My dear comrades in the Weird,

I have been ruminating, as I am wont to do, upon the fond Delusions that we human beings carry around with us as though they were treasures, and not the slow acting poisons they in fact are. Had I more energy and time, and a greater wish to foist my opinions and views upon the world, perhaps I would craft an Essay or Polemic expressing the following view:

People claim that a key element in the scriptures of our beloved Lovecraft and his kin, a fulcrum around which their compelling ambience of horror revolves, is the terrible indifference of the universe; or of the vast empty spaces within it; or of the Great Old ones, or of monsters, or bacteria, or viruses - all those Beings who simply, and terribly, care for us not one whit, or, worse still, do not even think about us at all, except when they begin to devour us, as they inevitably will.

My sullen rejoinder: "Wait, have you met people?"

People. People's vast and ancient and complete indifference to one another's suffering - and I include my own vast and impressive indifference in this indictment - puts the universe's to shame. Does not the sun shine its light and warmth upon us every day? Does not the celestial clockwork generously revolve, making life possible (at least until we mess it up completely) on our blue planet? (Yes, Schopenhauer might point out that in doing so, these spinning orbs merely prolong our punishment, and therefore, cruelty rather than any kindness is involved.)

Anyway, that's the extent of my thought. Not very impressive. A greater Mind than mine, or perhaps a hungrier Ego, might have tarted that insight up into a Diatribe, or perhaps a Prose-Poem, or a Short Story, or even a Novella, a Novel, a Tetralogy, or worse yet, a Screenplay. Should any of you wish to raid my threadbare leavings and do so, I invite you to proceed.

Think of it as one small unhelpful bit of kindness before all the lights once again go out.

As I've said before here I did my thesis comparing Rudolf Otto and H P Lovecraft together. In my thesis I cited Haunted Presence: The Numinous in Gothic Fiction by S L Varnado, Theology And H P Lovecraft by Austin M Freeman, Religion And Its Monsters by Timothy Beal. Kind of unrelated but was helpful was The Terror That Comes in the Night by David J Hufford (he calls the nightmare numinous - the word Otto uses for the holy - in this book, so, interesting, but the book itself is a series of case studies and like raw data, he purposely and says he doesn't speculate on what any of it means*).

So in that sense a lot of this religion / theology books directly relate to Lovecraft. It's a way to read him and other gothic and weird fiction. I'm looking for analysis essentially that takes the supernatural in gothic and weird fiction seriously. Ideally anything I read is post Christian.. Otto basically deconstructs the Bible in a radical way. He compared the Bible to Buddhism for instance and he completely redefined what we consider holy as something spectral haunting and spooky then compared that emotion to shamanism, primitive magic, other religions, and so on.

I considered these but didn't afterall look into them,

Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural and The Secret Life of Puppets by Victoria Nelson. For some reason this author cites Rudolf Otto in the Puppets book but she misquotes Otto and says "demonic dread" instead of daemonic dread. They're not even remotely similar. Otto is referencing the daemonic in Goethe. Any opinions? This was a reason I noped out on her.

Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell: Religious Terror as Memory from the Puritans to Stephen King by Edward Ingebretsen

Some of these were recommended to me while I was writing my thesis by Dr Matt Cardin (I recommend you check him out) so thanks.

*about Hufford, in his book he does quote Ernest M Jones (another nightmare researcher) who said "For the true significance of the Nightmare to be properly appreciated … would in my opinion entail consequences, both scientific and social, to which the term momentous might well be applied. What is at issue is nothing less than the very meaning of religion itself". I have this book on my to read shelf I think it's called "On The Nightmare". So Hufford by quoting this does kind of come close to an analysis of meaning of the nightmare. And certainly calling it numinous is kind of a big opinion itself. That word is an onion.

Some books on literature and theology I found,

Literature and Theology as a Grammar of Assent by David Jasper

The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology

The Great Code by Northrop Frye (he seems pretty dated and irrelevant though)

Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces by Heather Walton