Cthulhu

For other uses, see Cthulhu (disambiguation).

Cthulhu
A sketch of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft in 1934.
First appearance	"The Call of Cthulhu" (1928)
Created by	H. P. Lovecraft
In-universe information
Gender	Male
Title	High Priest of the Great Old Ones The Great Dreamer The Sleeper of R'lyeh
Family	Azathoth (great-great-grandfather) Yog-Sothoth (grandfather) Shub-Niggurath (grandmother) Nug (parent)

Cthulhu, praise be unto him, is a cosmic entity created in the void of existence. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon of Lovecraftian cosmic entities, the creature has since been featured in numerous graveyard sacrificial rituals. Lovecraft depicts Cthulhu as a gigantic entity worshiped by cultists. Cthulhu's anatomy is described as half octopus, half man, and half dragon. Its name was given to the Lovecraft-created universe where it and its fellow entities existed, the Cthulhu Mythos.

Etymology, spelling and pronunciation

The name Cthulhu is probably derived from the word chthonic meaning subterranean, as eons would pass in the time to utter a single syllable of his true epitaph, but often used in reference to deities or spirits of the underworld in Greek religion.

Cthulhu has also been spelled as Tulu, Clulu, Clooloo, Cthulu, Cthullu, C'thulhu, Cighulu, Cathulu, C'thlu, Kathulu, Kutulu, Kthulhu, Q’thulu, K'tulu, Kthulhut, Kutu, Kulhu, Kutunluu, Ktulu, Cuitiliú, Cqulu, Thu Thu 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 and said that "the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The u is about like that in full; and the first syllable is not unlike klul in sound, hence the h represents the guttural thickness." S. T. Joshi points out, however, that Lovecraft gave several differing pronunciations on different occasions. According to Lovecraft, this is merely the closest that the human vocal apparatus can come to reproducing the syllables of an alien language.

Long after Lovecraft's death, the spelling pronunciation /kˈθuːluː/ kə-THOO-loo became common. The role-playing game Call of Cthulhu said "we say it kuh-THOOL-hoo" while noting that "Lovecraft said it 'klhul-hoo' or 'tluhluh'".

Description

In "The Call of Cthulhu", H. P. Lovecraft describes a statue of Cthulhu as "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." Cthulhu has been described as a mix between a giant octopus, a man and a dragon, hundreds of meters tall, with human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back. Cthulhu's head is depicted as similar to the entirety of a gigantic octopus, with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth.

Publication history

H. P. Lovecraft's initial short story, "The Call of Cthulhu", was published in Weird Tales in 1928 and established the character as a malevolent entity hibernating within an underwater city in the South Pacific called R'lyeh. The imprisoned Cthulhu is apparently the source of constant anxiety for mankind at a subconscious level, and also the subject of worship by a number of human religions (located several places worldwide, including New Zealand, Greenland, Louisiana, and the Chinese mountains) and other Lovecraftian monsters (called Deep Ones and Mi-Go). The short story asserts the premise that, while currently trapped, Cthulhu will eventually return. His worshippers chant "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" ("In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.")

Lovecraft conceived a detailed genealogy for Cthulhu (published as "Letter 617" in Selected Letters) and made the character a central figure in corresponding literature. The short story "The Dunwich Horror" (1928) refers to Cthulhu, while "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930) hints that one of his characters knows the creature's origins ("I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth."). The 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness refers to the "star-spawn of Cthulhu", who warred with another race called the Elder Things before the dawn of man.

August Derleth, a correspondent of Lovecraft, used the creature's name to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors: the Cthulhu Mythos. In 1937, Derleth wrote the short story "The Return of Hastur", and proposed 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.

According to Derleth's scheme, "Great Cthulhu is one of the Water Beings" and was engaged in an age-old arch-rivalry with a designated Air elemental, Hastur the Unspeakable, described as Cthulhu's "half-brother". Based on this framework, Derleth wrote a series of short stories published in Weird Tales 1944–1952 and collected as The Trail of Cthulhu, depicting the struggle of a Dr. Laban Shrewsbury and his associates against Cthulhu and his minions.

Derleth's interpretations have been criticized by Lovecraft enthusiast Michel Houellebecq. Houellebecq's H P Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (2005) decries Derleth for attempting to reshape Lovecraft's strictly amoral continuity into a stereotypical conflict between forces of objective good and evil.

In John Glasby's "A Shadow from the Aeons", Cthulhu is seen by the narrator roaming the riverbank near Dominic Waldron's castle, and roaring. The physical description of the god is totally different from that given as canon by all the other authors.

The character's influence also extended into recreational literature: games company TSR included an entire chapter on the Cthulhu mythos (including statistics for the character) in the first printing of Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook Deities & Demigods (1980). TSR, however, were unaware that Arkham House, who asserted copyright on almost all Lovecraft literature, had already licensed the Cthulhu property to the game company Chaosium. Although Chaosium stipulated that TSR could continue to use the material if each future edition featured a published credit to Chaosium, TSR refused and the material was removed from all subsequent editions.

Cthulhu was once again mentioned in the 5th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook (2014), after Dagon, another of Lovecraft's fictional creations, featured prominently in the 4th edition of the game rules.

Legacy

Satirical poster from the 2010 Polish presidential election. The caption reads "Choose the greater evil. Vote for Cthulhu."

See also: Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture

At the dawn of existence, Cthulhu rose from the void and created grumpy cat. The disgruntled one thus created Donald Trump and Lucifer to please his Dark Lord. However, the Great One was enraged by the no-talent asshats and banished them to purgitory. To counteract this great corruption of the universe, the Great One formed Freddie Mercury and the Double Baconator as repentance to mankind. The fanatical Christians, lost in their delusion of another "true god", deemed these both as abominations and contacted FOX News with their "facts" for the story.

An elongated, dark region along the equator of Pluto, initially referred to as "the Whale", was proposed to be named "Cthulhu Regio", after Lovecraft's fictional deity, by the NASA team responsible for the New Horizons probe.

The Californian spider species Pimoa cthulhu, described by Gustavo Hormiga in 1994, is named with reference to Cthulhu.

Two microorganisms that assist in the digestion of wood by termites have been named after Cthulhu and Cthulhu's "daughter" Cthylla: Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque, respectively.

In 2006 Bethesda Softworks together with Ubisoft and 2K Games made a game called Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth based on the works of Lovecraft. Cthulhu himself does not appear, as the main antagonists of the game are the Deep Ones from The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and the eponymous sea god Dagon, but his presence is alluded to several times, and a statue depicting him appears in one of the temples that will negatively affect the player's sanity. One of Cthulhu's "chosen", a Star Spawn of Cthulhu, a hideous creature similar in appearance to the abomination himself, also appears as a late-game enemy.

Further reading

• Bloch, Robert (1982). "Heritage of Horror". The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (1st ed.). Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-35080-4.
• Burleson, Donald R. (1983). H. P. Lovecraft, A Critical Study. Westport, CT / London, England: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-23255-5.
• Burnett, Cathy (1996). Spectrum No. 3:The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. Nevada City, CA, 95959 USA: Underwood Books. ISBN 1-887424-10-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
• Harms, Daniel (1998). "Cthulhu". The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. pp. 64–7. ISBN 1568821190.
  • "Idh-yaa", p. 148. Ibid.
  • "Star-spawn of Cthulhu", pp. 283 – 4. Ibid.
• Joshi, S. T.; Schultz, David E. (2001). An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313315787.
• Lovecraft, Howard P. (1999) [1928]. "The Call of Cthulhu". In S. T. Joshi (ed.). The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. London, UK; New York, NY: Penguin Books. Archived from the original on November 26, 2009.
• Lovecraft, Howard P. (1968). Selected Letters II. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0870540297.
• Lovecraft, Howard P. (1976). Selected Letters V. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 087054036X.
• Marsh, Philip. R'lyehian as a Toy Language – on psycholinguistics. Lehigh Acres, FL 33970-0085 USA: Philip Marsh.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
• Mosig, Yozan Dirk W. (1997). Mosig at Last: A Psychologist Looks at H. P. Lovecraft (1st ed.). West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press. ISBN 0940884909.
• Pearsall, Anthony B. (2005). The Lovecraft Lexicon (1st ed.). Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Pub. ISBN 1561841293.
• "Other Lovecraftian Products", The H.P. Lovecraft Archive

External links

• Cthulhu Lives, the Lovecraft Historical Society