Beasts, men or gods: HP Lovecraft's alien cults

(image: John Coulthart, "The Call of Cthulhu")

The presence of mythical-religious themes in the work of the "cosmic Poe" - as Jacques Bergier defined it - is of interest not only from a literary point of view, but also with respect to the relationship between modernity and this type of knowledge. As is now known even to non "experts", Howard Phillips Lovecraft defined himself as a Β«absolute materialist and mechanistic[1]Β persuaded that the world was the mathematical sum of physical impulses governed by chance and deriving human aspirations to mere fantasies. Yet, behind this profession of faith - which too many have stopped at when questioning the Loner of Providence - there is much more. For example, the fact that he had studied and therefore well knew the ancient myths of the West, Greco-Roman but also Germanic and Norse. Well, how are these interests related to yours World vision? Why should an enthusiastic follower of science and technology be passionate about those myths that the same followers of the Goddess Reason often relegate to expressions of a convoluted and premodern, "infantile" humanity? The contradiction, in reality, is only apparent.

A cosmogonic reading of the pantheon of the Mexica tradition, in a perspective of religious syncretism

According to mexica mythology, each star embodies a certain character: the deities have so to speak "sacrificed" themselves in illo tempore to reincarnate in the stars. Thus, for example, Quetzalcoatl transformed himself into the planet Venus, the morning star, which therefore can be worshiped in the triple symbolic form of dynamic energy, of star and personified, as a cultural hero. In turn, the Sun, the main source of the tona or vital heat, arises from the immolation of Nanahuatzin.

The Aztec religion is a Mesoamerican religion that combines elements of polytheism, shamanism and animism, as well as aspects related to astronomy and the calendar. Aztec cosmology divided the world into three levels: an upper one, seat of the celestial gods, a lower one, seat of the underworld powers, and a middle one, in which the human consortium lives, equidistant from the gods and demons of nature and the subsoil. The concept of TheotlΒ it is fundamental in the Aztec religion. In language Nahuatl it is often considered synonymous with "God", even if, to be more precise, it refers to a more general concept, which refers to the immaterial dynamic energy of divinity (tona), similar to the Polynesian concept of mana. As the Tapas of the Indo-Aryans, this tona it is not always beneficial, since an overabundance of it brings death and destruction [Torres 2004, p.14].