The Great God Pan, The Shining Pyramid, The White People by Arthur Machen

As the middle classes continually divorced themselves from communities, traditions, religions, folklore, and history – turning to the democratization of science and capitalism which permitted a man to do as he damn-well pleased – Machen foresaw the perils of a world off the leash. Machen wrote at a time when the middle class was surging: the days of a small, educated elite and a massive, illiterate populace dependent on priests and noblemen for their sense of identity was long gone, and while Machen would hardly have wished humanity back into feudal Europe, he was concerned about the rapid strides made and the intoxication of independence.

Like Robert Louis Stevenson, Machen was obsessed with the concept of vestigial evil – a sort of atavistic will-to-wickedness that clung to the back of men’s brains like a hungry parasite in spite of all our science, manners, and political correctness. This doesn’t necessarily mean the land of ghosts and fairies, but it does mean the Beyond of the human spirit. Aside from any genuine theories about the supernatural, “The Great God Pan” – and the rest of Machen’s prewar corpus – is primarily invested in reminding us of the nearness of the Beyond. In his stories these vortices are strongest among the rugged Welsh wilderness, but they can be summoned in Westminster parlors, Soho alleys, or West End apartments. Sanderson called vile vortices – windows through which the Outside can reach in and grab us. In a sense he was talking about what Ivan T. Nearly all of the speculative fiction that he wrote before World War One concerns this idea of spiritual cross pollination.

“Pan” was a study in Machen’s favorite horror narrative: the story of two worlds touching – barely overlapping, yet long enough for something from beyond to take seed in the world of human affairs. Nearly all the themes, motifs, and philosophy that would make Machen an icon of fin-de-siècle horror can be found in “The Great God Pan” – the story that he is most famous for, but one to which critics continue to have mixed reactions. When Arthur Machen published his first serious attempt at a supernatural tale in 1890, it would set the tone for his horror fiction for the rest of his life.

The Great God Pan, The Shining Pyramid, The White People by Arthur Machen