Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. (Any question received after then will not get an answer, and will likely just be deleted.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

***Ahem. People have continued to try to post questions, despite the post being closed. I have deleted these. Follow-up comments to existing questions are fine, but other than that, please save it until the next Magic Monday.***

Comments

Lovecraft vision

[(Anonymous)]

JMG and Anonymous -

I’ve imagined that the Lovecraftian vision of a coldly different universe has its own cosmic nature, what with its scope and god presence - it reminds me a bit of what Evelyn Underhill described as the “negative epiphany’, ie., an encompassing vision of a mostly empty and meaningless universe filled with absurdly vast stretches of time and space, etc.

I do think the vision is accurate insofar as “real world” stuff goes, and it’s always beneficial to know that you do have negotiate yourself through a real world that won’t tolerate foolishness for long. But i think it’s a vision of the *material* universe only, even if the vision is cosmic in scope. That’s the reason I’ve never warmed to the Lovecraftian vision - as cosmic as it may be, it seems absent the higher spiritual reality, which is anything but cold, empty, and meaningless.

I wonder if a lot of horror literature isn’t rooted in this kind of cosmic yet still materialistic vision, eg., the figure of the zombie, which could be seen as a type of resurrection or an immortality, yet constrained by a thoroughly materialistic form. It’s as if the horror writers have a genuine yearning for a spiritual vision, but ultimately can’t escape the material world, at least in the case of Lovecraft and perhaps Edgar A Poe.

Re: Lovecraft vision

[ecosophia]

That standard distinction -- between a supposedly cold and meaningless material cosmos and a supposedly warm and meaningful spiritual cosmos -- has always rung false to me. Maybe it's just one of the ways in which I'm an oddball, but to me, the spiritual realm is a realm of infinite space and perfect balance, rising forever beyond human understanding; if it has a meaning, it's not a meaning we can understand, and the Hindu mystics who described the basic nature of the cosmos as lila, "dance" or "play," came much closer to its nature than those who insist on mapping human notions of purpose and meaning onto it.

Lovecraft saw this and was horrified by it. I see this and I find it comforting. From my quirky perspective, the material realm is small and warm and cozy -- consider the food chain, where everything gets to eat many times and only has to be eaten once! -- and the spiritual realm is vast and spacious and awe-inspiring, an immense space through which colossal shapes move for reasons that are beyond my understanding. From this in turn unfolds a spirituality of freedom -- not the sort of rigidly mandated path to a predetermined goal that so many traditions offer, but a spiritual cosmos full of many genuinely different possibilities, any of which can be appropriate for any given soul.

That's the vision that underlies my para-Lovecraftian fiction; it's also the vision that runs through Western occultism from ancient Greek times to the present, and underlies the title that the Golden Dawn gave to the notional endpoint of the path it taught: ipsissimus, "most completely oneself."

Re: Lovecraft vision

[(Anonymous)]

"consider the food chain, where everything gets to eat many times and only has to be eaten once!"

I'd not considered that before!

"Dinner is great for you, until it IS you!"

- Mr. New-Writer

Re: Lovecraft vision

[ecosophia]

Everyone is dinner sooner or later. Just think of how many tasty meals you get to eat first!

Re: Lovecraft vision

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

Thanks for your clarifying and inspirational response! I definitely prefer your inversion of the Lovecraftian theme over the original.

I’m comfortable with material reality and I accept that the spiritual realm in its largest sense will be forever beyond my reckoning. Still, I’m confident I’ll get my share of spiritual reality in the smaller sense on my long march to be “most completely one’s self” as I eventually ascend the planes.

As Lovecraft was something of a militant atheist, he was likely closed to any such spiritual ascension - I think that’s why his vision of the cosmos and its cold material indifference horrified him.

Re: Lovecraft vision

[ecosophia]

Lovecraft was indeed a militant atheist, and like most militant atheists, poke a quarter inch under his skin and you'll find a Christian. His vision of the cosmos as cold and vast and horrible is exactly how the cosmos looks if you're a devout Christian and God suddenly isn't there any more. It's because I don't share those preconceptions -- I was never baptized, encountered the basic concepts of Christian theology for the first time in late childhood, and found them bizarre -- that I find a cosmos full of space and light and freedom appealing, not horrifying.