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36-450: Invented by Lovecraft in 1928, the name Cthulhu was probably chosen to echo the word chthonic (Ancient Greek "of the earth"), as apparently suggested by Lovecraft himself at the end of his 1923 tale " The Rats in the Walls ". The chthonic, or earth-dwelling, spirit has precedents in numerous ancient and medieval mythologies, often guarding mines and precious underground treasures, notably in

72-539: A holocaust , defined by the completely burned and destroyed nature of the offering. The sacrifice was performed on a low altar or in a pit in the ground, offered in the direction of the earth where chthonic deities would reside. The animal sacrifice was sometimes buried as well. The temples in which these sacrifices were performed were typically built outside city walls with caves and grottos being popular locations, believed to be openings for chthonic deities. Worshippers lowered their palms and faced them downwards toward

108-457: A human caricature, hundreds of meters tall, with webbed, human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back. Its head is depicted as similar to the entirety of a gigantic octopus , with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth. The short story that first mentions Cthulhu, "The Call of Cthulhu", was published in Weird Tales in 1928, and established

144-464: A libation. They were performed on high altars which resided outside of temples . The animal sacrifice was roasted with the smoke traveling upward toward the sky, in the direction of the Olympic gods. Once cooked, the worshippers would feast on the sacrifice with the idea that they were sharing this meal with the gods. The worshippers would eat the consumable portions of the animal and burn the rest for

180-399: 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 ." Cthulhu is said to resemble a green octopus, dragon, and

216-567: A platform that included the legalization of human sacrifice, driving all Americans insane, and an end to peace. In 2016, the troll account known as "The Dark Lord Cthulhu" submitted an official application to be on the Massachusetts Presidential Ballot. The account also raised over $ 4000 from fans to fund the campaign through a gofundme.com page. Gofundme removed the campaign page and refunded contributions. Several organisms have been named after Cthulhu, including

252-601: A published credit to Chaosium, TSR refused and the material was removed from all subsequent editions. Cthulhu has appeared as a parody candidate in several elections, including the 2010 Polish presidential election and the 2012 and 2016 US presidential elections . The faux campaigns usually satirize voters who claim to vote for the " lesser evil ". "Cthulhu for America" ran during the 2016 American presidential election, drawing comparisons with other satirical presidential candidates such as Vermin Supreme . The organization had

288-464: Is historically accurate and/or useful. Some scholars, including van Straten, argue that the term is not archaeologically verifiable. Some of these scholars believe that the modern use of chthonic is much more binary and concrete than it was in Ancient Greece. Schlesier notes that discussions of chthonic practices often create a false sense of "normal" worship and "deviant" worship, again citing

324-470: Is merely the closest that the human vocal apparatus can come to reproducing the syllables of an alien language. Cthulhu has also been spelled in many other ways, including Tulu, Katulu, and Kutulu. Long after Lovecraft's death, Chaosium stated in the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game : "we say it kuh-THOOL-hu" ( / k ə ˈ θ uː l uː / ), even while noting that Lovecraft said it differently. Others use

360-569: Is the case, a few gods are most commonly considered chthonic due to their considerable role in the underworld and/or agriculture. These include Hades as he is the ruler of the underworld. Persephone is the Queen of the Underworld alongside Hades. She spends half the year in the underworld and the other half above the earth. The period when Persephone is in the underworld corresponds with winter while she personifies spring when she returns to above

396-654: The Cthulhu Mythos . In 1937, Derleth wrote the short story "The Return of Hastur", and proposed two groups of opposed cosmic entities: the Old or Ancient Ones, the Elder Gods , of cosmic good , and those of cosmic evil , bearing many names, and themselves of different groups, as if associated with the elements and yet transcending them: for there are the Water Beings, hidden in the depths; those of Air that are

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432-658: The Germanic dwarfs and the Greek Chalybes , Telchines , or Dactyls . Lovecraft transcribed the pronunciation of Cthulhu as Khlûl′-hloo , and said, "the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The 'u' is about like that in 'full', and the first syllable is not unlike 'klul' in sound, hence the 'h' represents the guttural thickness" yielding something akin to /ˈq(χ)lʊlˌhluː/ . S. T. Joshi points out, however, that Lovecraft gave different pronunciations on different occasions. According to Lovecraft, this

468-481: The underworld or existed in or under the earth, and were typically associated with death or fertility. The terms "chthonic" and "chthonian" are derived from the Ancient Greek word χθών ( khthṓn ) meaning 'earth' or 'soil'. The Greek adjective χθόνιος ( khthónios ) means 'in, under, or beneath the earth', which can be differentiated from γῆ ( gê ), which speaks to the living surface of land on

504-587: The California spider Pimoa cthulhu , the New Guinea moth Speiredonia cthulhui , and Sollasina cthulhu , a fossil echinoderm. Two microorganisms that assist in the digestion of wood by termites have been named after Cthulhu and Cthulhu's "daughter" Cthylla: Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque . In 2014, science and technology scholar Donna Haraway gave a talk entitled " Anthropocene , Capitalocene , Chthulucene: Staying with

540-488: The Cthulhu mythos (including character statistics) in the first printing of Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook Deities & Demigods (1980). TSR, however, were unaware that Arkham House , which asserted copyright on almost all Lovecraft literature, had already licensed the Cthulhu property to game company Chaosium . Although Chaosium stipulated that TSR could continue to use the material if each future edition featured

576-539: The Greek root, and her description of its meaning coincides with Lovecraft's idea of the apocalyptic, multitentacled threat of Cthulhu to collapse civilization into an endless dark horror: "Chthulucene does not close in on itself; it does not round off; its contact zones are ubiquitous and continuously spin out loopy tendrils." In 2015, an elongated, dark region along the equator of Pluto , initially referred to as "the Whale",

612-580: The Trouble", in which she proposed the term "Chthulucene" as an alternative for the concept of the Anthropocene era, due to the entangling interconnectedness of all supposedly individual beings. Haraway has denied any indebtedness to Lovecraft's Cthulhu, claiming that her "chthulu" is derived from Greek khthonios , "of the earth". However, the Lovecraft character is much closer to her coined term than

648-552: The World, Against Life (2005) decries Derleth for attempting to reshape Lovecraft's strictly amoral continuity into a stereotypical conflict between forces of objective good and evil. In John Glasby 's "A Shadow from the Aeons", Cthulhu is seen by the narrator roaming the riverbank near Dominic Waldron's castle, and roaring. The character's influence also extended into gaming literature; games company TSR included an entire chapter on

684-628: The character as a malevolent entity, hibernating within R'lyeh , an underwater city in the South Pacific . The imprisoned Cthulhu is apparently the source of constant subconscious anxiety for all mankind, and is also the object of worship, both by many human cults (including some within New Zealand , Greenland , Louisiana , and the Chinese mountains ) and by other Lovecraftian monsters (called Deep Ones and Mi-Go ). The short story asserts

720-576: The creature's origins ("I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth.") The 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness refers to the "star-spawn of Cthulhu", who warred with another race called the Elder Things before the dawn of man. August Derleth , a correspondent of Lovecraft's, used the creature's name to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors,

756-597: The earth and underworld, in the direction of the chthonic gods. The goal of chthonic worship was to interact with gods beneath the earth so offerings were directed toward the ground to reach these deities. For this reason, incense was not used in Chthonic worship, as the smoke would rise upwards rather than downwards. Wine was not utilized in this form of worship, but instead honey was a common libation used. Sacrificial practices would not always follow these exact patterns, but these are differences which can allude to whether

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792-426: The earth, particularly in the sky. Gods that are related to agriculture are also considered to have chthonic associations as planting and growing take place in part under the earth. Chthonic and ouranic, or olympic, are not completely opposite descriptors. They do not cleanly differentiate types of gods and worship into distinct categories, but represent a cultic spectrum. These terms communicate associations with

828-411: The earth. In Greek, χθόνιος ( khthónios ) is a descriptive word for things relating to the underworld, which was in antiquity sometimes applied as an epithet to deities such Hermes , Demeter , and Zeus . The chthonic deities have been compared to the more commonly referred-to Olympic gods and their associated rites and cults. Olympic gods are understood to reference that which exists above

864-504: The earth. It is for these reasons that she is mainly associated with the underworld as well as agriculture. Demeter is related to the underworld as she attempts to rescue Persephone from Hades in her grief. She is associated with agriculture and fertility. The Furies, or the Erinyes , reside in the underworld and are known for vengeance. Offerings were a significant aspect of Ancient Greek religion. They were used to communicate with

900-402: The god. While performing the sacrifice, worshippers would raise their palms open and upward, again gesturing toward the sky where the ouranic gods resided. Chthonic sacrifice was commonly defined by offering a black or dark-hided animal to the deity. Worshippers did not consume the sacrifice themselves, but instead burned the entirety of the animal for the god. This type of sacrifice is called

936-407: The gods and commonly took the forms of sacrifice and libation . Offerings were central to the worship of both chthonic and ouranic gods, though the specifics of these rituals differed. These differences provide insight into the ways in which Greeks perceived chthonic and ouranic deities as well as the ways they related to them. Ouranic sacrifices took place during the daytime and included wine as

972-644: The premise that, while currently trapped, Cthulhu will eventually return. His worshippers chant " Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn " ("In his house at R'lyeh , dead Cthulhu waits dreaming"). Lovecraft conceived a detailed genealogy for Cthulhu (published as "Letter 617" in Selected Letters ) and made the character a central reference in his works. The short story " The Dunwich Horror " (1928) refers to Cthulhu, while " The Whisperer in Darkness " (1930) hints that one of his characters knows

1008-654: The primal lurkers beyond time; those of Earth, horrible animate survivors of distant eons. According to Derleth's scheme, "Great Cthulhu is one of the Water Elementals" and was engaged in an age-old arch-rivalry with a designated air elemental, Hastur the Unspeakable , described as Cthulhu's "half-brother." Based on this framework, Derleth wrote a series of short stories published in Weird Tales (1944–1952) and collected as The Trail of Cthulhu , depicting

1044-440: The pronunciation / k ə ˈ t uː l uː / . In " The Call of Cthulhu ", H. P. Lovecraft describes a statue of Cthulhu as: "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." A carving of Cthulhu is described thusly: "It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing

1080-514: The stark binary which modern scholars may fall into. In response, Scullion articulates the benefits of the term chthonic as long as one also understands the fact that chthonic and Olympian are not mutually exclusive categories. The term serves to highlight differing aspects of religious practice. Scholars emphasize the importance of reserving the label of chthonic for situations that were explicitly labeled as such in Ancient Greece. Elder Thing Too Many Requests If you report this error to

1116-727: The struggle of a Dr. Laban Shrewsbury and his associates against Cthulhu and his minions. In addition, Cthulhu is referenced in Derleth's 1945 novel The Lurker at the Threshold published by Arkham House . The novel can also be found in The Watchers Out of Time and Others , a collection of stories from Derleth's interpretations of Lovecraftian Mythos published by Arkham House in 1974. Derleth's interpretations have been criticized by Lovecraft enthusiast Michel Houellebecq , among others. Houellebecq's H. P. Lovecraft: Against

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1152-429: The surname "chthonios", demonstrating the situational use of a chthonic description. In Ancient Greece, the names of deities were sometimes followed by an epithet , similar in concept to a surname. In this context, the purpose of an epithet was to describe a characteristic or association of a deity. The epithets 'chthonios' and 'chthonia' would follow the name of a god or goddess to reference their relationship either to

1188-459: The underworld and/or agriculture. This makes some deities such as Hades , Persephone , and Erinyes more likely to be considered chthonic due to their proximity to the underworld. While this is the case, virtually any god could be considered chthonic to emphasize different aspects of the god. For example, Demeter and Hermes are categorized within the twelve Olympian gods but are often considered chthonic. Zeus has also been referenced with

1224-506: The underworld or agriculture. For example, Hermes Chthonios references Hermes' role as the underworld escort. In contrast, Charon does not necessitate a chthonic epithet as his relation to the underworld is his main attribution. Additional examples of deities with recorded epithets include Demeter Chthonia, Ge Chthonia, Persephone Chthonia, Zeus Chthonios, and Hecate Chthonia. As discussed, many deities can be considered chthonic based upon what attributes are being referenced. Though this

1260-413: The worshipper is conducting an ouranic or chthonic sacrifice. Though the specifics of chthonic and ouranic sacrifice differ, they both have similar goals. In both scenarios, worshippers perform sacrifices to communicate and forge a relationship with the gods. They may perform a sacrifice to thank, honor, or request a favor from a god. There is scholarly debate regarding whether the distinction of chthonic

1296-643: Was proposed to be named "Cthulhu Region", by the NASA team responsible for the New Horizons mission. It was given the informal name Cthulhu Macula , though the feature was later officially named Belton Regio by the International Astronomical Union . Chthonic In Greek mythology , deities referred to as chthonic ( / ˈ θ ɒ n ɪ k / ) or chthonian ( / ˈ θ oʊ n i ə n / ) were gods or spirits who inhabited

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