3.8 - Gothic Enchantment: The Magical Strain in Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Anglo-American Gothic

Summary

The Gothic and magic have had a long association. This essay is framed with some relevant remarks by the magician known as ‘Éliphas Lévi’, and refers to a number of twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts that might well be thought of as Gothic: Aleister Crowley’s Moonchild, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Denis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory, M. John Harrison’s The Course of the Heart, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and F.G. Cottam’s House of Lost Souls. All of them have to do with magic, which is also to say that they approach the question of the supernatural through the route of conjuration and return, although from very different perspectives. They all have something to say about ritual magic, and therefore about the afterlife. Some of them express belief in the supernatural efficacy of magic; some do not – but the best leave it up to readers to decide for themselves.