What kind of myth is Cthulhu, who was badly played？

In today’s popular culture all over the world, "Cthulhu" is a high-frequency word, and you will see all kinds of novels, movies, games, TV series, cartoons, animations, music and so on.

Now, Cthulhu is no longer just an ancient evil spirit written by H.P. Lovecraft, an American horror novel master. It represents an "indescribable" style, becomes a kind of culture and label, and becomes a stalk that everyone loves to see and even a little "played badly".

Every time there is an American election, Cthulhu will be moved out for a few steps. In the 2016 general election, a role-playing board game "Let Cthulhu be President" was born. Players have to canvass for Cthulhu and let him settle in the White House through various methods.

When Cthulhu runs for president, you will become an older Party member, shouldering the task of serving the old dominators, who are fighting for dominance forever. Fight with other political parties, use non-Euclidean geometry to manipulate voters, swear on the Book of the Dead, and sacrifice your colleagues to worship ancient gods. Politics has always been evil, but destroying the world has never been so interesting!

This year’s American election is just around the corner, and the "call" for Cthulhu to be president has come back again.

Poster of Facebook homepage "CTHULHU FOR PRESIDENT", the introduction of this homepage is: When the next election comes, don’t vote for Republicans or Democrats, vote for Cthulhu!

According to a variety of spoof posters, since we want to choose a general among the dwarfs-choose a president from two unreliable people, we might as well let Cthulhu be the one.

Some people even set up a voting website for Cthulhu, and a large number of neighborhoods were sold online.

This kind of black humor shows people’s love for Cthulhu culture. Moreover, not only the American election, but also the grand gathering of Cthulhu, the sculpture of Cthulhu city, and the priests registered as Cthulhu, branded everything imaginable with the brand of Cthulhu … Not to mention the cultural creation in the 20th century competing to pay tribute to Cthulhu.

But what is Cthulhu and what kind of myth is Cthulhu myth?

01

What is the Cthulhu myth?

Cthulhu myth was originally a "writing game" initiated by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), an American horror novel master. Lovecraft likes the works of Irish fantasy novelist Lord Dunsany very much. In his creation, Lord Dunsany used a lot of his own gods and place names to construct fictional myths, forming the so-called "Pegana Myth".

The myth created by Dunsani aroused Lovecraft’s great interest. Therefore, in the process of creation, he also invented many archaic gods, place names and fantastic book names. On the one hand, Lovecraft encouraged his writers and friends to quote the gods and titles that appeared in his works, on the other hand, he also quoted his friends’ works, so that many strange writers headed by Lovecraft shared the same keywords and were skillfully linked together.

But at first, Lovecraft didn’t have the idea of a mythological system. From 1930, he began to sort out the mythological settings, such as "Crazy Mountains" and "The Haze of Innsmouth".

Astounding Stories in 1936, illustrated by illustrator Howard Brown for Crazy Mountains.

Although they shared key words, it was not until the death of Lovecraft in 1937 that the first generation of Cthulhu myth writers began to have an obvious common world view. Auguste Drees, who took Lovecraft as his teacher, named their myth works "Cthulhu myth".

Lovecraft was unknown before his death. After his death, Auguste Dreyfus wanted to publish a collection of works for him, but no publishing house agreed with this idea. Dresden was not discouraged. He set up "Akam House" to publish Lovecraft’s works in person. At the same time, he also devoted himself to training a new group of myth writers and encouraging young writers to continue to write Cthulhu myths, which made the "Cthulhu myth system" develop and grow.

The first book published by Akam House in 1939, The Outsider and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft.

After Auguste Dresden died of illness in 1971, Lin Carter continued to spread the myth of Cthulhu further. He published the anthology of Cthulhu Myths, The Family of Cthulhu and The Complete Collection of Cthulhu Myths, which made the myth of Cthulhu break the circle from a small number of horror fiction lovers and rise to a world-famous height.

In his works, Lovecraft set up many ancient evil gods, all of which appeared in an era much earlier than human beings and possessed incalculable power of human beings. The most powerful existence in the universe is the external god. Azathoth, the head of the external god, is dark and amorphous, at the center of all infinity, hungry and greedy in chaos.

Azathoth, the God of Blindness and Stupidity.

Azathoth, the "source of all things", gave birth to three original gods: Shaba Nicholas, the black goat of Mori who gave birth to thousands of children, Yog-Sothoth, the chaos of crouching, which can be said to be the center of the myth of Cthulhu.

Cthulhu is an "old dominator". Although the power of the old dominator is not as strong as that of the external gods, its ability is still far beyond human imagination, and ordinary people will go crazy just by seeing them. The old rulers descended from the sky to the earth and lived in an era much farther away than before human beings appeared. But now, the old masters have left, either hidden in the center of the earth or sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Lovecraft’s hand-painted Cthulhu.

In the novel The Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu has an octopus head, a dragon-like body and wings covered with scales. It sank into the underwater city of Roo-Lee-ah, hidden in a slimy stone room covered with green moss, but its dead body will still appear in the dreams of our ancestors. In remote wasteland and dark corners all over the world, the Cthulhu Christians have built an endless Sect that has been handed down from generation to generation. They hope that one day, when the stars are in place and Cthulhu calls, they will go on a pilgrimage, liberate and awaken it, and it will dominate the earth again.

Cthulhu by Andrée Wallin.

In addition to the evil worship of gods (those mentioned above), alien creatures (deep divers, ghouls, ancient leather giants, giant worms, fascinating mice, night nightmares …), taboo things (The Book of the Necromancer, The Codex of Nakert, The Unknown Sacrifice Book …), places of terror (Inmouth, Akam, Dunwich, etc.

The core of cosmic terror is that the limited mind of human beings can’t understand the nature of the universe and life, the universe is cruel, and those great beings are indifferent to human beings. Therefore, the characters in Cthulhu mythology always lose their SAN values and go insane, because the incomprehensible unknown existence will bring strong and crazy fears.

The Cthulhu myth has left behind a variety of expandable deities and monsters, which are enough to surpass the times and have a grand world outlook and cosmology, leaving room for later creators to play, making the Cthulhu myth an enduring source of creative inspiration from the 20th century to the present.

02/ Myth makers love craftsmanship.

It is not an ordinary person to be able to create works with such far-reaching influence and be supported by readers.

Lovecraft was interested in literature since he was a child. At the age of four, he began to read Arabian Nights and Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and listened to his grandfather’s stories about witches, ghosts and horror. At the age of seven, he began to write novels.

Two-year-old love craft.

Before the age of eight, Lovecraft basically had no school education. Because he was sick and didn’t listen to adults, he dropped out of school after entering school for one year at the age of eight. After dropping out of school, he read a lot of books and came into contact with the works of Poe, H·G· Wells and jules verne. He admired Poe very much, so he began to write strange novels based on Poe’s works.

At this time, at the age of eight or nine, Ai Craft began to indulge in chemistry, astronomy and geography at the same time, and his imagination galloped in distant lands such as Antarctica, aliens and other planes.

In 1903, 13-year-old Loveclough featured astronomical notes.

At the age of 15 or 16, ordinary children began to go to the third grade. Lovecraft has contributed to Scientific American. He believes that there is the ninth largest planet besides Neptune, and astronomers should devote themselves to finding this planet. Later, the magazine also published this article.

In 1904, Lovecraft finally entered high school, but he dropped out of school the next year because of epilepsy. Four years later, on the eve of graduating from high school, Lovecraft suffered from a nervous illness, which led to five years’ life in some kind of emotional disorder. He didn’t write novels, so he had to stay at home and write poems.

In 1914, Lovecraft joined a national amateur writers’ association and met many talented writers. They helped him overcome the strange style of writing and advised him to pick up strange novels again. In this way, starting from the Tomb and Dagon, he began to write strange novels again in 1917.

In his life, Lovecraft wrote nearly 80 novels. Apart from the Cthulhu myth, Lovecraft also wrote many other excellent works, such as the horror novel Herbert West-The Resurrection of the Dead, the fantasy series Cadas, Crossing the Wall of Sleeping, Crossing the Gate of Silver Keys and so on.

Here, I would like to recommend Lovecraft’s complete novel The Book of the Dead, which contains nearly 80 long, medium and short stories written by Lovecraft from the time he started writing at the age of 7 to his death at the age of 46, and the famous strange novel paper Supernatural Terror in Literature is also included, which is the most comprehensive, well-made, most suitable for Cthulhu, into the pit, and most suitable for collection.

Original title: "What kind of myth is the badly played Cthulhu? 》

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