|
The occult exerts
a certain fascination even upon many who do not believe in its claims of hidden
worlds and its promises of arcane powers. Simply following out the maps of
meaning sketched by occultists and mystagogues can be an experience enchanting
in its own right. And the use of occult themes in weird fiction has provided a
good opportunity for many of those who, like Lovecraft, do not believe in the
occult, but want to explore it. When we open the covers of The Dunwich Horror
or Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, we can have the fun of making believe we
believe in things like lost continents or alien gods, even if in our serious
moments we dismiss such things as hokum.
In this issue of Crypt
of Cthulhu, we will try to make clearer some of the more obscure occult
references in Lovecraft, as well as show how the background of his stories has
much in common with the worldview of occultism.
Just one
explanatory note: by "occult", we're going to be referring not
to magic, Satanism, or parapsychology, but rather to those forms of
fringe-philosophy and shadow-metaphysics that we find in the writings of Madame
Blavatsky, James Churchward, Lewis Spence, Rudolph Steiner, and others. But this
focus will be pretty evident as we get into the articles themselves. So let's
go!
Robert M. Price
Hierophant of the Horde
|