The Cthulhu Mythos of Howard Phillips Lovecraft provides a rich field for the literary critic, the anthropologist, and the psychologist, but it has lain fallow for the latter two. A deal more than he intended to indicate in this mythos is the unmistakeable target of the literary critic who is concerned with more than mere surface mechanics. Indeed, by comparison, although Beethoven never intended his Seventh A Major Symphony as "program music," yet the critics found in it a medieval tournament, a knightly festival, a concatenation of musical logic derived from the most eclectic sources, and even the suggestion of a great social upheaval! Thus we steal the right to take such immense liberties with what was never intended to be anything beyond the gothic horror variety of fantasy designed, not for didactic but for purposes of entertainment. If we take pleasure in such circumlocutory meanderings, it may be supposed with at least some justification that Lovecraft would not begrudge us these innocent satisfactions.
He might, however, have protested with some vigor the descriptions of philosophical and historical inferences in his work which are part and parcel of much fairly sophisticated literature. To the extent that they may be detected in the Cthulhu Mythos, in most cases, not without reasonably energetic probing accompanied, now and again by the discreet application of a touch of external coloring, we will concern ourselves here with the insinuated moral relationships between the Elder Gods and the Judao-Christian Bible.
The distinguished Lovecraftian scholar, Dr. John Boardman, recently disclosed that Lovecraft himself drew a parallel between the exiled Ancient Ones and Milton's Fallen Angels. This does not necessarily mean that Lovecraft deliberately planned such a comparison when he originated the Mythos, and it certainly lends little support to any suggestion that Lovecraftian literature is afflicted with Miltonian overtones, a fact, no doubt, for which most Lovecraftian fans are profoundly grateful.
It is important, however, in this context, to examine the theological definition of "God" and compare it with the connotations achieved in the horror/fantasy of H. P. Lovecraft. Let us briefly touch on one or two outright Biblical references, and we will proceed to attempt an analysis of the Lovecraftian conception of God. Lovecraft's "antedeluvian civilization" or the "great deluge which the Christian Bible records as 'The Flood'..." illustrate, in part, the mythic and perhaps theological roots of the Cthulhu Mythos. Dunsany and Poe notwithstanding, we must look towards the Bible as a primary source for background even when such is provided in the Mythos only in suggestion or inference.
An investigation along these lines would indicate that the Bible is not to be underrated as a referent for Lovecraftian literature. The problems of which modern theology has evolved its methodology have existed in the consciousness of human experience since time immemorial, and the fact that religious overtones are present and to a certain extent even dominant in the fantasy literature of both the eastern and western worlds is only a single aspect of this universal presence. By a series of not-too-deft sophistries, a recent facetious article in the No-Eyed Monster attempted to prove that science-fiction fandom was a religion. It requires far less circumlocutory logic to plumb the depths of the Biblical background of literature even as comparatively contemporary as that produced by the Weird Tales group.
In such a close-quarters exposition, we are compelled to cope with the significance of the fact that the use of the word "God" has been drawn a bit thin in fantasy literature. When Lovecraft mentions a "god", the veteran Lovecraftian fan immediately understands something more substantial and perhaps more mundane than the conventional Western European religious usage. At this point, the reader having carelessly permitted himself to be helplessly engrossed in the power of the skillful Lovecraftian mood-prose, he will have overlooked the fact that the term "god" as the personification of an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent force in the universe, who is in Lovecraft's own words, "...co-existent with all time and co-terminous with space..." does not apply in every one of the cases to the beings of his mythology. In lieu of a less disparaging label Lovecraft permitted his creatures to be haled as "gods". In the Judao-Christian system, of course, most of them would qualify as demons; we have only to realize what we are talking about when we speak of gods in horror/fantasy literature. Jewish theology admits of no more potent deity than Adonai Jahweh, and the Christian reveres Jesus Christ as himself, his father, and his own ghost, simultaneously, a concept to which speculation could scarcely apply in comparison to the gods of fantasy unless they were specifically designed to conform to such a particular definition. It is uncertain whether this has ever been done, or even suggested; at any rate, we may rest assured that Lovecraft visualized his gods as negative and we are supported by Frank Belknap Long's short story, "The Brain Eaters", if his description of Lovecraft were an accurate one, that the latter expected the sign of the Cross, as the symbol of Good Incarnate, to ward off and vanquish his alien malevolences.
Updated June 26, 2001. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.