Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Dunwich Cycle Where the Old Gods Wait by Robert M. Price The Dunwich Horror. " The Dunwich Horror " is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written in 1928, it was first published in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales (pp. 481–508). It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusetts. It is considered one of the core stories of the Cthulhu Mythos. "The Dunwich Horror" is one of the few tales Lovecraft wrote wherein the heroes successfully defeat the antagonistic entity or monster of the story. Contents. Geographical [ edit | edit source ] The action "takes place amongst the wild domed hills of the upper Miskatonic Valley, far northwest of Arkham, and is based on several old New England legends — one of which I heard only last month during my sojourn in Wilbraham," a town east of Springfield. ( HPL : letter to August Derleth, August 4, 1928, EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) One such legend is the notion that whippoorwills can capture the departing soul. (EXP: The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Dunwich is "a vague echo of the decadent Massachusetts countryside around Springfield — say Wilbraham, Monson and Hampden." ( HPL : Selected Letters 3.508) It is noted that "much of the physical description of the Dunwich countryside is a faithful sketch of Wilbraham:" The physical model for Dunwich's Sentinel Hill is thought to be Wilbraham Mountain near Wilbraham. ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Researchers have pointed out the story's apparent connections to another Massachusetts region: the area around Athol and points south, in the north-central part of the state (which is where Lovecraft indicates that Dunwich is located). It has been suggested that the name "Dunwich" was inspired by the town of Greenwich, which was deliberately flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir, [1] although Greenwich and the nearby towns of Dana, Enfield and Prescott actually weren't submerged until 1938. Donald R. Burleson points out that several names included in the story— including Bishop, Frye, Sawyer, Rice and Morgan—are either prominent Athol names or have a connection to the town's history. [2] Athol's Sentinel Elm Farm seems to be the source for the name Sentinel Hill. (EXP: The Dunwich Horror and Others ) The Bear's Den mentioned in the story resembles an actual cave of the same name visited by Lovecraft in North New Salem, southwest of Athol. (EXP: The Dunwich Horror and Others ) (New Salem, like Dunwich, was founded by settlers from Salem—though in 1737, not 1692. [3] ) The book Myths and Legends of Our Own Land , [4] by Charles Montgomery Skinner, mentions a "Devil's Hop Yard" near Haddam, Connecticut as a gathering place for witches. The book, which Lovecraft seems to have read, also describes noises emanating from the earth near Moodus, Connecticut, which are similar to the Dunwich sounds decried by Rev. Abijah Hoadley. ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Literary [ edit | edit source ] Lovecraft's main literary sources for "The Dunwich Horror" are the stories of Welsh horror writer Arthur Machen, particularly "The Great God Pan" (which is mentioned in the text of "The Dunwich Horror") and "The Novel of the Black Seal". Both Machen stories concern individuals whose death throes reveal them to be only half-human in their parentage. According to Robert M. Price, "'The Dunwich Horror' is in every sense an homage to Machen and even a pastiche. There is little in Lovecraft's story that does not come directly out of Machen's fiction." [5] Another source that has been suggested is "The Thing in the Woods", by Margery Williams, which is also about two brothers living in the woods, neither of them quite human and one of them less human than the other. The name Dunwich itself may come from Machen's The Terror , where the name refers to an English town where the titular entity is seen hovering as "a black cloud with sparks of fire in it". [6] Lovecraft also takes Wilbur Whateley's occult terms "Aklo" and "Voorish" from Machen's "The White People". [7] Lovecraft also seems to have found inspiration in Anthony M. Rud's story "Ooze" (published in Weird Tales , March 1923), which also involved a monster being secretly kept and fed in a house that it subsequently bursts out of and destroys. (EXP: The Dunwich Horror and Others ) The tracks of Wilbur's brother recall those seen in Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo", one of Lovecraft's favorite horror stories. ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Ambrose Bierce's story "The Damned Thing" also involves a monster invisible to human eyes. Plot summary [ edit | edit source ] In the isolated, desolate, decrepit village of Dunwich, Wilbur Whateley is the hideous son of Lavinia Whateley, a deformed and unstable albino mother, and an unknown father (alluded to in passing by mad Old Whateley, as "Yog-Sothoth"). Strange events surround his birth and precocious development. Wilbur matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade. Locals shun him and his family, and animals fear and despise him (due to his odor). All the while, his sorcerer grandfather indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft. Various locals grow suspicious after Old Whateley buys more and more cattle, yet the number of his herd never increases, and the cattle in his field become mysteriously afflicted with severe open wounds. Wilbur and his grandfather have sequestered an unseen presence at their farmhouse; this being is connected somehow to Yog-Sothoth. Year by year, this unseen entity grows to monstrous proportions, requiring the two men to make frequent modifications to their residence. People begin to notice a trend of cattle mysteriously disappearing. Wilbur's grandfather dies. His mother disappears soon afterwards. The colossal entity eventually occupies the whole interior of the farmhouse. Wilbur ventures to Miskatonic University in Arkham to procure their copy of the Necronomicon – Miskatonic's library is one of only a handful in the world to stock an original. The Necronomicon has spells that Wilbur can use to summon the Old Ones, but his family's copy is damaged and lacks the page he needs to open the "door". When the librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage, refuses to release the university's copy to him (and has, by sending warnings to other libraries, thwarted Wilbur's efforts to consult their copies), Wilbur breaks into the library at night to steal it. A guard dog, maddened by Wilbur's alien body odor, attacks Wilbur with unusual ferocity, killing him. When Dr. Armitage and two other professors arrive on the scene, they see Wilbur Whateley's semi-human corpse before it melts completely, leaving no evidence. With Wilbur Whateley dead, no one attends to the mysterious presence growing in the Whateley farmhouse. Early one morning, the Whateley farmhouse explodes and the thing, an invisible monster, rampages across Dunwich, cutting a path through fields, trees, and ravines, leaving huge "prints" the size of tree trunks. The monster eventually makes forays into inhabited areas. The invisible creature terrorizes the town for several days, killing two families and several policemen, until Dr. Armitage, Professor Warren Rice, and Dr. Francis Morgan arrive with the knowledge and weapons needed to kill it. The use of a magic powder renders it visible just long enough to send one of the crew into shock. The barn-sized monster screams for help - in English - just before the spell destroys it, leaving a huge burned area. In the end, its nature is revealed: it is Wilbur's twin brother, though it "looked more like the father than Wilbur did." Reaction [ edit | edit source ] Lovecraft took pride in "The Dunwich Horror", calling it "so fiendish that [ Weird Tales editor] Farnsworth Wright may not dare to print it." Wright, however, snapped it up, sending Lovecraft a check for $240, equal to $2800 in modern dollars, the largest single payment for his fiction he had received up to that point. ( HPL : Selected Letters 2.329) Kingsley Amis praised "The Dunwich Horror" in New Maps of Hell , listing it as one of Lovecraft's tales that "achieve a memorable nastiness". [8] Lovecraft biographer Lin Carter calls the story "an excellent tale. A mood of tension and gathering horror permeates the story, which culminates in a shattering climax". [9] In his list of "The 13 Most Terrifying Horror Stories", T. E. D. Klein placed "The Dunwich Horror" at number four. [10] Robert M. Price declares that "among the tales of H. P. Lovecraft, 'The Dunwich Horror' remains my favorite." [11] S.T. Joshi, on the other hand, regards "Dunwich" as "simply an aesthetic mistake on Lovecraft's part", citing its "stock good-versus-evil scenario". ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) However, he has also noted that it is "richly atmospheric." Characters [ edit | edit source ] Old Whateley [ edit | edit source ] Lavinia Whateley's "aged and half-insane father, about whom the most frightful tales of magic had been whispered in his youth". [12] He has a large collection of "rotting ancient books and parts of books" which he uses to "instruct[s] and catechise" his grandson Wilbur. He dies of natural causes on August 2, 1924. He is given no certain first name by Lovecraft, although Fungi from Yuggoth mentions a John Whateley; he is referred to as "Noah Whateley" in the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. According to S. T. Joshi, "It is not certain where Lovecraft got the name Whateley," though there is a small town called Whately in northwestern Massachusetts near the Mohawk Trail, which Lovecraft hiked several times, including in the summer of 1928. ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Robert M. Price's short story "Wilbur Whateley Waiting" emphasizes the obvious pun in the name. [13] Lavinia Whateley [ edit | edit source ] One of Lovecraft's very few female characters. Born circa 1878, Lavinia Whateley is the spinster daughter of Old Whateley and a mother who met an "unexplained death by violence" when Lavinia was 12. She is described as a. “ somewhat deformed, unattractive albino woman. a lone creature given to wandering amidst thunderstorms in the hills and trying to read the great odorous books which her father had inherited through two centuries of Whateleys. She had never been to school, but was filled with disjointed scraps of ancient lore that Old Whateley had taught her. Isolated among strange influences, Lavinia was fond of wild and grandiose day-dreams and singular occupations. „ Elsewhere, she is called "slatternly [and] crinkly-haired". In 1913, she gave birth to Wilbur Whately by an unknown father, later revealed to be Yog-Sothoth. On Halloween night in 1926, she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, presumably killed or sacrificed by her son. Wilbur Whateley [ edit | edit source ] Born February 2, 1913 at 5 a.m. to Lavinia Whateley and Yog-Sothoth. Described as a "dark, goatish-looking infant"—neighbors refer to him as "Lavinny's black brat"—he shows extreme precocity: "Within three months of his birth, he had attained a size and muscular power not usually found in infants under a full year of age. At seven months, he began to walk unassisted," and he "commenced to talk. at the age of only eleven months."At three years of age, "he looked like a boy of ten," while at four and a half, he "looked like a lad of fifteen. His lips and cheeks were fuzzy with a coarse dark down, and his voice had begun to break." "Though he shared his mother's and grandfather's chinlessness, his firm and precociously shaped nose united with the expression of his large, dark, almost Latin eyes to give him an air of..well-nigh preternatural intelligence," Lovecraft writes, though at the same time he is "exceedingly ugly. there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears." He dies at the age of fifteen after being mauled by a guard dog while breaking in to the Miskatonic library on August 3, 1928. His death scene allows Lovecraft to provide a detailed description of Wilbur's partly nonhuman anatomy: “ The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish-yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall, and the dog had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin. It was partly human, beyond a doubt, with very manlike hands and head, and the goatish, chinless face had the stamp of the Whateleys upon it. But the torso and lower parts of the body were teratologically fabulous, so that only generous clothing could ever have enabled it to walk on earth unchallenged or uneradicated. Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest. had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth's giant saurians, and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws. „ This death scene bears a marked resemblance to that of Jervase Cradock, a similarly half-human character in Arthur Machen's "The Novel of the Black Seal": "Something pushed out from the body there on the floor, and stretched forth, a slimy, wavering tentacle," Machen writes. ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Will Murray notes that the goatish, partly reptilian Wilbur Whateley resembles a chimera, a mythological creature referred to in Charles Lamb's epigraph to "The Dunwich Horror". [14] Robert M. Price points out that Wilbur Whateley is in some respects an autobiographical figure for Lovecraft: "Wilbur's being raised by a grandfather instead of a father, his home education from his grandfather's library, his insane mother, his stigma of ugliness (in Lovecraft's case untrue, but a self-image imposed on him by his mother), and his sense of being an outsider all echo Lovecraft himself." [15] Henry Armitage [ edit | edit source ] The head librarian at Miskatonic University. As a young man, he graduated from Miskatonic in 1881 and went on to obtain his doctorate from Princeton University and his Doctor of Letters degree at Johns Hopkins University. Lovecraft noted that while writing "The Dunwich Horror", "[I] found myself identifying with one of the characters (an aged scholar who finally combats the menace) toward the end". (HPL: letter to August Derleth, September 1928; EXP: An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia ) "The Terror From the Depths" - Fritz Leiber "The Horror in the Gallery" - Lin Carter "The House of Azathoth" - Peter Cannon. Francis Morgan [ edit | edit source ] Professor of Medicine and Comparative Anatomy (or Archaeology) at Miskatonic University. The story refers to him as "lean" and "youngish". In Fritz Leiber's "To Arkham and the Stars"—written in 1966 and apparently set at about that time—Morgan is described as "the sole living survivor of the brave trio who had slain the Dunwich Horror". According to Leiber, Morgan's "research in mescaline and LSD" produced "clever anti-hallucinogens" that were instrumental in curing Danforth's mental illness. [16] Warren Rice [ edit | edit source ] Professor of Classical Languages at Miskatonic University. He is called "stocky" and "iron-grey". Nyarlathotep. Nyarlathotep , known to many by his epithet The Crawling Chaos , is an Outer God in the Cthulhu Mythos. He is the spawn of Azathoth. He is the creation of H. P. Lovecraft and first appeared in his prose poem "Nyarlathotep" (1920). Nyarlathotep appears in numerous subsequent stories by Lovecraft, and is also featured in the works of other authors, as well as in role-playing games based on the Cthulhu Mythos. Contents. Description. Nyarlathotep differs from the other deities in the Mythos in a number of ways. Most of the Outer Gods are exiled to the stars, like Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth, and most of the Great Old Ones are sleeping and dreaming like Cthulhu; Nyarlathotep, however, is active and frequently walks the Earth in the guise of a human being, usually a tall, slim, joyous man. He has "a thousand" other forms and manifestations, most reputed to be quite horrific and sanity-blasting. Most of the Outer Gods have their own cults serving them; Nyarlathotep seems to serve as He serves several cults and takes care of their affairs in the other Outer Gods' absence. Most Outer Gods use strange alien languages, while Nyarlathotep uses human languages and can easily pass for a human being if he chooses to do so. Finally, most of them are all-powerful yet evidently without clear purpose or agenda, yet Nyarlathotep seems to be deliberately deceptive and manipulative, and even uses propaganda to achieve his goals. In this regard, he is probably the most human-like among the Outer Gods. Nyarlathotep enacts the will of the Outer Gods, and is their "messenger, heart and soul", "the immemorial figure of the deputy or messenger of hidden and terrible powers" He is also the servant of Azathoth, whose fitful, spastic wishes he immediately fulfills. Unlike the other Outer Gods, spreading madness is more important and enjoyable than death and destruction to Nyarlathotep. It is suggested by some that he will destroy the human race and possibly the earth as well. ( EXP : "Nyarlathotep", The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana [Harms]) In the Mythos. Nyarlathotep's first appearance is in the eponymous short story by Lovecraft (1920), in which he is described as a "tall, swarthy man" who resembles an Egyptian Pharaoh. In this story he wanders the earth, gathering legions of followers through his demonstrations of strange and seemingly magical instruments, the narrator of the story among them. These followers lose awareness of the world around them, and through the narrator's increasingly unreliable accounts the reader gets a sense of the world's utter collapse. The story ends with the narrator as part of an army of servants for Nyarlathotep. Nyarlathotep, again manifested in the form of an Egyptian Pharaoh when he confronted Randolph Carter as an avatar of the Other Gods, executing their will on Earth and in Dreamland ( HPL : The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath ). Nyarlathotep meets Walter Gilman and witch Keziah Mason (who has made a pact with the entity) in the form of "the 'Black Man' of the witch- cult," a black-skinned avatar with the appearance of the Christian Devil (His footprints suggest cloven hooves instead of feet) associated with New England witchcraft lore ( HPL : "The Dreams in the Witch-House"). The being of pure darkness dwelling, possessing a "three-lobed eye", in the steeple of the Starry Wisdom sect's church is identified as another form, or manifestation of, Nyarlathotep ( HPL : "The Haunter of the Dark"). Nyarlathotep's name is spoken frequently by the fungi from Yuggoth in a reverential or ritual sense, indicating that they worship or honor the entity ( HPL : "The Whisperer in Darkness"). According to certain sources he is currently living or imprisoned on the planet Abbith ( EXP : The Horror in the Gallery). Inspiration. In a 1921 letter to Reinhardt Kleiner, Lovecraft related the dream he had had — described as "the most realistic and horrible [nightmare] I have experienced since the age of ten" — that served as the basis for his prose poem "Nyarlathotep". In the dream, he received a letter from his friend Samuel Loveman that read: “ Don't fail to see Nyarlathotep if he comes to Providence. He is horrible — horrible beyond anything you can imagine — but wonderful. He haunts one for hours afterward. I am still shuddering at what he showed. „ Will Murray suggests that this dream image of Nyarlathotep may have been inspired by the inventor Nikola Tesla, whose well-attended lectures did involve extraordinary experiments with electrical apparatus, and whom some saw as a sinister figure. [1] Robert M. Price proposes that the name Nyarlathotep may have been subconsciously suggested to Lovecraft by two names from Lord Dunsany, an author he much admired: Alhireth-Hotep, a false prophet from Dunsany's The Gods of Pegana , and Mynarthitep, a god described as "angry" in his "The Sorrow of Search". [2] Quotations. The Nyarlathotep Cycle. In 1996, Chaosium published The Nyarlathotep Cycle , a Cthulhu Mythos anthology focusing on works referring to or inspired by the entity Nyarlathotep. Edited by Lovecraft scholar Robert M. Price, the book includes an introduction by Price tracing the roots and development of the God of a Thousand Forms. The contents include: : "Alhireth-Hotep the Prophet" by Lord Dunsany : ""The Sorrow of Search" by Lord Dunsany : "Nyarlathotep" : "The Second Coming" (poem) by William Butler Yeats : "Silence Falls on Mecca's Walls" (poem) by Robert E. Howard : "Nyarlathotep" (poem) : "The Dreams in the Witch-House" : "The Haunter of the Dark" : "The Dweller in Darkness" by August Derleth "The Titan in the Crypt" by J. G. Warner "Fane of the Black Pharaoh" by Robert Bloch "Curse of the Black Pharaoh" by Lin Carter "The Curse of Nephren-Ka" by John Cockroft "The Temple of Nephren-Ka" by Philip J. Rahman & Glenn A. Rahman "The Papyrus of Nephren-Ka" by Robert C. Culp "The Snout in the Alcove" by Gary Myers "The Contemplative Sphinx" (poem) by Richard Tierney "Ech-Pi-El's Ægypt" (poems) by Ann K. Schwader. Lovely Lovecraft. In Sara Bardi's webcomic Lovely Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep carries many masks, but usually appears as a tall human with handsome features, and hair styled like a pair of lightning bolts. Some time before the comic started, he and the other Outer Gods were trapped on earth in the forms of mortals. While Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath are content to wait for the stars to align, Nyarlathotep is more impatient, and tortures Albert Wilmarth for information on the Miscatonic University's copy of the Necronomicon. He gains access to the school under the guise of Mister Noyes, an English literature teacher in Wilmarth's absence. Before he can steal the Necronomicon, however, he discovers that it's been tore apart, and only the second half is in the University's possession. He considers going into the grave where the first half was lost, when foul magic stream from the book, giving him back a fraction of his power. Using it, he releases a captive shoggoth and sends it after the first half, held by 12-year old Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Before Nyarlathotep can use the complete necronomicon, he is temporarily incapacitated by the Night Gaunt Phil'Gwanach, who pushes an amulet bearing the Elder Sign into his chest. He makes a reference to having made a deal with the Mi-Go at one point, possibly for information on Prof. Wilmarth. Years later, he lured the adult Howard to one of his gatherings of aspiring cultists. When Lovecraft fearfully asked him if the stars were right, he responds that they are, but not for him and his people; For Lovecraft. As a horde of creatures dressed like the King in Yellow appear around Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep gleefully exclaims "You're going to die, Howard." Popular culture. As one of H.P. Lovecraft's most famous creations and the most "human" of his cosmic horrors, Nyarlathotep has appeared in and been referenced by numerous other works in popular culture. Literature. Nyarlathotep sometimes appears or is referred to in literature outside the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror: The Dunwich Cycle (1995) Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. In any anthology of stories there are bound to be a few that are not as good as the others. This is the case in this book but overall, the quality of the short stories and writing in this volume was quite good. I would recommend it to any HPL or Mythos fan who hasn't read this one. it's worth the money just for The Great God Pan, The Dunwich Horror, The Shuttered Room & Wilbur Whateley Waiting. OY! What great great stories these are! Contents: 1. The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen (10/10 stars) -- the inspiration for HPL's The Dunwich Horror 2. The White People, by Arthur Machen -- I skipped this one because I have a 3-volume set of stories by Machen published by Chaosium that I'm reading soon 3. The Dunwich Horror, by HPL -- (10/10 stars) -- probably one of HPL's finest stories ever 4. The Shuttered Room, by August Derleth -- (another 10/10) -- very creepy sequel to the Dunwich Horror 5. The Round Tower, by Robert M. Price -- I skipped this one, because he meant it as an alternative ending to August Derleth's "The Lurker at the Threshold," which sadly, I do not have a copy of anywhere. So once I read the original story, I'll go back to this one. 6. The Devil's Hop Yard, by Richard Lupoff -- well, here was the first story I didn't like; it was way too much of a clone of the original Dunwich horror but silly. 7. The Road to Dunwich, by Ben Indick -- another good story, told from the POV of a man whose son married a distant relative of the Dunwich Whateleys. Very well written; not as scary as some of the others, but still good. 8. The Tree House -- WH Pugmire and Robert M. Price -- I didn't like this one, either; kind of silly. Takes place in the Sesqua Valley, west of Dunwich 9. You Can't Take it With You -- CJ Henderson (10/10 stars) -- CJ Henderson has got to be one of my all-time favorite authors. I love everything he's ever done (even under the Robert Morgan alias) and this story is no exception. Very good story about a young woman caught up in something beyond her control. 10. Wilbur Whateley Waiting -- Robert M. Price -- An excellent ending to this volume in which WW returns and lands himself in NYC, where society has become so bizarre and so jaded (I'm talking about our present) that a strange weirdo like WW fits in rather nicely, no questions asked. Very very nice story and one everyone should read. I'm looking forward to the next of Price's anthologies. they are wonderful! ( ) Cthulhu Mythos. The Cthulhu Mythos encompasses the shared elements, characters, settings, and themes found in the works of H.P. Lovecraft and associated horror fiction writers. Together, they form the mythos that authors writing in the Lovecraftian milieu have used — and continue to use — to craft their stories. [1] The term itself was coined by the writer August Derleth. Although this legendarium is also sometimes called the Lovecraft Mythos, most notably by the Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, it has long since moved beyond Lovecraft's original conception. Contents. Development [ edit | edit source ] Robert M. Price, in his essay "H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos", sees two stages in the development of the Cthulhu Mythos. The first stage, or "Cthulhu Mythos proper" as Price calls it, took shape during Lovecraft's lifetime and was subject to his guidance. The second stage occurred under August Derleth who attempted to categorize and expand the Mythos after Lovecraft's death, writer Richard L. Tierney later applied the term "Derleth Mythos" to distinguish between Lovecraft's works and Derleth's later stories. [2] First stage (Cthulhu Mythos proper) [ edit | edit source ] During the latter part of Lovecraft's life, there was much borrowing of story elements among the authors of the "Lovecraft Circle", a clique of writers with whom Lovecraft corresponded. This group included Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Henry Kuttner and others. Lovecraft recognized that each writer had his own story-cycle and that an element from one cycle would not necessarily become part of another simply because a writer used it in one of his stories. For example, although Smith might mention "Kthulhut" (Cthulhu) or Iog-Sotôt (Yog-Sothoth) in one of his Hyperborean tales, this does not mean that Cthulhu is part of the Hyperborean cycle. A notable exception, however, is Smith's Tsathoggua, which Lovecraft appropriated for his revision of Zealia Bishop's "The Mound" (1940). Lovecraft effectively connected Smith's creation to his story-cycle by placing Tsathoggua alongside such entities as Tulu, Yig, Shub-Niggurath and Nug and Yeb in subterranean K'n-yan. Most of the elements of Lovecraft's Mythos were not a cross-pollination of the various story-cycles of the Lovecraft Circle, but were instead deliberately created by each writer to become part of the Mythos — the most notable example being the various arcane grimoires of forbidden lore. So, for example, Robert E. Howard has his character Friedrich von Junzt reading Lovecraft's Necronomicon in "The Children of the Night" (1931), and Lovecraft in turn mentions Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten in both "Out of the Aeons" (1935) and "The Shadow Out of Time (1936). [3] Howard frequently corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft, and the two would sometimes insert references or elements of each others' settings in their works. Later editors reworked many of the original Conan stories by Howard; thus, diluting this connection. Nevertheless, many of Howard's unedited Conan stories are arguably part of the Cthulhu Mythos. [4] The Mythos as a background element [ edit | edit source ] According to David E. Schultz, Lovecraft never meant to create a canonical Mythos but rather intended his imaginary pantheon to serve merely as a background element. Thus, Lovecraft's "pseudomythology" — a term used by Lovecraft himself and others to describe the beings appearing in his stories — is the backdrop for his tales but is not the primary focus. Indeed, the cornerstone of his stories seems to be the town of Arkham and not beings like Cthulhu. [5] Furthermore, Lovecraft may not have been serious when he spoke of developing a "myth-cycle" and probably would have had no need to give it a name anyway. Since he used his Mythos simply as background material, he probably had this in mind when he allowed other writers to use it in their own stories. Moreover, it could be said that Lovecraft's Mythos was a kind of elaborate inside joke, propagating among the writers of his circle and wearing thin upon his death. Derleth seems to have not understood this and believed that Lovecraft wanted other authors to actively write about the myth-cycle rather than to simply allude to it in their stories. Second stage (Derleth Mythos) [ edit | edit source ] The second stage began with August Derleth [6] who added to the mythos and developed the elemental system, associating the pantheon with the four elements: air, earth, fire and water. To understand the changes that Derleth made to Lovecraft's Mythos, it is important to distinguish among Lovecraft's stories. Price says that Lovecraft's writings can be divided into three separate groups: the Dunsanian, Arkham, and Cthulhu cycles. [3] The Dunsanian stories are those that are written in the vein of Lord Dunsany (and may include Lovecraft's so-called Dream Cycle tales), the Arkham stories include those that take place in Lovecraft's fictionalized New England setting, and the Cthulhu cycle stories are those that utilize Lovecraft's cosmic story-cycle (the Lovecraft Mythos). Rather than distinguish among Lovecraft's various cycles, Derleth combined them, ignoring individual distinctions, to create a large, singular story- cycle. So, for example, Derleth appropriated Nodens from the Dunsanian cycle and leagued him with the Elder Gods against the Old Ones. Derleth also introduced a good versus evil dichotomy into the Mythos that was contrary to the dark, nihilistic vision of Lovecraft and his immediate circle. Derleth further ignored any distinction between the story-cycles of Lovecraft and those of other writers. If Lovecraft referenced a name from another author, Derleth took that as justification to include the other author's story-cycle in the Cthulhu Mythos. For example, he developed Hastur into a Great Old One represented as an avatar by the King in Yellow of Robert W. Chambers from a passing reference linking Hastur and the Yellow Sign in Lovecraft's The Whisperer in Darkness. Finally, Derleth apparently classified any story that mentioned a mythos element as belonging to the Cthulhu Mythos — consequently, any other element in the story also became part of the mythos. Hence, since Lovecraft made passing reference to Clark Ashton Smith's Book of Eibon, Derleth added Smith's Ubbo-Sathla to the mythos. Because of Derleth's broad canon, the Mythos would indeed grow enormously. [3] Third Stage [ edit | edit source ] Further removing the Cthulhu Mythos from its source were stories written by such authors as Lin Carter, Colin Wilson, and Brian Lumley. Carter was especially influential in setting out detailed lists of gods, their ancestry, and their servitors through his Mythos tales, attempting to codify the elements of the Mythos as much as possible. Through this process, more gods, books, and places were created and interlinked with each other. Another influence has been the Call of Cthulhu RPG published by Chaosium in 1981. Largely developed by Sandy Petersen, this version of the Mythos broke Lovecraft's entities down into further sub-groupings: Outer Gods, Great Old Ones, and the nebulously-termed Other Gods. Material from these sources has slowly crept back into mainstream Mythos fiction, as Chaosium published fiction related to, or written by players of the game. Many of the newer generation of Mythos authors (especially those published in Chaosium compendiums) take their cue from this more clinical, continuity-focused brand of the Mythos instead of Lovecraft's more mysterious version. However, as the Mythos has grown and it has become increasingly difficult for any one author to be familiar with all the elements, the Mythos can been seen as a series of interconnecting cycles of myth that sometimes conflict with one another. The Cycles include: The Cthulhu or Xothic Cycle; the Hastur Cycle; the Yog-Sothoth Cycle; the Tsathogguan or Hyperborean Cycle; the Yig Myth; the Yidhra Cycle; and the Legend of the Elder Gods. This would reflect the development of real myth, where conflicting versions of the same narrative exist as the legend spreads abroad and is elaborated upon. For example, tales about Gawain, Tristran, Lancelot, and Merlin had probably been stand-alone story cycles prior to falling into the "gravitational pull" of King Arthur legend (we know Lancelot was invented by Chrétien de Troyes and was not in the original printed version of the legend). The advantage of this view is that it explains factual conflicts from story to story, avoiding the need for the kind of "smoothing out" that Lin Carter actively pursued. Structure [ edit | edit source ] The Mythos usually takes place in fictional New England towns and is centered on the Great Old Ones, a fearsome assortment of ancient, powerful deities who came from outer space and once ruled the Earth. They are presently quiescent, having fallen into a death-like sleep at some time in the distant past. The most well-known of these beings is Cthulhu, who currently lies "dead [but] dreaming" in the submerged city of R'lyeh somewhere in the Southeast Pacific Ocean. One day, "when the stars are right", R'lyeh will rise from beneath the sea, and Cthulhu will awaken and wreak havoc on the earth. Despite his notoriety, Cthulhu is not the most powerful of the deities, nor is he the theological center of the mythos. Instead, this position is held by the demon-god Azathoth, a mindless but all-powerful Outer God, ruling from his cosmically centered court. Nonetheless, his avatar Nyarlathotep, who fulfills Azathoth's random urges, has intervened more frequently and more directly in human affairs than any other Outer god. He has also displayed more blatant contempt for humanity, especially his own worshippers, than almost any other Lovecraftian deity. Theme [ edit | edit source ] The essence in the Mythos is that the human world and our role in it are an illusion. Humanity is living inside a fragile bubble of perception, unaware of what lies behind the curtains or even of the curtains themselves, and our seeming dominance over the world is illusory and ephemeral. We are blessed in that we do not realize what lies dormant in the unknown lurking places on Earth and beyond. As Lovecraft famously begins his short story, The Call of Cthulhu, "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." Now and then, individuals can, by accident or carelessness, catch a glimpse of, or even confront the ancient extraterrestrial entities which the mythology centres around, usually with fatal consequences. Other times, they encounter by their non-human worshippers and servants, whose existence shatters the worldview of those who stumble across them. Human followers exist as well. Because of the limitations of the human mind, these deities appearances are so overwhelming that they can often drive a person insane. They are portrayed as neither good or evil; within the Mythos, these are concepts invented by our species as a way to explain what truly are inexplicable intentions and actions. The Call of Cthulhu was the premiere story in which Lovecraft realized and made full use of these themes, which is why his mythology would later be named after the creature in this story, as it defined a new direction in both his authorship and in the horror fiction genre. This is also the first and only story by Lovecraft where humans and one of the cosmic entities called the Great Old Ones come face to face. In his final years of writing, Lovecraft used fewer supernatural elements to represent the dangers which threaten humanity. Instead, he gradually replaced them with non-supernatural cosmic beings and phenomena, based on principles outside the laws of nature in our own space-time continuum. This sci-fi trend particularly becomes clear in works such as At the Mountains of Madness. Derleth's involvement [ edit | edit source ] Derleth had his own take on the mythos and tried to make it conform to his own Roman Catholic values and dualism. Instead of a universe of meaninglessness and chaos, Derleth's mythos is a struggle of good versus evil. Derleth once wrote: Lovecraft was an atheist, and claimed that Kant's ethical system "is a joke." Because of this, Derleth's theories about the Cthulhu Mythos are inconsistent with Lovecraft's design. The Mythos was never intended to be a cohesive, singular entity; instead, it should be regarded as simply a collection of ideas that can be used in separate works to provoke the same emotions. Another difference with Derleth's mythos is that the Elder Gods never appear in Lovecraft's writings, except for one or two who appear as "Other Gods" such as Nodens in Lovecraft's "The Strange High House in the Mist" (though perhaps this is an example of how "very rarely [they stir] forth"; i.e., usually never). Furthermore, the Great Old Ones, or Ancient Ones, have no unified pantheon. Indeed, the term "Ancient Ones" appears in only one Lovecraft story, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (moreover, the story is actually a collaboration between Lovecraft and his friend and correspondent E. Hoffmann Price). Elemental theory [ edit | edit source ] Derleth also connected the deities of the Mythos to the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water. This system left gaps which Derleth filled in by creating the beings Ithaqua, representing air, and Cthugha, representing fire. [7] However, the system has a few problems. For example, Derleth classified Cthulhu as a water elemental, but if this were so, how could he be trapped beneath the ocean and how could his psychic emanations be blocked by water? Another problem arises when applying the elemental theory to beings that function on a cosmic scale (such as Yog-Sothoth)— some authors have tried to get around this by creating a separate category of aethyr elementals for Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth. Finally, Derleth matched the earth beings against the fire beings and the air beings against the water beings, which is not consistent with the traditional elemental dichotomy (namely, that air opposes earth and fire opposes water). Elemental classifications [ edit | edit source ] Derleth's elemental classifications Air Earth Fire Water Hastur* Ithaqua* Nyarlathotep Zhar and Lloigor* Cyäegha Nyogtha Shub-Niggurath Tsathoggua Aphoom-Zhah Cthugha* Cthulhu Dagon Ghatanothoa Mother Hydra Zoth-Ommog * Deity created by Derleth. Conclusion [ edit | edit source ] Derleth became a publisher of Lovecraft's stories after his death. [6] Lovecraft himself was very critical of his own writings and was often easily discouraged, especially when faced with any rejection of his work. Were it not for Derleth, Lovecraft's writings and the Cthulhu Mythos might have remained largely unknown. Fundament [ edit | edit source ] As stated above, new elements have constantly been added to the mythology after Lovecraft's death, including works by others as well as stories by Lovecraft himself that were not originally included in the mythos. Other short stories written by Lovecraft are included because of references to such elements as Necromonicon, cosmic terror and non-human species, despite lacking direct encounters with any of these things. The basic origin of what Derleth would name the Cthulhu Mythos can be traced back to a collection of seven stories with great impact which form the main fundament of Lovecraft's final and major fictional work: (February, 1928) (April, 1929) (August, 1931) (March-April, 1936) (April, 1936) (June, 1936) (December, 1936) Of these seven, "The Whisperer in Darkness", At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time involves alien species with superior alien technology and are closest to science fiction, containing Lovecraft's typical atmosphere of horror, and reflect his materialistic atheism and the direction he was heading at the end of his life. The Shadow Over Innsmouth stands more or less alone as the origin of the threats, which in this case can be traced to the hostile depths of the ocean rather than the darkness between the stars, but otherwise shows the classical elements and pattern; the three remaining tales can best be described as dark fantasy. Combined, they cover all of Lovecraft's universe of mind numbing horror, cosmic beings, outer gods and hidden dangers.