” (1948) in his 2007 Penguin anthology American Supernatural Tales. Rather as Lovecraft scholar Daniel Harms writes, the issue with Derleth was that while “a good editor and a great author,” he was bad about respecting the “boundaries of a body of work” and often treated the work of other authors, including Lovecraft, as his own.14 The goal of this chapter, then, is not necessarily to dissent from the scholarly consensus regarding Derleth’s as a writer, or his relationship to Lovecraft’s

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work as an editor, but rather to argue for a third point of view which seeks to situate Derleth between the roles of saint and heretic. I will argue that not only is Derleth not guilty of breaching any boundaries with regard to his treatment of Lovecraft’s fiction, but that in treating Lovecraft’s imagined universe as if it were his own, Derleth was actually following Lovecraft’s own directive. More to the point, it is my contention that Derleth’s dualistic vision is not in direct conflict with Lovecraft’s own—and certainly not worthy of the label of heresy.

DID DERLETH MANUFACTURE THE MYTHOS? When Lovecraft began developing his mythology in 1926, Derleth responded enthusiastically recognizing it as something unique in the making. It might even be said that Derleth was the first fan of what today is called the Cthulhu Mythos. It is an accepted fact that Lovecraft did not originate the title “Cthulhu Mythos” but rather that it was coined by Derleth after Lovecraft’s death, though Derleth was not always transparent about this reality.15 As a result, some scholars have argued that the term Cthulhu Mythos as a catchall for Lovecraft’s fiction should be abandoned since it reflects Derleth’s heretical conception of Lovecraft’s work. However, despite such uninspiring suggestions for new designations as the “Lovecraft Mythos,” as well as attempts to rechristen Derleth’s work as the “Derleth Mythos,” nothing has succeeded in usurping the Cthulhu Mythos in terms of brand recognition. In fact, while it is true that Lovecraft never settled on a singular all-encompassing term for his fictional milieu it is also not quite accurate to claim that he had no input concerning the formulation of the phrase the Cthulhu Mythos. In a spattering of letters written between 1927 and 1934 Lovecraft refers to several of his stories as belonging to an “Arkham Cycle” while in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, dated November 11, 1930, Lovecraft references his “Miskatonic Valley myth-cycle.” Both of these titles refer to topographical locales frequently employed by Lovecraft as settings for his stories.16 However, in an even earlier letter to Robert E. Howard, dated August 14, 1930, Lovecraft writes of “the solemnly cited myth-cycle of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, R’lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Nug, Yeb, Shub-Niggurath, etc., etc.”17 With the exception of R’lyeh (which is a place) this list refers to most of the major and minor gods in Lovecraft’s work indicating that he was keeping track of who’s who in his invented pantheon. Likewise in a story he had been working on that same year, “The Whisperer in Darkness” (written February–September 1930, pub. August 1931), Lovecraft again mentions “the Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu cycles.”18 These references show that Lovecraft had shifted to identifying his synthetic mythology via its invented

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gods rather than its fictional locales. Another pair of terms used by Lovecraft to refer to his work was “Cthulhuism” and “Yog-Sothothery,” the latter of which appears in a February 27, 1931, letter to friend and aspiring writer Frank Belknap Long and again in a letter from that same year dated May 16 addressed to Derleth. This later epistle of Lovecraft’s was in response to one, which does not survive, in which Derleth apparently had proposed to Lovecraft that he group his artificial mythology under the heading of “The Mythology of Hastur” after one of the gods mentioned in passing in “The Whisperer in Darkness.” It is worth pointing out that Hastur was not original to Lovecraft but had been appropriated from the work of author Robert W. Chambers, who in turn had gotten the name from writer Ambrose Bierce. Though Lovecraft felt that Derleth’s suggested designation was “not a bad idea,” he ultimately politely dismisses it, noting that his fiction really owed more to the horror stories of Welsh writer Arthur Machen and the fantasies of the Anglo-Irish Lord Dunsany than that of Bierce and Chambers.19 As a result of this explanation, Derleth dropped the suggestion. However, in two subsequent letters to Lovecraft, dated July 3 and July 17, 1933, respectively, Derleth employs the new sobriquet of “the Cthulhu mythology” and “the mythology of Cthulhu” to which Lovecraft raises no objection. Most interestingly, however, Derleth also uses this new phrase in a manner which suggests a communal property rather than something inherently belonging to Lovecraft alone.20 These two instances can be seen as Derleth’s earliest formulations of what would eventually become his ultimate nomenclature for Lovecraft’s mythology: the Cthulhu Mythos. This testifies to the fact that while Lovecraft may never have had a consistent or systematic understanding of his own mythology, he nevertheless did have a categorical conception of the fictional world he was creating, denoted by a variety of different names with a propensity toward those which identified this mythology via its gods, such as Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu. Derleth’s “Cthulhu Mythos” is thus a perfectly applicable term. DID DERLETH STEAL LOVECRAFT’S WORK? In the September 1925 issue of Weird Tales, Frank Belknap Long’s short story “The Were-Snake” appeared, containing a fleeting reference to “the mad Arab Alhazred”; a creation of Lovecraft’s having originally appeared in the short story “The Nameless City” (November 1921). This story is thus the first example of a Cthulhu Mythos tale by an author besides Lovecraft.21 Soon, more of Lovecraft’s informal network of friends and colleagues— designated the Lovecraft Circle by scholars—would follow suit in penning

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their own stories linked to Lovecraft’s emerging mythology. In each and every instance such contributions were always made with Lovecraft’s express consent and repaid via Lovecraft’s adoption of some of their original elements. For example, in Long’s following short story, “The Space Eaters,” the Elizabethan astrologer John Dee is stated to have owned a translation of Lovecraft’s fictional grimoire the Necronomicon—an idea which Lovecraft then incorporated into his story “The Dunwich Horror” (1929).22 However, some Lovecraft scholars, such as Joshi and Schultz, have nevertheless stated that, “It is an exaggeration to say that HPL ‘encouraged’ these imitations or elaborations of his myth-cycle; in most cases, the writers simply made additions of their own accord, and HPL (usually out of courtesy) praised the results.”23 Yet, in spite of Joshi and Schultz’s assertion, I can find no example of a writer in Lovecraft’s lifetime, including Derleth, writing a Mythos story without first getting Lovecraft’s approval. Furthermore, “encouraging” is exactly what we find Lovecraft doing on multiple occasions. One example, involving Derleth, occurs in the same May 16 letter previously cited in which Derleth first proposed his “Mythology of Hastur” designation for Lovecraft’s tales. Just a few lines down from this, Lovecraft remarks, “I feel flattered by your adoption of some of this background. Robert E. Howard is doing it, too. In making your allusions don’t forget Klarkash-Ton’s accursed & amorphous Tsathoggua, whom I have adopted into our malignly leering family pantheon!”24 Here we not only have Lovecraft saying he is “flattered” by Derleth’s “adoption” of the Mythos but also quickly pointing out that Derleth need not feel timid about it because Conan creator Howard is also participating. Lovecraft then goes on to not only encourage Derleth to make use of the elements from his literary mythology but also authorizes the appropriation of elements originating from Clark Ashton Smith (referred to here as “KlarkashTon”) such as the toad-god Tsathoggua.25 More to the point, the use of the terms “our” and “family” in reference to the pantheon of imagined gods being employed by the Lovecraft Circle clearly suggests that Lovecraft considers this invented mythology to now belong to a community of writers, Derleth included, rather than himself alone. However, not all were aware of Lovecraft’s position on this matter. In early 1931, August Derleth coauthored a Mythos story with writer Mark Schorer originally titled “The Horror from the Lake” in which a spawn of Cthulhu is brought back to the Chicago Field Museum only to break out and wreak havoc on the waterfront.26 Derleth submitted this story to Weird Tales only to have Farnsworth Wright reject it on the grounds that its overt use of Lovecraft’s Mythos ran tantamount to plagiarism. In a July 13, 1931, letter to Derleth, Wright says:

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But a more serious objection to this story is the fact that you have lifted whole phrases from Lovecraft’s works, as for instance “the frightful Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred,” “the sunken kingdom of R’lyeh,” “the accursed spawn of Cthulhu,” “the frozen and shunned Plateau of Leng,” etc. Also you have taken the legends of Cthulhu and the Ancient Ones directly out of Lovecraft. This is unfair to Lovecraft. Robert Louis Stevenson once said that in the days of his apprenticeship to the writing craft he “had played the sedulous ape” to different authors in turn. But you have not merely aped Lovecraft in this story—you have even lifted his wording. My admiration for Lovecraft’s writing amounts almost to idolatry, and I cannot allow such imitations in Weird Tales. It is all right to use the legends as Howard and Smith have used them—as mere allusion to them; but your usage oversteps the bounds of propriety.27

While Wright had no issue with how Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith were using Lovecraft’s Mythos—making “mere allusions to them”— he objects to Derleth’s more overt “imitation.” Derleth transcribed Wright’s rejection letter and forwarded it to Lovecraft for his take. At the time Lovecraft was nursing the wound of having his novella At the Mountains of Madness also recently rejected by Wright. Lovecraft wrote back to Derleth on August 3, 1931, to say: As for Wright’s rejections, as so interestingly transcribed in your letter it almost nullifies the sting of his latest rejection to see his irrational & inattentive capriciousness so amusing revealed on a large scale! Of all Boeotian blundering & irrelevancy and what pointless censor of the introduction of Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth—as if their use constituted any infringement on my stuff! Hades! The more these synthetic daemons are mutually written up by different authors the better they become as general background-material. I like to have others use my Azathoths & Nyarlathoteps—& in return I shall use Klarkash-Ton’s Tsathoggua, your monk Clithanus, & Howard’s Bran. Indeed, I shall tell Wright of my attitude when next I write him. You have not used the “Elder Ones” any more specifically than Smith uses them in “The Holiness of Azedarac” (where he speaks of “Iog-Sotot” etc. . . .)—which Wright has taken. As for phrasing—Hell! can’t the fool see that certain set expressions like “The frightful Nec. Of the mad Arab A.A.” are definitely crystallized phrases equivalent to single words or names? The fellow seems to have absolutely no flexibility or sense of proportions in his judgments—everything is measured literally & pedantically. And his “idolatry” of one whose stuff he repeatedly rejects is surely a damn peculiar species.28

Clearly Wright’s concerns regarding Derleth’s impropriety with regard to Lovecraft’s Mythos were not shared by Lovecraft, who not only makes no objection to Derleth’s use of the Mythos but again overtly encourages it,

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while continuing to promote the lifting of other writer’s mythology—Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard’s in particular—and promising to use Derleth’s ideas in return. Joshi, who has looked at this letter, places extra emphasis on Lovecraft’s use of the phrase “background-material” with regard to the Mythos, saying that where Derleth erred was by moving these elements to the foreground.29 This is virtually the same objection made by Wright, which Lovecraft himself rejected. There is nothing in Lovecraft’s own words to suggest he felt that the Mythos elements in his stories or those of others belonged exclusively in the background of a work. Even Joshi in his recent The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos has acknowledged that in a story like Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” the figure of Cthulhu is front and center. Likewise, Schultz has claimed that Derleth was the only one of Lovecraft’s friends to ever try and contribute a Mythos story: “[Derleth] misunderstood how other writers played this literary game: he kept saying that Clark Ashton Smith ‘contributed’ to the Mythos, that Frank Belknap Long ‘contributed’ to the Mythos. That’s not true.”30 However an April 13, 1937, letter written by Clark Ashton Smith to Derleth contradicts Schultz’s claim and supports Derleth’s. Here, Smith claims, “Tsathoggua, Eibon and The Book of Eibon are, however, my own contributions to the Mythos of the Old Ones and their world.”31 Following this Smith proceeds to list his eight Mythos stories identifying them by both his own contributions as well as those featuring elements originally created by Lovecraft, closing his letter to Derleth by stating that “this summary seems to exhaust my own use of the mythology to date.”32 In the same letter Smith also points out to Derleth that Frank Belknap Long intentionally developed the elephantine god Chaugnar Faugn—originally appearing in Long’s novella The Horror from the Hills (1931)—as an addition to Lovecraft’s Mythos as well. In fact, Smith is actually underselling this point as Long’s novella was in truth an expansion of a dream which Lovecraft had had and then relayed to several correspondents in letters.33 Posthumously titled “The Very Old Folks,” Lovecraft originally intended to develop the episode into a full story but never got around to, eventually giving Long permission to make use of it.34 But perhaps the best summation of Lovecraft’s attitude regarding the Mythos can be found in a May 31, 1935, letter to aspiring sci-fi writer Emil Petaja, in which Lovecraft addressed Petaja’s concern that Lovecraft has been ripped off by writer Hazel Heald whose stories contained numerous Mythos elements. Lovecraft explains to Petaja that he had in fact ghostwritten those stories for Heald before adding I put in all that artificial mythology myself—since Smith & Howard & I like to have our synthetic demons popularized by wide use. Such use tends to give them

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a convincing air of actual mythological standing. I’ve also put Yog-Sothoth & Tsathoggua in yarns ghost-written for Adolphe de Castro & have encouraged other writers (Derleth, Long, Bloch, Wandrei, &c.) to use them. Smith constantly mentions my gods & I constantly mention his.35

Here we find a perfect encapsulation of Lovecraft’s philosophy concerning the developing Cthulhu Mythos which he identifies as belonging equally to Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and himself. In order to extend the apparent legitimacy of their mythology, Lovecraft inserts references, mainly the names of various extraterrestrial gods and hoary grimoires, into stories he has ghostwritten for others while simultaneously encouraging younger aspiring writers—such as Derleth—“to use them” in their own tales. In this way eagle-eyed readers of Weird Tales magazine would (and did) get the impression that Lovecraft, Smith, and Howard, as well as other subsequent writers like Derleth, were referencing a genuine mythology independent of any one author.36

DID DERLETH CONTRADICT LOVECRAFT’S VISION? In the late summer of 1931, August Derleth coauthored another Mythos story with Mark Schorer titled “The Statement of Eric Marsh” in which the titular protagonist journeys to Burma where he runs afoul of a subhuman tribe called Tcho-Tcho that capture him and attempt to sacrifice him to the Great Old Ones Lloigor and Zhar. Fortunately our hero is spared when celestial beings of light alternately referred to as “Ancient Ones,” “Star-Warriors,” and “Elder Gods” arrive and vanquish the offending alien gods.37 Derleth submitted “Statement” to Weird Tales only to have Wright also reject it, though notably not on the grounds of plagiarism. Derleth, convinced the story was “rotten,” forwarded it to Lovecraft on August 21, 1931, looking for feedback. Lovecraft replied on August 26 saying: “‘Eric Marsh’ is great—do you really mean to tell me seriously that that ass Wright rejected it? Good god! What in hades can he pretend to himself that his standards of judgment is?”38 Again Lovecraft rebukes Wright for rejecting a story by Derleth but this time gives Derleth some pointers on how he might improve it, mostly with regard to spelling and grammar but also suggesting that Derleth change the title to either “The City of Elder Evil” or “The Lair of the Star-Spawn.” Overall Lovecraft praises the story as “a really notable piece of work with a genuine kick to it” and comments that he will use Derleth’s Tcho-Tcho people in “some later story” of his own, which he did, in both “The Horror in the Museum” (1933), ghostwritten for the aforementioned Hazel Heald, as well as his own The Shadow out of Time (1936).39

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Derleth also took Lovecraft’s advice and in an August 31 letter reported that he had revised the story including changing the title to the suggested “The Lair of the Star-Spawn,” but was nevertheless still reluctant to resubmit it to Wright. Lovecraft continues to encourage Derleth to resubmit the story in a September 2 letter and Derleth eventually does as conveyed in an October 26 letter to Lovecraft. Lovecraft writes back on October 30 to tell Derleth he will “urge the acceptance of ‘Star-Spawn’ the next time I have occasion to drop a line to [Wright].”40 As with Lovecraft’s own “The Call of Cthulhu,” Wright did accept “The Lair of the Star-Spawn” upon its resubmission and published the story in the August 1932 issue of Weird Tales. “Star-Spawn” is significant because it is the first published story in which Derleth’s benevolent “Elder Gods” appear.41 It is important to note that Lovecraft in reading and critiquing the story didn’t have anything to say about these benign alien deities. How should we understand Lovecraft’s silence on this element? Lovecraft scholar Daniel Harms has chosen to interpret this silence as indicating that Lovecraft didn’t care for them as additions to the Mythos.42 This is unconvincing. If Lovecraft didn’t care for the Elder Gods why not tell Derleth to take them out? Lovecraft was not known for keeping his opinions to himself, and regularly exchanged heated words with his correspondents, not only on what made for good literature but also on such volatile issues as race, religion, and politics. Furthermore, Lovecraft’s overall opinion of Derleth’s latest story was positive. Why should Lovecraft call this story “great. . . . A real notable piece of work,” and then urge Derleth to resubmit it, and Wright to accept it, if he didn’t like the Elder Gods who comprise a key component of it? It is my contention that Lovecraft did like Derleth’s notion of gods allied with and against humankind. Lovecraft in fact adopted this notion for one of his own stories, “Out of the Aeons,” another tale which he ghostwrote for Hazel Heald in August 1933 and which was published in Weird Tales’s April 1935 issue.43 Set on the lost continent of Mu, “Out of the Aeons” concerns an attempt by a man named T’yog to stop the cult of the god Ghatanothoa from raising their deity, an event which would have eschatological consequences. T’yog is described as the “High-Priest of Shub-Niggurath” and is at first reluctant to act against the cult of Ghatanothoa but is finally compelled to do so after a series of “strange dreams and revelations” convince him “that the gods friendly to man could be arrayed against the hostile gods . . . that ShubNiggurath, Nug, and Yeb, as well as Yig the Serpent-god, were ready to take sides with man against the tyranny and presumption of Ghatanothoa.”44 Though it appeared under Heald’s name, Lovecraft made sure that all his friends, including Derleth, knew that he had written “Out of the Aeons.”45 Here, then, we have a Mythos story in which Lovecraft has seen fit to split

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his invented pantheon into “friendly” and “hostile gods” ready to take up sides in the fight over the fate of humankind. The key difference between the two tales is that while Derleth’s Elder Gods are victorious over the Great Old Ones, saving Eric Marsh, in Lovecraft’s tale “the gods friendly to man” prove rather impotent. T’yog’s failure to thwart Ghatanothoa and his cult results in the doom of Mu and its people.46 Despite these differences, it seems that Derleth took this story by Lovecraft as confirmation that the Mythos was a dualistic system. This is born out in a June 15, 1934, letter to Florida teenager R. H. Barlow (who had earlier befriended Lovecraft) in which Derleth outlines his interpretation of Lovecraft’s Mythos: “According to the mythology as I understand it, it is briefly this: the Ancient or Old Ones ruled the universe—from their authority revolted the evil Cthulhu, Hastur the Unspeakable, etc., who in turn spawned the Tcho-Tcho people and other cultlike creatures.”47 This shows that Derleth already had a dualistic understanding of the Mythos well in advance of Lovecraft’s death. It is unknown whether Derleth ever shared this conception of the Mythos with Lovecraft, though Schultz notes it is possible that Lovecraft could have read this letter while visiting Barlow in Florida around that time. If this is true, then it is notable that Lovecraft felt no compulsion to correct or modify Derleth’s interpretation of the Mythos, a fact which would have mattered to Derleth since as he informs Barlow: “H.P. is the final court of appeal in all these matters.”48 What this means is that even though Derleth was taking Lovecraft’s idea of the Mythos as a communal property seriously—as evidenced by his incorporation of both the Tcho-Tcho people and the Elder Gods, here called “the Ancient or Old Ones,” as key elements of the “mythology”—he still felt the need to defer to Lovecraft, with whom this lore had first originated. Despite the allegations of some critics, this deferential attitude is one that Derleth would maintain even after Lovecraft’s death. A case in point is writer Carl Jacobi’s Mythos tale “The Aquarium” (1962), commissioned by Derleth, which attempted to introduce a number of novel elements into the Mythos which Derleth promptly axed on the grounds that they deviated too far from Lovecraft’s original vision.49 Then there is Clark Ashton Smith. Lovecraft scholars hostile to Derleth often cite an April 13, 1937, letter from Smith to Derleth, written following Lovecraft’s death, in which the former expresses the view that it would be inappropriate to “class any of the Old Ones as evil: they are plainly beyond all limitary human conceptions of either ill or good.”50 However, these same scholars overlook a subsequent letter dated April 28/29 in which Smith writes that upon rereading Lovecraft’s stories with “a critical eye to

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mythologic references,” he has begun to see elements that “would support your theory as to good and evil deities.” Smith cites Lovecraft’s tale “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1933) as a key example. The story depicts the god Nyarlathotep as “the Black Man of Satanism and witchcraft” who attempts to lure the protagonist to the “throne” of the “daemon-sultan” Azathoth, to sign his name in blood in the “book of Azathoth” just as witches were believed to bequeath their souls to Satan by signing their names in blood in his book.51 Later that same year Derleth also received a letter from a man named Howard Farnese who had briefly been in contact with Lovecraft. Farnese provided Derleth with two genuine letters he had received from Lovecraft, as well several pages of notes which he claimed were transcriptions from memory of a third Lovecraft letter which he had lost. Among the latter was an alleged quote from Lovecraft which explained how the Cthulhu Mythos was a dualistic system in which the evil Great Old Ones had been cast out by the Elder Gods for daring to dabble in black magic. Derleth believed this quote to be authentic and subsequently published it as Lovecraft’s own words.52 Today it is universally agreed by scholars that this “Black Magic” quote is not genuine, instead originating from Farnese’s own imagination. Perhaps Farnese even wanted to appeal to Derleth’s interpretation of the Mythos. Nevertheless, Derleth certainly went to his grave believing the quote authentic, and seeing it as proof that his dualistic interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos was the correct one.53 None of which is to say that it was the wrong one, either. Even if we agree that Lovecraft’s interpretation of the Mythos was one of cosmicism, the very fact that Lovecraft opened his mythology up to other writers precludes the claim of his personal interpretation being the only correct one. As another one of the Mythos’s many contributors and interpreters, Derleth saw something very different than what Lovecraft saw in the Mythos and yet, at the same time, not too different, as Lovecraft clearly displayed both a willingness to embrace Derleth’s contributions to the Mythos—including, when it suited him, a dualistic schema. Conversely, it should be noted that not all of Derleth’s Mythos stories are dualistic in nature. After finishing “The Lair of the Star-Spawn,” Derleth began work on his first solo Mythos tale, “The Thing That Walked on the Wind,” published in the January 1933 issue of Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror.54 Here one finds no kindly Elder Gods; only the cold and inhuman Great Old One Ithaqua and a climax few Mythos stories can rival in terms of pure chilling cosmic malignancy. Derleth himself may have agreed that this was the preferable approach to the subject, as he would later confide in a June 15, 1934, letter to Barlow that this story alone constituted his only “worthwhile [addition] to the mythology.”55

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CONCLUSION Why the issue of Lovecraftian orthodoxy should be so important to scholars is not clear, though it may have something to do with the deeply problematic tendency among some Lovecraftians to try and elevate the Providence writer from author to atheistic philosopher.56 However, British Mythos author Brian Lumley, himself a protégée of Derleth’s, suggests that the problem may run even deeper. Writing about how “Derleth has been much criticized in certain quarters with regard to his treatment of the Mythos” Lumley observes that the castigating of Derleth as “being (of all things) ‘a heretic’” bespeaks rank hypocrisy, as this allegation comes from “the self-same people who insist upon Lovecraft’s (religiously) destitute Mythos-ideology!” Lumley concludes, “Indeed, it has sometimes seemed to me that the most fanatical of HPL’s readers have made a god—or at least fashioned an idol—out of Lovecraft himself!”57 In a pair of 1937 letters to Derleth written on May 13 and April 28, respectively, Clark Ashton Smith opined that Lovecraft probably never “had [any] intention or desire of reducing [the Mythos] to a consistent and fully worked out system, but used it according to varying impulse and inspiration,” so that it might “suggest the diverse developments and interpretations of old myths and deities that spring up over great periods of time and in variant races and civilizations.”58 In this capacity Lovecraft can be seen as having anticipated what computer software developers call “open-source” technology in which the originator of a piece of software allows it to be further developed and changed by others in order to continually improve upon it. As scholar Jess Nevins observes, by creating the first “open-source fictional universe,” Lovecraft found another way to cultivate the hoax-like atmosphere surrounding his work and perhaps the best way to ensure that it remained perpetually in the public sphere.59 August Derleth dedicated his life to making sure that Lovecraft’s creations were never forgotten following his friend’s death, a contingency he was sure Lovecraft himself had neglected to prepare for. But what Derleth failed to realize was that when Lovecraft first invited the young Wisconsin writer to participate in the literary game that became the Cthulhu Mythos, Lovecraft had already ensured the continuation of his nightmare gods and their secret cults. Lovecraft did this by not keeping them to himself, but rather by sharing them with the world.

NOTES 1. Late in the process of working on this chapter I became aware that I had arrived at the same title as that of an essay by Dan Clore originally published in

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Lovecraft Studies Nos. 42/43 (Autumn 2001): 61–69. However the topic of Clore’s essay is hoaxed editions of the Necronomicon rather than the writings of August Derleth. Considering the disparateness of our subjects and my own attachment to my title I’ve decided to keep it while at the same time acknowledging Clore for coming up with this play on Derleth’s novel The Lurker at the Threshold first. 2. This type of long-distance relationship was not unusual for Lovecraft who likewise never physically met Clark Ashton Smith or Robert E. Howard either and knew them only through their voluminous correspondence. 3. For an example of Lovecraft describing Derleth as his protégée, see H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters Vol. 3, ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971), p. 398. For Derleth’s thoughts on Lovecraft as mentor, see August Derleth, “Lovecraft as Mentor” in The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1959), 141–70. 4. W. Scott Poole, In the Mountains of Madness (Berkley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2016), 190. 5. This charge having arisen from Tierney is deeply ironic considering that his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos are the Simon of Gitta stories which so thoroughly combine Christian gnostic theology with Lovecraft’s fiction that Robert M. Price (who holds PhDs in Systematic Theology and the New Testament) confesses that “one cannot easily keep straight where the Bible ends and Weird Tales begins in Tierney’s tales.” See Robert M. Price, The Shub-Niggurath Cycle (Oakland, CA: Chaosium, 1994), 95. Joshi has likewise noted the paradox of Tierney’s dual role as herald of anti-Derleth Lovecraft scholarship and author of Cthulhu Mythos pastiches composed in the Derlethian mold. See S.T. Joshi, The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 333–36. 6. Robert M. Price, H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, Inc., 1990), 86. 7. Kenneth Hite, Cthulhu 101 (Alexandria, VA: Atomic Overmind Press, 2009), 44–45. 8. W. Scott Poole, In the Mountains of Madness (Berkley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2016), 274. 9. Fourteen years after its publication Derleth revealed the true nature of The Lurker at the Threshold (1945) in the pamphlet Some Notes on H.P. Lovecraft (1959) writing that of the novel’s 50,000 words only about 1,200 were Lovecraft’s based on a number of unrelated fragments he left behind. Derleth further acknowledged that Lurker was a “decidedly inferior work, since 9/10ths of it was written by me from Lovecraft’s notes.” Despite this, the book continues to be periodically republished with either Lovecraft’s name solely on the byline or occasionally with both author’s names albeit with Lovecraft’s presented more prominently. For additional analysis of The Lurker at the Threshold, see Crypt of Cthulhu Vol. 1, No. 6, St. John’s Eve 1982. 10. One of the especially curious aspects of the debate is that such divergent evaluations of Lovecraft and Derleth’s relationship should arise from scholars who all have access to the same set of texts, including not only Lovecraft and Derleth’s fiction but also much of their surviving private correspondence which was published

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in 2008 as Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, edited by Joshi and Schultz and reviewed by Haefele in the Lovecraft Annual, No. 2 (2008). 11. See August Derleth, “H.P. Lovecraft and His Work,” in The Dunwich Horror and Others (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1963), 11–15; August Derleth, “The Cthulhu Mythos,” in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft and Others (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1969), vii–xii. 12. S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, “Cthulhu Mythos,” in An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004), 51. 13. There are countless examples of Lovecraft expounding upon his cosmic philosophy through his life to multiple correspondences but in interest of brevity consider just those letters found in H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters Vol. 1 (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964) numbered 4, 9, 16, 18, 21, 32, 34, 64, 80, and 95. 14. Daniel Harms, “Derleth Defender,” Papers Falling from an Attic Window (September 28, 2007), Web. 15. S.T. Joshi, The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 204–206. See, for example, August Derleth, “The Cthulhu Mythos,” in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft and Others (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1969), vii. 16. S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz “Cthulhu Mythos,” in An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004), 50–51. 17. Will Murray, “On the Natures of Nug and Yeb,” in Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos (Lakeland, Florida: Miskatonic River Press, 2011), 141. 18. H.P. Lovecraft, “The Whisperer in Darkness,” in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (New York: Penguin Classics, 1999), 211. 19. H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2008), 336. 20. Ibid., 589, 591. 21. Bobby Derie, “‘The Were-Snake’ (1925) by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.,” Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein (May 29, 2021), Web. Prior to the rediscovery of Long’s “The Were-Snake” it was generally held that the first Cthulhu Mythos story by an author besides Lovecraft was Long’s The Space Eaters which appeared in the July 1928 issue of Weird Tales. What made this assertion awkward however was that the only element connecting “The Space Eaters” to the Cthulhu Mythos was an epigraph quoting The Necronomicon. However, this element was not featured in the original version of The Space Eaters,” but only the original manuscript which Lovecraft’s had reviewed. S.T. Joshi, The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 137–39. 22. Subsequent reprints of Long’s “The Space Eaters” would include the epigraph deleted in the original publication, see Frank Belknap Long, “The Space Eaters,” in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft and Others (New York: Del Rey, 1990), 74. 23. S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz “Cthulhu Mythos,” in An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004), 52. Joshi maintains this stance

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in The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 22–23. 24. H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2008), 336. 25. Clark Ashton Smith first introduced the toad-god Tsathoggua in his story “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” which he had written in 1929 and sent to Lovecraft for feedback. Lovecraft liked Tsathoggua and referenced him in the story he was currently working on: “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Subsequently “Whisperer” was published in the August 1931 issue of Weird Tales while Smith’s story would not appear until the November issue. As a result, for many years, it appeared as if Lovecraft had invented Tsathoggua rather than Smith. See S.T. Joshi, The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 142–49. 26. This story was eventually published as “The Evil Ones” in the October 1940 issue of Strange Stories and in subsequent collections was renamed “The Horror from the Depths.” 27. H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2008), 355n2. 28. Ibid., 353. 29. S.T. Joshi, The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 23. Interestingly, Joshi contradicts himself here since earlier in the same work (page 16) we find him writing that “it may not be quite accurate to say that Lovecraft never wrote ‘about’ Cthulhu [as] ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ really is largely ‘about’ Cthulhu.” Joshi seems to clarify his thoughts on this issue a few lines down by stating that the difference between Lovecraft and Derleth’s treatment of Cthulhu is that Lovecraft’s “‘The Call of Cthulhu’ is not only about Cthulhu.” Here Joshi may have a point since for Lovecraft his gods were symbols of an indifferent cosmos, while for Derleth they seem to have just constituted scary monsters. 30. David E. Schultz, “What is the Cthulhu Mythos?: A Panel Discussion.” Lovecraft Studies no. 14 (Spring 1987), 5. 31. Clark Ashton Smith, “Appendix I: Letters to August Derleth,” in Clark Ashton Smith: Letters to H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Steve Behrends (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987), 58–61. 32. Ibid. Joshi does raise the important point that despite contributing to each other’s imaginative universe Lovecraft and Smith nevertheless did consider their respective fictional works as comprising two parallel streams rather than one homogenous body. See The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 142–49. 33. S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004), 286. The most commonly reprinted version of Lovecraft’s “The Very Old Folk” is the one sent to Donald Wandrei and can be found in H.P. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1995), 46–51.

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For a variant version sent to Bernard Austin Dwyer, see H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters Vol. 2 (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1968), 188–97. 34. For Lovecraft’s proposed story based on “The Very Old Folks,” see H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters Vol. 2 (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1968), 202–203. For Lovecraft granting permission to Frank Belknap Long to use the story in a future novel, see page 261 in the aforementioned book. For Long’s use of the story, see Frank Belknap Long, The Horror from the Hills (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1963), 65–75. 35. H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters Vol. 5, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Sauk City, WI: Arkham, 1976), 173. The Bloch mentioned in this letter is horror author Robert Bloch best remembered for his novel Psycho (1959). Early in his career Bloch was also mentored by Lovecraft and intermittently returned to the Cthulhu Mythos as a subject for his short stories and novels. Lovecraft’s last published story “The Haunter of the Dark” was actually a sequel to a Mythos story by Bloch titled “The Shadow from the Steeple.” For more, see S.T. Joshi, The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 161–78, 289–92. 36. Steven J. Mariconda has made the astute observation that unless one was a subscriber to Weird Tales who read every story published in each issue of the magazine the connections between these stories would likely have gone unnoticed. For this reason Mariconda has noted that one could just as well call this literary mythology “the Weird Tales Mythos” as the Cthulhu Mythos. See Steven J. Mariconda, “Toward a Reader-Response Approach to the Lovecraft Mythos,” in Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S.T. Joshi (Lakeland, FL: Miskatonic River Press, 2011), 54–72. 37. August Derleth and Mark Schorer, “Lair of the Star Spawn,” in The Lovecraft Mythos, edited by Robert M. Price (New York: Del Rey Books, 1992), 132–53. 38. H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2008), 366–67. 39. Daniel Harms, The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, revised 3rd edition (Lake Orion, MI: Elder Signs Press, 2008), 273–74. 40. H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2008), 400. 41. The Elder Gods are also present at the climax of “The Horror from the Depth”; however, there are a number of difficulties with citing this story as their origin. For one it is not clear if the version of this story that was eventually published was extensively revised by Derleth prior to publication, meaning that the references to Elder Gods could be a later interpolation. A secondary issue is that this story was not published in Lovecraft’s lifetime and it is not apparent whether Lovecraft’s ever read it in manuscript. However, if it could be shown that the published version of “The Horror from the Depth” is the same as Derleth and Schorer’s original draft and that Lovecraft read it then that would only compound the case that Lovecraft never made any objection to the introduction of benevolent Elder Gods into the Mythos.

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42. Daniel Harms, “Derleth Defender,” Papers Falling from an Attic Window (September 28, 2007), Web. 43. S.T. Joshi has actually acknowledged that in “Out of the Aeons” one finds “the exact premise of the Derleth Mythos” but then in a surprising gaffe dismisses his own observation by saying that “it does not appear as if Derleth himself ever attributed the origin of” his dualistic conception of the Cthulhu Mythos to this story. See The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 119–20. However, as I have outlined here, there is no reason for Derleth to have attributed his dualistic conception of the Mythos to Lovecraft, because this dualistic conception in fact originated with Derleth and was rather appropriated by Lovecraft for one of his own stories. It would seem that Joshi simply cannot bring himself to see Lovecraft as sharing Derleth’s schema. 44. H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, “Out of the Aeons,” in The Horror in the Museum (New York: Del Rey Books, 2007), 273. 45. S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz “Out of the Aeons,” in An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004), 197. 46. In his essay “On the Natures of Nug and Yeb” Lovecraft scholar Will Murray suggests that T’yog’s belief that “Shub-Niggurath and her sons [were] on his side” “may or may not” have been “a delusion on his part.” However, the text is ambiguous and it seems just as plausible to assume that these gods were indeed allied with T’yog and simply proved ineffectual. 47. David E. Schultz, “Who Needs the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’?” in Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos (Lakeland, Florida: Miskatonic River Press, 2011), 29. 48. Ibid., 29. 49. Robert M. Price, Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos (New York: Del Rey Books, 1992), xxiv. For the unaltered version of Jacobi’s “The Aquarium,” see this same volume, 340–51. 50. Clark Ashton Smith, “Appendix I: Letters to August Derleth,” in Clark Ashton Smith: Letters to H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Steve Behrends (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987), 58. 51. Ibid., 65. See also H.P. Lovecraft, The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (New York: Penguin Classics, 2004), 310, 322, 329. 52. See August Derleth, “H.P. Lovecraft and His Work,” in The Dunwich Horror and Others (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1963), 11–15; August Derleth, “The Cthulhu Mythos,” in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft and Others (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1969), vii–xii. 53. David E. Schultz, “The Origin of Lovecraft’s ‘Black Magic’ Quote,” in Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos (Lakeland, Florida: Miskatonic River Press, 2011), 216–23. 54. Joshi incorrectly cites this story as first appearing in Weird Tales. See Joshi, The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015), 222. 55. Robert M. Price, The Ithaqua Cycle (Oakland, CA: Chaosium, 1998), 57.

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56. W. Scott Poole, “Lovecraft, Witch Cults, and Philosophers,” in The Age of Lovecraft, edited by Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 215–30. 57. Brian Lumley, Haggopian and Other Stories (Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2009), 13. 58. Clark Ashton Smith, “Appendix I: Letters to August Derleth,” in Clark Ashton Smith: Letters to H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Steve Behrends (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987), 64–67. 59. Jess Nevins, “To Understand the World Is to Be Destroyed by It: On H.P. Lovecraft” Los Angeles Review of Books (May 5, 2013), Web.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Derie, Bobby. “‘The Were-Snake’ (1925) by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.” May 29, 2021. Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein. https://deepcuts​.blog​/2021​/05​/29​/the​-were​ -snake​-1925​-by​-frank​-belknap​-long​-jr/. Accessed June 30, 2021. Derleth, August. “H.P. Lovecraft and His Work.” In The Dunwich Horror and Others. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1963, pp. 11–15. ———. “Lovecraft as Mentor.” In The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, compiled by August Derleth. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1959, pp. 141–170. ———. Some Notes on H.P. Lovecraft. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1959. ———. “The Cthulhu Mythos.” In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by August Derleth. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1969, pp. vii–xii. Derleth, August, and Mark Schorer. “Lair of the Star Spawn.” In The Lovecraft Mythos, edited by Robert M. Price. New York, NY: Del Rey Books, 1992, pp. 132–153. ———. “The Horror From the Depth.” In Lovecraft’s Shadow: The Cthulhu Mythos Stories of August Derleth. Shelburne, ON: Mycroft & Moran, 1998, pp. 85–99. Haefele, John D. A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos: Origins of the Cthulhu Mythos. Paperback Edition. Cimmerian: The Cimmerian Press, 2014. Harms, Daniel. “Derleth Defender.” Papers Falling from an Attic Window. http:// danharms​.wordpress​.com​/2007​/09​/28​/derleth​-defender/. Accessed December 2, 2012. ———. The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia. Revised 3rd Edition. Lake Orion, MI: Elder Signs Press, 2008. Hite, Kenneth. Cthulhu 101. Alexandria, VA: Atomic Overmind Press, 2009. Joshi, S. T. A Dreamer and a Visionary: H.P. Lovecraft in His Time. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001. ———. A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft. 3rd Edition. Maryland: Borgo Press, 1996. ———. The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press, 2015. Joshi, S. T., and David E. Schultz. An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004.

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Long, Frank Belknap. The Horror From the Hills. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1963. ———. “The Space Eaters.” In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. New York, NY: Del Rey Books, 1990. Lovecraft, H. P. Miscellaneous Writings. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1995. ———. Selected Letters, Vol. 1, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964. ———. Selected Letters, Vol. 2, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1968. ———. Selected Letters, Vol. 3, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971. ———. Selected Letters, Vol. 4, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham, 1976. ———. Selected Letters, Vol. 5, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham, 1976. ———. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. New York: Penguin Classics, 1999. ———. The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004. ———. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories. New York: Penguin Classics, 2001. Lovecraft, H. P., and August Derleth. Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press, 2008. ———. The Lurker at the Threshold. New York, NY: Carroll & Graf, 2003. Lovecraft, H. P., and Hazel Heald. “Out of the Aeons.” In The Horror in the Museum. New York, NY: Del Rey Books, 2007, pp. 264–288. Lumley, Brian. Haggopian and Other Stories. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2009. Mackley, J. S. “The Shadow over Derleth: Disseminating the Mythos in the Trail of Cthulhu.” In New Critical Essays on H.P. Lovecraft, edited by David Simmons. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 119–134. Mosig, Dirk W. “H.P. Lovecraft: Myth-Maker.” In Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S. T. Joshi. Lakeland, FL: Miskatonic River Press, 2011, pp. 13–21. Murray, Will. “On the Natures of Nug and Yeb.” In Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S. T. Joshi. Lakeland, FL: Miskatonic River Press, 2011, pp. 139–147. Nevins, Jess. “To Understand the World Is to Be Destroyed by It: On H.P. Lovecraft.” Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks​.org​/article​/to​-understand​ -the​-world​-is​-to​-be​-destroyed​-by​-it​-on​-h​-p​-lovecraft/. Accessed October 30, 2020. Poole, W. Scott. In the Mountains of Madness: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of H.P. Lovecraft. Berkley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2016. ———. “Lovecraft, Witch Cults, and Philosophers.” In The Age of Lovecraft, edited by Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press, 2016, pp. 215–230.

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Price, Robert M. Crypt of Cthulhu, Vol. 1, no. 6. St. John’s Eve, 1982. ———. H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, Inc., 1990. ———. Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos. New York, NY: Del Rey Books, 1992. ———. The Ithaqua Cycle. Oakland, CA: Chaosium, 1998. ———. The Shub-Niggurath Cycle. Oakland, CA: Chaosium, 1994. Schultz, David E. “The Origin of Lovecraft’s ‘Black Magic’ Quote.” In Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S. T. Joshi. Lakeland, FL: Miskatonic River Press, 2011, pp. 216–223. ———. “What is the Cthulhu Mythos?: A Panel Discussion.” Lovecraft Studies, no. 14, Spring 1987. ———. “Who Needs the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’?” In Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S. T. Joshi. Lakeland, FL: Miskatonic River Press, 2011, pp. 22–36. Smith, Clark Ashton. “Appendix I: Letters to August Derleth.” In Clark Ashton Smith: Letters to H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Steve Behrends. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987. Steven J. Mariconda. “Toward a Reader-Response Approach to the Lovecraft Mythos.” In Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S. T. Joshi. Lakeland, FL: Miskatonic River Press, 2011, pp. 54–72.

Part III

LOVECRAFT AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY

Chapter 7

When God Goes Mad Lovecraft, Von Balthasar, and the Split between Transcendence and Goodness Lyle Enright and Nick Bennett

H. P. Lovecraft was an atheist. He was upfront about this in his nonfiction and correspondence, and when discussing Lovecraft and religion, it is important to be upfront about this as well. One might avoid making the mistake that S. T. Joshi observes in his review of Scott Cutler Shershow and Scott Michaelson’s The Love of Ruins: Letters on Lovecraft. In a piece unambiguously titled “How Not to Read Lovecraft,” Joshi scolds Shershow and Michaelson for questioning whether Lovecraft was actually a “card-carrying atheist and enemy of religion” based on the conclusion of “The Call of Cthulhu,” where the narrator prays that his executors not reveal his manuscript to anyone. On top of reassuring his readers that “Lovecraft really was a ‘card-carrying atheist,’” Joshi insists that any resemblance between Lovecraft’s monsters and the divinities worshipped by mainstream religions is a confirmation of his atheism and nothing else: The purpose of weird fiction is to frighten, to terrify. He knew that, in order to terrify others, he must first need to terrify himself. What would be more terrifying to Lovecraft than to contemplate, for the duration of a tale, the refutation or subversion of his cherished beliefs—atheism, materialism. . . . But he knew damn well it wasn’t so. He knew he was writing fiction [. . .] in suggesting that the laws of matter do not apply in certain corners of space or to certain entities of his own imagination, he was confirming his materialism. [. . .] Got that, people?1

Joshi is here referencing two of Lovecraft’s remarks that address his interest in supernatural fiction. The first is in a 1930 letter to James F. Morton where 121

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Lovecraft explained the fantastical nature of his works with regard to his materialism. “I get no kick at all from postulating what isn’t so, as religionists and idealists do,” Lovecraft wrote. “My big kick comes from taking reality just as it is—accepting all the limitations of the most orthodox science—and then permitting my symbolising faculty to build outward from the existing facts; rearing a structure of indefinite promise and possibility. . . . But the whole secret of the kick is that I know damn well it isn’t so.”2 The second reference is to Lovecraft’s essay “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” where he makes it clear that the supernatural, for lack of a better word, is a cornerstone of his weird fiction. “I choose weird stories,” he writes, “because they suit my inclination best . . . to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which for ever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis.”3 Dustin Geeraert explains that evoking the supernatural only served as the vehicle through which Lovecraft criticized the religious worldview: “[I]t is exactly due to his [. . .] desire for transcendent experience,” he writes, “that Lovecraft condemned religion. Lovecraft’s stories portray events that seem to transcend the laws of space and time, and which confirm in the process bizarre, ancient, and absurd doctrines about incomprehensible deities; in this way Lovecraft’s body of fiction, taken as a whole, presents a nihilistic parody of religion.”4 Regardless of Lovecraft’s motivation, though, one can trace in his depiction of the supernatural more than merely the horrific or parodic. Lovecraft’s depiction of transcendent entities in human experience draws from an established theological tradition that questions whether any form of transcendence can be identified as good or beautiful, or with Love, without qualification. Rather than necessarily being an answer to or criticism of the Christian worldview, the immortal monstrosities which haunt and stalk through his tales are reflections of a well-established Christian, and especially Protestant, conception of God, an influence Lovecraft recognized himself on some level to have inherited. To those who explore those legacies, Lovecraft’s fiction emerges as a sort of theological limit-case wherein divine goodness and sovereignty resolve themselves in alien formlessness and the transcendent governance of the world is not displaced by but rather becomes indistinguishable from the cold mechanisms of chance.5 By contextualizing Lovecraft’s descriptions of cosmic divinities alongside Hans Urs von Balthasar’s account of modern (especially Protestant) theology and its relationship to aesthetics, we explore how the theological tradition itself furnished Lovecraft’s imagination with horrific possibilities. Indeed, despite Lovecraft’s intellectual rejection of that tradition, we find that Lovecraft’s cosmic horror still participates in the unfolding theological imaginary that it forswears and parodies.

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HAN URS VON BALTHASAR AND THE THEOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF POWER The theological legacy that disconnects transcendence from sensible beauty or goodness has deep roots in Christian history. The twentieth-century Jesuit theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar frequently explores theology’s potential to deform its ideas about transcendence. Balthasar reiterates again and again that metaphysical concepts, when abstracted from scriptural revelations about divine love, risk casting God as naked power. This pure, sovereign freedom necessarily devolves into a species of horror. Early in the fifth volume of The Glory of the Lord (1961–1967), Balthasar outlines a series of negative potentials within the medieval theological tradition itself—a history which gives us a new perspective on Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Specifically, Balthasar refers to debates over whether theology could only speak analogously of divine being—as in the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas—or else could apply the language of created being to divine being in the exact same ways, as argued by Duns Scotus and William of Ockham among others. Scotus feared that a God hidden behind analogies—whose goodness was already more dissimilar than similar to human goodness, for example—remained in the darkness of mysticism. Rather, Scotus argued, we should expect that God would reveal himself to human reason. By opting for a logical definition of being over a metaphysical definition, Scotus hoped to lay a foundation for objective, positive knowledge about God that was more rigorous than the mystical theologies of his time. However, Balthasar argues, this development had unintended side effects, such as implying that supernatural realities were subject to the same scrutiny as natural phenomena. Inevitably or not, the concept of univocal being paved the way for sense perception to become the absolute measure of reality, such that, “in the English empiricist tradition up to and including Locke and Hume, [perception] constitutes the whole content of reality and presents it to thought.”6 This “whole content” of a reality available to the physical senses was not, at first, so thoroughly material as many modern empiricists claim. Showing the continuity of thought between the medieval univocalists and modern empiricists, Balthasar suggests the true inheritance of Scotus’s theology is better seen in someone like Baruch Spinoza, who placed “objective” knowledge of both God and the world on one spectrum: God-or-Nature. The result was, in any case, a total collapse of difference between Creator and creation into what Balthasar calls “a theological basis to positivism, which refuses to ask questions that go beyond the mere givenness of what is.”7 On a more cynical reading, the univocal school of thought sought to correct the “falsehood and evasion” of mystical, analogical thinking, unwittingly precipitating the movement of philosophy toward the nihilism of

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modernity. Lovecraft acknowledged this legacy, explaining in a 1931 letter to Frank Belknap Long that “the basic attitude of facing the universe honestly,”8 which he associated with “complete materialist skepticism,” was shared by his Protestant forebears who had passed down their “Protestant, puritan [. . .] scorn for falsehood and evasion” to the “modern American Nihilist.”9 But before cleaving away from its religious roots and becoming the Enlightenment tradition that influenced Lovecraft, this strain of theology already had to deal with another, seemingly insoluble problem: cogently distinguishing God and creation, and naming the goodness of God’s relation to that creation.10 Aquinas’s analogy of being foregrounded this distinction; maintaining that God and the world were separate but related, it invited both creation and God, nature and supernature, into a mutual space of participation animated by divine love. But again, the univocalists saw analogy as offering only negative, apophatic, and ultimately mystical knowledge about God. Those who desired a more objective, positive knowledge of God reopened the issue of sufficiently describing the dissimilarity between God and creatures. Whereas analogy could, for example, posit the transcendence of divine goodness as a function of divine kind or nature, Balthasar argues that logical consistency forced the univocal position to state transcendence as a function of degree or perfection—divine goodness as simply but maximally greater than human goodness. What analogy posited as an expression of relation between Creator and creation, univocity thus understood as an expression of pure power or freedom. Gathering momentum in the work of William of Ockham, such expressions of divine sovereignty soon spiraled out of control where the intelligibility of the good was concerned: [S]weeping away the entire Platonic and Aristotelian tradition, [Ockham] directly opposes to the yawning abyss of absolute freedom a world which is fragmented into irrational points of reality. With this rupture within the tradition of a mediating or natural (philosophical) theology, every contemplative dimension of [faith seeking understanding] is in principle removed. Theology . . . now closes itself in upon itself. . . . And the Franciscan image of God—love beyond the limits of knowledge—must therefore degenerate into an image of fear. . . . From here, it will be bequeathed to the Reformers.11

We see here how the absolute, even contrarian, idea of sovereignty opens the way to a vision of God more steeped in terror than in fatherly love. Lovecraft recognized this connection between the Reformed conception of God and this cosmic fear, and explored it in depth. Lovecraft describes the Puritan attitude in “Supernatural Horror in Literature” as being obsessed with “the stern and vengeful God of the Calvinists,”12 the vision of which formed part of his

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own religious education.13 Even if the “absolute monarch” of the Puritans whom Lovecraft subjects to rationalist scrutiny ultimately proves a “caricature” of the Christian imagination at large, his writings—as we will further demonstrate—responded to a genuine intellectual possibility furnished by the theological tradition itself.14 In fact, taking Balthasar seriously here means acknowledging that the confluence of logical positivism, rationalist fideism, nihilistic antihumanism, and cosmic horror that famously formed Lovecraft’s identity owes much to the repetitions of certain theological deformations already seeded as far back as the thirteenth century.15 It is not enough, however, to suggest that Lovecraft parodies the “absolute monarch” of his Protestant upbringing; we can trust him when he says that such a deity is of little concern or interest to him. The gods and monsters populating his fiction are something else entirely, and reflect a different— though related—sensibility that is more meaningfully religious and more difficult to dismiss, even by Lovecraft. To better understand this, we must look at the two ways in which Balthasar believes Protestantism distinguishes itself from Catholicism: the ascendency of the kerygma—the Gospel as preached to the individual believer—in theology after Luther, and the ways it continued the historical separation of metaphysics from aesthetics that began in the late medieval period. We turn first to Balthasar’s understanding of those doctrinal differences, and how particular elements of Protestantism influenced Lovecraft.16

THE INWARD TURN OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY For Balthasar, the kerygma becomes a problem in Protestantism insofar as it abstracts the Gospel proclamation from the historical person of Christ and holds the believer responsible not for following “Jesus’ way (of the Cross)” but for responding personally and internally to the proclamation in faith; since for Luther, “everything lies [for the Protestant] in the Word that promises me salvation and that I allow in faith to be true in me.”17 This emphasis on personal, inward response to the kerygma now and in the present inaugurates a trend of forgetting the Christ-form as itself Christianity’s historical origin. Balthasar demonstrates, through “a short look at the dramatic history of Protestant theology between Luther and Bultmann,” that the emphasis on the kerygma produces a form of religiosity with a perpetually inward vector: “At first,” Balthasar says, “the word of Scripture and the person of Christ remain closely bound together, even when Lutheran orthodoxy intensifies the significance of the word with its doctrine of verbal inspiration, while pietism takes a relationship of personal immediacy to the person.” But, he continues, when the Enlightenment later attempts to refer back to Jesus following this

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history of abstraction, Jesus is “de-dogmatized,” and dogmatics becomes (in Schleiermacher) the expression of a “pious consciousness” the sort of which could be elevated by Hegel as “‘open religion,’ to be the objective expression of the intellect’s self-understanding.”18 Again, we find the intelligibility of divine goodness placed at stake by these developments. In the intervening period between the rise of Lutheranism and modern demythologization, American Puritanism would experience this inward spiritual turn through an increasingly anxious attitude toward grace, seeking certainty of salvation within the chambers of the individual conscience in a form of legalistic introspection that was hardly faithful to either Luther or Calvin.19 The result was an increasingly esoteric, almost magical attitude toward the role of personal moral behavior and the maintenance of social order to achieve certainty of salvation. Lovecraft acknowledges this dimension of early American Protestantism as well, explaining that it was characterized by “morbid introspection . . . harassed by commands for theological self-examination.”20 After the Enlightenment, descendants of the Puritans—such as Lovecraft—would reflect upon the faith and actions of their ancestors as an endless well of superstition, though they remained in the persistent shadow not of divine love, but of that “pious consciousness.”21 Of course, Lovecraft’s knowledge of the Protestant theological tradition does not mean the formless monsters that occupy his fiction are derived from said tradition; still, his self-affirmed engagement with the elements of Protestant theology position him within religious discourse regardless of his vocal commitment to materialist atheism. The fields of secular and post-secular studies have moved scholarship beyond the binaries of sacred and profane, insisting that secularization itself is a continued negotiation with religion in the past and the present, which never finally results in overthrowing religion altogether. As Charles Taylor reminds us, the disenchantment embraced by many Western Christians during the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was itself a function of a particular theology rather than the abandonment of it: “The new mechanistic science of the seventeenth century wasn’t seen as necessarily threatening to God. It was to the enchanted universe and magic. It also began to pose a problem for particular providences. But there were important Christian motives for going the route of disenchantment.”22 Debating Lovecraft’s relative openness to this or that theological imagination therefore misses the point, for Lovecraft can be made available to theological inquiry simply by virtue of his being an actor in history. Lovecraft’s atheistic speculations on his own Protestant heritage show him to be more aware of his historical constitution than Terry Eagleton’s “secular fideist,” whose Reason “likes to imagine itself as sprung from its own loins, thereby

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repressing the history which went into its making.”23 Speculating on this “repressed history” in Lovecraft allows us to meaningfully situate him within the larger historical trajectories of secularization—and, therefore, as a legitimate topic of interest for any theologian.

LOVECRAFT’S INHERITED RELIGIOUS SENSIBILITY Lovecraft gives us clues to this repression in the very ways that he authors himself. First, Lovecraft explores a general connection between the religious imagination and an emotional or instinctual investment in weird fiction. In “Supernatural Horror in Literature” Lovecraft explains that throughout history the desire to explore “weird” and supernatural stories is resistant to any degree of rationality or analysis and has always been related to a religious sensibility: “There is here involved a psychological pattern or tradition as real and as deeply grounded in mental experience as any other pattern or tradition of mankind; coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspects of it, and too much a part of our inmost biological heritage to lose keen potency over a very important, though not numerically great, minority of our species.”24 Lovecraft could here be talking about himself as much as any ancient or early American lover of supernatural horror, as he attributes the intensity of weird fiction from Western Europe to “the mystic Northern blood.”25 In spite of his atheism, he may have seen some of his desire to cultivate an experience of the miraculous as genetically inherited along with his other instincts and sensibilities. Furthermore, the ancestors to which Lovecraft attributed his emotional and instinctual sensibilities were not, in his mind at least, run-of-the-mill believers. Kenneth W. Faig Jr. reports that Lovecraft, though erroneously, believed himself to be descended from a line “rotten with reverends,” and “with an abnormally high percentage of clergymen.”26 His discussion in his 1931 letter of being shaped and influenced by inherited “gland functionings and nerve patterns” becomes even weightier when one considers this impression of his ancestry.27 It even calls to mind the conclusion of “The Evil Clergyman,” where a character awakens from a trance to find that the spirit of an occultobsessed Anglican minister has enacted upon him a physical transformation: “A thin, dark man of medium stature attired in the clerical garb of the Anglican church. . . . For all the rest of my life, in outward form, I was to be that man!”28 Lovecraft’s other acknowledgments of his religious inheritance are more nuanced. In his discussion of religion, one important distinction he makes is between a desire for the “forms” of religion and a legitimate belief in them. “The beliefs,” he wrote in his 1931 letter to Long, “cannot survive today. . . .

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Yesterday’s beliefs are nothing. . . . But the forms are at least forms—tangible rhythms, which do not need to pretend to be anything other than they are . . . the object-lover is the greater traditionalist, because the objects can emotionally represent for him something nearer what the credos once emotionally represented for his ancestor, than the emptied verbiage of those selfsame credos now can.”29 As a lover of the past, Lovecraft understands his connection to be with these “forms” and not with any adoption of dogma—a relation not dissimilar from the sort that Balthasar describes in demythologized Protestantism’s handling of the kerygma. To account for persistent religious affectation in his own life, Lovecraft also draws another clear distinction between his rational mind and his instinctual or emotional sensibilities. Within the latter, he recognized a legacy of the traditional religious worldview, something he believed himself to have inherited on a genetic level. In the same letter he explained the origins of his whole nonrational sensibility—his “unintellectual instincts and sympathies and predilections”—along these lines: I retain, apart from all conscious philosophy, an enormous amount of hangover material from my immediate blood-ancestry and personal milieu—habit-patterns, spontaneous likes and dislikes, standards and associations, geographical points of view, and all that-things which are perfectly meaningless in my conception of the universe, but which are undoubtedly a greater part of the sum total of my personality (the general conglomerate of irrational patterns and scraps which forms anyone’s personality) than their intellectual significance would indicate.30

These two distinctions are, in Lovecraft’s mind, interrelated. Lovecraft explains that his emotional state is the reason for his “liking the same superficial forms and types and attitudes” as his forefathers.31 This emotional state he claims to have inherited is that of the “old American-Protestant type.”32 and is therefore aligned with the same state that encouraged the Puritans to obsess over “the stern and vengeful God of the Calvinists” and “the sulphureous Adversary of that God.”33 It was this state of mind, Lovecraft explains elsewhere, that spawned a culture “in which tales of witchcraft and unbelievable secret monstrosities lingered long after the dread days of the Salem nightmare.”34 These “unbelievable secret monstrosities” are cut from the same cloth, he writes, as all weird fiction, and so they constitute “forms” important and appealing both to early American Protestant culture and to Lovecraft’s own work. Lovecraft claims that “emotionally” he has had “no cleavage with the early-American scene, no matter what I may believe intellectually,” and that he has come by these emotions via “gland functionings and nerve patterns,”35 so it may not be far-fetched to count

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among the “forms” that Lovecraft understood himself to have inherited this “stern and vengeful God.” Because, as Balthasar explains, the figure of the kenotic Christ was not embedded in the Puritan aesthetic imagination, what Lovecraft found among the forms of that religion was a God associated with absolute power and terror. Lovecraft’s acknowledgment that he is the inheritor of an innate Protestant sensibility—Christopher Hitchens, even refers to Lovecraft as a “Protestant atheist”36—allows us to explore the extent to which Lovecraft’s adherence to a strict secularism is, in essence, in dialogue with an acknowledged, inherited religious framework. Lovecraft vouchsafes his version of “secular fideism” by acknowledging his religious heritage and then holding it at a distance, in a kind of inclusive exclusion. The genetic freight of religiosity forms, in Lovecraft’s own mind, a soil from which his “conscious philosophy” can emerge. He insightfully acknowledges the “unbroken continuity” of the traditions that have formed him, but this self-contained continuity only reinforces his belief in the self-springing autonomy of Reason which liberates him from becoming one more link in a chain “rotten with reverends.” But that very chain also makes us aware of Lovecraft’s relationship to his religious history in ways that he refused to engage. In particular, we may ask with new interest how the “old American-Protestant” imagination, with its “stern and vengeful God” and “sulphureous Adversary,” formed material for Lovecraft’s own brand of cosmic horror, and why such scrutiny might matter to the field of theology. We are, in effect, provoked into asking after another genetic relationship: that between the content of American Protestant theology itself and the phantasms that haunted Lovecraft throughout his life. We can further connect the theological dots between Lovecraft, the Reformation, and cosmic horror by swerving back into the arena of aesthetics, which occupies Balthasar’s project as much as does metaphysics.

A HORROR OF TRANSCENDENTAL FORMLESSNESS The Protestant emphasis on personal response to the kerygma helps explain the conditions of possibility for Puritan superstitiousness and supplements Lovecraft’s reaction to his “repressed” heritage with a theological genealogy; it may also throw additional light on his use of witchcraft and occultism in his fiction as ways of parodying that heritage. But it does not yet explain how Lovecraft’s aesthetic of cosmic horror exceeding the realms of magic also owes much to this same theological legacy. In brief: the essential formlessness at the heart of Lovecraft’s horror aesthetic is not reducible to an expression of secular meaninglessness; it is also the culmination of the essentially theological problem of relating form and content or else privileging the latter

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over the former, which preoccupied Balthasar. Where aesthetics is neglected and form’s relevance abandoned, the formlessness of absolute divine power emerges as a bogeyman within the theological tradition. It is Lovecraft, we here suggest, who achieves this theological legacy’s most hyperbolic literary expression, insofar as the formlessness of the deity was also among the “forms” that Lovecraft inherited from his Protestant ancestors. The theological neglect of form that reaches its zenith in modernity is not, Balthasar argues, unique to Protestantism, but it intensifies in the Protestant tradition due to the abstraction of the kerygma from the historical person of Christ as discussed above. It is the very form of Christ—predicted in the scriptural witness and persistent in the earthly church—that forms a locus of beauty engendering trust in the transcendent goodness and truth of his message. When not united by the “cloud” of beauty, Balthasar says, truth and goodness can only be experienced in an alienated relation to matter.37 So alienated from the world, religious experience must also become inevitably more alienated from God who, without a form to communicate himself to the world, becomes radically hidden in his own alienness; the deus absconditus which, according to Raymund Schwager, emerges as distinct from the deus revelatus in Luther’s pioneering theological innovations: “While the [God of revelation] is a God of goodness under the clothing of anger, the [hidden God] remains entirely incomprehensible to humankind, for goodness and anger can no longer be distinguished in this hidden God.”38 This is no longer a theological aesthetics of divine truth, but an aestheticization of absolute sovereignty, such as we see seeded in medieval theology.39 As with the trajectory of the kerygma, this divine formlessness and alienness—in which God’s mercy and his merciless judgment become indistinguishable—would root itself ever more deeply into “interior Christian lives,” largely in the forms of Puritanism, Pietism, and Idealism, though by their inception these theological and aesthetic trajectories had developed entirely apart from one another.40 Idealism especially granted to aesthetics an autonomy that allowed culture to stand in for God, but at significant cost: without the formal character provided by historical Christianity, Idealist aesthetics could only assert its autonomy by taking onboard the whole of human experience. This involved gathering, as Eagleton puts it, “the excremental into the eternal,” effectively placing aesthetics at war with ethics and finding truth in ugliness as the hidden reality of beauty. So redefined, the “transcendentals” of truth, goodness, and beauty reveal an essential “nothingness” to human experience that can no longer distinguish good and evil with any confidence.41 Unmoored from its theological roots, this ambivalence characterizes the aesthetics of transcendence through modernity and into the present. Because

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aesthetics now encompasses the evil of human experience alongside originally religious notions of the good, Rudolf Otto—as the most prominent modern theorist of the sublime—was left with the difficult job of insisting that his notion of the mysterium tremendum meant “something absolutely and intensely positive” despite acknowledging that “what is enunciated in the word is negative,” being “hidden and esoteric [. . .] beyond conception or understanding, extraordinary and unfamiliar.”42 Though Otto attempts to restore a sense of biblical glory to the triple structure of fear, “overpoweringness,” and urgency encountered in the mysterium, he cannot finally overcome the fact that each of these sensations is experienced nakedly—and so negatively—as “might” and “power” before they are mediated by the religious imagination into something positive.43 This is why Robert M. Price, in his essay “Cosmic Fear and Fear of the Lord,” sees in Lovecraft’s cosmic fear an essentially religious worldview, one that echoes Otto’s sense of the divine experience.44 From a Balthasarian perspective, Price’s connection of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror to Otto’s mysterium tremendum begins to make more sense: since Otto insists upon approaching transcendence in its formlessness as “Wholly Other”45 rather than from the given form of Christ, his achievement amounts to an aestheticization rather than a theological aesthetics; the naked power of divine sovereignty persists as the “object of fear” Balthasar sees emerging in the thirteenth century, one which cannot provide its own notion of goodness or beauty. This is, in a sense, corroborated by Merold Westphal when he states that, for Otto, the experience of the holy emerges first as a sense of “ontological deficiency” accompanied by “fear, terror, shuddering, dread, and horror.”46 While such ambivalence between fear and wonder may indeed be a theologically appropriate experience for the creature, the experience of “ontological deficiency” does not comport with that theological tradition which understands creation in terms of autonomy-in-contingency through its analogous relationship to a loving Creator.47 The fact that Lovecraft—whose fiction evokes “ontological deficiency” in the extreme—intuits an essential negativity at the heart of Otto’s “idea of the holy” is, therefore, insightful on an astoundingly theological level. At about the same time as Balthasar—who, in his Apocalypse of the German Soul (1937–1939), already observed the trajectory of romantic sublimity terminating in “terror”—Lovecraft was intuiting a connection between sublimity’s formlessness and the emergence of transcendence as a dark, alienating, negatively aesthetic category in modernity, such that the formless “indescribability” of Lovecraft’s monsters takes on much greater meaning.

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LOVECRAFTIAN TRANSCENDENCE In his introduction to a collection of Lovecraft’s atheistic writings, Joshi explains that the author “has become, more than a half-century after his death, a kind of patron saint of atheism,”48 and there are some indications that he was associated with an antireligious stance by the science fiction community well before that. Sci-fi author James Blish, in his 1953 essay “Cathedrals in Space” (which dealt with what Blish saw as a growing trend of religious ideas being featured in sci-fi), acknowledges that Lovecraft offered influential remarks on the presence of religion in science fiction coinciding with “the great theism vs. atheism arguments” that raged “in the letter columns of the professional magazines” during Lovecraft’s tenure as an author. Citing the essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” Blish explains that Lovecraft believed “it was futile to attempt to describe possible peoples of other planets simply by exporting to them wholesale the folk customs of Earth. One of the folk customs listed by HPL in the course of his comment was royalty; another was religion.”49 Lovecraft was recognized for acknowledging that human institutions like religion were historically and culturally rooted, and any revelation they offered could not possibly be shared by any creature outside the earth. This reputation, coupled with Lovecraft’s repeated acknowledgment of his own position, makes one wonder how authors like Michaelson and Shershow could possibly question Lovecraft’s atheistic credentials. Yet, as Blish points out shortly after addressing Lovecraft’s point, “we can at least be sure that man will export his own gods into space,”50 and in his description of his quasi-divine deities inhabiting deep space Lovecraft seems to have done just that. The tension felt between God’s transcendence and his goodness in Christian theology seems to haunt Lovecraft’s work in spite of his vocal commitment to atheism. While others have explained the echoes of religion found in Lovecraft as merely parodic or critical of religion, this is needlessly reductive, for even if one does so one is pressured to admit that such parody reveals Lovecraft’s imagination as still being “secretly theological.”51 Lovecraft’s fiction presents several treatments of the traditional Christian conception and iconography of divinity that are worth exploring. Encounters, or near-encounters, with the Outer God known as Azathoth gloss descriptions of the divine in the Christian tradition, while at the same time emphasizing the alterity and innate hostility of the divine with regard to human experience. In “The Haunter of the Dark,” an encounter with a being of pure darkness from deep space (identified as “Nyarlathotep”) leads protagonist Robert Blake to have disturbing dreams: Before his eyes a kaleidoscopic range of phantasmal images played, all of them dissolving at intervals into the picture of a vast, unplumbed abyss of night

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wherein whirled suns and worlds of an even profounder blackness. He thought of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose centre sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the tin monotonous piping of a daemoniac flute held in nameless paws.52

Here the “Lord of All Things,” a designation worthy of Jehovah, takes a central place within the cosmos attended by a “heavenly host” of immortal servants, but the being is referred to as a “blind idiot god,” implying both a detachment from human affairs and an inscrutability from the human perspective. This inversion of the traditional beatific vision takes a slightly different approach in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. There we have all of the trappings of a biblical account of the almighty, complete with a heavenly host, incense, blaring trumpets, and a throne in a celestial kingdom.53 Randolph Carter expects to find the more familiar “gods of the earth” in this palace, but instead discovers “no golden dais,” and no “august circle of crowned and haloed beings . . . to whom a dreamer might pray.”54 Carter finds an empty throne, and a celestial city occupied by “Other Gods,” the chief of whom is “the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth” who “bubbles and blasphemes at infinity’s centre” in “inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time.”55 Here Azathoth takes the place of the chief deity, hiding behind “a pall of mystery,”56 but this seeming inversion of the traditional conception of the divine throne is actually in keeping with the tradition that sees God in his transcendence as something Wholly Other and an object of fear for those encountering him. One objection to reading Lovecraft against this theological tradition may be rooted in viewing Lovecraft’s Mythos as a project accomplishing something distinct from other mythologies. Some critics like John Gray and S. T. Joshi, while unwilling to suggest anything like “theology” in Lovecraft’s work, distinguish his “Cthulhu Mythos” from more traditional myths via the label “anti-mythology”—a label Joshi attributes to David E. Schultz.57 Gray explains that, “although [Lovecraft] believed myth existed in order to shield the human mind from reality, his own Mythos seems to do the opposite: the ‘Outside’ is more frightening than the world in which human beings live.” This reveals, on the part of Lovecraft and perhaps some of his critics, a very narrow understanding of what myth or religion actually is, and of how Lovecraft’s imagination may have participated in those traditions. A comparison between Lovecraft’s “anti-mythology” and reflections on spirituality and mythmaking from religious believers of his day makes this clear. One believer prominent enough to warrant several mentions throughout Lovecraft’s letters is G. K. Chesterton. Lovecraft expresses skepticism about Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism, calling him “a frantic old man trying

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to cover up confusion with a joke and a chuckle,” but for Chesterton the role of mythology is not to “cover up confusion.”58 Rather than making the world more intelligible, Chesterton saw the role of myth as mystifying the world for people, allowing them to reimagine or recognize their perceived reality as less scrutable.59 Chesterton, like Lovecraft, also saw the religious impulse in humanity as rooted in our intuitions and therefore as inherently irrational.60 This echoes Lovecraft’s distinction between the rational mind and his inherited instincts and emotional intuitions, and it also echoes the understanding of mysticism and religious experience articulated elsewhere in the twentieth century. Again, Rudolf Otto describes the miraculous in terms that seem tailor-made for a comparison with Lovecraft’s fiction: “Nothing can be found in all the world of ‘natural feelings’ bearing so immediate an analogy . . . to the religious consciousness of ineffable, unutterable mystery, the ‘absolute other,’ as the incomprehensible, unwonted, enigmatic thing, in whatever place or guise it may confront us.”61 Lovecraft’s exploration of the suspension of natural law, even insofar as he recognizes it as illusion, lends itself to a reading that sees his stories as speaking to and within a religious discourse, on account of the encounter with a miracle’s being such a potent analogy for the “religious consciousness of . . . mystery” such as Price locates between him and Otto. Furthermore, several modern explorations of the monstrous recognize the extent to which it is a discourse embedded within religious conceptions of the divine. While Lovecraft’s monstrous, eternal aliens may seem to be utter inversions of the God of the Abrahamic tradition, Tina Pippin makes the case that the omnipotent God of the book of Revelation is another example of the deification of the monster: “We take the position of the monster when the victim is destroyed. There are many monsters in the Apocalypse, but the real bad-ass monster sits on the heavenly throne.”62 Timothy Beal, in “Introduction to Religion and Its Monsters,” points out some parallels between Lovecraft’s monstrous deities and the formless deity envisioned by the theological tradition. He notes that Lovecraft’s supernatural entities are examples of the “deification of the monster,” something that “puts us in a world of religious disorientation and horror.”63 Lovecraft’s monstrous deities are certainly objects of terror, but as we have seen Lovecraft himself already encountered such terrors in the picture of almighty God bequeathed to him through his own Christian tradition. Such studies as these leave us better positioned to understand how the horrific entities that occupy the celestial throne in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath echo a legacy of Christian theology that acknowledges God as a potentially hostile, even alien, entity. Simply put, Lovecraft’s selfunderstanding vis-à-vis his own religious heritage and his body of fiction subtly reminds us that Christian theology has, especially in modernity, been

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a source of imaginative horror as much as hope. Critics of Christianity will often point to historical moments like the Crusades, the Spanish conquest of the Americas, or theological justifications of the transatlantic slave trade to evidence Christianity’s capacity for terrible violence. Lovecraft, though, seems to source his religious horror less in Christianity’s historical conduct and more in its doctrine and aesthetics. This is by no means a dead theological question, or even one dismissable as a straw man; Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart even appears to agree with Lovecraft when he affirms with the horror author that Calvinism evinces “the most terrifying and severe expression of the late Augustinian heritage,” namely that God not only “hates the damned” but creates beings expressly to be “objects of his hatred” in a theology of “sheer absolute power exercising itself for power’s sake.”64 This characterization of Calvinism is, of course, debatable, but it should be beyond doubt that, at least in the popular imagination, Calvinism has disproportionately furnished or exposed certain connections between Christianity and horror that persist well beyond the opinions of either a contemporary theologian or an early twentieth-century author of speculative fiction.65 CONCLUSIONS Lovecraft’s gods are not “secretly theological” in the same sense that Eagleton claims of Schopenhauer’s “Will,” which parodies the sovereignty of the Almighty. Lovecraft’s imagination is more concertedly atheological: he banishes all “personality” from his vision of transcendence or divinity, achieving the formless, sublime horror that Balthasar predicts as a dead-end of Protestantism.66 But Lovecraft cannot achieve this without knowing what he is trying to evacuate. This apparent care with which he strips transcendence of all formal qualities speaks to a much more incisive theological instinct than most accounts of his atheism would allow, in their ascription of a kind of contemptuous neglect to his thought and aesthetics. Studies in the philosophy of religion offer new categories for understanding Lovecraft beyond the tired binaries of theism and atheism. In his General Theory of Victims (2015), for example, the philosopher François Laurelle argues that “atheism” itself is a misleading name for contemporary unbelief, preferring the religious language of the heretic: [T]he true atheism is not as simple as philosophy imagines it to be. It occurs in two stages: the banal refusal to believe in a God is self-contradictory and satisfies those who think little, but the refusal to believe in a good God is the true rebellion. There is always a God lying in ambush, preparing his return

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in whatever negation is made of his existence, even a materialist one, but it is important that it be a malicious God, a thesis that only an “ultra”-religious heresy can face.67

We would be remiss to suggest that Lovecraft, his identity so wrapped up in Enlightenment understandings of Reason, would himself have accepted the moniker of “heretic” with all its implications (except, perhaps, to raise the ire of Chesterton). But Laurelle’s definition of authentic atheism as an “ultrareligious heresy,” ever vigilant against the resurgent imagination of divinity, still resonates with Lovecraft’s own fraught description of his identity. On the other side of Lovecraft’s intellectual rejection of religion exists a very real impulse toward transcendence that achieves more than the momentary suspension of his materialist worldview. His fiction intuits and explores a spectrum between the anthropomorphic tyrant-God of popular Calvinism and the sublime, formless anxiety of nothingness as the quasideific possibility of nonbeing. Along this spectrum, Lovecraft populates his dreamscape with “malicious gods,” suggesting through his fiction that the human impulse toward cosmic, synchronic transcendence can only terminate in darkness. Combing his stories and letters reveals further evidence—from the formlessness of the Outer Gods to anxieties over the impunity of their “pure power”—that Lovecraft serves as a meaningful touchstone of more than Enlightenment skepticism. He represents the decidedly modern inability to think transcendence and goodness together, which remains a stumbling block for theology even into the present. NOTES 1. S.T. Joshi, “How Not to Read Lovecraft,” STJoshi​.org​, 2018, http://stjoshi​.org​ /review​_ruins​.html. 2. Joshi, “How Not to Read Lovecraft.” 3. H.P. Lovecraft, “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction.” The H. P. Lovecraft Archive, 20 October 2009, https://hplovecraft​.com​/writings​/texts​/essays​/nwwf​.aspx. 4. Dustin Geeraert, “Sanity, Subjectivity, and the Supernatural,” Lovecraft, Annual 8 (2014): 111–130, 128. Austin Freeman’s chapter in this book, “Mythos and Mythopoeia: Lovecraft and Tolkien on the Transcendent Function of Fantasy,” critically engages this idea, arguing that the desire for transcendence in Lovecraft’s fiction may have reflected more than Lovecraft’s understanding of man’s place in the unfeeling, materialist universe. 5. In his reading of Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Giorgio Agamben argues that, in the theology of sovereign providence that arrives to us in modernity, “[t]he divine government of the world is so absolute and . . . penetrates creatures so deeply, that the divine will is annulled in the freedom of men (and the latter in the former). . . . At this point, theology can resolve itself into atheism, and providentialism into democracy,

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because God has made the world just as if it were without God and governs it as though it governed itself” (Agamben, Homo Sacer II, 4: The Kingdom & The Glory [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017], 631—italics in the original). As we shall see, the atheological Agamben here agrees even with Hans Urs von Balthasar’s diagnosis of the Christian tradition in modernity. 6. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord V: The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 10. 7. von Balthasar, Realm of Metaphysics, 11. 8. H.P. Lovecraft, Against Religion, ed. S.T. Joshi (Sporting Gentlemen, 2010), 158. 9. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 151. 10. cf. Robert Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1982). 11. von Balthasar, Realm of Metaphysics, 11. 12. H.P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” The H. P. Lovecraft Archive, 20 October 2009. https://hplovecraft​.com​/writings​/texts​/essays​/shil​.aspx. 13. Lovecraft acknowledges his religious upbringing in a 1922 essay in The Liberal, explaining he was “instructed in the legends of the bible” in an environment “of the average American Protestant . . . in theory quite orthodox, but in practice very liberal” (Against Religion, 2). In a 1935 letter he acknowledges the immense hold of “any belief . . . implanted in the brain and nervous system . . . in infancy” (Against Religion, 32), but of course he does not acknowledge a continued impact of Christian ideas on himself. 14. Cf. Terry Eagleton, Culture and the Death of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 143. 15. Lest we carelessly imply that these concerns are the purview of Orthodox and Catholics alone, Thomas Torrance points out that such theological abstraction is also the enemy of an authentically Protestant religion as well. Cf. The Christian Doctrine of God (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 204–206. This, too, is the topic of William Placher’s The Domestication of Transcendence (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996). 16. Missing, here is a deeper discussion of those theologians such as Gabriel Biel who, inheriting the metaphysical problems of univocity from Ockham, attempted to solve them by advocating a distinction between potentia absoluta (God’s theoretical power and freedom to do anything and everything he wills) and potentia ordinata (that power which God has “ordained” to himself as properly expressed in his covenant with humanity). We deem pursuit of this distinction a digression from our present topic for two reasons: first, while Balthasar acknowledges that such distinctions were made, he also demonstrates that the theoretical validity of the distinction did little to impact practical theology in various veins, which continued to speak of absolute divine power and freedom in univocal terms. As we will continue to demonstrate, Lovecraft comes down to us from a tradition that did not make this distinction, or at least did not foreground it, insisting instead on the constant invocation of absolute power without distinction. Second, however, we cannot stage this investigation without turning away from Lovecraft and more toward Balthasar, who ultimately

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finds potentia absoluta to be a less than useful category, distracting from the human experience of God in nature and revelation; as far as we are or ought to be concerned, God’s power simply is whatever God ordains it to be in his covenant with us. 17. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology III: Creator Spirit (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 89. 18. von Balthasar, Explorations, 90ff. 19. Placher, 96ff. 20. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” 21. Placher, 89. 22. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard: University Press, 2007), 26. See further examples of relevant post-secular criticism such as Talal Asad, Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009) and Carl Raschke, Critical Theology: Introducing an Agenda for an Age of Global Crisis (Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2016). 23. Eagleton, 147. 24. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” 25. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” 26. Kenneth W. Faig, Jr., “Clergymen among Lovecraft’s Paternal Ancestors,” Lovecraft Annual 9 (2015): 135–180, 135. 27. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 148. 28. H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Fiction (New York: Barnes & Noble), 944. 29. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 147. 30. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 148. 31. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 148. 32. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 149. 33. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” Geoffrey Reiter explores Lovecraft’s relationship to the Puritan worldview in much greater depth in his own chapter within this book. 34. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” 35. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 148. 36. Christopher Hitchens, “Foreword: On the Varieties of Non-Religious Experience,” v–viii in S.T. Joshi (ed.), Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H. P. Lovecraft (Sporting Gentlemen, 2010), viii. 37. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord I: Seeing the Form (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), 19. 38. Raymund Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation: Toward a Biblical Doctrine of Redemption (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1999), 7. 39. von Balthasar, Seeing the Form, 56. Cf. Agamben for speculations on how this aestheticization developed out of patristic theology as well. 40. von Balthasar, Seeing the Form, 56ff. 41. Eagleton, 78–79. 42. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 13. 43. Otto, 19.

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44. Robert M. Price “Cosmic Fear and the Fear of the Lord: Lovecraft’s religious vision,” 216–222 in Leverett Butts (ed.), H. P. Lovecraft: Selected Works, Critical Perspectives and Interviews on His Influence (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2018), 217. 45. Otto, 25ff. 46. Merold Westphal, God, Guilt and Death (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 38ff. 47. Cf. von Balthasar, The Christian and Anxiety (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011). 48. S.T. Joshi, “Introduction,” ix–xxv in S.T. Joshi (ed.), Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft (Sporting Gentlemen, 2010), ix. 49. James Blish, “Cathedrals in Space,” 49–70 in William Atheling, Jr. (ed.), The Issue at Hand: Studies in Contemporary Science Fiction (Chicago: Advent Publishers, 1964), 49. 50. Blish, 50. 51. Eagleton, 152. Speaking of Schopenhauer, Eagleton says that “there is a sense in which his infamous ‘Will’ is a grisly parody of the Almighty, and thus remains secretly theological,” insofar as one must acknowledge theology as a structured relationship to reality irreducible to affirmation or negations of this-or-that creed or deity. 52. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1013. 53. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 480–482. 54. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 481. 55. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 487. 56. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction,480. 57. John Gray, “Weird Realism: John Gray on the Moral Universe of H.P. Lovecraft.” New Statesman, 24 October 2014, https://www​ .newstatesman​ .com​ /culture​/2014​/10​/weird​-realism​-john​-gray​-moral​-universe​-h​-p​-lovecraft; Joshi “Introduction,” xxv. 58. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 146. 59. G.K. Chesterton, Heretics (London: John Lane Company, 1905), 152. 60. Chesterton, Heretics, 145. 61. Otto, 65–66. 62. Tina Pippin, “Apocalyptic Horror,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Art 8, no. 2 (30), Special Issue: Fantasy and the Bible (1997): 198–217, 210. 63. Timothy Beal, “Introduction to Religion and its Monsters,” in Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (ed.), The Monster Theory Reader (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), 298. 64. David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 49–50. 65. Hart goes on to say that Calvin himself was “a product of centuries of bad scriptural interpretation and even worse theological reasoning. . . . Protestant and Catholic alike” (51). Again, this chapter does not intend to make judgments about what counts as bad scriptural interpretation or bad theological reasoning, but to point out H. P. Lovecraft’s participation in an ongoing religious tradition that includes such “bad” interpretations and reasoning as part of its history.

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66. None of this has been to imply that Balthasar has any great disdain for Protestantism; he was, in his time, frequently accused of being too influenced by Protestant theology, though his Catholic commitments of course kept him from affirming its final veracity. See, for example, D. Stephen Long, Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Preoccupation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014). 67. François Laurelle, General Theory of Victims (Cambridge: Polity, 2015), 21.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agamben, Giorgio. The Omnibus Homo Sacer II, 4: The Kingdom and the Glory, for a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Translated by Lorenzo Chiesa. Stanford: University Press, 2017. Asad, Talal (ed.). Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Beal, Timothy. “Introduction to Religion and its Monsters.” In The Monster Theory Reader, edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press, 2020. Blish, James. “Cathedrals in Space.” In The Issue at Hand: Studies in Contemporary Science Fiction, edited by William Atheling, Jr, 49–70. Chicago: Advent Publishers, 1964. Chesterton, G. K. Heretics. London: John Lane Company, 1905. Eagleton, Terry. Culture and the Death of God. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. Faig, Kenneth W., Jr. “Clergymen Among Lovecraft’s Paternal Ancestors.” Lovecraft Annual 9 (2015): 135–180. Geeraert, Dustin. “Sanity, Subjectivity, and the Supernatural.” Lovecraft, Annual 8 (2014): 111–130. Gray, John. “Weird Realism: John Gray on the Moral Universe of H. P. Lovecraft.” New Statesman, 24 October 2014. https://www​.newstatesman​.com​/culture​/2014​/10​ /weird​-realism​-john​-gray​-moral​-universe​-h​-p​-lovecraft. Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell & Universal Salvation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Hitchens, Christopher. “Foreword: On the Varieties of Non-Religious Experience.” In Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H. P. Lovecraft, edited by S. T. Joshi, v–viii. Sporting Gentlemen, 2010. Joshi, S. T. “How Not to Read Lovecraft.” STJoshi​.org​, 2018. http://stjoshi​.org​/ review​_ruins​.html. ———. “Introduction.” In Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H. P. Lovecraft, edited by S. T. Joshi, ix–xxv. Sporting Gentlemen, 2010. Laruelle, François. General Theory of Victims. Cambridge: Polity, 2015. Long, D. Stephen. Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Preoccupation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014. Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Edited by S. T. Joshi. Sporting Gentlemen, 2010.

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———. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction.” The H.P. Lovecraft Archive, 20 October 2009. https://hplovecraft​.com​/writings​/texts​/essays​/nwwf​.aspx. ———. “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” The H.P. Lovecraft Archive, 20 October 2009. https://hplovecraft​.com​/writings​/texts​/essays​/shil​.aspx. ———. The Complete Fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. London: Oxford University Press, 1972. Pippin, Tina. “Apocalyptic Horror.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 8, no. 2 (30), Special Issue: Fantasy and the Bible (1997): 198–217. Placher, William C. The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. Price, Robert M. “Cosmic Fear and the Fear of the Lord: Lovecraft’s Religious Vision.” In H. P. Lovecraft: Selected Works, Critical Perspectives and Interviews on His Influence, edited by Leverett Butts, 216–222. Washington, DC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2018. Raschke, Carl. Critical Theology: Introducing an Agenda for an Age of Global Crisis. Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2016. Schwager, Raymund. Jesus in the Drama of Salvation: Toward a Biblical Doctrine of Redemption. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1999. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Torrance, T. F. The Christian Doctrine of God: One God in Three Persons. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. von Balthasar, Hans Urs. Explorations in Theology III: Creator Spirit. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012. ———. The Christian and Anxiety. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011. ———. The Glory of the Lord I: Seeing the Form. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982. ———. The Glory of the Lord V: The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990. Westphal, Merold. God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.

Chapter 8

One God Further Lovecraft and the Critique of Ontotheology Ryan G. Duns

Submerged in the South Pacific Ocean’s abyssal depths, the corpse city of R’lyeh is, literally, the stuff of nightmares. There Cthulhu, the tentacleheaded priest whose spells preserve the city, slumbers amid the Great Old Ones.1 The thoughts of these ancient terrors invade the terrestrial world where they trouble the dreams of the sensitive and stir into action those eager for their return. As they wait, Cthulhu’s cultic worshippers intone: Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn. In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

Any theologian familiar with the Necronomicon and H. P. Lovecraft’s works should tremble, for a dark eschatology orients the worshippers’ hopes. For, they believe, we will learn of what Cthulhu dreams in the deep when the Great Old Ones arise and the human race becomes as they are: “free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy.”2 Yet a ray of insight dispels the darkness. “Of course,” the theologian assures herself, “this is just a story. Whether gods or extraterrestrial beings, the Great Old Ones are not at all like the God in whom I believe. I believe in the God, not a god like Cthulhu.” But what warrants a theologian bracketing out Lovecraft’s gods while reserving belief in the God revealed through nature or biblical revelation? This, it seems, is the issue at the heart of Richard Dawkins’s barbed observation: “When it comes to Baal and the Golden Calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidon and Apollo, Mithras and Ammon Ra, [you theists] are actually atheists. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us go one god further.”3 To be sure, Dawkins’s pointed bon mot does not rise to the level of philosophical argument, but it does capture a sentiment 143

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shared by many: the God worshipped by Jews, Christians, and Muslims is nothing but a mythic creation forged by human imaginations and enshrined in myths. In this chapter, I want to use Dawkins’s quip as an opportunity to inquire into what it is that distinguishes God from the gods. This inquiry requires us to traverse the terrain of Lovecraft’s narratives where the “gods” who populate his fiction provide thinkers an opportunity to engage in a form of ontotheological critique. We can, in effect, become better believers in the God of natural theology and biblical revelation by learning how to critique Lovecraft’s gods. In the rubble and debris of these gods who are not quite godly enough, we might gain an appreciation for the God pondered and prayed to by Christian theologians. Before turning to Lovecraft’s texts, the chapter begins with Martin Heidegger’s understanding of ontotheology. In part I, we define ontotheology and identify its problems for theology. What Heidegger offers, I propose, is a “critical hammer” with a theological provenance, a hammer that can be wielded against the “gods” encountered in Lovecraft’s world. The second stage of the chapter involves visiting four of Lovecraft’s stories to show how ontotheological critique can serve and support rigorous theological thinking. One can learn much of God by engaging and offering a strong ontotheological critique of Lovecraft’s various gods. The chapter’s third stage enjoins the help of philosophers William Desmond and Herbert McCabe to show how razing idols and false gods both reraise the question of a divine Creator and also uncover a mystical path that rekindles astonishment and awe at the givenness of creation. We conclude by revisiting Dawkins’s “one god further” quip and suggest how a robust embrace of his atheism, paradoxically, renders service to a robust theism. In a funny way, Christian theology agrees with Dawkins that we cannot believe in yet one more god, one more deity in the company of other deities. Christians believe not in one god among others but in the God on whose account anything is—even other deities, if they were to exist—are at all.

GOD AFTER GODLESS THINKING Martin Heidegger. The theologian shudders. Most may prefer to spend an evening with Nyarlathotep than to read about, let alone read, Heidegger’s philosophy. Nevertheless, his critique of ontotheology is theologically significant. For from Heidegger we can learn how not to speak of God and how not to entomb the divine in the sepulchers of human concepts. In this section, I read Heidegger not as some Lovecraftian Alleszermalmer or “AllCrusher” of the divine but as the crafter of a critical hammer under whose blows idols and insufficiently godlike gods crumble. In what follows, I

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demonstrate the truth of his claim in “The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics” that his godless thinking is, oddly, more hospitable to the divine than we realize.4 The term ontotheology first appears in Immanuel Kant’s philosophy but becomes familiar to philosophers and theologians through Heidegger. Heidegger reads the West’s metaphysical tradition, from Plato to Nietzsche, as ontotheology. He writes: Metaphysics thinks of beings as such, that is, in general. Metaphysics thinks of beings as such, as a whole. Metaphysics thinks of the Being of beings both in the [1] ground-giving unity of what is most general, what is indifferently valid everywhere, and also in the [2] unity of the all that accounts for the ground, that is, of the All-Highest. The Being of beings is thus thought of in advance as the grounding ground.5

Do not flee to R’lyeh! Heidegger’s point, simply put, is that metaphysics does two jobs. First, it thinks of Being as [1] the first and common ground of beings in general. Metaphysics is ontology. But wait! Metaphysics thinks of Being [2] as the All-Highest Being that accounts for the totality and intelligibility of beings. In thinking the All-Highest, metaphysics is also theology. Metaphysics tries, then, to give a reasoned account (logos) of the ground of being and the highest being. In so doing, it conflates ontology and theology to form an onto-theo-logic. The more one reads, the more one realizes what a threat ontotheological thinking poses to theology’s task. “The Being of beings,” Heidegger continues, “is represented fundamentally, in the sense of the ground, only as causa sui. This is the metaphysical concept of God.”6 Rightly does the theologian worry. For if Heidegger is correct, if ontotheology’s God is the causa sui or self-caused cause that acts as the “grounding ground” of beings, then this God is an element within the metaphysical system. Mary-Jane Rubenstein observes, “Inscribed in this manner within categories of human thought, the ‘God’ of ontotheology becomes the highest object of that thought, the concept inserted at the beginning or end of philosophy as a logical necessity.”7 God, as causa sui, assumes the role of a cause among other causes. This deity acts as the linchpin holding the conceptual system together; it “fits into” place and provides the “ultima ratio, the final account” of being.8 This causa sui is not the God who sings creation into existence, liberates the Hebrews, or raises Jesus from the dead. It is a deity with a very circumscribed job description: make the whole of being intelligible and accessible to calculative reason. No God of mystery and majesty, ontotheology’s god has a specific task to fulfill. The more one reads, the more ontotheology’s god looks like an idol designed in praise of human rationality than a God worthy of worship.

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What does ontotheology’s god do? Well, it does not speak from the Burning Bush, raise Jesus from the dead, or manifest itself in epiphanies. Instead, the deity makes its way into our world “only insofar as philosophy, of its own accord and by its own nature, requires and determines that and how the deity enters into it.”9 Finite human reason permits ontotheology’s god into its conceptual system and employs it “as the keystone of a metaphysical theory designed to render the whole of reality intelligible to philosophical reflection.”10 At this, the All-High must stoop to take a job at the “ground level” where it earns its keep by keeping the whole system intact (as causa sui) and intelligible (as ultima ratio). This leads to Heidegger’s famous conclusion: “Man can neither pray nor sacrifice to this god. Before the causa sui, man can neither fall to his knees in awe nor can he play music and dance before this god.”11 The problem with ontotheology is not that it gives too much room to the divine, but too little. By constraining God within a conceptual system, ontotheology depicts God as a being amid other beings, not the Creator and Sustainer of all being. This God has been nipped and tucked to meet the needs of human reason, a God whose purpose is to secure and subtend the rational order we have established. Protagoras redivivus: “Man the measure of all things.” Theologians recognize this as idolatry. And it is against such idolatrous deities that Heidegger’s critique delivers a devastating blow: “The god-less thinking which must abandon the god of philosophy, god as causa sui, is thus perhaps closer to the divine God. Here this means only: god-less thinking is more open to Him than onto-theo-logic would like to admit.”12 Heidegger’s godless thinking neither argues for or against the God of the theologian. In fact, a self-critical thinker who has nurtured the theological vocation through prayer and asceticism knows well the practice of godless thinking. Instead of trying to seize and control the Holy One, the theologian cultivates a spiritual disposition of Gelassenheit, “releasement,” or an active passivity that awaits to welcome the advent of divine Mystery. Theologians do well, then, to learn to wield the hammer of ontotheology’s critique because, amid the dust and rubble of the gods who crumble beneath its blow, the space opens to welcome the advent of the God whose advent comes on the Holy One’s terms, not ours. The insight: the “no” of every ontotheological critique is always accompanied by a “yes” affirming the God who comes after the gods. Each refusal to constrain God within a system of concepts, each rejection of efforts to turn God into a being, each swing of the hammer that razes idols erected to secure human mastery and dominion over nature: each “no” to what is not God makes it possible to say “yes” to the God who appears in the wake of rigorous godless thinking. Thus, it is as though ontotheology’s “hammer” bears an inscription taken from Augustine’s Sermon 117: Si enim comprehendis, non

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est Deus—“If you understand, it is not God.” Heidegger may not have been a theologian, but his hammer has been forged in the fire of a tradition stoked by thinkers like Augustine, the Pseudo-Dionysius, and Meister Eckhart. Each exhorts would-be theologians to chasten their expectations, for they will never grasp or comprehend the Holy One. Let us turn, then, to Lovecraft’s world where we may practice swinging the hammer of ontotheological critique. An exercise in godless thinking, this sojourn will help us to recognize how every “no” to ontotheological thinking serves as an implicit “yes” to the God revealed through creation and the Scriptures. SYMBOLS FOR THE INSCRUTABILITY OF THE COSMOS Venturing into Lovecraft’s realm, the theologian treads on strange turf. In the Introduction to Against Religion, S. T. Joshi names the paradox readers confront: Lovecraft is a materialist atheist whose literary universe teems with gods and their worshippers.13 The best resolution, to my mind at least, is to regard Lovecraft’s gods as “symbols for the inscrutability of the cosmos.”14 As Lovecraft writes in “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” the test of weird literature is whether the story excites “in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim.”15 This is what makes his stories so interesting. Whether they lurk beneath the water (Dagon, Cthulhu), outside the cosmos (Yog-Sothoth), or appear as shadowy figures responsive to a child’s malevolent petition, Lovecraft’s “gods” bespeak the abiding mystery at the heart of the cosmos. In this, Lovecraft and the theologians converge: there is more to the world than meets the eyes. Our interest, as we journey through his narratives, will be in how the creatures and deities he depicts function to reveal this mystery. The wager behind this pilgrimage: ontotheological critique does not expose the meaninglessness of the cosmos but, rather, provides occasions to rekindle wonder at its very existence. Through our critique of ungodly gods, I suggest, we can learn much of God. A Daytrip with Dagon First published in the November 1919 issue of The Vagrant, “Dagon” recounts its narrator’s encounter with a “vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome” creature somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.16 The anonymous narrator’s

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reliability is questionable, as he admits to being addicted to morphine, penniless, and suicidal. Indeed, we are told at the outset of the narrative that the story shared via a few “hastily scrawled pages” is his suicide note.17 The narrator begins by recalling how he had been employed on a cargo ship that was captured by a German sea-raider. After five days of captivity, he escaped in a small boat. After several days adrift, he awakened to discover his boat stuck in a “hellish black mire.”18 He conjectures that “through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths.”19 When the ground dried enough for him to walk on it, he made a journey of several days toward a distant hill. On the fourth evening he arrived at his destination and decided to sleep before attempting an ascent. His sleep was troubled with wild dreams, so he rose and climbed the hill. At its summit, he was horrified to discover that he stood at the precipice of a vast canyon. Urged onward by “an impulse which I cannot definitely analyze,” he ventured into the pit’s Stygian depths.20 His descent was doubly revelatory. By the moon’s light he saw a gleaming white stone that he realized was a monolith covered in carved images. Some carvings he recognized: octopi, fishes, whales. But “pictorial carvings” in bas-relief arrested his attention. They seemed to “depict men—at least, a certain sort of men” but in grotesque form. They were “damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall.”21 Yet, to the narrator, the proportions were wrong. These humanoid creatures seemed to be nearly as big as whales. And so he judged that these carvings “were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe”.22 He stood awestruck before this relic of the past. Then the water began to churn. A Polyphemus-like monster emerged, darted toward the monolith, flung its “gigantic scaly arms around it,” and gave “vent to certain measured sounds.” The narrator expresses simply the harrowing effect of beholding Dagon: “I think I went mad then.”23 Now, one would assume the theologian would take aim at Dagon.24 For is not Dagon a being who dwells among other beings, a God who occupies space within a pantheon of other ontotheological deities? Dagon should be the target of critique, right? Yet the critical blow must be directed not against the hideous monstrosity, but against the narrator’s rationalization of the monolith’s meaning. Beneath the moon’s revelatory light he confronted a mystery. But instead of allowing the mystery to stretch and extend reason’s limits, the narrator sought to explain it away and “make sense” of it by fitting the mystery into his set of concepts. The monolith, per his judgment, was nothing more than a mute

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vestige of a forgotten religion and its imaginary gods. The narrator secured and preserved his sense of reason by reducing mystery to a manageable category. Yet his satisfaction with this judgment was fleeting, as the advent of the aquatic monster sundered his efforts. Its irruption burst his categories and drove him mad, leaving him haunted with dreams of humanity’s destruction through a great reversal “when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.”25 Our critique strikes at rationalism’s rage for total intelligibility. Reason’s light may pierce the darkness of the unknown, but Lovecraft understood well that beneath what is known there are realms beyond reason’s reach: the ancient monolith testifies to the depths of what remains unknown. Dagon, taken both as a literary character and as a narrative, symbolizes the fragility of human logic. Were Dagon to be worshipped as the deity of the deep, Lovecraft’s depiction would render Dagon a being, a deity, among others. An ontotheological god, perhaps, but hardly God. Then again, Dagon might well be a daimon, one who stands between humans and the Old Ones. Dagon, in this case, would point toward the inscrutable depths of the cosmos. Whether a deity or a daimon, Dagon’s lesson remains: when we rush to explain mystery away, or force it into Procrustean categories, we imperil reason itself. Thus, our first “no” is a self-chastening admonition not to reduce the “inscrutable reality of the cosmos” to fixed categories. The hammer of critique swings as a “no” against any attempt to entomb mystery within reason’s categories. Cats! As we enter Ulthar’s city limits, we should have more on our minds than taking our allergy pills. No allergy rivals the horror enshrined in “The Cats of Ulthar,” a story about felines who developed a taste for something other than cat food. But instead of 9Lives, Ulthar’s cats are said to have consumed only two: a vicious elderly couple who delighted in torturing and killing felines. According to Ultharian lore, an old codger and his wife used to trap and kill any cat that wandered onto their property. But, because Ulthar’s residents feared the couple, they never confronted them. One summer, a caravan of merchants passed through town. They brought with them a little orphan boy, Menes, whose constant companion was a tiny black kitten. Tragically, no one warned the little boy to keep his cat close and, on the third morning of their visit, he awoke to find his cat missing. His cries aroused the town’s sympathy and he was told, in hushed voices, of the couples’ cat-killing proclivities. When Menes heard these things, “his sobbing gave place to meditation, and finally to prayer. He stretched out his arms toward the sun and prayed in a tongue no villager could understand . . . [and] as the little boy uttered his petition there seemed to form overhead the shadowy, nebulous figures

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of exotic things; of hybrid creatures with horn-flanked discs.”26 The travelers departed. And, that very evening, the town’s cats disappeared from their homes. By morning, however, they had returned with a remarkable lack of appetite. When two “cleanly picked human skeletons” (Lovecraft, 2016, 92) were later found in the cottage, the townspeople supported the mayor’s decision to forbid the killing of any cat in Ulthar. To the theologically attuned, the odor wafting throughout Ulthar is not catnip but ontotheology. Menes’s “prayer” was to a deity confined within the constraints of reason’s litter box. Through a mysterious incantation and strange gestures, Menes magically manipulated the dark deity to avenge his kitten’s murder. For Lovecraft’s depiction of this God is one who functions as a being who can be cajoled into doing the bidding of humans.27 The ontotheological error was not, of course, in Menes’s desire for justice. It was believing that the right formula could compel the deity to act in his favor. If Jesus’s prayers exemplify the act of opening oneself to a God beyond human control (“Thy will be done” in Mt. 6:7–15; “Not my will but yours be done” in Lk. 22:39–46), Menes makes a small, but key, substitution: “My will be done.” The prayer of ontotheology is akin to a magic spell: say the right words, use the right gestures, get the desired result. Thus, rather than an act of entrusting oneself to divine providence, ontotheology mutates prayer and renders it an effort to manipulate the deity into doing the boy’s malevolent bidding. If this be his power, if this be the bitter fruit of ontotheology, woe to anyone who, once he gets his license, cuts Menes off in traffic. Theologians are aware that there is a bit of Menes in most of us. We praybarter as though we could dictate how the Holy One might act. We think that if we just get the prayer right, God will give us our way. Once more, the wisdom of godless thinking comes to the fore. Ontotheology’s ungodly gods set terms and conditions on the divine. Ontotheology, as seen in Ulthar, is so concerned to manipulate the deity that it neglects to listen for a God who may freely act. Thus, critique’s “no” to Menes’s idolatrous deity, a dark god who can be managed and manipulated, enacts a “yes” to the God whose address we listen for and await, a God whose Spirit, like the wind, “blows where it wishes” (Jn 3:8). It may well be a “fearful thing to fall in the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31), but trying to contain the living God within our hands is far more theologically disastrous. Cthulhu We turn now to Boston where we have occasion to shuffle through some of Francis Wayland Thurston’s papers. Thurston had a keen appreciation for

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human reason’s limitations, yet feared that should we one day grasp the “big picture,” a darkness would fall: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.28

The avatar of this “new dark age” is found on a bas-relief carving of a grotesque creature with a “vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopuslike head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.”29 If this sort of creature abides in the “black seas of infinity,” surely it is better to leave these depths unexplored. Arguably Lovecraft’s best known creation, Cthulhu, appears in 1928’s “The Call of Cthulhu.” The story’s opening lines, quoted above, reflect Lovecraft’s godless thinking. In a letter to Frank Belknap Long, he describes the atheist as tasked with showing that humans “cannot reasonably occupy any considerable place” within the cosmos. Indeed, the atheist “aims to show that, no matter what the visible universe is or what mankind is, mankind is only a transient incident in any one part of the visible universe.”30 Religion is a fiction, useful to preserve order among the “herd,” but a fiction nonetheless.31 It functions to keep humans ignorant of existence’s meaninglessness. But what religion kept at bay, science promises—or threatens—to reveal: in the cosmos, we are but specks of meaningless dust. To face this truth, as the luckless crew of the Alert discovered in Lovecraft’s story, is to stare Cthulhu in the face. The Alert’s crew encounter Cthulhu during their investigation of a mysterious citadel that had risen up from the ocean’s depths. When one of the crew accidentally opens an enormous door, Cthulhu squeezed its “gelatinous green immensity” through the opening of his unsealed tomb. Two men die instantly of fright. Yet the theologian, practiced in ontotheological critique, need not fear. For Cthulhu is a thing. No question: it has a hideous visage, dangerous claws, and a nauseating stench. Moreover, whether a God or an extraterrestrial interloper, Cthulhu poses a threat to the world’s order. All that said, Cthulhu would not be an object worthy of theological worship or adoration. Why not? Because Cthulhu remains a thing, a being among beings. It may be the All-High around these parts, but Cthulhu remains in

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these parts. Its worshippers are, sadly, guilty of bad theology. The theologian may not manage to ram Cthulhu with a yacht running at full steam,32 but a well-placed ontotheological critique can still strike at Cthulhu’s malignant heart. Once again, the lesson to be learned is that ontotheology is bad theology because it puts its gods to work within a conceptual system. Cthulhu’s job, for Lovecraft, is to recall humans to their insignificance and worthlessness. Yet Jews and Christians are well acquainted with nothingness: in Genesis 3:9, they hear, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Christians, in fact, observe this dark recollection on Ash Wednesday when they publicly acknowledge their nothingness. Ironically, Cthulhu’s job within Lovecraft’s narrative is to make sense of the fact that human existence makes no sense. But where Cthulhu acts as a cipher for mystery’s meaninglessness, the words of Genesis and the public wearing of ashes serve as invitations for believers to reflect on their fragility and nonnecessity and to recall the ongoing work of God. As an ontotheological deity, Cthulhu stands within the system to proclaim the system’s meaninglessness. The self-revealing God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ, although revealed within history, cannot be contained by ontological constraint. Instead of extirpating mystery, the God of the theologians deepens one’s sense of mystery. Whereas Cthulhu’s appearance enkindles a sense of cosmic terror, meditating on human fragility intends to stir up a sense of astonishment at the gratuity of creation, an existence sustained in being by the Creator. Dunwich Self-critical theologians know well that, in various ways, the temptation to ontotheology is unavoidable. When thinking of God who is no thing, we cannot think nothing without thinking something. Yet every affirmation must be balanced by a purifying negation. Negation does not jettison the truth of what we affirm, but it does recall that more always remains to be said. The limitations of reason’s concepts and categories mean that theological reflection is an endless task. The wisdom gained from practicing ontotheological critique might be summarized in three maxims: 1. Do not try to confine the divine within human reason. 2. The divine cannot be coerced, manipulated, or controlled. 3. God is not a thing.

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The veracity of these maxims can be tested and clarified by applying them to the story of Yog-Sothoth, the terrifying creature at the heart of “The Dunwich Horror.” That Wilbur Whateley and his twin were the spawn of a human woman (Lavinia Whateley) and Yog-Sothoth, no one contests. What is at issue, however, is just what Yog-Sothoth was or is. The Necronomicon, taken from the Miskatonic Library, describes him thus: Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. . . . Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now.33

The passage mimics elements of the Christian New Testament. First, there is an echo of the Letter to the Hebrews: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). There is, as well, a resonance with John’s Gospel, where Jesus proclaims, “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture” (Jn. 10:9). What, then, is the difference between Yog-Sothoth and the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ? Two points bring out the radical difference. First, Yog-Sothoth appears as a deity amid a pantheon of deities. It may or may not be the All-High, but it is nonetheless within a series of others. And, despite being the “gate” and “key,” Yog-Sothoth is limited. The text suggests Lavinia was the one who opened the gate to Yog-Sothoth before their unholy tryst. Years later, Old Whateley exhorted Wilbur to feed his brother, but not too fast, “fer ef it busts quarters or gits aout afore ye opens to Yog-Sothoth, it’s all over an’ no use. Only them from beyont kin make it multiply an’ work. . . . Only them, the old uns as wants to come back.”34 What grants the deity entrance into the system? Human effort. The ontotheological error reappears, as seen previously with Menes: the deity is manipulable. The second point: the Old Ones and humans are portrayed as rivals who compete to inhabit the same space. The Old Ones desire to overthrow humans and thereby reclaim dominion over the world. These ungodly gods are no less driven by a “will to power,” the desire to grasp at and control being (conatus essendi), than humans. Yet these deities, depicted as sharing or jockeying for a place “on the map” of being, are depicted as beings and not the creative and sustaining source of being itself. Elsewhere, Randolph Carter wonders “at the vast conceit of those who had babbled of the malignant Ancient Ones, as if They could pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak havoc upon mankind. As well, he thought, might a mammoth pause to visit frantic vengeance on an angleworm.”35 Whatever

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the Ancient Ones’ ontological status, Lovecraft depicts them as occupying the same plane as humans. Christians should note a similarity between Jesus Christ and Yog-Sothoth, for both function as gateways leading to another order. The difference between them, however, is crucial. Through the Incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ, God the Son enters into the chaos of history to redeem humanity and lead them in the way of God’s peace. Jesus reveals a way of life animated not by sinful humanity’s logic but by a divine theo-logic. YogSothoth, by contrast, acts as Jesus’s photographic negative. Yog-Sothoth does not open a way of peace but inaugurates the violent invasion of the Old Ones. That this was their ambition is attested by Professor Armitage’s memory of a dream of a “terrible elder race of beings from another dimension” who wished to strip the earth and “drag it away from the solar system and cosmos of matter into some other plane or phase of entity from which it had once fallen” (Lovecraft, 2016, 701). So, whereas the “Word became flesh and lived among us” (Jn 1:14) in Jesus Christ with a mission to heal history, Yog-Sothoth enters history with a mission to harrow it. The ontotheological error: Jesus inaugurates a Kingdom that reconciles the estranged with God, Yog-Sothoth comes as the avatar of a regime inimical to humanity. Juxtaposing Jesus Christ with Yog-Sothoth and noting their fundamental differences, we may articulate a fourth and final maxim: 4. God and humans, the infinite and the finite, are not rivals. There is no necessary antinomy between the transcendent and the immanent. They are not rivals because they do not share the same space or vie for the same goods. Indeed, as we shall consider shortly, the finite and immanent order is because the infinite and transcendent One creates and sustains it. This is a far cry from ontotheology where its God stands within the cosmos. So far, we have exercised ourselves in godless thinking. With each creature or deity encountered, we leveled an ontotheological critique to expose how the deity failed to be sufficiently godlike. But with every “no” to these gods, a “yes” was uttered to the God who may be made known after godless thinking. To refine our interpretation of this experience, let us turn to two theologically friendly thinkers—the late Dominican priest Herbert McCabe and contemporary metaphysician William Desmond—to discover how the “no” we have practiced serves to empower a “yes” to God.

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GOD AFTER CRITIQUE Enlisting William Desmond, known for his pioneering work in metaxological metaphysics, may seem peculiar. He is a metaphysician, and didn’t Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology succeed in putting a nail in the metaphysical coffin? In the wake of Heidegger, it seems the death of metaphysics has been celebrated many times over. Desmond does not buy into Heidegger’s account of the ontotheological constitution of metaphysics. His worry is that, when uncritically assumed, ontotheology becomes something of an “intellectual bogeyman conjured up to frighten philosophical thought away from origins.”36 To be sure, Desmond does not deny the temptation to think of God as a God or to capture God within human concepts. As mentioned, this is a temptation theologians must always resist. But robust metaphysical thinking, as Desmond practices it, does not invoke or import God to render the system intelligible. Instead, metaphysics probes the finite realm in search of chinks or cracks that reveal an opening to the transcendent. Rather than trying to get God into the system, metaphysics provokes one to ask why there is a system at all. This is the question of origins, of creation, of the reason there is something rather than nothing. Dagon, Cthulhu, and Yog-Sothoth all share space on creation’s map, whereas Desmond’s inquiry points to what transcends and sustains the map in the first place: God. Herbert McCabe puts the matter pithily: “If God is whatever answers our question, how come everything? then evidently he is not to be included amongst everything. God cannot be a thing, an existent among others.”37 It is because Desmond and McCabe are rigorously metaphysical, in fact, that they are absolved of ontotheology: instead of confining the deity within a system of categories, they allow the question of creation to point beyond (meta) the finite realm toward the creative source of everything: God. In God and the Between, Desmond invites readers to participate in an exercise in godless thinking. Calling it a “Return to Zero,” Desmond bases his exercise on Thomas Aquinas’s Third Way or argument from contingency. The metaphysical meditator considers her surroundings: no finite being, no thing, is self-creating. Every finite thing is inflicted with the mortal wound of finitude. The mystery of the cosmos, the mystery of creation, is that there is a constitutive nothingness at the heart of every being. But whereas Lovecraft’s ontotheological deities would act as symbols of this meaningless, neither Aquinas nor Desmond paper over the nothingness. In fact, their “ways” invite readers to ponder intensively the meaning of the nothing: The finite world is contingent: things come into being and pass out of being. In the endlessness of becoming, there is one possibility that would be realized

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at some point: namely, that there would be no contingent being. After all, everything finite might not be; and at some time, in the infinite time of endless becoming, the possibility of everything not being will be. If this possibility of everything not being is possible, then nothing could ever come to be; for nothing comes from nothing; hence nothing could now exist.38

Every finite being has a starting point and an ending point. At some point, each contingent being was not and there will be a time when it will no longer be. So, to avoid an infinite regress, there must be an Other on whose account everything is in the first place. This would be the Origin that creates and sustains everything. This creative and sustaining source, known imperfectly to natural theologians, is what theists recognize as the God of creation. What, then, distinguishes the Creator who creates from nothing (ex nihilo) and Yog-Sothoth? Yog-Sothoth, like all ontotheological deities, makes a difference in the world. Yog-Sothoth acts on, influences, and can be manipulated by other beings. Whereas the Creator transcends and stands apart from the world, Yog-Sothoth remains within and plays a part within it. Ironically, rigorous theists and robust atheists converge: God is nothing. Or, perhaps more precisely, God is no thing. God, as McCabe would note, is the name of the unfathomable Mystery on whose account there is anything at all.39 Desmond, by guiding readers through a meditation on nothingness, rekindles a sense of astonishment at the givenness of creation. What we often take for granted can be beheld as granted and marveled at as the work of a Creator who creates gratuitously and out of love. Some may harbor suspicions about Desmond’s meditation. Probing the “crack” in every finite thing, the crack that inflicts the wound of contingency and mortality, cannot replace what has been made known through theological revelation. Desmond does not disagree. Nevertheless, in an age grown skeptical of theological claims, Desmond dares to search for a way to reraise the question of the Creator who gives not out of need but out of love. Rather than trying to offer an abstract logical proof, Desmond’s approach is to invite readers into a metaphysical performance that plunges them into the darkness of the nothingness. The descent into darkness, he believes, can occasion an ascent illuminated by renewed astonishment and wonder. He describes what may, to some, appear as the paradox of this itinerary: “The mystical way is the risk of atheism, for the seeker finds [her] own lack and nothing, just in the rebound from [her] ardor for the divine other.”40 We rebound toward the “divine other” as reflection on our creatureliness renews our mindfulness of the Creator. Thus, probing the “crack” of finitude and pondering the nothingness from whence everything arises and to which it returns allows one to experience the mystical renewal that restores a sense of communion with the Mystery at the heart of creation.41 Such mystical renewal comes, however, at

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a cost. For it is only when ontotheology’s gods have been razed, only when one stands within the rubble of the gods who once served us, that one may discern the advent of the God who comes not as humanity’s enemy or rival but, rather, as the one who comes to redeem and restore creation. Far from an idle exercise, the exorcism and destruction of ontotheology’s idols serves theology by uncovering a “mystical way” running through even Lovecraft’s domain. The purgation enacted through the clearing of his ungodly gods opens an illuminated path leading beyond Lovecraft’s narratives and toward a deity worthy of worship. Guided by this light and drawn by a woo that promises to satisfy the heart’s deepest longings, this mystical itinerary leads ever deeper into the Mystery at the heart of creation and guides one’s steps toward union with the Creator. The practice of godless thinking, it turns out, proves a boon to theology’s task. To demonstrate its salutary effect, let us briefly return to Dawkins and his facile dismissal of the God revealed through the Scriptures as a fictive or mythic deity, just “one god further,” who is no more credible or believable than Zeus or Yog-Sothoth.

“ONE GOD FURTHER” It was in response to Dawkins’s “one god further” quip that we began our journey through Lovecraft’s stories. Although Dawkins provides no rigorous argument to support his dismissal of the gods’ existence, or of God’s, the “one god further” statement does express a belief held by many, namely, that Christians worship a deity not at all dissimilar to the gods one finds in mythology or fiction. That said, we seized Dawkins’s statement as an opportunity to critique Lovecraft’s gods in an effort to see what separates the God of Christian theology from those gods. Guided by Heidegger’s ontotheological critique, we adopted our own form of a-theistic thinking as we considered why each of the deities encountered along the way were insufficiently godlike. Yet the practice of godless thinking proved itself an aid to thinking reflection. For by empowering a critical “no” to each ungodly God, space was made for saying “yes” to the God who comes after critique. The purgative fires of atheism, the theologian may discover, contribute to a theism strengthened and refined by sojourning in darkness. Dawkins references a panoply of gods. Baal and Thor and Mithras. Add Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth, if you like. What Dawkins misses, however, is that these are the names of ontotheological deities, gods who play a role within a conceptual system, beings among other beings. Dagon, Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth: each one of these cosmic terrors succumbed to the hammer of critique. As every idol crumbled beneath critique’s “no,” space was created for one to say “yes” to the God who is not a thing, the Logos who cannot be

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corralled into or contained within finite reason’s logical categories. Thus, we were able to pass beneath the dark clouds summoned by Menes as we discerned a mystical path leading beyond the gods toward God, the Creator who sustains creation in existence. The reason Dawkins need not frighten theologians is because he commits a category error. The deities he decries stand among others who rival and do battle with one another. To go “one god further” would be to add only another deity to the series and assumes they can “fit” into an embracing ontological framework. Yet God, for theists like Desmond and Aquinas and McCabe, is not a thing. In fact, they embrace a therapeutic atheism to purge their imaginations of any too-small deities. The gods encountered “within” any finite system cannot, on their own, explain why there is a system at all. Inspired by Aquinas, Desmond’s way forces readers to examine the “crack” of finitude, to ponder the contingency of every created thing, and to allow the gratuity of creation to direct one toward the Creator. Why is there anything at all? Because God creates and sustains it. So, even if there are other gods—from Zeus to Cthulhu to Baal—they would exist only because God wills them to be. There may be good critiques of God, but simply dismissing the God of Christian theology as yet another deity, as but “one god further,” is little more than an assertion and not at all an argument. The stories of H. P. Lovecraft would not normally be regarded as fertile ground for theological reflection. Yet the practice of godless thinking, the willingness to take the hammer to the too-small gods, can tutor theologians to be wary of ontotheology’s false promises to grant human reason mastery over the conceptual system. For the critique of ontotheology, when undertaken by theologians, entails embracing an a-theism that refuses to accept any god but God. By razing the false gods, the idol-negating critique creates an openness to the God who is not a being but is the reason, indeed the Logos, on account of whom anything and everything is at all. NOTES 1. H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (New York: Chartwell, 2016), 403. 2. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 395. 3. Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 150. 4. Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 72. 5. Heidegger, 58. 6. Heidegger, 60.

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7. Mary-Jane Rubenstein, “Unknow Thyself: Apophaticism, Deconstruction, and Theology After Ontotheology,” Modern Theology 19, no. 3 (2003): 387– 417, 389. 8. Heidegger, 60. 9. Heidegger, 56. 10. Merold Westphal, Transcendence and Self-Transcendence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 18. 11. Heidegger, 72. 12. Heidegger, 72. 13. S.T. Joshi, “Introduction,” ix–xxv in H.P. Lovecraft, Against Religion, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Sporting Gentlemen Publishers, 2010), xxii. 14. Joshi, xxiii. 15. H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature & Other Literary Essays (Rockville: Wildside Press, 2008), 20. 16. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 28. 17. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 25. 18. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 26. 19. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 26. 20. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 27. 21. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 28. 22. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 28. 23. Lovecraft, 2016, 28. 24. See Alexander Thompson’s chapter in this book. 25. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 29 26. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 91. 27. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1948). 28. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction,381. 29. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 389. 30. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 84. 31. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 120. 32. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 120. 33. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 687. 34. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 685. 35. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 968. 36. William Desmond, Desire, Dialectic, and Otherness (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2014), 16. 37. Herbert McCabe, God Matters (New York: Continuum, 2005), 6. 38. William Desmond, God and the Between (Malden: Blackwell, 2008), 132. 39. Herbert McCabe, God Still Matters (New York: Continuum, 2005), 59. 40. Desmond, God and the Between, 266. 41. Desmond, God and the Between, 260.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Dawkins, Richard. A Devil’s Chaplain. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Desmond, William. Desire, Dialectic, and Otherness. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2014. ———. God and the Between. Malden: Blackwell, 2008. Heidegger, Martin. Identity and Difference. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. Against Religion. Edited by S. T. Joshi. New York: Sporting Gentlemen Publishers, 2010. ———. Supernatural Horror in Literature & Other Literary Essays. Rockville: Wildside Press, 2008. ———. The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. New York: Chartwell Books, 2016. Malinowski, Bronislaw. Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Glencoe: The Free Press, 1948. McCabe, Herbert. God Matters. New York: Continuum, 2005. ———. God Still Matters. New York: Continuum, 2005. Rubenstein, Mary-Jane. “Unknow Thyself: Apophaticism, Deconstruction, and Theology After Ontotheology.” Modern Theology 19, no. 3 (2003): 387–417. Westphal, Merold. Transcendence and Self-Transcendence. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Chapter 9

Mythos and Mythopoeia Lovecraft and Tolkien on the Transcendent Function of Fantasy Austin M. Freeman

“Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things [. . .] Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day.” —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

On the surface of it, no two authors could be more different than J. R. R. Tolkien and H. P. Lovecraft. One, the medievalist master of pastoral and neo-agrarian virtues, sacramental Catholic worldview, wholesome rustic love and friendship, ethereal Elves and sturdy Dwarves.1 The other, modernist purveyor of nihilistic materialism and the illusory nature of all human value, of the utter insignificance of our works in the face of the vast unfeeling cosmos, of loathsome horrors stretching across far-flung regions of space. But beneath these stark distinctions lies something more meaningful than sharing monikers with multiple first initials. They were exact contemporaries, though their wildly different milieus and personalities make them seem to inhabit different worlds.2 They also had strikingly similar views on the function of the fantastic in literature, which will be the subject of this chapter. But before we essay to begin establishing this point, it will serve us well to set the stage and bring these two spheres into closer conjunction. There are several literary similarities that serve to unite Lovecraft with Tolkien. Neither author was taken seriously at first and neither wanted to publish until encouraged by a group of devoted friends. Tolkien’s opus would never have seen the light of day without Lewis in particular, and were it not for August Derleth and Donald Wandrei’s work at Arkham 161

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House, Lovecraft’s work would have perished with him.3 Both men were raised by their mothers and were forever marked by their mothers’ tragic deaths. Both authors appeal to a lost nostalgia of childhood prior to this loss. Tolkien’s idyllic upbringing in rural England instilled in him a great love for the countryside of his homeland, while Lovecraft’s equally quaint youth in Providence and the surrounding farmlands led him, in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, to name it as the closest thing to heaven he could afford.4 Their nostalgic longing for the purity and innocence of a bygone time are strongly tied to place (whether England or New England). They seemed men out of time—Lovecraft a Georgian gentleman and Tolkien some blend of Victorian academic and Anglo-Saxon bard. In terms of literary influence, Lovecraft and Tolkien share a mutual forefather in Lord Dunsany, though his impact on Lovecraft was certainly more profound.5 Aside from this, both men shared a deep appreciation for Greek and Roman myths and for the sagas of the European North. Both draw on a rare narrative technique, what Tolkien calls a “Frameless Picture.”6 Allusions to other figures and works, made as if in reference to some common knowledge, hint at further depths and connections that extend the imaginative landscape outward past the story in the immediate foreground. These are what we might call fake textual histories. The catena of Elvish place names and the offhand way in which Tolkien made reference to the then-unpublished legends of his Silmarillion were, in his opinion, one of the greatest sources of literary pleasure in his work. Likewise, Lovecraft was so convincing in his references to the Necronomicon that many people still believe it is a real book. The shared universe of names and events for which Tolkien is rightly famous is not as consistently or deliberately displayed in Lovecraft, but it is undeniably present. The priest from “The Other Gods” appears in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, for instance, and the fictional New England geography of Lovecraft’s stories is now a part of pop culture with its own Wikipedia page. Both Lovecraft and Tolkien utilize a deferral of authoritative accounts in order to heighten realism and provide a mysterious distance to their work. Lovecraft constantly makes use of documents and letters, secondhand testimony, newspaper clippings, and other such pseudo-realistic flourishes. Tolkien creates his own forms of deferral: The Lord of the Rings is fictitiously edited by Tolkien from the Red Book of Westmarch, itself a composite of firsthand accounts of the War of the Ring by the hobbits supplemented with consultation of Elvish and Gondorian archival texts. Tolkien portrays the Silmarillion as several generations of human copyists removed from the Elvish originals. These artifices allow both authors to maintain the feeling of verisimilitude and to hedge against inevitable artistic limitations. One cannot expect the same overwhelming horror of a firsthand encounter with

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Cthulhu after it has been filtered through a telephone game of reportage. Likewise, the piercing Elvish beauty of the true “Lay of Leithian” cannot of course be conveyed by a mere translation into modern English. Thus, both Lovecraft and Tolkien are off the artistic hook, so to speak, in communicating transcendence. More obviously, both men have constructed a large body of interconnected myth, story, and poetry set within a fictionalized version of our planet’s remote past, and while each author populates his world with gods, neither of these sets of gods is actually gods in the technical sense. Tolkien’s Valar and Maiar are angels under the One God, while Lovecraft’s gods are inscrutable alien beings. Each of these settings serves as containers into which the authors pour their philosophy and theology—of which more below. These two bodies of fiction, Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium and Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos,” deserve to be drawn into closer conversation with one another. These two very different authors use their fantastic fiction to convey a vision of the transcendent, and both believe that a sort of fantasy is the preferred medium through which to work. They feel the power of what Tolkien terms “mythopoeia,” mythmaking, as a tool to disclose the ultimate nature of reality. What we might call this shared mythopoeic impulse results, because of the difference in the two authors’ worldviews, in two distinct responses: Tolkien’s fairy stories and Lovecraft’s weird fiction. It is remarkable that two authors of such differing inclinations could create such consonant structures. Why this strange mix of similarity and difference? I suggest it is because both Tolkien and Lovecraft experience the same mythopoeic impulse but react to this in different ways because of their belief systems. Their urges to express their vision of the ultimate nature of reality manifest itself in fiction which transgresses the bounds of everyday experience. Lovecraft, though unable to assent, feels the call of the Christian structure of story as highlighted by Tolkien, and seems hemmed in by his own worldview, using his fiction as an almost desperate means to escape his claustrophobic universe. Both men, then, have an instinct to link human creativity to the transcendent element of creation, and thus to locate mythopoeia within the theological doctrine of creation. Luckily, both authors wrote contemporaneous reflections on their mythopoeic process which we can use to found our analysis: Lovecraft in “Supernatural Horror in Literature” and “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” and Tolkien in “On Fairy Stories.” Here, the impulse toward addressing the transcendent is clearly evident, and the strategies each writer describes are in turn used to help construct both legendarium and Mythos. We now turn to examine these essays more closely.

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TWO RESPONSES TO THE MYTHOPOEIC IMPULSE While Lovecraft’s seminal essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” had first been published in 1927, its first widespread visibility came in 1939 with the posthumous publication of The Outsider and Others, while on March 8 of the same year Tolkien delivered the Lang Lectures which would become his own landmark essay on fantastic literature, “On Fairy Stories.” These two texts are thus rough contemporaries. Here we will analyze Lovecraft’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature” but will also supplement this with other co-texts relevant to the discussion. First, however, we will treat Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories,” which, though published second, is better known and will set the stage for highlighting some of Lovecraft’s themes in his own essay. Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories” Tolkien’s classic essay, first given as a lecture in 1939 and revised twice,7 falls into several parts, not all of which will be discussed here. In this concise but wide-ranging work he addresses contemporary theories of myth and folklore, whether “fairy stories” are meant for children alone, and, following Coleridge, the role of the imagination in fantasy. Deliberately drawing on the Christian doctrine of creation, Tolkien terms the fantasist a “sub-creator,” maker of an imagined world situated within the primary world.8 Whether in the modern fairy story or in the strange and ancient tales of mythology, the power is the same. Yet, Tolkien observes, critics deride the former and exalt the latter. Such a distinction is unfair.9 Even if, as Müller or Lang propose, the gods are simply personalized forms of natural phenomena, their characters are still artifacts of human invention, exactly the same as fairy stories.10 As such, Tolkien denies any absolute distinction between mythology and fairy tale. What, then, is the impulse that lies behind both mythology and fantasy? The root lies in imagination and language. “When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power—upon one plane.”11 Because it arises naturally from basic human activities such as language and thought, Tolkien insists that fantasy does not impede rationality but complements it. “Fantasy is a natural human activity [ . . . it] remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”12 Thus, Tolkien rejects the Coleridgean term ‘suspension of disbelief’ for the phenomenon of the good fantastic tale. Instead, “What really happens is that the storymaker proves a successful ‘sub-creator.’ He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it

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accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed.”13 Tolkien argues that the central concern of fantasy is desire. A story succeeds when it both awakens, satisfies, and whets the desire for the transcendent, for the glimpses beyond the walls of the world and into the nature of ultimate truth.14 Every sub-creator desires that at some level their creation should be or become real.15 If it achieves the inner consistency of reality, it is because in some sense it partakes of ultimate Reality, hidden behind the veil of the everyday. Fantasy is therefore, far from a lesser art, the most nearly pure form, and the most powerful when done successfully.16 Among the innate desires to which fantasy gives rein, Tolkien mentions a desire for “communion” with other living things, such as beasts and trees, but also that more fundamental desire: the escape from Death.17 Here we touch upon that aspect of Tolkien’s mythopoeic impulse that brings us into greatest overlap with Lovecraft. For Tolkien, as for Lovecraft, fantasy is a means by which its users may achieve a momentary freedom from the facts of the world as it appears, and open a window into a world beyond. “Such tales have a greater sense and grasp of the endlessness of the World of Story than most modern “realistic” stories, already hemmed within the narrow confines of their own small time.”18 This is because by its very nature fantasy concerns itself with “the derived notions of ‘unreality’ (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World), of freedom from the domination of observed ‘fact.’”19 Elves, of course, have very little to do with human beings for the most part, and therefore caution the reader against anthropocentrism, a concern that Lovecraft will also seek to avoid.20 Here, too, Tolkien specifically mentions horror as an element in such stories. The most grotesque or violent fairy tale elements, as holdovers from some especially ancient or primitive age, serve to heighten the enchantment rather than to cause fright: “I do not think I was harmed by the horror in the fairytale setting, out of whatever dark beliefs and practices of the past it may have come. Such stories have now a mythical or total (unanalysable) effect, an effect quite independent of the findings of Comparative Folk-lore, and one which it cannot spoil or explain; they open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe.”21 For Tolkien, fantasy proceeds in a three-stage movement of Escape, Recovery, and Consolation. The escapist function to which Lovecraft is beholden is merely the first of these and is by no means an object of derogation. We find ourselves trapped in the world, in a sense. Something is missing, either in it or in us. “Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he

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thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it.”22 A desire for escape correlates with an insistence that there is more to the world than it appears, and that the world in which we find ourselves is galling and claustrophobic. However, fantasy does not merely wish to leave the world, but to transform it. This is the second stage, Recovery. Tolkien sees fantasy not as a flight from reality but as an extension of it past the visible and ordinary. Fantasy helps us to see the world afresh, and to be shocked and delighted by it again. Our encounter with the hippogriff does not diminish but increases the delight of our encounter with the hippo. The aura of Faërie lingers once we have finished reading. In fact, it helps us to regain a clear view of reality as existing apart from ourselves, free from triteness, familiarity, and possessiveness.23 The final stage, Consolation, is the assurance that everything will be alright in the end. The “Consolation of the Happy Ending” is an essential element of any complete fantasy and is the mirror image of the catastrophic Tragedy. This brings us to Tolkien’s famous and highly significant neologism, eucatastrophe. He defines it as “the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’” when all seems lost.24 In fact, this is “the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.”25 He explains, “In such stories when the sudden ‘turn’ comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.”26 Tolkien speaks repeatedly in his writings about this gleam through the chinks in the wall (or tapestry, or armor) of the world. This is his way of speaking of the breakthrough from ordinary reality into the transcendent, and it comes frequently through narrative, and especially through fantasy. “The peculiar quality of the ‘joy’ in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a ‘consolation’ for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, ‘Is it true?’”27 Yes, says Tolkien, if you have built your world well, it is true—on that plane, and within that sub-created reality. But he also goes much further. For Tolkien, the eucatastrophic breakthrough is not an illusion, nor a private aesthetic event. It is a moment of objective truth that points toward certain metaphysical realities. “In the ‘eucatastrophe’ we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium [good news/gospel] in the real world. [. . .] God redeemed the corrupt making creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature.”28 Here Tolkien speaks of the way in which the story of Christ is the ultimate point at which legend and history meet and combine. The resurrection of Christ is both myth and reality. “The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of

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fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe, [the incarnation and resurrection].”29 The result is good news for fantasy, and for any suffering from the mythopoeic impulse as Tolkien and Lovecraft did. “He [the author] may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.”30 Fantasy is not therefore a private indulgence but a sort of missionary activity, a ministry in which the writer helps to cocreate a new world and to redeem the current one. So Tolkien begins with the same cramped feeling and desire for transcendence that Lovecraft does, but by the end sees that his impulse is actually a divinely bestowed means of grace. Lovecraft, we will see, cannot reach this point of resolution. Lovecraft’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature” Lovecraft’s best-known essay analyzing the major elements of his chosen genre was written between November 1925 and May 1927. It was first published in 1927 and underwent subsequent revision from 1933 to 1934. Much of this long piece is devoted to literary analysis and criticism of various authors, from Blackwood and Poe to contemporary practitioners who have been otherwise forgotten.31 Here, Lovecraft does not lump all fantasy or science fiction stories together, but focuses his examination on certain aspects of a new genre he calls the “weird tale.” Many (most?) horror or fantasy stories do not evoke the proper atmosphere and remain at the level of simple quotidian wish fulfillment. To classify as a true weird tale rather than this other more commonplace story, the text requires that “a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”32 As such, it is the tone and not the content that matters. “We must judge a weird tale not by the author’s intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point.”33 The essence is therefore in atmosphere rather than plot or characterization. Why the genre should have developed so late is therefore puzzling, since the sensation it seeks to conjure is perennial.34 Lovecraft himself identifies

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this as akin to the feeling of transcendence, of Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fascinans. “There is here involved a psychological pattern or tradition as real and as deeply grounded in mental experience as any other pattern or tradition of mankind; coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspects of it.”35 As a result, such stories have always existed and always will exist.36 Indeed, we find Lovecraft admits that horror is a mere exigency in achieving this atmosphere. Since fear is the oldest and strongest human impulse, it suits itself best to inducing the sort of primitive reaction a weird tale requires. “Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected, so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or ‘outsideness’ without laying stress on the emotion of fear.”37 Lovecraft does not discount that a weird tale might be written in a positive mode, but this is less likely due to the nature of human psychology. “Because we remember pain and the menace of death more vividly than pleasure, and because our feelings toward the beneficent aspects of the unknown have from the first been captured and formalized by conventional religious rituals, it has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore.”38 Supernaturalists may in fact make worse fantasists than materialists, since the invisible world is to them more normal, more expected.39 Elsewhere, in a more practical piece, Lovecraft gives aspiring authors of weird fiction detailed advice on how to achieve the proper atmosphere. This passage is densely packed with ideas quite consonant with Tolkien’s own principles of criticism. First, the atmosphere of awe and impressiveness is, as we have already seen, associated by Lovecraft with the religious dimension, the numinous or transcendent. This is achieved through carefully considered references to hidden depths of untold story which give the illusion of reality. We have already touched upon this “Frameless Picture” technique above. Second, the tone must be serious and not condescending, neither sneering nor hiding a laugh. For Lovecraft, as for Tolkien, weird tales also require the inner consistency of reality in order to achieve their effect. Their intensity depends on “close consistency and perfect fidelity to Nature except in the one supernatural direction which the author allows himself.” Alternatively one may construct a “realm of phantasy, with atmosphere cunningly adapted to the visualization of a delicately exotic world of unreality beyond space and time, in which almost anything may happen if it but happen in true accord with certain types of imagination and illusion normal to the sensitive human brain.”40 Third and above all, the story must be a snapshot of a certain mood, almost as if it were a poem.41 He believes this means one should focus on events rather than characters, and preexisting myths and legends should be avoided as weakening the unexpectedness of the effect—though like Tolkien,

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Lovecraft also finds that the Northern myths (including Beowulf) contain more of the proper tone than those of other cultures.42 From the foregoing, it is already clear that Lovecraft seeks to minimize the anthropocentricity that in his opinion plagues most stories. Tying the transcendent to the cosmic, and thus setting it against the human, Lovecraft himself sometimes seems to draw a distinction between the weird tale and “phantasy.”43 So much fantasy literature is too anthropocentric to adequately capture the feeling Lovecraft wants to evoke. “The romantic, semi-Gothic, quasi-moral tradition,” instead of focusing on pure atmosphere and setting the human element aside, “take[s] a definite stand in sympathy with mankind and its welfare,” he writes.44 But Lovecraft avers that the human being has never held any interest for him due to the race’s cosmic insignificance.45 The mob who views human beings as worthy of attention is enslaved to the antiNietzschean weakness of traditional Christian morality. “Such persons are submerged in the vortex of Oriental [read: Christian] idealism and abasement which ruined classic civilisation in the Dark Ages, and live in a bleak world of abstract sentimental values wherein the mawkish illusions of meekness, gentleness, brotherhood, and whining humility are magnified into supreme virtues.”46 Lovecraft continues, “This heritage, ironically foisted on us when Roman politics raised the faith of a whipped and broken people to supremacy in the later empire, has naturally kept a strong hold over the weak and sentimentally thoughtless.”47 A breakthrough into the transcendent cannot therefore rely on human notions of happiness or goodness because humanity is ultimately insignificant and cannot serve any ultimate role in Reality. “The wishes, hopes, and values of humanity are matters of total indifference to the blind cosmic mechanism. Happiness I recognise as an ethical phantom whose simulacrum comes fully to none and even partially to but few, and whose position as the goal of all human striving is a grotesque mixture of farce and tragedy.”48 As such, in strong contradistinction to Tolkien, Lovecraft decries “certain empty literary conventions such as the happy ending, virtue rewarded, and in general a hollow moral didacticism, [and] acceptance of popular standards and values.”49 If an author attempts “to obtrude his own emotions into the story and take sides with the partisans of the majority’s artificial ideas” he no longer achieves the right tone of cosmicism. “A weird story whose intent is to teach or produce a social effect, or one in which the horrors are finally explained away by natural means, is not a genuine tale of cosmic fear.”50 But Lovecraft himself also offers an alternative approach to the mythopoeic impulse that moves beyond the language of horror and into the vocabulary of enchantment. Once again, fear is merely a convenient mechanism. Transcendence and not terror is the essence of Lovecraft’s desire. “My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more

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clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.”51 This is why Lovecraft places Dunsany at the forefront of fantasy: “Beauty rather than terror is the keynote of Dunsany’s work.”52 He admires Dunsany’s own mythopoeic fiction for its ability to create “a strange world of fantastic beauty” which is “pledged to eternal warfare against the coarseness and ugliness of diurnal reality.”53 For Lovecraft, beauty is “probably the only thing of any basic significance in all the cosmos”54 and “the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe.”55 He can speak of an “austere, absolute beauty” available to those who can grasp it.56 This beauty is perhaps the only thing that resists the meaninglessness of all human striving, valuable and pleasurable for itself. We ought, he says, to worship that beauty “in all its forms without regard for the sentimental and ethical illusions of the moment. For the man who knows the hollowness of feeling and the emptiness of human objects and aspirations, and who therefore clings solely to what is real—as beauty is real because it pretends to a significance beyond the emotion which it excites and is.”57 Beauty beyond the walls of the world—that is, what Lovecraft is truly after, and what he deems as most ultimately worthwhile. Were Lovecraft otherwise metaphysically minded than he is, he might perhaps find the same effect produced by what Tolkien labels as Faërie. Indeed, from what we have so far seen, Lovecraft and Tolkien seem to be approaching the same object from different angles. For both men, the basis of the mythopoeic impulse lies in “an absolute and stupendous violation of the natural order” full of “awe, remoteness, and impressiveness.”58 In a sense, this is to be expected. As preeminent fantasy theorist Colin Manlove writes, modern fantasy arises in large part out of the Romanticist movement, and especially from a Romantic desire for transcendence. “Out of this dual emotional emphasis [from the Gothic and Romanticist writers] emerge two kinds of fantasy: one involved with fear or horror, and the other with enchantment and desire.”59 Lovecraft exemplifies the first and Tolkien the second, but both stem from the same root. Let us turn to examine this more directly. Overlaps and Divergences This desire for a violation of natural law appears repeatedly, and the basis of Lovecraft’s judgment of the good weird tale also happens to be the object of his own most personal desire. He declares that he is most fascinated by “some curious interruption in the prosaic laws of Nature, or some monstrous intrusion on our familiar world by unknown things from the limitless abysses outside.”60 Much like Tolkien and Lewis, therefore, Lovecraft writes because

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he wants an experience he cannot find otherwise.61 “There can be no real authorship without a genuine and imperative urge for expression—I have not that urge except in connexion with the haunting conception of impinging cosmic mystery & the liberation implied in the suspension or circumvention of the tyranny of time, space, & natural law.”62 Thus, in a convergence with Tolkien’s three-stage terminology, Lovecraft also identifies his impulse with a desire for an “imaginative escape from palling reality.”63 Sounding very like Tolkien, Lovecraft draws not only on cosmic but on more traditionally fantastic images to describe this feeling. “There will always be a certain small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest.”64 Unlike Tolkien, however, who sees in the desire for Faërie a universal human need, Lovecraft restricts the mythopoeic impulse to the elite. “The weird tale has survived, developed, and attained remarkable heights of perfection; founded as it is on a profound and elementary principle whose appeal, if not always universal, must necessarily be poignant and permanent to minds of the requisite sensitiveness.”65 Appreciating weird fiction requires “a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.”66 Only the special few who can separate themselves from sentiment can appreciate such stories, as the majority of humankind has deadened their sensitivity to such matters. Both men accept fantasy as a means of Escape from a world they find dissatisfying, and which closes out the hints of transcendence they seek—what Lovecraft calls the weird and what Tolkien labels Faërie. Furthermore, both accept that the mythopoeic impulse provides a Recovery of this sensation, a particular aesthetic experience of beauty that is perhaps the only thing Lovecraft sees as of absolute value. This sensation of otherness heavily implicates the relationship between time and eternity. For if Lovecraft ever does identify a basic human desire worth writing about, it is the tragedy of Time and human death. “The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe. Conflict with time seems to me the most potent and fruitful theme in all human expression.”67 We recall that Tolkien expresses virtually the same sentiment. Time is not merely a negative theme for Lovecraft either. He can also praise eighteenth-century literature for making him “feel subtly out of place in the modern period, and consequently to think of time as a mystical, portentous thing in which all sorts of unexpected wonders might be discovered.”68 This echoes Tolkien’s observation that

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fantasy can open a door on “Other Time,” which momentarily allows us to step outside of this tragic progression and glimpse the world as it really is. But Lovecraft and Tolkien part company on the matter of Consolation. Lovecraft absolutely rejects the happy ending in principle, while Tolkien sees it as the very essence of the mythopoeic impulse. Ultimately, of course, this is because Tolkien has theological commitments that lead him to view the universe as consonant with that happy ending, as guaranteed by its author. Thus, the sub-creative activity of fantasy appears as revelatory of the deep structure of the world. The doctrine of a fallen creation, of a world at the same time lovable but distressing, exists alongside the doctrine of redemption, of eucatastrophe. Lovecraft, denying this theology, must rest content with struggling to break free of the tyranny of reality. Ultimate reality, for him, has no meaning but what one bestows. Lovecraft, though, also expresses a contradictory impulse. He uses his fiction to communicate things he believes are genuinely true about reality— such as our cosmic insignificance and the relativity of all morality. This is, after all, what leads him to want to deny the happy ending to his characters in the first place. Such sentimentalism gets in the way of the revelation of truth and spoils the desideratum he is after, the experience of transcendence. We might say that Lovecraft believes the most effective escape from reality is the one that is most consonant with its deepest truths. And in this, Lovecraft once again unwittingly aligns himself with Tolkien. Lovecraft’s overall consolation—his experience of beauty or the transcendence of the weird and cosmic—comes, in his mind, from a rejection of traditional story structures and their anthropocentric elements. But the desire for an escape that at the same time regains a clear view of truth is still present. For both men, narrative structure responds to—or rather, finds itself determined by—the structure of reality. This is only to say that both authors’ approaches to conceiving the way the text relates to the world depend (obviously) not only upon the text but upon the world, as they see it. Shifts in literary theory reflect these shifts in worldview. In the words of M. H. Abrams, fantasy functions as either a lamp or a mirror.69 Tolkien, we may assert, sees fantasy as a mirror, reflecting the true nature of reality that has been forgotten. “Fantasy,” he writes, “is made out of the primary world. [. . .] By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.”70 Lovecraft, by contrast, seems to waffle between the mirror view and the alternate view of literature as a lamp, shedding into empty nature a light which was never previously there, and which only exists within the subjective human imagination. For Richard Kearney, the shift between these two images occurs when modernism arrives in the late eighteenth century. Here, the biblical and

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medieval mimetic paradigm of imagination were abandoned by modernism for a productive paradigm, in which meaning is no longer centered upon the transcendence of God but upon the transcendental ability of the human mind.71 Tolkien, as a Christian and a medievalist, follows the older model, while Lovecraft, an atheist modernist but also a deliberate antiquarian, seems not to notice when he shifts between the older and newer. Tolkien believes that Consolation, the happy ending, is the natural terminus of the mythopoeic impulse. This is, in turn, because fiction mirrors truth. We are pulled toward this structure because it is the structure of reality. Lovecraft believes there is no Consolation, and therefore does his best to create an otherworld in which his impulse to react against the emptiness of the universe can manifest. Yet he cannot resist being pulled in the opposite direction, seeking not to create transcendence but to mirror it. And furthermore, he does not consistently implement his own literary view. This is what the next section will demonstrate. LOVECRAFT AND THE CHRISTIAN STRUCTURE OF STORY Lovecraft attempts to escape conventional narrative structures, and to write as if humans and their values do not matter. But he frequently fails to do so. Atheist and preeminent Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi dismisses many of Lovecraft’s stories for this reason.72 “There is no cosmic ‘good vs. evil’ struggle in Lovecraft’s tales,” he declares. “There certainly are struggles between various extraterrestrial entities, but these have no moral overtones and are merely part of the history of the universe.”73 This is a sort of “No True Scotsman” fallacy, since elsewhere Joshi clearly acknowledges that Lovecraft does write such tales. Joshi simply dismisses them from having any place in Lovecraft’s true vision. It is the lesser authors, distorting Lovecraft’s original ideas, who have projected onto Lovecraft a vision he did not himself possess, Joshi argues. But this is clearly false, as Joshi admits Lovecraft himself lays this foundation in many of his own stories. Rather than sweep aside so much of Lovecraft’s corpus on principle, however, critics ought to deal with what is actually present. Readers must come to grips with all of what Lovecraft did in fact write. When we do so, we find that the overwhelming majority of Lovecraft’s plots feature either a somewhat traditional happy ending or a caution against hubris similar to that of Greek tragedy. Lovecraft’s Happy Endings In order to support this claim, and before speculating on its cause, we must analyze what exactly we mean by a happy ending. Not all such resolutions

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are about cheap emotional schmaltz. A happy ending deals more with the structure of the plot. Hamlet has, in a certain sense, a happy ending. That is, it provides a satisfying and cathartic conclusion in which Hamlet achieves his goal and the wicked Claudius receives justice. As such, and as Aristotle acknowledges in the Poetics, even tragedies can have happy endings. Let us start with the most general feature, however. A happy ending is, most simply, one in which the main character survives. They may be scarred, battered, and harrowed, but they live on and thus provide readers with the implicit knowledge of their continued agency in the world. If the main character does die, their death is portrayed as noble, sacrificial, heroic, or in some other sense worthwhile. Here the implicit hope transfers from the character to the more positive state of affairs the character enables through their death. Since virtually all of Lovecraft’s stories are in the first person, the narrator generally always survives whatever ordeal he suffers, though there are instances in which he dies upon completion or shortly thereafter. Death instead usually occurs for the supporting characters or the protagonist whose actions the narrator is relating. The trauma therefore most commonly lies in a dark revelation; Lovecraft’s characters come to a terrible knowledge of reality. They witness horrors the normal world ought not to face. These events certainly classify his short stories as horror tales, but the mere presence of horrible things does not negate the existence of a happy ending. This is instead the conflict the characters must either overcome, endure, or fail. Critics should ask not whether the characters discover something unsettling about the universe, but whether they fall victim to it, either through death or loss of agency. The second form of happy ending is one in which evil is punished and/or good rewarded. Such a plot structure is satisfying because it reinforces the reader’s belief in a just and morally coherent universe. It deals, in Lovecraft’s words of condemnation, with “moral didacticism, [and] acceptance of popular standards and values.”74 These plots almost always automatically “teach or produce a social effect,” since they provide structural condemnation for certain forms of action. In Richard III, for instance, the morally despicable protagonist Richard dies as a consequence of his own bloody acts. Characters, even protagonists, who get their just deserts do not prevent a happy ending but instead establish it.75 Lovecraft himself wishes to reject such stories because they are inextricably tied to Christian ethics and metaphysics. But in fact, he does not usually do so. Let us then work through all of Lovecraft’s stories, noting their endings and what we find there. Sixteen of Lovecraft’s tales (over 25%) deal with characters who, through their hubris, overstep the natural bounds of existence and receive a just and even poetic punishment.76 This hubris falls within traditional bounds of

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morality and therefore reinforces that good is rewarded and evil is punished, or at the least that humans ought not to meddle in affairs beyond their ken, as we see in the classical tragedies. In four of Lovecraft’s stories the narrator is rescued through an improbable accident, which other writers would chalk up to providential intervention.77 These are weak forms of happy ending since the character or narrator survives and learns to some extent to cope with the disturbing truths he has uncovered. In total, therefore, and including these latter two classifications, we find that a shocking 65% of Lovecraft’s stories can be categorized as having happy endings of some sort.78 Seven stories (under 7%) have emotionally neutral or mixed endings.79 In several of these, the protagonist finds some sort of vindication but little comfort, or Lovecraft simply relates a marvelous event of more or less foreboding character. Alternately, as in the fascinating “The Strange High House in the Mist,” the souls who remain in the faery house receive unending joy while their bodies return, rational but passionless, to the sinister world outside.80 This leaves only a little over 23% of Lovecraft’s oeuvre as indisputably lacking in Consolation.81 This includes many of his best-known works, including “Dagon,” “The Rats in the Walls,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Colour out of Space,” “The Whisperer in Darkness,” and “The Haunter of the Dark.”82 To be clear, I am not claiming that Lovecraft is secretly smuggling in Christian virtues, nor that we should take his statements on nihilism and cosmicism as disingenuous. His stories are far from traditional morality tales. Rather, despite his avowed distaste for anthropocentrism and the happy ending, the logic of Lovecraft’s own plots dictates that the majority of his protagonists survive and cope, and that the majority of his endings can be classified as happy in the above sense. Lovecraft therefore himself follows the mythopoeic pattern of Escape, Recovery, and even Consolation outlined by Tolkien in “On Fairy Stories.” Lovecraft and Eucatastrophe We can see, therefore, that Lovecraft does not, by and large, follow his own literary theory. His denial of Consolation, of the yoking of redemption with creation, is neither desirable nor doable. He does, by contrast, evince a strong desire to break free from the universe he alleges his theory to portray, and writes exactly the sort of stories he ostensibly condemns. Why should Lovecraft want so desperately to escape this sort of world, if it is true? Why does Lovecraft pick out Time as the most potent source of literary conflict? C. S. Lewis provides an intriguing answer. You say the Materialist universe is “ugly.” I wonder how you discovered that? If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at

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home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. [. . .] In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.83

While indeed no more than a suggestion, it goes a long way toward explaining why Lovecraft would at the same time so frequently undermine his own literary philosophy and possess such a driving mythopoeic urge. One possible objection: there is no denying that Lovecraft’s best and most effective tales are his bleakest. Does this not go some way toward disproving our thesis? Lovecraft’s literary greatness rests, it seems, most securely on those stories in which he does properly instantiate his philosophy. But we must also ask ourselves why exactly we find these particular pieces to be the best. One surmises that, as horror tales, they are best because they are the most effective at conjuring an atmosphere of fear and dread. Lovecraft here taps into our biologically primal fear of the unknown in a specific way: by hinting that the universe of light and beauty and relative comfort we think we have always known is in fact an illusion. Were irrationality, chaos, and meaninglessness truly a part of our quotidian existence, they would surely not be objects of abject horror when we meet them in narrative. Here we must pause and review. For Tolkien, there is no distinction in kind between fairy story and mythology. Both seek to touch the transcendent through moments of disclosure. Tolkien constructs his own stories by following this mythopoeic impulse, deliberately courting these moments of “eucatastrophe” and tying the doctrine of creation to the doctrine of redemption. Recall that for him, eucatastrophe is the true and fundamental structure of the fairy tale and thus of mythology in general. Recall too that Lovecraft feels the same impulse Tolkien does, labeling it as weird fiction rather than fairy story, and finding its source in an apparent violation of the laws of nature and thus in a sort of transcendence as well. The themes and structures of Lovecraft’s horror rely, therefore, on a sort of maltheism (perhaps even misotheism) which is unexpected, and therefore shocking. Were we all aware of the dreadful apathy of the cosmic powers, their revelation would not be shattering, and the horror would not exist. Were the cosmic powers benign, as in Tolkien, the horror would also not exist. The structure of Lovecraft’s chosen medium, the fantastic story—that which touches upon the transcendent or “weird”—naturally expects a eucatastrophe, a happy ending simultaneously unforeseen, overwhelming, and yet flowing naturally from the course of events. We, as readers, expect that the protagonist will, somehow, delightfully, triumph over the vast forces arrayed against him. Usually this happens, as in The Dream-Quest of

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Unknown Kadath, “The Tree,” “The Picture in the House,” or “The Dunwich Horror.” Sometimes it does not, and the effect of the story relies on our shock at its subversion. Lovecraft views himself as one of the “elites” who realize the dreadful truth of the universe, something the majority of his audience likely cannot accept. He plays upon their expectations in order to achieve his effect. Perhaps, one might argue, Lovecraft’s happy endings were written in order to satisfy this less discerning clientele, who would otherwise react negatively to his project. Yet he himself admits an urge to escape from this truth: the mythopoeic impulse to create a certain sort of fictional universe. Can so many of his stories have been written merely to pander, or to bow to popular expectations? Even if we accept that Lovecraft settled on his personal style and grew in his confidence in his approach only in the latter years of his life, there is no significant difference in terms of ending. In fact, several of his more ‘traditional’ stories occur in this period. Perhaps (and it is only a supposition) Lovecraft himself felt a dissatisfaction with his own philosophy and sought, through his literature, to achieve some sort of Consolation. In contrast with Lovecraft’s worldview, all these impulses are readily explainable. From a Christian dogmatic perspective, the hero triumphs over evil and tragedy and narratives reiterate happy endings because this is in fact the shape of reality.84 Jesus Christ rescues humanity and the universe from the sin and death into which they have pitched themselves. The mythic hero archetype, along with all its various reflections and refractions, finds its source in God. Reality is, insofar as the world is enslaved to sin, a tragedy in which fundamentally noble beings find themselves destroyed by their own flaws. But, insofar as the actual end of the story involves a eucatastrophic redemption in Christ, reality is a comedy with the ultimate happy ending. Humans derive their narrative instinct from the shape of God’s history of salvation. Both are true, depending on where we wish to cut off the story. Such a state of affairs is both desirable and livable, unlike Lovecraft’s own philosophy. Lovecraft, stuck in a creation without redemption—more than this, in a universe in which the fall and its threat of meaninglessness simply exists without the goodness of creation undergirding it—naturally feels this desire for escape, for transcendent beauty, for a redeemed creation. What is more, he writes the majority of his stories from this perspective as well, inchoate as it is: a place where the goodness of creation triumphs over its fall, where some order is restored from chaos. He cannot escape it: not the hound of Tindalos, but the Hound of Heaven is hunting him. G. K. Chesterton has argued that the terror of the world is due partly to our own disoriented perspective. “Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is

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not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—”85 Interestingly, one of the (co-written) stories, Joshi condemns, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” offers much the same sentiment regarding none other than the Old Ones themselves.86 As such, Lovecraft’s universe is not nearly so alien to the Christian one as many would think, and it is fascinating to speculate as to how his thought may have developed had he not died so soon. How would he have reacted to Tolkien’s work, we might wonder? Would it have offered another avenue through which Lovecraft could find the fulfillment of the desire for transcendence he so vigorously sought? If only he could have seen things from a different angle; if only he could have gotten round in front.

NOTES 1. There is a scholarly volume devoted to Tolkien’s use of horror: The Mirror Crack’d: Fear and Horror in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (ed. Lynn Forest-Hill [Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008]). 2. Howard Lovecraft was not yet two years old when Tolkien was born in South Africa. By the time the Tolkiens moved back to England, Lovecraft’s father had already been committed for insanity, and Lovecraft (so he claimed) had already discarded a belief in the Christian God and become enamored of classical myth. Lovecraft and Tolkien began their first forays into writing at the same time, and when Tolkien entered Oxford University as a first-year Lovecraft was entrenched in his first significant literary exposure, a controversy within the pages of the Argosy. This sparked Lovecraft’s subsequent rise to prominence in the world of amateur journalism, while across the pond Tolkien’s romance with Edith was being interrupted by his deployment to the Somme and the trenches of the First World War. Lovecraft published “Dagon,” the first of his stories to exhibit the themes that would so dominate his later writings, in 1917—the same year that Tolkien began work on Middle-earth and his Elvish language. By age thirty, Lovecraft’s mother had been committed to an insane asylum and he had begun his Dunsanian dream cycle tales, while Tolkien, only twenty-eight, was already a reader at the University of Leeds. When Tolkien was offered the Rawlinson and Bosworth Chair of Anglo-Saxon Literature at Oxford University in 1925, Lovecraft was a depressed newlywed stuck in New York City. His return to New England led to an explosion of creativity, and Lovecraft was right in the middle of his most fruitful literary period when Tolkien befriended C. S. Lewis and began meeting with the group that would come to be known as the Inklings. When “The Call of Cthulhu” was published in 1928, Tolkien had not yet abandoned his tale of Beren and Lúthien, and while Lovecraft was sharing his “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” Tolkien was sharing drafts of The Hobbit with C. S. Lewis. H. P. Lovecraft died on March 15, 1937, six months before the publication of The Hobbit. He was forty-six; Tolkien was forty-five.

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3. Wandrei, in fact, was in part responsible for convincing the editor of Weird Tales to publish “The Call of Cthulhu.” Derleth secretly submitted Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth for publication. See S.T. Joshi, More Annotated Lovecraft (St. Louis: Turtleback, 1999), 173. 4. H.P. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008), 484. 5. Tolkien’s opinion of Dunsany was not uncritical. L. Sprague de Camp relates that Tolkien disliked “The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweler” for dragging the primary world into his secondary fantasy world. This is also concrete evidence that Tolkien had read at least one of Lovecraft’s tales, “The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” published in the volume de Camp had sent Tolkien and on which they were corresponding: Swords & Sorcery: Action, Magic, Enchantment — Eight Novelettes by Masters of Heroic Fantasy (New York: Pyramid Books, 1963). Without mentioning Lovecraft by name, Tolkien comments that he finds the tales in the volume bad, especially as they relate to fantasy nomenclature. See de Camp, “Letters,” Mythlore 13, no. 4 (1987): Article 21. 6. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 412. 7. First published in Essays Presented to Charles Williams in 1947, and then subsequently revised again but only published posthumously in 1983. 8. J.R.R Tolkien, Tolkien on Fairy-stories, extended edition, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson (London: HarperCollins, 2008), 42. 9. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 42. 10. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 42–43. 11. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 41. 12. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 65. 13. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 52. 14. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 55. 15. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 77. 16. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 60. 17. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 74. 18. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 84. 19. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 32. 20. “Most good ‘fairy-stories’ are about the aventures [sic] of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches. Naturally so; for if elves are true, and really exist independently of our tales about them, then this also is certainly true: elves are not primarily concerned with us, nor we with them. Our fates are sundered, and our paths seldom meet. Even upon the borders of Faërie we encounter them only at some chance crossing of the ways. [In a note to this passage:] This is true also, even if they are only creations of Man’s mind, ‘true’ only as reflecting in a particular way one of Man’s visions of Truth” (Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 32). 21. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 50. 22. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 69. 23. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 67. 24. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 75. 25. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 75.

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26. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 76. 27. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 77. 28. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 77. 29. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 77–78. 30. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 79. 31. For critical reception of this chapter, see the introduction to Sean Moreland (ed.), New Directions in Supernatural Horror: The Critical Influence of H.P. Lovecraft (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 32. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1043. 33. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1044. 34. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1047. 35. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1042, emphasis added. 36. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1043. 37. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 113. 38. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1042. 39. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1083. 40. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1086. 41. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 116. 42. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1046, 1064. 43. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1044–45. 44. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1050. 45. H.P. Lovecraft, Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft, ed. S.T. Joshi. Sporting Gentlemen, 2010), 8. 46. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 546–47. 47. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 547. 48. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 9. 49. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1065. 50. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1043–44. 51. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 113. 52. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1093. 53. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1093. The strands of Dunsany’s mythological influence are, apart from the Oriental, the same as Tolkien’s. As Lovecraft lauds, “this author draws with tremendous effectiveness on nearly every body of myth and legend within the circle of European culture; producing a composite or eclectic cycle of phantasy in which Eastern color, Hellenic form, Teutonic somberness and Celtic wistfulness are so superbly blended that each sustains and supplements the rest without sacrifice or perfect congruity and homogeneity” (1093). 54. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 550. 55. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 556. 56. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 546. 57. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 556. 58. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1083. 59. Colin Manlove, The Fantasy Literature of England (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020), 90–91. For Lovecraft’s relationship to Romanticism, see Donald Burleson, “Lovecraft and Romanticism,” Lovecraft Studies 19/20 (1989): 28–31.

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60. H.P. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, ed. S.T. Joshi (New York: Arkham House, 1995), 558. 61. “[I]f I could find tales or books or poems expressing everything I wish to say, I would not write at all” (H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, Volume II, ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei [New York: Arkham House, 1968], 111); “[Lewis] said to me one day: ‘Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves’” (Tolkien, Letters, 378). 62. H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, Volume IV, ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (New York: Arkham House, 1965), 94. 63. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 562. Emphasis added. 64. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 113–14. 65. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1041. 66. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1041. 67. Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 113. 68. H.P. Lovecraft, Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters, ed. David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000), 346. 69. M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953). 70. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 68. Tolkien uses the image of the mirror directly in the term Mooreeffoc (picked up from Chesterton, and signifying a glimpse of the familiar made strange, as ‘coffee room’ seen through a mirror), but actually classifies this as a lesser form of the more robust and powerful fairy story. 71. Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture (London: Routledge, 1988), 155. 72. In A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft (Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 1996) he picks out for special opprobrium “The Moon-Bog” (“elementary [. . .] naive,” 64), “The Cats of Ulthar” (“extremely elementary,” 79), “The Horror at Red Hook” (“little more than a tired rehash of hackneyed demonology and a viciously racist story,” 104; “How the atheist Lovecraft could provide a satisfactory explanation for ‘cosmic sin’ and the presence of Satan would be an interesting question,” 106), “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (“Both Curwen and Ward [the threats] are vividly realized. [. . .] Willett [the traditional hero] is not so successful, and on occasion he reveals himself to be somewhat pompous and self-important,” 124), “The Dunwich Horror” (“painfully inept [. . .] an elementary ‘good vs. evil’ struggle,” 139), “The Whisperer in Darkness” (a “violation of Lovecraft’s stated wish to discard conventional morality,” 146), and “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (“philosophical speculations [about Carter’s universal significance] . . . marred by a schoolroom atmosphere,” 197). Joshi even goes so far as to blame Lovecraft for setting up his own worst sorts of imitators. “What ‘The Dunwich Horror’ did was, in effect, to make the rest of the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ [. . .] possible. Its luridness, melodrama, and naive moral dichotomy were picked up by later writers [. . .] rather than the subtler work embodied in ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’ ‘The Colour out of Space,’ and others. In a sense, then, Lovecraft bears some responsibility for bringing the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ and some of its unfortunate results down on his own head” (141).

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73. Joshi, Subtler Magick, 131. 74. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 1065. 75. Interestingly, as we have seen in the two Shakespearean examples, audiences seem to crave justice more than mere emotional happiness, since in the hierarchy of satisfaction it seems more important that evil is punished than that the hero survives. 76. “From Beyond,” “The White Ship,” “The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” “The Terrible Old Man,” “The Tree,” “The Cats of Ulthar,” “Celephaïs,” “The MoonBog,” “The Other Gods,” “The Music of Erich Zann,” “Hypnos,” “Herbert West— Reanimator,” “The Hound,” “The Unnameable,” “He,” “In the Vault,” “Pickman’s Model.” 77. “The Transition of Juan Romero,” “The Picture in the House,” “The Lurking Fear,” “The Festival.” 78. “The Alchemist,” “A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson,” “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” “Old Bugs,” “The Street,” “Sweet Ermengarde,” “Ex Oblivione,” “The Outsider,” “The Shunned House,” “The Horror at Red Hook,” “The Silver Key,” The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, “The Dunwich Horror,” At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, “The Dreams in the Witch House,” “The Thing on the Doorstep,” “From Beyond.” 79. “The Tomb,” “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” “Cool Air,” “The Strange High House in the Mist,” “The Very Old Folk,” “The Evil Clergyman,” The Shadow out of Time. 80. We should note that Lovecraft explicitly ties his descriptions in this story to the realm of “faery” (Complete Fiction, 401, 408) and the “elfin” (406). 81. “Dagon,” “Polaris,” “Memory,” “The Temple,” “Nyarlathotep,” “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family,” “The Nameless City,” “The Quest of Iranon,” “What the Moon Brings,” “The Rats in the Walls,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Colour Out of Space,” “The Whisperer in Darkness,” “The Haunter of the Dark.” 82. Recall however that according to Joshi “The Whisperer in Darkness” is not a ‘true’ Lovecraft tale because it involves traditional morality. 83. C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950–1963 (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 76. 84. Clearly, this argument holds no water for those who do not already accept Christianity. Such a case could be made, but it is beyond the scope of this chapter. 85. G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1912), 257. 86. Of the horrible entity known as ‘Umr at-Tawil spoken of in the Necronomicon, Lovecraft writes, “There was no horror or malignity in what he radiated, and Carter wondered for a moment whether the mad Arab’s terrific blasphemous hints, and extracts from the Book of Thoth, might not have come from envy and a baffled wish to do what was now about to be done. Or perhaps the Guide reserved his horror and malignity for those who feared” (Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 898). Later, Carter muses on the limited perspective that ascribed hostility to the Old Ones: “Damnation, he reflected, is but a word bandied about by those whose blindness leads them to condemn all who can see, even with a single eye. He wondered at the vast conceit

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of those who had babbled of the malignant Ancient Ones, as if They could pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak a wrath upon mankind. As well, he thought, might a mammoth pause to visit frantic vengeance on an angleworm” (899). The implication here is that the seeming threat posed by the Great Old Ones is merely a projection by less enlightened humans faced with a reality beyond their ken. Since this tale was co-written with another author, we must be hesitant here. Price himself says Lovecraft basically rewrote the story entirely, but kept as many of Price’s ideas as possible, including, we might surmise, this one. What is interesting, however, is that if Lovecraft rejected such concepts outright, why he had such a hand in bringing the continued story of previous authorial stand-in Randolph Carter to publication in such a form.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1953. Burleson, Donald. “Lovecraft and Romanticism.” Lovecraft Studies 19/20 (1989): 28–31. Chesterton, G. K. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co. 1912. De Camp, L. Sprague. “Letters.” Mythlore 13, no. 4 (1987): Article 21. ———. Swords & Sorcery: Action, Magic, Enchantment – Eight Novelettes by Masters of Heroic Fantasy. New York: Pyramid Books, 1963. Forest-Hill, Lynn, ed. The Mirror Crack’d: Fear and Horror in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008. Joshi, S. T. A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft. Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 1996. ———. More Annotated Lovecraft. St. Louis: Turtleback, 1999.Kearney, Richard. The Wake of Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture. London: Routledge, 1988. Lewis, C. S. The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950–1963. New York: HarperOne, 2009. Lovecraft, H. P. Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Edited by S. T. Joshi. Sporting Gentlemen, 2010. ———. Complete Fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008. ———. Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters. Edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000. ———. Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by S. T. Joshi. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1995. ———. Selected Letters, Volume II. Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1968. ———. Selected Letters, Volume IV. Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1965.

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Manlove, Colin. The Fantasy Literature of England. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020. Moreland, Sean. Editor, New Directions in Supernatural Horror: The Critical Influence of H.P. Lovecraft. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Humphrey Carpenter, ed. with the Assistance of Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ———. Tolkien on Fairy-Stories. Extended Edition. Edited by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson. London: HarperCollins, 2008.

Part IV

LOVECRAFT AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY

Chapter 10

Haunted Steeples and Horrible Peoples Church and Cult in Lovecraft Neal Foster

INTRODUCTION: CHURCH AS PLACE, CHURCH AS PRACTITIONERS At a practical level, one of the more disturbing things a Christian encounters in Lovecraft’s stories is his description of “church.” “Church” in the Cthulhu Mythos means a building, “dilapidated,” “ancient,” “unwholesome,” and “vacant,” sometimes associated with crypts and cemeteries (sources, of course, of a variety of horrors). Moreover, groups of people meeting together for spiritual purposes are usually secret cults perpetuating the memory and reverence of the “Great Old Ones” such as Cthulhu—incomprehensible amoral beings who share almost no characteristics with the God of Christian theology. How does Lovecraft create feelings of unease and fear in his portrayal of churches and spiritual communities? There are two main understandings of the term “church”—one more popular, and the other more strictly biblical. The most common, in popular usage, is the building where believers primarily enact worship services. The second understanding is shown in passages such as Ephesians 5:23, which seem to equate “church” to “body of Christ,” or the group of all believers (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 12:12–27).1 In this chapter, the focus will be on Lovecraft’s use of “church,” which refers to physical buildings. At the same time, he takes advantage of situations that correspond to the second meaning, in his description of cult members and their activities—what we might consider a perversion of church services, rituals, and congregants. Lovecraft’s portrayal of the ethnic other will come to the forefront in this area. 187

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE A brief mention of Lovecraft’s early life can give insight into his views on Christian community. He relates in his essay “A Confession of Unfaith” that although he received teaching in traditional American Protestant Christianity, around the age of five he confirmed the nonexistence of Santa Claus, which led him to question the existence of God. Then he discovered Greco-Roman thought and culture, which he enthusiastically accepted (one might even say he converted) with a corresponding “religious experience,” concluding, “[i]f a Christian tell me he has felt the reality of his Jesus or Jehveh [sic], I can reply that I have seen the hoofed Pan and the sisters of the Hesperian Phaethusa.”2 During this time he became “so pestiferous a questioner” of his Sunday School teacher at the First Baptist Church that his mother allowed him to stop attending.3 Undoubtedly, one of his greatest offenses, when learning of the Roman persecution of Christians, was his support of Rome’s efforts to stamp out the absurd Christian myths, even imagining amphitheaters where he could have tortured Christians.4 It is clear that the Christianity to which Lovecraft was exposed failed to communicate the relational, aesthetic, or philosophical meaning he yearned for. Losing his father before the age of eight, then his maternal grandfather a few years later, Lovecraft could have benefited from a Christian community that accepted and mentored him, and allowed room for his questions. Instead, he was offered, to use his terms, an absurd gray myth of a religion that valued him only as a potential member of its herd. No wonder then that, as his scientific knowledge increased (especially astronomy), by the age of thirteen he had adopted materialistic, “pessimistic cosmic views.”5 CHURCH AS CONGREGATION: CULTS AND CULTISTS Cults as the Racial Other We are all aware of Lovecraft’s racism and xenophobia, situated in a larger conservative mind-set that was resistant to change. It is beyond our scope here to examine thoroughly the effect Lovecraft’s mind-set had on his stories; however, we can notice how it affects his description of religious rituals and their participants—especially scary ones. A common if not ubiquitous literary device employed by Lovecraft is to insert non-Westerners or non-Caucasians to illustrate how dangerous or uncertain a situation is. Psychologist Kirk Schneider gives an explanation: “The more an experience deviates from and ultimately contradicts our accustomed outlook, the more intimidating it becomes.”6 In fact, “the more a thing

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differs, the less manageable it becomes; the less manageable it becomes, the greater its linkage to extremity, obscurity, and, ultimately, endlessness.”7 Essentially, for Lovecraft there is a direct link from people-who-are-different-from-me to uncontrollably-scary-situation. So, part of the uncanniness to (white Christian) readers is that strange creepy rituals are performed by brown humans in other languages, as Benjamin Zeller notices in “The Call of Cthulhu”: [T]he story revolves around malevolent dark-skinned cultists who not only possess knowledge of Cthulhu, but actually worship this foul being. . . . The clear racial hierarchy present in this narrative, with white investigators unraveling the evil secrets of dark-skinned religious zealots, may obscure the fact that Lovecraft did identify these sinister characters with explicitly religious terminology such as idol, fetish, cult, ceremony, worship, and god, albeit language that he associated . . . with “primitive” religion.8

It is not just the obvious racial essentialism of white good guys stymieing brown bad guys, but Lovecraft digs deeper into the cult’s worship (i.e., beliefs expressed in rituals) to make an even more disturbing connection. He describes the apocalyptic end of the world that would come from the awakening of Cthulhu. “Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.”9 Obviously this is unsettling not just to Christians but to all followers of religions who depend on their religious beliefs for a moral code. There must be something wrong with religious rituals that foretell “ecstasy and freedom” “with laws and morals thrown aside.” Yes, and as mentioned previously, these are not Caucasians, nor even Westerners, who are doing this. Lovecraft emphasizes the difference between Western cultural religious beliefs and those of the cult to show the reader how dangerous and scary they (and the one they worship, Cthulhu) are. In “The Evil Clergyman,” the combination of twisted religion and racial other is extrapolated to the horrifying conclusion: dabbling with rites and knowledge too dangerous for the anemic Anglican Church leadership mysteriously transforms the protagonist into the titular evil clergyman with his “sallow, olive complexion.”10 The Egyptians with whom the protagonist (ostensibly Harry Houdini) interacts in “Under the Pyramids” turn out to be essentially violent kidnapping scam artists. In hindsight the reader should have seen this inevitability when the leader is described as resembling a pharaoh or ancient priest, complete with a “hollow and sepulchral voice.”11

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“The Festival” connects the “dark furtive folk” who had settled New England before Europeans to the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, the author of an important Lovecraftian artifact, his version of Scripture, the Necronomicon.12 On the winter solstice, in the ground below a church, the assembled brown primitives enact the eponymous festival that results in crazy flopping underworld-dwelling winged webbed monstrosities pulling the participants into Tartarean depths. The Necronomicon is described in “The Dunwich Horror” as a large very old book with a metal lock, written in a language no one can read. The antagonist young Wilbur Whateley values it as holy writ and is obsessed with translating and reading it. The problems in Dunwich actually start prior to Europeans settling there. Heathen rituals of the Indians addressed “forbidding shapes,” resulting in spooky unexplained earthquakes. These rituals must have involved May Eve and Hallowmass, recurring holy days for Lovecraft’s scary cults. No matter which story they are in, cults are always doing weird rituals on Walpurgis night (May Eve, April 30) and Halloween (or Hallowmass, October 31). In “The Dunwich Horror,” they are even called “orgies”—very upsetting to the conservative mind.13 In a way, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath provides the epitome of the connection between perverted cultish rituals and their object. The Prophet Nyarlathotep leads the ritual worship of Azathoth: “the daemonsultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in chaos amid pounding and piping and the hellish dancing of the Other Gods, blind, voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless, with their soul and messenger Nyarlathotep.”14 Sean Martin makes much of this description, concluding, “Ultimately, Azathoth, the center and origin of it all, exists as the very embodiment of absurdity, for Azathoth is not vengeful but oblivious—omnipotent, but completely uninterested in the affairs of any other beings. Humankind is trapped in every aspect—meaninglessness within meaninglessness, absurdity within absurdity.”15 Alexander Thompson has already summarized The Shadow over Innsmouth in his chapter earlier in this book. Let us further examine the influence exerted on Innsmouth’s churches by the exotic newcomers. A seventeenyear-old grocery worker informs the narrator: the churches still extant have been “violently disavowed” by each of their denominations. Their rituals are of the “queerest” kind, as are the clothes their clergy wear, and their stated dogmas, which mention some sort of “bodily immortality” in this world.16 This is the influence of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, “a peculiar secret cult . . . a debased, quasi-pagan thing imported from the East a century before.”17 Benjamin Zeller points out that Lovecraft connects the downfall of Christian practice (including church activity and membership) to the racial degradation of Innsmouth’s people.

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The Esoteric Order’s religious practices, Lovecraft describes, demonstrate a variety of nefarious foreign influences, including “peculiar vestments,” headdresses, jewelry reminiscent of distant lands, and foreign languages. Rather than finding such exoticism appealing, the narrator initially (before his ultimate downfall in the final pages) reacts with revulsion.18

As Zeller mentions, the final horror in this story is that the narrator has some of that non-Caucasian lineage, and thus sees himself predestined to join the members of the Order in their horrific way of life. In an obvious perversion of the Christian idea of predestination unto salvation in a believing community ascending to heaven after death, the narrator accepts his transition into an amphibious thing who, along with the other inhabitants of Innsmouth, will descend into the ocean depths in undying service of the Deep One. Javier Martínez Jiménez further illuminates the connection Lovecraft often makes between cults, immigrants, and the deterioration of not only sacred spaces like church buildings, but entire neighborhoods. “The presence of secret cults acting in given urban areas (. . . as in Red Hook . . . or elsewhere as a result of the establishment of a cult) tends to lead to decayed urban (ruinous buildings, irregular and dirty streets) and social fabric.”19 This intertwining of space, ritual, and the racial other is clearly seen in “The Horror at Red Hook.” There, “chanting, cursing processions of bleareyed and pockmarked young men”20 are a part of rites effected by a white man hungry after arcane secrets, Robert Suydam, who takes advantage of foreigners to form, in effect, his own cult. Of course he attempts to explain it away to authorities in terms of anthropological research, describing his interest in a sort of Nestorianism influenced by Tibetan shamans. The Nestorian Christianity angle is supported by his (and his cult’s) involvement with an old Catholic church—wisely, local priests have rejected that particular church’s identity and authority.21 Eventually the police find that church building houses humanity-violating crimes committed by the cult in service of the demonic powers from below. It is unclear from the story whether the “devil-worshipers” of “Mongoloid stock” were attracted by or caused the physical connection to hellish dimensions.22 The end is the same: “cosmic sin” enters the physical space under Red Hook, ruining the lives of many—including driving into madness the primary detective on the case, Thomas Malone.23 Curiously for Lovecraft, the antagonist (Suydam) has a change of heart and rejects his previous evil endeavors in a final Samson-like effort to seal the Tartarean rift and prevent the unleashing of widespread evil on New York.24

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CHURCH AS PLACE OF WORSHIP: TEMPLES, ALTARS, AND STEEPLES Christians tend to see church buildings as figurative thresholds, or liminal spaces between physical and spiritual dimensions. James Kneale says Lovecraft’s traditionalism affects this aspect thusly: “While thresholds can be read positively or negatively, Lovecraft usually casts his in a negative light because they open up the prospect of change, which can only be threatening to someone obsessed with fixity.”25 This means that one of the things Lovecraft does to fascinate Christians is to take the place we meet our allgood, all-loving Creator God, and describe it in such a way that, at the same time the uncanniness feels familiar, it applies to situations that definitely do not connect to a loving fatherly deity. In fact, both the places and the rituals Christians employ to worship and connect with God can be employed in ways that connect to but subvert the Christian’s expectations. This is aided by Lovecraft’s traditionalistic perspective. Kneale points out that Lovecraft’s stories have the common thread of valuing traditional places. These places—the historic, settled, knowable but ultimately lost spaces of his beloved New England—are not social spaces, alive with potential encounters and the possibility of change. Lovecraft’s conservative sense of place combines the distance of the cartographer with the antiquarian’s lack of interest in the living.26

Sacred Spaces Interestingly, though Lovecraft typically displays no sympathy for Christianity, he often uses the desecration of Christian places to illustrate the conservative concern for the influence of the newcomer, the unexplained, or the other. This is seen in “The Dunwich Horror,” where the Congregational pastor affirmed and preached against the demonic powers at work in Dunwich in 1747, after which he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen again. Not coincidentally, the only church building mentioned in Dunwich has a broken steeple and now houses the only store in town, which is itself “slovenly.” For our purposes, the most significant religious idea in this story is the place where the Whateleys carry out their rituals, Sentinel Hill, which has an “altar-like stone”27 whereon the Whateleys offer foul sacrifices and obscene rituals. It is not explained in the story exactly how much of the dark stone arrangement was accomplished by the original Native Americans who used it, and how much the Whateleys did. But, as Benjamin Zeller is back to explain, “the overall role they serve is clear as unholy spaces, haunted inversions of the sort of European megaliths that Lovecraft knew from his

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readings of British supernatural fiction, places like Stonehenge, Callanish, or Drombeg.”28 Not only does Wilbur Whateley scream for Yog-Sothoth in the middle of the unholy stone circle, but at the same place, the group of three heroes manages to vanquish Wilbur’s twin brother, the titular Dunwich Horror, a huge abomination of somehow both godly and human lineage. Thus, we see that the only Cthulhu story, in which humans “win” or at least fend off the horror, is one in which multiple humans coordinate to formulate and execute a plan with courage. Of course, the ultimate doom of the world is still on the table, but this small band of believers managed to frustrate the nefarious purposes of the Whateleys.29 The heroic librarian’s advice at the end of the story to “dynamite” the Whateley family’s altar and other arrangements of stone might turn out to be decent (if impractical) advice regarding sacred spaces in other Lovecraft narratives that incite insanity and horror. In “Dagon” the adrift protagonist encounters a “putrid” “rotting” muddy land mass that has risen from the depths of the sea.30 After a few days of walking through locations that remind him of Satan’s experience in the darkness in Paradise Lost, he finds a large monolith that marks a place of worship for “a stupendous monster of nightmares.”31 All this combines to drive the protagonist mad. “The Other Gods” is a story exactly about a mythical sacred space and the danger it holds for curious humans, like Barzai, who know a little too much. Lovecraft explicitly says the mountain of the gods Hatheg-Kla “rises like a rock statue in a silent temple.”32 As Barzai the self-named prophet ascends it, he has a numinous experience resulting in a sort of worship that puffs himself up. Pride truly goes before destruction, because he meets not just the earth gods but the gods of the hellish abyss between the stars, resulting in him falling forever up into the sky. In “The Nameless City,” the description of abandoned religious buildings initially seems not directly to induce terror but to disorient and place the reader or protagonist in an uncertain situation. But as the explorer continues, he finds more details, including “certain altars and stones [that] suggested forgotten rites of terrible, revolting, and inexplicable nature.”33 Inside the most obvious temple-like structure he finds a “narrow passage” which he follows “infinitely down like some hideous haunted well.”34 After a claustrophobic journey, he finds near-chaos in “mummified forms of creatures outreaching in grotesqueness the most chaotic dreams of man.”35 Right after the room with the mummies, still underground, is a “luminous abyss,” a seemingly bottomless but well-lit opening, out of which inverted heavenly gate eventually come the unliving mummies’ ghosts to drag him down to doom. Egypt is the location of a similar plot in “Under the Pyramids.” First the protagonist (supposedly Harry Houdini) describes the physical connection

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between the pyramids to their respective “mortuary chapels.”36 Then he is kidnapped and thrown into one of these structures—can Houdini escape being imprisoned with the Pharaohs? Eventually he does, but not before witnessing a twisted subterranean ritual centered, as it first seems, on a literal lack of holy space. Later he sees the opposite; the unbelievably horrible throng is worshiping what can only be the monstrous gargantuan ancient creature who inspired the sphinx statue.37 In the epic novella At the Mountains of Madness, there is no mention of literal church buildings, but the descriptions of temples in the Antarctic city represent “monstrous perversions of geometrical laws and [. . .] the most grotesque extremes of sinister bizarrerie.”38 For the narrator, this perversion is inseparable from two dark religious factors. The first is mankind’s own forgotten origins, including “primordial” memories of “temples of horror earlier . . . than any human world we know.”39 The second is his familiarity with the Necronomicon. Upon closer inspection of the city, the narrator begins to understand the choice of the highest mountains for the site of the main temples—now dilapidated—and how slowly eroded caverns were connected into subterranean sections of the temples.40 Exploring the underground passageways leads to the famous conclusion of the story, wherein the narrator escapes indescribable monstrosities from claustrophobic passages. When Randolph Carter finds the long-sought mountain with the carvings of the gods, in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, he recognizes it as a sort of combination of an idol, a God, and a place of worship. The solitary protagonist notes, “there is in a god’s face more of marvel than prediction can tell, and when that face is vaster than a great temple and seen looking down at sunset in the cryptic silences of that upper world from whose dark lava it was divinely hewn of old, the marvel is so strong that none may escape it.”41 Thus, this representation of a divine being irresistibly compels what is essentially a worshipful response, or at least the marveling reaction is inescapable. Carter again encounters another twisted sacred place of note on his quest when he is captured by the “slant-eyed merchant” and taken to the monastery of the yellow silk-masked priest of Nyarlathotep. The centerpiece of the priest’s de facto sanctuary is a “gaping well which rumour holds to reach down to the hellish Vaults of Zin where gugs hunt ghasts in the dark.”42 Carter manages to make his escape after taking the priest by surprise and pushing him down the well; thus the Caucasian hero gets to subvert the intent of his subjugator and stave off madness or death. Church Buildings Returning to the victorious Randolph Carter, in his story “The Silver Key,” when he sees the steeple of the Congregational church in the distance, this

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clues the reader into a transition.43 It turns out not to be just the meeting of two dimensions—spiritual and physical—but the meeting of two times; he literally travels back to his childhood. The Shadow over Innsmouth has been mentioned already as an example of Lovecraft’s racist fears, but how specifically do those interact with the architecture of church buildings? Benjamin Zeller explains that the narrator only becomes aware of the religious degradation of Innsmouth when he “catches glimpses of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, the religious establishment of the town and the source of its apocalyptic decline.” This foreign cult was the result of the immoral captain Obed Marsh bringing to Innsmouth not just a religion based on the Deep Ones, but also carnal relations with the followers of that religion. Therefore, this perverted syncretism is the principal influence of cultural and moral decline in the story. Zeller concludes, “Lovecraft’s own fears of immigration and racial miscegenation, and their effects on American society, could not be clearer.”44 These effects extend clearly to the church buildings, which are examples of barrenness. “Three tall steeples” are in obvious disrepair, “crumbling down” and missing clocks in their towers.45 Later, the narrator sees a stone church in a “clumsy Gothic fashion” with a “disproportionately” high basement with windows closed and shuttered, whose tower clock is missing hands. He sees the basement door open to a dark void, which results in “unaccountable horror,” searing into his mind a nightmarish image: a pastor with non-Western-looking crown and clothing.46 “The Temple” has a unique setting for an ancient madness-inducing holy place: an indescribably ancient temple at the bottom of the sea. Lovecraft’s racism this time is intentionally expressed as a feature of the arrogant Prussian submarine officer which shows how far he falls when finally taken by the madness.47 Finally we come to “The Haunter of the Dark,” where Lovecraft develops most fully the narrative mechanism of the spooky church building. Interestingly, it explores the interplay of light and dark not just in an abstract sense but in its effect on a sensitive, artistic human, Robert Blake. Lovecraft introduces the pivotal church in uncertainty, mentioning many conflicting theories about the role played by the building and its contents in the death of the protagonist Blake.48 When the narrator describes Blake’s first attraction to Federal Hill, the section of town where resides the church, he uses adjectives related to the visual spectrum: “violet, lamp-starred twilight” with “floodlights” and a “beacon” that “blazed up” the night.49 The church building itself is “dark” with a steeple that looms “blackly against the flaming sky.” It is “grim and austere,” “stained and weathered,” with large windows that never show light inside.50 These observations stimulate Blake’s imagination until he is obsessed with the “black, frowning steeple”—even to the point of abandoning the novel he wants to write, not coincidentally on a cult

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in Maine. He finally gets to Federal Hill to visit the structure, whereupon the reader’s tension is heightened by descriptions of streets that get “stranger and stranger” as well as nearby residents who cannot or will not give Blake directions to the church—thus removing that particular building from normal expectations. This is literally confirmed shortly thereafter with Lovecraft’s description of the church property, fenced and raised above its surroundings, as “a separate, lesser world.” Now Blake sees details only of “desolation and decay.”51 He finally gets some history of the building from a nearby policeman, who mentions an illegal cult that summoned nefarious abyssal entities. The consensus of the community, according to the cop, is to let the accursed building collapse through attrition. Blake’s dark thoughts about the structure are buoyed by this new knowledge, so he is unable to resist seeing for himself what lies inside the “stained, sooty walls” which seem to absorb the bright afternoon sunshine. When he sneaks through a hole in the fence, he notices several people disassociating themselves from his audacity (closing doors and windows, pulling children inside, and making protective gestures with their hands). Of course, once inside the church proper he sees all the expected signs of a dark deserted creepy building: cobwebs, dust, decay, soot, and shadows from the sinking sun through the painted windows. One thing he doesn’t expect: a shelf of moldy, decaying books of occult secrets!52 This discovery confirms to Blake that the building had formerly been the home of horror more ancient than the human race, and larger than the cosmos. One books he ferrets away, apparently handwritten in esoteric code. He makes it to the clock tower and steeple, and, in typical Lovecraftian fashion, after he climbs the stairs to the highest point of the building, he finds weird artifacts, unrecognizable in the weak light. He also finds a dead body—a possibly likeminded explorer from forty-two years earlier (with oddly charred and stained bones!), so there is definitely human death involved in this church building. One of the strange items he sees, it turns out, is the “Shining Trapezohedron,” a uniquely shaped and fascinating large gem-like stone which seems to transmit images into his mind—in fact, not just images but a sense of a conscious being perceiving him.53 This leads to perhaps Lovecraft’s most obvious usage of an anti-God figure, especially because his way into our dimension is through a church building. This “Haunter of the Dark” seems to be omniscient and requires horrible sacrifices, but he must remain in darkness and cannot cross any section of light. Soon Blake has a nervous breakdown after a sleepwalking episode takes him to the steeple, having dreamed of a perverted church service worshiping a perverted god, “the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a daemoniac flute held in nameless paws.”54 He escapes the physical constriction of the old nightmarish church, but he cannot shake the sense of inevitable doom at

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the hands of the steeple haunter. Finally comes a thunderstorm which knocks out electricity for a sufficient time that the otherworldly haunter can travel a dark route from the steeple to Blake’s room across town. In Blake’s final frenzied diary entries that night, before his death of fright from encountering the thing, he writes: The lightning seems dark and the darkness seems light. . . . The long, winging flight through the void . . . cannot cross the universe of light . . . re-created by the thoughts caught in the Shining Trapezohedron . . . send it through the horrible abysses of radiance. . . . Azathoth have mercy!—the lightning no longer flashes—horrible—I can see everything with a monstrous sense that is not sight—light is dark and dark is light . . . am mad or going mad—the thing is stirring and fumbling in the tower. I am it and it is I—I want to get out . . . must get out and unify the forces. . . . It knows where I am.55

In the end, then, we see that light would have constricted and entrapped the Haunter, while darkness gave it freedom. The darkness, and what lives in it, proves to be too much for Blake’s mind, so he dies of shock, both in the physical electrical sense, and in the emotional fearful sense. CONCLUSION Sean Martin says, “The ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ stands as a distorted carnival mirror reflection of world religions,” specifically, “In Lovecraft’s religions, temples are secret and disturbing places.”56 We see this twisted reflection particularly through Lovecraft’s description of the ethnic other through a traditionalist, conservative perspective. Nonwhite people, typically slant-eyed and swarthy foreigners with profane beliefs and practices, bring blasphemy to churches and other sacred spaces, as well as the downfall of geographical regions. Christians who enjoy the stories of Lovecraft must recognize his source of horror not just in the descriptions of otherworldly beings (such as Elder Gods or Deep Ones), but also in the description of humans involved. This deepens the weirdness of Lovecraft’s portrayal of desecrated church buildings, twisted rites and worship, and cults and their rituals. NOTES 1. Theologian Tom Greggs explains further, “The church begins at Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit. The primary condition of the church is not ecclesial form, patterns of worship or structures of ministry. The primary condition of the church is the event of the coming of the Holy Spirit, who is present within the

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variety and plurality of the community in all its diversity, and acts upon the community to make it the church.” Tom Greggs, “Church and Sacraments,” 157–69 in Kent Eilers and Kyle Strobel (eds.), Sanctified by Grace: A Theology of the Christian Life (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 160–61. 2. H.P. Lovecraft, “A Confession of Unfaith” (1922). Howard P. Lovecraft collection. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository​ .library​.brown​.edu​/studio​/item​/bdr​:709536/, 19–20. 3. Lovecraft, “A Confession of Unfaith,” 18. 4. S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2013), Kindle location 1140. 5. Lovecraft, “A Confession of Unfaith,” 21. 6. Kirk Schneider, Horror and the Holy: Wisdom-Teachings of the Monster Tale (Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing, 1993), 8. 7. Schneider, 7. Emphasis original. 8. Benjamin E. Zeller, “Altar Call of Cthulhu: Religion and Millennialism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos,” Religions 11, no. 1 (2020): 18, 8–9. doi: 10.3390/ rel11010018. 9. Lovecraft, The H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 3: The Haunter of the Dark and Other Titles (London: Grafton Books, 1985), 80–81. 10. Lovecraft, The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (New York: Chartwell Books, 2016), 1015, 1017. 11. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 296. 12. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 281. 13. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 112. 14. H.P. Lovecraft, The H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 1: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (London: Grafton Books, 1985), 377. 15. Sean Martin, “H.P. Lovecraft and the Modernist Grotesque” (PhD diss., Duquesne University, 2008), 186. 16. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 404. 17. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 393–94. 18. Zeller, 13. 19. Javier Martínez Jiménez, “The Impact of the Eldritch City: Classical and Alien Urbanism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Mythos,” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 131, no. 47.3 (2018): 38–39. 20. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 339. 21. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 341. 22. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 342. 23. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 349. 24. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 351. The reader is left wondering whether Suydam comes to his senses because as a white man he has senses he can return to? 25. James Kneale, “From Beyond: H. P. Lovecraft and the Place of Horror,” Cultural Geographies 13 (2006): 120. 26. Kneale, 119. 27. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 140. 28. Zeller, 11.

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29. Is this an admission by Lovecraft that, while solitary protagonists in his stories have few options, there is hope in genuine, practical, and proactive community? 30. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 26. 31. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 28. 32. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 190. 33. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 167. 34. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 168. 35. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 170. 36. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 293. 37. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 310–11. 38. Lovecraft, Omnibus 1, 45. 39. Lovecraft, Omnibus 1, 44. 40. Lovecraft, Omnibus 1, 96–97. 41. Lovecraft, Omnibus 1, 396. 42. Lovecraft, Omnibus 1, 445. 43. Lovecraft, Omnibus 1, 497. 44. Zeller, 13. 45. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 398. 46. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 401. 47. Lovecraft, Complete Fiction, 121. 48. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 272–73. 49. This is in addition to Lovecraft’s normal utilization of adjectives such as “bizarre,” “curious,” “grotesque,” “unreal,” and “alien.” 50. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 275. 51. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 278. 52. Including, of course, the Necronomicon. 53. Is the trapezohedron like the host of Eucharist, or an icon, which offers a gateway into the life of the one who finds it or focuses attention on it? Is attempting to appreciate this otherworldly item a form of worship? 54. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 294. 55. Lovecraft, Omnibus 3, 300–301. 56. Martin, 181.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Greggs, Tom. “Church and Sacraments.” In Sanctified by Grace: A Theology of the Christian Life, edited by Kent Eilers and Kyle Strobel, 157–169. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014. Joshi, S. T. I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2013. Kneale, James. “From Beyond: H. P. Lovecraft and the Place of Horror.” Cultural Geographies 13 (2006): 106–126.

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Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. “A Confession of Unfaith.” In Howard P. Lovecraft Collection. Brown Digital Repository, Brown University Library. 1922. https:// repository​.library​.brown​.edu​/studio​/item​/bdr​:709536/. ———. H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 1: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror. London: Grafton Books, 1985. ———. H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 3: The Haunter of the Dark and Other Titles. London: Grafton Books, 1985. ———. The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. New York: Chartwell Books, 2016. Martin, Sean. “H.P. Lovecraft and the Modernist Grotesque.” PhD Dissertation, Duquesne University, 2008. Martínez Jiménez, Javier. “The Impact of the Eldritch City: Classical and Alien Urbanism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Mythos.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 131 (47.3) (2018): 29–42. Schneider, Kirk. Horror and the Holy: Wisdom-Teachings of the Monster Tale. Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing, 1993. Zeller, Benjamin E. “Altar Call of Cthulhu: Religion and Millennialism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.” Religions 11 (1) (2020): 18. https://doi​.org​/10​.3390​ /rel11010018.

Chapter 11

Lovecraft’s Gods Cosmic Anxiety and Racist Hatred Michael Spence

The universe of H. P. Lovecraft is populated with a pantheon of horrors. From Nyarlathotep and his avatars, to the amorphous Azathoth and the iconic Cthulhu, these monstrous beings are one of the most recognizable features of Lovecraft’s own work and the genre of storytelling that bears his name. Yet it ought to give pause that a writer so clear in his correspondence about his mechanistic worldview imbues the sources of horror in his stories with distinctly deific qualities. Lovecraft’s nonfiction writing charts a personal theological journey through pantheism and agnosticism to a mechanistic materialism and his own philosophy of ‘cosmicism,’ yet his fiction presents, not the horror of a godless universe, but the horror of a universe controlled by monstrous deities.1 Lovecraft’s creatures are either presented as explicitly godlike to varying degrees or are at the very least mistaken for gods and worshipped as gods by human beings.2 Here, six readings of Lovecraft’s gods are briefly explored and assessed: first, the literary origins of Lovecraft’s gods in the lineage of “ancient alien” theories; second, Lovecraft’s gods as anti-theist polemic; third, the gods as symbols of cosmic indifference; fourth, Lovecraft’s “anti-mythology” as a critique of established religion; fifth, a critique of those efforts for cosmic agency sought by the esoteric traditions popularized by Helena Blavatsky; sixth, a phenomenological view exploring the relationship between the numinous and the uncanny. Finally, a new reading applies a theological lens to Lovecraft’s fiction and correspondence to claim that Lovecraft’s strange gods are neither mere polemic nor science fiction flourish, but a direct expression of racism and xenophobia.

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LOVECRAFT’S GODS: SIX READINGS 1. Ancient Aliens The origin of Lovecraft’s gods seems to lie in a synthesis of ideas. Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany, who influenced Lovecraft both stylistically and thematically, features gods in his stories on several occasions, even creating his own pantheon.3 Lovecraft fuses this with Charles Fort’s surmise that strange phenomena and unexplained artifacts could be attributed to “extra-mundane” visitors in earth’s past.4 This forms the seed of At the Mountains of Madness and “The Call of Cthulhu,” with their revelations of ancient alien visitors still living in remote places.5 Lovecraft’s fiction is perhaps the first explicit expression of the idea that ancient alien visitors would be worshipped as gods or that they are the origin of human life.6 These ideas would attach themselves firmly to Charles Fort’s notions, becoming almost axiomatic in what would go on to be a common trope in both science fiction and pseudoscience. It is Lovecraft’s version of Fort’s idea that later reappears in the “ancient astronaut” theory found in Pauwels and Bergier’s The Morning of the Magicians (1960) and Erich von Däniken’s seminal Chariots of the Gods? (1968), among many others. This reading explains the literary origins of the idea of alien gods but this alone does not account for the turn Lovecraft’s writing takes. Lovecraft depicts the gods as horrifying monsters and this suggests some other purpose. 2. Anti-theist Parodies An initial reading of Lovecraft’s work may suggest a polemical purpose in his descriptions of monstrous gods. These are not the loving God of his father’s Anglicanism or his Baptist Sunday School which so “exasperated” him, nor even the playful sylvan spirits of his declared classicism.7 Lovecraft’s gods are maddeningly other, physically repugnant, either indifferent or actively malign. But while these depictions may align with maltheism, dystheism, misotheism, or any form of “God is not great” anti-theism, Lovecraft has little to say here about the character of God as depicted by any religion.8 Instead, he reserves his criticism for religion itself which he dismisses as childish, superstitious, and the opponent of scientific progress.9 While some antireligious sentiment can be detected in his depictions of superstitious and “primitive” worship, Lovecraft’s gods themselves are not anti-theist parodies. This reading is understandable but ultimately presumptive. A more indepth understanding of Lovecraft’s worldview yields a fuller picture of how and why Lovecraft’s writing features monstrous alien gods. 3. Icons of Cosmic Indifference Lovecraft frequently described his view of the universe to his correspondents: “Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless

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rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident. There is no reason why it should be otherwise, or why we should wish it otherwise. All the florid romancing about man’s “dignity,” “immortality,” &c. &c. is simply egotistical delusions plus primitive ignorance.”10 This cosmic indifference is the very essence of Lovecraft’s horror—the revelation of a human being’s place in a vast, uncaring universe. As Lovecraft wrote: “Frankly, I cannot conceive how any thoughtful man can really be happy. There is really nothing in the universe to live for, and unless one can dismiss thought and speculation from his mind, he is liable to be engulfed by the very immensity of creation.”11 Here, we can detect among the personal ennui the influence of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West: “‘Mankind,’ however, has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids. ‘Mankind’ is a zoological expression, or an empty word . . . that empty figment of one linear history which can only be kept up by shutting one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of the facts, the drama of a number of mighty Cultures.”12 Lovecraft’s gods function similarly to his understanding of Greco-Roman gods—they personify a universal attribute.13 In this case, that attribute is cosmic indifference. Lovecraft’s worldview is depicted symbolically in uncaring, unknowable, and indifferent gods. Atheist cosmicism can therefore be summarized: there is no God—but if there were a God, God would be monstrous.14 This reading is central to understanding Lovecraft’s gods. It is almost certainly what Lovecraft means by his gods—the deliberate intention behind them. Yet there are several key features that this reading does not account for. It explains the existential angst, even the madness that Lovecraft’s characters experience, but it does not explain the visceral disgust so characteristic of Lovecraft’s work. Nor does it explain why Lovecraft’s gods are connected with themes of interbreeding, cultural degradation, and invasion. 4. Aspects of an Anti-mythology Developing the idea of the gods as symbols of cosmic indifference, David E. Schultz has called Lovecraft’s pantheon an “anti-mythology.” This has been interpreted as referring to the elevation of scientific truth over superstitious narrative, but Lovecraft biographer and scholar S. T. Joshi suggests an openly antireligious interpretation: “What is the purpose behind most religions and mythologies? It is to ‘justify the ways of God to men.’ . . . Every religion and mythology has established some vital connection between gods and human beings, and it is exactly this connection that Lovecraft is seeking to subvert with his pseudomythology.”15 This reading is only partially useful. It is plain that Lovecraft’s gods are an expression of cosmicism and that the aim of his ‘mythology’ is the

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destabilization of comfortable anthropocentric worldviews. However, Joshi’s characterization of this move as specifically antireligious is a misfire and relies on a simplistic definition of religion and mythology requiring benevolent gods. Lovecraft’s own understanding of religion and mythology was broad. He showed particular interest in Norse, Greek, and Roman tales. All three of these traditions notably include disinterested and mischievous gods as symbolic expressions that the major forces of the universe are indifferent to human affairs.16 If Lovecraft’s gods represent a specific critique of any religious traditions it is the esoteric paths. 5. A Critique of Esotericism The popular esoteric tradition Theosophy is referenced throughout Lovecraft’s works and its founder Helena Blavatsky is named several times in “The Call of Cthulhu.” The rituals in Lovecraft’s fiction are so much an inversion of the task of Theosophy that it is difficult not to read direct criticism. In Lovecraft the quest for spiritual enlightenment through ritual inevitably ends in disaster. Robert M. Price summarizes the meaning of this motif: “The knowledge, once gained, is too great for the mind of man. It is Promethean, Faustian knowledge. Knowledge that destroys in the moment of enlightenment, a Gnosis of damnation, not of salvation.”17 Any use of ritual to connect with or influence divine forces is arrogant in Lovecraft’s universe. The anthropocentrism of esoteric traditions is either dangerous or useless. Divine forces are more likely to respond to random events than any human effort, as in “The Call of Cthulhu” where the summoning ritual fails: “What an age-old cult had failed to do by design a group of innocent sailors had done by accident.”18 This reading cannot be ignored. Given Lovecraft’s plain disdain for esoteric efforts, there is further theological work to be done exploring those modern-day esoteric groups that elevate Lovecraft’s work to the place of sacred text.19 What this reading does not account for is the specific nature of the fate that befalls those who encounter Lovecraft’s gods. 6. An Inversion of the Numinous When investigation or revelation allows Lovecraft’s characters even a glimpse of the gods and their reality, madness is the common outcome. This is shown in a number of ways from shrieking “a single mad word” to being institutionalized to the simple declaration of the protagonist in “Dagon”: “I think I went mad then.”20 The implication is that madness results from the shattering of anthropocentric worldviews and proximity to a being of incomprehensible otherness. This madness and horror in the presence of the divine

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is a contrast to the expectation of ‘wonder and awe in God’s presence’ in religious experience.21 C. S. Lewis’s description of the numinous in The Problem of Pain begins: “Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear.”22 He develops the idea further, stating that a ghost in the next room would elicit feelings of dread toward the uncanny. Finally, news of a mighty spirit in the next room would excite awe. The object of such awe is the numinous. Lewis’s description of this third category echoes Lovecraft: “Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it.”23 Rather than progressing to Lewis’s third stage of positive awe, Lovecraft’s characters remain at the second stage—dread of the uncanny. Indeed, the dread is only magnified as the otherness increases. God’s ineffability is not awe-inspiring, but maddening.24 Part of the question of whether the presence of the divine results in a positive experience of awe or a negative experience of dread is the benevolence or otherwise of the divine other. The descent into ‘madness’ is therefore another expression of Lovecraft’s cosmicism: love and benevolence are not at the center of all things—they are very human ideas. If there were gods they would be completely indifferent to human concerns and they would be so other, so incomprehensible, that human beings would be horrified or driven mad by them. Julian Simpson’s audio adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward summarizes this neatly in a single phrase: “I have seen the face of God and it is terrible.”25 Though divine otherness leading to alienation is in some ways an inversion of Lewis’s Christian expectation, it is not outside Christian theology. The poetic meditation on the incarnation that opens John’s Gospel includes the line: “Though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him” (John 1:10, NIV). Here is a second inversion, where God becomes the stranger experiencing alienation. This scriptural theme of God as stranger is the theological lens that will bring into focus a significant reading of Lovecraft’s gods. A NEW READING: LOVECRAFT’S GODS AS EXPRESSIONS OF RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA While previous readings have interpreted Lovecraft’s gods primarily along polemical lines and focused on deliberate authorial intent, this new reading adds a psychosocial element. Previous interpretations are in no way excluded

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but what is added explains what they do not, notably key features of Lovecraft’s gods, including physical revulsion, inscrutable motives, and misophonia. The theological lens for this reading is the thread of Judeo-Christian tradition that connects God and stranger. Reading through this lens will reveal striking similarities between the frightening and physically revolting gods of Lovecraft’s fiction and his nonfiction descriptions of frightening and physically revolting strangers.26 To put the thesis succinctly: Lovecraft’s gods are an expression of his racism and xenophobia. Lovecraft’s Racism and Xenophobia Lovecraft’s general misanthropy is well documented both by himself and his biographers, and his forceful hostility in matters of race, immigration, and what he considered “miscegenation” is recorded throughout his correspondence and his fiction.27 Though he has his apologists, there is no doubt about the full-bloodedness of Lovecraft’s racism: A 1912 poem titled with a racial slur describes the creation of black people to fill the gap between “man” and “beast.” He described New York’s China Town as “a bastard mess of stewing mongrel flesh without intellect,” adding: “Would to heaven a kindly gust of cyanogen could asphyxiate the whole gigantic abortion.”28 A move to New York to marry Sonia Greene exacerbated his hatred, which was not just confined to his personal correspondence. Greene commented: “Whenever he would meet crowds of people [. . .] and these were usually the workers of minority races—he would become livid with anger and rage.”29 To be clear about the extremity of Lovecraft’s views, in his letter to Natalie Wooley on November 22, 1934, he writes of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Africa: The white minority adopt desperate & ingenious means to preserve their Caucasian integrity—resorting to extra-legal measures such as lynching & intimidation when the legal machinery does not sufficiently protect them. Of course it is unfortunate that such a state of sullen tension has to exist—but anything is better than the mongrelisation which would mean the hopeless deterioration of a great nation.30

Lovecraft saw himself as belonging to both a superior ‘Nordic’ race and a sort of North American aristocracy.31 In his fictionalized accounts of his New York experience, “The Horror at Red Hook” and “He,” he compares the architecture and culture of noble European founders with the overwhelming sights and sounds of the city now overrun by hordes of “mixed foreigners.”32 The fear of the familiar being overcome by an alien culture is writ large in his early work “Dagon” (1917) and the idea of racial mixing causing cultural and physical degradation is a central theme of at least two works: 1924’s “Facts

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Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” and the celebrated novella The Shadow over Innsmouth (1931). In both his prose and his correspondence we see strong, repeated examples of cultural nostalgia and a high level of disgust sensitivity—two features psychology has associated with racism and extreme forms of social conservatism.33 Factual and fictional reports of encounters with those he considers “foreigners” make repeated references to maddening sounds and physical repugnance, unfamiliar culture, and alien values. It is clear that Lovecraft’s racism, both biological and cultural, cannot be said to be peripheral. Rather, it permeates his work, giving his prose its hyperbolic energy and forming the root of key themes. It should not be surprising then to find connections between Lovecraft’s racism and one of the central features of his work—his gods. The Link between God and the Stranger Lovecraft’s generalized antipathy toward others and more forceful hatred toward those he perceived as foreigners mirrors the Judeo-Christian emphasis to love the neighbor and in particular the foreigner. Rabbi Jonathan Sachs explains: “The Jewish sages noted that on only one occasion does the Hebrew Bible command us to love our neighbour, but in thirty-seven places it commands us to love the stranger. Our neighbour is one we love because he is like ourselves. The stranger is one we are taught to love precisely because he is not like ourselves.”34 Antithetically, Lovecraft’s xenophobia and racism are fear of the unknown other.35 Kusche and Barker’s work into the psychology of racism describes a reaction that was almost certainly true of Lovecraft: “General unfamiliarity or atypicality act as cues for this hypersensitive threat detection system.”36 The stranger’s unfamiliar appearance, speech, and customs suggest unknown and unpredictable values and motivations.37 Might this person be malicious or merely indifferent to the well-being of the self, family, or tribe? This possibility of danger from unknown others is a strong subtext in Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan, dealing as it does with an unprovoked attack (Luke 10:25–37). Yet, in the turn of the tale, Jesus answers the question “Who is my neighbor?” by pointing to one who is racially and culturally other: subject to suspicion, strict boundaries, and fears about racial mixing. This move is made particularly provocative by the fact that Jesus’s interlocutor, “an expert in the law,” has already made another implicit connection: between love for neighbor and love for God. The link between God and the unknown stranger appears numerous times throughout the Jewish and Christian scriptures in narrative form. Notable examples are Sarah and Abraham’s visitors, the encounter with Melchizedek,

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the parable of the sheep and the goats, and the road to Emmaus.38 Again, in each of these stories there is a subtext of the threat of the unknown—the risk of harm—but hospitality and willingness to encounter the stranger leads to blessing. In fact, in each of the above examples the stranger in the midst is explicitly presented as a theophany. The presence of the stranger is the presence of God. Contrary to the religious anthropology of Feuerbach and Durkheim, where gods and religions are a projection and elevation of a culture’s own values and boundaries, this thread of the biblical tradition insists that God is encountered in a unique way through cultural outsiders.39 Correspondingly, Lovecraft’s imagined gods become a canvas onto which he projects, not his own values or ideas about nobility, but his feelings about cultural outsiders: he finds their unfamiliarity unsettling and they are feared as forces beyond his control. Hate God and Hate Your Neighbor The most evident connection between Lovecraft’s gods and his experience of strangers is the way he speaks about both. The language of disgust he employs in his fictional descriptions of the gods, their activities, and their environments directly parallels nonfiction descriptions in his personal correspondence of those he considered “foreigners.” The following instance is of note: The organic things . . . inhabiting that awful cesspool could not by any stretch of the imagination be call’d human. They were monstrous and nebulous adumbrations of the pithecanthropoid and amoebal; vaguely moulded from some stinking viscous slime of earth’s corruption, and slithering and oozing in and on the filthy streets or in and out of windows and doorways in a fashion suggestive of nothing but infesting worms or deep-sea unnamabilities. They—or the degenerate gelatinous fermentation of which they were composed—seem’d to ooze, seep and trickle thro’ the gaping cracks in the horrible houses.40

Here the familiar purple prose is not describing a fictional extraterrestrial horror. Lovecraft is instead sharing his view of the inhabitants of lower eastside Manhattan.41 Similarly, he describes “a shuddering physical repugnance to most Semitic types” similar to the “shuddering” repugnance described in “Dagon.”42 Obviously there is a need for caution in drawing conclusions from the style of Lovecraft’s writing—he employed this heightened language by habit. A cumulative case can be made however, particularly noting the focus of his language. For example, the creator-beings discovered in At the Mountains of

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Madness are described as possessing “features obviously of almost incredible primitiveness,” just as Lovecraft characterizes “non-Aryan” features as primitive.43 The senior deity Azathoth is described as existing “in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.”44 Lovecraft repeated this motif of “maddening” music with the unmistakable implication of feeling alienated by unfamiliar cultures, made explicit in one reference to “Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings.”45 Even Lovecraft’s racist claims of intellectual inferiority find expression in the description of Azathoth as “the blind, idiot god.”46 One direct association Lovecraft makes between his fearful gods and his fear of foreigners is that the gods are invariably worshipped by racially mixed cults. This overtly racist description from “The Call of Cthulhu” is notable: “Men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattos, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a colouring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult.”47 One more example of deliberate parallelism is in Lovecraft’s process of nomenclature. He states: “To a large extent they are designed to suggest [. . .] names in actual history or folklore which have weird or sinister associations. . . . Thus ‘Yuggoth’ has a sort of Arabic or Hebraic cast, to suggest [. . .] Moorish & Jewish manuscripts.”48 Taken cumulatively, this evidence forms the case that, whether deliberately or subconsciously, Lovecraft’s disquiet and disgust at the otherness of his neighbor find expression in fiction through disquieting and disgusting divine others. In Lovecraft’s writing, hate for God is hate for strangers.

A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE The stream of tradition that links love for God and love for neighbor, including strangers, develops to its fullest expression in 1 John 4 with the enjoinder: “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love [. . .] since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:7–12, NIV). The idea is repeated forcefully in the negative: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20–21, NIV). Theologians have wrestled with the starkness of this concept, debating which love proceeds from the other. Gerald J. Beyer summarizes Aquinas’s

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conclusions: “In the order of being, the two loves occur simultaneously; we love God in the neighbor. In the order of knowledge, we first learn to love the neighbor, thereby implicitly loving God.”49 Karl Rahner also champions this “radical unity of the loves” stating: “one can love God whom one does not see only by loving one’s brother lovingly.”50 Whatever the mechanism or process, 1 John 4 presents love for God and love for neighbor as inextricable. One cannot love God without loving the neighbor. Feelings and actions toward others and feelings and actions toward God are not merely influenced by one another—they are, in some way, the same thing. Emphatically, this applies not only to the familiar neighbor but also, perhaps particularly, to the unknown stranger. The Abyss of the Other One reading of this thread of biblical tradition provides a direct counter to Lovecraft’s fear and hate of the other by directly confronting the realities of cultural nostalgia and the disgust reaction. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek follows Freud and Lacan in problematizing the injunction to love our neighbor. Rather than denying the unsettling experience of unfamiliarity that Lovecraft expresses, Žižek acknowledges that encountering the “otherness” of the neighbor, and particularly the cultural outsider, can be traumatic: “Socially, what is most toxic is the foreign Neighbor—the strange abyss of his pleasures, beliefs and customs.”51 Rather than Lovecraft’s racist response to this otherness, Žižek advocates an alternative—to choose to encounter the neighbor with radical differences intact. Žižek criticizes multicultural projects that have relied on a counterfeit tolerance based on “quarantining” or neutralizing the very strangeness of the stranger, describing this as “the regression from the Christian gospel (love thy neighbor) . . . the greatest threat to our Christian legacy.”52 To truly encounter and ‘love’ the neighbor means acknowledging the potential for fear and traumatic change. Žižek states this strongly: “Our basic fear is fear of the neighbor, and all racisms play upon this. This abyss of the Other.”53 This closely echoes Lovecraft’s famous dictum, in which we can perceive the direct connection between reactionary racism and cosmic horror: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”54 Fear is named in 1 John 4 as the antithesis of love for both God and others: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18, NIV). Lovecraft’s experience of fear was in both the cosmic and the domestic: in contemplation of the vastness of the universe and in public encounters with strangers of unfamiliar appearance and unknown motivations. The writer of 1 John 4 prescribes the antidote to such fear. The

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revelation that “God is love,” rather than malicious, capricious, or indifferent, relieves fear of divine punishment and enables love to be expressed toward both God and others. The Christological core of 1 John 4 also presents an alternative reaction to potential danger from unknown strangers than fear. The writer expounds that the giving of Jesus as an atoning sacrifice is the ultimate expression of God’s love and that Jesus himself is the model for human action in the world (“In this world we are like Jesus”). This suggests the writer’s intention that the “perfect love” that “drives out fear” includes the willingness to suffer even to the point of death rather than hate. The attitude of Jesus, who pleaded forgiveness for those who crucified him, renders fear of personal harm irrelevant to expressing love to strangers (1 John 4:17, NIV). The willingness to understand an encounter with strangers as a positive experience of the divine, even if there is personal cost, is the antithesis of Lovecraft’s anxious experience of misanthropy, racist hatred, and cosmic anxiety.

CONCLUSION: LOVECRAFT AS A THEOLOGICAL RESOURCE In conclusion, bringing theological perspectives to bear can refine and enhance previous insights into the significance of Lovecraft’s gods. Using the scriptural connection between God and stranger as a lens brings into focus how Lovecraftian themes of physical repugnance, “maddening” otherness, inscrutable motives, misophonia, strange languages, cultural degradation, and alien invasion can be traced to his racist and xenophobic fear and hatred. Perhaps surprisingly, Lovecraft’s work emerges as a source of rich tools for individuals and communities engaged in the theological task, whether conducting cosmicist thought experiments or carefully considering his critique of anthropocentric ritual. The most practical and potentially transformative theological reflection comes from acknowledging the centrality of racist and xenophobic hate and fear in Lovecraft’s work. Like all good monster tales, Lovecraft’s work shows the reader a terrifying reflection of themselves. In this case the theme of cultural nostalgia and the language of disgust allow the reader to acknowledge, interrogate, and diagnose their own capacity for these feelings and resulting hate, xenophobia, and racism. The inextricable link between Lovecraft’s repugnance at others and his depiction of repugnant gods confronts the reader with a 1 John 4 insistence that intention and action toward neighbor is the true intention and action toward God. Perhaps such fruitful engagement should not be surprising, for in presenting the symbols of his monstrous and indifferent gods Lovecraft is asking

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the question at the heart of the theological task: What kind of universe do we live in?

NOTES 1. On pantheism: “I was infinitely fonder of the Graeco-Roman mythology, and when I was eight astounded the family by declaring myself a Roman pagan. Religion struck me so vague a thing at best, that I could perceive no advantage of any one system over any other. I had really adopted a sort of Pantheism, with the Roman gods as personified attributes of deity” (“Letter to Maurice W. Moe, January 1915,” in Selected Letters I [1911–1924]), eds. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei [Sauk City, WI: Arkham House 1964], 10); on agnosticism: “I am a sort of agnostic neither confirming nor denying anything,” ibid., 11; on materialism: “I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality” (“Letter to Clark Ashton Smith, October 1925,” in Selected Letters II [1925–1929], eds. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei [Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1968], 197); ‘Cosmicism’: A widely used term of uncertain coinage, this refers to Lovecraft’s literary philosophy, though he also expounded upon its ideas in his correspondence. Key features are the indifference of the universe to human interests and any meaning or functional understanding of the universe being far beyond human apprehension. See Eric Ortlund’s chapter in this book. 2. Azathoth is the main example of an omniscient and eternal being, with Nyarlathotep taking the role of god-prophet. The ‘Great Old Ones’ such as Cthulhu are not labeled as ‘gods’ by Lovecraft and it is implied that they are native to the universe; however, Cthulhu deliberately influences the creation of a religious cult for the worship of Cthulhu. The ‘Elder Things’ of At the Mountains of Madness are godlike in a different way, being revealed as the origin of human life on earth. Lovecraft insisted that within his fiction these ‘gods’ were material beings subject to physical laws. 3. Lord Dunsany, The Gods of Pegāna (Elkin Matthews, 1905). 4. It is from Charles Fort that we derive the adjective ‘Fortean.’ Lovecraft makes Fort’s influence explicit in 1931’s The Whisperer in Darkness, mentioning: “The extravagant books of Charles Fort with their claims that voyagers from other worlds and outer space have often visited the earth,” cf. H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories (London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2018), 67. 5. Perhaps influencing At the Mountains of Madness, Charles Fort’s The Book of the Damned (New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 1919) makes several references to Arctic exploration and even connects this obliquely with the idea of alien visitors: “There have been other extra-mundane visitors, who have gone away again—altogether quite in analogy with the Franklin Expedition and Peary’s flittings in the Arctic” (117); it could be argued that “Dagon” is the first appearance of this idea,

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but while this early work describes ancient creatures worshipped as gods it makes no reference to an extraterrestrial origin for the creatures. 6. The closest Fort’s The Book of the Damned comes to suggesting extraterrestrial origins for religious belief is that instances of sulfur falling from the sky could have become associated with demonic activity. Lovecraft was also likely aware of the thread in Theosophy that identified spiritual influences as follows: “The Lords of the Flame, who arrive from Venus . . . quicken mental evolution, to found the Occult Hierarchy of the Earth and to take over the government of the globe. It is They whose tremendous influence so quickened the germs of mental life that these burst into growth.” See A. Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, Man: Whence, How and Whither, a Record of Clairvoyant Investigation (Theosophical Publishing House, 1913), 79. 7.  “My theological beliefs are likely to startle one who has imagined me as an orthodox adherent of the Anglican Church. My father was of that faith, and was married by its rites, yet, having been educated in my mother’s distinctively Yankee family, I was early placed in the Baptist sunday school. There, however, I soon became exasperated by the literal Puritanical doctrines, and constantly shocked my preceptors by expressing scepticism of much that was taught me. It became evident that my young mind was not of a religious cast, for the much exhorted “simple faith” in miracles and the like came not to me” (“Letter to Maurice W. Moe, January 1915,” in Selected Letters I, 10).

8. See David Goodin’s chapter in this book. 9. H.P. Lovecraft, Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft, ed. S.T. Joshi (Sporting Gentlemen, 2010). 10. “Letter to Natalie Wooley, May 1936,” in Selected Letters V (1934–1937), eds. August Derleth and James Turner (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1976), 240. 11. “Letter to ‘The Kleicomolo’—Kleiner, Cole, and Moe, October 1916,” in Selected Letters I, 26. 12. Oswald Spengler. The Decline of the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), 21. 13. “Letter to Maurice W. Moe, January 1915,” in Selected Letters I, 10. 14. Cf. Goodin again. 15. Michael Saler, As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 135; S.T. Joshi A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), 246. 16. There is also a body of work which reads divine encounters in the JudeoChristian texts as disruptions of a human-imposed order, notably the work of Peter Rollins. Further work is required to consider whether Lovecraft’s pantheon can truly be called an “anti-mythology,” or whether definitions of mythology, including a Jungian definition, are broad enough to contain Lovecraft’s promotion of cosmic indifference. 17. Robert M. Price. “Introduction,” in The New Lovecraft Circle: Stories (New York, Random House, 2004), xviii–xix; Also insightful is Daniel Nexon’s humorous and erudite summary: “Lovecraft provides a critical reading, of sorts, of these ideas; one with a rather ironic ‘reveal’: the mystical energy beings coming through that portal you invoked are going to eat your brains” (“H.P. Lovecraft and Theosophy,” Duck of Minerva). https://duckofminerva​.com​/2012​/05​/hp​-lovecraft​-and​-Theosophy​.html.

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18. “The Call of Cthulhu,” in H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories (London: Arcturus, 2018), 219. 19. The Esoteric Order of Dagon, Haunters of the Dark, Chaos Magickians, Lovecraftian Magickians, The Church of Satan, The Temple of Set, Grant’s Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis (and its offshoot the New Isis Lodge). Nadine Eekhout, “Do you believe in the Lord and Saviour Cthulhu? The application of Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos in Western Esotericism” (2020). 20. At The Mountains of Madness, in H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness and Other Stories (London: Arcturus, 2018), 123; “The Rats in the Walls,” in H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories (London: Arcturus, 2018), 110; “Dagon,” in H.P. Lovecraft, Macabre Stories (London: Arcturus, 2018), 25. 21. ‘Wonder and awe in God’s presence’ is one of the seven Gifts of the Spirit in Catholic theology. 22.  “Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told “There is a ghost in the next room,” and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is “uncanny” rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply “There is a mighty spirit in the room,” and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare’s words “Under it my genius is rebuked.” This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous.” C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 5–6.

23. Lewis, 5–6. 24. See Enright and Bennett, “When God Goes Mad: Lovecraft, Von Balthasar, & the Split Between Transcendence & Goodness,” in this book. 25. Julian Simpson, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Sweet Talk Productions (BBC Sounds 2018). https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/programmes​/p06spb8w​/episodes​/player. 26. There is no suggestion that Lovecraft appreciated this theological perspective and employed it deliberately. He is often open in his correspondence about his themes and intentions and he never explains his gods as symbolic of strangers or foreigners. More likely it is operating as something subconscious or culturally infused. 27. “Letter to James F. Morton, January 1931,” in Selected Letters III (1929– 1931), eds. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971), 253. 28. “Letter to Maurice Moe, May 1922,” in Selected Letters I, 181. 29. Quoted in Joshi, Dreamer, 222. 30. “Letter to Natalie Wooley, November 1934,” in Selected Letters V, 77. 31. “Letter to James F. Morton, January 1931,” in Selected Letters III, 253. 32. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu, 168. 33. See Michael Maly, Heather Dalmage and Nancy Michaels, “The End of an Idyllic World: Nostalgia Narratives, Race, and the Construction of White

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Powerlessness,” Critical Sociology 39, no. 5 (September 2013): 757–79; Isabel Kusche and Jessica L. Barker, “Pathogens and Immigrants: A Critical Appraisal of the Behavioral Immune System as an Explanation of Prejudice Against Ethnic Outgroups,” Frontiers in Psychology 10 (2019): 2412; Yunzhe Liu, Wanjun Lin, Pengfei Xu, Dandan Zhang, Yuejia Luo, “Neural Basis of Disgust Perception in Racial Prejudice,” Human Brain Mapping 36, no. 12 (December 2015): 5275–86. 34. Jonathan Sacks, Faith in the Future (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 78; Leviticus 19:18. 35. There is no evidence of the fear or disgust Lovecraft expressed toward racially diverse crowds ever being directed toward his wife Sonia Greene, a Ukrainian Jew, or his Jewish friend Samuel Loveman. Indeed, Loveman was unaware of Lovecraft’s anti-Semitism until after his death. When Greene challenged Lovecraft about the apparent contradiction in his attitude he revealed that he considered her to have ‘assimilated.’ “Although he once said he loved New York and that henceforth it would be his ‘adopted state,’ I soon learned that he hated it and all its ‘alien hordes.’ When I protested that I too was one of them, he’d tell me I ‘no longer belonged to these mongrels.’ ‘You are now Mrs. H. P. Lovecraft of 598 Angell St., Providence, Rhode Island!’” Quoted in Joshi, Dreamer, 222. 36. Kusche and Barker. 37. Lovecraft voices this perspective expressly in his correspondence: “No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese. [. . .] This, of course, implies permanent association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things and usual influences—home faces and home voices— grows stronger and stronger. [. . .] We require the environing influence of a set of ways and physical types like our own, and will sacrifice anything to get them” (“Letter to James F. Morton, January 1931,” in Selected Letters III, 253).

38. Sarah and Abraham’s visitors (Gen 18); Melchizedek (Gen 14); The road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35); The parable of the sheep and the goats: “‘When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’” (Matt 25:38–40). 39. Ludwig Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1841); Émile Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1912). 40. “Letter to Frank Belknap Long,” in Selected Letters I, 333. 41. This demonstration was employed by Zachary Snowdon Smith in his article “Lovecraft’s Otherworldly Xenophobia,” Areo Magazine, accessed December 28, 2020. https://areomagazine​.com​/2019​/03​/05​/lovecrafts​-otherworldly​-xenophobia/. 42. “Letter to Lillian D. Clark, January 1926,” in The Lovecraft Letters Volume 2: Letters from New York, eds. S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2005), 269; “I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering

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at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite” (from “Dagon,” in H.P. Lovecraft, Macabre Stories [London: Arcturus Publishing, 2018], 26). It should be acknowledged that these similarities are in part due to Lovecraft’s wider experience of the world and his particular turn of phrase. They must be taken as a cumulative case. 43. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness, 29. An example of Lovecraft describing non-Aryans as primitive: “The primal savage or ape merely looks about his native forest to find a mate; the exalted Aryan should lift his eyes to the worlds of space and consider his relation to infinity!!!!” (from “Letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, January 1920,” in Selected Letters I, 106). 44. H.P. Lovecraft, The Randolph Carter Tales (London: Arcturus, 2018), 11. 45. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu, 37. 46. H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories (London: Arcturus, 2018), 230. 47. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu, 203. 48. “Letter to Duane W. Rimel, 14 Feb 1934,” in Letters to F. Lee Baldwin, Duane W. Rimel, and Nils Frome, eds. David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2016), 140–41. 49. Gerald J. Beyer, “The Love of God and Neighbour according to Aquinas: An Interpretation,” New Blackfriars 84, no. 985 (2003): 116–32. 50. Gerald J. Beyer, “Karl Rahner on the Radical Unity of the Love of God and Neighbour” Irish Theological Quarterly 68, no. 3 (2003): 251–80; Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations Volume VI, trans. Karl-H. and Boniface Kruger (New York: Crossroads, 1982), 247. 51. Slavoj Žižek, “Barbarism with a Human Face,” In These Times, 23 November 2010. https://inthesetimes​.com​/article​/barbarism​-with​-a​-human​-face. 52. Žižek, “Barbarism.” 53. Slavoj Žižek, “Why Only an Atheist Can Believe,” filmed November 2006 at Calvin College, Michigan, video 1:07:00. https://www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=1X​ _hwUEPelQ. 54. H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, 1927. https://www​.hplovecraft​.com​/writings​/texts​/essays​/shil​.aspx.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Besant, Annie, and Charles W. Leadbeater. Man: Whence, How and Whither, a Record of Clairvoyant Investigation. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1913. Beyer, Gerald J. “Karl Rahner on the Radical Unity of the Love of God and Neighbour.” Irish Theological Quarterly 68, no. 3 (2003): 251–280. Beyer, Gerald J. “The Love of God and Neighbour According to Aquinas: An Interpretation.” New Blackfriars 84, no. 985 (2003): 116–132.

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Dunsany, Lord. The Gods of Pegāna. Exeter: Elkin Matthews, 1905. Durkheim, Émile. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Félix Alcan: Paris, 1912. Eekhout, Nadine. “Do You Believe in the Lord and Saviour Cthulhu? The Application of Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos in Western Esotericism.” 2020. https://docplayer​.net​/158712999​-Do​-you​-believe​-in​-the​-lord​-and​-saviour​-cthulhu​ .html. Feuerbach, Ludwig. Das Wesen des Christentums. Otto Wigand: Leipzig, 1841. Fort, Charles. The Book of the Damned. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1919. Houellebecq, Michel. H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Translated by Dorna Khazeni. London: Gollancz, Orion Publishing Group, 2008. Joshi, S. T. A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001. Kusche, Isabel, and Jessica L. Barker. “Pathogens and Immigrants: A Critical Appraisal of the Behavioral Immune System as an Explanation of Prejudice against Ethnic Outgroups.” Frontiers in Psychology 10 (2019): 2412. Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001. Liu, Yunze, Wanjun Lin, Pengfei Xu, Dandan Zhang, and Yuejia Luo. “Neural Basis of Disgust Perception in Racial Prejudice.” Human Brain Mapping 36, no. 12 (December 2015): 5275–5286. Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Edited by S.T. Joshi. Sporting Gentlemen, 2010. ———. At the Mountains of Madness and Other Stories. London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2018. ———. Letters to F. Lee Baldwin, Duane W. Rimel, and Nils Frome. Edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2016. ———. Macabre Stories. London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2018. ———. Selected Letters I (1911–1924). Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964. ———. Selected Letters II (1925–1929). Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1968. ———. Selected Letters III (1929–1931). Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971. ———. Selected Letters IV (1932–1934). Edited by August Derleth and James Turner. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1976. ———. Selected Letters V (1934–1937). Edited by August Derleth and James Turner. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1976. ———. “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” 1927. https://www​.hplovecraft​.com​/ writings​/texts​/essays​/shil​.aspx. ———. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories. London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2018. ———. The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories. London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2018.

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———. The Lovecraft Letters Volume 2: Letters From New York. Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2005. ———. The Randolph Carter Tales. London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2018. Maly, Michael, Heather Dalmage, and Nancy Michaels. “The End of an Idyllic World: Nostalgia Narratives, Race, and the Construction of White Powerlessness.” Critical Sociology 39, no. 5 (September 2013): 757–779. Nexon, Daniel. “H.P. Lovecraft and Theosophy.” Duck of Minerva. https:// duckofminerva​.com​/2012​/05​/hp​-lovecraft​-and​-Theosophy​.html. Price, Robert M. “Introduction.” In The New Lovecraft Circle: Stories, edited by Robert M. Price, xviii–xix. New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2004. Rahner, Karl. Theological Investigations Volume VI. Translated by H. Karl and Boniface Kruger. New York: Crossroads, 1982. Sacks, Jonathan. Faith in the Future. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997. Saler, Michael. As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Simpson, Julian. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Sweet Talk Productions, BBC Sounds. 2018. https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/programmes​/p06spb8w​/episodes​/player. Snowdon Smith, Zachary. “Lovecraft’s Otherworldly Xenophobia.” Areo Magazine. Accessed December 28, 2020. https://areomagazine​.com​/2019​/03​/05​/lovecrafts​ -otherworldly​-xenophobia/. Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. Žižek, Slavoj. “Barbarism With a Human Face.” In These Times, November 23, 2010. https://inthesetimes​.com​/article​/barbarism​-with​-a​-human​-face. ———. “Why Only an Atheist Can Believe.” Filmed November 2006 at Calvin College, Michigan. https://www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=1X​_hwUEPelQ.

Chapter 12

Sudden Onset Belief The Brutality of Conversion in Lovecraft’s Stories Robert Grant Price

Silly religions do not survive because those who participate in silly religions know that what they profess is silly. Pastafarianism, the pseudo-religion invented to mock supernatural commitments, is self-consciously silly. Selfprofessed Jedi know they are playacting. Nobody really believes the precepts of these religions. When the silliness loses its humor, disciples go looking for another joke—or something serious and real. Perceptions of silliness may have something to do with the steep decline in religious commitment among Americans and the West more generally. Surveys show a rapidly increasing number of Americans who claim to have no religious affiliation.1 These surveys indicate that these people do not see religion as a conduit for accessing reality—a monumental problem for organized religions since access to reality is how religions can claim to be “true” and why so many religious believers take their religions seriously. Reality, after all, must be taken seriously. Reality compels people to convert. Only an encounter with reality can convert a person from silly fantasies to the singular, incontrovertible truth. Conversion is an awakening. Converts come to see reality as available only through the practices and beliefs of a particular creed. Through conversion, the competing desires that pull a person apart align and turn to follow a single, proper desire. Scales fall from the eyes. In most traditions, knowing reality is something to celebrate. But, as this chapter demonstrates, no matter its virtues, conversion to reality is a brutal affair. The convert leaves behind beliefs they know to be false and gains access to a truth that expands their minds—sometimes to insane proportions. This journey to insanity is most often the course of conversion in H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction. Far from the soft, 219

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saccharine, and silly experiences with Christ offered by sentimental branches of Christianity, conversion to the reality of the Old Ones drives the characters in Lovecraft’s fiction mad. In this way, the dismal stories of the atheist Lovecraft may offer a more realistic, if hyperbolic, account of the conversion experience than those offered by mainline churches today.

A COMMENT ABOUT SENTIMENTALITY This chapter deals with conversion through terror. Before broaching that topic, we should first address its opposite: conversion through sentiment. Sentimentality, Benjamin Myers notes, is often misunderstood as “not simply too much emotion, but an imbalance of it, an over-investment of emotion relative to that in which it is invested.”2 Instead, he argues that sentimental depictions of the divine are better understood as an impulse that “offers us the dubious chance to feel while bypassing the messiness of any real human engagement: not too much feeling but too thin an experience.”3 Myers skewers several contemporary Christian artists who trade in sentimentality and demonstrates how sentimental art corrupts the religious experience. Instead of capturing the trauma and meaning of religious awakening, the sentimentalist jumps to the end and shows the narrator complete in themselves and in their relationship with God. Sentimentality is silly. It’s a shortcut around hard experiences that obscure the truth found through the journey. A cursory view of mass-produced, contemporary Christian conversion stories shows how sentimentality distorts the seriousness of conversion. Take three examples. The first is a recurring phrase found in evangelical marketing programs: “Jesus is my best friend.”4 What does this phrase mean? On the surface, it attempts to humanize God. Jesus had friends, too, it says, and you can be one of his friends, if you open your heart. But by attempting to humanize God, the phrase also reduces God and the human-God relationship to something out of middle school. Every teenager knows what a best friend can do for you: keep your secrets, support you when you’re ill, and even lie for you. For the convert seeking a sentimental relationship with God, this evangelical call might resonate. Who doesn’t want another best friend? All you need to do is be baptized, pray, and boom!, you can sit beside Jesus in the cafeteria. A hymn made popular by Rosemary Clooney, “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling,” captures another strain of Christian sentimentality. Imagine the non-Christian hearing the words of this hymn: “Oh, for the wonderful love He has promised— / Promised for you and for me! / Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon— / Pardon for you and for me!”5 For the catechumen, this brand of Christianity sounds soft and tender. Jesus’s love is “wonderful,”

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and he will pardon the sinner—probably with a snap of the fingers. The hymn makes no reference to the pain and suffering that attends real repentance, and neither does it speak about Jesus’s demand that the Christian forgive others if he wishes to earn God’s forgiveness. This version of Christianity is a good deal: pardon without payment. Finally, consider how sentimental Christianity deals with death. When a loved one dies, the sentimentalist says, “There’s another angel in Heaven.” This reasoning ignores Christian theology. First, humans don’t become angels. And second, for serious Christians, death is obliteration. It is an evil that must be acknowledged. The dearly departed is not in Heaven; their body rots in the grave, and the soul will remain in a mode “inconceivable to us,”6 the living, until the Second Coming when God returns to resurrect the dead, judge them and, maybe, throw our loved one into Hell. If a Christian can die and fly straight to Heaven, why suffer death? Why the tears? Why bother with the Resurrection? We all know the answer. Christians say these things to avoid the hard realities Christianity claims to access. Sentimental death is easier than real death, just as sentimental religion is easier than the real thing and sentimental conversion is easier than the harsh realities of authentic conversion.

THREE VIEWS ON CONVERSION In simplest terms, to convert means to choose to believe something different than before. It is an awakening, a realization, a revelation. Conversion is persuasive: reality persuades the convert to accept the truth. Forced conversion is no such thing; it is coercion, a violation. To convert is to receive. In his seminal study of belief, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Henry James describes two species of conversion. The first, volitional conversion, describes conversion by choice. With volitional conversion, a convert will choose to accept a new reality and engage in a process of conversion that is gradual, bound with doubt, and built on a revision of one’s behaviors. A person may, through long exposure to a belief system, come to believe in a new reality. A student with a religious upbringing may, for example, embrace atheism following a long exposure to a materialist worldview at university. The second species of conversion that James identifies, self-surrender conversion, stands opposite to volitional conversion. Self-surrender conversion happens fast. St. Paul’s conversion on the Road to Damascus exemplifies this type of conversion. A Roman Jew, Paul did not believe the claims Christians made until, suddenly, Christ revealed himself to Paul. Struck blind, Paul surrendered to Christ and was baptized after three days of prayer (Acts 9:1–22).

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More recently, Hannan has described a third, hybrid species of conversion—one found in the life of St. Augustine.7 As it is popularly told, Augustine’s story takes the shape of a sudden, self-surrender conversion. Under a fig tree, Augustine heard a child’s voice say, “Take it and read,” and so he read from Paul’s letters. “For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled.”8 This seems instantaneous, but as Hannan explains, Augustine’s conversion to Christianity came after much doubt, delay, and denial, proving this instantaneous conversion was less than instantaneous. As Hannan discusses, Augustine’s conversion—like all conversions—is itself never ending. Seeded with doubt, torn by competing wills and desires, the convert must constantly engage with truth, must constantly return to the source of reality, or else risk taking reality for granted and losing sight of what is important. Conversion is a lifelong process, and one can only know the convert’s allegiance to the truth after the convert has died. A convert can fall away from the truth, be born again, and fall away again. “True conversion,” Hannan writes, “calls for perseverance until the end of time.” In their own way, each of these routes to conversion can defy sentimentality, but there seems a greater risk of sentimentality in self-surrender. The sentimentalist will say she has found God in a flash and now has found the doorway to Heaven. Voluntary conversion, and even more so Augustinian conversion, requires the faithful convert to trudge the path toward the truth, eyes always on the reality on the horizon, knowing she will never reach that sacred place in her lifetime. The faithful convert will walk herself to death. Then, after death, God may judge whether she arrived.

FEAR AND CONVERSION IN LOVECRAFT’S FICTION Common among all species of conversion is reluctance and fear. Augustine did not want to convert; he feared losing what he perceived was freedom. At Christ’s crucifixion, the Roman guards are terrified to discover, after they had killed Jesus, that He truly was the Son of God. The same is true with St. Paul’s radical conversion: his confrontation with Christ forced him to confront both the errors of his life until then and the full weight of reality bearing down on him. We see terror again in the original ending of the Gospel of Mark. In that shocking scene, the women flee the empty tomb because they were “afraid.” Conversion in Lovecraft’s fiction comes suddenly and is always bound with fear. An encounter with the Old Ones tears apart conventional reality of the sorry humans who wander into their path. What was once hidden to them becomes known. By possessing this dangerous knowledge, many unfortunates in Lovecraft’s fiction convert from witless actors to people

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terrified about the true nature of reality. Reality brings madness. In many cases, the poor souls discover that reality is itself madness. Fear runs through nearly all of Lovecraft’s fiction. His genre was horror but the terror that follows conversion is distinct from the generalized fear expressed by the characters in such fiction. These conversion stories capture the terror that follows an encounter with reality. The narrator of “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” makes this point in the first sentence of the story: “Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.”9 Arthur Jermyn encounters the truth of his ancestry—he is the product of a union of a human with an ape. The truth drives him mad and he sets himself on fire. This story provides a template for other conversion stories, including Lovecraft’s. Petitioners seek knowledge of reality, they encounter reality, and they are remade by truth about reality. In the case of St. Paul’s conversion, the petitioner may not seek knowledge of reality, but in every other case, and almost always in Lovecraft’s work, the person is remade—driven mad—by his knowledge of existence. This happens exactly to the narrator of “Dagon.” Drawn into a mystery by a monolith and weird hieroglyphs, he stares into the water. Then, he reports, he sees Dagon, one of the Old Ones, a “[v]ast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome” thing. “I think I went mad then,” he says, and lives the rest of his days terrorized by what he had seen.10 At the Mountains of Madness follows a similar trajectory. In this story, Dyer and Danforth set out on a journey of exploration. The journey leads them into an encounter with the unknown and unexplainable, including bodies preserved in the ice. They journey on, called by the mystery, and inside encounter a Shoggoth, a pustulant monster created by the Old Ones. They flee. Danforth, like Lot’s wife, looks back, but instead of turning to a column of salt, goes insane. This pattern of conversion runs through “The Call of Cthulhu.” The narrator, Thurston, who says he held an attitude of “absolute materialism” before his encounter with the Great Old One, finds the mystery of Cthulhu intriguing enough to investigate. His investigation leads to the journals of the Norwegian sailor named Gustaf Johansen. These document the discovery of R’lyeh and the unleashing of Cthulhu. Johansen escapes to tell what he learns—the universe is far more terrifying than he knew. His mate Briden, like Danforth, like Lot’s wife, looks back and goes insane. Johansen tells nobody (but his journal) of his encounter; if he did, they’d call him mad. To believe such a truth, a person would have to be mad. Thurston, convinced of Cthulhu’s existence by the witness of others, struggles to hold onto his sanity. His exposure to the truth of the universe changes him irrevocably: “I have

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looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowing of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.”11 Lovecraft’s stories are rightly described as weird fantasies, but they are also stories of terror. Indeed, in relation to the theological elements of his work, “terror” might be a better descriptor of Lovecraft’s oeuvre than ­ “horror.” Terror, McNally and Florescu write, is a rational fear; horror is an irrational fear.12 Horror stories present readers with an encounter with the monstrous aspects of the absurd, like Cthulhu’s exploding head—a scene that is so horrific it slides into the ridiculous, and in a lesser hand than Lovecraft’s, the comic. Horror is unreasonable, even stupid, a characteristic that derives as much from the delivery of the story (a melodramatic delivery overplays the hand) as from the structure of fiction: to resolve the conflict that drives the horror story, the writer might make the mistake of explaining the supernatural. This is always a bad idea: the supernatural cannot be explained without it becoming natural. Or, to borrow Tzvetan Todorov’s understanding of the fantastic, the risk facing the horror novelist is that by explaining the supernatural, he will reduce the supernatural to the mere uncanny—to an illusion that, when shown for what it is, nullifies the horrific element that drove the narrative.13 This happens whenever a writer explains away a story by saying, “It was all just a dream,” or, as with every episode of Scooby-Doo, when the ghost turns out to be nothing more than a man in a costume. If the supernatural cannot be explained as fake or illusory, Todorov says, the encounter may be an expression of the “fantastic marvelous.” Like the ineffable doctrine of the Trinity, the marvelous cannot be explained; it is a mystery, beyond the capacity of human understanding. Lovecraft’s fiction straddles the uncanny and the marvelous. Unlike the Christian God who exists outside of his Creation, the Old Ones exist as part of nature, as elemental creatures, and through their existence force a radical revision of how a person understands nature. They convert, transforming from naïve and ignorant to wise and justly terrified by their insignificant place in the universe. Their terror is entirely reasonable. It is not rational to fear a man in a costume pretending to be a ghost, but it is rational to scream in terror when confronted with cosmic insignificance revealed by the Old Ones or incontrovertible proof of God made man.

FEAR OF GOD AND GODS OF FEAR The hideousness of revelation pervading Lovecraft’s fiction raises another question: How does the “call” to religious conversion materialize in the Cthulhu Mythos, and how does this call differ from calls in its counterpoint, Christianity? For Joseph Ratzinger, conversion to God is a call to turn toward the light. Christ is beautiful; His love is expressed in the beauty found in the

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world; and conversion to Christ is, in the end, joyful, as the penitent responds to God’s voice calling to him through what is beautiful in this world. Contrast this theology with Lovecraft: whereas the Christian God’s call sounds through all that is beautiful, the call of the Old Gods radiates through nightmares. The narrator in “Dagon,” for instance, is “[u]rged on by an impulse” that he says cannot be understood and eventually arrives at a place (or is brought to a place) where he witnesses the creature called Dagon. Before Thurston discovers Cthulhu for himself, he encounters the hideous aura of the Old God in the stone carving. The carving disgusts him, yet he is drawn toward the Old God, who calls to him in his dreams. The nature of the call may differ, but both Christianity and Cthulhu share a similar theology of grace. Grace presumes that penitents do not chance upon superbeings; rather, superbeings call penitents and permit themselves to be seen. Christian grace reveals the unlimited beauty of creation; the call of Cthulhu reveals the repellent core of reality. In both cases, the penitent can either heed the call and follow the truth—even if that drives the person insane—or deny the monstrous truth of what lies behind reality. Either way, both calls inspire awe.

TEARING REALITY Lovecraft’s fiction is, according to its genre classification, “weird.” Weird means strange, new, so new that recognition is impossible. What the characters see in so many of Lovecraft’s stories is ineffable, weird. Despite the extreme novelty the characters (and readers) encounter, the stories contain in them moments of high realism. Snapped into new realities by encounters with demi-gods, his characters endure sudden conversions that alter the direction and meaning of life. Revelation inspires change, as it did with St. Paul. And while this conversion differs from Augustine’s—his was both drawn-out and sudden—the transformative nature of Lovecraftian conversion feels right. This rightness follows from Lovecraft’s discerning style: rather than slip into sentimentality, his characters journey through the terror that follows revelation, and inspired by what they have witnessed, many of these characters share their stories, their gospels, to warn others about what exists behind the veneer of everyday life. Religious belief is weird—or it should be weird, and that is because God is weird. He is unfathomable. Sentimental Christian theologies that dwell too long on God’s mercy and forgiveness bypass the weirdness and terror of the Christian God. The revelation that God is real ought to rip the fabric of reality for the person who truly believes. Catholics who do not throw themselves on the ground in front of the Eucharist do not understand the terrifying glory of

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the Thing that they behold—a fact that bears out in polls of U.S. Catholics, two-thirds of whom admit that they do not accept the doctrine of Real Presence, and by admitting such a fact cast light on the failure of the church to teach the weirdness of reality.14 Terror and the sundering of reality sound dramatic. It is. And for some, belief may not tear reality as much as it remakes it into a thing created by God—not a fabric of randomness but a tapestry expressing the will of its weaver. Terror and weirdness characterize the religious impulse, and this makes sense, since terror is a rational response to revelation and weird is how life feels when it is understood for what it is. Here, the Christian and Lovecraft part ways. The Christian understands that human life, as weird as it seems, as puny as it is, holds the greatest significance in the universe, while Lovecraft, composing stories about man’s confrontation with the first things, sees insignificance and nothingness.

NOTES 1. For one example, see Pew Research, May 12, 2015, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” https://www​.pewforum​.org​/2015​/05​/12​/americas​-changing​ -religious​-landscape/. 2. Benjamin Myers, “The Sentimentality Trap,” First Things, https://www​ .firstthings​.com​/article​/2016​/11​/the​-sentimentality​-trap. 3. Myers. 4. For one example of many, see an essay on this topic by Dani Stafford, “11 Reasons Why Jesus is My Best Friend,” The Odyssey Online, https://www​.theodysseyonline​.com​/why​-jesus​-is​-my​-best​-friend. 5. https://www​.hymnal​.net​/en​/hymn​/h​/1027. 6. Josef Pieper. Death and Immortality, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press), v. 7. Sean Hannan, On Time, Change, History and Conversion (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020). 8. Augustine, Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), 178. 9. Lovecraft, “Fact Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family,” The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (New York: Penguin, 1999), 14. 10. Lovecraft, 5. 11. Lovecraft, 169. 12. Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu, In Search of Dracula (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994). 13. Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Cornell University Press, 1975).

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14. Gregory Smith, “Just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church that Eucharist is body, blood of Christ,” August 5, 2019, https://www​.pewresearch​.org​/ fact​-tank​/2019​/08​/05​/transubstantiation​-eucharist​-u​-s​-catholics/.

BIBLIOGRAPHY “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, May 12, 2015. https://www​.pewforum​.org​/2015​/05​/12​/americas​-changing​ -religious​-landscape/. Augustine. Confessions. Translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin. New York: Penguin, 1961. Hannan, Sean. On Time, Change, History and Conversion. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. New York: Penguin, 1999. McNally, Raymond T., and Radu Florescu. In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994. Myers, Benjamin. “The Sentimentality Trap.” First Things, November 2016. Accessed September 2, 2021. https://www​.firstthings​.com​/article​/2016​/11​/the​ -sentimentality​-trap. Pieper, Josef. Death and Immortality. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000. Stafford, Dani. “11 Reasons Why Jesus is My Best Friend.” The Odyssey Online, July 19, 2016. Accessed September 2, 2021. https://www​.theodysseyonline​.com​/why​ -jesus​-is​-my​-best​-friend. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Cornell University Press, 1975.

Part V

LOVECRAFT AND OTHER RELIGIONS

Chapter 13

Lovecraft the Pagan? Lovecraft and Classical Religion Katherine Kelaidis

While the role of religion and the role of Greco-Roman antiquity in the work of H. P. Lovecraft have both been the subjects of significant scholarly attention,1 little remark has been paid specifically to the role of Greco-Roman religion, or rather an imagined pre-Christian, Greco-Roman religion, plays in Lovecraft’s corpus. This chapter seeks to begin this conversation and in doing so connects Lovecraft’s imagined Greco-Roman paganism to larger philosophical and cultural trends in Lovecraft’s work and in the surrounding culture. In summary, this chapter suggests that for Lovecraft, as for many of his contemporaries, Greco-Roman paganism represented a more masculine, rational, and robust alternative to Christianity, which they viewed as weak, effeminate, and potentially deleterious. Consequently, it is possible to see “cosmic horror”—a genre largely associated with (and perhaps even originating with) Lovecraft—as an attempt to reinvent classical paganism in a modern, industrialized world. THE TREE: A CASE STUDY Despite what we will see was Lovecraft’s lifelong fascination with the Greeks and Romans, a fascination that fundamentally shaped him, there is surprisingly only one Lovecraft short story set in ancient Greece, “The Tree” (1920). This story shall provide our case study in this chapter, though it should be noted that, having been written in 1920, the story was penned before Lovecraft experienced his greatest period of political radicalization. “The Tree” tells the story of two sculptors, Kalos (meaning “fair” or “beautiful” in Greek) and Musides (“son of the Muses”), who are asked by 231

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the Tyrant of Syracuse to each create a statue of Tyché (Chance or Luck). The statues will then be judged against one another and the winner’s statue will become the Tyché idol of Syracuse. While Kalos and Musides are friends, they cannot be more different from one another. “At night, as of yore, Musides sought the banquet halls of Tegea whilst Kalos wandered alone in the olive grove.”2 Soon, however, Kalos becomes ill, growing progressively weaker over time. Musides nurses him, but to no avail, and Kalos dies. As a result of Kalos’s death, Musides wins the statue competition by default. But a strange olive tree starts growing from Kalos’s tomb and suddenly falls on Musides and his statue, destroying them both. It is implied that this is evidence that Musides, despite caring for Kalos, secretly poisoned him. While not obviously about religion per se, “The Tree” is rife with the themes of Greco-Roman religion and patrician totalitarianism which motivate so much of Lovecraft’s work, making the story an excellent opportunity to analyze how these threads interact with one another in Lovecraft’s prose. First, it is notable how detailed and accurate the story is, speaking to Lovecraft’s deep knowledge of the ancient world. In fact, the story is so expertly written that it is possible to date the story to within an approximately twenty-year period in the mid-fourth century BCE.3 Moreover, there was actually a cult of Tyché at Syracuse in fourth-century Greece. What we know about this cult, or more precisely what Lovecraft might have known about this cult, offers a great deal of insight into “The Tree” and the role GrecoRoman religion is playing in the story. Tyché (or Fortuna, in Latin) is one of those mystery deities which would later have such great appeal to the Romantics. Described as the daughter of Aphrodite by either Zeus or Hermes, Tyché was a guardian deity who oversaw the fate of cities. While the worship of Tyché was an important feature of Hellenic religion, Tyché took on increasing importance in the Hellenistic period (i.e., the time between the death of Alexander the Great and the emergence of the Roman Empire) the period during which “The Tree” is set. In particular, it was during the Hellenistic period that the cultic site of Tyché in the Greco-Italian city of Syracuse began to take on increased importance. “The Temple of Tyche in Syracuse was possibly the most important and venerable temple in the city, giving its name, Tychaion, to one of the four quarters of the city. More so than Tyche temples in cities in the Greek East, this temple was of central importance to the city’s identity.”4 That Lovecraft appears to know this offers significant evidence for his intimate familiarity with ancient Greece. In this light, Lovecraft’s choice of Syracuse specifically for its association with Tyché can tell us a great deal. Tyché, by the Latin nomenclature

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of Fortuna, was of significant importance to many Romantic and Victorian classical revivalists. As one of the ancient gods whose image was sufficiently vague as to permit a continued presence throughout the medieval period, Fortuna appeared not only in classical art and literature, but also in many of the medieval traditions to which the Romantics were attracted.5 Importantly, for understanding Lovecraft, Tyché/Fortuna is also a deity associated with the inherent superiority or blessedness of a nation or bloodline and so had particular appeal to the nationalist and increasingly racialist ideologies of the era. Perhaps even more fascinatingly, Kalos and Musides are from a place with sacred and Romantic significance. The ancient Arcadian settlement of Tegea was, as Lovecraft notes in the opening paragraph, “a chosen haunt of dreaded Pan,” and according to Herodotus the site of one of Pan’s most famous appearances: While still in the city, the generals first sent to Sparta the herald Philippides, an Athenian and a long-distance runner who made that his calling. As Philippides himself said when he brought the message to the Athenians, when he was in the Parthenian mountain above Tegea he encountered Pan. Pan called out Philippides’ name and bade him ask the Athenians why they paid him no attention, though he was of goodwill to the Athenians, had often been of service to them, and would be in the future. The Athenians believed that these things were true, and when they became prosperous they established a sacred precinct of Pan beneath the Acropolis. Ever since that message they propitiate him with annual sacrifices and a torch-race.6

By locating the story at the site of this famous appearance, Lovecraft is marking off the lost worship of Pan and the dangerous weakness in which it places people. In doing so, he once again revives Romantic and Victorian notions of this deity, particularly as expressed in “The Great God Pan,” and highlights the sense of lost glory inherent in his understanding of the disappearance of the ancient cults. On its most superficial level, “The Tree” is a kind of morality play, setting out in expected form a tale that condemns the sort of behavior that Lovecraft found repulsive and celebrates those qualities Lovecraft admired. But the story’s setting in ancient Greece, and moreover, the absolute precision with which Lovecraft shapes this setting mean that the setting itself offers the opportunity to extend the story beyond a mere simplistic moralism to an invocation to dead gods and an ode to a lost religion that no doubt Lovecraft found more congenial.

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FINDING OTHER GODS: THE CLASSIC AND CHRISTIAN IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF H. P. LOVECRAFT The intimate knowledge of antiquity displayed in “The Tree” should come as no surprise. Like most young men of his era and class, H. P. Lovecraft became acquainted with the ancient Greeks and Romans early in life. Based on Lovecraft’s own account, it was his maternal grandfather (and principal father figure), Whipple Phillips, who facilitated Lovecraft’s first introduction to the classics.7 A precocious reader, Lovecraft would later write of his initiation into the classics at the tender age of six, “The most poignant sensations of my existence are those of 1896 when I discovered the Hellenic world.”8 Lovecraft’s fascination with the ancient world was far from superficial and from his first introduction to this pre-Christian spirituality, he renounced Christianity and became a “pagan”—or rather, he came to adopt what he (and others) imagined to be the religious position of the pre-Christian GrecoRoman world. In doing this, Lovecraft was far from alone. From almost the moment that Theodosius outlawed the practices of the ancient religion(s) in 392 CE, there have been those who have sought to reconstruct pre-Christian practices, to “resurrect” the old religion. But in the nineteenth century, Romanticism (and the closely related nationalism it encouraged) oversaw a rather unprecedented phenomenon: not only a rising interest but participation in non-Christian religious rites believed by adherents to have their genesis in the ancient world. This phenomenon, it should be noted, was not limited to the classical world; German and Norse gods were also brought back to life by Romantic poets and nationalist revolutionaries. But the Old Gods came to life in a very specific way. Romantic neopagan revivalism was principally derived from two impulses: a desire for “authenticity” in religious and spiritual experience and a quest for mystical experience in the face of Western rationalism. During the Enlightenment, ancient Greek culture and its gods had frequently stood as symbols of reason and logic. For Hellenic religion to have a place in the new Romantic spirituality it had to be radically re-understood. Consequently, as Margot K. Louis has observed, the Romantic approach to Hellenic religion sought to find a mystical angle outside of the traditional pantheon: The gods of Greek mythology were denigrated as finite in form, limited in sympathy with mortal suffering, and separate from humanity in their inhuman beauty and immortal joy—altogether inadequate, therefore, to a Romantic religious sensibility. By contrast the Greek Mysteries were assumed to have satisfied the religious sensibility because they connected celebrants with one

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another, with nature, and with the infinite. This opposition between myth and Mystery (which may not seem characteristic of ancient Greek religion as we now perceive it) grew out of Christian and Romantic concepts experience; more importantly, underlying this denigration of myth and elevation of Mystery was a very nineteenth-century agenda.9

This was the environment in which a young H. P. Lovecraft was coming of age and encountering the classical tradition and Hellenic religion. In his famed 1922 essay, “A Confession of Unfaith,” Lovecraft explicitly connects his fascination with ancient Greece to a sort of noncommitted youthful paganism, writing that: Before long I was fairly familiar with the principal Grecian myths, and had become a constant visitor at the classical art museums of Providence and Boston. [. . .] I mention this aesthetic tendency in detail only to lead up to its philosophical result—my last flickering of religious belief. When about seven or eight I was a genuine pagan, so intoxicated with the beauty of Greece that I acquired a half-sincere belief in the old gods and nature-spirits. I have in literal truth built altars to Pan, Apollo, Diana, and Athena.10

The specific gods to whom he “built altars” are significant because these are precisely the mystic gods who had gained popularity during the period (though he seems to have passed on an altar to Dionysus). Pan, in particular, with his pro-nature/anti-civilization associations, took on a particular significance. Moreover, Pan is the only Greek god who dies,11 a radical and jarring disruption of a religious system inherited from ancient Indo-European roots, in which one of the primary organizing principles of the cosmos is the division between dying (thanatoi) humans and the undying (athanatoi) gods.12 Long a source of fodder for Christian apologists, who often associated Pan with Satan, the myth of the death of Pan was a significant reason for the god’s popularity among the Romantics and, later, the Victorians. This popularity only grew throughout the nineteenth century and reached its zenith between 1890 and 1926.13 During this period, Pan appears in poetry, art, music, and literature with remarkable frequency. Even now-classic children’s literature becomes the domain of Pan, such as Peter Pan and The Wind in the Willows. For Lovecraft, however, the most significant piece of work produced by this “Pan-mania” is doubtlessly Arthur Machen’s 1894 novella The Great God Pan. The plot of the novella revolves around Clarke, a man who, at the beginning of the story, agrees to witness a strange experiment carried out by his friend Dr. Raymond. The goal of the experiment is to induce a spiritual experience in a young woman named Mary, an experience Dr. Raymond says the ancients called “seeing the Great God Pan.” When Mary awakes from the experiment, she is frightened and in awe, but it quickly becomes

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apparent that she has been left permanently impaired by the experience. Years after the experiment, Clarke encounters a mysterious young woman who has been connected to a series of strange events of a terrible, occultic, and erotic character. At the end of the novella, it is implied that Helen, the daughter of Mary, was fathered by the god Pan. Obviously, the connection between Helen and Jesus should be clear: a child born to a young woman named Mary, following her frightening encounter with divinity. This point is further driven home by the appearance of the Latin creed “Et Diabolus Incarnatus Est. Et Homo Factus Est,” a reference to the Nicene proclamation of Christ’s incarnation, Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est. (Greek: kai sarkouthenta ek Pneumatos Hagiou kai Marias tes Parthenou kai enanthroupesanta). ANCIENT GODS, STRONGER GODS The Great God Pan was hugely influential on Lovecraft, not least because the world presented in the novel, as in much of Machen’s other work, constituted a type of dark meditation on the consequences of modernity, arriving at a sort of enchanted nihilism. While some scholars have declared Lovecraft himself a nihilist, the truth is likely something more complicated. H. P. Lovecraft lived and wrote in a time of unprecedented change and upheaval. Born in 1890 at the height of the Victorian Era, he died in 1937 on the eve of the Second World War. Like many of his “lost” generation, Lovecraft sought solace from the fear that filled the era in which he lived. “Fundamental to Lovecraft’s fear was his understanding of, and preoccupation with, atavism—of evolutionary throwbacks, survivals and regressions—in modern industrial society, and his extraordinary stories were only one expression of a contemporary anxiety affecting eugenicists, political economists, and prominent author of the Gothic and ‘weird’ traditions between the 1890s and the 1930s.”14 For Lovecraft, part of this fear of evolutionary degradation arose from an understanding of history in which the robust, strong, and masculine world of antiquity had given way to the regressive, weak, and effeminate Christian world during the Middle Ages: But amidst this chaos of intellectual and emotional grovelling a few free souls have always stood out for the old civilised realities which mediaevalism eclipsed—the stern classic loyalty to truth, strength, and beauty given by a clear mind and uncowed spirit to the full-living Western Aryan confronted by Nature’s majesty, loveliness, and aloofness. This is the virile aesthetic and ethic of the extensor muscles—the bold, buoyant, assertive beliefs and preferences of proud, dominant, unbroken, and unterrified conquerors, hunters, and

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warriors—and it has small use for the shams and whimperings of the brotherly, affection-slobbering peacemaker and cringer and sentimentalist. Beauty and sufficiency—twin qualities of the cosmos itself—are the gods of this aristocratic and pagan type; to the worshipper of such eternal things the supreme virtue will not be found in lowliness, attachment, obedience, and emotional messiness.15

Through this paradigm, ancient Greco-Roman religion became not so much a panacea for a lost Christian faith, but a symbol of all that was lost in the Christianization of the world. The manifestation of this sense of loss and the meditations on how this loss might be mended led Lovecraft down some dark political paths. Perhaps more than any other American thinker, Lovecraft demonstrates the utter insufficiency of the “Right-Left” ideological spectrum when discussing the real beliefs of real people. Born into New England’s elites, Lovecraft was a natural Republican, but his official party membership (then as now as much a matter of social position as ideological conviction) does not tell the whole story. When the moneyed classes failed to respond with the appropriate noblesse oblige following the 1929 crash, Lovecraft abandoned the relatively untutored patrician traditionalism that had characterized his political ideology in the first part of his life and took to calling himself a “Fabian socialist,” a reference to a British socialist organization that preferred gradualism to revolutionary change. But as with so many things with Lovecraft, this selfidentification obscures a more complex (and in this case frequently more sinister) reality. Lovecraft’s embrace of totalitarianism of various stripes is beyond doubt. In his 1933 essay “A Layman’s Look at Government,” Lovecraft wrote the following: Indeed, the salvation of society really depends on the faithful and diligent services of disinterested gentlemen—since the inflamed masses without leaders can only tear down without building up. The people as a whole are densely and hopelessly ignorant—mere blind forces either cowed to silent suffering or bursting into resistless fury under too much goading—hence democracy is and always will be a joke . . . or a tragedy. Salvation rests wholly with the trained man of vision and cultivation without the profit motive—namely, the fascistic leader.16

His fascination with and desire for fascistic leaders points to one of the most enduring characteristics of Lovecraft’s worldview. What exactly this characteristic might be called is complicated. Some have termed it “elitism,” but this does not do it justice. “Elitism” is no doubt the correct word to describe the views of the young Lovecraft, but it was an elitism that he shared with others of his race, class, sex, and education and cause by having

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been born as one of the masters of the world. But by the 1930s, Lovecraft abandoned his sympathies for the elites, whom he saw as worthless in the face of the crisis. Instead, it might be better to characterize Lovecraft’s later politics as supremacist. That is to say, Lovecraft believed in a world in which the strong were meant, not so much to dominate the weak in a Darwinian sense, but to reign over them. This is a subtle but important difference. Lovecraft’s education in and view of the Classics, and of ancient GrecoRoman religion, play an important role in shaping his views on race and eugenics. For example, in a letter to Donald Wandrei, Lovecraft describes a nightmare he has had. The nightmare occurs in a small, provincial Roman town in modern-day Spain. The governor of the town gathers the inhabitants and warns them about the hostile, unassimilated tribes dwelling above them in the hills.17 Frida Andersson argues that “in this particular Lovecraftian nightmare, the white, American body has been exchanged for that of the Roman. There are also the Vascones, who are the natives of Pompelo and who has been assimilated to the Roman culture and therefore are not marked as dangerous or evil.”18 Andersson’s interpretation of this dream makes sense given Classics association with “whiteness” and “Europeanness,” an association that had been increasingly developed throughout the nineteenth century. For Lovecraft, as for many others, an admiration for the Classics was also an assertion of the superiority of Western (read: white) culture. Moreover, Lovecraft’s fascination with ancient religion is deeply rooted in this view of the Classics. Lovecraft was, after all, essentially hostile to religious faith. His tolerance for (and even occasional celebration of) ancient Greco-Roman religion is without a doubt caught up in a view of all things Greco-Roman as symbolic of whiteness par excellence, a pattern we see occasionally repeated in contemporary white supremacist groups which reject Christianity (in part for its Jewish and Middle Eastern roots, but also for its focus on compassion and meekness) and look to the Greek, Nordic, and Germanic gods.

CONCLUSION: LOVECRAFT AND THE ANCIENT GODS TODAY H. P. Lovecraft is one of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century. And he has left an indelible mark on American fiction. He has also left a mark on how we view ancient religion, even if we do not think of it as specifically “Lovecraftian.” He was shaped by the classical tradition, and particularly by his culture’s reception of that tradition, for both good and bad. His sympathy with the recovery of classical culture and religion meant that it

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was the Ancient Gods who got the best portrayal of any deities in his work. But that is a complicated legacy.

NOTES 1. Cf. regarding religion: Benjamin E. Zeller, “Altar Call of Cthulhu,” Religions 11, no. 1 (2020): 18; Dustin Geeraert, “Specters of Darwin: HP Lovecraft’s Nihilistic Parody of Religion,” Master’s thesis, University of Manitoba (2010); and Alexander Pavlov, “Hyper-Real Religion, Lovecraft, and the Cult of the Evil Dead,” State, Religion and Church (2020): 4–24. Cf. regarding antiquity: Robinson Peter Krämer, “Classical Antiquity and the Timeless Horrors of H.P. Lovecraft,” in Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy, ed. Brett M. Rogers and Benjamin Eldon Stevens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Duncan Norris, “Lovecraft’s Greek Tragedy,” Lovecraft Annual 11 (2017): 7–22; and Marc A. Beherec, “H.P. Lovecraft and the Archaeology of ‘Roman’ Arizona,” Lovecraft Annual 2 (2008): 192–202. 2. H.P. Lovecraft, “The Tree,” in Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008). 3. S.T. Joshi, A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft (Cabin John, MD: Wildside Press, 1996), 78. 4. Darius Andre Arya, “The Goddess Fortuna in Imperial Rome: Cult, Art, Text,” PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin (2002), 151. 5. For more on Fortuna in medieval literature, see Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). 6. Herodotus VI.105–106, trans. A.D. Godley, 1920. 7. S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2010). 8. H.P. Lovecraft, “A Confession of Unfaith,” in Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft, ed. S.T. Joshi (New York: Sporting Gentleman, 2010), 5–10, 8. 9. Louis, Margot K., “Gods and Mysteries: The Revival of Paganism and the Remaking of Mythography through the Nineteenth Century.” Victorian Studies 47, no. 3 (2005): 329–361, 329–330. 10. Lovecraft, “A Confession of Unfaith,” 7. 11. See Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum. 12. Importantly, this fundamental division between dying and undying continues to form a significant part of Christianity in its Hellenic expression, as in the Trisagion hymn (which likely dates from at least the fifth century CE) proclaims, Hagios ho Theos, Hagios ischuros, Hagios athanatos, eleison hemas (Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us). While the hymn plays a minor role in Latin Catholic and Anglican worship, it is a fundamental part of Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic worship. 13. Cf. Patricia Merivale, Pan, the Goat-God, His Myth in Modern Times (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969).

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14. Sophus A. Reinert, “The Economy of Fear: H.P. Lovecraft on Eugenics, Economics and the Great Depression,” Horror Studies 6, no. 2 (2015): 255– 282, 256. 15. H.P. Lovecraft, “Cats and Dogs,” H.P. Lovecraft, rev. February 24, 2021. https://www​.hplovecraft​.com​/writings​/texts​/essays​/cd​.aspx. 16. H.P. Lovecraft, “A Layman Looks at the Government.” Lovecraft Studies 44 (2004): 3–22. 17. S.T. Joshi, A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft (Cabin John, MD: Wildside Press, 1996), 222. 18. Frida Andersson, “Racialist Nightmares: The Lovecraftian Fear of the Other,” Bachelor’s thesis (Halmstad University, 2017).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Andersson, Frida. “Racialist Nightmares: The Lovecraftian Fear of the Other.” Bachelor’s Thesis, Halmstad University, 2017. Arya, Darius Andre. “The Goddess Fortuna in Imperial Rome: Cult, Art, Text.” PhD Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 2002. Beherec, Marc A. “H.P. Lovecraft and the Archaeology of ‘Roman’ Arizona.” Lovecraft Annual 2 (2008): 192–202. Bird, Paul. “The Occult as a Rejection of Darwinism in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Journal, Kyoto Gakuen University 8 (2019): 91–97. Geeraert, Dustin. “Specters of Darwin: H.P. Lovecraft’s Nihilistic Parody of Religion.” Master’s Thesis, University of Manitoba, 2010. Joshi, S. T. A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft. Cabin John, MD: Wildside Press, 1996. King, Emily Anne. “The (Mis-)use of Greco-Roman History by Modern White Supremacy Groups: The Implications of the Classics in the Hands of White Supremacists.” Undergraduate Honors Thesis, SUNY, 2019. Krämer, Robinson Peter. “Classical Antiquity and the Timeless Horrors of H.P. Lovecraft.” Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy (2017a): 109–137. Krämer, Robinson Peter. “Classical Antiquity and the Timeless Horrors of H.P. Lovecraft.” In Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy, edited by Brett M. Rogers and Benjamin Eldon Stevens, 92–120. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017b. Louis, Margot K. “Gods and Mysteries: The Revival of Paganism and the Remaking of Mythography Through the Nineteenth Century.” Victorian Studies 47, no. 3 (2005): 329–361. Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. “A Layman Looks at the Government.” Lovecraft Studies 44 (2004): 3–22. ———. “Cats and Dogs.” H.P. Lovecraft. Last Revised February 24, 2021. https:// www​.hplovecraft​.com​/writings​/texts​/essays​/cd​.aspx. ———. Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008.

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Merivale, Patricia. Pan, the Goat-God, His Myth in Modern Times. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Moreno-Garcia, Silvia. “Magna Mater: Women and Eugenic Thought in the Work of H.P. Lovecraft.” PhD Dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2016. Norford, Jesse. “Pagan Death: Lovecraftian Horror and the Dream of Decadence.” In The Gothic: Probing the Boundaries, 171–178. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Norris, Duncan. “Lovecraft’s Greek Tragedy.” Lovecraft Annual 11 (2017): 7–22. Patch, Howard R. The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. Pavlov, Alexander. “Hyper-Real Religion, Lovecraft, and the Cult of the Evil Dead.” State, Religion and Church 7, no. 1 (2020): 4–24. Ralickas, Vivian. “‘Cosmic Horror’ and the Question of the Sublime in Lovecraft.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 18, no. 3 (2007): 364–398. Reinert, Sophus A. “The Economy of Fear: H.P. Lovecraft on Eugenics, Economics and the Great Depression.” Horror Studies 6, no. 2 (2015): 255–282. Zeller, Benjamin E. “Altar Call of Cthulhu: Religion and Millennialism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.” Religions 11, no. 1 (2020): 18.

Chapter 14

Prophet of the Mythos H. P. Lovecraft, Muḥammad, and Arabic Scriptures* Andrew J. O’Connor

My mind was whirling with mad thoughts, and the words and warnings of Arab prophets seemed to float across the desert from the lands that men know to the nameless city that men dare not know. —H. P. Lovecraft, “The Nameless City”

A recurrent element of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s (1890–1937) corpus of supernatural horror fiction is the infamous text known as the Necronomicon, written by an eighth-century Arab named Abdul Alhazred. This fictional “mad Arab” recorded in his forbidden tome the revelations he received while wandering the Arabian Desert and other sites of antiquity. Alhazred’s revelations reflect not the divine will of a singular omnipotent Creator God, however, but the horrific truth about the Old Ones: cosmic deity-like entities—alien and beyond human comprehension—who are at best indifferent and at worst openly hostile to the well-being of humanity. The fictional Necronomicon and its author appear frequently throughout Lovecraft’s oeuvre, usually in the context of discoveries of forbidden knowledge or the dealings of unsavory cults intent on realizing the will of ancient aberrational beings. Indeed, the conflicts and horrors recounted by the stories’ different narrators or protagonists are often traced back to this Arab and his sacrilegious scripture, which hold a prominent place within the Cthulhu Mythos. The Necronomicon has also made an indisputable cultural impact. Heavily influenced by the Gothic horror of Edgar Allen Poe (d. 1894) and the literary works of Lord Dunsany (d. 1957), Arthur Machen (d. 1947), and Robert W. Chambers (d. 1933), Lovecraft’s own writings in turn went on to have   I would like to thank Michael O’Connor, Jacob Kildoo, and AnaMaria Seglie Clawson for their crucial suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter.

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a profound influence on science fiction, macabre stories, and the horror genre.1 His style of Cosmic Horror led to the rise of a subgenre dubbed “Lovecraftian Horror,” influencing contemporary authors such as Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, and contemporary culture more broadly.2 The dread Necronomicon itself has made its way into film3 and even spawned attempts to construct physical copies of this fictional text, and several studies have examined its impact. The text has, in the words of one scholar, “been borrowed, used and altered to such an extent that, on occasion, certainty of its fictitiousness has become compromised.”4 The purpose of the present chapter, however, is not to further explore the impact of this fictional text and its Mad Prophet, but to dig further into some of the strands that lay behind Lovecraft’s construction of his prophet and his tome, and in doing so provide an initial overview of the prophetology that Lovecraft constructed for his Mythos. In particular, I make the argument that the character of Abdul Alhazred is in part inspired by the figure of the Prophet Muḥammad, and by extension that there are substantial parallels between Necronomicon and the Qurʾān. In other words, Islam had a prominent role in shaping the prophetology of Lovecraft’s Mythos. It is important to note that I am not arguing here that Abdul Alhazred is modeled solely on Muḥammad. My interpretation is not intended to undermine the recognition that Abdul Alhazred also functions as a proxy for Lovecraft himself; Lovecraft inserted one of his own childhood alteregos into his Mythos, in effect making himself into an Arab prophet.5 Additionally, Lovecraft nowhere (as far as I am aware) made the association between Abdul Alhazred and Muḥammad explicit. Lovecraft’s “mad Arab” seems to draw some inspiration from medieval Arab Muslim alchemists as well, such as the pseudo-mythical Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (ca. 720–808, 812, or 815 CE).6 Other possibilities include the Persian alchemist Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī (ca. 865–923/4 CE), author of the Book of Secrets (Kitāb al-asrār) and known in Medieval Europe as Rhazes, or even the more famous philosopher Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna in Latin; ca. 980–1037 CE). Although he had a complicated view of alchemy (al-kīmīyā), Ibn Sīnā authored treatises on medicine and philosophy that were profoundly influential in the West: The Canon (al-Qanūn), The Book of Healing (Kitāb al-shifāʾ), and his Treatise on the Elixir (Risālat al-iksīr).7 Lovecraft does in fact allude to Avicenna and the legacy of Arab alchemists in a passage of his short novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The narrator of the story, Marinus Bicknell Willett, relates how years ago an English gentleman had once visited the estate of Joseph Curwen (later revealed to be a duplicitous alchemist and sorcerer) and was shocked to discover “the titles of the books in the special library of thaumaturgical, alchemical, and theological subjects”:

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The bizarre collection, besides a host of standard works which Mr. Merritt was not too alarmed to envy, embraced nearly all the cabbalists, daemonologists, and magicians known to man; and was a treasure-house of lore in the doubtful realms of alchemy and astrology. Hermes Trismegistus in Mesnard’s edition, the Turba Philosophorum, Geber’s Liber Investigationis, and Artephius’ Key of Wisdom all were there; with the cabbalistic Zohar, Peter Jammy’s set of Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully’s Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetzner’s edition, Roger Bacon’s Thesaurus Chemicus, Fludd’s Clavis Alchimiae, and Trithemius’ De Lapide Philosophico crowding them close. Mediaeval Jews and Arabs were represented in profusion, and Mr. Merritt turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he had heard such monstrous things whispered some years previously after the exposure of nameless rites at the strange little fishing village of Kingsport, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay.8

Suffice to say, Lovecraft was certainly aware of other Muslim figures and authors beyond Muḥammad, but I argue that Lovecraft scholars should pay more heed to analogies with Islam’s prophet. According to the traditional Islamic account of his life, Muḥammad (ca. 570–632 CE) began to receive revelations from God while resting in Mt. Hira outside of his birthplace of Mecca, a town in the Hijazi region of the Arabian Peninsula, in about 610 CE. Muḥammad revealed himself as the messenger (rasūl) or prophet (nabī) of God, called to preach to his Arabic-speaking kin. In 622 CE he and his earliest followers emigrated north to the oasis town of Medina, and by his death in 632 his message had spread over most of the peninsula. Thereafter his followers recorded his revelations and collected them into a single codex: the Qurʾān. The Arabic term al-Qurʾān means “the Recitation,” and its 114 surahs (or chapters) contain a diverse collection of material, including narratives (usually about prophets), instructions on proper praxis, polemical passages, and proclamations about judgment. This last genre is particularly salient, and contemporary Qurʾānic Studies have highlighted the eschatologically charged character of the Qurʾān’s message.9 It is the text’s apocalyptic proclamations, alongside its status as the most wellknown Arabic text in history, that are most relevant to my present purposes: demonstrating that Abdul Alhazred and the Necronomicon are inversions of, if not parodies of, their Islamic equivalents. This chapter is broken into four sections. First, I introduce Abdul Alhazred and the Necronomicon alongside their place in the Cthulhu Mythos. In the second section, I demonstrate their relevance to Lovecraft’s views of religion and race, including his perception of Islam and Arabs. In the third and fourth sections, I place these two corpora into conversation and draw textual and thematic connections between

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Muḥammad and Abdul Alhazred, providing an interpretation of the latter as the Prophet of the Mythos, just as Muḥammad is the Prophet of God in Islam, and accordingly make the case that Lovecraft developed the Necronomicon to serve as the central “un-sacred” Arabic scripture of the Cthulhu Mythos just as the Arabic Qurʾān is the central scripture in Islam. Abdul Alhazred can be understood as the Prophet of the Cthulhu Mythos with the Necronomicon as his scripture, on analogy with Muḥammad the Prophet of Islam and the Qurʾān as the central religious text. An appreciation of this connection helps us to dig further into the origins of Lovecraft’s literary creations, in addition to encouraging scholars to look beyond Christianity when tracing the religious and theological motifs of Lovecraft’s works. Scholars ought, therefore, to pay more attention to Lovecraft’s caricature of Islamic and Middle Eastern sources when interrogating the religious motifs of the Cthulhu Mythos. In the fourth and final section, I offer concluding observations providing a preliminary mapping of Lovecraft’s prophetology. THE MAD ARAB AND THE NECRONOMICON Abdul Alhazred first appears as the author of an “unexplained couplet” in the 1921 story “The Nameless City,” whereas the title of his unholy grimoire, the Necronomicon, was first mentioned in Lovecraft’s 1922 story “The Hound.”10 Lovecraft went on to refer to both frequently throughout his literary corpus, much more often than any of the other fictional occultists or occultist volumes that appear in his Mythos. However, the most detailed account of the book and its author appear in the fictional history that Lovecraft developed in the “The History of the Necronomicon,” which he wrote in 1927. According to “The History of the Necronomicon,” Abdul Alhazred was from Sana’a in Yemen and flourished around 700 CE during the Umayyad (“Ommiade” in Lovecraft’s parlance) caliphate.11 He journeyed throughout Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Arabia, and his sojourn into ancient, forgotten places served as the basis for his discoveries of forbidden truths: He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia—the Roba el Khaliyeh or “Empty Space”12 of the ancients—and “Dahna” or “Crimson” desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death.13 Of this desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have penetrated it.14

Alhazred later resided in Damascus, where he wrote the Necronomicon and died under mysterious and horrific circumstances in 738 CE. Lovecraft even includes the (fictitious) claim that Alhazred and his death are mentioned by

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the (historical) Ibn Khallikān (1211–1282 CE; “Ebn Khallikan” for Lovecraft, who incorrectly identifies him to be from the twelfth century), the author of the biographical dictionary Deaths of Eminent Men and History of the Sons of the Epoch (Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-anbāʾ abnāʾ al-zamān).15 Anyone familiar with the Arabic language is sure to discern something erroneous with Abdul Alhazred’s name (Lovecraft, for his part, did not know any Arabic). The fictitious moniker contains two definite articles in a row (Arabic al-): Abdul Al-hazred. A more appropriate name, to accurately represent a transliteration of Arabic nomenclature in Latin script, would have been either Abd al-Hazred or Abdul Hazred.16 The first portion of the name is the Arabic word for “slave” or “servant” (ʿabd), commonly used as the first term in Arabic theophoric names (most frequently as ʿAbd Allāh or ʿAbdullah, “Slave of God”). The precise origin or etymology of “hazred”—if indeed it derives from actual Arabic—however, is uncertain. If one were to imagine that an Arabic dictionary was consulted, a possible explanation is the Arabic term ḥadrah “presence,” which in an iḍāfah/possessive construction is pronounced ḥadrat because of the final feminine marker tāʾ marbūṭah. This term is often used as an honorific, such as with the Prophet (ḥaḍrat Muḥammad), and in Persian and Turkish is pronounced like “hazrat” or “hazret.” Removing the duplicated definite article this would result in a name meaning something like “Servant of the Presence” (Arabic ʿAbd al-Ḥaḍrah). Hazred may otherwise have been intended to have some association with Arabic root ḥ-ẓ-r, with its associated verb ḥaẓara, “to forbid,” and noun ḥaẓr, “forbiddance.” In any case it may be best to refrain from digging too deeply into Arabic precedents since Lovecraft adopted this pseudonym for himself at a very young age, although it is unclear whether he formulated it himself or whether it was coined by his family lawyer upon his request.17 Other possible explanations include a reference to the name “Hazard” from Lovecraft’s family tree or a pun on “all-has-read” representing the young author’s obsession with books.18 Alhazred’s infamous text, the Necronomicon, originally bore the title of Al Azif. Lovecraft here provides his own explanation of the Arabic: “azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos’d to be the howling of daemons.”19 Lovecraft adopted this title from Samuel Henley’s notes to his translation of William Beckford’s Gothic novel Vathek, published in English in 1786.20 This is in fact genuine Arabic: al-ʿazīf (from the root ʿ-z-f). Indeed, Lovecraft seems to have alighted upon a rather fitting title for his fictional tome of evil. Ibn Manẓūr’s (1233–1311/1312 CE) prominent Arabic dictionary Lisān al-ʿarab (Tongue of the Arabs) reports that al-ʿazīf is said by Bedouins to be the voices of jinn (aṣwāt al-jinn),21 enigmatic invisible beings whom the Qurʾān declares were created from fire (Q 55:15) and were also capable of sexual relationships with humans (e.g.,

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Q 55:56, 74). Lane’s Lexicon accordingly offers the following translation of ʿazīf: “a sounding, or an emission of sound”; “the low, or faint, or humming, sound of the jinn, or genii, that is heard by night in the deserts”; “a sound heard in the night, like drumming: or the sound of the winds in the atmosphere, imagined by the people of the desert to be the sound of the jinn.”22 The Arabic name of the book, therefore, succinctly captures its eldritch and frightening nature. In the fictitious history of the text, the designation Necronomicon was provided by the text’s Byzantine translator, Theodorus Philetas (another fictional character) in 950 CE, when he translated the text into Greek. Lovecraft provided an etymology for this term, saying it derived from the Greek words for dead (nekros), law (nomos), and image (eikon); thus, “Image of the Law of the Dead.” However, as Joshi and Schultz note, this construct does not actually work under the rules of Greek grammar and etymology.23 It is possible that Lovecraft was interested in a title that resonated with the Egyptian Book of the Dead (the Book of Going Forth by Day), a book that was likewise gaining wide interest in the early twentieth century, and which likewise evoked a sense of otherworldliness.24 Additionally, Benjamin Zeller highlights the relationship between the Necronomicon and the Christian Bible: “The section of this fictional text therefore functions as a sort of Cthulhu Mythos equivalent of the Christian Book of Revelation, setting the parameters for millennial belief and action. Lovecraft suitably writes the text of the Necronomicon in pseudo-Biblical phrasing reminiscent of the King James translation of the Christian Bible.”25 This is a valuable observation, and certainly Lovecraft was far more familiar with the Bible than with the Qurʾān. But tracing the origins of the Necronomicon to an Arab gives Lovecraft lead to add a greater sense of “otherness” or “alterity” to his unholy scripture, allowing it to resonate with Western perceptions of the Islamic scripture. Indeed, there are further compelling connections between Islam’s prophet and the author of the al-ʿAzīf.

LOVECRAFT’S GODS AND LOVECRAFT’S ORIENT First, the link between Abdul Alhazred and the Necronomicon on the one hand with the Prophet and scripture of Islam on the other is strengthened through positioning Lovecraft’s creations within his wider views on religion and race, and in particular his perception of Islam and Arabs. Lovecraft was an ardent critic of religion and any consideration of his employment of religious motifs within his works ought to take into consideration his staunch agnosticism/atheism that bordered on nihilism.26 Lovecraft portrayed humankind’s struggle vs. evil with a sense of pessimism and ultimate

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meaninglessness. For Lovecraft, the cosmos was “sublime in the range and power of its menacing inhospitality.”27 This is reflected in the cosmology of the Cthulhu Mythos, a universe which offers humankind a purposeless existence without solace, with the very origins of the human race said to be an accident or joke.28 In theological terms, Lovecraft’s Mythos stories “narrate a world without Logos.”29 One could add that the Cthulhu Mythos similarly presented a world without telos. Nonetheless, scholars such as Zeller have demonstrated that despite his early rejection of religious belief, Lovecraft was never able to escape religion’s shadow: “Yet despite Lovecraft’s avowed atheism, materialistic philosophy, and dismissal of religion, an examination of his biography as detailed in his own writing shows a deep resonance of religious thought, a persistent presence of a sense of awe which at times became dread, but which reveals an enduring religious influence.”30 Lovecraft’s stories are, he points out, “fundamentally about gods, demons, religious groups, and apocalyptic expectations.”31 Zeller particularly argues that Lovecraft’s Mythos is suffused with an “Anti-Millennialism,” an inversion of traditional millennialism that hopes for vindicatory upheaval and salvation for the faithful, and instead representing the aspiration of cultists for the arrival of hell on earth or even utter annihilation.32 Accordingly, Zeller draws parallels with messianic traditions within Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism, but one could add that Islam is no less of an apocalyptically oriented religious tradition, and the Qurʾān itself is suffused with eschatological warnings.33 Timothy Evans has likewise recognized Lovecraft’s use of folklore to construct his own ‘anti-mythology’: “In reaction to what he perceived as the breakdown of religion, Lovecraft created a cosmology, an alternate history of the universe that has been called an ‘anti-mythology.’ In reaction to what he saw as the puerility of both religion and occultism, Lovecraft invented his own sacred texts and rituals.”34 Indeed, just as Lovecraft writes about Old Gods, mythologies, cults, and the dreadful eschaton, so too does he write of prophets, and the core prophet of his anti-cosmology evokes his own sense of “alterity” by invoking the alterity of Islam to Westerners. Lovecraft’s perspectives on Islam especially—rather than religion generally—are comparatively more difficult to discern since he did not write about it as often as he did those traditions with which he was more familiar such as American Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Nonetheless, Lovecraft admitted to an early consumption of texts and stories from the Islamic world, some of which were filtered through the writings of British Enlightenment and Romantic writers. It is not clear whether H. P. Lovecraft ever read any parts of the Qurʾān himself, but he may have learned about the life of Muḥammad from Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline

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and Fall of the Roman Empire and other historical works.35 Lovecraft also seems to have picked up numerous details and themes from One Thousand and One Nights, Beckford’s Vathek, and other oriental fantasies, including, for example, a recognition that the devil in Islam is known as “Eblis” (Arabic Iblīs).36 Lovecraft does refer to Islam and even Muḥammad occasionally in his correspondences: “Half of what Buddha or Christus or Mahomet said is either simply idiocy or downright destructiveness, as applied to the western world of the twentieth century; whilst virtually all of the emotional-imaginative background of assumptions from which they spoke, is now proved to be sheer childish primitiveness.”37 For Lovecraft, Muḥammad, like the founder of other religions, disseminated fallacious doctrines. In a rather overt mocking tone, he writes of “the little Moslem continuing the ancestral whine to Allah,” who, like the followers of other religions, would ultimately be forgotten—as would the entirety of the human race—in the infinite sweep of the cosmos.38 He elsewhere remarks that an “Arab may feel that Mahomet is the only true prophet at the same time that an Englishman feels that Christ is,” for which reason Lovecraft professed to prioritize reason over intuition and emotion.39 Islam does stand out for him in some regards, however. In a discussion of how religions tend to grow and gain influence gradually, he wrote, “Exceptions to this rule of gradual growth are very rare—coming only when some psychological accident raises up a new illusion so potently captivating that it sweeps all before it. Such an accident was the blazing up of Islam in the 7th century.”40 Islam, he suggests, was a profound accident and particularly potent illusion among other illusions. Therefore, Islam’s prophet was one prophetic contender among many, albeit one with remarkable efficacy. Lovecraft’s literary use of an Arab prophet also follows him his notorious racism.41 Lovecraft viewed immigration and foreign influences on American society as a sign of miscegenation, with Zeller going so far as to remark that, for Lovecraft, “dark skinned-others represented the advent of the end of the world.”42 Arabs and Islam stand as stark “Others.” Ian Almond has also showcased some of the complexities of Lovecraft’s perceptions and portrayals of Islam and Muslims (which Lovecraft tended to associate with Arabs and the Middle East).43 Almond highlights the pervasive use of orientalist motifs throughout Lovecraft’s writings, within which he employs tropes and Western stereotypes of the Orient to accentuate the other-worldliness and fantastic character of the denizens and domains associated with the alien Ancient Ones who threaten humanity. In other words, in addition to Lovecraft’s unconcealed racism, his views of Islam and Arabs are tied to his context within Western Orientalism. On the one hand, Lovecraft links the Arab Orient with sorcery, demonology, and the unholy (going back to Medieval European polemics against Islam),44 but on the other hand he presents Arabs

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as “distant sages, offering alternative sources of wisdom.”45 Almond goes on to remark how this applies to the character of Abdul Alhazred: In many ways, the two possible genealogies available for Lovecraft’s “mad Arab”—on the one hand, a positive Rosicrucian understanding of the Arab Orient as a place of Enlightenment and learning, juxtaposed against a Medieval Christian demonisation of the East as a spawner of Satanic arts and unholy heresies—reflect the ambiguities of Lovecraft’s use of the Islamic Orient.46

Lovecraft incorporates many standard orientalist images and tropes, depicting the Islamic east as a fantastical landscape of minarets, arcane secrets, superstition, and barbarism. Lovecraft himself confessed his childhood fascination with the One Thousand and One Nights, the influence of which can be particularly felt in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and other stories of his Dream Cycle.47 This story, for example, speaks of “all the thousand minarets of Celephaïs” in the surreal landscape of the Dreamlands, wherein the protagonist Randolph Carter encounters dark merchants wearing turbans manning a galley alongside near-human monstrosities.48 These figures in particular seem to embody racist tropes of depicting Arabs, who become barbaric subhumans. This novella also refers to the most horrifying entity of all the Outer Gods, Azathoth, consistently dubbing him “the daemon-sultan Azathoth,” adding a title with an oriental flair to his identity through employing the title “sultan” rather than “king.” In “The Haunter of the Dark,” Azathoth is described as follows: “He [Robert Blake] thought of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose centre sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a daemoniac flute held in nameless paws.”49 Even though the title “sultan” is replaced with “the blind idiot god,” Azathoth is again described in language evocative of the courts and harems of medieval Muslim rulers. In the short story “Under the Pyramids” (also known “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs,” and written in collaboration with Harry Houdini), racial stereotypes about Arabs again abound. In the story, a fictionalized version of Houdini is bound and gagged by his Arab guides and left in a pyramid to see if he could escape (which he does, but not before being brought to the edges of his sanity through witnessing unspeakable secrets beneath the earth). The narrator relates how “whispers of Arabs are very wild, and cannot be relied upon,”50 since they harbored superstitious beliefs—beliefs which, in this case, turn out to reflect a ray of truth, as the conclusion of the story suggests that the Arab legends about “King Khephren and his ghoul-queen Nitokris” were based on a horrible reality beneath the pyramids. Here Lovecraft again associates Arabs with ancient knowledge and service to dark powers.51 This

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aligns with prominent motifs from European and Christian polemics against Muḥammad which depict the Arab prophet as a magician or false prophet who communicated with demons. In Western literature from a wide range of time periods Muḥammad emerges as a charlatan, necromancer, prophet of Baʿal, magus perfectissimus, and demoniacus.52 These depictions of Arabs are rooted in both Western stereotypes about the East and Lovecraft’s Anglo-Saxon-centric racism. One can also discern the presence of European and particularly medieval Christian stereotypes about Islam. Muḥammad, under the pen of unsympathetic biographers and commentators, was a trickster, heresiarch, and pseudo-prophet.53 However, Almond goes on to note that “any attempt to read Lovecraft’s daemon-sultans and Arab sorcerers as modern resurrections of medieval Christian stereotypes of Islam quickly become problematised not merely by the author’s own rejection of Christianity, but also by an enthusiastic appreciation of what he clearly considered to be a more Romantic faith.”54 Almond cites two anecdotes by Lovecraft, in one of which he refers to the “Eastern magnificence of Mahometanism,” and in the second he relates that he once “formed a juvenile collection of Oriental pottery and objets d’art, announcing myself a devout Mohammedan and assuming the pseudonym of ‘Abdul Alhazred.’”55 Almond goes on to conclude: A standard Saidesque dismissal of Lovecraft as just another Orientalist caricaturist would overlook [. . .] subtle yet significant points: first of all, that Lovecraft’s disavowal of his own faith [. . .] and even his aesthetic privileging of Islam over Christianity forces us to reconsider his use of mad Arabs and encroaching Forces in a different light. Secondly, that the central role of the Orient and Abdul Alhazred certainly discounts any marginalization of Islam in Lovecraft’s texts—on the contrary, in a slightly perverse parody of Christendom’s reliance on Avicenna and Averroes for its knowledge of Aristotle, practically all of Lovecraft’s invariably Anglo-Saxon protagonists have to refer to Arab science (albeit not logic or algebra, but necromancy) in order to understand their situation. In other words, there is an epistemological dependence of the West on the Orient.56

The use of a Muḥammad-like figure also serves Lovecraft’s purpose in subverting the religious perspectives of his contemporaries: “For these [Enlightenment] authors, Islam is ‘good to think with.’ . . . The Enlightenment Mahomet is useful above all as a foil for the Christian worldview, an alternative truth to brandish in the face of those who argue for the universal truth of Christianity and the power of the Church.”57 In other words, Lovecraft’s “aesthetic privileging” of Islam allows him to undermine the truth claims of Christians in his own milieu.

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Lovecraft’s impression of Islam from his youth and his later favoring of oriental aesthetics over his own Christian upbringing may have nudged him toward an association between Arabs and prophetic revelation par excellence. For Lovecraft the most appropriate Prophet of the Mythos, therefore, was an Arab. He merges long-standing polemical presentations of Muḥammad and Arabs with the more favorable (but no more objective) images of the Prophet disseminated by authors of the Enlightenment and Romantic periods.58 Thus, while Abdul Alhazred is imbued with Western stereotypes making him a “mad Arab,” it is also the case that this prophet brings something real—albeit foul and terrifying.59

ARAB PROPHETS AND ARABIC SCRIPTURES In addition to the relationship between Abdul Alhazred, Muḥammad, and Lovecraft’s views on religion and race, there is significant literary evidence to suggest that Muḥammad served as at least partial inspiration in the figure of Abdul Alhazred, the “mad Arab” and author of the Necronomicon. Some of these parallels and connections between the Qurʾān and Abdul Alhazred or his book may be coincidental, but there is enough evidence otherwise to suggest that H. P. Lovecraft drew upon images of Muḥammad when he devised the author of the Necronomicon. One of the strongest pieces of evidence suggesting that Alhazred was partially inspired by Muḥammad comes from the line quoted at the beginning of this chapter, wherein the protagonist of the short story “The Nameless City” recollects “the words and warnings of Arab prophets.”60 As I mentioned above, this was in fact the first story to mention Abdul Alhazred by name, and consequently in his first introduction the Mad Arab is associated with prophecy. At the beginning of the story the narrator introduces the eponymous Nameless City located deep within the Arabian Desert: “It was of this place that Abdul Alhazred the mad poet dreamed on the night before he sang his unexplained couplet: ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie,/ And with strange aeons even death may die.’”61 That Alhazred is intended to be one of the Arab prophets—if not the central Arab prophet—seems clear with the citation of one of his “couplets” (or, for our present purposes, one of his revelations, since it came to him in his sleep). Although it is nowhere stated in this story, later writings placed this couplet in the Necronomicon.62 Early on, therefore, Abdul Alhazred is styled an Arab prophet whose revelation served as a warning about the threat of higher powers. This image is familiar to anyone familiar with the Qurʾān—indeed, the text often presents its words and message as warnings to humankind and its own prophet as a warner (nadhīr) and the revelations recited by Muḥammad

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are described—just as the words of Lovecraft’s Arab prophets—as “a warning” or threat to his people because of the imminent arrival of God’s eschatological judgment (e.g., Q 10:101–102; 74:36; 20:113). The Qurʾān warns of God’s imminent punishment of unbelievers, just as the Necronomicon warns of the inevitable destruction that would be meted out by the Old Ones. “The History of the Necronomicon” also remarks that Abdul Alhazred “was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.”63 That is, Alhazred was not a worshipper of a monotheistic God (Allāh in Arabic), but of beings from the pantheon of the Mythos. The written record of his revelations, al-ʿAzīf, reveals their existence to humanity, just as al-Qurʾān reveals the existence and will of God to its Arabic-speaking audience. Lovecraft’s intention with godlike Old Ones is difficult to pinpoint precisely (he may have undergone three or more stages in how he understood them, progressing from wild primordial gods, to natural superbeings, to aliens) but they nonetheless represent beings beyond human understanding.64 I would also posit that the Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos function as inversions of the God of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Rather than being invested in the lives of human beings and endowing their existence with telos, the Old Ones either seek humankind’s destruction or are oblivious to our presence. The Old Ones are the central embodiment of “horror as the overwhelming threat posed by the unknown” that characterizes Lovecraft’s approach to horror fiction.65 Alhazred’s tome is a warning of the grim reality of the malevolence of these godlike beings, such as Yog-Sothoth, who would destroy humanity in its entirety; it is, in short, the Mythos’s un-sacred scripture. Indeed, the Necronomicon is by far the most important of the esoteric books mentioned in Lovecraft’s corpus—it serves as the most infamous of all sources of forbidden knowledge.66 Almond comments that this book is “the Urtext which lies at the heart of Lovecraft’s fictitious universe.”67 Abdul Alhazred recorded what he received in dreams or learned during his travels, including “the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind” discovered in the desert and including—it is implied—what he learned from shrines of the Old Ones.68 Alhazred visited Egypt and Babylon, but he most importantly spent ten years in the deserts of Arabia, the domain of Muḥammad and the primary theater of his prophetic career of preaching the Qurʾān. As “The History of the Necronomicon” reveals, this desert environ was also said to be the abode of spirits and monsters, adding to the sense of fear and foreboding of Alhazred’s revelations. The Arabian Desert, therefore, serves as Lovecraft’s key “un-sacred geography” (to use Zeller’s idiom),69 or “Unholy Land,” a domain of inhuman mysteries.

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A further noteworthy link between Abdul Alhazred, his book al-ʿAzīf, Muḥammad, the Qurʾān, and the importance of Arabia as the central Unholy Land of the Mythos are references to the mysterious “Iram with its pillars.” Lovecraft likely encountered this idiom in the One Thousand and One Nights,70 but this allusion is ultimately traced back to the Qurʾān in Q 89:7: Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with ʿĀd, Iram with its pillars (Iram dhāt al-ʿimād), 8 The like of which had not been created in the land, 9 And Thamūd, who hewed the rocks in the wadi, 10 And Pharaoh, the man with the tent-pegs, 11 Who were [all] insolent in the land, 12 And caused much mischief in it. 13 Your Lord unloosed on them the scourge of a punishment.71 6 7

In its typical allusive style, the Qurʾān does not elaborate upon the identity of Iram. Most medieval Muslim exegetes suggested that it was either a subtribe of ʿĀd (a pre-Islamic Arab tribe) or a city/place name associated with ʿĀd.72 The latter is the most common interpretation, and commentators typically place this city in Yemen,73 but following recent epigraphic evidence modern scholars associate it with Wadi Rum in Jordan.74 What is clear, however, is that the text includes Iram in a list of peoples or places that God had destroyed for their transgressions and unbelief (they were insolent, ṭaghaw, and caused corruption, fasād) in an abridged version of the Qurʾān’s “punishment stories.”75 These narratives refer to God’s “custom” (Arabic sunnah) of judging and destroying peoples who reject prophets (cf. Q 35:43–44).76 After the spread of Islam, Iram passed into later legends and fables, typically associated with a king named Shaddād. Indeed, in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” Lovecraft associates Iram with this same king: “That antique Silver Key, he said, would unlock the successive doors that bar our free march down the mighty corridors of space and time to the very Border which no man has crossed since Shaddad with his terrific genius built and concealed in the sands of Arabia Petraea the prodigious domes and uncounted minarets of thousand-pillared Irem.”77 Indeed, “Irem” (from an older spelling of Iram) appears about five times in his works and is often associated with Abdul Alhazred, the Necronomicon, and other cultish activity or forgotten lore.78 Thus, a qurʾānic legend plays a central role in Lovecraft’s Unholy Land. One of the most central appearances of “Irem, the City of Pillars” is in fact in the “History of the Necronomicon”: “Of his [Abdul Alhazred’s] madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert

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town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind.”79 While for the Qurʾān Iram is one place among many who have been destroyed by Allāh (in accordance with his sunnah), for the Cthulhu Mythos, Iram is the central (un-)holy site. Irem, the City of Pillars, is the anti-Mecca or anti-Jerusalem, where the mad or foolish visit to learn unwelcome secrets of the Old Ones. In “The Nameless City,” the narrator suggests that the eponymous city of the mysterious and reptilian elder race was located near Iram, for which reason Arabs feared it.80 “The Call of Cthulhu” states that the center of the cult of the Old Ones lay “amid the pathless deserts of Arabia, where Irem, the City of Pillars, dreams hidden and untouched,” and further suggests that Abdul Alhazred was familiar with this cult.81 This all demonstrates the centrality of Arabia and a qurʾānic locale to the revelation of Lovecraft’s core unholy text. Let us turn now to the fictional passages from the Necronomicon quoted by Lovecraft in a handful of his stories. Most of the passages ascribed to the Necronomicon do not resemble poetry except for the most oft-quoted verse: “That is not dead which can eternal lie,/ And with strange aeons even death may die.” This “couplet” appears twice in “The Nameless City” and once in “The Call of Cthulhu,” for which reason it is the most well-known passage of the text.82 Nonetheless, Abdul Alhazred is twice referred to as a “mad poet”: once in his first appearance in “The Nameless City” and again in “The History of the Necronomicon.”83 The Qurʾān, for its part, frequently denies that its own prophet is a poet (Q 36:69; 52:30; 69:41). It announces that poets are followed by those who are astray or perverse, and adds that “they wander in every valley” (Q 26:224–225). Q 37:36 even quotes the Qurʾān’s audience as objecting “are we to abandon our gods for the sake of a mad poet (shāʿir majnūn)?” In other words, when Muḥammad recited the proclamations that made up the Qurʾān—which included exhortations to monotheism and condemnations of “associating” other beings with God (shirk)—it sounded to his audience like he was reciting poetry. Indeed, much of the Qurʾān’s verses are composed in a rhythmic style called sajʿ, which may harken back to the mantic speech of pre-Islamic soothsayers in Arabia (Ar. kāhin, plural kuhhān).84 The Arabic term for “mad,” majnūn, literally means “possessed by a jinn,” and so the Qurʾān is denying that its Prophet is a poet possessed by a spirit—which, one might argue, is exactly the identity of Abdul Alhazred: a wandering poet in servitude to malignant and unfathomable entities, unseen by any mortal. Lovecraft’s “mad Arab” also received his couplet in a dream,85 and Q 21:5 has the Qurʾān’s interlocutors dismiss its revelations as “tangled nightmares” (aṣghāt aḥlām). One of the most extended passages from the Necronomicon is provided in “The Dunwich Horror,” as Dr. Henry Armitage translates a portion to discern the motive of the semi-human antagonist Wilbur Whateley:

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“Nor is it to be thought,” ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it, “that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. . . . The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. . . . As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. . . . Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.”86

The passage exhibits numerous scripture-like doxologies and eschatological threats, extolling the terrifying (and even numinous) dominance and impending reign of the Old Ones.87 The repetitive language of doxologies is a common feature of the Qurʾān, such as in Q 59:21–24: Had We sent this Recitation (al-qurʾān) down on a mountain, you would have seen it humbled and split asunder through fear of God. These parallels are coined by us for the people so that they may reflect. 22 He is God. There is no god but Him, Knower of the Invisible and the Witnessed. He is the Merciful and the Compassionate. 23 He is God. There is no god but Him, the King, the Holy, the Peace, the Faithful, the Watcher, the Mighty, the Compelling. Glory be to God, far above what they associate [with Him]. 24 He is God, the Creator, the Maker, the Shaper. To Him belong the fairest names. All that is in the heavens and the earth glorify Him. He is the Mighty and the Wise. 21

Furthermore, the warning that the Old One’s “hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not” resonates with a similar threat from Q 50:16, which declares that God is “nearer to him [humankind] than his jugular vein,” which alludes to God’s cognizance of human deeds. Another passage from the writings of Alhazred appears in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” part of Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle and co-written with E. Hoffman Price: “And while there are those,” the mad Arab had written, “who have dared to seek glimpses beyond the Veil, and to accept HIM as a Guide, they would have been

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more prudent had they avoided commerce with HIM; for it is written in the Book of Thoth how terrific is the price of a single glimpse. Nor may those who pass ever return, for in the Vastnesses transcending our world are Shapes of darkness that seize and bind. The Affair that shambleth about in the night, the Evil that defieth the Elder Sign, the Herd that stand watch at the secret portal each tomb is known to have, and that thrive on that which groweth out of the tenants within—all these Blacknesses are lesser than HE Who guardeth the Gateway; HE Who will guide the rash one beyond all the worlds into the Abyss of unnamable Devourers. For HE is ‘UMR AT-TAWIL, the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OF LIFE.”88

Here we encounter an Arabic appellation for an otherworldly entity described in the Necronomicon, again suggesting a correlation between Arabic and supernatural revelations. Arabic ʿumr al-ṭawīl (“the long life” or “the longest life”) here refers to some sort of guide who would usher the foolhardy into the ravenous abyss (perhaps related to the “daemon-sultan” Azathoth) at the center of all reality. When Randolph Carter encounters this being, he makes the proper “obeisances which the hideous Necronomicon had taught him to make.”89 This is another case of Abdul Alhazred functioning as the Prophet of the Mythos, both revealing to his readers the nature of ultimate reality— which in this case is terrifying and madness-inducing—and directing them to proper praxis (even if, in this case, Carter also recognizes the inaccuracies of the “mad Arab’s terrific blasphemous hints,” positing that Alhazred had been unable to accomplish what Carter himself was about to achieve). The theme of guidance (hudā) is likewise a ubiquitous theme in the Qurʾān, appearing, for example, in the prayer in the first surah (al-Fātiḥa) of the entire text (Q 1:6). The only other extended quotation from the Necronomicon appears in “The Festival,” but it has less to do with the terrible majesty of the Old Ones than it does with warning about the dreadful craft of wizards, though it also refers to another (fictional) Arab associated with the occult, Ibn Schacabao90— strengthening the association between Arabs and forbidden supernatural knowledge.91 Relatedly, just as Muḥammad’s proclamations in the Qurʾān frequently speak of the opulent pleasures of paradise and the horrific landscape awaiting the reprobate in Gehenna (jahannam), Alhazred seems to have written about death and some semblance of an afterlife (in this case likely tied to necromancy), since a passage from “The Hound” mentions how “the old Arab daemonologist” wrote about a symbol and its lineaments “drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the dead.”92 Furthermore, followers and readers of Alhazred’s volume or illicit lore tied to the Mythos in general are associated with Arabic. In “The Dunwich

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Horror,” the diary of Wilbur Whateley (who is, in fact, the half-human son of Yog-Sothoth and twin brother of the eponymous and monstrous “Dunwich Horror”) is said to bear a “general resemblance to the heavily shaded Arabic used in Mesopotamia,” though it is ultimately revealed to be employed as a cipher.93 The librarian Dr. Armitage later deciphers the cryptogram, revealing it to be written in English, albeit with ties to the “Saracens” like Abdul Alhazred: “Armitage had an idea that the alphabet might be something esoterically used by certain forbidden cults which have come down from old times, and which have inherited many forms and traditions from the wizards of the Saracenic world.”94 Alhazred was the foremost figure of the “wizards of the Saracenic world,” the genealogy of which is again likely rooted in Lovecraft’s inheritance of centuries-old European tropes about Muḥammad the heresiarch, pseudoprophet, and demonic magician. In another example The Case of Charles Dexter Ward recalls eighteenth-century accounts of a disembodied voice that echoed from the sky, “evil as the forbidden books of the Arabs.”95 Robert Suydam, the mysterious character at the center of “The Horror at Red Hook,” lived near “a very unusual colony of unclassified slant-eyed folk who used the Arabic alphabet but were eloquently repudiated by the great mass of Syrians in and around Atlantic Avenue.”96 Throughout all these examples, the presence of Arabic or Arab character signifies the activity of blasphemous cults and dark powers, as is the case with the Mad Arab and his un-sacred scripture, traced back to a parody of Muḥammad’s role in Islam. LOVECRAFT’S PROPHETOLOGY Given these connections between Lovecraft’s creations and Islam, can we construct a theology of prophethood—in other words, a prophetology—of Lovecraft’s Mythos? First, it is worth observing that Lovecraft seems to add his own fictional etiology for the phenomenon of prophets and prophecy in “The Call of Cthulhu.” Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones await their awakening in various hidden places throughout this and other worlds, such as in the submerged city of R’lyeh, from which they communicate to humanity: They knew all that was occurring in the universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals. Then . . . those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones shewed them; idols brought in dim aeras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the

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secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. . . . Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return. In the elder time chosen men had talked with the entombed Old Ones in dreams, but then something had happened. The great stone city R’lyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, had sunk beneath the waves. . . . But memory never died, and high-priests said that the city would rise again when the stars were right. Then came out of the earth the black spirits of earth, mouldy and shadowy, and full of dim rumours picked up in caverns beneath forgotten sea-bottoms.97

In sum, ancient so-called prophets were spoken to by the Old Ones, but after the sinking of the city of R’lyeh, “dim rumours” were gathered in the lost, inaccessible places of this world. This seems to account for Abdul Alhazred’s acquisition of forbidden and forgotten knowledge recorded in the Necronomicon—indeed, the Arab’s name is mentioned shortly thereafter in the same paragraph. Here there is no “descent” (tanzīl) of revelation from God to human prophets as in Islam, but the dissemination of dreadful knowledge through the dreams of the Old Ones or through consultation with “black spirits.” Lovecraft provided an additional explanation in the novella The Shadow out of Time, in which the accomplishments of the time-traveling alien race of Yith gave birth to legends about prophets in human mythology.98 Who or what, then, is a Prophet of the Mythos? Prophecy as a phenomenon is coupled with the Old Ones or alien beings, rather than a God or gods, due to the illusionary nature and indeed hollowness of traditional religions. Prophets investigate the secrets of the Old Ones in the Unholy Lands (or anti-sacred geographies) of antiquity, learning glimpses of the ghastly truth of the maliciousness of the cosmos, becoming heralds of the anti-millennial eschaton. Their revelations are recorded in ghastly grimoires, anti-sacred scriptures that contain poetic couplets, blasphemous doxologies, apocalyptic threats, and guidance for proper praxis when dealing with unwholesome powers. It would, perhaps, be more fitting to speak of the Mythos’s “pseudoprophetology,” since the messages of these heralds are fundamentally in opposition to any sense of holiness, logos, or telos, and antithetical to the well-being of humanity. This (pseudo-)prophetology is informed by Lovecraft’s rejection of religion and racialized view of the orient. The foremost prophet, the mad poet, is an Arab associated with dark magic, malignant spirits, and a blasphemous scripture—all of which were (and are) common motifs of anti-Muslim polemics in the West. Lovecraft was not inclined to be sensitive or irenic in his use of religious themes, and one need not be too surprised that one of his central characters existed as a sort of parody of a prominent religious figure. On the other hand, his own attraction to the aesthetics of Islam and the fables of the

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Middle East likely instilled a perception that privileged Muḥammad as the Prophet par excellence (even if Muḥammad, like all prophets, was a false one). The most fitting persona to reveal and record the horrid secrets of the Old Ones, therefore, was an Arab. The Necronomicon—originally an Arabic text, al-ʿAzīf—is the central scripture of the Mythos and its dark gods, and Abdul Alhazred is their Prophet.

NOTES 1. See, for example, Goho, “The Shape of Darkness: Origins for H.P. Lovecraft within the American Gothic Tradition,” and Schweitzer, “Lovecraft’s Debt to Lord Dunsany,” both in Lovecraft and Influence: His Predecessors and Successors, ed. Robert H. Waugh (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2013); the most extensive treatment of Lovecraft’s life is Joshi, I Am Providence (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2013). For a brief introduction to Lovecraft, see Bloom, “This Revolting Graveyard of the Universe,” in American Horror Fiction: From Brockden Brown to Stephen King, ed. Brian Docherty (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). 2. Dick, “Lovecraft’s Influence in Science Fiction,” and Langan, “Nature’s Other, Ghastly Face;” both in Lovecraft and Influence; George, “Polychrome Study: Neil Gaiman’s ‘A Study in Emerald’ and Lovecraft’s Literary Afterlives,” in The Age of Lovecraft, ed. Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffery Andrew Weinstock (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016). On Lovecraft’s literary legacy in contemporary culture, see Mark Jones, “Tentacles and Teeth: The Lovecraftian Being in Popular Culture,” in New Critical Essays on H.P. Lovecraft, ed. David Simmons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Sederholm and Weinstock, “Introduction: Lovecraft Rising,” in Age of Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s work has also spawned further collections of short stories, roleplaying games, board games, video games, and appearances in shows such as South Park. 3. For example, the text appears (under the alternative name of the “Necronomicon Ex-Mortis”) in Sam Raimi’s films Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992). 4. Lippert, “Lovecraft’s Grimoires,” Working with English: Medieval and Modern Language, Literature and Drama 8, Gothic Histories (2012): 41–50, 41. 5. Pearsall, The Lovecraft Lexicon (Las Vegas: New Falcon Publications, 2005), 53. 6. On whom, see Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 33–45. Forster, “Jābir b. Ḥayyān,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, ed. Kate Fleet et al. I owe awareness of this possibility to Levente Vezetéknév. 7. On their place in the history of alchemy, see Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy, 46–50. 8. H.P. Lovecraft, The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, ed. Leslie S. Klinger (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014), 189. Almost the entire corpus of H. P. Lovecraft’s short stories is in the public domain and is available on various websites

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or published collections. In almost all cases, in the present chapter I make use of this two-volume edition. 9. For example, see Sinai, “The Eschatological Kerygma,” in Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity, ed. Hagit Amirav, Emmanouela Grypeou, and Guy Stroumsa (Leuven: Peeters, 2017); idem, The Qur’an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 162–169. 10. S.T. Joshi and David Schultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004), 186. 11. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 813. 12. The “Empty Quarter” (al-rubʿ al-khālī) in the Arabian Peninsula. 13. Lovecraft, well-acquainted with the stories of One Thousand and One Nights, almost certainly has genies (jinn) and ghouls (al-ghūl) in mind. 14. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 813. 15. This can be found in English in de Slane, trans., Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary (Paris: Oriental translation fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1842–74). 16. The first example transliterates the Arabic alphabet without declension, whereas the second showcases the manner in which the short vowel -u (a ḍammah, which falls at the end of the first noun of an iḍāfah construction when in the nominative/marfūʿ case) elides the alif of the definition article of the second noun. 17. Joshi and Schultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, 186, cite a 1932 letter of Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard in which the former relates how the name was supplied to him at five years old by “a family elder—the family lawyer [Albert A. Baker], as it happens—but I can’t remember whether I asked him to make up an Arabic name for me, or whether I merely asked him to criticise a choice I had otherwise made.” Either way, the error in Arabic syntax apparently went unnoticed. 18. Pearsall, The Lovecraft Lexicon, 53. 19. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 813. 20. Joshi and Schultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, 187. 21. Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿarab (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 2008), 2929. He even refers to a ḥadīth (report) of Ibn ʿAbbās (a young cousin of Muḥammad) which alludes to this. He also lists the definitions of “the sound of sand when wind moves through it”; “a sound in sand that you do not know.” 22. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863), 5:2035. The dictionary of Hans Wehr provides “whistling (of the wind), weird sound or noise” (Wehr, Arabic-English Dictionary, 4th ed. (Urbana, IL: Spoken Language Services, Inc., 1994), 714. 23. Joshi and Schultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, 187. 24. This explored in Vinson, “Necrobibliomania,” in Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt, ed. Foy Scalf (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2017), 169–170. 25. Zeller, “Altar Call of Cthulhu,” Religions 11, no. 1 (2019): 1–17, 11. 26. On Lovecraft’s views of religion, see his writings preserved in Lovecraft, Against Religion, ed. S.T. Joshi (New York: Sporting Gentlemen, 2010). For an interesting take on Lovecraft’s theological motifs, see Gregory, Science Fiction Theology (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015), 5–77.

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27. Gregory, Science Fiction Theology, 60. Gregory later (61) remarks that in Lovecraft’s story, “No eternal mind or law holds this world in reason; no recognition nods across the gulfs of indifference. All is at odds.” Hanegraaff puts it this way: “There may indeed be a ‘beyond,’ but it has nothing to do with a spiritual realm of goodness, truth and beauty; on the contrary, behind the empty and meaningless world of material reality, there lurks something even worse” (Hanegraaff, “Fiction in the Desert,” Aries 7 (2007): 85–109, 89). 28. In the 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness, the narrator and geologist professor William Dyer relates how Professor Lake—another member of the ill-fated expedition of scholars from Miskatonic University (a fictional university located in the equally fictitious town of Arkham, Massachusetts) to Antarctica—whimsically recalls “the primal myths about Great Old Ones who filtered down from the stars and concocted earth-life as a joke or mistake.” Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 484. This story also offers hints of pseudoscientific explanations for the otherwise more supernatural elements of Lovecraft’s stories as he moved away from the use of supernatural myths in his earlier stories toward presenting his monsters as cosmic entities or even aliens rather than otherworldly gods (Joshi, “Introduction,” in Against Religion, xxiv). Professor Dyer later relates, concerning the primordial beings from beyond earth, that: “They were the makers and enslavers of that life [on earth], and above all doubt the originals of the fiendish elder myths which things like the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon affrightedly hint about. They were the Great Old Ones that had filtered down from the stars when earth was young—the beings whose substance an alien evolution had shaped, and whose powers were such as this planet had never bred” (New Annotated Lovecraft, 484). Indeed, in the same story it is suggested that all organic life on earth—including the ancestors of humanity—evolved as the result of unsupervised life cells left over by the Elder Things when they created the shoggoths, their monstrous and protoplasmic servants. 29. Gregory, Science Fiction Theology, 67. 30. Zeller, “Altar Call of Cthulhu,” 2. 31. Zeller, “Altar Call of Cthulhu,” 2. 32. Zeller, “Altar Call of Cthulhu,” 5. 33. For an overview, see David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, Inc., 2002). 34. Evans, “A Last Defense against the Dark,” Journal of Folklore Research 42 (2005): 99–135, 127. 35. Lovecraft owned this and a couple other works about Gibbon (Joshi, Lovecraft’s Library, 3rd ed. [New York: Hippocampus Press, 2012], 67). On Gibbon’s presentation of Muḥammad, see Tolan, Faces of Muhammad (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 176–183. 36. Lovecraft mentions “the halls of Eblis” in “Herbert West—Reanimator” (New Annotated Lovecraft, 51) and “the fiery halls of Eblis, the Mahomaten Devil,” in The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature, ed. S.T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2012), 43. 37. From a 1929 letter to James F. Morton quoted in Joshi, “Introduction,” xxii. 38. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 42. From a 1931 letter to Maurice W. Moe.

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39. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 58. From the 1921 essay “The Defense Reopens!” 40. Lovecraft, Against Religion, 135. This originated as part of a letter to Helen Sully written in 1933. 41. Cf., for example, see two recent articles in the press: Baker, “Facing the Monsters,” Publishers Weekly, October 27, 2014, https://www​ .publishersweekly​ .com​/pw​/by​-topic​/columns​-and​-blogs​/soapbox​/article​/64504​-facing​-the​-monsters​ .html, 96; Baxter “The Hideous Unknown of H. P. Lovecraft,” New York Review of Books, December 18, 2014,https://www​.nybooks​.com​/articles​/2014​/12​/18​/hideous​ -unknown​-hp​-lovecraft/#:~​:text​=Fiction​%20like​%20Lovecraft’s%20​can%2​0be,w​ ho%20​are%2​0unpr​epare​d%20f​or%20​it. 42. Zeller, “Altar Call of Cthulhu,” 15. 43. Ian Almond, “The Darker Islam within the American Gothic: Sufi Motifs in the Stories of H.P. Lovecraft,” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 3, no. 3 (2004): 231–242. 44. See the extensive discussions of these themes in Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009); Tolan, Faces of Muhammad. 45. Almond, “The Darker Islam,” 233. 46. Almond, “The Darker Islam,” 233. 47. Donald Burleson, H.P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1983) 30, 75. 48. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 382. 49. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 800. 50. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 201. 51. He also writes of “the haughty luxury, sly disillusion, bland cruelty, urbane treachery, and shadowy spectral horror of the Saracen spirit” (Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, 43). Cf. also the line from “Under the Pyramids”: “The next day, however, precipitated us delightfully into the heart of the Arabian Nights atmosphere; and in the winding ways and exotic skyline of Cairo, the Bagdad of Harounal-Raschid seemed to live again” (Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 179. 52. Daniel, Islam and the West, 51, 90, 98, 108. 53. See, for example, the first three chapters of Tolan, Faces of Muhammad. 54. Almond, “The Darker Islam,” 234. 55. The first is cited from de Camp, Lovecraft: A Biography (New York: Ballantine, 1976), 22; the second is from Lovecraft’s letter to Edwin Baird, February 3, 1924. I owe both quotations to Almond, “The Darker Islam,” 234–235. 56. Almond, “The Darker Islam,” 235. 57. Tolan, Faces of Muhammad, 183. 58. See the discussion in chapters six and seven of Tolan, Faces of Muhammad. 59. Cf. Robert Grant Price’s chapter on conversion in the current book. 60. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 85. Emphasis added. Cf. also the later line: “In the darkness there flashed before my mind fragments of my cherished treasury of daemoniac lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad Arab, paragraphs from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius, and infamous lines from the delirious Image du Monde of Gauthier de Metz.” 61. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 80; cf. 92.

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62. For example, Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 143. 63. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 814. 64. Persall, The Lovecraft Lexicon, 380–383. 65. Gregory, Science Fiction Theology, 60. 66. A passage from “The Festival” singles out the Necronomicon over other unseemly books: “Pointing to a chair, table, and pile of books, the old man now left the room; and when I sat down to read I saw that the books were hoary and mouldy, and that they included old Morryster’s wild Marvells of Science, the terrible Saducismus Triumphatus of Joseph Glanvill, published in 1681, the shocking Daemonolatreia of Remigius, printed in 1595 at Lyons, and worst of all, the unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, in Olaus Wormius’ forbidden Latin translation; a book which I had never seen, but of which I had heard monstrous things whispered.” Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 106. 67. Almond, “The Darker Islam,” 232. 68. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 814. Cf. Lovecraft, “The Last Test,” in The Horror in the Museum & Other Stories (London: Wordsworth Editions, 2010), which refers to “an old man who had come back alive from the Crimson Desert” and “had worshipped at the underground shrines of Nug and Yeb” (96). 69. Zeller, “Altar Call of Cthulhu,” 10–11. 70. Pearsall, The Lovecraft Lexicon, 287. 71. All citations of the Qurʾān are from the English translation of Alan Jones, The Qur’ān: Translated into English (Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2007) with some of my own modifications. 72. The medieval exegete al-Ṭabarī (d. 923 CE), for example, includes reports that it either refers to Alexandria, Damascus, or a sub-tribe of ʿĀd, but ultimately endorses the interpretation that Iram refers to the place where the tribe of ʿĀd resided. Al-Ṭabarī, al-Jāmi’ al-bayān, vol. 15 (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2013), 5:219–220. 73. Orhan Elmaz, “A Paradise in the Desert,” in To the Madbar and Back Again, ed. Laïla Nehmé and Ahmad Al-Jallad (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 74. For example, Saba Farès and Fawzi Zayadine, “Two North-Arabian Inscriptions from the temple of Lât at Wadi Iram,” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 42 (1998): 255–257. 75. This designation (adopted from the German term Straflegenden) is used to qurʾānic studies to refer to the Qurʾān’s allusions to peoples, nations, or tribes who were destroyed by God as a consequence of their unbelief, sinful behaviors, and rejection of God’s prophets. The designation may have originated with Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Moḥammad (Berlin: Nicolai’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1861), 1:469, and was widely employed by Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1926), 10–32. 76. Cf. Q 3:137, 8:38, 15:13, 18:55, 33:62, 35:43, 40:85, 48:23. 77. Lovecraft, The Randolph Carter Tales (London: Sirius, 2017), 148. 78. For example, Lovecraft, Horror in the Museum, 96. 79. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 814. 80. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 89.

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81. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 143. Lovecraft more explicitly writes of “underground shrines of Nug and Yeb,” twin Old Ones, at Iram in “The Last Test.” Lovecraft, Horror in the Museum, 96. 82. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 80, 92, 143. 83. In the first it appears in the line: “It was of this place [the Nameless City] that Abdul Alhazred the mad poet dreamed on the night before he sang his unexplained couplet” (Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 80). In the second he is described as “Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen” (Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 813). 84. On saj’, see Devin J. Stewart, “Sajʿ in the Qurʾān: Prosody and Structure,” Journal of Arabic Literature 21, no. 2 (Sept 1990): 101–139; Stewart, “Soothsayer,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 85. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 80, 93. 86. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 358–359. 87. Cf., for example, Q 59:21–24. 88. Lovecraft, The Randolph Carter Tales (London: Sirius, 2017), 153. For a Sufi interpretation of this story, see Almond, “The Darker Islam.” 89. Lovecraft, Randolph Carter, 155. 90. A name which is, like “Abdul Alhazred,” problematic from an Arabist’s point of view. 91.  ““The nethermost caverns,” wrote the mad Arab, “are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.”” Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 113. Ibn Schacabao, who appears to be entirely fictional, is also mentioned in the The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, but little is said of him beyond the implications that he was an Arab acquainted with the occult. Cf. Pearsall, The Lovecraft Lexicon, 278.

92. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 98. 93. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 371. 94. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 371–372. 95. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 215. 96. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 260. In the story, Suydam thinks they were associated with Nestorian Christianity or the Shamanism of Tibet, which suggests that Lovecraft associated both these traditions with the occult or heretical activity. Later, however, the protagonist Detective Malone decides they may have originated near Kurdistan, “the land of the Yezidis, last survivors of the Persian devilworshippers.” New Annotated Lovecraft, 261. Lovecraft here draws upon some of the more blatant misunderstandings about the Yazidi people, and the extent to which he would rely upon racist stereotypes to add to the atmosphere of trepidation in his fiction. For a contemporary scholarly presentation of the Yazidis, see Açikyildiz, The Yezidis (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014). 97. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 142. 98. Lovecraft, New Annotated Lovecraft, 729.

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Index

aesthetics; beauty of the world, 22, 49– 50; and nihilism, 2–3, 6, 68–69, 170– 72, 175–76; non-Christian, 234–36, 252–53; philosophy, 4, 125, 234–36; Puritan, 61, 129–30; theological, 66, 122–23, 128–31, 135, 166–67, 188, 225 Alhazred, Abdul, 101, 103, 190, 243– 48, 250–61 anthropocentrism, 5, 15, 33, 136, 165, 169, 172, 175, 204, 208, 211 Aquinas, Thomas, 123–24, 155, 158, 209–10 Arkham, MA, 1, 81–82, 100, 249n28 atavism, 3, 36–38, 190, 195, 203, 236 atheism: arguments, 4–5, 16, 18, 55, 99, 109, 132, 135–36, 143–44, 175–76; materialist worldview, 14–16, 38, 61–62, 68–70, 72, 122, 124, 161, 168, 173, 188, 201, 223; mythology, 16, 91, 98, 147; and religion, 2, 15–16, 21, 23, 30, 33, 39, 67, 81, 121, 126–27, 129, 151, 156–58, 203, 220–21, 248–49 atmosphere (narrative): characteristic, 1–2, 17, 17n20, 81, 147, 171, 176, 259n96; creation of, 16, 24, 24n38, 28, 99, 109, 169; experience of, 22, 167–70

At the Mountains of Madness, 103, 194, 202n5, 223; origin of the gods, 15–16, 79–82, 201–2, 201n2; origin of humanity, 14–16, 84–85, 208–9, 249n28 Augustine, 53–54, 70, 135, 146–47, 222, 225 Azathoth, 103, 108, 132–33, 190, 196– 97, 201, 201n2, 209, 251, 258 Barth, Karl, 39 Beauty. See aesthetics Bible: authority, 62–65, 125; doctrine, 23, 30–32, 37–40, 52–53, 55, 64, 66, 83, 172, 187, 205, 210; God, 46, 123, 130, 143–44, 147, 157, 207–8, 211; influence, 30, 32–34, 84, 86, 90–91, 133–34, 190, 248; text, 14, 24, 29, 48–49, 81 Bierce, Ambrose, 84, 101 Bultmann, Rudolf, 125 “The Call of Cthulhu,” 15–16, 69, 79, 81–82, 86, 90, 99, 104, 106, 121, 151–52, 175, 189, 202, 204, 209, 223, 256, 259–60 Calvin, John, 124, 126, 128, 135–36 The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, 67, 70, 205, 244, 259

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“The Cats of Ulthar,” 149–51 Chesterton, G. K., 133–34, 136, 177 classics: civilization, 2, 169, 188, 231– 39; history, 52–53; knowledge of, 66, 81, 162, 249–50; literature and poetry, 2, 53, 173, 175, 204; religion, 4–5, 143, 157–58, 202–4 “The Colour out of Space,” 50, 175 “A Confession of Unfaith,” 188, 235 cosmicism; and Christianity, 13–24, 39, 175, 211; definition, 2, 61, 169, 201n1, 203; in fiction, 29, 35, 108, 201, 205 Cthulhu: encounter with, 163, 193; and Great Old Ones, 16, 29, 51, 83, 86, 100–101, 107, 147, 155, 157–58, 201, 201n2, 254; in R’lyeh, 50, 87–88, 104, 143, 223–25, 259–60; servants of, 102–3, 187, 189; as symbol of Lovecraft’s philosophy, 6, 10, 69, 104n29, 151–52; water elemental, 89–90 Cthulhu Mythos: anti-mythology, 133, 249, 254–56; concepts, 51–52, 55n13, 56, 70, 163, 187, 197, 224, 253, 258; creators of, 46–47, 79–80, 82–95, 98–117, 243–46, 259; nomenclature, 2, 100–101; pantheon of beings, 29, 55, 61, 72, 254, 260 Dagon (god), 29–40, 55, 81, 147–49, 155, 157, 190, 195, 223, 225 “Dagon,” 29, 32–38, 46, 51, 55n13, 79, 147–49, 175, 193, 202n5, 204, 206, 208, 223, 225 Dawkins, Richard, 5, 8, 143–44, 157–58 death: in Christian theology, 30–31, 145–46, 177, 191, 211, 221–22; Death of God movement, 54–55; experience of, 50–51, 162, 165, 168; gods, 143, 233, 235, 253, 256, 258–59; Lovecraft’s, 46–47, 56, 80, 97–98, 100, 107, 109, 132, 178, 236; in narrative, 152, 171, 174, 194–97, 232, 246, 248; personified, 20, 48

Derleth, August, 2, 22, 47, 79–117, 161 dream: Dreamlands, 88, 133, 136, 251; Great Old Ones, 143, 154, 256; Lovecraft’s, 17, 17n20, 104, 171, 238; nightmares, 35, 106, 132–33, 143, 148–49, 193, 196, 224–25, 253–54 The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, 88, 133–34, 162, 176–77, 190, 194, 251 “The Dreams in the Witch House,” 70, 108 Dunsany, Lord: influence of, 80, 84, 101, 162, 202, 243; works of, 162n5, 170, 170n53 Duns Scotus, John, 123 “The Dunwich Horror,” 81, 83, 86, 102, 152–54, 177, 190, 192–93, 256, 258–59 Ecclesiastes, 20–22 Elder Gods, 83–84, 86–89, 91, 98, 105– 8, 106n41, 187, 197 Elder Things, 81–84 ethics: Christian, 126, 130, 174–75, 236–37; Lovecraft’s avoidance of, 72, 169–70; narrative, 16n17, 99, 143, 173, 189, 195, 233; relative, 2, 5–6, 69, 82, 99, 172 “The Evil Clergyman,” 127, 189 “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family,” 206–7, 223 “The Festival,” 67, 190, 223 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 39, 208 Gnosticism, 51–52, 55, 98n5, 204 God, Creator: humanity, 17–19, 49, 52, 54, 86, 131, 164; revelation of, 16, 82, 85, 123–24, 147, 226, 243, 257; works, 20, 90, 144–46, 152, 154–58, 192, 224 God, Trinity, 89, 224 Gothic, 5, 66, 169–70, 195, 236, 243, 247

Index

Great Old Ones: aliens, 81–86, 201n2, 243, 249n28, 260; gods, 88–89, 91, 98–99, 105, 107–8, 153–54, 254; knowledge of, 10, 86, 143, 149, 153– 54, 178, 178n86, 189, 220–25, 256–61; other contributors, 83–91, 100–107 Greco-Roman. See classics Hastur, 51, 82, 84, 86, 90, 101, 107 “The Haunter of the Dark,” 14, 132, 175, 195–96, 251 Heidegger, Martin, 144–47, 155, 157 “Herbert West–Reanimator,” 50 “The History of the Necronomicon,” 246, 254–56 “The Horror at Red Hook,” 8, 69, 191, 206, 259 “The Horror in the Museum,” 105 “The Hound,” 246, 258 Howard, Robert E., 97, 100, 102–5 humanity: culture and values, 2–3, 5, 123–24, 145, 149, 220; divine love for, 45, 48, 85–86, 89–91, 154, 157, 177, 226; and Elder Gods, 89–91, 106–7; knowledge, 61, 67–72, 253–54, 259; nature, 21–22, 88, 127, 164, 167–68, 171; and the world, 47, 49, 52, 69, 163; as worshippers, 24, 31–33, 39, 80, 133–34, 136, 143, 201 Hume, David, 1, 5, 123, 220 idolatry, 17, 29–40, 56, 103, 144–46, 150, 157–58; carved images, 148, 189, 194, 232, 259; hammer against, 38, 144, 146–47, 149, 157–58 Ignatius, 51, 51n7, 55 image of God, 18–19, 31, 46, 48, 82, 85, 164 imagination: human, 47, 134–35, 144, 164, 168, 171–73; Lovecraft’s, 4, 20, 24, 34, 46, 80, 100, 121–22, 132–33, 135, 188, 231, 234; products of, 33, 68, 102, 108, 144, 148–49, 162, 195, 208, 231, 234; religious, 15, 23, 35,

273

88, 122, 125–27, 129, 131, 136, 144, 158, 248, 250 Innsmouth, MA, 5, 7–8, 35–38, 81, 190–91, 195 insanity: descent into, 35, 50, 148–49, 191, 193–95, 197, 205; individuals, 90, 101, 103, 161n2, 190, 243–46, 251–53, 255–60; products of, 68, 203, 209, 243; truth, 5–6, 20, 151, 204–5, 219–20, 223, 225, 258 insignificance, human: cosmicist philosophy, 1–5, 13–24, 29, 86, 99, 151–52, 169–70, 203, 250; to God, 45–46, 55, 84, 204–5, 234; in narrative, 81–82, 85, 88, 133, 149, 161, 173, 190, 224, 243, 248–49 Jesus: in history, 45, 48, 125–26, 152, 154, 166, 250; person and work, 129, 150, 153–54, 166, 177, 205, 207–8, 211, 225, 236; resurrection, 145–46; worship of, 30–31, 131, 187–88, 220–22 Job, 19–20, 23, 45–50 Joshi, S. T.: critique of, 80–81, 83, 98–99, 102–4, 104n29, 106n43, 173, 173n72, 178, 203–4; on Lovecraft’s work, 14, 16, 16n17, 18, 67, 72, 121, 132–33, 147, 248 Kant, Immanuel, 50, 55, 145 King James Bible, 33, 248 laws of nature: and materialism, 2, 4, 38; violation, 15, 121–22, 134, 167– 68, 170–71, 176 “A Layman’s Look at Government,” 237 Lewis, C. S., 4, 17, 23, 161, 161n2, 170, 171n61, 175, 205 Locke, John, 123 Long, Frank Belknap, 80–81, 101–5, 101n21, 124, 127, 151 Luther, Martin, 125–26, 130

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Index

Machen, Arthur, 80, 88, 101, 233, 235–36, 243 Madness. See insanity Marcion, 52 Materialism. See atheism Mather, Cotton, 34, 62, 64–67, 70 Meaninglessness. See nihilism medieval: and classical civilization, 17, 169, 233, 236; imagination, 161, 173; Islam, 244, 250–52, 255; magic, 63; theology, 123, 125, 130, 125n16 metaphysics, 4, 48, 123, 125, 125n16, 129, 144–46, 154–56, 166, 170, 174 Milton, John, 33, 53–54, 193 miscegenation, 35–38, 81, 195, 203, 206, 223, 250 Miskatonic University, 82, 153, 249n28 mood (narrative). See atmosphere (narrative) “The Music of Erich Zann,” 69 mythology: anti-mythology, 16, 29–30, 38, 133, 201, 203–4, 249; classical, 162, 188, 234–35, 238; fiction, 79, 82, 84–85, 88, 91, 98, 100–102, 104–5, 107–8, 163, 193, 249, 260; Northern, 162, 168–69; study of, 33, 67, 109, 134, 144, 157, 164–67, 176–77 “The Nameless City,” 101, 193, 243, 246, 253, 256 narrator, 67–68, 83–88, 190, 220, 243, 256: doomed, 15, 35–36, 38, 50–51, 72, 121, 174–75, 191, 194–95, 225; scientific, 16, 24, 33, 148–49, 223, 244, 251, 253 Necronomicon: forbidden knowledge, 56, 80, 190, 243–48, 254, 260–61; Great Old Ones, 82, 143, 153, 258; in narrative, 102–3, 162, 194, 253–56 “Nemesis,” 14 New England, 34–35, 37, 62–67, 81, 162, 190, 192, 237

New Testament, 30–31, 33, 45, 51, 153, 205, 209. See also Bible; Old Testament New York, 66, 161n2, 191, 206, 207n35 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1, 5, 9, 38, 145, 169 nihilism: in narrative, 61, 69, 72, 122–25, 155, 190, 236, 248–49; as philosophy, 1–4, 13–14, 123–25, 129–30, 151, 161; response to, 19–20, 39–40, 91, 147, 152, 170, 173, 175–77 Nodens, 87–88 “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” 122, 163 Nyarlathotep, 29, 88–90, 100, 103, 108, 132, 144, 190, 194, 201, 201n2 Ockham, William of, 123–24, 125n16 Old Ones. See Elder Things Old Testament, 13, 17–24, 29–40, 45– 46, 48, 81, 87, 207. See also Bible; New Testament “The Other Gods,” 162, 193 otherness: God as Wholly Other, 39–40, 131, 133–34, 156, 158, 202, 204–5, 210; idolatry, 31–38; sensation, 161, 171–72, 248; xenophobia, 3, 3n4, 187–89, 191–92, 197, 207–12, 250 Otto, Rudolf, 131, 134, 168 The Outsider and Others, 164 Paul, 30, 51n7, 221–23, 225 “Pickman’s Model,” 67–70 “The Picture in the House,” 177 Poe, Edgar Allen, 46, 55n13, 66–67, 167, 243 prophecy: in Christianity, 23, 31; in Islam, 243–46, 248–50, 252–53, 256, 258–61; Lovecraft as, 47, 56; in narrative, 10, 190, 193, 201n2 Providence, RI, 3, 10, 66, 81, 97, 109, 162, 235 Psalms, 17–20

Index

Puritanism, 34, 61–77, 81, 124–26, 128–30, 202n7 racism, 3, 35, 37, 188–89, 191, 195, 197, 201, 205–7, 209, 211, 233, 238, 250–52, 259n96 Rahner, Karl, 210 “The Rats in the Walls,” 90, 175 Ratzinger, Joseph, 224–25 sacred space: Christian, 30–32; classical, 192–94, 232–33; inversion of, 24, 24n39, 50, 187–200, 225, 253–54, 260; ruins, 10, 35, 37, 68n40, 90, 194–97 Satan: alliance with, 35, 37–38, 64–65, 108, 191, 214, 235–36; Christian, 45–46, 48–49, 84–86, 88–89, 128– 29, 173n72; Islam, 250–51, 250n36, 258n91, 259n96; other depictions, 52–54, 193 science: astronomy, 3–4, 14, 17–18, 24, 188; biology, 6, 47, 65, 67, 127, 176, 207; ignorance, 33, 38, 151, 202–3; interest in, 81, 122; Islamic, 244, 252; science fiction, 87, 132, 167, 201–2, 244; 17th century, 65, 70–71, 123, 126; 20th century, 4, 14–16, 29, 39, 47 The Shadow out of Time, 24, 105, 260 The Shadow over Innsmouth, 6, 27, 29, 32–38, 55, 86, 190–91, 195, 207 shoggoth, 1, 223, 249n28 Shub-Niggurath, 100, 106 “The Silver Key,” 194 Smith, Clark Ashton, 68n40, 97, 97n2, 100–105, 102n25, 104n32, 107–9 Spinoza, Baruch, 123 “The Strange High House in the Mist,” 88, 175 “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” 28, 124, 127, 132, 147, 163–64, 167–70 Taylor, Charles, 126 “The Temple,” 55n13, 195

275

theodicy, 45–46, 52–56, 56n14, 85 “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” 51, 88, 178, 255, 257 time: eternity, 21–22, 37, 122, 130, 133–34, 156, 165, 168, 170–72, 201n2, 209, 237, 253, 256; and human life, 14, 21–22, 82, 109, 162, 171–72, 175–76; in the universe, 4–5, 83, 99, 195 “The Tomb,” 55n13 transcendence: denial of, 13; desire for, 122, 136, 163, 165–72, 176–78; God, 20, 123–24, 130, 132–33, 135, 154– 56, 173; numinous, 168, 193, 201, 204–5, 205n22, 257; sublime, 49–50, 131, 136, 249; transcendentals, 6, 130, 170, 249n27 “The Tree,” 177, 231–34 “Under the Pyramids,” 189, 193, 251 “The Unnamable,” 50, 67, 70 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, 122–25, 128–31, 135 von Harnack, Adolf, 52 Wandrei, Donald, 80, 97, 105, 161, 162n3, 238 Weird Tales, 34, 68n40, 79–80, 82, 97, 99, 101–3, 101n21, 102n25, 105–6, 105n36, 162n3 “The Whisperer in Darkness,” 100–101, 175 Witchcraft: Bible, 48, 48n2; Puritanism, 61–65, 70–71, 81, 128–29; Witch House, 108 women, 48, 63–64, 153, 222, 235–36 xenophobia, 3, 187–88, 191, 197, 201, 205–12, 207n35, 250 Yog-Sothoth: god, 51, 90, 147, 156–57; in narrative, 51, 103, 105, 153–54, 193, 254, 257, 259; nomenclature for Mythos, 81, 100–101

About the Contributors

Nick Bennett teaches English composition and humanities courses at a variety of colleges around Chicagoland. He earned his Master’s in literature from Loyola University Chicago and often commits his research to the exploration of modernism and its myths. He is currently working on a book about the role of the mutant in the popular imagination of the Twentieth Century. Ryan G. Duns, SJ, holds a PhD in Systematic Theology from Boston College. He is currently assistant professor of Theology at Marquette University. He is the author of Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age: Desmond and the Quest for God (Notre Dame University Press, 2020), coeditor with Derrick Witherington of René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture (Lexington/ Fortress Academic, 2021), and articles about Karl Rahner, Iris Murdoch, William James, and the relationship between philosophy and theology. He is currently working on a book tentatively entitled The Dark Transcendent: Metaphysics, Theology, and Horror. Lyle Enright, PhD, writes frequently on topics in pop culture and religion, with his work appearing in Christ & Pop Culture, Church Life Journal, Fathom Magazine, The Other Journal, and many others. He holds a doctorate in English from Loyola University Chicago, where he studied themes of divine sovereignty in twenty-first-century novels and poetry. His research has won awards from the Colloquium on Violence & Religion and the Society of Textual Scholarship. Lyle currently works as chief storytelling officer at unRival.Network, amplifying nonviolent approaches to religious and fundamentalist conflicts. You can also read his short fiction at Short Edition, Speculative City, and TL; DR Press, or follow him on Twitter at @ynysdyn.

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About the Contributors

Neal Foster holds an MDiv in missiology and a BS in science education. Hailing from Oklahoma, he previously served as missionary in Africa, and currently serves as staff member for Peace Catalyst International. He facilitates and supports peacebuilding and reconciliation through practical application of Jesus’s teachings, focused on Christian and Muslim dialogue and community. He is currently interested in pursuing meaning through deconstruction of his evangelical Christian background toward a radical theology of Jesus-centered pessimistic optimism. Austin M. Freeman (PhD, systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) specializes in the theology of fantasy literature, especially that of J. R. R. Tolkien. Alongside his other publications, he has contributed to or edited several volumes in the current series, including Theology and the Marvel Universe, Theology and J.R.R. Tolkien, and Theology, Fantasy, and the Imagination. Austin teaches a wide variety of subjects from moral philosophy to medieval worldview to rhetoric. He is a duck owner. David K. Goodin earned a PhD in Religious Studies from McGill University in the philosophy of religion, with a concentration in Patristic theology. He also holds a Master of Science degree in environmental policy from Florida International University. Research interests include theodicy, eco-theology, and eco-philosophy with a specialization on the Ethiopian sacred forests of the Täwaḥədo tradition. Currently, he is a lecturer for the McGill School of Religious Studies in Montreal, Professeur Associé at the Université Laval, Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe de Montréal, and an instructor for the Pappas Patristic Institute at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts. His latest book is Confronting Evil: Theodicy in the Eastern Patristic Tradition (Alexander Press, 2021). Originally from Miami, Florida, David K. Goodin now resides and teaches in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Robert Grant Price lectures at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. His recent contribution to studies in pop culture, philosophy, and religion includes essays in Black Mirror and Philosophy (2020), KISS and Philosophy (2020), Rene Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture (2021), and Indiana Jones and Philosophy (2022). Katherine Kelaidis is the resident scholar and director of Academic Collaborations at the National Hellenic Museum. Her work focuses on the contemporary reception of ancient religion, particularly ancient Christianity in literature and politics. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Kelaidis is a regular contributor on issues related to Eastern Christianity in the trade press.

About the Contributors

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She holds a PhD in Classics from Royal Holloway College, University of London and a BA in Classics from the University of California, Berkeley. She has also completed graduate work in Biblical Studies at the Institut Catholique de Paris and in Classical Philosophy at the Universitat de Barcelona. J. S. Mackley graduated from the University of York, UK, with a PhD in Medieval Literature. He has taught at the University of Northampton where he was program leader for the BA English degree and at Richmond University, the American International University in London where he lectures in British Fantasy Literature and Saxon history. He has published a monograph, The Legend of St Brendan, as well as articles on medieval and Gothic literature, mythology and folklore, and contemporary literature and popular culture. Most recently, he has completed a seven-volume collection of “Penny Dreadful” serial novels featuring the Victorian antihero, SpringHeeled Jack. Justin Mullis is a PhD candidate in American Cultural Studies at Bowling Green State University and holds a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina in Charlotte where he has taught classes on the intersection of religion with science-fiction and horror literature and film. His recent publications include: “Cryptofiction! Science-Fiction and the Rise of Cryptozoology” (Paranormal and Popular Culture, Routledge, 2019), “Fear, Fairies and Fossils: The Legacy of Arthur Machen’s ‘Little People’ Stories” (Arthur Machen: Critical Essays, Lexington Books, 2021), “Thomas Jefferson: The First Cryptozoologist?” (Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous, Lexington Books, 2021), and “The Lovecraft Investigations as Mythos Metatext” (The Medial Afterlives of H.P. Lovecraft, Palgrave, forthcoming). Andrew J. O’Connor is assistant professor of Theology and Religious Studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin (USA). He holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame, a MA from the University of Chicago, and a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In the 2017–2018 academic year, he was the recipient of a Fulbright Research Grant to study in Amman, Jordan. Andrew’s research interests include the Qur’an’s engagement with Jewish and Christian traditions and the cultural environment of Late Antiquity more broadly. He is currently preparing a monograph on the Qur’an’s prophetology. Eric Ortlund teaches Hebrew and Old Testament at Oak Hill College in London, England. He is married with two children. He is especially interested

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About the Contributors

in the hermeneutics and theology of OT poetry and prophecy, its ancient Middle Eastern background, and its connections to modern culture. His most recent works are Piercing Leviathan: God’s Defeat of Evil in the Book of Job (NSBT; IVP: 2021) and the Lovecraftian fantasy I Am the Doorway, published with the writer’s collective Seed of Dragons. Geoffrey Reiter is associate professor and coordinator of Literature at Lancaster Bible College and an associate editor at the website Christ and Pop Culture. He holds an MA in Church History from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a PhD in English from Baylor University. He has published articles on numerous speculative genre writers such as Peter S. Beagle, George MacDonald, Bram Stoker, Arthur Machen, and Clark Ashton Smith. His weird horror poetry and fiction have appeared in Spectral Realms, Star*Line, and Penumbra. Michael Spence runs the digital media project Other Worlds, which explores the connections between theology and geek culture. His academic work has included a dissertation on the theology of Doctor Who and a master’s degree focusing on political theology, chiefly the Christian Anarchist tradition. He has occasionally been a tutor, speaker, guest lecturer, and course leader for Durham University, University of Manchester, Dublin City University, and Queen’s University Belfast, respectively. Michael is a minister in the Methodist Church in Ireland. He is married to Nicki and they have two children aged four and two. Alexander P. Thompson (PhD, Emory University) is assistant professor of Religion at Tennessee Wesleyan University. His research concentrates on the New Testament, especially the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation. He has published several academic articles on the New Testament and has a forthcoming monograph on the resurrection appearances in the Gospel of Luke. Alex is also an ordained United Methodist minister in the Holston Conference where he serves two churches. As a pastor and theologian, he has written a popular level Advent study under contract with Wipf and Stock and continues to explore the intersection of theology and pop culture.