- A
History of Terror
- Paul
Newman
- (Introduction
by COLIN WILSON)
- Sutton Publishing: £19.99
INTRODUCTION
What
is the motive force behind civilisation? As this important, stimulating
book demonstrates, it is fear which begins in the nursery and
oppresses youth, middle age and the yellow leaf. Traditional lord of
nightmare was Pan, the goatfoot god, whose spirit haunts this enthralling
narrative - sometimes as a sacrifical victim or ‘scapegoat’ and other
times as an orgiastic avenger.
PREHISTORY
AND THE MIDDLE AGES
Fear
was active from the dawn of prehistory – fear of ghosts, revenants and
hate-dealing spirits like the Grendel who dwelt in a swamp and was slain
by the Anglo Saxon warrior, Beowulf. Throughout the Middle Ages the
spectre of Satan and vengeful Jehovah filled the lives of ordinary men and
women with a dread of hellfire and damnation. It was a time of irrational
hatreds when religious sects like the Cathars were consigned sadistically
to the flames. There was a fear of shape-changing witches and werewolves,
neither of whom were shown a jot of mercy. Then there was imminent panic
at the thought of End of the World, the appearance of the Anti-Christ
followed by the Second Coming. Cowed by such a vision and by waves of
famine and Black Death, men and women processed from town to town,
stripped near-naked in churches and public squares, and scourged
themselves until the blood poured from their skins – all to forestall
the wrath to come.
ELIZABETHANS
AND ROMANTICS
In
the Age of Elizabeth, nobles feared disorder in the kingdom and being the
butt of Machiavellian conspiracies. The French Revolution saw the savage
fantasies of the Marquis de Sade (who himself was shaken by the
barbarities he witnessed) made real as thousands of innocents were
butchered and drowned. With the dawn of Romanticism, the great poets –
Byron, Keats and Shelley – started to delve into the Gothic groves of
horror where they confronted the primal dread or ‘ministry of fear’:
the sense of the sublime that some kneel before as ‘God’ or shrink
away from as ‘Nothing’.
THE
VICTORIANS
The
Victorian Age brought with it a plethora of mechanical inventions, yet
also, ironically, the return of the same restless spirits who oppressed
the tombs of Bronze Age peoples – now they materialised in the curtained
closeness of the séance room. Furthermore, in Britain and Europe, there
was a growth of diabolism, exemplified in figures like Aleister Crowley,
described as "one of the most depraved, vicious and revolting humbugs
who ever escaped from a nightmare or lunatic asylum."
TWENTIETH
CENTURY
The
twentieth century ushered in the birth of atomic physics and the
‘godless’ universe of relativity. It also saw the development of
techonolgies of horror such as the atom bomb to which may be added
Hitler’s gas chambers and the bloody purges of Stalin. Beside the
ever-present spectre of War, floods of smaller panics were provoked by
millenial fantasies, visions of angel, devils and spacemen and the thought
of Satan stalking the world and inciting horrible acts on children and
animals.
FUTURE
TERRORS
Recently,
in the domain of medicine, brain-imaging techniques have enabled the
physiological seat of fear, the amygdala, to be located and linked up with
the alternative strategies of flight, violence and appeasement. In the
near future, with the aid of sophisticated drugs, doctors think fear may
be eliminated from daily life – but would this really be an improvement?
How can one nullify a primal emotion?
Using
unique psychological perspectives, plus an exciting variety of sources and
documents, this fascinating study plumbs the depths of our most intimate
fears and yearnings and culminates in an uplifting moment of vision as the
nightmare journey is eclipsed by a vast ‘aerial river’ of birds flying
across a sky lit up by the lambent white flame of eternity.
Special Offer
Owing to increased demand, we only have a limited quantity in stock, but if you wish to receive a copy signed by both Paul Newman and Colin Wilson, send a cheque or money order for £18 (sterling) to: Paul Newman, Abraxas, 57 Eastbourne Road, St Austell, Cornwall PL5 4SU, UK.
Read Gary Lachman's review of A History of Terror from the Fortean Times