“That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die”

I have never considered myself as a person with morbid inclinations until I chanced upon these lines while reading H.P Lovecraft’s most renowned Gothic novella, The Call of Cthullu. One of the first things that made an impression upon me about Lovecraft was the irony in his name since love is supposed to be the polar opposite of anything that could be deemed as grotesque or unnatural. Nonetheless, this misgiving rapidly gave way once I realised his literal ingenuity. Within a few minutes into the book, I found his literary prose to be oddly captivating for some reason. It was as though using his words, he was capable of arousing the most terrifying images humanly conceivable in the readers’ mind with exceptional clarity but in the process fettered one with chains of curiosity that rendered any chances of putting down the book, highly implausible. At first, it proved to be quite difficult and tiresome to understand his convoluted sentences refined for aesthetic appeal but with a little amount of perseverance I became extremely fond of his prosaic style and managed to breeze through his sentences with almost no effort. Finishing the book within a few hours, I seemed to have been overwhelmed by a queer sense of nostalgia while wondering how the utterly terrifying things that I just read could exercise such a magical influence on someone who’s always despised any work of horror most of his life. Among the innumerable Gothic fiction produced for entertainment, it seemed to me that the Lovecraftian universe did not possess any distinctive characteristics that would set it apart from the rest of its counterparts but soon after, I became quite convinced that this analysis was painfully superficial and that the object of its criticism warranted a much more diligent scrutiny.

Thereby began my relentless pursuit to understand this strange liking that I took towards H.P Lovecraft’s nocturnal monstrosities. I started perusing the internet for every Lovecraftian work of horror hitherto published, from At The Mountain of Madness to Shadow Over Insmouth, incessantly devouring what I considered to be some of the greatest works of fiction ever written. With each book that I managed to read within hours of its discovery, my appreciation for Lovecraft and the entire realm of morbid aspirations grew correspondingly unobscure but so did my perplexion with this peculiar fondness that I discovered within myself. For as long as I can remember, I have always shown a marked aversion to things that are generally permeated by a hideous undertone because of my encounters with uncommonly frightful circumstances. Some of the earliest memories that I retained from my childhood were of an exceedingly morbid nature which I suppose greatly contributed to my abhorrence of anything dark and twisted. And the tribulations of life that besets one and shatters any appearance of normality should have reinforced my prejudice against anything ghastly but here I was, utterly fascinated by these seemingly grotesque figures of darkness. The paradoxical nature of this novel fascination captivated even further and I soon became obsessed with fully expounding this new found appreciation. I started to feel that the Cthullu Mythos - Lovecraft’s fictional universe - directly spoke to a part of myself that I didn’t even know existed and consequently prompted a deep reflection into the dark recesses of my human soul.

It was during this period of introspective contemplation that I fully realised that the peculiarities did not lie in Lovecraft’s novellas but rather in the subject in which it excited much attention. This realisation came us a complete surprise to someone like me who’s always been portrayed as a seemingly innocuous person; and this attempt to impart an identity upon me was not met with much resistance since I firmly believed that the quality of being innocuous was inherently a virtue. Thus I revelled in my supposedly unwavering moral rectitude, harbouring the unshakeable conviction that I most certainly contributed to solving the overarching moral nihilism that characterizes our current society. Nonetheless, protecting this illusion that I was an avatar of moral purity proved to be beyond the bounds of my capabilities once I confronted the darkness that lied within me. Clearly, my Lovecraftian run of the readings unwittingly lead to a discovery that immediately won my disapproval for it implied the line that separated me and the people that I have despised most of my life was much more ill defined than I would like to admit. A conviction from which I derived most of my moral fortitude for so long foundered upon this startling discovery and ultimately lead to what could only be described as a metamorphosis, for this was the time that I became intimately acquainted with Carl Jung’s idea of the shadow.

From a Jungian perspective, the shadow is simply defined as an individual’s inferior qualities that has been repressed as a consequence of a moral conflict with conscious norms or ideals. It is the part of the personality that has been ignored as being too hideous or immoral and thus sinks to the unconscious, exerting its influence on our conscious mode of conduct behind the veil. Encountering these descriptions while reading Jung struck me as quite strange and I struggled to discern whether if it was my lack of ingenuity and wisdom that caused such bafflement or my inexperience with psychological literature. Although most of what Jung said seemed to lie in domains that I have hitherto never dared to even acknowledge, I deeply resonated with his writings and acquired an inexplicable impression that suggested its supreme importance to my psychological well being. So I sought to dispense with this feeling of apparent remoteness and resolved to understand his ideas in spite of its sheer complexity. Within a few months, I managed to obtain a reasonable understanding of the Jungian framework and felt competent enough to engage in various discourse pertaining to psychology and comparative mythology hoping to glean insights that would aid my comprehension of his arcane subtexts. But this abstract acquisition however was not immediately followed by any form of spiritual change like I had hoped. In spite of my new found ability to adequately reformulate Jung’s conceptions on my own terms, I felt that I would never truly understand the essence of his writings unless I weaved his ideals through my own personal narrative. I was once again reminded of the difference between verbal representations and the underlying substance they sought to circumscribe and ventured to establish a connection between these concepts and my own subjectivity. This endeavour nonetheless proved to be much more difficult than I had presumed since the requisite material that would allow me to establish such a bond was wholly rendered unconscious by my infantile attitude. On the brink of desertion, this undertaking was surprisingly resuscitated by my encounter with the morbid anthology of Lovecraftian fiction and unearthed parts of myself that were simply too painful to confront. Parts that would constitute the impalpable connection I later formed with the Jungian Opus.

My encounter with the Gothic writings of H.P Lovecraft and the subsequent reflections prompted by the former brought forth a wave of dreams fraught with unspeakable horror and dread. The dreams, unlike what one would expect, did not possess any typical qualities of Gothic fiction that I had lately perused but seemed to reveal contents that were extremely personal in nature. During its initial stages, I was exceedingly overwhelmed by these strange ordeals and struggled to grapple with them due to the unprecedented nature of their problem but their repeated occurrence however alleviated the fear that was normally associated such experiences and paved a way that would greatly further my understanding of psychological afflictions and human nature in general. So instead of running away from the spectres of darkness that plagued me at night, I resolved to confront them and elucidate their archaic forms of representations in spite of its sheer ambiguity. Unlike most other psychologists of his time who considered dreams as nothing more than a trivial abnormality that did not warrant much attention, Jung regarded them as direct manifestations of unconscious activity whose message was of the utmost significance to the dreamer and solely attributed its apparent incoherence as a consequence of personal ineptitude. I instantly sympathized with Jung’s conceptions on the importance of dream activity and started to realise that ignoring my nightmares would not contribute to their much desired imminent disappearance. Thus I directed my undivided attention to the nocturnal part of my existence and willingly confronted the products of my unconscious morbidities. Notwithstanding the fact that I was utterly terrified by their abject grotesqueness, I began to notice furtive allusions I seemed to associate with distant memories that have since long been buried. Subsequently, a flood of associations rushed in like a storm, mostly serving to instantiate the immorality of my past actions and motivations and which inevitably lead me to question the moral nature of my existence. I was completely engrossed by this problem, so to speak, and constantly searched for justifications that would fortify my cherished illusion but those attempts forever remained in vain. I was invariably obligated to find a way to assimilate these new found contents that were unearthed in the process of this demoralising introspection but could only do so by answering a question that seemed thoroughly inscrutable. A question that forced me to reconsider the very nature of darkness itself.

A problem that I merely regarded to be nothing more than a trivial idiosyncrasy that would simply contribute to my long list of queer peculiarities proved to be a much larger predicament whose relevance encapsulated every individual that comprised current societies and as a consequence demanded their most fervent attention. Nonetheless, the people that I often encountered seemed to remain completely impervious to such moral conflicts whilst I appeared to be foredoomed to live a life eternally characterized by profound psychological disunion. I simply could not rest content with the fact that I harboured qualities of such moral decadence and took elaborate pains to discover the reasons for why I possessed those traits. Although comparatively speaking, I could be described as a moral person who did not pose any danger to himself or to those around him, the point of my concern was not so much the things I had done in the past which qualified as immoral but the potentialities that were illuminated in the process of this laborious self reflection. I was soon confronted with the question on how exactly would one reconcile goodness with the capacity to inflict undue suffering on others. Isn’t it rational to presume that the absence of malevolence is what truly constitutes as being good? Or does evil paradoxically form the necessary precondition for genuine morality that individuals strive towards? But the question that I found to be the most disconcerting was why did such supposedly trivial issues that no one ever bothered about and which evidently possessed a morbid demeanour be utterly captivating? The task of answering these questions occupied the forefront of my consciousness but any solution that I stumbled upon seemed to lie far beyond the bounds of my comprehension. I was no distinguished moral philosopher who could divine generalized conclusions about the moral nature of our existence but simply a precocious adolescent whose taste for morbid things aroused in him an inexplicable disquietude. In spite of my apparent cluelessness, my intuition lead me to believe that the series of aforementioned questions could all be resolved to that problem which troubled me the most. What precisely constituted the allure to darkness?

And there I was once again, struggling to understand the inexplicable source of my morbid fascinations and perhaps even of the existence of darkness itself. The first image that one recalls in the face of darkness and evil is obviously the Devil, a widely disseminated religious figure whose existence could very well account for all the malevolence that abounds in the world. But as I looked upon history and the catastrophes wrought by tyrants and oligarchs characterized by an insatiable thirst for power, the proposition that the devil was the only cause of evil seemed unconvincing since it clearly was the deliberate act of individuals that lead to such catastrophes. The devil could very well have tempted those individuals to commit such atrocities instead of doing the deed himself but nonetheless, the outcome was still contingent upon their willful subordination to the potent forces of darkness. Therefore naturally, one might assume that bringing about goodness in this world is merely a matter of resisting the alluring exhortations of Satan and fortifying oneself against him by strongly adhering to their respective religious doctrines. But the belief in the objective validity of religious precepts however has been greatly undermined since the inception of post experimentalist thought and the devil in the modern era seems like nothing more than a fleeting fantasy that warrants our utmost contempt and ridicule. Even from an orthodox religious perspective, admitting to the existence of the Devil is seldom followed by a diligent survey that attempts to expound what precisely makes him evil. We either ascribe no significance whatsoever to this well known figure or exalt him to such heights of decadence that even showing the slightest of interest on the context within which he is placed is perceived as sinful or well nigh daemonic. As I appropriated a refined corpus of knowledge pertaining to the phenomenon of malevolence and resentment it seemed highly likely that the follies of human civilization is not solely a consequence of forsaking the idea of God. It is also partly because we have underestimated and profoundly misunderstood what the Devil actually stands for. And most importantly failed to recognise what it is that draws people towards darkness.

The conclusions that I derived from what appeared to be an insipid rumination about Lovecraftian horror proved to be revolutionary for I have never been the same person since then. One of the first things I realized in my arduous contemplations that would help me answer the aforementioned questions was the fact that the nature of our moral judgements largely depend on the context within which they are manifested. So unlike what most people would suppose evil could never be sufficiently elucidated to a series of abstract descriptions for every aspect of human experience necessarily harbours a paradoxical quality. Anything that could be deemed as a mark of goodness and benevolence might very well seem undoubtedly evil if the presumptions that underlie such a frame of reference is slightly altered. This is perhaps why evil is best construed as a personality because only a living entity could best approximate the true nature of a dynamic process and any abstraction that one might employ to understand such an idea is invariably distorted. Despite the apparent simplicity of this observation, the implications that it entailed had far reaching effects on my overarching worldview because it seemed to presage a glimmer of hope that would finally alleviate my dismal state of affairs. Contrary to their allegorical usage, I eventually recognised that darkness and evil were not identical in nature because the former’s enclave confined a much larger aspect of human experience than the latter. And because of our proclivity to tenaciously protect the edifices from which we derive much of our certainty both of those words remained insufficiently discriminated and as a consequence anything that even dared to transgress already established ideals was unthinkingly conceptualized as a harbinger of evil. The reason I suppose darkness exercises such an influence on curious individuals like myself is because it also represents latent potential. It represents everything that has hitherto remained outside the bounds of our chartered territory and beckons people who present the courage and ingenuity to rise up to the occasion that would profoundly expand the domain of human understanding. This morbid curiosity might very well threaten everything that we have ever worked for and might even prove to be extremely dangerous for the individual who undertakes such a courageous enterprise but any alternative that seems superficially desirable leads to a much larger catastrophe than one might expect. It is indispensable to take into account the ever prevailing darkness that surrounds human experience because any failure to do so would be what truly constitutes the evil mode of being.

Enabling me to discern the evil I encountered without, the insights I had gleaned also allowed me to reconcile the immorality that I found within. Comprehending the fact that evil was merely pride and the voluntary refusal to admit one’s fallibility, I realized that my former actions that bore the mark of malice was in fact the source of my greatest strength for without its existence my understanding of evil would have forever retained its premature naivety. Soon after this reconceptualization, the nightmares that had often plagued me at night grew increasingly infrequent and eventually withered away. The dissolution of my former personality and the consequent plunge into the depths of chaos was followed by a profound enlargement of my conscious understanding of the world and of myself. It was as though I was involuntarily disillusioned by transpersonal forces who had laid life bare in all its glorious failures and apprehensions and as a result instilled a deep seated humility that would perhaps never fail to remind me of my personal inadequacies. Although this triumphant victory over the forces of darkness so to speak was preceded by a period of intense misery and despair, the subsequent wisdom that was unearthed during this process proved to be invaluable in my pursuit of self knowledge. I was finally able to fully comprehend Jung’s notion about the shadow and how one’s conscious orientation towards it would aid in the formation of an integrated personality. But this hard earned acquisition however did not in the least undermine the vitality of my profuse inner life. On the contrary, my dreams had only proliferated in number and firmly established the importance of my psychological reality that I could no longer ignore for I had beheld the light nested within the darkness that beckoned me.