H.P. Lovecraft's Works...At Sacred Texts?

I ran across an unlikely backup database of H.P. Lovecraft's stories the other day. It seems the weird fiction godfather now has his tales hosted at Sacred Texts, a website otherwise devoted to archiving digital copies of the world's chief religious texts. Next to Lovecraft there are tabs marked Tolkien, UFOs, and Earth Mysteries, which showcases Sacred Text's move into borderline Fortean territory.

However, the inclusion of Lovecraft and the fictional Necronomicon he contrived on the site is a bizarre and possibly timely one. Lovecraft's Mythos, like Tolkien's fantasy worlds, are becoming increasingly serious spiritual pantheons for tiny, but vocal outsider circles looking past "mainstream" religion. Still, putting H.P. Lovecraft's stories next to holy books and historical grimoires says quite a bit about society as a whole, but more importantly, HPL's yawning trajectory away from his literary starting point. Lovecraft's Cthulhu has become an undeniable icon of pop culture on the internet, often with a humorous slant. The opposite end of the spectrum is occupied the other current, best represented by the Cult of Cthulhu, which adopts Lovecraft's outre entities as genuine religious symbols, if not authentic gods and demons.

Lovecraft's addition to Sacred Texts may be part of an expanding move in this direction. Considering fictional constructs as articles of worship is far from popular, though, even among the vast majority of Lovecraft readers. There's no reason to think this will change either. Yet, increased instances of Cthulhu Mythos horrors being appropriated as real spiritual objects, or treated as such, implies a new level of tolerance for this use of Lovecraft's work. And that alteration may generate a permanent and controversial footnote in the future Lovecraftian landscape.

-Grim Blogger