CULTS OF LOVECRAFT: THE IMPACT H.P. LOVECRAFT'S FICTION ON CONTEMPORARY OCCULT PRACTICES

According to his voluminous correspondence, it never went beyond that verisimilitude and facade of existence, and Lovecraft never even outlined its full, albeit fictive, contents. Lovecraft, for all his singular and moving descriptions of occult practices in the secret places of the world, was in reality a skeptic and rationalist with a sense of the solidity of the universe and natural world: "Lovecraft's early studies in the natural sciences, as well as his absorption of the atomism of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, led to his espousal of mechanistic materialism" (Joshi, "Introduction" 23). (Lovecraft, Dream-Quest 3) This vision of boundless cosmic horror lying just beyond the thin skin of our material universe, a malevolent chaos waiting to boil into our reality and extinguish all life and rationality, is profoundly affecting. From an analytical standpoint this seems like a very strange admission; while there are many strands of left-hand path, or dark magic, practice in the world, most involve some sort of payoff, usually in the form of power or pleasure (Evans 197).