HP Lovecraft, the "lost worlds" and Theosophy

One of the things that most strike the reader who is familiar with the themes of esotericism is the large amount of traditional elements in Lovecraft's stories, which is very strange when one takes into account that he defined himself as a convinced advocate of mechanism and materialism. . These concepts, including that of the so-called "lost continents", did not come to him through authentically traditional sources, but through the cogitations and narratives of the theosophists of the late nineteenth century, which also inspired some colleagues of the Providence Dreamer, such as Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard.