Reading the Mythos as Mythology, Not Fiction
Why the stories of Lovecraft feel like they could have happened
For the entirety of August, similar to how I dedicated January to Robert E. Howard and Sword & Sorcery fantasy, this month will only feature posts about Howard Phillips Lovecraft and his famous “Cthulhu Mythos” due to it being his birth-month. To kick off the first weekly post, I decided to talk about how readers can approach his stories concerning Yog-Sothoth, Arkham, the Necronomicon, and others with a different lens than simply classic weird horror fiction.
Even before August Derleth coined the term “Cthulhu Mythos”, Lovecraft and his contemporaries had established their literary universe subtly throughout their publications in the Weird Tales magazine and other publications during the “Golden Age” of pulp fiction. They referenced and expanded upon one another’s inventions, but did not hinge the success of their stories on these “Easter eggs”; they convincingly created a pantheon of alien gods, a library of dread grimoires, a host of forgotten heroes, and cells packed to the brim with madmen and doomed lore-seekers. Each author in the “Lovecraft circle” knew what they wanted to write and mastered their craft and niche within this fledgling subgenre, and tied it back to the “facts” of their imagined universe Lovecraft had established. He and his friends wrote with a conviction as if they were indeed the oft ill-fated chroniclers in the worlds of their tales. This goes beyond the simple name-drops or cameos most mainstream entertainers might default to when they think of a corpus of stories sharing a larger imagine universe. The stories written in the mythos—at least by Lovecraft and most of the better authors in his circle—do not involve epic, continuous stories about saving humanity from the threat of the Great Old Ones with ensemble casts but are rather episodic accounts from ordinary people that have had brushes with these ancient, extraordinary forces. Their format imitates the loose, scattered nature of myths that are only pieced together later on yet still are open to vast amounts of speculation and limitless imaginings.
Lovecraft and his contemporaries were well-versed not only in their preferred genres of writing (at the time, most speculative fiction was far from in vogue) but in classic myths, folklore, philosophy, science, and history. Many of them had, by all rights, a classical education in literature (many of them likely self-educating rather than enrolling in university) and thus gained well-rounded perspectives on the real world through literature. Lovecraft himself utilized his great-uncle’s extensive library before the age of 10, favoring Greek and Arabic stories that definitely fueled the basis of his later works. The tales of Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood (among others) were some of the fiction that pushed Lovecraft towards writing in the vein of the weird. The influences of these three authors are very apparent to most readers of Lovecraft as many would be able to see how Dunsany’s Pegana inspired the Dreamlands, or how Machen and Blackwood’s blending of real-world folklore and mythology with weird horror prompted Lovecraft to do the same with his own inventions.
When thinking about how mythology is presented in a written format, most readers likely imagine the book of Greek myths that could have occupied the shelf of their fifth-grade classroom, or the latest “re-imagining” of mythological tales in a digestible format complete with quippy dialogue and the gods making pop culture references. The mythological stories mainstream audiences would be familiar with are heavily edited and streamlined from scholarly translations, then usually presented in a way that makes sense to a casual reader. Most of these books have straightforward narration styles, clear explanations of characters and events without major cultural contextualization, and a quite confident voice when it comes to stating “what happened.” Academics, professional or hobbyist, will know that even the myths that are most well-known and popular among casual audiences (namely Greek and Norse) are a labyrinthine sprawl of speculation, varied and incomplete translations, and endless recontextualization as we discover new information and generate new theories. The point is to say that the simplified mythology collections found in most bookstores are closer to how fiction is written than actual mythology. Both fictional and mythological stories are usually authored with the idea or belief that what is being told could happen in some way. The difference is that myths are something that not only served as entertainment but were used to make sense of a world or people. Given how far removed from the time and cultures of the people who originally told these stories, it is cavalier to presume that any interpretation of a myth is “fact”. In fiction, authors can invent a concept and decree it as a fact of their imagined world, making worldbuilding an almost precise science. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos draws the uncertainty of mythology into fiction, leaving the answers in the dark both to increase the atmosphere of horror and the verisimilitude of the alternate Earth these stories chronicle.
Lovecraft’s stories often have onion-like layers that unravel as they progress where the reader becomes privy to the protagonists’ uncovering of the alien truths of the cosmos. They also have two “tracks” based on the events and perceptions of what is happening: the first track is what the protagonists experience and how they perceive it, the second is what is happening in the background—the cosmic truth and the machinations of the Great Old Ones or other alien beings. The protagonists might have some kind of explanation as to what is going on, using whatever knowledge they already possess or can scrape up to form a narrative—which is likely what we are reading—but even the more precise attempts to explain are just grasping at straws. Lovecraft himself was probably fully conscious of his characters’ ignorance, purposefully keeping the truth behind the weirdness vague. In this manner, he really plays off not only the best methods of writing horror but writing the discovery of an enigmatic mythology through a modern lens. The Great Old Ones and other creatures that make up the Mythos have goals and plans completely alien to humanity, and entire histories that we couldn’t even hope to calculate or chronicle ourselves. Although later Mythos authors would have sweeping narratives explaining their own additions, Lovecraft’s most thorough explanation of the hidden history within the Mythos comes during At the Mountains of Madness when Dyer’s expedition discovers the markings left by the Elder Things. This, however, was something Lovecraft was forced to add by the editors at Astounding Stories, which evaporated a lot of the mystique. Otherwise, Lovecraft is content to not provide answers as potentially he himself couldn’t conceive of what the Great Old Ones have in store for the “new dark age.”
The reason why I bring up the idea of what’s going on in the background is because, for the most part, our own myths are simply our human perceptions of gods and other supernatural entities. Within myths there is the logic that the characters and events could exist or happen in some way. They use contextual information that audiences from particular cultures and traditions would recognize. There might have been lessons or symbolism that people who lived at the time when these myths were more commonplace might have understood—I do not claim to know what the “actual” meanings of myths, other than that they are a complex form of storytelling that hint at the cultural values of the people who told and preserved them. Lovecraft uses similar techniques but grounds his myths in a paradoxical combination of real-world lore and fact with his own weird fiction and alien inventions. His stories from an alternate Earth, where the Great Old Ones exist, are the fragmented myths of his imagined universe. As his friends joined in the development of the Mythos they expanded it to different genres, vistas, and themes under the umbrella of weird fiction. They—especially Lovecraft—didn’t do it for the sake of building a franchise or wrote with an exact timeline or idea of canonicity, but they did it for the pure craft of storytelling and the goal to create art. Each one of them became a tradition-bearer of sorts, utilizing their own talents, interests, and background to perpetuate the loose mythology conceived by Lovecraft; these stories resonate with the earthly culture, or people, of the outsiders, those who look into the darkest corners of the universe and see terrible beauty rather than nothing. Their god is the maddening inspiration of the cosmos and their myths are their insane ramblings.
Thanks for reading this week’s post! Which story from Lovecraft or the Cthulhu Mythos in general is your favorite? Leave it in the comments below!
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Cthulhu Mythos definitely feels as close as we can get to a modern mythology with pantheons and such in today's secular world. Corporate owned media is too structured and self aware, they can't even adapt existing myths or epics well usually (or I'm just bitter about my favorite specific figures never being done well). I know someone who argues it's more of an 'anti mythology' since most mythology infuses the world with meaning while the Mythos is generally known for life being meaningless but I feel you'd disagree.
Of my very limited experience I find Hastur one of the most mythical feeling Lovecraftian figures to me (though I believe Lovecraft himself had nothing to do with the development of Hastur) due to how completely different Hastur in Haita the Shepherd is from the later King in Yellow depictions, which lines up with my own experiences of looking into mythical figures and finding vastly different versions within mythology. Like The Eddas vs Gesta Danorum.
I find the idea of writing something that feels like a myth fascinating precisely because a perfect replication is impossible, so it comes down to what part of your experience with it you choose to focus on. My approach has been to write myths framed as being from another world entirely and trying to leave enough blank space and unexplained/unelaborated references for people to imagine a wider corpus it's part of. Or to have footnotes from an imagined translator to mime my own experience reading the sagas and such.
I'm actually considering having my own depiction of Hastur in one of my fantasy settings as a nod to Haita the Shepherd, since it's a short story very relevant to one of my current projects. And because I want to engage with the mythos in my own small way.
One of the things I love about reading the Norse Myths, in many forms, is trying to take them seriously and to speculate about how they might be interpreted as more than stories.
For example, we know from reading many of the stories that Odin is as much a trickster as Loki is and that being a trickster is often viewed as a moral good. After all, being predictable in battle is foolish. This led me to wonder if Odin's invitation of the Volva to recite the Voluspa in the court was a deception of a kind. Not that there wouldn't be a war between the Gods and Giants, but that by having a public tale stating that the Giants would win no matter the time frame that Odin might be allowing himself to stock up enough to win. Additionally, the visions could be lies regarding the betrayals. After all, why not just kill the betrayers now?
Of course not killing the betrayers and accepting inevitable doom instead is also a vital part of the Norse myths, so maybe that's the lesson.