The Blavatsky Occult Files #1 
File Card 1 – Lovecraft was familiar with 19th century supernatural literature that had various connections and influences with Theosophy.
 |
| She, H. Rider Haggard |
Comparing Helena Blavatsky’s literary interests, as outlined by Frenschkowski, with Lovecraft’s essay Supernational Horror in Literature, authors that both give notice to include: Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Théophile Gautier, Charles Dickens, Francis Marion Crawford, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Oscar Wilde, and W. B. Yeats. Blavatsky mentions Florence Marryat, who is the daughter of Frederick Marryat, whom Lovecraft notices.
File Card 2- Blavatsky herself penned some intriguing Occult Tales, published in Theosophical magazines, gathered in Nightmare Tales
File Card 3 –Considerable presence of Theosophical concepts in the American pulp magazine field
Madame Blavatsky is really quite an important personage in the history of fantasy. In the course of two interminable and all but unreadable tomes of spurious occult lore --- Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine --- she codified fugitive and unattached morsels of legend, theory and nonsense into a systematic prehistory of the world" including a superbly "gaudy cosmology". "This system, percolating down through sensational popularizations and Sunday supplement articles, was adopted lock, stock and barrel by writers for the fantasy pulp magazines, who are thus greatly in her debt. (Lin Carter, Preface to Clark Ashton Smith, Poseidonis, p. 3, 1973)
To give an idea of how Theosophy influenced pulp fiction, I’ve listed some themes in the work of comic book storyteller, Jack Kirby, an avid reader of science fiction pulp magazines, who used a wide array of Theosophical concepts throughout his career: supernatural phenomena, psychic powers, alternate realities/dimensions, mythology, alternate/cyclical history, lost civilizations, ancient aliens, transhuman evolution, secret societies- good and bad, and the science/magic overlap.
Moreover, various Theosophical writers showed interest in contributing to Weird Tales, such as:
- Bernice Banning (1885-1954)
- William Levington Comfort (1878-1932), mentor to and father-in-law of Paul Annixter (1894-1985)
- Guy Endore (1901-1970), author of The Werewolf of Paris (1933)
- Mrs. Edgar Saltus (1883-1960)
- Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea (1915-1995), aka Millen Cooke
File Card 4– Lovecraft’s more direct discovery of Theosophical concepts brought a new level of influence
The big three of pulp fiction magazine Weird Tales and the Lovecraft Circle most popular works seem to be the most-theosophically influenced ones: “The starting point of our examination of fictions dealing with ‘lost worlds’ as cultural productions drawing on Theosophical ideas is the publication of Weird Tales, an American horror and fantasy pulp fiction magazine of the 1920s, which was the vehicle for distributing the works of Howard Philips (H. P.) Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. These were the three main contributors to Weird Tales evidencing Theosophical influences in their fiction”. (Garry W. Trompf and Lauren Bernauer “Producing lost civilisations: Theosophical concepts” in Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production, BRILL, 2012, p. 113)
Lovecraft became more specifically, acquainted with Theosophical writings around 1926, when he began being published in Weird Tales, where he occasionally mentions Theosophists and Blavatsky’s Book of Dzyan in his stories, inspiring his invention of The Necromicon.:
Notable for our purposes is William Scott-Elliot, who in silent collaboration with Charles Webster Leadbeater produced two volumes expanding on Blavatsky’s occult history of the root-races: The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904); these would be reprinted in a combined edition The Story of Atlantis & The Lost Lemuria (1925). Scott-Elliot quotes from “The Book of Dzyan” a handful of times; these are taken from the “Stanzas of Dzyan” in The Secret Doctrine (Derie)
For the rest of his life, Lovecraft would occasionally discuss Theosophical notions in his voluminous correspondence with members of the Lovecraft circle: "I'm quite on edge about that Dzyan-Shamballah stuff. The cosmic scope of it --- Lords of Venus, and all that --- sounds so especially and emphatically in my line!" (Selected Letters, vol. IV, p. 153)
Lovecraft received additional information about Theosophical literature via his correspondence with E Hoffmann Price, a Buddhist with occult interests. Price mentions A. P. Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism”, Blavatsky’s “Secret Doctrine” Besant’s “Pedigree of Man”, and Leadbeater’s “Inner Life”, and prepared a four-page outline of relevant Theosophical concepts that circulated in the Lovecraft circle.
Usually, the Theosophical references were made with a playful, humorous tone, with Lovecraft developing enough familiarity to be able to joke about the Theosophical niceties of preparing a curry rice dish:
Your explanation
of the inward nature of curry is surely a tantalisation of the palate! I must
sample this gift of the Djinns, in all its perfection, either at the Peacock
Thone or in the Citadel of Holy Shamballah, before I make the final incantation
precipitating me into Avichi. In the interim, if I can find any 15¢ cans
(what’s the make?) I shall make this one of my regular dietary items in place
of Campbell’s
soups & Heinz’s beans & spaghetti. We shall see . . . . but I won’t
make the mistake of confounding any base commercial imitation with the real
thing, as prepared according to the precepts in the Book of Dzyan.
—H. P. Lovecraft to E. Hoffmann Price, postmarked 24 Mar 1933, Letters to E. Hoffmann Price 73
Towards, the end of his life, he finally took the step to consult Blavatsky’s work directly: “This was probably The Secret Doctrine. However, at this point Lovecraft (sic) already dying, and it seems unlikely he managed to wade through its 1,500+ pages in the few months remaining to him.’’ (Derie)
For more tales of mystery and imagination, see:
References
HPL and HPB: Lovecraft's Use of Theosophy
Robert M. Price Crypt of Cthulhu, Roodmas 1982, vol.1, no. 5
https://web.archive.org/web/20141018102241/http://crypt-of-cthulhu.com/lovecrafttheosophy.htm
K R Bolton The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 9
Through the Gates of the Silver Key By H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price. Narrated by AI Ranni
https://youtube.com/watch?v=B65T0RoghUo
For controversies concerning Lovecraft, see:
