H.P. Lovecraft Lectures by Dr. Justin Woodman: The Recordings

Last year we mentioned that Justin Woodman was due to present a series of four linked lectures on H.P. Lovecraft and the Occult at Treadwell's Bookshop in Covent Garden, London.

Dr. Woodman gave the lectures in January & Feburary of this year and has now generously made the audio recordings of those lectures publicly available through Yog-Sothoth.

The four (hour-plus) lectures are entitled: HPL: Fabulist, Myth-Maker & Shaman, Legends of the Necronomicon, Chariots of the Dark Gods and Chaos, Cthulhu, and Contemporary Consciousness. If the sound of those whet your appetite, then read (and listen) on.

H.P. Lovecraft & the Occult.
A lecture series by Dr. Justin Woodman. Presented at Treadwell's Bookshop, Covent Garden, London.

17 January, 2007
The First Lecture: Fabulist, Myth-Maker & Shaman (53.5 MB, MP3)
In the first of the series Justin Woodman casts a critical eye on the 'magical' context of Lovecraft's life and work. He explores some of the myths surrounding the man and his fiction. This first talk also begins to examine the powerful influence that Lovecraft's unique literary creations have exerted over the contemporary occult imagination.

31 January, 2007
The Second Lecture: Legends of the Necronomicon (61.3 MB, MP3)
In part two of this series, Justin Woodman explores the history of the legendary Necronomicon in fact and fiction, and ponders its continuing relevance to contemporary occult cultures. Penned by the Yemeni poet and mystic Abdul Alhazred circa 700 AD, the dreaded Necronomicon is perhaps one of the most powerful and alluring of HP Lovecraft's creations: a grimoire able to rend apart the very fabric of reality and bring forth the Great Old Ones themselves. Although a work of fiction, the Necronomicon has achieved a social and physical reality with more than twenty versions having been published since the 1960s.

14 February, 2007
The Third Lecture: Chariots of the Dark Gods (49.5 MB, MP3)
Many of H.P. Lovecraft's best known tales of the Cthulhu Mythos intimate that the human species is nothing but a by-product of extraterrestrial interventions in Earth's prehistory. Lovecraft's ideas do, in fact, predate the "Ancient Astronaut" theorists and "alternative archaeologists" by over thirty years. Drawing on the work of Jason Colavito, in this lecture Justin Woodman demonstrates that Lovecraft is a pervasive (but often unacknowledged) influence upon contemporary ufology, UFO religions and the broader 'culture of conspiracy'.

28 February, 2007
The Fourth Lecture: Chaos, Cthulhu, and Contemporary Consciousness (59.1 MB, MP3)
This talk concludes the series exploring the relationship between Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and contemporary occult cultures. Woodman focuses on Chaos magic and other recent movements, and considers the claim that Lovecraft was a "mythographer of modernity" whose work intimates something about the current trajectories of Western culture and consciousness.

Associated Microsoft PowerPoint slides (zipped archive, 7.8 MB)

About Dr. Justin Woodman

Justin Woodman lectures in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths College (University of London), where he completed his doctoral thesis on Chaos Magick in 2003. He also lectures at Birkbeck College (University of London), and the University of Westminster. Dr. Woodman has contributed articles on Lovecraftian themes to Strange Attractor and The Journal for the Academic Study of Magic, and is one of the founding moderators of the Lovecraft Scholars Yahoo Group. Justin is also a keen player of Call of Cthulhu and a regular lurker at Yog-Sothoth.com.

Justin is currently working on a book based on the lecture series, and his occasional musings on things Lovecraftian can be found at:

http://ghooriczone.blogspot.com/