The Call of Cthulhu

“Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival…a survival of a hugely remote period when…consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity…forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds.”

This quotation is the story’s epigraph, which Lovecraft attributes to English horror writer Algernon Blackwood. Blackwood was one of the most influential horror writers of the early 20th century, and many of his themes such as the existence of the supernatural and ancient sources of wisdom permeate Lovecraft’s work. The quotation is the basis for Lovecraft’s concept of the Old Ones, beings that communicate through thought and have been present from time immemorial.

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

The story’s opening line is a famous statement of Lovecraft’s unique vision. The author saw human knowledge as a thin veneer over a reality too vast and horrifying to contemplate. The opening line is also ironic, as Thurston spends the whole story trying to “correlate” an especially horrifying set of facts. Indeed, the story is Thurston’s attempt at “correlation.”

“Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it.”

Here Thurston makes a distinction between the beliefs of theosophy, which include esoteric powers beyond human comprehension, and the Cthulhu Cult, which Thurston paints as a grotesque racialized perversion of theosophical beliefs and practices.