H.P.

Lovecraft: An Atheist and his Gods

By Karl Beech

H.P.Lovecraft is in my opinion one of the great mythopoeic fantasy writers of

the last one hundred years. In his dark universe sanity is but a candle
guttering in an encroaching gust of madness. Add to this existential horror a
pantheon of dark gods so vividly pictured as to rival any fantasy mythos and it
is not surprising that the writings of Lovecraft have such a devoted readership
(myself included). In recent years critics such as S.T. Joshi et al have made
much of the fiction of Lovecraft as a kind of scripture or mythology of atheism.
Whereas the writer himself clearly professes this philosophy in his personal
correspondence it is my contention that these ideas are not so apparent in the
fictional works themselves and in fact on closer examination a somewhat
different worldview emerges.

Lovecraft writes in a letter quoted in ‘Against religion: the atheist writings of H.

P. Lovecraft’ that

“The word “Christianity” becomes noble when applied to the veneration of a

wonderfully good man and moral teacher, but it grows undignified when
applied to a system of white magic based on the supernatural.”

If this form of polemical engagement with Christianity was an important theme

in Lovecraft’s’ fictional works one might expect to find significant direct
references to God and Christianity: the supernatural genre in which he wrote
would give ample opportunity to do this. In fact a textual analysis of
Lovecraft’s ‘Collected Works’ shows only a handful of occurrences of the
words ‘God’ and ‘Christ*- mostly incidental. On the other hand there are
overwhelmingly higher significant occurrences of words such as ‘gods’ and
‘cults.’ (It could be argued there are in fact more significant references to
Theosophy than Christianity a theme which I will explore later). Although the
odd significant direct reference to sceptical themes can be found even these
references are ambiguous. In the context of the narrative they can be just as
easily read as evidence of the wickedness of the characters concerned as
authorial scepticism about the existence of a Christian God. One example of
this can be found in ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’ which could be read as
either Obed making a theological point about the non-existence of God or an
example of his blasphemy in equating a race of fish people with the Deity.

“Then's the time Obed he begun a-cursin' at the folks fer bein' dull sheep an'
prayin' to a Christian heaven as didn't help 'em none. He told 'em he'd
knowed o' folks as prayed to gods that give somethin' ye reely need, an' says
ef a good bunch o' men ud stand by him, he cud mebbe get a holt o' sarten
paowers as ud bring plenty o' fish an' quite a bit of gold”.

A concern for the well-being of orthodox religion also emerges in another

passage from the same story.
“Her own attitude toward shadowed Innsmouth--which she never seen--was
one of disgust at a community slipping far down the cultural scale, and she
assured me that the rumours of devil-worship were partly justified by a
peculiar secret cult which had gained force there and engulfed all the
orthodox churches.

It was called, she said, "The Esoteric Order of Dagon," and was undoubtedly
a debased, quasi-pagan thing imported from the East a century before, at a
time when the Innsmouth fisheries seemed to be going barren. Its persistence
among a simple people was quite natural in view of the sudden and
permanent return of abundantly fine fishing, and it soon came to be the
greatest influence in the town, replacing Freemasonry altogether and taking
up headquarters in the old Masonic Hall on New Church Green”.

The idea of blasphemy as a sinister activity is also near the surface of a lot of
Lovecraft’s stories- a strange choice of theme if the works were
polemically engaged with Christianity or even deism in general.

“Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips, and in my shocking sallies I

heeded no law of God, Man, or Nature. Suddenly a peal of thunder,
resonant even above the din of the swinish revelry, clave the very roof
and laid a hush of fear upon the boisterous company”.

‘The Tomb’

On the contrary I think what largely emerges for the casual reader of
Lovecraft’s weird tales is the need to keep within conventional
boundaries and the danger of entertaining occult ideas. (This might be
particularly true of the original pulp readership Lovecraft wrote for).

“One case, which the note describes with emphasis, was very sad. The
subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and
occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox's seizure,
and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be
saved from some escaped denizen of hell”.

‘The Call of Cthulu’

“He would often regard it as merciful that most persons of high intelligence
jeer at the inmost mysteries; for, he argued, if superior minds were ever
placed in fullest contact with the secrets preserved by ancient and lowly cults,
the resultant abnormalities would soon not only wreck the world, but threaten
the very integrity of the universe..”

‘The Horror at Red Hook’

A casual reader ignorant of Lovecraft’s scepticism in his personal

correspondence would more likely conclude that at least some of the stories
are morality tales showing the dangers of irreligion and new-fangled
philosophy rather than sceptical attacks on Christianity). A good example of
this kind of story is ‘Herbert West: Reanimator’ where the Promethean
protagonist is punished for tampering with the natural order and bringing the
dead back to life. Note in this passage West’s contemptuous references to
‘Puritanism’ (for which read ‘Christianity’) revealing an arrogance which turns
out to be his later undoing.

“That the tradition-bound elders should ignore his singular results on animals,
and persist in their denial of the possibility of reanimation, was
inexpressibly disgusting and almost incomprehensible to a youth of
West's logical temperament. Only greater maturity could help him
understand the chronic mental limitations of the "professor-doctor" type--
the product of generations of pathetic Puritanism; kindly, conscientious,
and sometimes gentle and amiable, yet always narrow, intolerant,
custom-ridden, and lacking in perspective. Age has more charity for
these incomplete yet high--souled characters, whose worst real vice is
timidity, and who are ultimately punished by general ridicule for their
intellectual sins--sins like Ptolemaism, Calvinism, anti-Darwinism, anti-
Nietzscheism, and every sort of Sabbatarianism and sumptuary
legislation….”

‘Herbert West: Reanimator’

Of course what is missing from the surface reading of the casual reader is a
closer examination of Lovecraft’s fictional mythos and some of the
deeper themes of his works which I would argue include polytheistic
dystheism, a very singular kind of dualism and oddly a greater
engagement with the ideas of Theosophy than Christianity.

(Just to clarify at this point I am not suggesting that Lovecraft necessarily

believed in his mythos merely that his fictional works seem more
influenced by consistency with the created mythos than the personal
scepticism of the author. Having said this I personally suspect that at
times Lovecraft genuinely entertained the theological position of his
works given his somewhat tragic life).

Polytheistic dystheism can be defined as the theological position that god/s

exist but they are either indifferent to the fate of mankind or actively
malevolent. This idea seems closer to the mythos underlying Lovecraft’s
tales than that of atheism which implies disbelief or scepticism about the
existence of any gods at all.

“It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a
thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating
essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which
has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was
perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-
SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the
crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous
brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign...”
‘Through the Gates of the Silver Key’

“There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that

shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered
universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of
nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all
infinity--the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips
dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted
chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile
drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which
detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly
the gigantic Ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless
Other gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos
Nyarlathotep”.

‘The Haunter of the Dark’

Note the references to ‘limitless being and self’ and ‘outside the ordered
universe.’ The beings described are not merely demi-gods or higher
beings (like Lovecraft’s ‘Old Ones’) but are described in terms commonly
used of transcendent gods. Azahoth has prophet called Nyarlathotep but
his message is ‘crawling chaos.’ Azahoth may be ‘blind, voiceless,
tenebrous, mindless’ but via Nyarlathotep he has agency if not purpose.

Interestingly Lovecraft’s transcendent gods are not creators or even

destroyers but agents of disorder and chaos-

“The legend of Yig, Father of Serpents, remained figurative no longer, and I

started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond
angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the
name of Azathoth…”

‘The Whisperer in Darkness’

Another significant aspect to the dystheism of Lovecraft’s tales is that

although composed of seething chaos the realm of the gods is ‘reality’
and it is the mundane world which appears unreal by comparison.

“Memory and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines

amidst the seething chaos, but Carter knew that they were of memory
and imagination only. Yet he felt that it was not chance which built these
things in his consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable and
undimensioned, which surrounded him and strove to translate itself into
the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind of Earth may
grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulfs
outside time and the dimensions we know”.

‘Through the Gates of the Silver Key’

The ‘Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines dualism as

“…the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental
kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’
is someone who believes that Good and Evil—or God and the Devil—are
independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts
with monism, which is the theory that there is only one fundamental kind,
category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism,
which is the view that there are many kinds or categories”.

I would argue the dualism that emerges from the fictional work of Lovecraft is
a form of matter/spirit dualism as expressed in the following passages-

“I now insisted, argued a faith in the existence of spectral substances on the

earth apart from and subsequent to their material counterparts. It argued
a capability of believing in phenomena beyond all normal notions; for if a
dead man can transmit his visible or tangible image half across the
world, or down the stretch of the centuries, how can it be absurd to
suppose that deserted houses are full of queer sentient things, or that
old graveyards teem with the terrible, unbodied intelligence of
generations? And since spirit, in order to cause all the manifestations
attributed to it, cannot be limited by any of the laws of matter, why is it
extravagant to imagine psychically living dead things in shapes--or
absences of shapes--which must for human spectators be utterly and
appallingly "unnamable"? "Common sense" in reflecting on these
subjects, I assured my friend with some warmth, is merely a stupid
absence of imagination and mental flexibility”.

‘The Unamable’

“From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove
little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth
knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and
space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I
believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain
presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely
virtual phenomenon”.

‘Beyond the Wall of Sleep’

“My friend was vastly in advance as we plunged into this awesome ocean of
virgin aether, and I could see the sinister exultation on his floating,
luminous, too-youthful memory-face. Suddenly that face became dim
and quickly disappeared, and in a brief space I found myself projected
against an obstacle which I could not penetrate. It was like the others,
yet incalculably denser; a sticky clammy mass, if such terms can be
applied to analogous qualities in a non-material sphere”.

‘The Unnamable’
“A gate had been unlocked--not, indeed, the Ultimate Gate, but one leading
from Earth and time to that extension of Earth which is outside time, and
from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to
the last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter”.

‘Through the Gates of the Silver Key’

“These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of
flesh and blood. They had shape--for did not this star-fashioned image prove
it?--but that shape was not made of matter”

‘The Call of Cthulu’

“The thing has gone for ever,' Armitage said. 'It has been split up into what it
was originally made of, and can never exist again. It was an impossibility
in a normal world. Only the least fraction was really matter in any sense
we know. It was like its father--and most of it has gone back to him in
some vague realm or dimension outside our material universe; some
vague abyss out of which only the most accursed rites of human
blasphemy could ever have called him for a moment on the hills

‘The Dunwich Horror’

“These adumbrations were never specific, but seemed to revolve around

some especially horrible doubt as to whether the old wizard were really
dead--in a spiritual as well as corporeal sense”.

‘The Thing on the Doorstep’

In classical religious dualism ‘matter’ is generally seen as ‘evil’ and ‘spirit’ as

good- as for example in the case of Catharism-

“The radical Cathars-and also the moderate Cathars-in contrast, teach a

‘vertical dualism’: what is above is good, what is below is bad. The light
has fallen into the darkness (the physical world) and must be liberated
from it. The creation has been made by a creatormalus. The Cathar
perfecti in particular have a horror of the creation and the body (van
Schaik, pp. 79-86)”.

CATHARS, ALBIGENSIANS, and BOGOMILS

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/cathars-albigensians-and-bogomils

The unique nature of the dualism that emerges from the fictional works of
Lovecraft is that unlike classical religious dualism it appears to view ‘matter’
as ‘good’ and ‘spirit’ (or that which is beyond the material world) as ‘evil’ (or at
least ‘not good’). It is the mundane material world which is safe and
wholesome and what lies beyond is threatening and harmful-
“I walked aimlessly south past College Hill and the Athenaeum, down Hopkins
Street, and over the bridge to the business section where tall buildings
seemed to guard me as modern material things guard the world from
ancient and unwholesome wonder”.

‘The Shunned House’

“Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimaeras--dire stories of Celaeno and the

Harpies--may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition--but they
were there before. They are transcripts, types--the archetypes are in us,
and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a
waking sense to be false come to affect us all? Is it that we naturally
conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being
able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of
older standing. They date beyond body--or without the body, they would
have been the same...That the kind of fear here treated is purely
spiritual--that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it
predominates in the period of our sinless infancy--are difficulties the
solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-
mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-
existence”.

--Charles Lamb: Witches and Other Night-Fears

‘The Dunwich Horror’

If it is agreed that Lovecraft’s fiction seems unengaged with Christianity this is

not the case with Theosophy. Robert M. Price argues convincingly in his
essay ‘HPL and HPB: Lovecraft's Use of Theosophy’ that despite the writer’s
limited direct knowledge of the subject his mythos was greatly influenced by
Theosophical imagery.

“From the Theosophists, too, Lovecraft seems to have derived his ubiquitous
references to "cyclopean" ruins, denoting the past dominance of gigantic alien
races, such as those just described. In "Out of the Eons", a "gigantic fortress
of Cyclopean stone" is attributed to "the alien spawn of the dark planet
Yuggoth, which had colonized the earth before the birth of terrestrial life." In
"The Call of Cthulhu", Wilcox dreams of "the damp Cyclopean city of slimy
green stone. . . . The size of the Old Ones [who built the city of R'lyeh], he
curiously declined to mention." In The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath,
Randolph Carter wonders at "the vast clay-brick ruins of a primal city whose
name is not remembered." He "did not like the size and shape of the
ruins. . . . And what the structure and proportions of the olden worshippers
could have been, Carter steadily refused to conjecture."

Price goes on to argue that in the addition to the use of Theosophical imagery
Lovecraft’s fiction shows a polemical engagement with Theosophy (or
perhaps with ‘Occultist Optimism’ in general) -
“In all these instances, the implications contain a dim hint of an archaic truth
terrible in its reality. It is as if to say that the Theosophists have only a small
part of the truth, and that their little knowledge is an extraordinarily dangerous
thing. In fact, HPL's narrator says as much in our fourth quote (again, from
"The Call of Cthulhu"): "Theosophists have guessed at the awesome
grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form
transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which
would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism." There is, so to
speak, indeed something at the end of the rainbow, only instead of a pot of
gold, it is a bottomless pit. In their occultist optimism, Theosophists had
postulated the ancient origin of humanity amid alien super-intelligences. So
glorious an origin seemed to imply a bright destiny for the race. But
Lovecraft's "cosmic futilitarianism" led him to repaint the picture in darker,
pessimistic hues. As depicted in At the Mountains of Madness, the genesis of
the human race was a breeding accident in the laboratories of the star-
headed Old Ones. The resultant vision is one of absurdity. Lovecraft has
represented precisely what fundamentalist "creationists" see as being at
stake in their quixotic crusade against Darwinism: if man's origin was random,
so is his meaning, and so will be his destiny”.

(Where I take issue with Price is the suggestion that Theosophy can be
viewed as a kind of proxy for creationist Christianity in Lovecraft’s fiction- I
think given it’s inferior relation as a ‘cult’ as compared to orthodox Christianity
in the narrative I find this unconvincing).

Yeats famously wrote of the necessity for the reader to distinguish between
the works of an author and the personal opinions of ‘the bundle of accident
and incoherence that sits down to breakfast.’ I think that the difference
between the worldview of Lovecraft the creator and the mythos he created are
very much a case in point.

Originally published on 13/1/12 at

http://invisiblekingdoms.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/h-p-lovecraft-an-atheist-
and-his-gods/

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