502. After completion (VIII)

I finally acquired a copy of The Dark Gods (1980) from a Satanist in Colorado; and this was fortunate, for the book retails second-hand at around £85-£465 on Amazon—it is long out of print, so the free PDF was most welcome (Satanists do not worry about copyright). It is a bad book, though not in the moral sense—not because Satanists hold the only copies, for ironically enough the authors take a Blakeian Christian stance to the world; they are very much against the Devil and all his works. It is just badly written; it suffers from this odd cramped or claustrophobic style-sensation often found with books that cover the occult and UFOs.

There is something damp about these books, just like cardboard soaked with too much water. In part, this is because the writers—literally, in the case of The Dark Gods—are schizo, and so their reasoning process is somehow like a badly distorted radio signal; it conjures images of hospital day-rooms where stale coffee sits beside an overflowed ashtray and the TV saturates the room with white noise. This is what it is like to read The Dark Gods.

Despite being out of print, The Dark Gods has had a formative impact on many conspiracy-minded people over the last four decades—its ideas can be seen in David Icke, Alex Jones, and Reza Jorjani (the latter being on the side of the “dark gods”). Its basic thesis is simple enough: HP Lovecraft’s tales are real, actual communications from dark gods—as are many similar “fictional” stories about various entities, along with various supernatural and UFO encounters. All these entities are demons and their role is to tempt mankind into the darkness at the end of time with the promise of “evolution to the next level” (through technology, eugenics, and other blandishments). Hence Hitler and Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner and today’s progressive leaders are all the same—often united through similar esoteric societies, such as the Illuminati, that are in contact with the dark gods. It is all “one thing”.

The alternative is to embrace a Blakeian Christianity—the eternal order found at Glastonbury; and, basically, to be nice to people and not break out the planchette and receive instructions for “evolution to the next level” via the Ouija board, lest you summon the “Men in Black”—a reptilian crew who police unauthorised encounters with the dark gods and their plans.

I found that as I read this book the temperature in my room definitely dropped by several degrees—although it is a bad book, it somehow genuinely disturbs; and perhaps that has something to do with its two authors. Anthony Roberts is the weaker thinker: a journalist who inserts the usual leftist points (occultists seem to often be anti-Semitic; “racism” is Satanic); although, apparently, he made a valiant stand against feminism in the ley line community.

However, it is Geoff Gilbertson—genuinely schizophrenic—whom I believe to be the real motive force behind The Dark Gods. Gilbertson was born to a Bletchley Park cryptographer, a linguist who knew many German dialects; in short, he was very smart—and insofar as the cosmos is a code he had the sensibility to crack it. He lived an itinerant and marginal life, characterised by extreme and almost saint-like openness and receptivity—as with many schizos, he was “cracked open” to reality; and this included a facility with computers, with the early Internet—along with various paranormal happenings. He contested that writing The Dark Gods placed him under psychic attack. He died in impoverished conditions, in a Quaker hostel; and before he died his voice achieved a high-pitched register—the voice-type typically associated by occultists, as well as by the philosopher Nick Land, with spiritual entities; it is generally described as “silvery”. So I feel Gilbertson definitely achieved some gnosis, laid himself bare to reality—involuntarily or not. His traditionally religious insight: the end times approach—and the servants of the dark gods rule the world.