|
    
Just Who Is Cthulhu, our soon to be executive officer?
The best answer to this question is found in Lovecraft's
tale "The Call of Cthulhu". Cthulhu is a monstrous entity
who lies "dead but dreaming" in the city of R'lyeh, a place
of non-Euclidean madness presently (and mercifully) sunken
below the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Cthulhu appears in
various monstrous and demonic forms in early myths of the
human race. Racial memory preserves Him as humanity's most
basic nightmare. Cthulhu is the high priest of the Great Old
Ones, unnatural alien beings who ruled the Earth before
humanity formed, worshipped as gods by some misguided
people. It is said that They will return, causing worldwide
insanity and mindless violence before finally displacing
humanity forever.
In "Call of Cthulhu" our beloved leader is described in
the following way:
It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol
representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased
fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant
imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a
dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to
the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted
a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it
was the general outline of the whole which made it most
shockingly frightful.
Also, it is described in another fashion in the following
manner:
It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline,
but with an octopuslike 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. This
thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural
malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence...
|
