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With the several horrors of Dunwich, Arkham, Innsmouth, and Kingsport we are all familiar. But another hamlet found only in
Lovecraft's atlas is the upper New York State village "which bore the
dubious name of Chorazin" ("The Diary of Alonzo Typer"). Why
dubious? The name occurs in Matthew 11:20-24. "Then Jesus began to denounce
the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did
not repent. 'Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! . . . And you,
Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to Hades. .
. . But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of
judgment than for you.'"
Who would name their town "Chorazin", save
people who explicitly repudiated Christianity and embraced "the other
side"? And sure enough, Lovecraft says the "straggling village arose
around the dreaded house" of the wicked van der Heyl family and continued
to observe blasphemous heathen sabbats in succeeding generations.
We see this phenomenon elsewhere in the same tale,
in the case of "The unmentionable Abaddon Corey" of Salem. "Abaddon"
means "Destroyer", and is the name given the king of the locusts from
the bottomless pit in Revelation 9:11: "They had as king over them the
angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon. . . . " That someone
should have been named this by his parents indicates that he is sprung from a
hereditary line of witches and warlocks. Of course that is exactly what
Lovecraft's context implies.
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