‘Supernatural Horror’

A compared analysis of the integration of fantastic motifs into

occultism by the example of
Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Kenneth Grant

(Extract)

by

Friedemann Rimbach-Sator
1. Spirituality between occultism and fantasy

1.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………...….....3
1.2. Thesis statement……………………………………………………………….4
1.3. Terms and definitions………………………………………………………….4
1.4. Theoretical focus………………………………………………………………5

2. Howard Lovecraft’s ‘Cthulhu-Mythos’

2.1. Lovecraft’s religious thoughts………………………………………………...6

2.2. Lovecraft’s strategies of authentication….……………………………………7
2.3. Lovecraft’s reception: popular culture……….………...…………………….10

3. Kenneth Grant’s ‘Thyphonic Trilogies’

3.1. Grant’s religious thoughts……………………………………………...……10

3.2. Grant’s strategies of authentication………………………………………….11
3.3. Lovecraft’s reception: Lovecraft-Magic……………………………………..14

4. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..15

5. Bibliography …………………….…………………………….………………………….16
1. Spirituality between occultism and fantasy

1.1. Introduction

Occultism and fantastic literature never stood in direct opposition to each other, but have been
deeply intertwined ever since. So it is not surprising, as Antoine Faivre writes for the
Encyclopedia of Religion, that both categories, together with Spiritsm, came into existence at
the same time, namely in the middle of the 19th century and especially in France.1

The differences between these genres were mingling, foremost at its beginning, and
sometimes ideas invented as fantastic even found their way into the spectrum of occultism.
According to the German scholar of religious studies Marco Frenschkowsky, the key figure of
a transfer of fantastic motifs into the reality of especially British occultists at this time was
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 -1873).2 As Frenschkowsky traced in ‚Das schwarze Auge,
Magazin zur unheimlich-phantastischen Literatur‘ No. 4 (1999), Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
(1831-1891), for example, was not only highly influenced by his system of magic in his novel
‘Zanoni’ (1842), but integrated also whole elements like the vital-force ‘Vril’ (‘The coming
Race’ 1871) or the demonic ‘dweller on the threshold’ as the devastating effect of initiation3.

According to the Australian sociologist of religion Adam Possamai, the number of belief
systems between fantastic literature and occultism increased in postmodern culture, as did the
crossing between popular culture and religion in its entirety. Gathering from the religious
material with a never seen ease and being the only authority in deciding what fits as a
religious identity, the postmodern individual invents unnumbered personalized hybrid forms
of religion while consuming them like grocery articles.4 In his ‘Religion and Popular Culture’
(2005) Possamai describes this process as “fallen in love with various works of popular
culture”5, which come alive like Pygmalion’s statue in the production of personal myths. As
the leading researcher on this subject he also coined the name ‘Hyper-Real Religion’ and
invented its definition which now is the point of reference for most scholars following him:

„A hyper-real religion is a simulacrum of a religion created out of, or in symbiosis with,

commodified popular culture which provides inspiration at a metaphorical level and/or is a
source of beliefs for everyday life.”6

Better known contemporary religions noticeable under this definition are for example Oberon
Zell Ravenheart’s ‘Church of all Worlds’, components of the ‘Otherkin-Movement’ or the
religious stream of ‘Jediism’. Because of his exceeding importance for ‘Hyperreal Religions’

1
Faivre, Antoine: 1987 and 2005 Occultism in: Encyclopedia of Religion II Edition p. 6782.
2
Frenschkowski, Marco: 2013 Phantastik und Religion: Problemanzeige p. 560.
3
Frenschkowski: 1999 Okkultismus und Phantastik – Eine Studie zu ihrem Verhältnis am Beispiel Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky p. 94ff.
4
Possamai, Adam: 2005 Religion in Popular Culture p. 65ff.
5
Ibid. p. 157.
6
Possamai: 2012 Yoda goes to Glastonbury: An introduction to Hyper-Real Religions in: id.: Handbook of the
Hyper-real Religions p. 20.
3
within occultism this essay examines the work of the writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft and its
integration into the work of the occultist Kenneth Grant.

1.2. Thesis statement

Regarding the question of how profane motifs became sacred this essay states the thesis that
beyond the sociological implications given, it has to be looked at certain writing strategies to
understand this process more clearly. As will be shown, these strategies of authentication
(‘Beglaubigungsstrategien’) are created by the authors to manipulate the reader, so that the
process of accepting and integrating once fantastic motifs as true or religious becomes more
reasonable.

1.3. Terms and definitions

As a basic understanding of the term ‘occultism’ this article follows Wouter Hanegraaff’s
description of occultism as a specific transformation of Western esotericism between the late
18th and early 20th century “by people in general to make sense of esotericism from the
perspective of a disenchanted secular world”7. According to Antoine Faivre, this tendency can
furthermore be outlined by five characteristics, including roughly: an industrious effort in
synthesizing esoteric traditions; a preference of the occult sciences; an attempt at a
progressive dialogue with predominant sciences; an effort of emancipating from Christian
thought; and the attempt to define oneself against trends like spiritism or parapsychology8.

For approaching the vitally discussed definition of ‚fantastic literature’, the theory of German
scholar of literature Hans Richard Brittnacher from his book ‚Phantastik – Ein
interdisziplinären Handbuch‘ (2013) has been followed. After Brittnacher, the core of
fantastic literature is a conflict of order between two different realities, whereas one reality
breaks into the other as through a rip.9 Due to the accumulating effects of virtualizing and
simulating our experienced realities to the consequence of losing the ability to distinguish
clearly between fantasy and reality, for Brittnacher fantastic literature has now become
something similar to a ‘test case’ of representations10.

Concerning the question of the relation between fantastic literature and other ‘discourse
systems’, especially religion, for Brittnacher the works of Marco Frenschkowski stand out
evidently. For the purpose of this analysis his theory will therefore be examined closer in the
following.

7
Hanegraaff, Wouter: 1996 New Age Religion and Western Culture p. 422.
8
Cp. Faivre: 1987 and 2005 p. 6781f.
9
Cp. Brittnacher, Hans Richard: 2013 Phantastik-Theorien p. 191.
10
Cp. ibid. p. 195.
4
 1.2. Theoretical focus

For Frenschkowski not only the discourse of what fiction is and what fact is dependent on
social developments, but also the idea of a strict separation between them. So, for example,
the idea of a solely fictional story would have been completely alien to a person with a
medieval perspective11. Frenschkowksi therefore discriminates between a fictional text, if it is
the only entrance to a ‘within-world’ (‘Binnenwelt’) and a non-fictional, if it is not. Hence,
the difference between being fictional or non-fictional consists mainly in the demand of being
true, whether the texts had been imagined or not. In this way, fantastic literature always keeps
the possibility of becoming true if the collective perception decides in favor of it12.

In its confrontation with the terms of a disenchanted and secular world, fantastic literature
gained new qualities in absorbing the once religious dimensions of experience. As displaced
and hidden as these, fantastic literature now became a ‘Trojan horse’ against the ’bulwark’ of
modernity. Thus, the marginalization of fantastic literature has also to be understood as a
banishment of religious thought13. In other words, and in quoting Frenschkowski’s influential
definition of his religious understanding of fantastic literature:

„Das Phantastische ist jene Dekonstruktion von Wirklichkeit im Medium von Kunst, in der
sich das Religiöse in der einen oder anderen seiner Facetten konstituierend in die
dekonstruierte säkularisierte Normalität einmischt, ohne sich als religiöses zu offenbaren.“14

Furthermore Frenschkowsi recognized fantastic literature as ‚post-religious‘, in terms that it

only comes into existence, if a society breaks with its own religious heritage. Eventually, in
rejecting the secularization-thesis, he developed this idea further, arguing that fantastic
literature always has to be considered as a ‘subsystem’ among others and next to religion; and
as such it can only be seen as ‘structurally’ post-religious15. Arriving at the ‘core’ of fantasy,
Frenschkowski claimed that under these conditions the possibility of humans to live
simultaneously in different constructions of reality becomes obvious. Likewise, under the
perspective of different relations of reality, fantastic literature has to be considered as
potentially both, fictional and non-fictional, at the same time16.

Since he was an expert in the German-speaking area for Lovecraft, some important
considerations of Frenschkowski about Lovecraft are examined finally:

11
Cp. Frensckowski: 2010 Der Begriff des Fantastischen p. 133.
12
Ibid.
13
Cp. Frenschkowski: 1999 p. 47.
14
Frenschkowski: 2006 Ist Religion postreligiös? p. 51. See also: „Imaginativ-phantastische Literatur entsteht,
wenn sich religiöse Fragestellungen, Erfahrungen und Themen unter den Rahmenbedingungen der Moderne –
d.h. regelmäßig ‚nichtreligiös‘ – in Literatur umsetzen.“ ibid p. 38.
15
Ibid p. 47.
16
Ibid. p. 33ff.
5
As Frenschkowski says, out of fantastic literature a revival of the myth under the conditions
of modernity has emerged, in terms of a desire for integrating the realizable and non-
realizable in a cosmic whole where the shattered individual can find its place and dignity17.

As a specific quality of post-enlightenment the myth in fantastic literature is ‘broken’.

Signifying the new quality of humanity of being radically extruded out of the center of cosmic
importance, this artificial myth stands in direct opposite to the religious’. In inventing this
artificial and broken myth, for Frenschkowski, Howard Lovecraft has been the undisputed
master for a generation suffering under the insignificance in an allegedly meaningless
universe18. In a nutshell, the essence of Lovecraft’s fiction for Frenschkowski lies in his
ability to express the doubt of a mythological experience of wholeness and thus became
preserved by a generation experiencing exactly this kind of ‘ambiguities’ and ‘ambivalences’
as written in his fiction.

To understand the significance of Lovecraft’s tale to occultism further, at first it will be

looked upon Lovecraft’s religious thinking and in this light at the meaning of the ‘Cthulhu-
Mythos’. Then his strategies of authentication are highlighted, followed by a short outline of
the history of his reception, concentrating mainly on his highly important publisher August
Derleth. After describing likewise the major ideas of Kenneth Grant’s religious worldview
and the position of the ‘Cthulhu-Mythos’ within it, the focus will be Grant’s work of making
this integration reasonable. Finally there will be a short outlook on the influence of Kenneth
Grant into occultism.

2. Howard Lovecraft’s ‘Cthulhu-Mythos’

2.1. Lovecraft’s religious thoughts

According to Sunand Joshi, who, together with Yozan Mosig started the modern wave of
research into the realm of Lovecraft, this cross-border author between weird and science
fiction became a convinced atheist very early in his life. Lovecraft’s astronomical
consideration about the pettiness of the human condition compared to the splendid but
senseless magnitude of the universe paved the way especially for his immersion in the theory
of Ernst Haeckel19. In Lovecraft’s well known ‘The Riddle of the Universe’ (1899), Haeckel
formulated his three principles of the ‘mechanical materialism’, namely the rejection of every
kind of non-material existence, the rejection of every idea of universal teleology and the
understanding of a machine-like interaction of the universe20.

17
Frenschkowski: 1997 Lovecraft als Mythenschöpfer p. 112.
18
Ibid., p. 156 and 167.
19
Cp. Joshi, Sunand: 2013 I am Providence Vol. 1 p. 316, 323 and 329. Other important influences of his
atheism had been Hugh Elliot’s Modern Science und Materialism (1919) and diverse works of Friedrich
Nietzsche.
20
Cp. ibid. p. 319.
6
Eventually, Lovecraft’s hope that in the near future religion would sink into oblivion because
of the diverse achievements of science was shattered. Seeing the intolerability of coping with
this awful truth as one of its main reason, as stated by Joshi, Lovecraft invented one of his
most important literary ideas: the construction of his style as ‚non-supernatural cosmic art‘. In
trying to appease this rebellion against the unbearable pettiness of humankind, in his fiction as
a replacement of religion the supernatural should exist, but always in accordance with
science21.

Following Joshi, Lovecraft’s later work of creating an artificial myth-cycle must therefore be
seen as an embodiment of his philosophy of mechanical materialism, whose main thesis is the
insignificance of humankind, or ‘cosmicism’22. Thus, entering the contact with Lovecraft’s
alien deities kicks the antagonist out of his anthropocentric comprehension of the universe and
leaves him through a mental breakdown in a state of ‘cosmic fear’23.

Because a religious myth in the first place tries to establish a contact between gods and
humans, Lovecraft’s creation furthermore should rather be understood as an ‘anti-myth’24.
Whereas Lovecraft defined this myth in a letter in 1930 as “Regarding the solemnly cited
myth-cycle of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth (…)”25, in the following the widely accepted term
‘Cthulhu-Mythos’ will be used, as it was declared by Lovecraft’s posthumous publisher
August Derleth26.

2.2. Lovecraft’s strategies of authentication

By taking into consideration the works of Howard Lovecraft, Yozan Mosig, Susanna Smuda,
Michael Koseler, Thekla Zachrau and Ingo Gatzer, Lovecraft’s persuasion-strategies can be
divided into authenticity of the protagonist, as well as historical, typographic, attested,
scientific, fantastic, mythological, emotional and psychological authenticity. As Thekla
Zachrau writes in her research about the function and structure of the Cthulhu-Mythos, the
essential method of Lovecraft is the connection of facts with fiction, either as a synthesis or as
a factual description of fiction27. Inspired by the three-step process of Ingo Gatzer, this logical
process of understanding can be stated as:

A is true. B (fictional) stands in connection with A. So B might be true as well.

For Lovecraft, the cornerstone of real authenticity does not lie in the plot of a story, but in the
creation of emotions28. The most important criterion for creating a radical fear of being truly
in contact with unknown forces and spheres is Lovecraft’s use of atmosphere. Because the

21
Cp. ibid. p. 779f.
22
Cp. Joshi: 2013b I am Providence Vol. II p. 642f.
23
Cp. Price, Robert: 1991 Lovecraft´s Artificial Mythology p. 247.
24
Cp. ibid. p. 646.
25
Lovecraft, Howard: 1971 Selected Letters III 1929-1931’ p. 166.
26
Cp. Joshi: 2013b p. 642 .
27
Cp. Zachrau, Thekla: 1986 ‘Mythos und Phantastik’ p. 153f.
28
Cp. Lovecraft: 2012 Das Übernatürliche Grauen in der Literatur p. 38.
7
tiniest clue for a real existence of unknown forces for him evokes the most effective climax,
Lovecraft was experimenting with language, perspective or the perfect length of his texts all
his life29. To enable such an atmosphere, according to Gatzer, Lovecraft most importantly
creates natural phenomena and architectures and uses them as a transition-path to a realm,
where the fantastic can happen30.

Similarly, Lovecraft ties his settings to real historical events or places like his beloved
hometown Providence and depicts them so accurately that routes can be reconstructed by
means of degrees of longitude and latitude. Because the imagined towns like Innsmouth are
equally characterized in great details, for an average reader, according to Gatzer, the
distinction between the real and the created becomes more and more blurred.31

As an instance which witnesses these events directly, the first-person narrator, Lovecraft’s
most frequently employed protagonist, is most suitable32. Thereby, Lovecraft uses
professional groups like the scientists, which symbolize rationality and objectivity. To back
up their narrations, a great number of bystanders, manuscripts and newspaper articles are
consulted, whereby a connection with the non-fictional world is drawn by using existing
newspapers like the ‘Golden Globe’.33

Crucial in this process of assurance is the close entanglement of real and fictional books. Real
are for example James Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ (1890), Eliphas Levi’s ‘Dogme et Rituel
de la Haute Magie’ (1920), and Margaret Murray’s ‘The Witch Cult in Western
Europe‘(1921)34. As a particularly successful synthesis of facts with fiction stands the
grimoire of the ‘Great Old Ones’, the ‘Necronomicon’, which always appears in the context
of real and fictional literature on occultism35.

For the further authentication his grimoire and entities, Lovecraft especially uses the method
of ‘intertextuality’. As stated by Smuda, the Cthulhu-Mythos consists of a complex system of
references and self-quotations, which strengthens the authenticity of its entities, as they occur
continually in different stories36. One example of these is Dagon, a dreadful aquatic entity in a
short story from 1917, the name of which derives from the biblical grain-god Dagon37 who
later was depicted in the form of a fish. The effect accumulated, when Lovecraft encouraged
befriended authors – in the ‘Lovecraft circle’ – to write und develop his black pantheon
further. This ‘wise decision’, as Price notices, not to introduce all clues and hints directly,

29
Cp. Lovecraft: 1974 Selected Letters IV 1932-1934 p. 71 and 310.
30
Cp. Ibid. and Gatzer, Ingo: 2004 Analye der Wirkungstrategien in H.P. Lovecrafts Erzählungen des Cthulhu
Mythos p. 111.
31
Cp. Gatzer ibid.
32
Cp. Koseler, Michael: 1997 Anmerkungen zur Erzählkunst Howard Phillips Lovecrafts p. 84.
33
Cp. Gatzer: 2004 p. 19f.
34
Cp. Frenschkowski 1997 Lovecraft als Mythenschöpfer p. 150ff.
35
For example: ‚Die Unausprechlichen Kulte‘ of Wilhelm van Junzt. Likewise, the depository of the
Necronimcon is a consequent mixture of facts with fiction, as the libraries of Harvard and Arkham. Cp. Gatzer:
2004 p. 29.
36
Cp. Smuda, Susanna 1997 H.P. Lovecrafts Mythologie – Bricolage und Intertextiualität‘ p. 33
37
Cp. 1. Samuel 5.
8
allows the reader to gather together the awful truth autonomously through the media of a
distorted legend38.

Besides the use of self-quotations, Smuda divides the types of ‘intertexuality’ into references
to mythological sources, like the myth of Prometheus in ‘The Other Gods’ (1921), and literal
sources like H. G. Wells ‘The Time Machine’ (1895) in ‘Shadow Out of Time’ (1935).39
Intertwined with the so called ‘bricolage-method’, named after a theory of Claude Levi-
Strauss, Lovecraft’s stories achieve the impression of a real mythological narrative.

As a bricolage, a mythology in the understanding of Smuda, always consists of same

reassembled and recombined patterns. Through different ‘score systems’ (Partiturensysteme),
Smuda proves the reconstruction of fixed elements for example by means of the motifs in
‘Shadow over Innsmouth’ or the characteristics of Lovecraft’s entities40. As one of the basic
concept in Lovecraft’s stories she locates the wandering between dream and reality. In doing
this, the commingling of symbols of dream and myth gradually blurs its boundaries and as a
result opens the gates for the irrational41.

A pioneer in deconstructing the stories of Lovecraft as dreams and analyzing them with the
theory of C. G. Jung is Yozan Mosig. In accord with Mosig, Lovecraft consciously uses
Jungian symbols to induce fear:

„What could be more terrifying for man than the realization of his own impotent
insignificance face to face with the unknown and the unknowable?”42

As a recurrent motif he sees the incapability of the modern man to become ‘whole’ in the
Jungian sense. In Mosig’s interpretation the universe of Lovecraft has no higher purpose;
everybody is only equal in his unimportance. Instead of a higher self or glorious ‘land of
hope’ the protagonists are thrown back to their own imperfect narrowness – the pursuit of a
higher purpose has to end logically in a collapse43. Seeing this pursuit as a hope for a utopian
future, instead of a bright success over all vices, the protagonist succumbs to the symbol of
the universal meaninglessness: Cthulhu44. For Mosig, Lovecraft is therefore an author for the
unbeliever - appreciated for his description of modern dissonance by everyone unimpressed
with classical ‘Gothic Fiction’45.

38
Cp. Price: 1991 p. 251.
39
Cp. Smuda: 1997 p. 52f.
40
Ibid. p. 54.
41
Cp. ibid. p. 98.
42
Cp. Mosig, Yozan: 1997 Mosig at last p. 24.
43
Ibid. p. 64.
44
Ibid. p. 47.
45
Ibid. p. 93.
9
 2.3 Lovecraft’s reception: popular culture

Mistaking Lovecraft, maybe even for economical reasons, Lovecraft’s publisher and most
enthusiastic epigone August Derleth kept the rumor alive, Lovecraft’s deities were real and
their prophetic scriptures consciously woven into his texts46. A proof for him was the so
called ‘black magic quote’, unaware of the fact that this quote is an unfounded paraphrase of a
letter from Lovecraft to his pen friend Harold Farnese47. The black magic quote goes:

“All my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on the fundamental lore or legend that
this world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practicing black magic, lost their
foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth
again.“48

As a publisher, Derleth had the authority over the work of Lovecraft until his death in 1971.
Aggravated by his own interpretations, mistakenly in the spirit of Lovecraft imagined
creations, forewords and reprimands, he led a generation of epigones who carried on the
‘black pantheon’ in terms of an alienated and quasi-Christian dichotomy.

Nevertheless, the influence of Lovecraft on popular culture in the last 100 years had been
enormous and included the typical processes of marginalization and transformation. As Price
considers, this reception can only be compared to that of Arthur Conan Doyles’ Sherlock
Holmes49. An outstanding example in the process of mingling truth with fantasy in a playful
way is the Cthulhu role-playing game as ‚Malleus Monstrorum‘ (2008), a book for
background information, demonstrates.

3. Kenneth Grant’s ‘Typhonian Trilogies’

3.1. Grant’s religious thoughts

Kenneth Grant was the personal secretary of Aleister Crowley and later the leader of the
British ‘Ordo Templi Orientis’, which after different discords became known as the
‘Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis’. He published his religious thoughts mainly in his nine
books of the ‘Typhonian Trilogies’ representing the results of his work with his lodge50.

Central for Grant’s system is the ‘Great Work’ which is the dissolving of matter and
subjectivity in his divine origin. Its basic sketch is the cabbalistic ‘Tree of Life’, consisting of
ten spheres, which are connected through 22 paths. In the process of the ‘Great Work’ the
adept has to ascend these spheres as a pass to the divine light beginning in its lowest sphere

46
Cp. Price: 1991 p. 250.
47
Cp. Joshi: 2013b p. 833.
48
Price: 1991 p. 255.
49
Ibid. p. 247.
50
Evans, Dave: 2007 The History of British Magick After Crowley p. 286.
10
Malkuth51. Unguided, the adept can only arrive at Daath, the hidden eleventh sphere in the
‘middle’ of the tree, connecting the tree of life with its background, and the more spiritual
spheres with the more material ones52.

This back side of the tree of life is crucial for an understanding of Lovecraft’s entities. As a
direct mirror of its front, the 10 qlippoth and 22 ‘Paths of Seth’ represent the wild pre-human
and outer-terrestrial forces an adept has to integrate to pass the initiation ‘test’ of Daath.
Having overwhelmed these forces and standing in contact with his higher self - or guardian
angel in the terms of Crowley - the adept reaches the conscious state of Maat and can enter
the upper triad53.

This path is also a short cut for the goal, the whole humankind is heading to. Developing in so
called eons, humans as a collective now stand before the test of Daath signifying the
apocalyptic breakthrough of qlippothic forces into our known realm54.

In Grant’s system Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth and the other lovecraftian entities embody the forces
and leaders of the qlippoth, who are deeply intertwined in the evolution of humanity and
essential for their illumination, or ‘Necronomicon Gnosis’55. In this process, the ‘Cthulhu-
Mythos’ gains the quality as a reminder of real and long gone folktales of alien entities who
created the humans as their slaves, founded religions, withdraw after a war and have loomed
since then to return56.

Basic for an understanding of Grant’s use of Lovecraft is also his philosophy of art. As he
demonstrates mainly in his book ‘Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God’ (1992), the author is
usually not responsible for his ideas, inasmuch as he gets his ideas transmitted. Since the point
of contact for this inspiration lies in unconsciousness, the transmission happens at best in
absence of the mind, for example in a state of dream. Because Lovecraft knew this intuitively,
according to Grant, he incorporated the inspiration of alien entities out of his dreams in his
narratives in a distorted way, most clearly in ‘The Call of Cthulhu’57.

3.2. Grant’s strategies of authentication

In her study on the ‘hyperreal-religious’ ‘Otherkin - Community’, Danielle Kirby defines two
main strategies of legitimization the fictional background of the convictions in this group:
First, the transformation of the author into a channel of other dimensions of existence.
Second, the actual creation of these dimensions or creatures through the belief of the reader.58

51
Cp. Grant, Kenneth: 1999 Beyond the Mauve Zone p. 154ff.
52
Cp. Grant, Kenneth: 2010 Schattenkulte p. 213.
53
Cp. Grant, Kenneth: 2008 Die Nachtseite von Eden p. 21 and 195; Grant: 1999 p. 162.
54
Cp. Grant, Kenneth: 2011 Aleister Crowley & der verborgene Gott p. 67f.
55
Cp. Grant, Kenneth: 1994 Outer Gateways p. 86ff.
56
Cp. Grant, Kenneth: 2012 Jenseits der Zeitkreise p. 256ff.
57
Cp. Grant 2011 p. 43 and 46.
58
Kirby, Danielle: 2009 From Pulp Fiction to Revealed Text p. 150f.
11
Grant follows this first strategy by revealing Lovecraft as an insider in the possession of
hidden knowledge and a reluctant prophet. According to Grant, Lovecraft’s worldly
involvement and adoption of the Great Old Ones started with his acquaintance to Arthur
Machen (1863 – 1947) and Algernon Blackwood (1868 – 1951), both members of the ‘Order
of the Golden Dawn’59. However, his true inspiration derived from a ‘telepathic projection’
into his dreams, either from the spirit of Abdul Al-Hazred or from Lovecraft’s unconscious
wanderings into the qlippoth60. Yet his own real tragedy meant his denegation of both the real
background of his stories and his potential as a prophet of the Necronomicon through the fear
of accepting his own dark history. For Grant this had mainly consisted in atrocities, while he
was practicing black magic in a former life. His expulsion conversely led to a continual
harassment by shadowy forces and entities in the form of nightmares and eventually led to
Lovecraft’s early death61.

Grant was convinced that the ‘Cthulhu-Mythos’ of Lovecraft was identical with Aleister
Crowley’s doctrine, even though neither Lovecraft nor Crowley could truly unveil the nature
of their inspiration. To prove this, he matches motifs of Lovecraft in the form of a chart with
those of Crowley’s in ‘The Magical Revival’ (1972), Grant’s first book on this topic. This list
increased dramatically the deeper he immersed in this subject62. For example Yog-Sothoth as
one of Lovecrafts most important entities in this process becomes one with Crowley’s
guardian angel and Chorozon, the guardian of the Sephira Daath63.

As an objective proof that Lovecraft’s entities exist outside of its author’s books, Grant refers
among others to the appearance of the word ‘Cthulhu’ in its undistorted version Tutulu in
Crowley’s ‘Liber 418’ 20 years before Lovecraft: “ARARNAY OBOLO MAHARNA
TUTULU (…)”64.

The following painstaking research of many occultists influenced by Grant in matching

Crowley with Lovecraft, also known as ‘Lovecraft / Crowley Axis’, can vividly be illustrated
by the example of Peter Levenda. After mentioning further coincidences in his book ‘The
Dark Lord’ (2013), like an orgiastic feast in ‘Call of Cthulhu’ which happened on the first of
November 1907 at the same time as Crowley wrote his ‘Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente’ in
which he contacted demonic tentacles, he concluded65:

„Either Lovecraft was in some kind of telepathic communication with Crowley, or both men
were in telepathic communication with ... Something Else.“66

59
Cp. Grant: 2011 p. 44.
60
Cp. Grant: 2012 p. 196.
61
Cp. Grant: 2012 p. 194 and Grant 2011 p. 44ff.
62
Cp. Grant, Kenneth: 1972 The Magical Revival p. 132ff.
63
Cp. Grant: 2008 p. 239.
64
Crowley, Aleister: 1909 The Vision and the Voice p. 17.
65
Cp. Lavenda, Peter: The Dark Lord p. 99.
66
Ibid. p. 103.
12
Besides the legitimation of transforming Lovecraft and matching him with Crowley, Grant
employs basic principles of numeric Kabbalah, like gematria. As a basic tool Grant constantly
uses this method of breaking down words to their basic numbers to find their hidden essence
and thereby to pacify different worldviews67. Once acknowledged as basically identical, terms
became exchangeable and lead to mix-forms like Seth-Hulu as the former form of Cthulhu68.
Support in this process is granted by his intuition, which to Grant was an extraordinary
competence only achieved by the highest adepts who reached the Sephira of understanding
Binah69.

As a mirror of his evolving process of revelation in his lodge, Grant did not rush in
introducing Lovecraft’s entities as actual and tangible forces, but rather tiptoes to this
conclusion. In doing this, Grant does not overburden his reader but rather persuades him step
by step from vaguely suggested assumptions in the beginning to for example recordings of
rituals in which people allegedly died or lost their mind70.

Regarding the thesis of this paper, two significant features emerge in this process:

To tie up with the Cthulhu-Mythos, Grant gives more priority to the religiously connoted
interpretation of Derleth. So he writes in ‘Jenseits der Zeitkreise’ (2012; Outside the circles of
Time), that even if there were different revisions of the ‘Necronomicon-Mythos’, the version
of Derleth would be the most suitable for his purpose 71. The preference of Derleth can among
others be seen by Grants utilization of motifs of Derleth, most importantly from ‘The Lurker
at the Threshold’ (1945), created with fragments of Lovecraft’s ideas. Among others, the
accentuation of Cthulhu as the main entity, the divine qualities of Yog-Sothoth as being ‘All-
in-One’, the distribution in more positive and more demonic entities, and the apocalyptic
vision of the rise of Cthulhu and the following war between the gods all can be found in this
book72.

In connection with the theory of Frenschkowski, Grant’s the religious reading of Lovecraft’s
and Derleth’s invented Necronomicon-passages is lastly a proof of the theory that a fictional
text can be seen as factual and fictional at the same time. The boundaries between these
categories became completely blurred in this example. Having given more than one entrance
to a ‘within-world’with the Lovecraft-Circle and Grant as the starting point for the take-over
of the Cthulhu-Mythos by Occultists, according to Frenschkowski, the Cthulhu-Mythos
gained the quality of being non-fictional.

67
For example in Grant: 2012 p. 144.
68
Cp. Grant, Kenneth: 2013 Hekates Brunnen p. 292f.
69
Cp. Grant: 2011 p. 45.
70
For example in Grant: 1972 p. 201 and Grant: 2012 p. 291.
71
Cp. Grant: 2012 p. 238.
72
Cp. Derleth, August: 1994 Das Tor des Verderbens p. 105 (rise of Cthulhu) p. 135 (preference of Cthulhu) p.
152 (separation between good and evil) p. 164 (Yog-Sothoth as ‘All-in-One’).
13
 3.3. Lovecraft’s reception: Lovecraft-Magic

From the start there were people believing the Cthulhu-Mythos was based on true facts.
Sunand Joashi in his biography for example refers to three persons who shared this belief and
got in contact with Lovecraft in 192973. Lovecraft replied to them in several letters, where he
pointed out, that neither his nor any kind of god actually exists74. Although it was big fun for
him and his friends to invent these entities, neither of them truly tried to mislead their
readers75. In the same way he writes to Margaret Sylvester on the 13 January of 1934:

„Regarding the Necronomicon- I must confess that this monstrous & abhorred volume is
merely a figment of my own imagination!”76

In the ‘The Necronomicon Files’, published by John Wisdom Gonce III and Daniel Harms
(2003), Gonce III mentions two publications which were essential in developing and
spreading the influence of Lovecraft into religious practice: Kenneth Grant’s ‘The Magickal
Revival’ (1972) and Anton Szandor LaVey’s ‘The Satanic Rituals’ (1972)77. The lovecratian
rituals of LaVey were designed by Michael Aquino, the future leader of the ‘Temple of Seth’
and served mainly the purpose of supporting LaVey’s liturgy with emotional atmosphere and
a theatrical setting78.

More lasting influence on the realm of modern occultism had Grant, directly by founding for
example the ‘Esoteric Order of Dagon’ (1981), which according to Grant prepares the return
of Cthulhu; or influencing the ‘Voodon Gnosis’ of Michael Bertiaux (1935-)79. Both,
Lovecraft’s entities and Grant’s findings of his explorations of the qlippoth had a great impact
on the doctrine of the ‘Dragon Rouge’. A rather innovative and vivid example is the practical
introduction ‘Necronomicon Gnosis’ (2007) of Asenath Mason, from the Polish branch of
‘Dragon Rouge’, the ‘Magan’ lodge.

Henceforward the Lovecaft-Magic fanned out into numerous schools and traditions and
transformed into a spectrum from ancient alien hypotheses to esoteric vampirism. Noteworthy
is furthermore the influence of Lovecraft on ‘Chaos Magic’. Seen by Stephen Sennitt and Phil
Hine, the entities of Lovecraft represent the wild ‘masks of chaos’ which can be utilized to
integrate repressed experiences or hidden forces of the self80.

73
Joshi: 2013b p. 721 (E.L. Mengshoel), p. 802 (Robert Erwin Howard 1906-1936) p. 825 (unknown ‘witch’ from
Boston).
74
Lovecraft: 1976 p. 50 „But in sober fact, there is not a particle of evidence to indicate that they do exist (...)
that goes likewise for all gods from Baal to Buddha and Jove to Jehovah“.
75
Ibid. p. 346.
76
Ibid.
77
Cp. GonceIII, John 2003: The Necronomicon Files p. 113. Likewise, the Simon Necronomicon (1977)
presumably of Peter Lavenda and a group of people around the occult-shop ‘Magickal Child’ has to be
mentioned. Although this book, according to Gonce III, was created as a prank and actually to harm the
practitioners, it has found a firm place among the following epigones of lovecraftian magic. Cp. Gonce III: 2003
p. 132 ff.
78
Cp. LaVey, Anton Szandor: 2010 Die Satanische Bibel / Die Satanischen Rituale p. 231.
79
Cp. Gonce III: 2003 p. 111 (Aquino) p. 114 (Michael Bertriaux) and 115 (Esoteric Order of Dagon).
80
Cp. Hine, Phil: 2009 The Pseudonomicon p. 41 and Sennitt, Stephen: 2010 The Infernal Texts p. 105.
14
4. Conclusion

The transition of a ‘Hyper-Real Religion’ by means of literal strategies has been shown.
These methods of authentication were used by Howard Lovecraft to make the reader believe
in his stories and to induce fear and by Kenneth Grant to make his religious use of Lovecraft
and for his followers more sensible.

By synthesizing facts with fiction, his lifelong experiences in creating authentic atmosphere
and creatures and in scattering hints of them even outside his books, Lovecraft replicated an
artificial mythology, the ‘hidden’ truth of which was created to be detected autonomously. It
can be argued, that he played his game of make-believe so well that he was mistaken. The
great step from Lovecraft’s atheistic attitude and his creation of entities as expressions of his
philosophy of ‘cosmicism’ to Grant’s description of them as creator-gods and wild forces,
crucial for gaining a cosmic gnosis, is thereby better comprehensible if August Derleth is seen
as a step of transition.

Already and most importantly in the first generation of his reception Lovecraft was said to
have interwoven fragments of an immemorial truth in his stories. Understood in a Christian
context of good and evil by Derleth, Lovecraft’s stories became an easier point of contact for
a religious worldview such as from the perspective of Kenneth Grant. In matching Lovecraft
with Crowley, transforming Lovecraft as a prophet and ‘proving’ the existence of his entities
outside his books, Grant definitely dissolved Lovecraft’s entities out of their fictional
background and provided the material for future practitioners.

Henceforward, following Frenschkowski, Lovecraft has to be understood as both, a fictional

and a religious writer. Likewise, the transformation of the broken myth of Lovecraft, as it was
stated by Frenschkowsi, to a religious myth by Grant and his followers can be seen as a
correction in terms of a de-secularization to win back the allegedly lost position in the
universe.

Regarding his thesis of fiction as a ‘Trojan horse’ of religion against the ‘bulwark’ of
modernity’ it could be argued, that the entities of the Cthulhu-Mythos in their wild
foreignness and shadowy state between dream and reality represent rejected qualities of
religious experience, like the wild, delusional, animalistic or irrational. Therefore, the
hyperreal Lovecraft-religion could be seen as a setting in which the postmodern individual
can again get in touch with these horizons and in this way get hold of its own rejected
qualities in the form of a cathartic and mystical event.

15
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18