You never know what you're going to get when you pick up a book by Khurt Khave. This one doesn't have his name on the front, because ostensibly it's a deeper exploration of occult practices laid out in his Astronomicon Minorem, the holy book of the First United Church of Cthulhu. However, this is a unique federally recognised religion in that it's not actively trying to recruit you and it isn't after your money. Its core belief is cosmic indifference; that we as a species are insignificant to any gods that might be out there and they certainly aren't listening to us.

As you might expect from such a punk take on religion, this is mysticism with a rebellious mindset, as much a punk zine as it is holy writ. It's a patchwork quilt of language, observation and guidance in which anything could be a lyric or a quote or a pop culture aphorism. Half of it is black and white art generated in Midjourney that's occasionally acutely memorable. It's all rather appropriate for a religion focused on H. P. Lovecraft that posits that, like Richard Upton Pickman, he painted from life, merely in words rather than colour. That doesn't mean that his monsters were real, just that he saw them, owing to enhanced levels of DMT in his pituitary gland. We see what we see.

And 'Moribund' is quite the trip. While it excerpts some of Khave's numerous volumes of fiction as flavour, such as 'A Bad Case of the Horribly Wrongs', 'Pickman's App' and 'Jangling the Silver Keys', a story from an Ulthar-based anthology, 'Kill Those Damn Cats', the early sections are dominated by Khave's charts about descents into darkness, each logical direction through a matrix explained as a combination of punk poetry and life choice, all set against the everpresent backdrop of cosmic indifference that suggests that our only judges are ourselves. And maybe we can judge ourselves on how well we slip into rhyme and how cleverly we diss the posers who set up their equivalent and failed.

As it moves on, it gets to the meat of the book, which is a suitably rambling Q&A about the church, from its origins and goals to how an organisation built on pop culture can morph and adapt as the needs of its members require. There's only one official holy day, for instance, which is Lovecraft's birthday on 20th August, but we celebrate a lot, because why wouldn't we, and, depending on the direction we took to reach the church, we might have brought some with us. The Dudeists brought their holidays, the Discordians theirs. I added Guy Fawkes Night because what's more fun than an immense bonfire while you're drinking beer and eating parkin? It can be a cosmic experience.

And I should point out my involvement here, as a disclaimer. I didn't write this book or any part of it, but I'm a co-founder of the First United Church of Cthulhu and serve as its Archpriest of Chaos. I didn't need most of the Q&A answers because I've watched the church grow, in the guiding arms of its Head Priest, the Proso Khurtulu, Khurt Khave. I've officiated a wedding under its auspices. This book contains samples of text suitable for such weddings, should you be asked to conduct one, and it talks through the legal side of that, where the state or country is accepting and where it needs other steps to be taken.

I used a romantic quote from imagineer Dr. Seuss during the wedding I officiated, which was: "You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." That kind of feels appropriate to bring up at this point, because there's so much in Lovecraft about dreams. And, just as we drift away into the art and the holy flippancy, Khave gets serious and gives us an idea of who we might meet there, the hierarchy of gods, diving into the Cthulthu Mythos and beyond to cite references. That's the sort of book this is, shifting on a dime from a Meat Loaf lyric to a quote from 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' with relevant wording emphasised.

Whether you read this seriously, as a set of directions and waypoints; semi-seriously, as a guide to a federally recognised religion that isn't going to pass round a collection plate and refuses to step on any beliefs you might bring with you; or entirely in fun, as a punk zine with a large font size and fascinating artwork, sourced somewhere in that dreamspace between horrific and welcoming, it's a fun ride. And, if you let it settle, it might prompt you to think about things and weft your mind in neat directions. Cthulhu fhtagn! ~~ Hal C F Astell

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