User blog:FanofRPGs/Cthulhu Mythos Blog

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

- The Call of Cthulhu

The Cthulhu Mythos and the Dream Cycle are parts of the greater Lovecraftian Mythos written by Howard Phillip Lovecraft from 1917 with Dagon to 1935 with A Haunter in the Dark. This shall be an analysis on the cosmology of the works of H.P Lovecraft and be a concise argument for why his Cthulhu Mythos should be ranked at the tier High 1-C to 1-A, and subsequently among the most powerful fictional universes alongside Umineko: When They Cry, The Dark Tower, and Discworld.

The following stories are vital to understanding Lovecraft's Cosmology:


 * Celephaïs
 * Nyarlathotep
 * Ex Oblvione
 * Hypnos
 * The Call of Cthulhu
 * The Colour Out of Space
 * Fungi from Yuggoth
 * The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
 * The Silver Key
 * The Hounds of Tindalos ‡
 * The Whisperer in Darkness
 * The Dreams in the Witch House
 * Through the Gates of the Silver Key
 * The Haunter of the Dark

‡The Hounds of Tindalos was not written by HP Lovecraft, but it is still canon

Type Four Multiverse of the Mythos
Now to begin, I will talk about the universes of the Cthulhu Mythos

First off, what are the rules for a type 4 Multiverse?


 * 1) it has to be an uncountably infinite in size structure. Now many works of fiction don’t make this sort of distinctions between the different types of infinite very good, but we can in many cases, based on the properties of the multiverse in question, state if will be “this large”. Example being, if a given multiverse contains each and every single possible permutation of an already infinite set, like every single possible variation of the arrangement of the matter in an infinite in size and matter universe. This is of course only a single example. Any multiverse with continuously changing variables in its universe would meet this requirement too.
 * 2) As you have stated earlier, there can’t be anything that is not part of this structure and yet is a part of a given setting cosmology unless you transcend the mathematics supplied in a setting and are effectively beyond even a perceived true reality
 * 3) The mathematics ( or some other representation of a logic based system, whatever you want to call it ) represents the “true” reality, of which the physical world is its representation. This one is rather “easy” as many of the settings use some sort of “higher reality”/”true reality” notions in their descriptions.
 * 4) Each and every single one of this non self contradicting mathematical structures that can be conceived at all ( or whatever you want to call them ), has to be represented in said multiverse. This is the hardest one to prove. How would one prove such a thing… unless it is explicitly told to us in the face by a reliable source

Universes are infinite:

"In time he grew so impatient of the bleak intervals of day that he began buying drugs in order to increase his periods of sleep. Hasheesh helped a great deal, and once sent him to a part of space where form does not exist, but where glowing gases study the secrets of existence. And a violet-coloured gas told him that this part of space was outside what he had called infinity. The gas had not heard of planets and organisms before, but identified Kuranes merely as one from the infinity where matter, energy, and gravitation exist."

- Celephaïs

This implies that this is a Type 4 Multiverse, given fundamental concepts such as matter and gravitation don't simply just work differently due to constants, but don't exist in some universes, implying different fundamental laws of physics

From Whisperer in Darkness, the universe is implicitly described as an “ingenuine infinity,” but still infinite; it is simply a lower infinity in the perspective of the “genuine infinity”

"Their main immediate abode is a still undiscovered and almost lightless planet at the very edge of our solar system—beyond Neptune, and the ninth in distance from the sun. It is, as we have inferred, the object mystically hinted at as “Yuggoth” in certain ancient and forbidden writings; and it will soon be the scene of a strange focussing of thought upon our world in an effort to facilitate mental rapport. I would not be surprised if astronomers became sufficiently sensitive to these thought-currents to discover Yuggoth when the Outer Ones wish them to do so. But Yuggoth, of course, is only the stepping-stone. The main body of the beings inhabits strangely organised abysses wholly beyond the utmost reach of any human imagination. The space-time globule which we recognise as the totality of all cosmic entity is only an atom in the genuine infinity which is theirs. And as much of this infinity as any human brain can hold is eventually to be opened up to me, as it has been to not more than fifty other men since the human race has existed."

- The Whisperer in Darkness

Here he also reveals that the multiverse has infinite universes. What this means is that given each universe has fundamentally different physical concepts, such as matter and gravitation and energy, that this is a Type 4 Multiverse. Also, it talks about an “ultimate infinity” again, but let’s get to that later.

"I have said that there were things in some of Akeley’s letters—especially the second and most voluminous one—which I would not dare to quote or even form into words on paper. This hesitancy applies with still greater force to the things I heard whispered that evening in the darkened room among the lonely haunted hills. Of the extent of the cosmic horrors unfolded by that raucous voice I cannot even hint. He had known hideous things before, but what he had learned since making his pact with the Outside Things was almost too much for sanity to bear. Even now I absolutely refuse to believe what he implied about the constitution of ultimate infinity, the juxtaposition of dimensions, and the frightful position of our known cosmos of space and time in the unending chain of linked cosmos-atoms which makes up the immediate super-cosmos of curves, angles, and material and semi-material electronic organisation.

Never was a sane man more dangerously close to the arcana of basic entity—never was an organic brain nearer to utter annihilation in the chaos that transcends form and force and symmetry. I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth. I guessed—from hints which made even my informant pause timidly—the secret behind the Magellanic Clouds and globular nebulae, and the black truth veiled by the immemorial allegory of Tao. The nature of the Doels was plainly revealed, and I was told the essence (though not the source) of the Hounds of Tindalos. The legend of Yig, Father of Serpents, remained figurative no longer, and I started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth. It was shocking to have the foulest nightmares of secret myth cleared up in concrete terms whose stark, morbid hatefulness exceeded the boldest hints of ancient and mediaeval mystics. Ineluctably I was led to believe that the first whisperers of these accursed tales must have had discourse with Akeley’s Outer Ones, and perhaps have visited outer cosmic realms as Akeley now proposed visiting them"

- The Whisperer in Darkness

And at the end, another statement about their being a multiverse

"There are four kinds of instruments here, Wilmarth,” whispered the voice. “Four kinds—three faculties each—makes twelve pieces in all. You see there are four different sorts of beings presented in those cylinders up there. Three humans, six fungoid beings who can’t navigate space corporeally, two beings from Neptune (God! if you could see the body this type has on its own planet!), and the rest entities from the central caverns of an especially interesting dark star beyond the galaxy. In the principal outpost inside Round Hill you’ll now and then find more cylinders and machines—cylinders of extra-cosmic brains with different senses from any we know—allies and explorers from the uttermost Outside—and special machines for giving them impressions and expression in the several ways suited at once to them and to the comprehensions of different types of listeners. Round Hill, like most of the beings’ main outposts all through the various universes, is a very cosmopolitan place! Of course, only the more common types have been lent to me for experiment."

- A Whisperer in Darkness

And so at the bare minimum, the multiverse of the Cthulhu Mythos is a type 4 multiverse with infinite universes, each with varying laws of physics, forming an infinite chain.

Higher Dimensions in the Mythos
What are dimensions according to Lovecraft? Well, it can be viewed from his descriptions in Through the Gates of the Silver Key (In fact, a healthy majority of statements on the nature of the greater cosmology is sourced from this story).

"He was told how childish and limited is the notion of a tri-dimensional world, and what an infinity of directions there are besides the known directions of up-down, forward-backward, right-left."

- Through the Gates of the Silver Key

And then shortly stated a few paragraphs down, this is talked of:

"Then the waves increased in strength, and sought to improve his understanding, reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an infinitesimal part. They told him that every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some corresponding figure of one more dimension—as a square is cut from a cube or a circle from a sphere. The cube and sphere, of three dimensions, are thus cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions that men know only through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five dimensions, and so on up to the dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity. The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness reached by the First Gate, where ’Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient Ones. Though men hail it as reality and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality."

- Through the Gates of the Silver Key

And then again later:

"After an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of few-dimensioned zones call change is merely a function of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the angles of cutting—being circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola according to that angle, yet without any change in the cone itself—so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change. But the entities outside the Gates command all angles, and view the myriad parts of the cosmos in terms of fragmentary, change-involving perspective, or of the changeless totality beyond perspective, in accordance with their will."

- Through the Gates of the Silver Key