Saturday, December 16, 2006

Lovecraft's Dreaming Part IV

We see that the child, Howard, probably was traumatized by his grandmother's death. He had already broke from her by rejecting Jesus (and Santa Clause), but he snuck to the attic and precociously studied "religion" by reading Dante's Paradise Lost.

Amazingly, the child ignored the nude figures and decapitated torsos of Dore, and focused on the winged demons. These became his nightgaunts who tried to dsh him against mountains.

He conflates his childhood nightmare with his adult dreaming. These adult incidents are reminiscent of sleep paralysis - his "struggle to keep awake".

Nest, let's explore if Lovecraft practiced "directed dreaming". For that we will use George Noory's recent book, Workers in the Dark.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I experience sleep paralysis on a very regular basis. It can be a terrifying ordeal. I have been on a sleep paralysis mailing list for many years, and you may be interested to know that one of the most common things seen is the figure of a dark, hooded man. In my own opinion, I could swear that HPL experienced sleep paralysis, probably off and on during his lifetime. It can become more frequent during periods of stress, and with irregular sleeping habits, medications, etc. People who have sleep paralysis can learn to move through the fear and go into lucid dreaming, they seem to be connected, or at least, they can be connected if you have the nerve.

Chris Perridas said...

Thank you Julilla for your faithful reading of the blog and your comment. Peace.

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