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Reincarnation (or
"metempsychosis" or "transmigration of souls") is a doctrine
with which the human mind seemingly cannot help but flirt. In the religions of
India it has a firmly-rooted place; it runs riot throughout the bewildering
tangle of occult systems; and occasionally it even penetrates the speculations
of Western religious thinkers (cf. Geddes MacGreggor, Reincarnation in
Christianity). Given H. P. Lovecraft's propensity to plunder the occult for
whatever dramatic props it might furnish, it is hard to imagine him not using
the concept of reincarnation somewhere in his work. In fact, he did use it,
though surprisingly seldom. We want to explore his use of the doctrine. First,
we will briefly explain what reincarnation is, distinguishing five basic
understandings. Second, we will ask whether Lovecraft himself believed in
reincarnation. Third, we will trace the few places in his writings where
reincarnation appears, trying to pin down just which of the five versions of the
doctrine informed his thinking.
Varieties of Reincarnation
All forms of reincarnation share in
common the belief that one lives on earth several times in succession, with or
without intervals of waiting. But beyond this, there is little agreement as to
the goal, or the nature of the reincarnating element. We may pick through the
disagreements to delineate five different schools.
The first is primitive
relncarnation. This is the belief of many pre-literate societies that deceased
ancestors return to bodily existence in the form of descendants born after their
death. Little Mpade is so named not merely to commemorate his grandfather, but
because he re-embodies him. As may be obvious, this view comes awfully close to
the theory of "ancestral (or racial, or hereditary) memory", to which
we shall return.
Second, there is Platonic
reincarnation. Here, as most clearly expressed in Plato's "Myth of Er",
the soul's return to birth is a form of education or purification. It must more
closely approximate the ideal of the philosopher if it is to enter the heavenly
Realm of Forms after death. Less sophisticated versions of this doctrine, such
as that held in popular Indian religion before the Upanishads (cf. Albert
Schweitzer, Indian Thought and its Development), teach that repeated
births afford one new chances to accumulate sufficient virtue, or to work off
enough bad karma, to pass over into heaven after death. MacGreggor, supra,
contends for a Christian version of Platonic reincarnation, coming down
somewhere between the Catholic idea of Purgatory and the Maslovian idea of
self-actualization.
Third, we may speak of a Gnostic
form of the concept. Gnosticism was an ancient elitist and world-negating
religion which mixed elements from Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and
Hellenistic-Egyptian magic. It centered about the belief that the material world
is evil, the creation of a malign and/or stupid god or angel far inferior to the
Ultimate Godhead. Within the murky world of matter several sparks of heavenly
light lie entrapped beneath the veil of ignorance. Thanks to the advent of the
Gnostic Revealer, the relative few "spiritual" individuals (those
containing the sparks) have access to the gnosis or secret knowledge
necessary to escape the material world and return to the world of light. Final
release comes only at death, but mystical transport is available even in this
life.
Though belief in reincarnation is not
absolutely necessary in such a system, some Gnostic sects did believe in it. The
Carpocratians, for example, believed that liberation was impossible unless one
had lived enough times to have performed every act that human beings can
perform. Thus they threw themselves with considerable zeal into various
licentious pursuits, as it were, just to get them out of the way.
Besides the Gnostics of the ancient
Mediterranean world, we find the same ideas represented in strikingly parallel
fashion among the Jainists and Samkhya Yogis of India. They, too, believe in the
existence of eternal individual souls, and in the need to liberate them from
cloying matter. Jainists conceive enlightenment in terms of attaining
"omniscience" --- obviously a remarkable parallel to Gnosticism's
"gnosis", or saving knowledge.
Precisely how is reincarnation
tied into these systems? The predicament in all cases is that sparks of
spirit/soul have somehow become mired in matter. Since these souls are eternal,
they cannot simply die with the body. But they cannot soar free into the realm
of light unless enlightenment has occurred during the lifetime. So, short of
this, what else is there for them to do but return to birth in the material
world again and again? This is why enlightenment would mean the end of the
treadmill of Samsara --- birth-death-birth-death-ad nauseum.
Our fourth kind of reincarnation may be
called by the twin rubric anatta/advaita. These are the words,
respectively, for the Buddhist doctrine of "no-soul" (or
"no-self") and the Vedanta Hindu doctrine of "non-dualism".
Though the terminology differs, the point of the doctrines is identical ---
there is finally no individual soul distinct from Absolute Reality, whether this
latter be called "Nirvana" or "Brahman". If this is the
case, what is it that is reincarnated? Why, nothing at all. The very perception
of individualized existence, including that of an individual soul and individual
incarnations, is an illusion. Unlike the Gnostic version of reincarnationism,
wherein there is an individual soul to be liberated from matter, here
deliverance is from maya, from the very illusion that any individual self
exists.
The fifth variety of reincarnation is a
fascinating amalgam of elements from the preceding two, combined in turn with
the theory of evolution. This is the Theosophical doctrine of
reincarnation, according to which universal history is divided into manvantaras
and pralayas, cosmic cycles of activity and rest. At the commencement of
each period of activity, the Absolute begins to differentiate itself into
individualized existences, the foremost of which are Dhyani-Buddhas, who oversee
the coming into being of individual souls, or life-monads. These embark on an
eon-long pilgrimage during which they will reincarnate in various life-forms,
trudging ever upward through bare sentience, on to intelligence, and finally to
enlightenment, after which they will merge again, as new Dhyani-Buddhas, into
the Absolute, drawing the manvantara to a close.
The whole process involves not only
transmigration between stages of evolution, but also between planets arranged
along various chains spanning the dimensions. One evolutionary stage is attained
on one planet, then on to the next for the next stage. Meanwhile, souls from
another planet are arriving on this one to assume new life-forms. All in all,
the cycle of seven worlds will be gone round seven times before the manvantara
ends.
The fertile imaginations of Madame
Blavatsky and A. P. Sinnett have thus creatively forged together the Ultimate
Oneness of Brahman, the individual incarnating souls from Jainism and
Gnosticism, and the gradual biological progress of Darwinism. By the way, though
Sinnett outlines these ideas in his book Esoteric Buddhism, they are not
Buddhist (though the philosophical theologian John Hick has recently constructed
a system similar in some respects, taking hints from the Vajrayana Buddhist Tibetan
Book of the Dead).
Lovecraft's Dreams
Lovecraft wrote, "I am, indeed, an
absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence
in any form of supernaturalism --- religion, . . . metempsychosis, or
immortality" (Selected Letters, Vol. II, p. 27). So whatever use he
may have made of the doctrine, he did not himself believe in it. This fact is
all the more remarkable since Lovecraft had certain experiences which many
believers in reincarnation would dearly love to be able to claim as evidence for
it.
First, there is HPL's well-known sense
of being a stranger to this century. He felt like a lost son of the eighteenth
century.
I think I am probably the only living
person to whom the ancient 18th century idiom is actually a prose &
poetic mother-tongue. . . . I would actually feel more at home in a silver-button'd
coat, velvet small-cloaths, [and a] three-corner'd hat. . . . I've always had
[the] subconscious feeling that everything since the 18th century is unreal
and illusory. . . . (quoted in DeCamp, Lovecraft,
a Biography, p. 22. )
Lovecraft himself attributed this
proclivity to his self-immersion in eighteenth century books during childhood,
but many reincarnation-ists would need no further evidence to convince them of a
genuine pedigree for their periwigs.
Even more striking is a collection of
vivid historical dreams that Lovecraft had.
[l]n my youth I dreamed nearly every
night of Rome. . . . Rome & its power have always exercised the most
phenomenal sway over my imagination & personality. . . . somehow my
immediate sense of personal identity seems transferred to the Seven
Hills. (Dreams and Fancies, pp. 27-38. )
The most famous of these dreams of Rome
was borrowed to form the basis of Frank Belknap Long's The Horror from the
Hills. HPL even corroborated place names from the dream in his classical
dictionary when he woke up! Again, what reincarnationist would not give several
lives' sets of eyeteeth for such dreams? But killjoy that he was, HPL was sure
that they merely "involved subconscious use of odd scraps of boyhood
reading long forgotten by my waking mind." (Ibid., p. 25.)
One dream actually contains the very
notion of reincarnation. In it, Lovecraft seeks to sell for display in a
Providence museum a clay bas-relief he has just finished. Refused on the grounds
that the museum only deals with antiquities, Lovecraft replies, "This . . .
was fashioned in my dreams; and the dreams of man are older than brooding Egypt
or the contemplative Sphinx or garden-girdled Babylon." He proceeds to
display his work, a depiction of ancient Egyptian priests in procession. The
curator is startled and gasps, "WHO ARE YOU?" Lovecraft supplies his
name, to which the curator responds, "No! No! --- before that!"
"I replied that I knew no other identity, save in my dreams." (Ibid. ,
p. 11. )
Lovecraft's Writings
Before we consider the clearest
instances of the concept of reincarnation in Lovecraft's works, we will note
briefly two imaginative variations on the theme. The first is the usage of
"ancestral memory" in "The Rats in the Walls". At the end of
the story, the barriers collapse between Walter de la Poer and his fiendish
forebears, and he begins to speak, or to rant, with their voices:
'Sblood, thou stinkard, I'll learn ye
how to gust . . . wolde ye swynke me thilke wys? . . . Magna Mater! Magna
Mater!
As we observed above, ancestral memory
is only one step removed from what we have called "primitive"
reincarnation, the rebirth of ancestors as their own descendants. The
difference, of course, is that only the memory, and not the soul or identity per
se, has been passed down through the ages.
The second variation on the
reincarnation theme occurs in "The Thing on the Doorstep", wherein
Ephraim Waite prolongs his life by magically transferring his consciousness into
one body after another. This is not reincarnation proper, as strictly speaking
there is no rebirth. But the result is largely the same.
The first mention of actual
reincarnation that we will discuss is to be found in the poem
"Nemesis", two stanzas of which will be reproduced.
Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.
Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of
slumber,
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived o'er my lives without number
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with
fright.
In these lines, Lovecraft accurately
reflects the despair felt by Eastern believers in reincarnation at the prospect
of the crushing burden of countless lives yet to be endured, a burden seemingly
lessened not one whit by the countless births already undergone. Here too we
find lamented the remorseless working of karma, that ineluctable cosmic law of
redress which dictates payment of "the last farthing" of sins
committed in previous lives.
Particularly interesting is the idea
that access to these previous lives is gained through sleep. The phrase
"Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber" seems to imply that in
sleep one may pass back through the tombs to one's previous lives. Of course,
Lovecraft's own dream (the last alluded to above) suggested the same thing. And
we may theorize that such dreams, perhaps this very one, were the origin of this
device in Lovecraft's fiction.
We see the influence of the idea again
in "Polaris", wherein a modern dreamer repeatedly finds himself back
at the siege of Olathoe. Should we count "Polaris" among the stories
of the "Dreamland" cycle, and so place its action in an alternative
but simultaneous world? This would be a mistake. That reincarnation, remembered
in dreams, is involved can be deduced from the poem whispered to the dreamer by
the personified North Star:
Slumber, watcher, till the spheres,
Six and twenty thousand years
Have revolv'd, and I return
To the spot where now I burn.
Other stars anon shall rise
To the axis of the skies;
Stars that soothe and stars that bless
With a sweet forgetfulness:
Only when my round is o'er
Shall the past disturb thy door.
Third and finally, we must give
attention to Lovecraft's redaction of E. Hoffmann Price's "The Lord of
Illusion" in "Through the Gates of the Silver Key". Price was
inclined to delve into Eastern religion and the occult, and Lovecraft was
fascinated by what Price conveyed to him of these areas. So it is not surprising
that Price's draft already employed the idea of reincarnation.
Having encountered the Guardian of the
Gate, 'Umr at-Tawil, Randolph Carter discovers himself to be only one of "a
legion of selves", "a multiplicity of Carters". The version of
reincarnation alluded to here is that of anatta/advaita. Price makes this
clear with numerous references such as these:
. . . to know that one no longer
retains an identity that will serve as a distinction from every other entity
[i.e., advaita, or "non-dualism"]; to know that one no longer
has a self [i.e., anatta, or "no-self"].
. . . his self had been annihilated.
. . . [= anatta].
. . . that utter nullity of
individual existence [= advaita].
Lovecraft adds substantial new material
to Price's text at this point. He elaborates on the nature as well as the spatio-temporal
relations of all Carter's "selves".
There were Carters in settings
belonging to every known and suspected age of Earth's history; . . . Carters
of forms both human and non-human, vertebrate and invertebrate, conscious and
mindless, animal and vegetable. And more, there were Carters having nothing in
common with earthly life, but moving outrageously amidst backgrounds of other
planets and systems and galaxies and cosmic continua; spores of eternal life
drifting from world to world, universe to universe, yet all equally himself.
It becomes apparent that Lovecraft
found Price's use of the Buddhist (anatta/advaita) version of
reincarnation inadequate for the story's purposes, so he recast Carter's
enlightenment-vision in terms of the Theosophical doctrine. In fact, it would be
hard to produce a better nutshell version of the Theosophical teaching, with its
evolutionary progression through vegetable, animal, invertebrate, vertebrate,
mindless, and conscious stages. And the "spores of eternal life drifting
from world to world" are surely the "monads" making their rounds
of the planetary chains. The "cosmic continua" are to be identified
with the eon-long "manvantaras". (HPL had read Sinnett's Esoteric
Buddhism wherein this system of ideas is set forth in detail [Willis
Conover, Lovecraft at Last, p. 33.])
And, finally, Lovecraft has added his
personal touch, the note that earlier incarnations can to some extent be
remembered in dreams: "Some of the glimpses recalled dreams --- both faint
and vivid, single and persistent. . . ."
In our cross-examination of Lovecraft
on the subject of reincarnation, we have found that though he did not believe in
the doctrine, his vivid dreams of the past led him to use the theme in his
fiction, where he managed to recapitulate several forms (primitive, Platonic,
and Theosophical) of reincarnationism.
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