Lovecraft And Priestcraft

[poliphilo]

A friend of a friend is frightened of demons. He puts it down to being a fan of Lovecraft's. And he puts the Lovecraft thing down to his good, old-fashioned Catholic education.

I can't be doing with Lovecraft. I find him completely over the top. He doesn't frighten me because I  don't believe in his mythos.

Maybe you need to have been brought up as a certain kind of Christian- traditional Catholic or hell-fire Protestant- to find Lovecraft frightening.

I was brought up as an Anglican with an elusive God who "moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform" and so the spook stuff that ruffles my feathers is the hinty, blink-and-you'll-miss-it English ghost story, as purveyed by the likes of M.R. James and Robert Aickman.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

My husband had no sense of humor at all. If he told jokes, they were usually tasteless and shocking, which was his intent.

If there are demons, does that mean there is "good" versus "evil"? (Perhaps that is too simplistic.) If so, I hope the good side protects my sad, crazy ex-husband from himself.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think there are non-human, discarnate entities out there. I reckon they mainly ignore us provided we ignore them.

Some of them may not be terribly kindly disposed towards us, but I doubt that they're "evil" in the full Miltonic sense of the word.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I reckon they mainly ignore us provided we ignore them.


Which brings up a point, the personal god, the god who "walks with me and talks with me while the dew is still on the roses."

I wonder sometimes What I am praying to, because I do pray, often, but I am long past God as a male hovering over my head with a hand to His ear, waiting for my requests (my letters to Santa).

I feel I have wrecked my religious life, in that I think of God now in terms of quantum physics and Jung's acausal events, and I don't have a clue what I'm doing anymore.

I sing in the choir and don't think about it, but when (as now, when my sister-in-law is very ill with ovarian cancer) things get rough, I want a "skin face" to tell me not to worry, so I seek out the Something that's waitinf for me in the garden by the rose bushes. Sometimes I almost believe Something's there and caring about me, and then I think, cynically: oh, really?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't have a personal God any more. But I hold on to the belief that the universe is basically kindly and wishes us well. If I'm anything, I think I'm probably a spiritualist.

I'm confident that there's a life after death. And if there isn't, well, I won't know anything about it, will I?

But these days I don't worry about theology. It's too much like chasing one's own tail. All one ever gets from it are bafflement and frustration.