I have always been fascinated by weird fiction and heroic fantasy. Howard Philips Lovecraft (alongside three he influenced: Robert E. Howard, Brian McNaughton, and Karl Edward Wagner) has been one of my favorite writers since I was a teenaged Evangelical Christian. It’s even been pointed out to me that my former Calvinistic theology is tantamount to Lovecraftian horror (a trait partly determined by its retention of Gnostic features latent in Christianity, especially Paul/Simon Magus/Marcion and John). Lovecraft had a brilliant hand for creating a mythology which had anthropological verisimilitude, being both strange and eerily believable at the same time. He drew directly on many myths and religions, giving them his own uncanny links to the rest. Like Greg Stafford’s Glorantha mythologies, Lovecraft keeps enough vagueness and tension to keep it a real mystery to us. His use of fringe science was combined with a literal interpretation of gnostics, especially in their darker shades, and how utterly weird theology in general is if you try to make it fit into our cosmos.
As far back as the Satanic Bible and Satanic Rituals, direct references to Lovecraft abound. Others, obviously influenced by Lovecraft, LaVey and one another in succession showed the same tendency: Anton Long and the Temple of the Black Light are almost using Lovecraft as a lens by which to interpret ancient anti-nomian and Cainite ideas.
I wonder how much modern writers of weird fiction are influenced by the currents of religious and esoteric Satanism. I know for a fact that more than one Satanic priest or magus writes dark fantasy or weird horror.