In the Light of the Cthulu Mythos

An Artist's Journey to the Lovecraft Mythos

 

As an artist, selling the invisible forms the basis of our creation. We can say that our lives, especially in writing, are spent trying to shape the formless. In my opinion, finding the right chord to express a feeling, like in music, is a journey into the unknown, like depicting the reflection in a lover's eyes or the shadow of a forgotten street that descends on a person... Even though we, who rise above creativity, are musicians, painters or writers, we create maps from the most minute details of the human soul in the minds of our readers. If we return to our main topic, it is an indisputable fact that the dark atlas of H. P. Lovecraft, who stands before us like a monument, will emerge as the foundations of these paths we follow.

 

Of course, facing his “Cthulhu Mythos” will be nothing like reading other stories. I can sense the question of why rising from those who are not familiar with the subject. It is like discovering a new color that catches one's eye, almost blinding one. Or like listening to a strange, foreign, discordant chord. But when that chord rhythm is entered and resolved or our eyes get used to looking at the color, we do not find peace, on the contrary, we are forced to take steps towards a deeper and more suffocating silence. Because nothing is as captivating as the sense of curiosity in humans. This imaginary world created by Lovecraft is like a vortex that is both fascinating and repulsive, attractive and yet tense and makes you want to turn around and run away. And its foundation is based on a thought that disregards everything we know about humans, and it creates a shiver inside you; absolute nothingness and utter insignificance in the universe we live in. Lovecraft did not only talk about the monsters he fed from his imagination. He established the anatomy of horror and composed its symphony, painted an indifferent universe that does not care about us on an empty canvas with an oil brush, and emphasized our insignificance in the universe by writing the holy book of cosmic indifference.

 

The Madman Behind the Curtain

 

You can’t fully grasp the texture of Lovecraft’s work without sketching it yourself. He didn’t birth his cosmic concept out of nothing; it was a direct product of life. A man who was touched by his time, yet tragically paradoxically out of step with it, Lovecraft was a tangle of contradictions within himself. He was a staunch atheist and a mechanical materialist; his “gods” were never supernatural beings, but rather alien beings who operated by unproven natural laws beyond our, human, comprehension. This was the heart of his clockwork process, as cold as it was icy, that fueled his terror: for H.P. Lovecraft, there was no divine plan, only our souls lost in the chaos of the indifferent and crushing gears of the cosmos.

 

It is necessary to know that, as disturbing as it is to confront the well-documented racism and xenophobia of the era, it cannot remain a mere footnote; They are pigments mixed together with the paints he uses in the universe he paints. His fear of the “Other” in his work is a frightening combination of the cosmic and the mundane. The fear of miscegenation and genetic deterioration in the decaying port of Innsmouth or the squalor of Dunwich’s woodlands are a direct echo in his mind of the collective memory embedded in his personal anxieties about racial purity and social decline. The “alien” cult members depicted in The Call of Cthulhu are mostly people of color, a clear reflection of Lovecraft’s fear of the immigrant population of New York City in which he lived. For Lovecraft, the concept of aliens from the stars arose from this same deep-seated fear of the unknown and the different. To ignore this is to see only part of the picture we are trying to create, and that is not a matter of choice, as it would produce an incomplete narrative.

 

Palette of Cosmic Horror

 

As a painter, I am drawn into the vortex of the sheer impossibility of Lovecraft’s visuals. Lovecraft challenges our senses with landscapes that challenge our human senses. Think of the pantheon he softly brings together, or perhaps allows to seep into the essence of being. These are certainly not gods to be worshipped, but cosmic forces to be shattered.

 

• Azathoth, the “Blind Idiot God” who seethes at the center of infinity, is not an ordinary character but a concept that cuts through the mind: the voice of an unconscious creation, an unthinking, seething nuclear chaos whose awakening means the end of reality as we know it. How could any man of the past or present paint such a thing? Pure, terrifying contrast…

 

• Yog-Sothoth, “The Key and the Door,” is a being of pure geometry, a being made of spheres or “holes” in space-time. It is the ultimate expression of the interconnectedness of reality, a reality so vast that it drives the viewer mad.

 

• And the iconic High Priest Cthulhu sleeps and dreams in his non-Euclidean city of R'lyeh. He is less a monster than a presence, and more a promise. The deep, resonant bass note of inevitable doom, waiting to rise, of course.

 

It is a cosmic theater stage, a complex of elements that are themselves channels of fear. Forbidden tomes, such as the Necronomicon of the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, the Book of Eibon, or the De Vermis Mysteriis, are not just books. They are, as the analysis puts it, "infected objects." As a writer, I can understand this perspective. Words have power, and these spellbooks contain information that acts as a vector for cosmic horror, and it is the erosion of this reality into the reader's mind that is the crux of the stories.

 

And the landscapes… Arkham, with its gambrel roofs, and the shadowy halls of Miskatonic University, home to these dangerous texts; Innsmouth, which reeks of decay and dead fish; and Dunwich, with its widespread reputation as a place of “decay and fear,” are more than just places. For in Lovecraft’s narrative they are living, breathing characters who deserve attention in their own right. They are canvases stained by a decay that carries the shadow of the deep, past.

 

 

We Share Only a Dissonant Symphony

 

Lovecraft never intended to create a rigid and systematic mythology; that was largely the work of his friend August Derleth, who compiled and published it after his death. Lovecraft called his interconnected stories the "Arkham Cycle" or, more peculiarly, the "Yog-Sothothery." It was Derleth who wrote the code for the "Cthulhu Mythos," controversially introducing a traditional struggle between the "good" Elder Gods and the "bad" Great Old Ones, and assigning them to the clichéd four elements. This interpretation, with limited talent, made the Mythos more accessible to readers, while actually diluting the basic philosophy of amoral, cosmic indifference that made Lovecraft's work so unique.

 

This "systematization" had an unexpected and beautiful result, if we don't look at it negatively. It emboldened later generations to do so by turning Lovecraft's solo performance into an improvisational session. Writers like Clark Ashton Smith in the fantastical baroque, Robert E. Howard in the pulp and heroic, and Robert Bloch in the psychological horror genre borrowed ideas from the Mythos and fed into it. Smith’s god Tsathoggua appeared in Lovecraft’s works; Howard’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten were named by Lovecraft; Bloch and Lovecraft famously “killed” each other in their own stories. This collaborative spirit, this organic world-building, foreshadowed the shared universes we see ubiquitous in modern popular culture, and evolved into something entirely new. As new instruments were added to the orchestra, the Mythos’ tonal range expanded from pure cosmic horror to heroic fantasy to psychological horror and beyond. It was a real intellectual revolution.

 

Blind Resonance in Art

 

So why do we feel the need to return to this dark and flawed source even after a century? Why does Cthulhu continue to inspire video games and heavy metal albums? Why can’t filmmakers like John Carpenter and Guillermo del Toro help themselves from dipping their brushes into these ugly yet beautiful colors and adding them to their own paintings?

 

Because Lovecraft gave us a language and alphabet for modern fear that will never lose its relevance: the fear of meaninglessness. His work is a powerful counter-narrative to the comforting stories humanity tells itself. A step that will undermine the way humans try to make sense of their own lives. In Lovecraft’s words, the existential threats, the overwhelming information age, the immensity of the universe, its antiquity, and the idea that it is completely indifferent to the phenomenon we call fate resonate in our minds.

 

Contemporary creators have also begun the vital work of confronting the ugliness in the Mythos, especially its racial basis. Works like Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom and the HBO series Lovecraft Country have subverted Lovecraft’s racism and reframed his mind-poisoning horrors through the eyes of those he personally feared. They have accomplished a kind of artistic alchemy that has re-moralized the world by challenging its hatred while preserving the cosmic terror.

 

As an artist, I see the Cthulhu Mythos not as a dogma to be followed, but as a challenge. It dares us to paint the unseen, compose the cacophonous, and write the unspeakable. It is an imperfect, frightening, and incredibly fascinating universe that reminds us that the deepest terror is not a monster lurking in the shadows. It is a shocking, liberating, and silent realization of our own cosmic insignificance.

 

It is a canvas, however imperfect, that we will never tire of exploring.