Greetings Everyone!
There is the Qabalah of two dimensions. This is the gnosis of Aleister Crowley.
There is the Qabalah of three dimensions. This is the gnosis of Frater Achad and Kenneth Grant.
There is the fourth dimension. There is no Qabalah and no gnosis for the fourth dimension. And this is Lovecraft country.
John L. Steadman
Greetings Everyone!
It is now a New Year and I hope that all of you will develop resolutions that will make this year better than the last! I hope, also, that you will put those resolutions into practice and be happy and productive!
My book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White
Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury! Please check it out!
The book, in particular, studies how Lovecraft uses
his racial hatred creatively by developing racist images and narratives to
advocate for his xenophobic, political beliefs: western civilization is in
decline due to unrestrained immigration, miscegenation and hybridism; and,
slavery is not only endemic, but justifiable among superior civilizations,
especially the white, Anglo-Saxon civilizations.
There is no writer in the English language, and
certainly, no writer of comparable magnitude to Lovecraft, who even attempts to
do such a thing. It is, quite literally,
an unprecedented phenomenon.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/
John L. Steadman
Greetings Everyone!
It is December and I hope all of you will check out my three books! They make great Christmas gifts!
For indeed, if you think about it, what will put you in
the holiday mood more quickly than to read about the Great Old Ones, human
insignificance and the bondage of space-time?!
Lovecraft's extra-terrestrial, terrestrial and transdimensional entities share much in common with the alien entities of other great science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov and William Gibson: they are malevolent and thoroughly incommensurable.
Lovecraft’s aliens, also, have had a profound influence on contemporary magical practitioners and have become a legitimate basis for working magical systems, particularly the black magical systems.
Additionally, the power of these entities is fueled by Lovecraft's racism: a violently, vitriolic racism, in fact, which argues that western civilization is in decline and slavery is justifiable among "superior" civilizations such as the Elder Things and the Great Race.
If that doesn't say "Merry Christmas," then I don't know what does!
https://www.amazon.com/Horror-Racism-H-Lovecraft-Fragility/dp/B0C5CPHCR2
https://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Reality-Science-Fiction-Lovecraft/dp/178904510X
https://www.amazon.com/Lovecraft-Black-Magickal-Tradition-Influence/dp/157863587X
Greetings Everyone!
Halloween is over!
Now, it is November, the last of the autumn
months. And we can hear the winter
calling to us—the frosty months of December, January and February—inviting us
to embrace the dark days and the dark nights and to celebrate the coming of a
new year and new light into our lives. The
dark and the light—it is all the same.
It is time, also, to read the great writers of autumn
and winter: H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.
Hervey Allen, author of Israfel: The Life and Times
of Edgar Allan Poe, describes Poe’s “Ulalume” in the following terms:
“Poe, the poet, personified the constellations,
reading into them an allegory of his soul’s predicament....There was a white,
frosty starlight caught in these lines; a terror of the great caverns of space
haunted by the beasts of the zodiac; an element of irresponsible cosmic will in
the fatal hour marked by the star-dials; a titanic alley of cypress for a
mystic adventure with his own soul in a demon landscape lit by the
star-glimmering, miraculous crescent of the goddess of passion.”
This magnificent description applies not just to
“Ulalume,” but to all of the works of Lovecraft and Poe, for in the prose and
poetry of both visionary writers, there is a fear and a terror of cosmic will,
there is the same demon landscape, and there is the same predicament of the
soul.
JLS
Greetings Everyone!
It is the last week of October and in this, my final
October posting, let us sum up what we have learned during the past month.
* Ray Bradbury
talks about the autumn people and warns us against them, claiming that they are
soulless, evil things that seek to ensnare humans. But there are also autumn people who have
souls and are not evil; they love autumn and celebrate the death of the year
and the renewal that always follows.
* Bradbury, again,
describes Halloween with images that seem to suggest death: the cold
wind; the velvet grave-cerements; the smoke-like funeral plumes; images that
seem to be a threat to our existence. But Halloween is not about death—it is
about life. And the candles burning in jack o’ lanterns represent life and the
celebration of the everlasting life to come after death.
* H. P. Lovecraft personifies October as a “mystic
pilgrim” who comes from a far land down the road to farther lands. Lovecraft did not believe in “farther lands,”
but I do—and I think that most of you do as well—farther lands of beauty and
promise where we can, if we have enough love, hope and faith, make all of our
dreams come true.
* Finally, Edgar Allan Poe describes a man journeying
on Halloween night through a nightmarish place, encouraged to keep going by the
beautiful vision of a ghost planet. But he
ends up standing before the tomb of his dead lover—the Lady Ulalume; he
has been tricked by the woodland ghouls into a confrontation with Death.
This is the ultimate Halloween trick or treat.
But it is also a blessing. For now, he can come to terms with his
sadness and his emptiness and put them to rest, just as his lover is now at
rest. And then he can move on to a new life and to the future that always waits
for those who keep moving forward.
JLS
Greetings Everyone! It is the third week of October!
Before ending my series of October postings, it is
only fitting to cite Edgar Allan Poe, an autumn person to the roots of his
heart and soul.
In his greatest poem “Ulalume”, Poe describes the
October dream-scape that his narrator is journeying through on his way to a
mysterious destination. It is clear that
this nightmarish experience is taking place on Halloween night.
The skies they
were ashen and sober;
The leaves they
were crisped and sere—
The leaves they
were withering and sere:
It was night, in
the lonesome October
Of my most
immemorial year:
It was hard by the
dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid
region of Weir:—
It was down by the
dark tarn of Auber,
In the
ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
The narrator encounters weird visions, including the “specter” of a planet—a ghost planet!—and ends up standing before the tomb of his beloved, the Lady Ulalume.
The narrator has been tricked by the woodland ghouls
into a confrontation with Death. And
this is the ultimate Halloween trick or treat!
JLS
