From: lizi@ocf.berkeley.edu (Cosma R. Shalizi)
Newsgroups: alt.horror
Subject: Jesus Cthulhu
Date: 4 Oct 1992 07:54:22 GMT
Organization: Vampire Research Group at Berkeley :)
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: lightning.berkeley.edu
Summary: You asked for it.

				JESUS CTHULHU
		Working Paper, The Vampire Research Group at Berkeley
		   Cosma Rohilla Shalizi (=lizi@ocf.berkeley.edu)
 
While the role of the Cthulhu mythos in many religions has been investigated
- e.g., the pre-Columbian cults of Mesoamerica received attention from
Lovecraft himself, vide "The Mound" - it is curious that a number of rather
obvious connections have not been made with the Christian faith.

The coincidence of names, Jesus Christ and Great Cthulhu, is suggestive, but
a linguistic accident. Much more convincing is the fact that Cthulhu is a
god who died and yet lives, now and forever, and shall soon enough return
in glory. Indeed, one of his (abortive) resurrections took place rather
close to Easter. Both the return of Christ and the return of Cthulhu are
eagerly awaited by hordes of worshippers who will do anything they can to
hasten the day. Both are to be heralded by war, death and general chaos. Both
are connected with astronomical prophecies - Cthulhu will return "when the
stars are right," while, according to Revelations, the Apocalypse should
make astronomy a most interesting if confusing profession. Both will be pre-
ceeded by unusual entities, Christ by the Beast and Cthulhu by Nyralthotep.
Christ was preceeded the first time by John the Baptist, who was probably yet
another incarnation of the Crawling Chaos. Both will involve the elimination
of death, in the Christian version by the resurrection for the Last Judge-
ment. The Cthulhist parallel is uncertain, but it is well known that

	That is not dead which can eternal lie,
	And with strange eons even death may die.

Finally, and perhaps not trivially, both will result in a new world order.

It should not be forgotten that Jesus came from an area where the worship of
the Magna Mater has been endemic for millenia, despite frequent condemnation
by prophets of the "Queen of Heaven" and "abominations." Her connection with
the mythos is well-known (see HPL, "The Rats in the Walls"); a consensus of
learned opinion holds her to be Shubb-Niggurath. Some, such as Robert Graves
in his _The Greek Myths_, have asserted that the name "Mary" derives from a
title of this goddess. This does not necessarily imply that the Virgin was
an extradimensional horror. She may merely have worshipped one.

The unusual conditions of Jesus' origin are well-known, and it is unnecessary
to dwell on them here, as the parallel with Wilbur Whately is distressingly 
obvious (cf. HPL, "The Dunwich Horror"). Certainly His Father must have been
extremely unpleasant, for King Herod to be willing to kill a huge number of
infants to prevent such a contamination of the gene pool. Also like Whately,
Jesus was extraordinarily precocious, and appears to have been no more re-
assuring or winning than the former. Indeed, it was suspected by some contemp-
oraries that His ability to handle demons was unwholesome; His rebuttal is so
patent a sophistry as to need to comment.

Besides His exorcisms and cures, most of Jesus' miracles involve water - turn-
ing water into wine, multiplication of loaves and _fishes_, walking on water,
etc. Even the demons driven into swine were sent into the sea, possibly as an
offering. Again, a large number of Cthulhoid entities are water-based, and
may have been of assistance. He promised to make His disciples "fishers of
men." This is obviously a puzzled scribe's redaction of "fish-men" - that is,
Deep Ones. Current Cthulhology indicates that this promise could only be ful-
filled if it referred to their descendants, or if they were already part
Deep One themselves. It also indicates a deplorable lack of ethics among mem-
bers of the Mythos.

Repeated references to "Heaven," especially the "Kingdom of Heaven," in the
Gospels, assume new relevance when the extraterrestrial origin of most
mythos beings is called to mind. Indeed, it appears that the universe is al-
most exclusively populated by eldritch horrors, who are, fortunately for
this author's limited powers of description, incomprehensible. The basic
prayer prescribed in the Gospels - "Our Father who art in Heaven... Thy will
be done, thy Kingdom come, on Earth as it is in Heaven" is positively chill-
ing in this light.

As to the lack of overly Cthulhoid elements in Christianity today, it should
be noted that St. Paul, not one of the original group of disciples, had a
major role in spread the faith. It is likely that, as a semi-outsider, he was
not trusted with the full revelation in all its mindshattering detail, mis-
interpreted what he was told, and proceeded to spread it from one end of the
Roman Empire to the other. It is also possible that some of the Gnostic sects
and later heretics had more accurate ideas of the nature of the religion, and
were suppressed in the name of sheer decency.

The implications of this are unsettling, not to say staggering. The fanciful
might be tempted to imagine Catholics replacing statues of the Virgin with
cloven-hooved, tentacled horrors, or Baptists in polyester suits and plastic
squid masks boarding South Sea cruises, waving curiously-bound editions of
the _Kitab al-Azif_ and shouting "Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!" In all seriousness,
much remains to be clarified; it appears that a major new field of
Cthulhology is opening up.


Reprinted from _The Proceedings of the Chrono-Causal Contentions Committee_,
Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 4-5, with slight redaction, and doubtless spelling errors.
-- 
"Some savages are persuaded by the 'natural light' that it is their duty to
 eat people, and even Voltaire's savages, who are led by the voice of reason
 to hold that one should only eat Jesuits, are not wholly satisfactory."
-Bertrand Russell on Rousseau in _A History of Western Philosophy_, p. 694