I Cthulhu, Do You?

As a fan of classic horror and a great reader in high school, I enjoyed stories by Poe, Shelley, Bram Stoker and Lovecraft.  I loved stories about robots and alien landscapes.  Probably I empathized more with the creatures in these tales than with the heroes who were trying to slay them.  For sure, I thought of myself as a stranger in a strange land -- awkward and full of strange impulses and appetites that I didn't understand.  

Now that I'm more grown up, maybe I can be friends with the monsters that live inside my head.  Or at least I can channel them into more productive directions.  I can take what is dark, and make light of it.

One of the monsters that I am finding very interesting right now is the Cthulhu.  

It's commonly pronounced kə-THOO-loo now, but this high priest of the Great Old Ones has had many names throughout time. Cthulhu are said to evoke abject terror in all who have the misfortune to encounter them.  According to HP Lovecraft, their appearance "yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.... A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary wings."  Sounds charming, right?

But like most monsters, Cthulhu have power.  The Great Old Ones are telepathic and "knew all that was occurring in the universe".  They ruled the earth before humans, but now they sleep, waiting to be awakened and dreaming of "new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."  Perhaps they still visit us, "moulding [our] dreams". 

All of this gives me very pleasant shivers.