It might seem that history has favoured the red corner and the Great Beast has the Welsh Wizard on the ropes. (Stoker registered a tipping-point in his introductory note to Dracula: “… a history almost at variance with the possibilities of latter-day belief …”) That leaves the blue corner, for good or evil, with the subterranean power of repressed forces.

Maybe BEKs will be the next little thing? (Given the catalytic book, film or TV show.)

For those who relish speculation regarding the future, the tale of supernatural horror provides an interesting field. Combated by a mounting wave of plodding realism, cynical flippancy, and sophisticated disillusionment, it is yet encouraged by a parallel tide of growing mysticism, as developed both through the fatigued reaction of “occultists” and religious fundamentalists against materialistic discovery and through the stimulation of wonder and fancy by such enlarged vistas and broken barriers as modern science has given us with its intra-atomic chemistry, advancing astrophysics, doctrines of relativity, and probings into biology and human thought.

Which nails the bifurcation in horror (fiction) between supernaturalism and naturalism, religion and irreligion, Counter-Enlightenment and ‘Dark Enlightenment’. Horror as romantic reaction to Aufklarung, a yearning for miracle, mystery and ‘Gothic’ Verdunkelung, the certain possibility of spiritual death and damnation — versus the horror of obscene matter, the uncertainty of bodily defeat and dissolution.

In the blue corner, Machen:

Our stupid ancestors taught us that we could become wise by studying books on ‘science,’ by meddling with test-tubes, geological specimens, microscopic preparations, and the like; but they who have cast off these follies know that they must read not ‘science’ books, but mass-books, and that the soul is made wise by the contemplation of mystic ceremonies and elaborate and curious rites.

In the red corner, Crowley:

I resolved that my Ritual should celebrate the sublimity of the operation of universal forces without introducing disputable metaphysical theories. I would neither make nor imply any statement about nature which would not be endorsed by the most materialistic man of science. On the surface this may sound difficult; but in practice I found it perfectly simple to combine the most rigidly rational conceptions of phenomena with the most exalted and enthusiastic celebration of their sublimity.

As a speculative sidenote and thinking out loud here, if there were in fact some sort of phenomenon associated with all the religious traditions on the planet, then that phenomenon seems to play right into our psychology in two ways. Firstly, by manifesting itself in ways that create awed or horrified states of mind that play on our deep evolutionary history, e.g. talking bushes on fire, or the apocalyptic imagery associated with Revelations, or the “First Vision” of Joseph Smith (Smith had his vision in the forest alone, with feelings that something was stalking him):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Vision#Story_of_the_vision

Secondly, by having a raw feed into our minds it makes sense that it is hard to capture that raw feed into actual words or imagery, e.g. the many contradictions or physical impossibilities in religious texts.