The problem of Cthulhu

Andy Robertson · 19 Jun 2007, 23:05 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: andywrobertson at clara.co.uk (Andy Robertson)
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:05:50 +0100
Subject: (urth) The problem of Cthulhu
In-Reply-To: <135522.2581.qm at web32402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <135522.2581.qm at web32402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <E1I0mli-0006te-N4 at oceanus.uk.clara.net>

don doggett writes:
>  What
> makes the Great Old Ones so terrifying is that they
> are completely alien, unknowable, invincible, and
> malevolent.  

The GOO are simply a modern analog of the Greek Titans or the Norse Jotuns 

Or to put it another way, these pre-human forces of Chaos would in their day 
have been thought of much as we today think of the Great Old Ones - horrors 
with nothing quaint or anachronistic in their makeup. 

(((
I'm an Odinist, and I continually have to remind myself and my 
co-religionists that archaism is not correct. 

Vikings, for example, (to pick a set of folk frequently and wrongly thought 
of as typifying Odinism), should be thought of as pirates using the highest 
tech weapons and transport; not quaint guys in helmets.   Because that is 
what they were. 

Think helecopter gunships and privately owned tanks not wooden ships.
))) 

Wolfe repeatedly follows his masters Lewis and Tolkien in Christianising 
pagan myth in multiple levels of narrative analogy. 

His fantasies and science fictions have characters who can represent Odin or 
Achilles in one layer, and Christ in a higher layer (Silk > Odin > is an 
obvious example) 

Erebus etc thus represent the classical Titans / Jotuns / GOO within the 
frame of the urth books.   They are a theme, not simply from Lovecraft, but 
also from pagan religion/myth/cosmology 

Maybe a Christian would tell me what the "Christian layer" analog is.  The 
Devil, I suppose: but that doesn't seem quite right. 

http://www.thenightland.co.uk 

01273-488272 / 0777-214-9545

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