Howard Phillips Lovecraft biography of the author
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Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (English: Howard Phillips Lovecraft).
In the 1920s, the American magazine of science fiction and horror "Supernatural Stories" began publishing stories by a then unknown author named G. F. Lovecraft.
And, as his collaboration with the magazine became permanent, these stories began to take the form of a consistent and integral mythology created from the literary realization of the author's dreams and intuitive impulses.
Although outwardly he maintained a completely rational and skeptical view of the universe, his experience in the land of dreams allowed him to look at spaces and entities on the other side of the world of earthly reality, and behind his high sounding and verbose prose there is a vision and understanding of secret forces that are directly related to the Magical Tradition.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, at 454 Angell Street the home of his maternal grandfather, Whipple W. Phillips.
His parents, Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan Phillips, were of English descent, and throughout his life Lovecraft remained a keen Anglophile.
Winfield Lovecraft, a traveling salesman, spent a lot of time away from the family home, and as a result had almost no influence on the young Lovecraft.
Three years after the birth of his son, he was placed in a psychiatric hospital, where he died in 1898 from "progressive paralysis of the mentally ill", the final stage of syphilis.
As a result, Lovecraft spent the rest of his formative years under the supervision of his mother and her two unmarried sisters, who completely protected him from the adversities and needs of everyday life, but at the same time they considered the boy extremely ugly in appearance, which they constantly told him about, causing the child heartache.
Soon Lovecraft began to show clear signs of "otherness" - at the age of four, he could read fluently and spent hours in his grandfather's extensive library, studying volumes on history and mythology.
His grandfather also introduced him to local folk stories and myths, which he later outlined in his memoirs of the imaginary New England landscapes of Arkham, Dunwich and Innsmouth.
Lovecraft began studying at Hope High School in Providence, but, having poor health, which led to long periods of absence from school, he was forced to engage in self education.
He preferred the company of adults, rather than peers who did not like him because of his refined nature and precocious intelligence.
Instead of joining in their youthful amusements, he developed his own inner world of imagination, trying to compose, and at the age of 15 he created his first short story "The Beast in the Cave".
By 1914, he had submitted a number of articles to the United Amateur Printing Agency and local newspapers, the content of which ranged from astronomy and philosophy to occultism and the supernatural; his early works were devoted to similar topics.
At this time, he also became interested in epistolary communication, which became one of the main amusements of his life.
At the same time, he was associated with more than a hundred regular correspondents, and, in fact, his letters that have come down to us significantly exceed his fiction in volume (according to one estimate, the total number of letters written by Lovecraft exceeds 100,000).
Nevertheless, it was only in 1917 that writing was taken seriously by Lovecraft.
The family was forced to leave the house on Angell Street due to financial difficulties, and Lovecraft soon found himself unable to earn a living.
(In fact, he spent the best part of his life in a state of financial need and half starvation, surviving on less than $ 15 a week).
Both his mother's sanity and material conditions were rapidly declining.
In 1919, his mother was admitted to the Butler Hospital, where she died in May 1921 after a long illness.
Lovecraft's short story "Dagon", written in 1917, was published in Supernatural Stories in October 1923, the year the magazine was published.
In the same year, the writer made his first trip to New York to visit the poet Samuel Loveman and meet Sonya X. Green, also a member of an Amateur Printing Agency.
Since 1921, Lovecraft corresponded with Sonya, a woman several years older than him, and worked on correcting her own writings.
Following their first meeting, their friendship developed into a more romantic relationship, and they were married on March 3, 1924.
However, this new life became a great test for Lovecraft, and after only two years they parted.
The urban metropolis of New York seemed unbearable to Lovecraft, and feelings of disgust for the city inspired him to write the story "The Horror at Red Hook".
After the breakup of his marriage, Lovecraft returned to Providence, where he lived as a semi hermit in the house of his aunt Ann Phillips Gamville.
With the exception of trips to various parts of the country related to antiquarian research (including visits to Boston, Quebec, New Orleans and Philadelphia), and short trips within New England to explore ancient sites (like the prehistoric megaliths in Shutsbury, Massachusetts), he remained in Providence for the rest of his life.
After returning to his hometown, Lovecraft concentrated exclusively on creativity, working all night and resting during the day with the shutters closed.
When he went on long night wanderings, he dreamed of scenes from his childhood, when he wrote the first stories; a childhood that always fascinated an adult writer and caused nostalgia.
In winter, he rarely left the boundaries of the house because of a pathological fear of temperatures below 70?
F.
There is an anecdote telling about a case when he decided to leave the house at 30?
F and immediately fell down, needing resuscitation.
He showed a clear aversion to the sea, suffered from terrible headaches, and his physical appearance showed signs of malnutrition.
He was also prone to extremely vivid and lucid dreams, suffering from nightmares almost every night.
In his childhood, he was visited in his dreams by creatures that he called "Night Mverzi".
These faceless, bat winged ghosts carried him to the high, pointed mountain peaks – an archetypal landscape that was called in his prose "the disgusting Lang plateau".
And what happened during such nocturnal events, which gave rise to many of the most vivid images of Lovecraft, is often left on paper in a manner virtually identical to the manner of "automatic writing", which took place in the translation of his poem "Nyarlathotep" in prose.
In a letter to Reinhardt Kleiner, dated December 4, 1921, he writes:
"Nyarlathotep is a nightmare, a genuine phantom of myself, who created the first paragraph, which was written before I was fully awake.
I've been feeling terrible lately – whole weeks have passed without getting rid of headaches and dizziness, and for a long time three hours was the maximum limit of continuous work…
To my constant misfortunes was added an unusual eye attack that prevented me from reading small print – a curious tension of nerves and muscles, to tell the truth, alarmed me.
And it went on for weeks.
In the midst of this gloom came the nightmare of nightmares – the most realistic and terrible of those that I have often experienced since coming of age – whose absolute abomination and extremely oppressive atmosphere I was able, albeit imperfectly, to reflect in my written fantasy…
Since I was falling into the abyss, I screamed heart rendingly, after which the vision disappeared.
It was very painful for me (spasms in my forehead and ringing in my ears), but, obeying an unconscious impulse, I rushed to the light and began desperately recording what I saw, trying to maintain an atmosphere of unprecedented fright.
When I woke up, I remembered all the events of the dream, but I completely lost the unbearable feeling of fear – the real feeling of the presence of a disgusting stranger.
From what I just wrote down, the smallest part directly belonged to me, and after a while I stopped and poured water over my head.
When I looked at the text I had written, I was surprised by its consistency.
It consisted of one paragraph of the completed manuscript, later I changed only three words."
Lovecraft is an extremely curious case of the dissemination of" occult knowledge " through a dream, he was one of the few who could effectively write about the supernatural without consciously believing in the data that he transmitted.
On the contrary, he categorically denied the possibility of the existence of occult phenomena, although he used their manifestations as a fictional device.
However, this intellectual refutation, expressed in his letters and conversations with friends, contradicts the subjective confidence with which he described the things witnessed in his work (this is an indication of the dynamic dichotomy between the rational and intuitive aspects of his psyche).
With the appearance of subsequent stories, a hidden model began to form in Lovecraft's work.
The story "The Call of Cthulhu", written in 1926, reveals this idea.
The plot of this story suggests that at certain times, when the constellations take a special position, some dark forces can influence sensitive people, sending them images of "Great Ancients", God like aliens of extraterrestrial origin.
These beings are in another dimension or on another vibrational level, and can enter this universe only through specific "open zones" or psychic gates – a concept fundamental in many occult traditions.
Cthulhu is the High Priest of the Ancients, buried in the sunken city of R'lyh, where he awaits the time of their return.
He is depicted as a huge winged anthropoid with tentacles, consisting of a semi viscous substance that can be reunited again after the obvious destruction at the end of the story.
The narrative also testifies, using various archaeological and mythological sources, to the constant existence of a cult dedicated to the return of the Ancients; its servants can be found, ranging from the inhabitants of the South Seas to the Angakoks of Greenland and those who practice voodoo in the southern states of the United States.
Lovecraft also gives a brief description of the world after the arrival of the Great Ancients: "It will be easy to recognize this time, because then people will become like the Great Ancients – wild and free, on the other side of good and evil, they will abandon laws and morals, everyone will shout, kill and have fun."
There is a clear similarity between this passage and the teachings of many actual secret societies of the past, including the Assassins, Gnostics and Templars, but especially the" Law of Thelema", expounded by Lovecraft's contemporary Aleister Crowley.
The main difference is in the moral interpretation.
While Lovecraft considered the ancient gods to be the embodiment of evil, Crowley saw such a return of atavistic deities as an event completely consistent with the "sequence of Aeons".
After The Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft wrote more than a dozen short stories containing the central core of the interconnected mythology that later became known as the" Myths of Cthulhu".
In these stories, he describes various rituals that have existed since the primordial rule of the Ancients, and have been preserved to this day in esoteric grimoires like the "Necronomicon", with the help of which the ritual of evocation of extraterrestrial gods could be carried out.
In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, by attributing a single source to many different branches of occult faith, Lovecraft hints that the true roots of the magical arts lie in the ritual veneration of entities that are beyond dimensions.
These ceremonies have been observed for centuries and have been misinterpreted in terms of black magic and devil worship.
It should be noted here that Lovecraft never used the term "Cthulhu Myths", which was introduced by his protege August Derleth after the writer's death.
Cthulhu is just one representative of a whole pantheon of deities, which includes Yogi Sothoth, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub Niggurat and others.
The manifestations of these entities change from story to story.
Sometimes they are depicted as supernatural, while in other cases they appear as space aliens in a specific physical guise.
A certain exceptional deity can be mentioned in both ways within the same text.
Comparing the references to each of the deities in the stories of "Myths", it is possible to restore their relationship and hierarchy, to explore the relationship between the imaginary pantheon of Lovecraft and the religious mythological systems that existed in the past.
Basically, the gods of the Cthulhu Myths are divided into two groups – the Great Ancient and the Oldest Gods, of the latter, only Nodens has a name.
Between the Ultimate Chaos and the Physical World are Yogi Sothoth and Azathoth, who share power over lower deities, subhuman races and people.
Yog Sothoth is the outer manifestation of the Primordial Chaos, the gate through which those who exist outside must enter.
In The Dunwich Horror, Lovecraft writes:
"The ancients were, the Ancients are, and the Ancients will be.
Not in the spaces that we know about, but between them.
They go imperturbable and primordial, dimensionless and invisible to us.
Yogi Sothoth knows the gate.
Yogi Sothoth is the gate.
Yogi Sothoth is both the key and the guardian of the gate.
The past, the present, the future, everything is in Yog Sothoth.
He knows where the Ancients came from in the past, and He knows where They will come from in the future."
The law of its existence is parallel to the concept of the universe described in Hindu and Eastern mysticism, unlimited being and essence, All in One and One in Everything.
A specific physical form as such cannot be attributed to Yog Sothoth, although in "The Dunwich Horror" his brainchild from mating with Lavinia Whatley is compared to an octopus, a centipede or a spider.
The evocation formula of Yogi Sothoth is given in the "Case of Charles Dexter Ward", where it forms part of the necromantic practices of the sorcerer Joseph Kerven.
The British occultist Kenneth Grant described Yogi Sothoth as the embodiment of " the highest and ultimate blasphemy in the form of the Aeon (yogi or yuga) Seta (Sotot = Set + Tot)".
On the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, Yogi Sothoth can be correlated with Da'at, the seventh (or "hidden") Sephirah, and identified with Horonzon, the Guardian of the Abyss, whom Crowley called "the very first and most deadly of the forces of evil", whose number is 333, the number of Chaos and Dispersion.
From the side of the elements, Yogi Sotota can be considered as an absolute manifestation of Fire; magically, it can be attributed to an active Spirit.
Its main location is the extreme South.
Azathoth rules this universe:
"the blind god is an idiot…
The Lord of All Things, surrounded by a horde of mad and amorphous dancers, lulled by the high and monotonous whistle of a demonic flute held by the paws of someone who cannot be named."
While Yogi Sothoth encompasses the space of infinity, Azathoth symbolizes the opposite principle: he rules in the heart of Chaos, the central point of the universe, imbued with the influence of Yogi Sothoth.
Their relations can be represented as the agreement of infinite expansion and infinite compression.
Speaking in physical terms, Azatot manifests itself as a colossal destructive energy inherent in an atomic particle that is released through nuclear fusion.
He is the complete opposite of creation, the extremely negative aspect of the Element of Fire.
Magically, it refers to a passive Spirit.
The amorphous dancers who are subject to the idiot god Azathoth and accompany him at the throne of Chaos belong to the "Other Gods".
Their soul and messenger is Nyarlathotep, the "Creeping Chaos", who is an intermediary between the Ancients and their human followers.
His avatar appears in the form of a black clad man with coal black skin, but, according to all other signs, belonging to the white race.
In this form, it is possible to identify the "Black Man of the Witches 'Sabbath" - an incarnation usually associated with Satan.
In the treatises on witchcraft of the seventeenth century, he is depicted as a being with a pitch black skin, wearing a long black priest's cassock and a conical hat – a description supported by the testimony of people both in Europe and in Lovecraft's New England.
The physical appearance of Nyarlathotep is also strikingly similar to the appearance of that astral entity, Aivaz, who dictated to Aleister Crowley the text known as the "Book of the Law", thus marking the beginning of the Aeon of Horus.
Crowley describes Aivaz as " a tall, dark man, about thirty years old, with the face of a savage lord and eyes covered with a veil so that their gaze does not destroy what they saw."
According to Grant, the cult of Aivaz "can be traced back to the period inspired by the eternal Draconian Tradition of Egypt, which lived in dark dynasties, whose monuments were filled with the ashes of opponents of the oldest cult."
It is interesting to note that Lovecraft himself pointed out the connection of the worship of Nyarlathotep with "pre dynastic Egypt" in the prose poem of the same name.
The element of Nyarlathotep is the Ether, a means of communication in interstellar space (or, in Lovecraft's terminology, "Listening Emptiness").
Shub Niggurat – "The Black Goat of the Forests with the Legion of the Younger" - the name meaning the reproduction of creatures on Earth.
He is the Horned God of the pagan agricultural communities of the ancient world, symbolizing abundance and sexual energy.
In Greek mythology, his archetype is Pan, a half human half goat.
At the time of the change of paganism to Christianity, the image of Pan became a prototype for the Christian devil and was associated with the practice of Satanism, although the worship of the Horned God is at least a thousand years older than Christianity.
In 1919, Aleister Crowley published a poem entitled "Hymn to Pan", awakening the flow of sexual energy, as is expected in ceremonial magic, and which he often incorporated into his own magical practice.
The exclamation " Io, Pan!", the final poem corresponds to the exclamation " Ya! Shub Niggurat!", which occurs in several stories of Lovecraft about the worship of a goat like god.
This correspondence raises the question of Lovecraft's close acquaintance with Crowley's work.
He could read "Equinox" (a collection of Crowley's essays) in the Harvard library, which received a copy in December 1917, where "Hymn to Pan" is the first composition.
However, apart from the occasional mention of Crowley in one of Lovecraft's letters identifying him with a character in Wakefield's story, it seems unlikely that Lovecraft knew anything more about the "Great Beast" than rumors about his reputation.
The element of the Niggurat Fur Coat is the Earth, symbolized by the sign of Taurus.
His place of residence is the North.
Hastur – "the voice of the Ancients" - is a deity of the element of Air or the vacuum of outer space.
On earth, the seat of Hastur is the East, and his sign is Aquarius.
The god Dagon was taken by Lovecraft from the Hebrew texts, in which he appears as the god of the Philistines.
In the "Myths" he is the Source of the Seas, the water equivalent of the Fur Coats of Niggurat, as well as the Lord of the amphibians of the Deep.
His element is Water, and his number is 777.
Cthulhu is referred to as the "High Priest of the Great Ancients".
His other names are "The One who will appear", "Lord of R'lyh" and "Lord of the Watery Abyss".
Cthulhu is the initiator of the dreams sent to mankind from the city of the crypt of R'lykha.
The formula for addressing him is given by Lovecraft in a curious ritual phrase of non human origin, which is sung by fans of the cult of Cthulhu:
"P'nglui mglw'naf Cthulhu R'lyh vga'nagl ftagn."
Cthulhu corresponds to the Abyss of the subconscious or the sleeping mind and is astrologically associated with the sign of Scorpio.
In ceremonies, it refers to the West (Amenta or the Abode of the Dead in ancient Egyptian religion), its geographical location is R'lyh in the South Pacific Ocean (the exact coordinates can be found in the story "The Call of Cthulhu").
As already mentioned, Nodens is the only one of the Oldest Gods who has a name.
Lovecraft does not give any additional information about him.
The sign of the Most Ancient Gods was depicted in the form of a straight pentagram, in which a symbol having the shape of an eye is inscribed.
The rays of the pentagram symbolize the four elements plus the Spirit (the fifth or" hidden " element).
United, they balance the single element of the nature of the Ancients, hinting that the Oldest Gods may exist on a higher level.
The " eye " implies the opening of the ajna chakra, or the Third Eye, symbolizing the ability of astral vision.
The entities described above are called "gods" because they are worshipped by innumerable hordes of other entities, both humans and inhumans.
Among them are the "Oldest Races", those who inhabited the Earth in prehistoric times, and whose invisible presence is the reason for the existence of people.
The first of these races to visit Earth were the "Ancients" who descended from the stars and built a city of black stone in Antarctica.
They are depicted as creatures with a starfish shaped head, having tubular bodies covered with tentacles and cilia.
Their servants are brainless, protoplasmic "shoggots".
In the story "The Ridges of Madness" by Lovecraft op the outcome of the war between the Ancients and other extraterrestrial races at the dawn of time, including the offspring of Cthulhu (winged cephalopod creatures who built the sunken city of R'lyh).
The Deep sea creatures described by Lovecraft in The Shadow over Innsmouth are Dagon's semi - humanoid water servants.
In the past, they dared to go out on the ground and copulated with humans, giving birth to degenerate offspring that possessed fish like physical features known as the" Innsmouth look", which appeared after the inhabitants of the New England port crossed with Deep Sea Ones.
The story "The Whisperer in the Dark" tells about the third group of non human creatures from the planet Yuggoth (or Pluto).
They are essentially mushroom like crab like creatures that Lovecraft associates with the Mi Go, or Himalayan Bigfoot.
The last type that Lovecraft describes in detail is the "Great Race" that invaded Australia approximately 150,000 years ago.
Unlike the other races mentioned above, it seems that this group was indigenous to Earth.
They were cone shaped creatures, with their heads and organs attached to their sprawling limbs.
According to the story "Shadow from the Ever After", a Great Race capable of exchanging consciousness with any form of life, has accumulated extensive knowledge about the various cultures inhabiting the universe.
Here the pantheon of non human entities ends.
The worship of the Great Ancients is continued on earth by secret societies, whose traditions and rituals preserve the hidden knowledge of these Ancient Races.
Lovecraft certifies three such cults: the "Cult of Cthulhu", the "Esoteric Order of Dagon", located in Innsmouth (actually in Newbariport, Massachusetts), and the "Sect of Star Wisdom".
In The Wanderer of Darkness, Lovecraft describes how this latter sect held meetings in a church in Providence, where its followers communicated with the avatar of Nyarlathotep using an object known as the "Shining Trapezohedron".
The name "Star Wisdom" again brings us back to Crowley and the " Argentum Astrum ", or "Order of the Silver Star", founded by him in 1907.
The "Silver Star" symbolizes Sirius, from where the magical stream flows, whose representative on Earth is the essence of Aivaz.
Another contemporary of Lovecraft, whose writings contain many similarities and correspondences with his works, is Elena Petrovna Blavatsky, a famous occultist, theosophist and author of the Secret Doctrine.
This extensive work is essentially an extended commentary on the "Book of Dzyan", a fragment of the " Mani Kumburm "(the sacred writings of the Jugarians, an ancient race that inhabited the mountainous regions of northern Tibet).
These texts begin to tell that the earth was once ruled by the aforementioned chaotic entities who crossed the abyss to come from another universe, simultaneously preceding the appearance of man, and continue to tell how they were expelled from this universe by the intervention of forces, allies of Order.
This cosmic story, detailing the subsequent battles with other primordial life forms, shows obvious parallels with what is described in the Cthulhu Myths.
In a letter dated March 25, 1933, Lovecraft writes:
"the other day, my friend from New Orleans, E. Hoffman Price ... discovered an extremely picturesque cycle of myths about the early epochs of the earth, the lost continents of Kush (Atlantis) and Shalmali (Lemuria), about the population of the earth that arrived from other planets.
It talks about a secret book in some eastern shrine, fragments of which are older than the earth itself…
Price assures me that this is genuine folklore and promises to send me more detailed information."
In another letter, Lovecraft discovers the identity of that secret book and the "Book of Dzyan" and identifies the eastern shrine with "Shambhala".
Madame Blavatsky died on May 8, 1891 of kidney inflammation, the same disease that affected Lovecraft and was one of the reasons for his early death.
An explanation of many of the" occult "correspondences found in Lovecraft's work is given in Kenneth Grant's "Typhonian Trilogy".
He suggests that Lovecraft's grimoire "Necronomicon" really exists in Akasha, or in the space of Astral Light.
This etheric repository surrounds the earth and retains in its structure the imprint of every event that has occurred since the formation of the planet.
It can be accessed by people who have certain psychic abilities and perceive visions sent by someone else's will.
Blavatsky wrote The Book of Dzyan, and Crowley wrote the Book of the Elements of Klipot under the influence of the Akashic Chronicles.
Could it be that Lovecraft was subconsciously given the "Book of Dead Names" from the same source?
When creating the Cthulhu Myths, Lovecraft used a wide range of sources, from authentic occult tradition to literary materials related to it.
In his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature", he mentions academic works such as Fraser's "Golden Bough" and Margaret Murray's book "The Witch Cult in Western Europe", as well as authentic grimoires such as" The Keys of Solomon"," The Book of Enoch " by John Dee, or "Liber Logaeth".
He also studied the collection of medieval texts by Waite, "The Book of Black Magic and Treaties"," The Sacred Magic of Abram Melin the Wise "translated by MacGregor Mathers and" Wonders of the Invisible World " by Cotton Mathers about the events related to the witchcraft phenomena that occurred in 1692 in Salem.
The names of these books are reflected in the grimoires created by Lovecraft himself and other authors of the Cthulhu Myths: "De Vermis Misteriis" ("The Mysteries of the Worm"), "Pnakotic Manuscripts", "Les Cultes des Ghoules" ("Cults of Ghouls") and "The Book of Eibon".
However, the most significant of these fictional folios is Lovecraft's own creation, "Al Asif" by the mad Arab Abdul Al Hazred, or, to use his Latin name, "Necronomicon".
This name, which came to Lovecraft in a dream, translates as:
NEKROS – the corpse, NOMOS the law, EIKON the image.
Hence, " Image (or Description) The Law of the Dead."
In a pamphlet entitled "Chronology of the Necronomicon", published in 1936, Lovecraft gives a supposed history of this pr?the cursed book.
According to this essay, the original text was deciphered by the poet Alhazred in 730 BC in Damascus.
The name "Al Asif" refers to the nocturnal sounds of insects, according to Arab beliefs, considered the howling of demons.
(According to the Kabbalistic numerology it is the number – 129, which means, among other things, "the space hungry creatures" and corresponds to the Egyptian word "and tem ", "destroy.")
Alhazred've been alone for ten years in a huge desert of southern Arabia, Roba El - Ehaliyeh or "Empty Space" of the ancients, which was a rumor, it was inhabited by evil spirits.
He explored the ruins of Babylon and the underground tombs of Memphis, and also visited a certain forbidden city.
Under the remains of an unnamed city in the desert, he found the chronicles of a race older than humanity, and recorded them in the "Asif".
In 950 AD, the book was secretly translated into Greek by Theodore of Philetus from Constantinople under the name "Necronomicon", and in 1228 Olaus Wormius made a translation into Latin.
This translation was published twice – the first time in Gothic script in the 15th century in Germany, the second time in the 17th century in Spain.
Shortly after the appearance of the Latin translation, the Necronomicon was banned by Pope Gregory IX , and no trace of the Greek copy remained after the burning of the library in Salem in 1692.
The translation made by Dee has never been printed and exists only in the form of restored fragments of the original manuscript.
Of the two existing Latin texts, one is presumably kept in the British Museum, and the second is in the National Library in Paris.
There is a 17th century edition in the Widener Library at Harvard.
Other numerous copies of this book, banned by the authorities of most countries and all branches of organized religion, also probably exist.
It is noteworthy to mention the name of Dee in connection with the" Necronomicon", since he was one of the few adepts of the magic of the past who could provide us with authentic facts of communication with non human entities.
Dr. John Dee was an astrologer of Queen Elizabeth I, who collaborated with many seers and experts in spiritual vision, the most talented of whom was the Irishman Sir Edward Kelly.
With the help of the magic mirror of the Maya Indians, Kelly began to contact certain spirits, communicating through it a number of magical "appeals" or keys in a language called "Enochian".
This language has been studied and analyzed by many historians, who confirm that it is really an authentic and consistent idiom, unlike any existing language.
Even more surprising is that in the recently deciphered passages of the Book of Enoch, words were found that are very similar to the names of the Great Ancients from the Cthulhu Myths.
Since 1930, Lovecraft has from time to time convinced those with whom he corresponded that as soon as he was going to stop composing, something forced him to continue creating new works.
In 1935 (a year after the completion of his last story "The Shadow from the Ever After") he was diagnosed with a disease that was finally diagnosed in 1937 as intestinal cancer.
By this time, the disease had spread to the whole body.
Lovecraft was admitted to the Jane Brown Memorial Hospital , where he died on March 15, 1937 at the age of 46.
Three days later, he was buried in the family plot of the Swat Point Cemetery.
After Lovecraft's death, the writer's friend August Derleth founded the publishing house Arkham House to save his work from the obscurity of cheap magazines, in which Lovecraft's stories first appeared, and in order to bring his writings to the attention of a wider audience.
(During Lovecraft's entire life, only one of his stories," The Shadow over Innsmouth", appeared in book form, published in a small private publishing house.)
In 1939, Arkham House published the first collection of his short stories, "The Outsider and Others".
Since then, many authors have contributed to the growing chronicles of the Cthulhu Mythos, adding their own deities to the pantheon and adding new creepy tomes to the list of blasphemous grimoires.
Many of these authors are people with whom Lovecraft personally corresponded: Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch and Derleth himself.
Later, elements of the Cthulhu Mythos were used in the works of Con Wilson, Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley.
"Myths" have also been borrowed for practical use by some modern magical and occult groups and organizations.
Anton La Vey, the head of the California based Church of Satan, published his book " Satanic Rituals "in 1972, in which he devoted an entire chapter to" the metaphysics of Lovecraft", including a detailed description of two Lovecraftian rituals," The Ceremony of the Nine Corners "and"Invocation to Cthulhu".
These rituals were reproduced in the original language of the Necronomicon and translated into English by La Vey's companion, the Satanist Michael Aquino.
Another group that uses Lovecraftian elements in their practice is the Cult of the Black Serpent or "La Couleuvre Noir", voodoo fans who combine left hand path rituals and archetypes from the Cthulhu Myths.
Their leader, Michel Berthier one of the leaders of the Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua and its offshoot, the Monastery of the Seven Rays - was initiated into the master of gnostic voodoo in Haiti in 1963.
In the book" Shadow Cults", exploring modern voodoo, Kenneth Grant describes a ritual practiced in order to make contact with Deep Sea People on a deserted lake in Wisconsin:
"The cult of the Deep Sea thrives in a humid and cold atmosphere, in complete contrast to the fire and heat generated by the initial ceremonies, which include lycanthropic rituals that summon the inhabitants of the lake.
At this stage, the participants are actually immersed in icy water, where the transfer of sexual magical energy between the priests and priestesses takes place in the element of water."
With the help of this magical ritual, according to Berthier, it is possible to establish contact with these creatures, who "acquire an almost material essence".
Lovecraft has left us with a more than unsatisfactory explanation of the true origin of the Cthulhu Myths.
And this is probably of great value for those who are currently practicing the "Black Art".
A word to Kenneth Grant, the head of the Typhonian Society .
T .
O .:
"Lovecraft's great contribution to the occult is in demonstrating (indirectly, as it most likely was) the power to control dreams and be able to project into other dimensions, discovering the gates through which the true flow of magical consciousness flows (in the form of inspiration, intuition and visions)."
Lovecraft's occult experience, hidden under the shell of fiction, testifies to the invasion of forces in full agreement with the archetypes and symbols in Blavatsky and Crowley, obtained during contact with "otherworldly" astral entities.
He became the receiver and transmitter of hidden knowledge, although, in the case of Lovecraft, this process was more intuitive than conscious.
The internal contradictions generated in this way could be the cause of the physical and mental characteristics of the writer; the reasons could also be
