The Great God Pan
In: Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic StudiesSearch for other papers by Sarah Iles Johnston in
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This essay starts from the premise that ghost stories of the late 19th and 20th centuries often engaged the same issues as older ‘gnostic’ treatises did (taking a particular line from Emanuel Swedenborg), but had the advantage of being able to describe encounters between humans and higher entities far more vividly than the treatises, and the corollary advantage of suggesting new ramifications of such encounters. It focuses on how such stories explore the possibility that, through encounters with higher entities who emerge as negative, protagonists discover that the divine world is either corrupt and ill-intended or (worse) completely meaningless. The first case, Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1890), is contextualized not only within contemporary reactions to Darwin’s theories of evolution (developing Adrian Eckersley’s study) but also contemporary conceptualizations of the debt that modern civilization owed to ancient Greece and Rome. The second examines how H.P. Lovecraft developed Machen’s ideas in ‘The Dunwich Horror’ (1929), where mastery of ancient languages unleashes horror. The third case, Peter Straub’s Ghost Story (1979)—an homage to Lovecraft and Machen—delivers an even darker ‘gnostic’ message: entities whom we assume to have purposes (even if dark purposes) have none at all; only the well-skilled narrative can bring them into order and save himself from perdition.
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Benson E.F. “The Man Who Went Too Far” The Room in the Tower and Other Stories 1912 London Mills & Boon 1 21 1912 Pages
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Blackwood Algernon “A Touch of Pan” Day and Night Stories 1917 New York E. P. Dutton 16 40 Pages
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Borgeaud Philippe Recherches sur le dieu Pan 1979 Geneva Institut Suisse de Rome Translated by Kathleen Atlass and James Redfield as The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece. 1988 Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Bosky Bernadette Schweizer Darrell “Peter Straub: From Academe to Shadowland” Discovering Modern Horror Fiction ii 1988 San Bernardino CA Borgo Press 3 17 Pages
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Cruz Gilbert “Horror Writer Peter Straub” Time 2008 accessed January 16, 2016 Tues. Oct. 14 (http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1850412,00.html) Last
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DeConick April D. DeConick April D., Shaw Gregory & Turner John D. “The Road for the Soul is Through the Planets: The Mysteries of the Ophians Mapped” Practicing Gnosis. Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature. Essays in Honor of Birger A. Pearson 2013 Leiden Brill 37 74 Pages
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DeConick April D. Bull Christian H., Lied Liv Ingeborg & Turner John D. “From the Bowels of Hell to Draco: The Mysteries of the Peratics” Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices. Studies for Einar Thomassen at Sixty 2012 Leiden Brill 3 38 Pages
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Eckersley Adrian “A Theme in the Early Work of Arthur Machen: Degeneration” English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920 1992 35 3 277 287 (1992) Pages
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Forster E.M. “The Story of a Panic” The Independent Review 1904 London Sidgwick & Jackson Later collected in E.M. Forster. 1912, The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories.
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Harrison Jane Ellen “Reminiscences of a Student Life” Arion 1965 4 2 London The Hogarth Press 312 346 Originally published 1925
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Johnston Sarah Iles Schäfer P. & Kippenberg H. Rising to the Occasion: Theurgic Ascent in its Cultural Milieu” Envisioning Magic: A Princeton Seminar and Symposium 1997 Leiden Brill 165 194 Pages
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Langan John “Interview: Peter Straub (Part 2)” Nightmare: Horror and Dark Fantasy 2012 accessed January 16, 2016 2 (http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-peter-straub-part-2/) Last
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Machen Arthur “Letter to John Rowland” Faunus, The Journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen 1943 32 42 43 personal correspondence of July 23. Reprinted in 2015
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Nelson Victoria The Secret Life of Puppets 2001 Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
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Price Robert M. The Dunwich Cycle: Where the Old Gods Wait 1996 Hayward, CA Chaosium
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Richards Fiona “Strange Territories: Arthur Machen and John Ireland” Faunus. The Journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen 2015 32 29 41 Reprinted in 1992
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Rowland John “The Mysticism of Arthur Machen” The Journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen 1943 32 44 46 The New Church Herald July 17. Reprinted in 2015
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Saki Saki “The Music on the Hill” The Chronicles of Clovis 1911 149 159 [Hector H. Munro]
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Smail Daniel Lord On Deep History and the Brain 2008 Berkeley University of California Press
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Tracy Robert Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: In a Glass Darkly 1993 Oxford Oxford University Press
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Worth Aaron “Arthur Machen and the Horrors of Deep History” Victorian Literature and Culture 2012 40 215 227
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4
Nelson 2001. The specific reference is to page viii, but the topic forms one of the foci of the book as a whole.
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6
See in general Merivale 1969, especially chapters 3 and 4, although I think specifically here of a painting done by Arnold Böcklin in 1864 or 1865, entitled “Faun, einer Amsel zupfeidend,” now in the Neuen Pinakothek in Munich.
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9
Eckersley 1992. Worth 2012. Worth draws on Smail 2008.
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11
Harrison 1965, 344.
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15
Bosky 1988, 8. See also the interview with Straub at Cruz 2008.
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The Great God Pan
In: Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic StudiesSearch for other papers by Sarah Iles Johnston in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This essay starts from the premise that ghost stories of the late 19th and 20th centuries often engaged the same issues as older ‘gnostic’ treatises did (taking a particular line from Emanuel Swedenborg), but had the advantage of being able to describe encounters between humans and higher entities far more vividly than the treatises, and the corollary advantage of suggesting new ramifications of such encounters. It focuses on how such stories explore the possibility that, through encounters with higher entities who emerge as negative, protagonists discover that the divine world is either corrupt and ill-intended or (worse) completely meaningless. The first case, Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1890), is contextualized not only within contemporary reactions to Darwin’s theories of evolution (developing Adrian Eckersley’s study) but also contemporary conceptualizations of the debt that modern civilization owed to ancient Greece and Rome. The second examines how H.P. Lovecraft developed Machen’s ideas in ‘The Dunwich Horror’ (1929), where mastery of ancient languages unleashes horror. The third case, Peter Straub’s Ghost Story (1979)—an homage to Lovecraft and Machen—delivers an even darker ‘gnostic’ message: entities whom we assume to have purposes (even if dark purposes) have none at all; only the well-skilled narrative can bring them into order and save himself from perdition.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 622 | 109 | 18 |
| Full Text Views | 322 | 24 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 172 | 44 | 8 |