Cthulhu

An interpretation of Cthulhu in the sunken city of R'lyeh

Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by horror author H. P. Lovecraft in 1926. The first appearance of the entity was in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu" published in Weird Tales in 1928.

Cthulhu is one of the central Great Old Ones of the Lovecraft Mythos. It is often cited for the extreme descriptions given of its hideous appearance, its gargantuan size, and the abject terror that it evokes. Cthulhu is often referred to in science fiction and fantasy circles as a tongue-in-cheek shorthand for extreme horror or evil.

After its first appearance in "The Call of Cthulhu", Cthulhu makes a few minor appearances in other Lovecraft stories.^[1] August Derleth, a correspondent of Lovecraft's, used the creature's name to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors, the Cthulhu Mythos.

Spelling and pronunciation

Cthulhu has also been spelled as Tulu, Clulu, Clooloo, Cthulu, C'thulhu, Cighulu, Cathulu, Kathulu, Kutulu, Kthulhu, Q’thulu, K'tulu, Kthulhut, Kulhu, Kutunluu, Ktulu, Cuitiliú, Thu Thu,^[2] and in many other ways. It is often preceded by the epithet Great, Dead, or Dread.

Lovecraft transcribed the pronunciation of Cthulhu as "Khlûl'-hloo" (IPA: [ˈχɬʊl.ɬuː] ?).^[3][4] S. T. Joshi points out, however, that Lovecraft gave several differing pronunciations on different occasions.^[5] According to Lovecraft, this is merely the closest that the human vocal apparatus can come to reproducing the syllables of an alien language.^[6] Long after Lovecraft's death, the pronunciation kə-THOO-loo (IPA: /kəˈθuːluː/) became common, and the game Call of Cthulhu endorsed it.

Physicality and origins

While the birthplace of Cthulhu is not definitively established, it is suggested that it is the planet Vhoorl, with his advent somehow connected with supernovae: "I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth."^[7] It is also suggested in both At the Mountains of Madness and “The Whisperer in Darkness” that Cthulhu is made up of some unknown and foreign matter.

The most detailed descriptions of Cthulhu appear in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", and are based on the statues of the creature. One, constructed by an artist after a series of baleful dreams, is said to have "yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.... A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary wings."^[8] Another, recovered by police from a raid on a murderous cult, "represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind."^[9]

When the creature finally appears, the story says that the "thing cannot be described", but it is called "the green, sticky spawn of the stars", with "flabby claws" and an "awful squid-head with writhing feelers". The phrase "a mountain walked or stumbled" gives a sense of the creature's scale.^[10]

Cult of Cthulhu

Cthulhu is depicted as having a worldwide doomsday cult centered in Arabia, with followers in regions as far-flung as Greenland and Louisiana.^[11] There are leaders of the cult "in the mountains of China" who are said to be immortal. Cthulhu is described by some of these cultists as the "great priest" of "the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky."^[12]

The cult is noted for chanting the phrase "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", which translates as "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."^[13] This is often shortened to "Cthulhu fhtagn", which might possibly mean "Cthulhu waits", "Cthulhu dreams",^[14] or "Cthulhu waits dreaming." ^[15]

One cultist, known as Old Castro, provides the most elaborate information given in Lovecraft's fiction about Cthulhu. The Great Old Ones, according to Castro, had come from the stars to rule the world in ages past.

They were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape...but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them.^[16]

Castro points to a "much-discussed couplet" from Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon:

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.^[17]

Castro explains the role of the Cthulhu Cult, stating that when the stars and the earth "might once more be ready" for the Great Old Ones, "some force from outside must serve to liberate their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented them from making an initial move."^[16] At the proper time,

the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from his tomb to revive His subjects and resume his rule of earth....Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.^[18]

The character goes on to report that the Great Old Ones are telepathic and "knew all that was occurring in the universe". They were able to communicate with the first humans by "moulding their dreams", thus establishing the Cthulhu Cult, but after R'lyeh had sunk beneath the waves, "the deep waters, full of the one primal mystery through which not even thought can pass, had cut off the spectral intercourse."^[19]

Additionally, The Shadow Over Innsmouth establishes that Cthulhu is also worshipped by the nonhuman creatures known as Deep Ones.^[20] “The Whisperer in Darkness” establishes that Cthulhu is one of many deities worshiped by the Mi-Go.

Star-spawn of Cthulhu

Though not extensively described in Lovecraft's works, the star-spawn of Cthulhu (or Cthulhi) are depicted as sharing physical characteristics similar to those of Cthulhu himself, although their overall size is far smaller. The narrator of At the Mountains of Madness notes that the Cthulhu spawn "seem to have been composed of matter more widely different from that which we know than was the substance of the Antarctic Old Ones. They were able to undergo transformations and reintegrations impossible for their adversaries, and seem therefore to have originally come from even remoter gulfs of cosmic space".

While the particulars of their relationship with Cthulhu are unknown, it is clear that they arrived on Earth with him, where they constructed the city of R'lyeh. Although it is said that they continue to dwell in the sunken city of R'lyeh, some of Lovecraft's stories include rumors that a few of them escaped this city's fate, and can be found in hidden places on Earth.

In At the Mountains of Madness the spawn of Cthulhu wage a great war against the Elder Things after arriving on Earth.

Elsewhere in Lovecraft's fiction

Cthulhu is mentioned elsewhere in Lovecraft's fiction, sometimes described in ways that appear to contradict information given in "The Call of Cthulhu". For example, rather than including Cthulhu among the Great Old Ones, a quotation from the Necronomicon in "The Dunwich Horror" says of the Old Ones, "Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly".^[21] Different Lovecraft stories and characters use the term "Old Ones" in widely different ways.

For example, in his 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness, the “Old Ones” refers to a species of extraterrestrials also known as the Elder Things. In this piece, a group of human explorers discover a lost city of the Elder Things deep in the Antarctic mountains. Within this ancient city, a series of hieroglyphic murals depict a great conflict between the Elder Things and the star-spawn of Cthulhu:

With the upheaval of new land in the South Pacific tremendous events began.... Another race—a land race of beings shaped like octopi and probably corresponding to the fabulous pre-human spawn of Cthulhu—soon began filtering down from cosmic infinity and precipitated a monstrous war which for a time drove the Old Ones wholly back to the sea.... Later peace was made, and the new lands were given to the Cthulhu spawn whilst the Old Ones held the sea and the older lands.... [T]he antarctic remained the centre of the Old Ones' civilization, and all the discoverable cities built there by the Cthulhu spawn were blotted out. Then suddenly the lands of the Pacific sank again, taking with them the frightful stone city of R'lyeh and all the cosmic octopi, so that the Old Ones were once again supreme on the planet....^[22]

As the narrator of At the Mountains of Madness notes, "the Old Ones might have invented a cosmic framework to account for their occasional defeats."^[23] This “cosmic framework” serves as an important element of other stories written by Lovecraft. In "The Whisperer in Darkness", for example, one character refers to "the fearful myths antedating the coming of man to the earth--the Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu cycles--which are hinted at in the Necronomicon".

According to correspondence between Lovecraft and fellow author James F. Morton, Cthulhu's parent is the deity Nug, itself the offspring of Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath. Lovecraft includes a fanciful family tree in which he himself descends from Cthulhu via Shaurash-ho, Yogash the Ghoul, K'baa the Serpent, and Ghoth the Burrower.

August Derleth & the Cthulhu mythos

August Derleth, a literary protégé and founder of the publishing house that first printed Lovecraft's works, wrote several stories in the Cthulhu Mythos (a term he coined) that dealt with Cthulhu, both before and after Lovecraft's death. In "The Return of Hastur", written in 1937, Derleth proposes two groups of opposed cosmic entities,

the Old or Ancient Ones, the Elder Gods, of cosmic good, and those of cosmic evil, bearing many names, and themselves of different groups, as if associated with the elements and yet transcending them: for there are the Water Beings, hidden in the depths; those of Air that are the primal lurkers beyond time; those of Earth, horrible animate survivors of distant eons^[24]

According to Derleth's scheme, "Great Cthulhu is one of the Water Beings". Derleth indicated that "the Water Beings oppose those of Air"—a departure from traditional elemental theory, in which water and fire were opposed—and depicted Cthulhu as engaged in an age-old arch-rivalry with a designated Air elemental, Hastur the Unspeakable, whom he describes as Cthulhu's "half-brother".^[25]

Based on this framework, Derleth wrote a series of stories, collected as The Trail of Cthulhu, about the struggle of Dr. Laban Shrewsbury and his associates against Cthulhu and his minions, culminating, in "The Black Island" (1952), with the atomic bombing of R'lyeh, which Derleth has moved to the vicinity of Ponape. Derleth describes Cthulhu in that story as

a thing which was little more than a protoplasmic mass, from the body of which a thousand tentacles of every length and thickness flailed forth, from the head of which, constantly altering shape from an amorphous bulge to a simulacrum of a man's head, a single malevolent eye appeared.^[26]

Derleth's interpretations are criticized by some enthusiasts of Lovecraft's work, including Michel Houellebecq in H P Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, for injecting a stereotypical conflict between equal forces of objective good and evil into Lovecraft's strictly amoral continuity.^[27]

In popular culture

Music

A number of musical pieces have been inspired by Cthulhu and the works in which it appears. Perhaps the most famous such work is Metallica's "The Call of Ktulu", an instrumental that draws on "The Call of Cthulhu". The Acacia Strain's "Cthulhu", from the album Continent, appears to involve its singer calling a relationship partner Cthulhu, while alluding to themes of death and judgment. The British black metal band, Cradle of Filth, released "Cthulhu Dawn" in their "Midian" album in 2000. In May of 2010 Joel Zimmerman (stage name: Deadmau5) released the single "Cthulhu Sleeps". Two songs of British Goth Rock band Fields of the Nephilim reference Cthulhu directly : "Last Exit For The Lost" of the album "Nephilim" and the intro to their album "Elizium", called "Dead But Dreaming".

Cthulhu, as well as many other Lovecraft works, has been central to the works of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. Most notably their album titled Cthulhu Strikes Back.

Games

• The Chaosium game Call of Cthulhu features Cthulhu prominently, as might be expected.
• The Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook Deities & Demigods originally included statistics for Cthulhu. These were removed in the second and subsequent editions.^[28]
• Arkham Horror, a board game based on Lovecraft's stories, include Cthulhu as one of the "great old ones".
• The PC/Xbox/PS2 game Max Payne lists Cthulhu as one of the beings invoked by Jack Lupino.
• Munchkin Cthulhu from Steve Jackson Games makes repeated references to Cthulhu and other Cthulhu Mythos material, and features an expansion named "Call of Cowthulu" where a parody of Cthulhu — Cowthulu — appears.
• The stars are right, a card game from Steve Jackson Games, features Cthulhoo as a "great old one".
• The online game Lost Souls includes Cthulhu as a semi-divine being that can be invoked by Erisian Liberation Front guerrilla theologians, and has a quest called "The Call of Cthulhu" which has the objective of destroying Cthulhu.^[29][30]
• Cthulhu can be summoned in the Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts. It is also one of the most powerful.
• In Castlevania: Symphony of the Night there is an enemy called Cthulhu. While the creature doesn't closely resemble it, another enemy called Malachi does.
• In the Gaia Online related Facebook application Ocean Party a special fish called "Cathulhu" can be earned.

Print

Aside from literature that is thematically part of the Cthulhu Mythos, Cthulhu makes cameo appearances or is parodied in other works regularly. In the sixth Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book, And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, Cthulhu briefly appears. It also shows up in Why We're Here by Fred Van Lente and Steve Ellis, which draws on the Cthulhu Mythos to parody apocalyptic Christian mythology, being written in the style and format of a fundamentalist Chick tract.^[31]

Visual arts

Cthulhu has served as direct inspiration for many modern artists and sculptors. Prominent artists that produced renderings of this creature include Paul Carrick, Stephen Hickman, Kevin Evans, Dave Carson, Francois Launet, John Kovalic, Stephen Fleishacker, and Ursula Vernon. Multiple sculptural depictions of Cthulhu exist, one of the most noteworthy being Stephen Hickman's Cthulhu statue which was featured in the Spectrum annual,^[32] and is exhibited in the John Hay Library of Brown University of Providence. For some time, replicas of Hickman's statue were produced by Bowen Designs.

Internet media

Cthulhu is a perennial favorite of webcomic artists and other Internet media, frequently in a tongue-in-cheek manner. One webcomic, Hello Cthulhu, has Cthulhu, thrust into the Hello Kitty universe, as its main character.^[33]

See also

• Cthulhu Mythos
• Lovecraft Mythos
• Cthulhu Mythos anthology
• Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)
• Kraken
• Kraken in popular culture

Notes

References

External links

• "The Call of Cthulhu," H. P. Lovecraft's original story featuring the first appearance of Cthulhu
• Cthulhu Lives, the Lovecraft Historical Society