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mythos relates the efforts of an “Old Race” which had ruled the Earth and which sought to
return from the nondimensional space to which it had been banished. The “Old Race” (in part
the creation of Madame Blavatsky) can be kept at bay by spells and rituals. But malign adepts
and magicians can summon The Color from Outer Space or the Shadow out of Time. The
spells to summon these unthinkable eldritch beings are contained in the Necronomicon
(1977), compiled by the “mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred. Far from being relegated to the history
of fantasy and science fiction, H. P. Lovecraft‟s novellas and the Necronomicon are current
staples in stores catering to those with an interest in the occult.
Initially, the paperback Necronomicon may have been meant as a tongue-in-cheek
compilation, but it has been adopted by vulnerable adolescents. To a 20th-century adolescent
in a technologically sophisticated world, what can be the appeal of the obscure rituals detailed
by an author who self-consciously regarded himself as an avatar and who is an 18th-century
writer displaced into modern America?
Lovecraft believed with real conviction in the presence and importance of the occult and the
supernatural. Like the modern adolescent, Lovecraft was obsessed with the presence and
passage of time and, above all, with the sense of having been displaced from a more
congenial era. Lovecraft‟s world is one of startling discontinuities: a conventional cellar door
opens onto a staircase which descends to sites of madness and ritual sacrifice as in The Rats
in the Walls. Or, as in The Outsider, an adolescent awakens to his sense of alienation and
separation from humanity. In the Shadow out of Time, the protagonist suddenly loses
consciousness and his mind is transported back to the prehistoric world of the Old Race, a
creation illustrating his debt to the godmother of modern occultism--Madame Blavatsky.
The Great Race is a relatively benign race except for its practice of mindnapping from all place
and time for research. The Great Race is ultimately destroyed by a successor race of
nameless, violent entities, the Old Race. The Lovecraftian perspective is one of constant
renewal and destruction, of cycles in which the individual who is unarmed, that is, without
ritual and spells, cannot survive. Within the Cthulhu mythos, the powers of destruction and
renewal are condensed and concretized into entities such as Shub Niggurath (“The Goat with
a Thousand Young”), comparable to Pan and Nyarlathotep, the messenger of “crawling
chaos,” who is comparable to Hermes but, since he is the messenger of bad news, he must be
kept at bay by rituals performed at the “gates.”
This pantheon, with its concretizations of fertility and destruction, of chaos warded off by
obsessive rituals, is an assortment that is appealing to the angry adolescent whose heroes in
the here and now include such figures as Judas Priest, Motley Crue, and Ozzy Osborne. They
are particularly seductive to the adolescent from a broken home dominated by violence,
sexual abuse, and substance use. Within such an environment, the appeal of a pantheon that
provides a structural framework unattached and in opposition to adult hypocrisy is obvious.
White Magic and Wicca
Not all magick is black, nor are all writers of fantasy preoccupied with vengeance, sacrifice,
and anthropophagy. Marion Zimmer Bradley in her Darkover series presents a more positive
view of nature, and embodies within her novels a more empathic sense of the magic inherent
in the natural world. Her novels exemplify and form a gloss on neo-Paganism. Both neo-
Paganism and Wicca (the craft of the Mother Goddess) represent a protest against the
mainstream Divinity that is perceived as patriarchal. And, if the patriarchal God has given
man dominion over the Earth and its creatures, then the Goddess (named Gea) is perceived
as endorsing a more compassionate, less exploitative relationship between humanity and its
surroundings. Practitioners of the craft of Wicca distance themselves at great length from the
practitioners of the “dark arts,” as the following illustrates:

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1992, Page 41
Jody was a 19-year-old woman referred for psychiatric evaluation because of her
increasing scholastic difficulties and alienation from her family. Jody had attended a
number of colleges and was currently enrolled at a university in the New York area.
She had enrolled in courses primarily in Irish studies and had announced to her
parents that she was planning to take a sabbatical in Ireland to study Druidic religion
and culture more intensively. She planned to become a priestess.
Unlike adolescents who dabble in Satanism, Jody (and others interested in Wicca) came from
an intact family. Her family had none of the overtones of abuse (physical or sexual) or
substance abuse and none of the lack of continuity that often appears to pervade the family
background of the dabbler/devotee of Satanism. However, her father was described as distant
and detached and Jody and her mother appeared to have formed an intense alliance directed
against the father.
Indeed, for Jody as for other practitioners of Wicca, identity issues appeared to be particularly
important. Many of her early sessions were devoted to her expressing her anger and
resentment toward male authorities/father, whom she perceived as being idealized as an
aspect of the patriarchal bias of mainstream religion. Jody appeared to derive a sense of
support from attendance at covens and a sense of potency from participation in ritual
celebrations often organized around the Druidic/Celtic calendar.
Dinnage (1989) has noted that Wicca is particularly seductive because it provides its initiates
with a sense of order in a world of chance: all actions can now be perceived as aspects of an
underlying order. Moreover, because magic involves the concrete manipulation of objects
represented in symbolic terms, the individual‟s sense of control is enhanced. As Jody was
encouraged to examine her sense of resentment toward her father, and her sense of
powerlessness to affect her relationship with him, she seemed to require participation in
Wicca less and less. She retained an interest in a nonmainstream form of religion, but she
was able to accept remaining at college and pursuing her studies in a less remote
environment.
In a very real sense, in a world in which computers have relegated objects to being symbolic
representations, operations that magically and concretely deal with these representations in
other contexts have gained a certain plausibility. While a reliance on “magic(k)” may
represent a regression to a state of infantile omnipotence, as the case of Jody illustrates, it
does not always have these dire psychopathological implications. As Dinnage (1989) has
noted, many “witches” do not operate on this level in many significant aspects of their lives.
Rather their use of magic creates a sense of ordering and continuity which enables them to
function, as do indeed all paradigms that enable individuals to order otherwise disparate
events into meaningful patterns.
The Horror, the Horror
Stephen King is the most popular author utilizing the occult in his work. His popularity marks
the presence of the paradox which has already been noted: a technologically driven world
seeking refuge within the ordered world of the occult. King‟s prodigious and varied output
defies easy analysis. Its very quantity has necessarily ensured that it is of uneven artistic
consistency. Certain themes, however, are particularly relevant.
For King‟s protagonists, things are not what they seem to be like a Magritte, the material
world is a facade. Thus, even the most reassuring icons, such as the St. Bernard dog in Cujo,
as well as icons redolent of nostalgia, such as the 1957 Chevrolet in Christine, undergo a
malignant degeneration. As critics have noted, King‟s work reflects an obsessive attempt to
undo childhood terrors in which objects possessed their own mysterious lives and independent
character. Even in his most ambitious novels, such as The Stand, his adolescent protagonists
are forced to confront an adult world that has lost all sense of compassion and constancy.