Reflections: On Lovecraft, landscape and urban wonder
I was recently asked to write something about what were the main influences that shaped my short book on Cthulhu Mythos magic – The Pseudonomicon. Reflecting on this was difficult at first, as some of the ideas that went into it had been rattling around in my head since the early 1980s. My first experiments with Lovecraftian Magic were enacted in 1980 or thereabouts, so trying to think back to that time was a challenge, to say the least. At this time of my life, I was studying for a degree in the Behavioural Sciences – a joint honors degree that encompassed Psychology, Sociology, Social Policy, and Philosophy at what was then Huddersfield Polytechnic. I’d been interested in the occult for about three years at this point and was still dipping my toes into actual magical practice in any sustained or coherent way. Some of the ideas and suggestions for Cthulhu Mythos magic in The Pseudonomicon were shaped by my dissatisfaction with how Lovecraft’s themes had been treated by other occult authors. Yet at the same time, those authors had an influence on me, insofar as they at least opened the way to the connection between fictional horror and magical experience.
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