Dark Awakenings

From its earliest origins, the human religious impulse has been fundamentally bound up with an experience of primordial horror. The German theologian Rudolf Otto located the origin of human religiosity in an ancient experience of 'daemonic dread.' American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft asserted that weird supernatural horror fiction arose from a fundamental human psychological pattern that is 'coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspects of it.' The American psychologist William James wrote in his classic study The Varieties of Religious Experience that the 'real core of the religious problem' lies in an overwhelming experience of cosmic horror born out of abject despair at life's incontrovertible hideousness. In Dark Awakenings, author and scholar Matt Cardin explores this ancient intersection between religion and horror in seven stories and three academic papers that pose a series of disturbing questions: What if the spiritual awakening coveted by so many religious seekers is in fact the ultimate doom? What if the object of religious longing might prove to be the very heart of horror? Could salvation, liberation, enlightenment then be achieved only by identifying with that apotheosis of metaphysical loathing?