/lit/ - Literature

>>22638157
>Did Lovecraft really believe in all that talk of some god-like beings that are enshrouded beyond perception and understanding?
No.

>>22638157
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Supernatural_Horror_in_Literature

>>22638157
no he was an atheist

>>22638523
Shut the fuck up you piece of reddit trash faggot

>>22638537
you seem upset

>>22638157
no he just had nightmares about it

He read Theosophy and perhaps some other occult sources for creative inspiration, but didn’t seem to believe any of it. You can find letters he sent to fellow writers and friends talking about the joy he had of finding some of their books (which he regarded as kooky, but still great source material) on stuff like Lemuria, Atlantis, ancient root-races and Cyclopean beings on Earth, I think he mentioned A.P. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism, Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled or some sources of her speaking about the legendary Book of Dzyan, etc. He used the occult as gristle for his mill but didn’t (consciously) seem to believe it. I believe he was also inspired by dreams of his. The fictional cosmology of his focuses more on the malevolent or utterly alien and apathetic-to-humanity cosmic forces, sort of like an inverted Theosophy focusing more on malicious cosmic God-like beings like the Great Old Ones who themselves inspire and control lesser yet still monstrous and powerful alien beings for their ends, who themselves are controlling and influencing occultists, tribal shamans, and deranged cults on Earth for their ends. This is basically the negative counterpart of the more positive Theosophical cosmology based on Hinduism and Buddhism that would have a hierarchy of something like Parabrahman, Brahman, the Devas or Gods, Avataras, Rishis, Munis, Siddhis, etc. (or the “Hierarchy” on Earth, “Ascended Masters”, etc. all doing the will of God). But it was all for fun for Lovecraft, he was an atheist.

When you branch out into some 20th-century conspiracy and occult literature, there’s a strange vein of some people taking Lovecraft rather seriously, or independently talking about similar things. Kenneth Grant is one, who seems to have viewed Lovecraft as an unconscious channel. Robert Anton Wilson was another except in a much more half-joking half-serious way, as he was about most things. The part you mention about us being “fed on” by higher beings/cosmic forces/processes and trapped in this cycle by them also shows up in:

—Robert Monroe’s books (the famous OBE investigator guy), with “loosh” as the immaterial energy of emotions and thoughts that humans are “fed” on for and as if farmed on Earth for
—Carlos Castaneda’s books (where our very awareness/perception is claimed to be “food for the Eagle” upon death, who chews us up and spits us out back into another form, all life on Earth being made by it to feed itself, and not a literal Eagle but a term to describe this demiurgic being)
—Gurdjieff’s conception of humanity as “food for the moon,” being made by vast cosmic purposes for transforming energy on the surface of Earth needed for the development of the universe, with the moon as the major controller of us and absorbing the souls of the spiritually undeveloped upon death, as well as Monroe’s “loosh” being called “askokin” in his Beelzebub’s Tales

if you want some interesting reading