1.
H.P. LOVECRAFT – THE CALL OF
CTHULHU – INDEPENDENTLY-
PUBLISHED AT AMAZON – 2020
The novella is a three-tier collection of documents on a fantastic entity known as Cthulhu.
The first phase is brought by a clay bas-relief by Henry Anthony Wilcox brought up on March 1,
1925, to a group of archaeologists, a bas-relief he has executed in a trance within or just on the verge of a
dream. This clay tablet reproduces a monstrous figure with some glyphs on the edge.
The second phase is a report by police inspector Raymond Legrasse from New Orleans about a
police operation to control some voodoo celebrations in New Orleans, or in the swamps close by. The
celebration is described as an orgy of violence, rhythmic drum playing, dancing, and sexuality. Less than 100
people. Forty-seven were arrested. They got some tale about Great Old Ones that existed before anything
else and who have to be worshiped. They centered their rituals on an idol.
“The statuette, idol, fetish, or whatever it was, had been captured some months before in the
wooded swamps south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed voodoo meeting; and so
singular and hideous were the rites connected with it, that the police could not but realize that they
had stumbled on a dark cult totally unknown to them, and infinitely more diabolic than even the
blackest of the African voodoo circles. […] between seven and eight inches in height, and of
exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an
octopuslike head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws
on hind and fore feet.”
The whole episode ended badly with two men hanged in the name of justice and all the others of the
47 arrested people institutionalized for life. No regeneration, no reformation, nothing but let’s pu them away
till death can liberate us from them, or from the fear they inspire in us.
“Only two of the prisoners were found sane enough to be hanged, and the rest were
committed to various institutions. All denied a part in the ritual murders and averred that the killing
had been done by Black-winged Ones which had come to them from their immemorial meeting place
in the haunted wood. What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo
named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the
cult in the mountains of China.”
This idol is quite similar to the figure on Wilcox’s clay bas-relief. What’s more this cult brings up some
“language,” in fact a formula: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." Translated as "In his
house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." It is this formula that led the police inspector to William
Channing Webb, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. He mentions a tour of Greenland
where he witnessed some similar cultish rituals among some local Eskimos.
The idea that emerges here due to the events happening at a certain date, or within a certain length
of time, is that this Cthulhu was calling during that expanse of time.
The third section of the novella is dedicated to what happened to the Norwegian naval officer
Gustav Johansen and his crew in the Pacific in the same period in 1925. It is the testimony of the emergence
of the city of R’lyeh from the ocean for a short period. This city is explored by Gustav Johansen and his crew
and only two manage to go back to their ship, one completely berserk, Gustav Johansen still capable to sail
the ship. They were, the ranting madman and the traumatized Johansen, rescued by some naval agency in
New Zealand. They had been confronted by a monstrous being that is quite similar to Cthulhu, the idol of the
other cases. But the temporal period during which this call was heard and felt comes to a close and nothing
remains except the clay bas-relief and the small idol from New Orleans.
This novella has become the center of so much interest because of the situation of the “island” of
Cthulhu. It justifies – mentally not archaeologically – those who want to advocate the existence of a vast
continent in the southern Pacific that would have collapsed sometime ten thousand years ago or so after

2.
having been the center of the whole world and the probably extra-terrestrial melting-pot of the emergence of
the human species. Except that Homo Sapiens has been asserted archaeologically something like 300,000
years ago in Black Africa and moving from there starting practically at the same time, let’s say 250,000 years
ago.
But this story is good as a story that creates some doubt in the reader by putting together
circumstantial elements that are connected only by the dates and the monstrous figure. Add to this some
voodoo seen as a sexual trance, plus some Eskimo lore seen as coming from the other side of our universe,
and a fallen city in the Pacific, and the gullible minds will believe it is true and they will start looking over both
their shoulders, at the same time and at once if they can, for this Cthulhu or some deranged Cthulhu admirer
brandishing some tentacles in the shape of swords, or opening its maw with 13 times 13 teeth in the shape
of as many Arabian daggers. You can replace Arabian with Chinese. It will work just the same because it is
racist.
Do not go down into the underground. That’s where all these phantasmagorical beings, monsters,
and nightmarish creations generally live in the shape – because they are shapeshifters – of whatever types
of beings that may frighten you. They have access to your unconscious mind, and they know all the
segregationist biases you may develop, unknowingly most of the time. Segregationist thinking is like the
foreskin of your brain: it has to be pushed back for your normal thinking to emerge. As Carl Gustav (just like
Gustaf Johansen in the story) Jung could say: H.P. Lovecraft, with all his Cthulhus, is the foreskin of the
phantasmagorical creativity of humanity. At times it is necessary to shorten it, a little bit but shy of plain
circumcision.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU