The Weakness of the Old Ones

An excellent and entertaining resource on Lovecraft’s stories is the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast hosted by Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer.  Over the years they have reviewed and analyzed all of HPL’s stories and currently are doing the same for stories that HPL has cited in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”  I highly recommend the Podcast.

What is interesting about going through the Podcast episodes of HPL’s stories, particularly since the stories are presented in chronological order, is you can see themes or trends appear throughout his writings.  One of the ideas that periodically comes up and has been noted by Chris and Chad is that in some respects select entities of HPL’s seem to be easily defeated or relatively weak beings.  In this article I will be discussing this idea and presenting a hypothesis to explain it

First, it should be noted that some Lovecraftian entities seem to be very hardy if not downright immortal.  The Elder Ones (or Elder Things) were described a number of times as being extremely tough yet flexible.  These beings are known to have the capacity to travel interstellar space, live in the deep waters of the ocean or on dry land, which can include the steaming jungles near the equator or the Arctic / Antarctic regions of the poles.  Additionally, they can be put into some type of stasis or coma and can be revived millions of years later.  The Elder Ones are obviously well adapted to surviving a wide variety of environments and are well known to be residents of our universe.  The same can be said of their creations the shoggoths; well adapted and hearty organisms.

Elder Ones by bioytic-9000 (www.deviantart.org)

However, in contrast to the Elder Things and shoggoths, other Lovecraftian entities do not appear to be as well adapted to our universe, let alone a Terran environment.  For example, in “The Whisperer in Darkness” the Mi-Go were described by Henry Akeley as being “clumsy in getting about” and having wings that “are not much use for short flights on earth.”  The Mi-Go are not of this Earth or of our universe, which is why they appear as clumsy in our atmosphere and gravity.

Mi-Go by Michael Bukowski (www.yog-blogsoth.blogspot.com)

In “The Dunwich Horror,” which is a story I have yet to cover on this blog site, Wilbur Whateley was easily killed by a guard dog while he was attempting to steal a copy of the Necronomicon housed at the library at Miskatonic University.  Additionally, after he was killed Wilbur’s body rapidly decomposed so that by the time the medical examiner came to inspect the body nothing was left except a “sticky whitish mass.”  Two things come to mind on this.  First, while powerful from an inter-dimensional perspective, Wilbur was relatively weak in our reality; he was essentially killed by a dog (he obviously was right to be fearful over dogs).  Second, once dead, Wilbur’s hybridized inter-dimensional biomatter quickly dissolved.  This indicates that a considerable amount of energy was required to keep Wilbur’s body stable and intact while he was alive.

Similar to Wilbur, his twin was defeated by Dr. Armitage through an incantation.  According to Armitage, “The thing has gone forever.”  Thus, this large, invisible, inter-dimensional being was simply obliterated by some phrases from the Necronomicon.

Wilbur Whateley by Michael Bukowski (www.yog-blogsoth.blogspot.com)

Finally, Cthulhu was presented as a god-like being who could influence people over the world through their own dreams.  In spite of Cthulhu’s god-like status compared to us puny humans, he appeared to be easily defeated.  Johansen drove the vessel the Alert head long onto Cthulhu.  The result of this was Cthulhu popped like an “exploding bladder” in an “acrid and blinding green cloud.”  However, while Cthulhu was defeated, it was not destroyed.  Johansen could see Cthulhu recombining in the water.  Thus, Cthulhu still lies deep in R’lyeh in a deep sleep.

Cthulhu Rising by Spenzer777 (www.deviant.org)

In each of these examples, these apparently powerful, inter-dimensional entities appear to be have difficulty in our reality or can be easily destroyed or defeated.  How can this be?  Essentially I hypothesize that since their beings originate from other dimensions or are inter-dimensional hybrids, their powers are limited in our dimension or reality.  Thus, the inter-dimensional entities in our reality can be thought of as astronauts or deep sea divers.

Astronaut and deep sea diving suits allow humans to explore non-habitable environments such as space and the ocean.  However, the trade-off to exploring these unforgiving, inhospitable environments is limitations in movement and speed due to their specialized suits.  Additionally, we are entirely dependent on an artificial means of breathing.  Thus, we need to expend a high amount of energy to explorer these environments over short periods of time.  From the perspective of a shark or whale humans in the ocean may appear to be powerful beings, yet at the same time we are weak in that we are slow moving and dependent on exteneral forces / energies to keep up alive.  I believe the same can be said about the inter-dimensional Old Ones.

An astronaut’s suit keeps them alive but limits mobility, and vision; the suit is both power and a limitation for humans (astronaut.com)

In each case, the Mi-Go, Wilbur Whateley and Cthulhu, are inter-dimensional, or semi-inter-dimensional entities probing or exploring our universe and reality.  For the Mi-Go, they may be a stable form of inter-dimensional life that can do quite well in our universe, however, they obviously are not adapted to many of our physical constants such as gravity.  Additionally, as HPL cites in “The Whisperer in Darkness” the Mi-Go are “composed of a form of matter totally alien to our part of space – with electrons having a wholly different vibration-rate.”  Thus, while possibly not residents of our universe, they appear to be moderately comfortable here.  Maybe they can be thought of as explorers (or miners?) with equipment and gear; although in their case their equipment are their biological modifications.

In contrast, Wilbur Whateley and Cthulhu are entities that appear to require an enormous amount of energy to maintain their status in this universe.  Upsetting this stream of energy killed Wilbur and temporarily defeated Cthulhu.  Thus, their respective forms in our reality may be their astronaut or diving suits – Cthulhu may look very different in its own residential universe.  Also, using the astronaut or diving suit analogy, this would explain the apparent weakness of these entities.  If Wilbur and Cthulhu were successful in opening the way from their universe to ours these circumstances would certainly change.

Next time the discussion will focus on Nyarlathotep.  Thank you – Fred.

Cthulhu 1790 by Fiend Upon My Back (www.deivantart.org)

Necronomicon Convention talk on the Biology of the Old Ones, Part 4 – Taxonomy of the Old Ones (H.P. Lovecraft!)

While Lovecraft did not formally create a taxonomic system for his creations, the hosts of the Double Shadow (Phil, Ruth and Tim) – an excellent Podcast on the writings of Clark Ashton Smith – came across something very interesting in a letter Lovecraft wrote to Smith.  The Double Shadow is the Clark Ashton Smith version of the excellent H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, hosted by Chad and Chris.

If you are not familiar with Smith I strongly recommend you read his stuff.  Before the Double Shadow Podcast I only read a handful of Smith stories (mostly his Lovecraftian stories) but with the Podcast as a guide it has been a blast reading Smith’s stories.  I highly recommend the Double Shadow.  In any event, Lovecraft included in a letter to Smith this taxonomy or genealogy on how both he and Smith are actually descendants of the Old Ones!

So based on Lovecraft himself, Clark Ashton Smith comes from the lineage of Tsathoggua (Smith’s own creation) and Yeb, which was child of Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath!

Also, according to Lovecraft, he is birthed from a “hellish and nameless tragedy between Viburnia and  Ghoth the Burrower” (one of the Little People – Machen reference?).  Strange to say the least!  In any event, I thought this was amusing.   Thank you Double Shadow!  Next time I actually start talking about the biology of the entities, starting with the Shoggoths!  Thank you.

Fred Lubnow

Necronomicon Convention talk on the Biology of the Old Ones, Part 3 – Taxonomy of the Old Ones (August Derleth)

Before Robert M. Price worked on his taxonomic nomenclature of the Old Ones, August Derleth proposed a means of classifying these entitles.  In fact, according to Richard L. Tierney’s seminal paper, The Derleth Mythos (Discovering H.P. Lovecraft edited by Darrell Schweitzer – 1995) Derleth was the person who established the concept of the Mythos.

Tierney and others such as Joshi and Murray have clearly identified and separated Derleth’s ideas and concepts from those of Lovecraft, which has been associated with varying degrees of criticism.  I do not want to dwell on this criticism of Derleth, there are three points I want to make in this regard.  First, Derleth took Lovecraft’s idea of a materialistic, uncaring Universe where man is insignificant and modified (or distorted) it into one where good (Elder Gods) battles evil (Old Ones) similar to Christianity, where humanity is the focus or celestial “prize”.  Second, Derleth’s taxonomy of categorizing the Old Ones was based on the classical (Greek) concept of four elements.  Third, Derleth, along with others such as Lin Carter, were accused of explaining too much; the Mythos thrived on mystery and confusion and ironing out all of the details takes away from the Mythos itself.  For the sake of this brief article I will focus only on the second point – that Derleth’s taxonomy was based on the four elements.

Essentially, Derleth said that  Lovecraft’s enitites could be categorized through the “elemental forces”  of fire, water, earth and air.

http://www.particleadventure.org

Reading Tierney’s article you get the impression that the focus of this idea was primarily based on Cthulhu and his spawn being aquatic creatures and thus being water entities.   However, if Cthulhu is a water being, why is he imprisoned in water?  Wouldn’t it be better to hold Cthulhu in, say, the center of a star, fire thus defeating or containing water?  Another point Tierney makes is that Hastur is considered to be an air-based entity yet he is thought to reside in the bottom of the Lake of Hali; is Hastur imprisoned in the bottom of the lake similar to Cthulhu being imprisoned in the Pacific Ocean?  Wouldn’t it be better to hold Hastur in the earth or in a deep cave on some remote world?  Yog Sothoth, Nyarlathotep and Shub-Nigguarth are all squeezed into the earth category.  Finally, since there was no entities within the fire category, Derleth created Cthugha to fill that niche.

While some authors have used this system of taxonomy for the Old Ones, its generally not thought much of now a days.  This is primarily due to the fact that such a classification system tries too hard to explain away what these entities are (evil manifestations of these elemental forces hell-bent on the destruction and/or consumption of humanity).  In addition, if one is going to develop a classification system of the Old Ones, it should be based primarily and foremost on Lovecraft’s writings.  As I attempt to make the case in my presentation, a classification system should be based on what little we know about these entities’ biology and their relation to life on Earth .

In conclusion, while Derleth’s taxonomic system does not seem to be satisfactory, it must be said, which I’m sure everyone recognizes, that Derleth should receive some credit to keeping Lovecraft’s stories in the public eye and being one of the co-founders of Arkham House.  Thank you.

Fred Lubnow

Necronomicon Convention talk on the Biology of the Old Ones, Part 2 – Taxonomy of the Old Ones (Robert M. Price)

As anyone who is familiar with Lovecraft knows, his stories were a loosely connected set of tales that provide glimpses into what lies beyond our five senses and sense of reality.  There are things in and beyond the known Universe that we can not imagine, must less quantify or categorize with science.  However, his concepts and ideas of “what lies beyond” resonated with so many people that some have attempted to provide some clarity or explanation on the subject.

For some, such as Robert M. Price, this was more of a fun academic activity while to others, such as August Derleth, it was suppose to provide critical insight into Lovecraft’s philosophy on his Cthulhu Mythos, which was coined by Derleth and not Lovecraft.

This part of the talk at the convention was very short but I wanted to elaborate a bit here.  Before I get into Derleth’s work, it should be known that Mr. Price provided a proposed taxonomic scheme for the Old Ones that I did not discuss during my presentation.

In Price’s H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos (Starmont House, Inc., 1990) he includes an article called “A Lovecraftian Taxonomy”.  The article focuses and addresses the confusion and inconsistency in names of the Lovecraftian entitles in Cthulhu Mythos fiction.  Thus, the article focuses on the taxonomy of names and not on the biology of the entities.

Price’s Book

Reviewing Lovecraft’s stories, Price came up with a set of recommendations in the development of a classification system of Lovecratian entities for future scholars.  Listed below are his recommendations taken directly from his article:

1.  The Great Old Ones (= the Other Gods): the pantheon of cosmic entities threatening humanity, including Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep.

2.  The Cthulhu-spawn: the cosmic octopi headed by Great Cthulhu, now asleep in R’lyeh.

3.  The Deep Ones: a race of fish-frog men dedicated to Cthulhu’s service.

4.  The Mighty Ones: a race of merfolk led by Nodens, Lord of the great Abyss.

5.  The Elder Ones:  the star-headed aliens of ancient Antarctica.

6.  The Outer Ones: the Mi-Go or fungi from Yuggoth.

7.  The Great Race: the time-travellers of Yith.

8. The Great Ones: the mild gods of earth.

9.  The Ancient Ones: the ascended masters beyond the Gate of the Silver Key.

10.  The People of K’n-yan:  the humanoid aliens living beneath the surface of the Oklahoma wilderness.

You may ask (as I’m sure you are), why bother to do this?  Lovecraft didn’t categorize his entitles.  He worked and created from story to story and was not concerned about consistency between the tales.  Yes, there were connections but he did not see it as a fully developed and integrated Universe.   In fact, including inconsistencies and mixing the real with the imaginary gave his work an air of mystery and realism.

So with this in mind, why did Price propose this classification system?  Well, first and foremost, it was done for academic fun.  When you hear Mr. Price talk, his appreciation for the Mythos really shines through and he readily admits that a lot of his work was simply done for the love of it.

In addition, it makes sense that humans would at least “try” to categorize something they are trying to understand.  We have a compulsion to label, categorize and systematize things (stars, rocks, plants, animals), even when such methodology does not work.  For example, while Linnaeus’s binomial nomenclature for naming organisms (Genus, species) can be easily applied to plants, fungi and animals, this system is difficult to apply to bacteria where horizontal gene transfer is possible.  In other words, the concept of species is sometimes very difficult to apply to bacteria, yet we still use it to label these organisms.  The same could be said about Lovecraftian entities; it’s our attempt in trying to understand them.

Finally, using such a labeling system does not have to be etched in stone and could be great fodder for future stories where humanity is trying to understand exactly what these “things” are.  Next time, I will be talking about the infamous “Derleth” taxonomic system before I move into the meat of the presentation.

Thank you – Fred Lubnow

Necronomicon Convention talk on Biology of the Old Ones, Part I – taxonomic description of Life on Earth

A number of people have asked if I was going to publish the talk I gave at the Necronomicon convention last month.  I was planning to put it out there simply as a PDF but I thought it would be better to put it on this blog so I could provide more information and elaborate on some of the ideas I presented.  Thus, I will provide the presentation in a series of episodes.  This, obviously, is Part I.  I hope you enjoy it.

Also, I do want to once again thank Niels Hobbs for inviting me to give the talk.  The convention was incredible and it looked like everyone (including me) had a great time.

The talk was formally called “Human Interpretations on the Biology and Evolution of the Old Ones”

The outline for the presentation is as follows:

1.  Review of current taxonomic description of life on Earth

2.  Previous “taxonomic” description of the Old Ones

3.  Lovecraft’s biological extraterrestrial discoveres

4.  Shoggoths and Elder Things

5.  Deep Ones

6.  Mi-Go

7.  The “Colour” out of Space

8.  A proposed “classification spectrum” and conclusions

So for Part I, I am talking about current taxonomic descriptions of life on Earth.  In turn, this will be linked to a proposed “classification spectrum” for Lovecraftian entities in a subsequent part of the presentation.

As a child, you basically think of life on Earth as being made up of plants and animals and this is how life was basically categorized by Carl Lennaeus who established the binomial nomenclature (Genus, species) for modern taxonomy. Thus, two Kingdoms were recognized; the Kingdom of Plants and the Kingdom of Animals. However, a third Kingdom was proposed to include the microorganisms that were revealed through the use of the microscope. Richard Owen and Ernst Haeckel proposed the Kingdom Protista.

When I was in college, five Kingdoms were recognized, separating the fungi from the plants and the bacteria from other microorganisms (such as the many forms of algae and protists like amoeba). Currently, an additional ranking of life on Earth is placed above the level of Kingdom and its called the Domain.  There are three recognized Domains and include the Archaebacteria, Eubacteria, Eukaryotes (animals, plants, protists and fungi).

So where am I going with this relative to Lovecraftian Horrors?  Well, my point is some of Lovecraft’s creations are Earth-bound entities. In fact, some can be included in Terrain taxonomy, which I why I am introducing these concepts. But before I talk about how Lovecraft’s creations fit (or don’t fit) into Earth life taxonomy, let’s briefly talk about evolution.

In its most basic form, evolution can be described simply as “change of time.” Darwin and Wallace both developed the concept that evolution gives rise to species through the process of natural selection. In Darwin’s mind and concept of evolution, all life is related and life on Earth can be thought of as a great tree, with new species being represented as new branches. Darwin sketched this as shown below.

Note, Darwin thought of the human species as being one of the many branches on the Terrain Tree of Life.  The concept that humans are not particularly special when compared to other species on Earth is a somewhat Lovecraftian idea.

That humans are equal with all other species in the eyes of evolution put people in the Victorian Era into an uproar (as well as still upsetting many people even today).  Aren’t we as a species special?  Aren’t we “better” than ferns, slime molds, giraffes and squid?  A lot of people have a hard time with this, including many supporters of Darwin and evolution.  The figure below shows an interpretation of the Tree of Life by Ernst Haeckel.

Note that here instead of Darwin’s view of the “tree” as being shaped more like a shrub with all branches being equal, the tree is a mighty oak that shoots to the heavens and who is on the top, why humans, of course!   Even the original title of the figure “Pedigree of Man” indicates that all of that hard evolutionary work on Earth strived to achieve or reach that pinnacle of evolution – Man!  However, its all on your point of view.  I just finished  a book on The History of Life by Michael J. Benton and one of his concluding points was that the “pinnacle” of evolution depends on what you are.  So, to a cockroach, the pinnacle of evolution would be – the cockroach.  Or if you are a squid, the pinnacle of evolution is the squid.  This is one of the reasons why Darwin’s scribble is not drawn as a tree but more as a shrub, where branches do not represent a hierarchy but instead the development of species over time.

To conclude this part, I want to show you another “interpretation” of Life on Earth, using the three Domain classification and a specific cellular component that all life possesses.  Specifically, this is ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA).  I won’t go into the details of rRNA but I will say two things.  First, rRNA is a component of ribosomes (an organelle in cells) that is essential for protein synthesis.  Second, since it is found in all of life (bacteria, plants, animals, fungi and protists), it can be used as a “marker” to compare species to one another.  Thus, the more closely related two species or groups are, the closer their branches will be to each other.  In addition, looking at rRNA can also give you a sense of the genetic diversity of Life on Earth.  This puts all organisms on equal footing in a comparison of all life on Earth.  This was Carl Woese’s idea and this is what he came up with:

Looks more like a shrub than a tree don’t you think?  Based on this view of life on Earth, the vast majority of the genetic diversity is found in the microbial world.  That one branch that says “we are here” does not represent humans, it represents all animal life.  From a genetic perspective humans are a pretty insignificant component of the pool of life on Earth.  Such a revelation is something Lovecraft would have certainly appreciated.

This “rRNA” view of life on Earth correlates well with HPL’s philosophy.  For example, this quote comes from Collected Essays, Volume 3 – Science (edited by S.T. Joshi)…”Man, so far from being the central and supreme object of Nature, is clearly demonstrated to be a mere incident, perhaps an accident, of a natural scheme whose boundless reach relegates him to total insignificance.” – HPL.

Next time I will be talking about Derleth’s taxonomic description of the Old Ones.

Thank you.

Fred