kaos

of interest in an ancient practice of human society. As to “if it works it’s good enough
for me” well I guess that depends on how you define “it works”. If those who attempt to
evoke Lovecraft’s fictional beings into appearance in the mirror don’t run from the
mirror screaming insane gibberish or soiling themselves from fear, or die on the spot,
then it didn’t work—you got a wrong number. Sure you may have invested some shade
of your subconscious with life and named it Yog-Sohot-toddie… but it ain’t “the dweller
on the threshold”.
PETER J SANDERSON
It’s strange how the test of time works, and provenance and origins in a mystical past do
matter. Hakim Bey recently wrote to me about the defamation of the Neolithic goddess
Tiamat as a chaos monster by supporters of the city god Marduk in the Enuma Elish,
showing me something I had never quite appreciated about the Babylonian Genesis,
the political propaganda inherent in it to the discerning eye. What is there to say about
Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, and Yog-so-goth, apart from the fact that they
appeared in stories by H P Lovecraft, there is simply no hidden history to discover, no
mysteries concealed by time, and, as you say, the version of this childish “mythos” beloved
of role-playing-game fanatics is not even anything Lovecraft would have recognised, it
is the product of corporate games manufacturers and misguided fantasists looking for a
crutch to make themselves appear interesting who simply cannot be convinced that the
Necronomicon isn’t real. What a waste of time that could otherwise be spent in genuine
study of the occult. Such “occultists”—and, let’s face it, it’s not just kids, the Typhonian
oto is full of them—don’t seem to be able to recognise the difference between mythology
and fantasy, having confused themselves with the belief they are experiencing atavistic
resurgence from the sunken necropolis at R’lyeh.
It is a mystery how this entirely false gnosis managed to take hold of so many minds.
What knowledge can Cthulhu convey beyond pseudo-chaotic nihilistic self-satisfaction?
Azathoth—an idiot savant deity. They have bought into a pop version of the occult,
and are in bondage to an inanity—like adolescent Satanists worshipping the goat of
their own rebellious youth, their heads spun into an illusion of Nyarlathotep’s hellish
moon glitter and ghastly midnight.
The occult is a vast enough subject without people wasting their time on makebelieve.
Cthulhuites I notice tend to justify their endeavour by saying that all demons
and gods are make-believe. Well, yes, I can understand that point of view, but what they
forget is that battles have been fought and lost and civilisations have been raised and
have fallen in the belief in the deities that true occultists and mythologists choose to
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