NOTE: This essay has now been collected in my 2022 book What the Daemon Said: Essays on Horror Fiction, Film, and Philosophy.
When the first of my sleep paralysis attacks occurred in the early 1990s, I had no idea that it was the onset of a period that I would later come to recognize or characterize as a spontaneous shamanic-type initiation via nightmare. I didn’t know that it would shatter the psychological, spiritual, ontological, metaphysical, and interpersonal assumptions that had undergirded my worldview and daily experience for so long that I had forgotten they were assumptions instead of givens. Terence McKenna, among others, has argued that, in accordance with the same principle that keeps a fish oblivious to the existence of water, the perturbation of consciousness is necessary for us even to become aware of the reality of consciousness as such. For me this was confirmed with lasting impact by the experience of waking up from a profoundly deep sleep to encounter a darkly luminous, vaguely man-shaped outline of a being that stood over me at the foot of the bed, and that shone with sizzling rays of shadow, and that represented a thunderous and sui generis — intended solely for me — black hole of a negative singularity, a presence whose entire reason for being was to draw me in and annihilate my essence. In the manner of dreams and daemons, the experience was as much cognitive and emotional as it was perceptual. There was no separation between these usually discrete categories. Nor was there a separation between the categories of self and other, between “me” and the assaulting presence. Horror was literally all there was, all that existed, all that was real — not as a reaction to an experience but as an organic and inevitable symmetry of being. I was not horrified. The experience was purely and simply horror.
When this proved to be not an isolated episode but an ongoing crisis spanning a period of months and years, and when the psychic effects began to leak into the daylight world and contaminate daily life with a distinct and inescapable background static of creeping nightmarishness, I knew something dire had happened. I had crossed some sort of threshold, and the most likely vocabulary for thinking and talking about it was the vocabulary of cosmic horror, which had been inculcated in me by years of obsessively reading Lovecraft, Lovecraft criticism, and the works of a whole host of associated authors. As explained previously, one of the results of this confluence was my horror novelette “Teeth.”
There was, however, another vocabulary I could have used, and it would have complemented the cosmic horrific one in mutually illuminating fashion. It was the vocabulary of consciousness change and high paranormal weirdness encoded in the idea of Chapel Perilous as explicated by Robert Anton Wilson. But this didn’t occur to me until much later. . .
This essay has now been moved over to my newer/current blog, The Living Dark. Click through to finish reading it there.
This is truly one of your penultimate posts, I can’t wait for the rest.
Thank you for the positive feedback.
Great post. Looking forward to more. I’ve peeked into Chapel Perilous but never had the guts to go in. What’s on the other side might ultimately be benign, but I have my doubts. Unfortunately, it appears to be the only route to any form of “enlightenment.”
Those doubts about the nature of what lies on the other side, whether it’s truly (or even nominally) benign, are indeed the rub, aren’t they? A number of writers in recent years, such as science journalist John Horgan (in RATIONAL MYSTICISM), have pointed out that, contrary to popular assumptions, “awakening” experiences are not uniformly pleasant, and are in fact experienced by some people as something on a continuum between unpleasant and horrific. And of course some (many) of us have verified that in our own lives.
“I had crossed some sort of threshold, and the most likely vocabulary for thinking and talking about it was the vocabulary of cosmic horror, which had been inculcated in me by years of obsessively reading Lovecraft, Lovecraft criticism, and the works of a whole host of associated authors.”
There’s something you wrote in your review of Thomas Ligotti’s work (about it coloring readers’ perceptions of the universe), combined with your quote there that makes me sometimes skittish of even being here. I know enough about how some of this stuff works – what you input (into the mind or consciousness, etc) works as catalyst/doorway/beacon to whatever beings/forces congregate at that type of energy, (I hope you understand what I’m saying, I don’t seem very articulate to myself.) and while it’s good to be catholic in one’s understanding of reality/ies, it’s maybe good to be choosy.
Anyway, I think I’m leading up to asking nominal forgiveness if I skirt topics, stick my fingers in my ears and sing ‘la la la’ and pretend I know nothing about threatening shadows and the horrific. I want to be able to return from all this. Not to bouncy cheerful positive thinking, but to a fool’s paradise nonetheless. Sorry, I’m gutless. Sort of. Meanwhile I peek out from behind my hands.
And then dash away.
The fact that we both take this seriously is what stands out to me. No need to worry about skirting certain topics etc., Wendy, because I view that as just sane and practical psychological/spiritual/whole-life-level self-preservation. We all know, deeply and automatically, when something strikes us well or ill. We also all know what it’s like to be drawn mothlike toward the flame of something that seems to inhabit the latter category and/but to exert all the more potent pull of dark fascination for that very reason. I’ll see you on other posts, or elsewhere on the Web, or both.
Thanks Matt, for recognizing it as “preservation” 🙂
For the most part, when I have free online time, I like what I read here and am fascinated by the variety of intersecting topics and the skill with which they’re presented. I think the line gets drawn, for me, oddly enough, at fiction. It’s like I can accept weirdness in real life – obviously people experience weirdness – but just can’t bring myself to let “horror” fiction enter my mindspace the way other fiction gets a pass. Anything that feels like it might be inviting company I really don’t want is nixed.
But as usual, I’m your plodding-along kinda-regular reader… 🙂
I and we are thrilled to have your plodding-along kinda-regular reader in our company. 🙂
Great piece, and generally admiration for your sustained fine work on these pages .. shine on !!
As I read your statement about absorbing the horror images from Lovecraft’s fiction I think of “Garbage in – Garbage out”. With a popular culture soaked in fantasy horror imagery it’s really no wonder that many are experiencing this as they timidly plow through mind space. The universe is absolutely beyond our human fantasies and merely reflects back what is in us already.
Here’s a little hint for those who encounter a loss of all meaning… You create meaning for yourself. All you know is already with you and you can derive meaning from it the way that a lost person sets about making a fire from things they find. The magician, however, uses novelty and invention to make meaning that has never existed before and thus re-new the world.
It’s inevitable. Our fiction gets in rather desired or not, regardless how eternal the desert might seem.
Matt, as you know, I do not, cannot read weird fiction, in spite of the fact that I find you to be a remarkably excellent writer. What interests me intently are the most autobiographical parts of your post. I would love to see something more like a day to day, or week to week, “diary” of your experiences and of how you, slowly I imagine, came to understand them, and to move your life beyond them. I gather, to get something like that, I would have to read the stories most closely resembling your personal experience. Thanks for this post, and for drawing my attention to it.