Category: Review

Rainbringer (2021) by Edward M. Erdelac

If you stay in Haiti long enough and really mingle with the people, the time will come when you hear secret societies mentioned. Nobody, of course, sits down and gives lectures on these dread gatherings. It is not in any open way that you come to know. You hear a little thing here and see a little thing there that seem to have no connection at first. It takes a long time and a mass of incidents before it all links up and gains significance.
—Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse (1938)

William Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929) was the book that launched the craze for Haitian Vodun and zombies in the United States, the direct inspiration for the film White Zombie (1932) and stories in pulp magazines like Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror such as August Derleth’s “The House in the Magnolias” (ST Jun 1932). Lovecraft read Seabrook’s book on a visit to Florida, and seems to have largely lost interest in voodoo, though he praised tales like “Mother of Serpents” (1936) by Robert Bloch.

Seabrook, however, was not the only one writing about African diaspora religions or African-American folklore. Zora Neale Hurston seems to have completely missed Lovecraft and his immediate contemporaries. In part, this was just a matter of timing; Lovecraft was dead by ’38 when Hurston’s book on Haitian Vodun, Tell My Horse, was finally published. In part, it was a reflection of segregation: as a Black woman, Hurston struggled seemingly her whole life against the prejudices of white editors and white audiences. Voodoo as a theme for Mythos fiction did not die off after the ’30s, but the Hollywood tropes of pins in dolls and zombies as reanimated corpses tended to overshadow authentic anthropology and folklore research.

Zora Neale Hurston never really got a chance to go up against the Mythos. Not until 2021, when Edward M. Erdelac, author of the Merkabah Rider series, published Rainbringer. In this episodic novel, Erdelac wears together fact and fiction, interpolating encounters with the Mythos into Hurston’s already busy and adventurous life. Her particular career of poking her nose into hoodoo, Vodun, and other systems of belief provide a good excuse for her to stumble across the much weirder cults and entities of the Cthulhu Mythos, and the stories are inflected in their interpretation and depiction of the Mythos to reflect Hurston’s own writings.

Erdelac took pains to present a period-accurate but not discriminatory view of Black people during the period; the word “Negro” was in common use at the time, without any pejorative association. Gullah speech is presented with fair accuracy. Most of Hurston’s investigations into insular African-American communities are played straight, and the joy of exploration and discovery, the use of her wits and charisma, her respect for the people she meets and their beliefs all lend verisimilitude to the stories. Then things get a little Lovecraftian.

“An Old One?” I said, folding my arms, and thought to myself, Lord God and Papa Yig, not these motherfuckers again.
—Ed Erdelac, “Ekwensu’s Lullaby” in Rainbringer 57

Yig, in the context of the fictional Zora Neale Hurston’s career, is cast as her hoodoo patron, the figure who presided over her initiation into the occult. Yet stories like “Ekwensu’s Lullaby” are not an effort to cast African diaspora beliefs into a Mythos mold; rather, it is a story about African diaspora religion and strange survivals in an out-of-the-way place, in a universe that is Mythos-inflected.

This is much more believable, and therefore more interesting, than if Zora Neale Hurston were trying to fight Cthulhu by her lonesome. The approach is reminiscent of “Jeroboam Henley’s Debt” (1982) by Charles R. Saunders, “Hairwork” (2015) by Gemma Files, and Ring Shout (2020) by P. Djèlí Clark in that the stories are very much grounded in the African-American and African-Caribbean experience, the echoes of slavery and discrimination that have left their mark on bodies, minds, souls, and cultures. In a system of belief that already accepts the supernatural, the existence of Yig & co. doesn’t have the same sanity-blasting effect.

Erdelac was strongly inspired by Hurston’s fieldwork in writing these stories, as he mentioned in his interview Cthulhu in the Deep South on Tentacle Talk, but there is a second vein trying to balance out in these stories, and that’s weaving Zora’s adventures into the Mythos with the skill of a pasticheur. If the whole book had only been about Hurston’s dealings with Yig as her patron, that might have been interesting but slight from a Mythos perspective. However, she also encounters the Dreamlands, the “King in Yeller,” Tsathoggua, and other eldritch entities. Which sometimes adds spice to the gumbo, and sometimes is a bit of an overpowering flavor.

The strength of each episode is really in how well the story hangs together more than how many references to Hurston’s work of Lovecraft’s Mythos he can stir in. The more spiritual and dream-like episodes are balanced out with shoot-’em-up pulp action sequences, and the balance of elements shifts from episode to episode, reflecting changes in both Hurston’s real life and whatever Mythos threat Erdelac wants to put her against next. The result isn’t an exhaustive Mythos biography of Zora Neale Hurston, by any means. I could easily see Erdelac writing another story that fits in between the existing episodes, as the plot occurs to him.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Ghosts and Monsters (1982) by Mark Falstein & Tony Gleeson

Ghosts and monsters have long been favorite topics for many children, so this Getting Into Literature set has a real built-in motivation factor. The art aids understanding, and the text is set in type (rather than hand-lettered in the traditional comic-book style). These features make GHOSTS AND MONSTERS enjoyable and easy to read.
—Teacher’s Guide: Ghosts and Monsters

Imagine yourself in a public middle school in the United States of America, circa the 1980s or early 1990s. A genuine chalk board, rows of desks, an old-style projector. It’s the fall; leaves are falling from the trees, t-shirts are giving way to long sleeves and jackets. The classroom might be decorated with black and orange chains of paper, a cut-out of a witch, a pumpkin with a crooked smile drawn on in sharpie. The teacher passes out a stack of worksheets—but what is this? Comics? Horror comics?

Ghosts and Monsters was published by Educational Insights in 1982. The kind of boxed set of teaching materials that found there way easily into hundreds or thousands of classrooms across the country. The contents were pretty basic: a book of spirit masters for duplicating worksheets (crosswords, etc.) in an age before photocopying became ubiquitous; a brief teacher’s guide with suggested questions and activities; and a package of comic booklets which adapted a dozen tales of horror and weird fiction to comics:

  1. “Feathertop” (1852) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  2. “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid” (1894) by H. G. Wells
  3. “The Bottle Imp” (1891) by Robert Louis Stevenson
  4. “Man-Size in Marble” (1887) by Edith Nesbit
  5. “The Legend of Gwendolyn Ranna” (1982?) by Frank Maltesi
  6. “The Ghost-Eater” (1924) by C. M. Eddy
  7. “The King is Dead, Long Live the King” (1928) by Mary Coleridge
  8. “The Secret of the Growing Gold” (1892) by Bram Stoker
  9. “The Gorgon’s Head” (1899) by Gertrude Bacon
  10. “The Outsider” (1926) by H. P. Lovecraft
  11. “The Stranger” (1909) by Ambrose Bierce
  12. “The Crewe Ghost” after Oscar Wilde [based on “The Canterville Ghost” (1887)]

It’s an odd mix. Many of these works were in the public domain, while the others were largely drawn from the pulps or (more likely) horror anthologies. “The Legend of Gwendolyn Ranna” by Frank Maltesi is a bit of an enigma, though the name is associated with several other brief legendary tales that have popped up in other educational materials; this may well be its first (and only) publication.

Most of the interest is on the comics themselves. The Teacher’s Guide credits Mark Falstein (well-known author of fiction for young adults) for selection and adaptation, and freelance artist Tony Gleeson for the illustrations. Each comic booklet is basically one large folded page, which gives four pages to tell and illustrate a complete story—a not-inconsiderable task!

The results tend to less grue and taboo than young horror fans might hope for. These were the last generation of “monster kids” that might pick up Famous Monsters of Filmland (1958-1983) on the stand, but they might still find a Helen Hoke-edited horror anthology in the school library, or pick up something from Scholastic involving vampires, werewolves, or bug-eyed aliens at the school book fair. Yet I have to wonder how many kids sat down one day and read Lovecraft for the first time as part of a school assignment—

And then fill out the worksheet afterwards!

Actually, there were two bits of Lovecraft tucked away in this package. C. M. Eddy, Jr.’s “The Ghost-Eater” (Weird Tales Apr 1924) was one of the stories that Lovecraft had somewhat revised for Eddy, and sold to Weird Tales editor Edwin Baird. As Lovecraft put it:

I have, I may remark, been able to secure Mr. Baird’s acceptance of two tales by my adopted son Eddy, which he had before rejected. Upon my correcting them, he profest himself willing to pint them in early issues; they being intitul’d respectively “Ashes”, and “The Ghost-Eater”.
—H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, 28 Oct 1923, Letters to James F. Morton 57

How much of it Lovecraft actually wrote is a matter for debate; S. T. Joshi in Revisions and Collaborations notes the plot and some of the dialogue seems very typical of Eddy, while much of the prose reads like Lovecraft. In any event, it’s a genuine rarity. While many of Lovecraft’s tales have been adapted to comics, his revisions and collaborations are much less likely to receive the same treatment. This is certainly the first, and possibly the only adaptation of “The Ghost-Eater” to comics.

Given the limitations of space, the monochromatic printing, and the incredibly tight scripts, credit has to be given to Tony Gleeson for doing a very decent job on the art. Stuck with a very boxy framing setup, he nevertheless manages to use perspective shots and shadowed silhouettes to hint and convey something of a horror-mood. While the Teacher’s Guide suggests that the typeset text will make it easier to read, I suspect the real issue was that the budget for this project didn’t extend to hiring a letterer.

When we consider Lovecraft as something more than a cult figure, but as a writer who has entered the canon of world literature—this is a good example of what that looks like. Not necessarily fancy, expensive editions that can only be seen and enjoyed by a few, but stories that penetrate into common educational materials, hitting the masses when they’re young and becoming part of the foundation of reading. Ghosts and Monsters is a core sample of how Lovecraft came to the masses.

It’s a bit of history easily overlooked and easily lost. These were sold for classroom use, not to the public, and not preserved in libraries. How many classes went through Ghosts and Monsters before the comics were too worn for further use, or lost and displaced? Who preserves old worksheets from childhood days? These are deliberately ephemeral products, designed to last a few seasons and then be replaced as educational guidelines shift or a company needs to sell a new product. Edutainment marches on.

(Here are the answer keys to the worksheets if you need them.)

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Requiem for a Siren: Women Poets of the Pulps (2024) ed. Jaclyn Youhana Garver & Michael W. Phillips, Jr.

Dorothy Quick was one of almost three hundred women who published fiction and poetry in sci-fi and horror pulp magazines before 1960.

Have you heard of her?
—”Introduction: A Place for Wild Women” in Requiem for a Siren (2024) 1

The pulp reprint anthology has long had a place in genre fiction. In the 1920s and 30s, the Not at Night series and its imitators mined Weird Tales to package pulp stories for audiences in hardback. In the 1960s and 1970s, as fantasy and science fiction boomed, authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith found a strange afterlife alongside the paperback reprints of The Lord of the Rings and Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan and John Carter of Mars novels. Editors like Helen Hoke, Margaret Ronan, and Betty M. Owen were not above reprinting pulp tales to fill out their anthologies for youngsters, and as copies of pulps decayed and rose in price, anthologists like Sam Moskowitz and Peter Haining saw a market in reprinting classic tales from the pulps.

They were right. There was a market for repackaging the best of Weird Tales from the 30s in hardback or paperback, and readers were eager to read the science fiction of the 40s, or themed anthologies of evil plants, drug use, vampire tales. Anthologies proliferated, and continue to proliferate—because now many of the contents of those original pulps have entered the public domain, their text has been scanned, transcribed, and posted online. Every laptop is capable of word processing, layout, and desktop publishing work that used to take an entire office, or at least a some dedicated space in the garage; print-on-demand publishing and ebooks mean it has never been easier for free content to be collated, packaged, and presented for sale at prices that range from the bargain-basement for a cheap ebook with content pulled from Wikipedia to a substantial sum for a high-end hardback, like Weird Tales: The Best of the 1920s (2024, Centipede Press).

The question presented is one of value: what have the editors and publishers provided in their anthology that makes it worth the reader’s hard-earned dollars? Does it save them time or effort? Is there some unique insight provided in the way of explanatory essays? Or is it merely a luxury good, designed to be enjoyed as an aesthetic experience for its own sake, and priced accordingly?

Personally, I tend to be leery of cheap pulp reprints in the print-on-demand era. The return on investment for the cheapest work seems to be low, so the folks attracted to that market are either bottomfeeders or rank amateurs, and the products reflect that. Aim a little higher, however, at the level of some of the self-published scholars and small independent presses, however, and some much more interesting books start to emerge.

Night Fears: Weird Tales in Translation (2023, Paradise Editions), edited by Eric Williams, is a collection of the non-English weird fiction that was translated and published in Weird Tales during the 20s and 30s, with explanatory essays and notes on the works. While you could go out and find the individual stories, these aren’t works that were ever published together before, and the essay adds history and context to why and how they appeared in the Unique Magazine.

So too, the women of Weird Tales, who so often never got collections of their own during their lifetimes when their male counterparts did, are finally getting some posthumous recognition in print. Today, those who want to read Francis Stevens can pick up The Citadel of Fear (2022, Flame Tree) with scholarly introduction by Melanie R. Anderson; Everil Worrell’s The Canal and Other Weird Stories (2023, Weird House) with introduction by S. T. Joshi; Greye la Spina’s Fettered and Other Tales of Terror (2023, From Beyond Press), with introduction by Michael W. Phillips, Jr.; Dorothy Quick’s The Witch’s Mark and Others (2024Sarnath Press), also introduced by Joshi.

Collecting these disparate stories from half-forgotten authors and bringing them together with a bit of information about their lives and works produces a whole that is more than the sum of the parts, because it effectively presents these women authors of weird fiction in the same way that their male counterparts have often been presented. In effect, it gives readers a chance to get to know an entire body of work by an author, instead of randomly running across a story or two, often presented without context.

Requiem for a Siren: Women Poets of the Pulps (2024, From Beyond Press) is representative of the best of this impulse to not just reproduce the work of women pulpsters in danger of being forgotten, but to arrange and comment on them in a way that highlights both the publishing history of poetry in pulp magazines and the lives of these women. While many of the poems are taken from Weird Tales, including “The Woods of Averoigne” (1934) by Grace Stillman and “The Eldritch One” (1948) by Pauline Booker, the collection also includes science-fiction poetry from the pages of Amazing Stories and other pulps. Much of the background information for the women is credited to Terence E. Hanley’s Tellers of Weird Tales blog, which is good as Hanley has put in tremendous work into his biographies of the authors and artists of Weird Tales.

Full disclosure at this point:

I would like to thank Bobby Derie, proprietor of the blog Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein (deepcuts.blog), for his invaluable assistance in researching the introduction to this chapter, and Timaeus Bloom for reading an early draft.
—Requiem for a Siren (2024) 1

My help consisted solely of a few brief discussions on social media, to try and help provide a few sources; I had no input into the selection or editing process. The final product is due to the hard work of the editors Haclyn Youhana Garver & Michael W. Phillips Jr., who made an effort to present a representative core sample of poetry by women in the fantastic pulps, covering not just multiple genres and themes, but tone and mood. The black humor of Lilith Lorraine’s “Mutation” to the fey rhythms of Frances Elliott’s “The Hill Woman,” the utter silliness of Julia Boynton Green’s “Radio Revelations” to the somber antique mystery of Alice I’Anson’s “Teotihuacan.” The brief biographies and introductory essays in between sections are functional and sometimes insightful.

Is it a perfect volume? I would have preferred an index of titles and/or first lines, to assist in finding a particular poem again without having to flip through the whole book. The selection is overall solid, but certain names predominate—as was the case in Weird Tales. Poets like Leah Bodine Drake, Dorothy Quick, and Cristel Hastings dominate a bit. If I had my druthers, I would have included more fan poetry, include Virginia “Nanek” Anderson, and perhaps Lilith Lorraine’s “The Acolytes” (1946) or “The Cup-Bearer” (1951)—but that would have been going outside of their own self-circumscribed ambit. This was a look at the women pulp poets, not all genre poetry from the period.

Requiem for a Siren: Women Poets of the Pulps provides value for the money. More than just saving the reader the time of flipping through thousands of pages of pulp magazines and reading a vast amount of dross, this curated collection of poetry is presented in a way to highlight not just some of the best weird and science fiction poetry of the period, but to highlight the women poets as well.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Eldritch Witchcraft: A Grimoire of Lovecraftian Magick (2023) by Amentia Mari & Orlee Stewart

We are living in the only period in history in which it is considered fashionable to be a witch. Given this complete public acceptance, an understandable tendency towards fadism develops. The once-stigmatizing label of “witch” has become a title of positive intrigue and has attained a status never before realized.
—Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Witch (1989), 1

In his book The Triumph of the Moon (1999), Ronald Hutton traces the history of modern pagan witchcraft, and how a combination of factors and personalities in the late 19th/early 20th century—the shift to urban living which caused a romantic attitude toward nature and rural areas, the spiritual awakenings that weakened the grip of Christianity and encouraged the spread of new religious movements and ceremonial magic, the anthropological re-evaluation of myth in George Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890) which inspired The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) by Margaret A. Murray—all came together in the mid-century as individual practitioners like Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente shaped the core practices that would characterize Wicca and other modern pagan witchcraft systems.

Lovecraftian witchcraft is an interesting concept. H. P. Lovecraft’s views on witchcraft were largely shaped by Murray’s Witch-Cult Hypothesis as set forth in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe; there’s no evidence he read her later book The God of the Witches, and while Lovecraft had some understanding of the history of ceremonial magic based on Éliphas Lévi’s The History of Magic (1922, trans. by A. E. Waite), he was never an occultist or member of any group like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. When asked by one Salem witch descendant for magical secrets hinted at in his fiction, Lovecraft had to politely confess he made it all up. While Lovecraft made much of the Salem witch diaspora in his stories, connecting characters like Keziah Mason (“The Dreams in the Witch House”), Joseph Curwen (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), and the founders of Dunwich (“The Dunwich Horror”) among others with the cult, that religion is uniformly depicted as dark, secretive, and often violent and malevolent. Keziah Mason even sacrifices children, repeating the old blood libel.

Most of Lovecraft’s contemporaries and immediate followers were not much better. Robert E. Howard’s Stregoicavar in Turkey in “The Black Stone” (1931) is a degenerate, alien, bloodthirsty religion. Henry Kuttner’s “The Salem Horror” (1937) strongly echoes “The Dreams in the Witch House,” with Abigail Prinn standing in for Keziah Mason. The image of the witch as a positive figure for female empowerment hadn’t really formed yet, though it was on its way with novels like Conjure Wife (1943) by Fritz Leiber. Over the decades, as the image of witchcraft shifted, Lovecraftian media often shifted to reflect the syntax of the time.

When exactly modern witches began to incorporate Lovecraftian elements into their work is a matter of debate. Doreen Valiente’s first book, Where Witchcraft Lives (1962), includes an invocation of the Old Ones during a full-moon ritual, which Hutton notes is nowhere in Gerald Gardner’s Writings and is very Lovecraftian (321). Any prospective witch who picked up Anton LaVey’s The Compleat Witch (1971; later reprinted as The Satanic Witch), could have used the Lovecraftian rites presented for the Church of Satan in The Satanic Rituals (1972) a year later. Kenneth Grant, one of the heirs of Aleister Crowley, threaded the needle of working references to witchcraft and Lovecraft into his system of ceremonial magick in The Magical Revival (1972). In 1977, Schlangekraft published the Necronomicon by Simon, which included a very Murray-esque witch cult into its Lovecraftian version of magical history as well.

So from the mid-to-late 1970s at least, modern pagan witches have had a vast amount of Lovecraftian occultism and lore to potentially draw on and incorporate into their own practices, if they so choose. Most of them do not. Daniel Harms and John W. Gonce in The Necronomicon Files noted that Doreen Valiente was familiar with Lovecraft and Lovecraftian occultism because she published an article on it: “Necronomicon—the Ultimate Grimoire?” that appeared in Prediction magazine (Apr 1982), which referenced a few of Lovecraft’s occult connections but gave little shrift to the Necronomicon as a genuine reality. As Harms & Gonce put it:

Most present-day Wiccans won’t give the Necronomicon (Simon or anyone else’s) the time of day. Other members of the Neopagan community also seem to give the Simon book short shift. Many of them see themselves as followers of the Light just as much as Christians do, and have no use for a “dark” grimoire. (209)

Modern pagan witchcraft in general has sometimes been derided as “cafeteria paganism” where practitioners pick and choose elements of their personal religion, and replaced any effort toward authenticity with fantasy, but the high degree of individualism and adaptability is a genuine strength for the movement as a whole. There is no hard canon for most would-be witches to get hung up on, and syncretization of Wiccan practices with other themes, or the incorporation of different magical and ceremonial practices into a Wiccan framework is fairly common.

Which brings us to Eldritch Witchcraft: A Grimoire of Lovecraftian Magick (2023) by Amentia Mari & Orlee Stewart. This slim (38 pages) POD-published workbook is relatively light on Lovecrafian lore (a 3-page essay on “Eldritch Witchcraft” that discusses witches in some of Lovecraft’s stories, and mentions influential occultist Austin Osman Spare), and the rest of the book consists of magical recipes, rituals, sigils, and illustrations divided into five chapters:

  • Rite to Become An Eldritch Witch: A Lovecraft Mythos-themed rite for solo initiation.
  • The Eldritch Candle Prayer of Chaos: A variation on a prayer candle, with Lovecraftian trappings.
  • Calling the Outer Gods: Sigils and incantations to invoke various Lovecraftian entities (Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, and Nahab (Keziah Mason)).
  • Spells of Yog-Sothothery: Collection of recipes and charms: a ritual to consecrate your altar and tools, creating an amulet consecrated to Nyarlathotep, compounding a “witch’s unguent” of unspecified purpose, making the incense of Zkauba, making a dream pillow associated with Keziah Mason, and brewing dream tea. Many of the materials require the information from the previous two sections.
  • Heart of Stars Meditation: A meditation intended to provide contact with alien intelligences via automatic writing; uses some of the materials in the “Spells of Yog-Sothery.” Ends with a brief personal account by Orlee Stewart of her experiences using this ritual, including contact with an entity that she speculates might be Nyogtha from “The Salem Horror.”

As a workbook for solo witches go, this book presumes a level of familiarity with the terminology and basic practices of contemporary witchcraft. Probably many Wiccans could fold it into their practice fairly easily; the gist is basic enough and familiar enough to magical practices by Austin Osman Spare, Thelemites, etc. that many occultists would have little difficulty adapting it to their own practices as well (though the Heart of Stars Meditation, it should be added, is written only for women in its current form).

Perhaps surprisingly, Eldritch Witchcraft doesn’t borrow heavily from Aleister Crowley, Kenneth Grant, or the Simon Necronomicon; instead it takes inspiration from the Necronomicon (1978) edited by George Hay, which is presented as translations from a fictitious medieval grimoire that is claimed to be the original from which Lovecraft derived the Necronomicon in his fiction.

Right: Hay Necronomicon, showing various ritual gestures. Left: Eldritch Witchcraft, showing a subset of the same gestures.
Right: Hay Necronomicon showing the Seal of Yog-Sothoth. Left: Eldritch Witchcraft showing a very similar sigil for Yog-Sothoth.

Many elements from the Hay Necronomicon have proven popular among artists and creators and both been re-used and inspired similar depictions. While the majority of the sigils and all of the artwork in Eldritch Witchcraft is original, it’s clear that the authors were drawing on the Hay Necronomicon when developing some of their practices.

Perhaps most notably absent in Eldritch Witchcraft are the trappings and religious underpinnings commonly associated with contemporary pagan witchcraft; neither is there any extended effort to pronounce Lovecraft’s Mythos as real or his stories as representing literal truth. The direct use of fictional characters in place of more traditional deities and the prominence of Austin Osman Spare suggests the influence of chaos magick, and a certain level of pragmatism: this is a practical collection of spells and materials designed to build one on the other, not a quasi-philosophical work like Phil Hine’s Pseudonomicon or Scott R. Jone’s When the Stars Are Right: Toward An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality. Readers get the how, but not necessarily the why.

Which leaves open the question: what is the viewpoint of a Lovecraftian witch? How would a contemporary pagan witch reconcile their ideology and practice Lovecraft’s Mythos? Which tradition(s), if any, do they blend into their own practices? Eldritch Witchcraft provides one possible answer to the latter, but the other questions the reader will have to figure out for themselves.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“The Message of Thuba Mleen” (1911) by Aleister Crowley

“Was it because of the Desert’s curse?” I asked. And he said, “Partly it was the fury of the Desert and partly the advice of the Emperor Thuba Mleen, for that fearful beast is in some way connected with the Desert on his mother’s side.”
—Lord Dunsany, “The Hashish-Man” in A Dreamer’s Tales (1910)

To properly review “The Message of Thuba Mleen” (1911) by Aleister Crowley requires a little background on Crowley’s relationship with the Cthulhu Mythos and Lovecraft’s references to Crowley in his letters. Since this background is a bit long with numerous quotes, some handy links are provided above to help readers navigate to whichever section they want to go to.

Crowley & Cthulhu

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) never met H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) in life. Crowley was an English occultist, writer, poet, and artist who became notorious both for personal life and his mystical philosophy, which coalesced into the development of Thelema in the early 20th century. After his death, his systems of ceremonial magic and philosophy were developed by various successors and fed into the growing interest during the post-WWII spiritual awakening. Notably, his secretary Kenneth Grant worked to expand and integrate Crowley’s system of “magick” with other esoteric practices and even fictional material from writers like H. P. Lovecraft.

Although Lovecraft seems to have been unacquainted with Crowley’s work, it is evident that both were in touch with a source of power, ‘a prater-human intelligence’, capable of inspiring very real apprehension in the minds of those who were, either through past affiliation or present inclination, on the same wavelength. Whether this Intelligence is called Alhazred or Aiwaz (both names, strangely enough, evoking Arab associations) we are surely dealing with a power that is seeking ingress into the present life cycle of the planet.
— Kenneth Grant, “Dreaming Out of Space” in Man, Myth, and Magic (1970), vol. 23, 3215

Grant wasn’t the first to draw associations between weird fiction and magic; Le Matin des magicians (1960) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier referenced the perceived connection between Arthur Machen’s fiction and his membership in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (an occult organization of which Crowley was also a member). However, Grant did more than draw parallels; in his writing, he directly associated his understanding of Lovecraft’s Mythos into his exegesis of Crowley’s magick.

Fiction, as a vehicle, has often been used by occultists. Bulwer Lytton’s Zanoni and A Strange Story have set many a person on the ultimate Quest. Ideas not acceptable to the everyday mind, limited by prejudice and spoiled by a “bread-winning” education, can be made to slip past the censor, and by means of the novel, the poem, the short story be effectually planted in soil that would otherwise reject or destroy them.

Writers such as Arthur Machen, Brodie Innes, Algernon Blackwood and H. P. Lovecraft are in this category. Their novels and stories contain some remarkable affinities with those aspects of Crowley’s Cult deal with in the present chapter, i.e. themes of resurgent atavisms that lure people to destruction. Whether it be the Vision of Pan, as in the case of Machen and Dunsany, or the even more sinister traffic with denizens of forbidden dimensions, as in the tales of Lovecraft, the reader is plunged into a world of barbarous names and incomprehensible signs. Lovecraft was unacquainted both with the name and the work of Crowley, yet some of his fantasies reflect, however, distortedly, the salient themes of Crowley’s Cult. The following comparative table will show how close they are:
— Kenneth Grant, The Magical Revival (1972), 114

Grant then followed with a table of correspondences he perceived between Crowley and Lovecraft. A similar, though distinct, table was also included in the Necronomicon (1977) written by “Simon.” This was the first commercial hoax Necronomicon which was also explicitly a grimoire, something that was intended to mimic other collections of ceremonial magic rites, sigils, lore, etc. intended for use by practicing occultists. The introduction by “Simon” leaned heavily on the supposed correspondences between Lovecraft’s Mythos and Crowley’s magick.

We can profitably compare the essence of most of Lovecraft’s short stories with the basic themes of Crowley’s unique system of ceremonial Magick. While the latter was a sophisticated psychological structure, intended to bring the initiate into contact with his higher Self, via a process of individuation that is active and dynamic (being brought about by the “patient” himself) as opposed to the passive depth analysis of the Jungian adepts. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos was meant for entertainment. Scholars, of course, are able to find higher, ulterior motives in Lovecraft’s writings, as can be done with any manifestation of Art.
— “Simon” (Peter Levenda), Necronomicon (1977) xii

The ceremonial magic presented in the Simon Necronomicon was distinct from that in Grant’s system derived from Crowley; though they shared some common references in Lovecraft and Crowley’s respective mythos & magick. This unexpected complexity invited comparison, and sometimes fusion. From a metafictional perspective, it became the beginning of a parallel body of literature alongside the growing body of Cthulhu Mythos fiction: a Lovecraftian occult scene. One that started to flower when another Necronomicon, edited by George Hay, was published in 1978:

I had also been reading the works of Aleister Crowley—collected by my friend Roger Staples of Michigan University—and found the parallels so striking that I owndered if Lovecraft and Crowley had been acquainted.

Derleth was positive that they had never met—in fact, he doubted whether Lovecraft had ever heard of ‘the Great Beast’. If he had, Derleth seemed to think, he would have dismissed him as a charlatan and a poseur.
— Colin Wilson, “Introduction,” The Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names (1978), 14

Wilson refers to a meeting with Derleth in 1967; later in the same introduction, he cites Grant’s merging of Lovecraftian Mythos with Crowleyian magick. The introduction was written with all the care of a good hoax; starting from a basis of facts and gradually weaving in fictional elements, to build up to the idea that Lovecraft’s Necronomicon wasn’t just a fictional book, but had been based on a genuine occult document from the Middle East—which is what the Hay Necronomicon was presented as.

So as the 1980s dawned and the Simon Necronomicon became available in an affordable paperback edition to grace New Age shelves forevermore, would-be Lovecraftian occultists had at least three separate sources to draw upon. All of them tried to tie H. P. Lovecraft to Aleister Crowley. The two men, who had never met in life, found elements of their legends entwined posthumously.

With the advent of the internet, it became easier for misinformation to spread. Colin Law’s Necronomicon Anti-FAQ (1995) was, like Wilson’s introduction, just a bit of fun—but it fostered certain misconceptions about Crowley and Lovecraft, despite repeated debunkings:

In 1918 Crowley was in New York. As always, he was trying to establish his literary reputation, and was contributing to The International and Vanity Fair. Sonia Greene was an energetic and ambitious Jewish emigre with literary ambitions, and she had joined a dinner and lecture club called “Walker’s Sunrise Club” (?!); it was there that she first encountered Crowley, who had been invited to give a talk on modern poetry. […]

In 1918 she was thirty-five years old and a divorcee with an adolescent daughter. Crowley did not waste time as far as women were concerned; they met on an irregular basis for some months.

In 1921 Sonia Greene met the novelist H.P. Lovecraft, and in that same year Lovecraft published the first novel where he mentions Abdul Alhazred (“The Nameless City”). In 1922 he first mention the Necronomicon (“The Hound”). On March 3rd. 1924, H.P. Lovecraft and Sonia Greene married.

We do not know what Crowley told Sonia Greene, and we do not know what Sonia told Lovecraft. 

Edwin C. Walker (1849-1931) was a radical liberal who founded the Sunrise Club in 1889; this interracial club held dinner meetings at which speakers were invited to discuss on a wide range of topics. According to L. Sprague de Camp’s H. P. Lovecraft: A Biography (1975), Sonia joined the club c. 1917 (160-161); and there is a reference to Sonia’s membership in one of Lovecraft’s letters (LFF 1.83). I have yet to find any reference to Crowley addressing or attending the club. Given he lived in the United States from 1914-1919 and was often living in New York City at the time, it is possible, if not necessarily plausible that he could have attended some evening.

There is no reference to Crowley in any of Sonia’s surviving letters, essays, or autobiography; no mention of grimoires or the Necronomicon. The idea that Lovecraft got the idea of the Necronomicon from Crowley by way of Sonia is unsupported by any evidence and relies on the idea that the Necronomicon bears some similarity to Crowley’s The Book of the Law—the same supposition pushed by Grant and Simon, among others. It is rather telling that nothing in Crowley’s own writings supports his meeting with Sonia either, and that all references to the idea of their meeting ultimately derive from Low. For more on this and other Necronomicon-related hoaxes and occult history, see The Necronomicon Files by Daniel Harms & John W. Gonce III.

It’s easy to go on, although facts and fiction get furiously muddled. Despite Grant’s assertion that Lovecraft had never heard of Crowley and Derleth’s assertion (as related by Wilson) that Lovecraft may not have heard of Crowley and certainly never met him, fictional meetings between the writer of the weird and the prophet of Thelema have increasingly featured in books and comics, one notable example being The Arcanum (2007) by Thomas Wheeler. Yet my favorite hypothetical meeting is a 1927 chess game between Aleister Crowley and Wilbur Whateley:

South Florida Sentinel, 27 Aug 2000 (74)

If Derleth did tell Colin Wilson that he doubted Lovecraft had ever heard of Crowley and this wasn’t another part of the hoax, then he was badly mistaken and should’ve known better. Lovecraft’s letters give considerable detail on his thoughts regarding Aleister Crowley.

H. P. Lovecraft on Aleister Crowley

The Crowley cutting is interesting. What has the poor devil-worshipper been up to now? When I was in Leominster (near Athol) with Cook & Munn last month, calling on a bookseller, I saw a copy of a book by Crowley—“The Diary of a Drug-Fiend.” The merchant informed me that it has been suppressed by some branch of the powers that be—though he agreed to part with his copy for three thalers. I did not take him up—but I told Belknap about the offer.
–H. P. Lovecraft to Wilfred B. Talman, [8 Jun 1929], LWT 114

In 1929, French authorities deported Crowley, which led to sensationl articles (Why France Finally Kicked Out the High Priest of the Devil Cult), and a similar cutting was no doubt passed to Lovecraft. From this first reference in Lovecraft’s letters, it isn’t clear when exactly the Old Gent from Providence became aware of Aleister Crowley, but the suggestion seems to be that Lovecraft was at least passingly familiar with the magus by the late 1920s, probably from similar newspaper clippings. From Lovecraft’s comments, his friend Frank Belknap Long, Jr. had an interest in Crowley…a greater interest than Lovecraft himself had:

Aleister Crowley still keeps in the news! Don’t take any especial trouble to send the clipping unless you find it lying around, for my interest in the gent is perhaps less intense than Belknap’s.
–H. P. Lovecraft to Wilfred B. Talman, [7 Jul 1929], LWT 116

In 1930, Percy Reginald Stephensen’s The Legend of Aleister Crowley: Being a Study of the Documentary Evidence Relating to a Campaign of Personal Vilification Unparalleled in Literary History was published, ostensibly to ameliorate Crowley’s reputation. Lovecraft apparently caught a few reviews:

And speaking of your precious files—have you seen reviews of the new book about that suave diabolist Aleister Crowley? Belknap sent me a cutting from the Tribune. The biographer—abetted by the reviewer—(Hebert S. Gorman, who claims to have dined with Crowley) tries to depict the reputed ally of Satan as a much-wronged and basically blameless poet—whose eccentricities are merely the harmless foibles of genius!
–H. P. Lovecraft to Wilfred B. Talman, [Sep 1930], LWT 133-134

Years passed. Crowley’s infamy was such that he served as the basis for several fictional magicians, most notably the character of Oliver Haddo in Somerset Maugham’s The Magician (1908); the black magician Oscar Clinton in H. R. Wakefield’s “He Cometh and He Passeth By” (1928) (and later, Apuleius Charlton in “The Black Solitude” (1951)); and, though Lovecraft never lived to see it, Rowley Thorne in the stories fellow Weird Tales writer Manly Wade Wellman, in one such story, “The Letters of Cold Fire” (WT May 1944), Thorne attempts to obtain a copy of the Necronomicon!

Lovecraft had not read Maguham’s novel, but was aware of its association with Crowley:

I’ve never seen the Ramuz & Maugham items. Poor old Crowley figures more than once in fiction—for I believe it is her upon whom the villain in Wakefield’s “He Cometh & He Passeth By” is modelled.
–H. P. Lovecraft to Richard Ely Morse, 22 Mar 1932, LHB 42

“Ramuz” may be a reference to C. F. Ramuz La Regne de l’esprit Malin (1917) tr. by James Whitall as The Reign of the Evil One (1922). The novel seems to draw no direct inspiration from Crowley, being about a stranger (who might be the devil himself) who comes to a small Swiss town and turns it into hell.

Lovecraft did read Wakefield, however, and was appreciative.

Wakefield’s stuff is generally very good, & I’m glad you’ve had an opportunity to read it. Of the tales in the first book my favourites are “He Cometh & He Passeth By” (the villain in which is a sort of caricature of the well-known living mystic & alleged Satanist Aleister Crowley), “The Red Lodge”, “The 17th Hole at Duncaster[“], & “And He Shall Sing”.
–H. P. Lovecraft to Robert Bloch, [22 Jul 1933], LRBO 62

Glad to see the item about Crowley. What a queer duck! He is the original of Clinton in Wakefield’s “They Return at Evening.”
– H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [14 Dec 1933], DS 507

Wakefield is pretty good—I’ll enclose “They Return at Evening” as a loan in the coming shipment. You’l probably find at least four of the tales especially absorbing—“The Red Lodge”, “He Cometh & He Passeth By” based on Aleister Crowley), “And He Shall Sing”, & “The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster.”
–H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [Jan 1934], DS 515

Clark Ashton Smith, when he read the “He Cometh and He Passeth By,” gave his own opinion to Lovecraft:

I read one of the Wakefield stories last night—“He Cometh and he passeth by—” and found it excellent, especially in the suggestion of the diabolic Shadow. Crowley is surely a picturesque character, to have inspired anything like Clinton! I know little about Crowley myself, but wouldn’t be surprised if many of the more baleful elements in his reputation were akin to those in the Baudelaire legend . . .  that is to say, largely self-manufactured or foisted upon him by the credulous bourgeoisie.
– Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, [Jan 1934], DS 520

Lovecraft’s reply reveals something new—an acquaintances of his had actually met Crowley:

As for Aleister Crowley—I rather thought at first that his evil reputation was exaggerated, but Belknap says that Harré has met him & has found him indescribably loathsome in mind, emotions, & conduct. This from Harré is quite a damning indictment, for Belkanp tells me that T. Everett himself is far from squeamish or fastidious in his language & anecdotes when amidst the sort of company that dissolves inhibitions. But Crowley was too much for him. He didn’t relate particulars—but said that the evil magus made him so nauseated that he left abruptly. I guess Crowley is about as callous, unclean-minded, & degenerate a bounder as one can often find at large—though he undoubtedly has talents & scholarship of a very high order. It seems to me I heard that he is in New York now—London won’t stand him any longer. And this reminds me that I forgot to return that old cutting of yours which mentions him—permit me to repair the omission now.
–H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [11 Feb 1934], DS 525

In 1933-1934, Crowley appears to have primarily been in London, dealing with a libel suit (which he lost). I have not discovered anything to suggest he went to New York at this time. However, Harré’s papers contain a folder associated with Aleister Crowley, so they may well have met or interacted at some point. It is also known that Harré and Crowley were published together in The International in 1915, so possibly the meeting occurred over a decade and a half earlier, when Crowley was in New York, and Lovecraft misunderstood.

Smith responded:

Judging from Harré’s reactions, it would appear that Aleister Crowley is a pretty hard specimen. I had discounted the legends on general principles, knowing nothing whatever about the mysterious magus.
–Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, [Mar 1934], DS 536

At this point, Crowley became a reference point for diabolists and occultists of all stripes.

The case of the Boer lady—Mevrouw van de Riet—certainly offers dark food for the imagination. She seems to be a sort of female Aleister Crowley—or a striga, lamia, empusa, or something of the sort.
–H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [18 Nov 1933], DS 479

The subject would next come up when Lovecraft began corresponding with the young fan Emil Petaja in 1935, when the subject turned toward the Black Mass, Satanism, and the occult. Lovecraft was an atheist and materialist, but he had read something of the occult for research purposes over the years, and picked up other tidbits:

In the 1890’s the fashionable decadents liked to pretend that they belonged to all sorts of diabolic Black Mass cults, & possessed all sorts of frightful occult information. The only specimen of this group still active is the rather over-advertised Aleister Crowley . . . . who, by the way, is undoubtedly the original of the villainous character to H. R. Wakefield’s “He Cometh & He Passeth By.”
–H. P. Lovecraft to Emil Petaja, 6 Mar 1935, LWP 414

Petaja apparently pursued the subject with Lovecraft, who responded at greater length, apparently still under the misconception that Crowley was in New York:

Regarding the Black Mass & its devotees—it is really even more repulsive than fascinating. The whole thing is described minutely in Joris-Karl Huysmans’ “Las Bas”—which was posthumously translated into English in 1923 & promptly suppressed. The Black Mass consisted in general of a malevolent & incredibly obscene parody on the Catholic Mass—involving public actions & natural substances almost impossible to describe in print. It originated in the Middle Ages, & has [ev]er since been secretly celebrated by groups of half-crazed, psychologically degenerate sensation-seekers—largely in the great metropolitan centres. Paris, Berlin, London, & New York are probably its greatest centres today. It seems to draw its devotees almost equally from the decadent artist class & from the general run of over-sophisticated psychopathic personalities. Aleister Crowley is a now-elderly Englishman who has dabbled in this sort of thing since his Oxford days. He is really, of course, a sort of maniac or degenerate despite his tremendous mystical scholarship. He has organised secret groups of repulsive Satanic & phallic worship in many places in Europe & Asia, & has been quietly kicked out of a dozen countries. Sooner or later the U.S. (he is now [in] N.Y.) will probably deport him—which will be bad luck for him, since England will probably put him in jail when he is sent home. T. Everett Harré—whom I have met & whom Long knows well—has seen quite a bit of Crowley, & thinks he is about the most loathsome & sinister skunk at large. And when a Rabelaisian soul like Harré (who is never sober!) thinks that of anybody, the person must be a pretty bad egg indeed! Crowley is the compiler of the fairly well-known “Oxford Book of Mystical Verse”, & a standard writer on occult subjects. The story of Wakefield’s which brings him in (under another name, of course) is in the collection “They Return at Evening”, which I’ll lend you if you like.
–H. P. Lovecraft to Emil Petaja, 5 Apr 1935, LWP 420-421

The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1918) was compiled by D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee; but the book contains three poems by Crowley. The reference to “phallic worship” suggests that Harré may have confided something to Lovecraft about Crowley’s practice of sex magick, but this is as close as Lovecraft would ever come to mentioning the subject. Lovecraft apparently lent Petaja a cutting about Crowley:

Keep the review of the O’Donnell book—& here’s another from the Times. I’d like to see the Crowley one again—though there’s no hurry.
– H. P. Lovecraft to Emil Petaja, 31 May 1935, LWP 433

Elliott O’Donnell was a well-known collector of ghost and haunted house stories.

As it turned out, Lovecraft wasn’t the only one who knew someone that knew Crowley:

Conversation with one who has known the fabulous Aleister Crowley must surely have been interesting! I’ve seen several articles on this curious & repulsive entity, & am familiar with the portrayal in “He Cometh & He Passeth By”—though I have not read Maugham’s “Magician.” One other side-light comes from the amiable & picturesque source T. Everett Harré—editor of “Beware After Dark.” Harré has met Crowley; & although himself something of a specialist in corpological diction & anecdote, avers that the Hellish Archimage actually sickened him with the tone & subject-matter of his conversation. And anything or anybody capable of sickening the hard-boiled & perpetually pickled T. Everett must be—in the language of Friend Koenig—pretty strong meat! Crowley is evidently a tragic example of diseased & degenerate development in certain lines. Whether such a mass of psychological putrescence ought to be allowed at large is a sociological question too tough for a layman to tackle. The answer would really depend upon just how much social effect he has. But in any case he is obviously one of those “gamey” specimens who are much pleasanter to read & speculate about than to meet! Of his genius—of a sort—there can be no doubt. I believe he is an important contributor to a standard anthology which I’ve never read—“The Oxford Book of Mystical Verse.”
–H. P. Lovecraft to Richard Ely Morse, 25 Apr 1936, LHB 125

This is Lovecraft’s final published letter on Aleister Crowley—and it’s interesting to note that Lovecraft’s information is entirely second- or third-hand. At no point does he give any indication of having read any of Crowley’s prose or poetry, much less any of his magickal writings. To Lovecraft, Crowley was already essentially a living legend. There is no indication that any information passed between them.

Which doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection between Aleister Crowley and the Lovecraft Mythos.

“The Message of Thuba Mleen” (1911)

Many believe that it was a message from Thuba Mleen, the mysterious emperor of those lands, who is never seen by man, advising that Bethmoora should be left desolate.
—Lord Dunsany, “Bethmoora” in A Dreamer’s Tales (1910)

In 1911, Aleister Crowley was in France, writing prolifically as he finished the books of Thelema, a considerable body of poetry, and the occasional review. One work that particularly caught his imagination was A Dreamer’s Tales (1910) by Lord Dunsany. This was the fourth collection of Dunsany’s fantasies, and a strong influence on H. P. Lovecraft. Crowley was inspired by the book to write a review titled “The Big Stick,” published in his own magazine The Equinox in 1911. Appended to the review is Crowley’s poem “The Message of Thuba Mleen.”

※

The Message of Thuba Mleen

I.

Far beyond Utnar Véhi, far beyond
The Hills of Hap,
Sits the great Emperor crowned with diamond,
Twitching the rosary in his lap—
The rosary whose every bead well-conned
With sleek unblinking bliss
Was once the eyeball of an unborn child of his.

II.

He drank the smell of living blood, that hissed
On flame-white steel.
He tittered while his mother’s limbs were kissed
By the fish-hooks on the Wheel
That shredded soul and shape, more fine than mist
Is torn by the bleak wind
That blows from Kragua and the unknown lands behind

III.

As the last flesh was flicked, he wearied; slaves
From bright Bethmoora
Sprang forward with carved bowls whose crimson craves
Green wine of hashish, black wine of datura,
Like the Yann’s earlier and its latter waves!
These wines soothed well the spleen
Of the Desert‘s bastard brother Thuba Mleen.

IV.

He drank, and eyed the slaves “Mwass, Dagricho, Xu-Xulgulura,
Saddle your mules!” he whispered, “ride full slow
Unto Bethmoora
And bid the people of the city know
That that most ancient snake,
The Crone of Utnar Véhi, is awake.”

V.

Thus twisted he his dagger in the hearts
Of those two slaves
That bore him wine ; for they knew well the arts
Of Utnar Véhi—what the grey Crone craves!—
Knew how their kindred in the vines and marts
Of bright Bethmoora, thus accurst,
Would rush to the mercy of the Desert’s thirst.

VI.

I would that Māna-Yood-Sushāī would lean
And listen, and hear
The tittering, thin-bearded, epicene.
Dwarf, fringed with fear,
Of the Desert’s bastard brother Thuba Mleen!
For He would wake, and scream
Aloud the Word to annihilate the dream

※

Thuba Mleen appeared in two of the stories in A Dreamer’s Tales: “Bethmoora” and “The Hashish Man.” Lovecraft never used the mysterious emperor directly, but Bethmoora appeared in a long list of names and places:

I found myself faced by names and terms that I had heard elsewhere in the most hideous of connexions—Yuggoth, Great Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, R’lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Hastur, Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, Bethmoora, the Yellow Sign, L’mur-Kathulos, Bran, and the Magnum Innominandum—and was drawn back through nameless aeons and inconceivable dimensions to worlds of elder, outer entity at which the crazed author of the Necronomicon had only guessed in the vaguest way.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1931)

So it was that Crowley and Lovecraft shared at least one influence; and in Lord Dunsany they both found inspiration, and they both created new works that tied into his dreamer’s tales—and by extension, because they were both building off Dunsany’s Dreamlands, so did their own dreams touch, or were in communion, all unknowing. “The Message of Thuba Mleen” stand easily with any of the other dream cycle stories and verses inspired by Dunsany and Lovecraft, with their strange names and dark, suggestive hints.

Many occultists looked for a common source between the two, and sought to create a shared origin for the Necronomicon and the Book of the Law; to tie Crowley to Cthulhu, and Magick to Mythos. Yet the shared Mythos was there all along, in a half-forgotten poem. The two were not tied together by any dark secret or occult truth, but by an appreciation for the great fantaisiste, Lord Dunsany.

And always will be, ’til wakes Māna-Yood-Sushāī.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Earth is a Breeding Ground For Monstrous Creatures (2024) by Starbound HFY & Chikondi C

Darwinism is older than space opera. The epic scales and timelines of interstellar travel and alien worlds with their own unique forms of life gave writers and artists the opportunity to depict different evolutionary paths than life took on Earth. How different environments shaped and nurtured these extraterrestrial forms of life. From the rubber-forehead aliens of Star Trek and Star Wars to more non-humanoid lifeforms of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) or Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (1973).

Social Darwinism and eugenics are also older than space opera, and the idea emerged that survival-of-the-fittest and particularly challenging environments would lead to hardier organisms. The thinking went that the harsh conditions would weed out the weak and force the survivors to be toughened up. To many, this might seem self-evident: wild animals are often leaner and more ferocious than domesticated pets and farm animals; rural people who work physically demanding jobs are often stronger and physically fit than city folk working office jobs. In practice, this is a misconception: survival of the fittest doesn’t necessarily mean the strongest or the toughest, and the forces that shape an individual over their lifetime aren’t necessarily passed down to the next generation (Lamarkism).

However, the idea had legs in science fiction.

“But every report on Salusa Secundus says S.S. is a hell world!”

“Undoubtedly. But if you were going to raise tough, strong, ferocious men, what environmental conditions would you impose on them?”
—Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

Earth is a diverse world with many biomes, and evolution has made plenty of weird stuff on our own planet. Some of them are harsher than others, and the same basic idea that science fiction authors applied to “hell worlds” in their space opera could also be applied (jocularly) to, say, Australia.

POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?

They waited.

IT WOULD APPEAR THAT—

“No, wait, master. Here it comes.”

Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up and caught the single sheet of paper.

He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side.

“May I?” said Albert. Death handed him the paper.

“Some of the sheep,” Albert read aloud.
—Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent (1998)

The ideas came together online in a series of Tumbr posts in 2016 in a thread titled “Humans Are Weird,” which started out with unusual traits of human beings as a species and then transitioned to Earth is Australia. The basic idea is a Star Trek or Star Wars-style universe with multiple intelligent, technologically advanced species, and they come across Earth…and compared to the rest of the inhabitable planets in the universe, Earth is a deathworld.

Which would make humans, as those who survive and thrive on said deathworld, incomparably awesome compared to the rest of the galaxy.

The idea has legs, and has inspired several memes, microfiction on social media sites, fanart, and entire novels and audiobooks. Variations and spinoffs include “Humans Are Space Orcs,” “Space Australia,” and “HFY” (Humanity, Fuck Yeah!). While initially light-hearted and at least mildly grounded in real-world science, as the ideas have developed and spread different themes have emerged—often involving environmentalism, military conflicts, morality, ethics, and above all human ingenuity and determination. Strong insirpirations from military science fiction are evident, with humans often being depicted with unshakeable resolve, peaceful unless provoked, relentless when provoked, and alternately surprisingly passionate or unstoppable horrors depending on the tone of the story.

Enterprising creators are commercializing these themes; one such endeavor is Starbound HFY, which might be most politely described as a fiction factory. Writers are solicited to submit stories that meet certain guidelines, get paid for their work; the stories are then read by voice actors, who are also paid; and the resulting audiobooks are posted online, usually accompanied by AI-generated artwork to lend some visual clutter to the production.

The use of generative AI has led to speculation about whether the audio productions use AI-generated text or are read by AI, or whether they plagiarize the stories of other creators. Part of the problem is that the titles for the stories are very clickbait-y, authors are rarely credited (although this has been getting better lately), and the voice actors who read the stories are often completely uncredited, although they usually appear at the beginning of the videos to confirm that yes, real human beings were involved in this production (though it appears they might have used narration software on the early videos). Competition in the field for clicks and views has led to a lot of imitation; how often this results in actual plagiarism or bots scraping content and repackaging it on different channels isn’t clear.

The whole process reminds me weirdly of the ultra-competitive nature of science fiction pulp magazines circa 1940, when there was an explosion of titles on the stands, all competing for the same dimes and quarters, often using the same writers or riffing on the same themes. Robots, bug-eyed aliens, women in distress, etc. were the order of the day. In the 2020s, the HFY-themes tend toward militarism, cultural exchange, and an elevated sense of how badass and cool humans are. In that respect, it reminds me of the men’s adventure fiction magazines of the 1950s. The emphasis on human strength, durability, and ingenuity over extraterrestrials—and the humans almost always being well-meaning, peaceful unless provoked, and utterly terrifying when not—tends to put human failings and weaknesses in the past tense, as cultural traits that have been overcome.

To be fair, this isn’t exactly a new idea. Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars that began in 1966 and David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers in 1979 was almost exactly this kind of quasi-hard-sci fi where humanity turns out to be very good at war and is surprisingly effective against alien species when conflict breaks out. Unlike those works, humans are usually depicted in HFY stories as possessing innate advantages thanks to evolving on a deathworld, including greater strength, ability to sustain and heal injuries, and quick reflexes—although sometimes the ability to metabolize oxygen and liquid water or exist at room temperature is enough to impress some alien species.

Starbound HFY publishes both stand-alone stories and has multiple separate canons which follow a particular setting or characters. On 1 August 2024, they published Earth Is A Breeding Ground For Monstrous Creatures—which is not to be mistaken for Earth is a Breeding Ground For Fearsome Creatures (12 Aug 2024, Galaxy’s Sci-Fi Story) or Earth is a Breeding Ground For Monstrous Creatures (23 Nov 2024, HFY Sci-Fi Story)—which is an interesting departure from the norm as it is a crossover between HFY and the Cthulhu Mythos.

The story itself is very much Delta Green or the SCP Foundation in a space opera setting. The HFY setting elements are a balance between popular conceptions of the Mythos (e.g. looking at a shoggoth or other Mythos entity drives someone insane). There very little taken directly from Lovecraft in the script compared to other Mythos-inflected space operas like the Boojumverse series by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette (“Boojum” (2008), “Mongoose” (2009), “The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward” (2012)) or La Planète aux Cauchemars (2019) by Mathieu Sapin & Patrick Pion, but the emphasis of the danger and difficulty of dealing with the Mythos does balance out the “humans are awesome” elements a little bit, which can get ludicrous at times.

A large part of the effectiveness for the audio narration is due to the voice actor, Chikondi C, who does an admirable job of trying to render R’lyehian as well as the different voices of the characters and the over all narration. The emphasis and emotion that come through in his reading goes a long way to bring alive a competent story. I highly doubt that the prose story by itself would be nearly as effective without Chikondi’s careful and clear narration and effective emoting.

“Earth is a Breeding Ground For Monstrous Creatures” (2024) is, effectively, a contemporary pulp story. In an era when print magazines are increasingly less relevant in the fiction publishing landscape, the edge of popular publishing has moved online, into spaces like Tumblr, Reddit, TikTok, and Youtube. Listen to it like that and you might know what it was like, back in the 40s or 50s, when a sci fi fan picked a magazine off the rack of the local newsstand, never know what might be a silly potboiler with bug-eyed aliens—or an early work by a writer destined to be a big name in science fiction in the future.

Update (15 Jan 2025): As of this writing the StarboundHFY Youtube channel has been removed and their content banned from the r/HFY subreddit following claims of stealing content, using generative AI when they claimed they weren’t, and basically unethically content farming. When or if it ever returns is ever unknown.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” (2024) by Molly Tanzer

“You have succeeded today;” it said, “but you have lost yourself, Jirel, once of Joiry.[“]
—Molly Tanzer, “Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” in New Edge Sword & Sorcery #3

Jirel of Joiry appeared in Weird Tales with “Black God’s Kiss” (1934) by C. L. Moore. That style of story had no name yet, and very few peers to compare it to. Readers immediately saw in Jirel a warrior akin to Conan the Cimmerian and Kull of Atlantis, embattled against wizards and stranger foes that blended adventure and horror, might thews and magic, swords and sorcery.

As a consequence, the initial spate of adventures from C. L. Moore’s typewriter were a bit raw. There was little continuity and less worldbuilding. Jirel herself was a boldly sketched character, and her personal trials shaped her development—yet Moore never tried to portray her at different ages as Robert E. Howard had done with Conan, never sought to reconcile her fantastic France with the real world, and the adventures she went on were the definition of episodic. Where readers could look forward to Conan as a king and know he spent a varied career as a thief, pirate, and mercenary soldier, Jirel was little different in her last adventure than she was at her first.

Jirel of Joiry had no destiny, no future, almost no past to speak of.

So when Molly Tanzer received permission from C. L. Moore’s heirs to do a new authorized Jirel story, she had some decisions to make. Ninety years of steady development has refined heroic fantasy fiction far from its roots in pulp fiction. There have probably been a hundred stories about mystic Mirrors of Truth, not least because Robert E. Howard had a go at the idea with “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” (1929), and the pages of at least ten thousand paperback novels is stained with the blood of cunning wizards and magical gewgaws who learned, far too late, what the tip of the blade feels like as it cleaves their liver (or black heart, or festering brain, etc.) in two.

In this respect, “Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” reads like a fairly competent and well-written sword & sorcery story in a fairly old-school mode. If the heroine wasn’t Jirel, readers would still have no doubt that Jirel’s literary DNA was in the mix, much as most barbarians in fiction have a little bit of Howard’s Cimmerian in them. If it lacks something of the raw and sensual language of C. L. Moore, that’s because Tanzer is a smart enough writer not to fall in the trap of trying to pastiche Moore’s prose style. Better, it shows a solid understanding of one of Moore’s central themes: the Jirel stories are always about a contest of spirit as much (or more) than flesh.

It doesn’t take much genre savviness to glance at the title and decide the question will emerge, sooner or later, “Who is Jirel of Joiry?” The answer, however, might surprise a few folks. Molly Tanzer doesn’t regurgitate bits of old Moore stories, though she draws on elements of them; she illustrates who Jirel is through her actions and interactions with others, especially her new companion, Thevin Galois. Less a girlfriend and more than a sidekick, Thevin is a kind of Enkidu to Jirel’s Gilgamesh; the two are alike, but they complement each other. Perhaps they reflect one another’s strengths and weaknesses, their potentialities. Thevin is what Jirel might have been; Jirel is what Thevin might yet be.

When it came to amorous matters, Thevin preferred the company of women, and did not give much notice to men’s attentions.
—Molly Tanzer, “Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” in New Edge Sword & Sorcery #3

Tanzer likes LGBTQ+ characters in her stories, and in this respect Thevin as a lesbian works well. Her sexuality is stated, there’s a hint of tension and attraction with Jirel, but this isn’t Thirsty Sword Lesbians or Dagger Kiss where the question is whether they’ll kiss. If anything, it’s nice to just see the representation of a character where their sexuality is relevant to their character but not the main focus of the story or present just to fulfill a lurid scene or two—there is actual porn out there for folks that want erotic tales of lesbian swordswoman. Tanzer is focused on telling Jirel’s story.

For readers who start with “Black God’s Kiss” and read through the whole C. L. Moore-penned Jirel of Joiry saga to “Hellsgarde” (1939), “Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” might be a bit of a jolt in style. There’s a bit more of Michael Moorcock and Joanna Russ in the style than Robert E. Howard and C. L. Moore. Yet it is a well-written story, and a cut above the pastiche of yesteryear. With a little luck, Jirel’s new adventures may have just begun.

“Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” by Molly Tanzer was published in New Edge Sword & Sorcery #3 (Summer 2024).

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“La Lámpara de Alhazred” (2023) by Manuel Mota & Julio Nieto

Habían pasado siete años desoe la desparaición de su abuelo Whipple cuando Ward Phillips recibió la lámpara.Seven years had passed since the disappearance of his grandfather Whipple when Ward Phillips received the lamp.It was seven years after his Grandfather Whipple’s disappearance that Ward Phillips received the lamp.
“La Lámpara de Alhazred” (2023) by Manuel Mota & Julio Nieto,
Cthulhu #28.5		English translationAugust Derleth, “The Lamp of Alhazred” (1957), The Watchers out of Time 114

Many of August Derleth’s “posthumous collaborations” with H. P. Lovecraft have been derided as pastiches. Yet “The Lamp of Alhazred” is more homage—and more accurately a collaboration than most of Derleth’s stories, since it incorporates a large chunk of text from Lovecraft’s letter to Derleth dated 18 Nov 1936, where Lovecraft described coming across a previously unknown wood west of Neutaconkanut Hill.

On Oct. 28 I penetrated a terrain which took me half a mile from any spot I had ever trod before in the course of a long life. I followed a road which branches north 7 West from the Plainfield Pike, ascending a low rise which skirts Neutaconkanut’s Western foot & which commands an utterly idyllic Vista of rolling Meadows, ancient stone walls, hoary groves, 7 distant cottage roofs to the west & south. Only 2 or 3 miles from the city’s heart—& yet in the primal rural New-England of the first colonists!He penetrated a terrain which took him almost a mile from any spot he had ever before trod in the course of his life, following a road, which branched north and west from the Plainsfield Pike and ascending a lot rise which skirted Nentaconhaunt’s Western foot, and which commanded an utterly idyllic Vista of rolling Meadows, ancient stone walls, hoary groves, and distant cottage roofs to the west and south. he was less than three miles from the heart of the city, and yet basked in the primal rural New England of the first colonists.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 18 Nov 1936, Essential Solitude 2.756August Derleth, “The Lamp of Alhazred” (1957), The Watchers out of Time 119

Derleth also took inspiration from an entry in Lovecraft’s commonplace book:

From Arabia Ency. Britt. II.–255. Prehistoric fabulous tribes of Ad in the south, Thamood in the north, and Tasm & Jadis in the centre of the peninsula. “Very gorgeous are the descriptions given of Irem, the City of the Pillars (as the Koran styles it) supposed to have been erected by Shedad, the latest despot of Ad, in the regions of Hudramant, and which yet, after the annihilating of its tenants, remains entire, so Arabs say, invisible to ordinary eyes, but occasionally, and at rare intervals, revealed to some heaven-favored traveler.” Rock excavations in N. W. Hejaz ascribed to Thamood tribe.It had once been the property of a certain half-mad Arab, known as Abdul Alhazred, and was a product of the fabulous trident of ad—one of the four mysterious, little-known tribes of Arabia, which where ad—of the south, Thamood—of the north, Tasm and Jadis—of the center of the peninsula. it had been found long ago in the hidden city called Irem, the city of Pillars, which had been erected by Shedad, last of the despots of Ad, and was known by some as the Nameless City, and said to be in the area of Hadramant, and, by others, to be buried under the ageless, ever-shifting sands of the Arabian deserts, invisible to the ordinary eye, but sometimes encounter by chance by the favorites of the Prophet.
The Notes and Commonplace Book of H. P. Lovecraft 21-22August Derleth, “The Lamp of Alhazred” (1957), The Watchers out of Time 115-116

While nearly every Lovecraft story has been adapted to comics at some point, rather fewer of Derleth’s stories have attracted the same treatment. Yet it makes sense that Manuel Mota (script) and Julio Nieto (artwork) would adapt “The Lamp of Alhazred” for Cthulhu #28, the Lovecraft special issue. Because there are homages which capture as much of the pathos of H. P. Lovecraft as well as this one.

Manuel Mota’s script is a fairly straight translation of Derleth text, albeit truncated for space and with the illustrations serving in place of much of the description, which inadvertently cuts out most of Lovecraft’s text. Yet the presentation and framing of the words and Julio Nieto’s art does much to lend a sense of action to what is a largely contemplative story that draws on both Lovecraft’s life and the sentiment of “The Silver Key.” Readers feel Ward Phillips loss and loneliness, his refuge in his imagination, and the visions of other worlds, other times.

It is escapist in the most literal sense of the word, and one of several stories that reflect that quiet, profound desire to abandon the daily grind of life, with its quiet indignities, defeats, and injuries.

Nieto’s artwork is carefully realistic, the page layout traditionally grid-like; it is a straight-forward presentation that puts the more fantastic sequences, the break-outs where the panel cannot contain a wondrous scene, in context. The weirdness isn’t a part of Ward Phillips world; it is the way out.

Jamás se encontro el cuerpo de Ward Phillips.

La policía aún espera queue sus restos aparezcan en Alguno de los lugares queue solía frecuentar en sus solitarios paseos.

Con el paso de Los años, la vieja casa fue derribada, la biblioteca adquirida por librerías anticuarias y lo queue quedó gue vendido como chatarra incluida una vieja lámpara Árabe a la que nadie encontró utilidad alguna.		The body of Ward Phillips was never found.

Police are still hoping that his remains will turn up in one of the places he used to frequent on his solitary walks.

Over the years, the old house was demolished, the library was acquired by antiquarian bookstores and what remained was sold as scrap, including an old Arabic lamp that no one found any use for.		Though desultory searching parties were organized and sent out to scour the vicinity of Nentaconhaunt and the shores of the Seekonk, there was no trace of Ward Phillips. The police were confident that his remains would some day be found, but nothing was discovered, and in time the unsolved mystery was lost in the police and newspaper files.

The years passed. The old house on Angell Street was torn down, the library was bought up by book shops, and the contents of the house were sold for junk—including an old-fashioned antique Arabian lamp, for which no one in the technological world past Phillips’ time could devise any use.
“La Lámpara de Alhazred” (2023) by Manuel Mota & Julio Nieto,
Cthulhu #28.14		English translationAugust Derleth, “The Lamp of Alhazred” (1957), The Watchers out of Time 123-124

It is a story that almost demands a familiarity with Lovecraft to truly appreciate; those who have read his letters, who knows what Lovecraft struggled with during his life, can recognize more of the man in Derleth’s framing of the Nentaconhaunt narrative. Mota and Nieto do well to capture and depict as much of this atmosphere as they can, and the sensibility of the story is necessarily both sad and romantic in the older sense—this is not a Mythos story, despite the name “Alhazred.” it is a fantasy, a myth, so much more elegant than the reality that saw Lovecraft end his days in pain in a hospital as the cancer consumed him.

“La Lámpara de Alhazred” (2023) by Manuel Mota & Julio Nieto is an excellent overall adaptation of Derleth’s homage to Lovecraft, one that captures the spirit of the original—the echo of Lovecraft, as it were—for a new medium and a new audience.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Dreidel of Dread: The Very Cthulhu Hanukkah (2024) by Alex Shvartsman and Tomeu Riera

Hanukkah is an ancient holiday, but a modest one. The holiday of the
Hasmoneans is new, yet it is full of spiritual exaltation and national joy. What
was Hanukkah forty years ago? ‘Al ha-nissim’ and Hallel; a short reading in
the synagogue; lighting the tiny, slender wax candles or oil lights; at home,
levivot [latkes–potato pancakes], cards for the older children, and sevivonim
[dreidels–spinning tops] for the little ones. But what is Hanukkah today? The
holiday of the Hasmoneans. A holiday of salvation. A great national holiday,
celebrated in all the countries of the Diaspora with dances and speeches,
melody and song, outings and parades, as if a new soul has been breathed
into the ancient holiday, another spirit renewed within it. One thing is clear:
if those tiny, modest candles had been extinguished in Diaspora times, if our
grandparents had not preserved the traditions of Hanukkah in the synagogue
and at home . . . , the holiday of the Hasmoneans could never have been
created. There would have been nothing to change, nothing to renew. The
new soul of our times would not have found a body in which to envelop itself.
—Chaim Harrari, Sefer ha-Mo’adim, Sefer Hanukkah (1938),
quoted in “Zionist Awareness of the Jewish Past: Inventing Tradition or Renewing the Ethnic Past?” (2012) by Yitzhak Conforti

On the 25th day of Kislev in the Hebrew calendar is the feast of Hanukkah. Originally a very minor holiday in the Jewish holy calendar, Hanukkah gained increasing prominence during the 20th and 21st centuries as it was embraced as a nationalist holiday by Zionists, and because Hanukkah often occurred near the major Christian holiday of Christmas. The massive increase of secular pop culture surrounding Christmas, especially in English-speaking countries, has led to the increased awareness of Hanukkah, and sometimes its depiction as an equivalent holiday among both religiously observant and secular Jews.

In some cases, elements of secular Christmas celebration have influenced or been adapted for Hanukkah, a process sometimes referred to as Chrismukkah. Jewish families might put up a Hanukkah Bush, or watch Hanukkah-themed movies and animated specials like A Rugrats Chanukah (1996) or Eight Crazy Nights (2002). The influence of Christmas pop-culture on secular Hanukkah media is often very notable. Even when things get a little weird and Lovecraftian.

So, when Alex Shvartsman (writer) and Tomeu Riera (artist) set about making Dreidel of Dread: The Very Cthulhu Hanukkah (2024), they took as their initial model the classic Christmas verse “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (1823).

To be fair, Shvartsman and Riera are very aware of it. In fact, that’s quite the point. The book gets very meta very fast, directly addressing how much Hanukkah has played second-fiddle to Christmas in pop culture. Cthulhu is just the catalyst for an ongoing dilemma about the cultural footprint of Hanukkah in a world dominated by Christmas. So with a mix of Yiddishisms and Lovecraftian references, Hanukkah Harry goes off to save Hanukkah from the apocalypse of Cthulhu.

Which he does with a sly insinuation about Lovecraft’s antisemitism and a dreidel.

Riera’s heart is lovely, a soft-focus blend of stylized and detailed that could easily serve as the basis for an animated short. The colors in particular strike a fine balance between the traditional greens and purples favored for eldritch horrors and the more subdued coloring of Harry’s mother and father’s modest dress, while Harry himself favors blue and white. Implicit details of dress suggest the family are probably Reform Jewish, since Harry lacks the payot and none of them wear the typical clothing associated with the hasidim (whose distinct garb Lovecraft noted and commented on in New York City).

It is not a very long book, and thematically it’s not a very deep book. Cthulhu goes down without devouring so much as a latke. Cosmic horror takes a back seat to wanting to sort things about before Christmas comes for Cthulhu. While suitable for and probably geared toward a young adult audience, the youngster would have to be perspicacious enough to be aware of the cultural references for both Hanukkah and Cthulhu to really grok it—and maybe get a chuckle at some of the jokes.

Dreidel of Dread: The Very Cthulhu Hanukkah (2024) is a fun little book, but readers looking for something a little more serious or action-packed might want to check out Edward M. Erdelac’s Merkabah Rider or “The Chabad of Innsmouth” (2014) by Marsha Morman. As Jewish/Cthulhu Mythos mash-ups go, this is distinctly light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek, less concerned with either the details of Lovecraft’s Mythos or the origins of the holiday.

It’s about Hanukkah Harry saving Hanukkah from Cthulhu. Which is, really, all it claims or needs to be.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023) by Meghan Maslow

Eldritch Fappenings
This review is of a homoerotic romance work which deals with mature themes and tentacle erotica.
Reader discretion advised.

Romance fiction is about the churn. Individual works often have minimal lasting value; only a rare few works of the sticking power or cultural cachet of Maurice (1971) by E. M. Forester. Yet the appetite for such works is constant. Consumers don’t just want porn, they want characters, settings, relationships, hardship, overcoming adversity, happy endings, unhappy endings—new stories, all the time. And creators need to eat, so they need to keep producing more and more to try and fill that demand.

Sometimes, this results in works that are less character-driven romance and more of erotica of dubious quality. Erotic ebooks like Booty Call of Cthulhu (2012) by Dalia Daudelin and its sequels might be produced rather quickly to hop on a trend. Creators might explore specific niches; Tentacles and Wedding Bells (2022) by Margaret L. Carter is about a young woman marrying into a family that just happens to be a bit inhuman, while Widdershins (2013) by Jordan L. Hawk explores a same-sex relationship in a fantasy steampunk setting, and “Moonshine” (2018) by G. D. Penman does much the same in a Prohibition-era gangster story.

There are times when a spate of Amazon erotic ebooks in a month are focused on bigfoot weddings, or older bosses (of either gender) seducing a new employee, or being isekai’d into a novel and now locked into a forbidden sexual relationship with a step-sibling. One month the flavor might be elves, another Regency-era settings, and sometimes a clever or ambitious author might combine the two. All’s fair in love and genre fiction.

Holiday-themed offerings are available in abundance. Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are all well-represented…and probably also Boxing Day, Hanukkah, and Arbor Day too. Christmas, however, remains a particular favorite. There’s something about the immense cultural memeplex that extends far beyond the actual celebration of Christ’s birth. A jolly old elf has never stuffed so many stockings; kids who wished for new siblings for Xmas may well get them, Rudolf may be a well-hung were-reindeer with amorous intentions toward Mrs. Claus, and the mistletoe works overtime to trigger steamy kisses. The literary stakes of such works are often pitifully low, with writers and readers more or less satisfied so long as the product delivers the bare minimum of what it promises or hints at.

Content Warning: violence, mature content, brief discussion of child abandonment
—Meghan Maslow, “Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023)

To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I have a sneaky respect for anyone that goes much, much further than too far. With a premise that starts out with “Cthulhu-themed Christmas book” and then expands into: “A Winter Holiday MM Tentacle Romance,” it would have been easy—ridiculously easy—to do a minimalist job, check off the hashtags, and pump out a simple, quirky, and porntastic M/M tentacle erotica ebook in time for the Xmas sales boost. No one would have complained.

What readers get is so much more. Readers going in hoping to see tentacles stretch out holes like pre-lubricated o-ring orifices from page one will be disappointed to find themselves going through short chapters filled with with well-developed characters, in an interesting and evocative setting (with map!), as personal dramas and a murder mystery slowly unfolds. Many of the plot-beats might feel like a Hallmark Christmas movie mixed with your favorite detective show. Will gay cop Zen King tell his straight best friend he’s in love with him? What does Zak’s best friend Grey Criswell and his old money family have to do with the mysterious murder at Salem’s Tree Lot? And what the heck does any of this have to do with a break-in at the local library?

“Cthulhu’s Compendium is a one-of-a-kind artifact. I can’t believe you glimpsed it! Please tell me you were able to read some of it! I’ve requested permission from the Special Collections numerous times, but they always inform me it doesn’t exist.”

“Cthulhu’s. Compendium.” Uh huh. “Like Lovecraft? It’s a work of fiction?”

I’d actually read some Lovecraft in high school when an emo kid recommended him.

She huffed. “It’s not fiction. And while it’s unsubstantiated, it’s well known that Lovecraft vacationed here on many occasions. Even visited the museum. You do the math.”
—Meghan Maslow, “Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023)

The Mythos elements of the plot don’t come exactly as a surprise (it’s in the title), but to Maslow’s credit the story takes the time to build up to the revelations. The tone is paranormal romance rather than horror—and because Lovecraft’s work is explicitly fiction within the setting, there’s room for Maslow to play fast and loose with what is “true” in terms of the Mythos. For the most part, that means that sometimes there are tentacles and sometimes they are frisky, though not always cooperative.

If you’d have told me I’d be cock-blocked by tentacles, I’d have laughed. But I wasn’t laughing now.

Fuck my life.
—Meghan Maslow, “Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023)

(For those interested in the steamier bits, the tentacles don’t cock-block for long. Quite the opposite.)

There’s a lot of little silly details that add up in the story to make it more charming. There’s a beaver that’s moved onto a houseboat like a stray dog. A pair of caribou driving a sleigh that work like a Uber service with an app called Caribou For You. An arranged marriage. An ugly sweater contest. If that sounds silly—that’s the point. Mundane weirdness tends to ground a story with more fantastical elements.

“Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023) by Meghan Maslow is not some quick and dirty romp churned out to meet a Yuletide theme and a couple keywords. There is a lot more heart to the story, and a lot more craft to the writing this tale of love, lust, and magic, than a reader might expect.

This story was written as part of a set of holiday-themed tentacle romance offerings: Tinsel & Tentacles.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.