H. P. Lovecraft and the Black Magickal Tradition by John L. Steadman

Author:John L. Steadman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633410008
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser

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LOVECRAFT AND THE AFRO-HAITIAN VODOU CULTS

The Vodou cults (variant spellings of the word “vodou” include Voodoo, Vaudou, Vodu, and, more recently, in Haiti, Hoodoo) have expanded in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries into a complex magickal system that has become, in the opinion of scholars like Reginald Crosley, a full-fledged religious system. Contemporary Vodou practices do not merely incorporate the rich body of primitive African oral traditions and ancestral worship, but also include aspects of Western Catholicism, Native American Shamanism, Western Freemasonry and Apollonian magickal practices, and, as Crosley argues, elements of Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam as well. As such, Vodou can be understood as uniquely synergetic in a way that other magickal systems are decidedly not. Yet, like other black magickal systems, Vodou encourages its followers and initiates to pursue knowledge and power for its own sake as they venture beyond ordinary reality into alternate dimensions and universes.

As we have seen, H. P. Lovecraft's knowledge of black magick and witchcraft was scanty at best, and clearly did not extend to the Vodou cults or any other of the non-Western, non-European Dionysian cults. Although Lovecraft visited New Orleans on at least one occasion and likely engaged in his usual antiquarian explorations and pursuits, there is no evidence that he ever set foot in an establishment that offered Vodou products or paraphernalia for sale. And not surprisingly, there is no mention of Vodou or Vodou practices anywhere in Lovecraft's voluminous correspondence. Nevertheless, there are significant similarities between Lovecraftian magick and the magickal practices of the modern Vodou cults.

To begin with, there is the fact that the crisis of possession is central to both the Vodou cults and the Lovecraftian Mythos. In many of Lovecraft's major works, the protagonists are “possessed” by extraterrestrial entities and their bodies and minds are utilized for nefarious or alien purposes. Likewise, Vodou practitioners are “possessed” by extraterrestrial entities and the bodies and minds of those who undergo this experience are at least temporarily under the control of alien beings. Secondly, Lovecraft's philosophical and metaphysical views of the cosmos are remarkably in accord with the Vodoun theories of the pan-psychic field. Although Lovecraft, unlike the Vodoun thinkers, would not have acknowledged the likelihood of any type of personal immortality or the possibility of an afterlife, Lovecraft and the Vodoun thinkers share a view of the universe that is remarkably akin to the paradoxical discoveries of relativity theory and quantum mechanics that characterize much of contemporary scientific thought. Finally, certain key entities in the Cthulhu Mythos, particularly the serpent god Yig, are eerily similar to major entities in the three Vodou pantheons.

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