âCthulhu Gnosisâ: Monstrosity, Selfhood, and Secular Re-Enchantment in Lovecraftian Occultural Practice

Justin Woodman

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Chapter 12 âCthulhu Gnosisâ

Monstrosity, Selfhood, and Secular Re-Enchantment in Lovecraftian Occultural Practice

äºFictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination

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Justin Woodman

Justin Woodman
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Page Range:: 289â313

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004466005_014

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Taking as its focus contemporary Chaos magical practice, this paper interrogates the occultural uses of Howard Phillips Lovecraftâs fictional âCthulhu Mythosâ, initially exploring the development of forms of âLovecraftianâ esotericism by way of a) themes of epistemological and ontological indeterminacy, and b) forms of secular re-enchantment, which are equally evident in Lovecraftâs fiction and in the theory and practice of Chaos magic and its historical antecedents. This is contextualised by way of ethnographic vignettes drawn from the authorâs research amongst âThe Haunters of the Darkâ: a sodality of UK-based Chaos magicians who employed Lovecraftâs fictive universes as the basis of their magical practice. Practitionersâ accounts of the application of Lovecraftâs âCthulhu Mythosâ as a process of âbecoming monstrousâ are subsequently theorised as an interiorization of alterity and uncertainty, by way of an experiential self-identification with Lovecraftâs imaginary monsters â employing the fiction of the âCthulhu Mythosâ to facitliate guided visualisations, esoteric dreamwork and ritualised possession - to attain âCthulhu Gnosisâ: the production of altered states of consciousness, wherein âThe Haunters of the Darkâ encountered and internalised the worlds and entities of Lovecraftâs fiction as a means of reconstructing and reshaping selfhood in ways receptive to the shifting and alienating social, economic and cultural topographies of modernity. These occultural deployments of Lovecraftâs fictional monsters are thus framed as forms of re-enchantment responsive to a perception and experience of modernity (and its attendant secular cosmologies governed by seemingly vast, inconceivable and inhuman forces of transnational consumer capitalism) as having itself become monstrously âLovecraftianâ.

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Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination

ä¸ç¼ï¼ Aries Book Series, å·ï¼ 30

ISBN:: 9789004466005

åºçç¤¾:: Brill

å°å·åºçæ¥æ:: 13 Sep 2021

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Chapter 12 âCthulhu Gnosisâ

Monstrosity, Selfhood, and Secular Re-Enchantment in Lovecraftian Occultural Practice

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Chapter 12 âCthulhu Gnosisâ

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