Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by horror author H. P. Lovecraft in 1926
Cthulhu. Leader of the Great Old Ones. Cthulhu exists in a deep sleep of death in the watery depths of R'lyeh silently dreaming, waiting for the day when the stars are right and his worshippers raise R'lyeh from the Pacific Ocean. It is his spells that protect and preserve the other Great Old Ones. Cthulhu has never been directly described, for those few who have seen him go stark raving mad. A description, then, can only be brought from a statue found depicting him. Cthulhu has a vaguely anthropoid outline, but with and octopus-like head whose face was a a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. He is of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and his cephalopod head is covered with facial feelers. Some have said to imagine Cthulhu, one must imagine a squid, a dragon and a man together in one body.
Cited for the extreme descriptions given of its hideous appearance, its gargantuan size, and the abject terror that it evokes. Cthulhu made his first official appearance in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu," written by Lovecraft in 1926, although no living character in the story ever sets eyes on the actual creature. The characters we meet in the story see Cthulhu either in dreams or in artwork. The narrator of the story says that a statue of Cthulhu resembled, in part, an octopus, a dragon and a human-like or anthropomorphic creature. From this description, artists and sculptors have created artwork depicting the monster with a head that looks like an octopus (complete with tentacles) and a massive pair of wings attached to his back.
Lovecraft didn't reveal much about Cthulhu in that first story. He wrote that Cthulhu had once ruled the Earth, and that one day he would do so again. As the story unfolds, the narrator discovers that Cthulhu was trapped in a stone city beneath the ocean, but an earthquake pushed part of the city back above the surface. Although Cthulhu did not awaken, he was able to make contact with the minds of particularly creative or insane people (rational, mundane minds seem to be insulated from Cthulhu's influence). Near the end of the story, the narrator discovers that after a massive storm the city once again sank in the ocean, and Cthulhu apparently lies dreaming once more.
The story also introduces the Cult of Cthulhu, an organization of humans who are convinced that Cthulhu's return is inevitable and work to hasten it. They foresee a time when Cthulhu will rise up and rule over Earth, and mankind will cast aside concepts of civilization and inhibition. Chaos will ensue, and men will revel in their most base instincts.
Who is Cthulhu?
Most characters in Lovecraft's stories only saw statues of Cthulhu, but that was enough to drive them insane.
According to Lovecraft, humans can never fully understand Cthulhu because his very existence is beyond mortal comprehension. Lovecraft's universe contains many creatures that are equally incomprehensible. Some of these are known as the Great Old Ones, or the Old Ones, and are powerful, ageless beings from beyond the stars. Though Lovecraft used the phrase "the Great Old Ones" in contradictory ways, most of his fans accept that Cthulhu is one of these extraterrestrial beings that only partially exist in our dimension.
Physicality and origins
While the origin of Cthulhu is not definitively established, it is suggested that it is the planet Vhoorl, with his advent somehow connected with stellar phenomena: "I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth."[2] It is also suggested in both At the Mountains of Madness and “The Whisperer in Darkness” that Cthulhu is made up of some unknown and foreign matter.
The most detailed descriptions of Cthulhu appear in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", and are based on the statues of the creature. One, constructed by an artist after a series of baleful dreams, is said to have "yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.... A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary wings."[3] Another, recovered by police from a raid on a murderous cult, "represented 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."[4]
When the creature finally appears, the story says that the "thing cannot be described", but it is called "the green, sticky spawn of the stars", with "flabby claws" and an "awful squid-head with writhing feelers". The phrase "a mountain walked or stumbled" gives a sense of the creature's scale.[5]
Great Old Ones
The Great Old Ones are ancient extraterrestrial beings of immense power, and most are also colossal in size. These entities seem to have a physical shape, but being cosmic lifeforms from beyond our space-time continuum means they are not based on matter in our definition of the concept, yet their forms are built on principles similar enough to those of true matter that they appear to be material in their nature. They are worshipped by deranged human cults, as well as by most of the non-human races of the mythos. The Great Old Ones are currently imprisoned—a few beneath the sea, some inside the Earth, and still others in distant planetary systems and beyond. The reason for their captivity is not known, though there are two prevailing theories:
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu
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