H.P. Lovecraft and 4/20

H.P. Lovecraft's influence has grown to such heights that many now look, hopefully, at the chance of the writer having a finger in their affairs. Among the more interesting suggestions to appear online is this blog post from Cannabis Culture speculating on a Lovecraftian origin for the 4/20 holiday. Lovecraft, a strict puritan when it came to substances harsher than caffeine and sugar, references the time 4:20 in his story "The Walls of Eryx." It's also the moment when his explorer comes into contact with a mind altering plant on Venus. Besides being an oddly sci-fi driven story ghostwritten for Kenneth J. Sterling, Lovecraft's vivid description of the marijuana-like Venusian growth is a departure in content from many of his other stories.

However fun it might be to think that HPL's work could have generated the name for 4/20's cannabis celebrations, it's not likely. The history of this cultural day seems fairly well documented, including its name. Also, there hasn't ever been corroborating evidence of this in any known Lovecraft scholarship.

Though the holiday recently passed and new blog posts about this appeared, the theory has actually been floating around for a few years. Its first noticeable appearance online was in a newsletter from the band Tool--quite possibly the originator. Given Lovecraft's popularity among people drawn to alternative niche cultures, this will not be the last tall tale in the now mythic existence of H.P. Lovecraft and his fiction.

-Grim Blogger