第112期 Geek时间: 克苏鲁神话为什么会火?
日期:2020-08-26 06:32

(单词翻译:单击)

Hello again.

Now on with the show.

Welcome back to Geek Time with Brad and we're here with Lulu, and we're gonna continue on with our discussion of Cthulhu advanced.

Yeah, last time we talked about Cthulhu gave me a few nightmares, but let's continue anyways.

So we're gonna start off by talking about some of the great old ones. These are what we refer to as the pantheon of the great old gods which Cthulhu belongs to.

Interestingly, when you say great old gods because the word god, when you think about it, you think of in the normal sense they should look really sort of divine. But these gods in the Cthulhu world or universe, they are all monsters.

If you even think about like a lot of the older gods and a lot of societies, they weren't like divine beings as we think of them today even. If you look at the more like the Norse Mythology, we have some of the more define like the more human like gods like Thor, Odin. But then there are some other gods that were more like serpents and snakes and things like that.

That is true. Some of the more let's say primal belief will have more monster, monstery or monster-like gods.

Yes, and I think that kind of Cthulhu return to that.

Return to the primitive,to the primal...

Kind of like a description of these older gods, but not just as we saw them in more primitive times, but maybe more of an artistic version of them.

I often hear the Cthulhu mythos. So mytho that's mythology.

Right.

So it's not just one god, it's not just one story, it's not just one monster. It's a whole system.

Currently I think they are somewhere between like thirty and fifty of the gods, and they have different tears like when we look at the easiest description I can think of as would be Odin and Thor. Like Odin is the supreme god and Thor as a demi god. He is not a supreme god until he takes over for Odin in the story. Right?

So it sounds like Cthulhu inc.

Right.

We have different levels of managers.

Cthulhu is actually like the grandson of the highest of the gods, which is known as Azathoth. So he is like the supreme god, but then we have like his children and then we would have Cthulhu which is like the grandchild and of like the father of many other gods. So we have this pantheon of gods, and most of them have not been written by H. P. Lovecraft, but they have been created by. . .

Fanfiction?

...a lot of other writers out there.

This whole hierarchy of gods, like how does humanity fit into this whole thing. Is it like humanity just a small group of humans, they're just the worshippers. They're following these gods like any religion would say?

For the most part, when it comes to. . . when you think about more modern religions like the gods demand our worship. When it comes to these gods however, these gods don't really pay much attention to us. They don't even consider us, we're more just like ants.

I've heard of that analog basically saying that as a human, if you accidentally stepped on an ant, you simply wouldn't think much of it. And that's in the Cthulhu world, this is what the great old gods what they will think of humans. They don't really care. It's not really like they want to eradicate humans or they want human worship, they just don't care.

Like I think the reason why in the mythos right now that like Cthulhu is trying to control peoples because he is in this like interdimensional slumber, he is trying to get out, and he needs people to help him escape. So basically he's reaching out and using us as a tool.

Okay, but what is their ultimate purpose then once they are awake?

I don't think we can grasp their ultimate purpose.

So it's, not destruction of the earth, nothing like that?

I don't think they want to destroy earth, I they think of earth as their home.

Okay. Which leaves what to us then. . .

Nothing. Yeah, they were basically we live on the earth but probably think of it as their home and we're just there as kind of like other animals other creatures, just the same as cats and dogs to them.

Okay. When human beings when they, according to these stories, when human beings do come into contact with these Cthulhu gods, what happens?


They essentially go insane because you can't comprehend this god when you see something like this, when you actually see it, it's gonna drive you insane. You realize that it is real. It's not just this thing I saw in my dream. This is an actual real being. It's imagine like if you're religious and you actually see your god. You can be like yeah. . .

I think that can really push any human being of sort of into insanity. I truly believe that. Okay, so that logic does work. You can't, well I mean, if you see them, you go crazy. That’s making all of what you say knd of unreliable. I see how that works.

And like going a little bit further into the mythos as Cthulhu has supposedly traveled through the universe, he's picked up other followers and there's a group of alien species that are kind of like shape shifters. They can like change the shape of their body. They have followed Cthulhu as worshippers. They have followed him throughout the planets. So apparently, in one of the stories he went to Saturn, they followed him there. And he currently resides on Earth. And so like there's the star spawn which are basically kind of like cult followers from another planet that have gone so far as to make themselves look like the god.

This is so complex, so not only humans or group of humans worship Cthulhu, you also have aliens that also worship Cthulhu so much that they change their shapes to look like their gods. All right. So would you say in that sense then, would you say that Cthulhu was created by Lovecraft originally as an alien species from the outer space? Or was it just more like you said earlier primitive like prehistoric believes?

I think when he originally thought of Cthulhu, I don't think he thought more beyond just what he envisioned in his dream. I think maybe he had like a small idea. I think maybe he thought they were more of a primitive thing, but when it comes to like the newer mythos, were Cthulhu is actually an alien from another planet, I think that's more of a modern interpretation of it.

The entire mythos actually grew and evolved with scientific development, especially in terms of space exploration now that the more we know about space, perhaps more of these things, more of these stories will emerge. Now comes to a very interesting question that I always wanted to ask, nowadays in real world, like in human world, are there people who truly believe or actually worship so to speak Cthulhu?

Yeah. When you look at some of the western countries as religion has kind of lost its grasp upon the main state of world of the life I would say, like main day to day goings of life, people have started to create their own religions whether it's the flying spaghetti monster or following some of these old classical gods like in from Norse Mythology. And now people are following kind of like these gods that have come from fiction. And part of that comes to it's like, where did the fiction come from?Is the fiction kind of, is it actually fiction?Or did these gods actually choose him as their herald or did Cthulhu choose H. P. Lovecraft to convert people by telling his story?

Because if you really go into how some of the religions start, obviously we're not going to go into details. This is what happens. It's usually a human guy that's saying that I got its message. That's how a lot of religion start. So you never know. Another question would be, why is it so fascinating?There's so many other types of stories, why Cthulhu?

I think simply just because Cthulhu was so strange like it's a man, but he's hundreds of feet tall, has tentacles for a mouth, can control your mind. His sleeping, it's interdimensional.

It's just eerie and weird and bizarre. And obviously these fan fiction created the entire mythos, the entire universe of it. Here comes another question. Now it's so popular. It's got a cult following so to speak. But back in the days when H. P. Lovecraft actually was alive when he wrote it, it wasn't really that popular, people didn't think much of it. Why do you think that is?

It could be a various different things, they could have to do with the way society was shaped, like it could have to do with technology of the day. There's lots of different things, if you look at the changes in the world in the last hundred years, every year we're getting newer and newer technologies, our technologies are doubling every year so to say with Moore’s Law, I think that's it. So like people probably were less likely to believe in that type of thing back then, they would probably just was like it's so mundane.

Yeah. Technology develops. So we find out more about the world and realizing that there's still a lot we don't know. Guess I've read it somewhere. There's a theory when Lovecraft wrote the book or wrote the story. Most of the English speaking world feels very confident about what human beings can do, what humanity can do, the grasp on modern technology, how they feel like they’re in control of the world. But obviously then second world war and all that a lot of things happened and then atomic bomb makes people feel out of control. They feel like they've lost that and I think that could also contribute to the rise of the whole popularity of Cthulhu.

Definitely. I mean, if you think about it, when you first start out your first learning something, you become very confident in your knowledge of that because you don't quite understand how deep that knowledge goes. So when you're first starting learning a language, you learn a few sentences like I can speak it, right?I know so much. And the more you learn about something, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. And so I think that maybe what happened like in the 1900s, people like look at all this technology we have we are going to control the world, we're gonna control everything, we're gonna control the universe and then we get this further, like we know nothing.

And I don't really know as we go forward, especially with space exploration. Maybe things will change again. We don't know. But that's part of the beauty. I think it's because we don't know, it's because there is still a lot of mystery out there. So maybe Cthulhu does exist. What do you think?If you have heard of Cthulhu, if you have played any games relating to that or watching the film or actually read the book, share with us in the comments section and let us know what you think.

And definitely if you've had dreams about Cthulhu, let us know.

Because that might be Cthulhu sending a message. All right, thank you Brad for coming to the studio again.

No problem. Have a good day.

We'll see you next time. See you.

Bye.


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