January 30, 2026

Greetings Everyone!

My newest book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, has been recently published by Bloomsbury!  I hope that all of you will pick up a copy!

Paul Rolland, Lovecraft scholar and author, writes: “The deficiencies of the man do not....debase the quality of his best work.  If anything, they invest it with a twisted passion that is missing from his more fantastic fiction.”

"Twisted passion” is the perfect phrase to describe Lovecraft’s work, especially the racist works.  One could argue, in fact, that this twisted  passion enhanced Lovecraft's fiction, especially the hybrid, degenerative monster tales, making them much more frightening and  investing them with raging, nearly psychotic emotion.

You may agree with this, or not.  But my book is, at the very least, an attempt to study and understand exactly how passionate and twisted Lovecraft really was.

So, please check it out!

JLS

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

January 21, 2026

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. This is Lovecraft country. 

John L. Steadman

January 5, 2026

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

 

December 2, 2025

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! 

 JLS

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

 

November 4, 2025

 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

October 31, 2025

 Happy Halloween, Everyone!

 

JLS

October 28, 2025

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