In 1937, Derleth wrote the short story "The Return of Hastur", and proposed two groups of opposed cosmic entities: Īugust Derleth, a correspondent of Lovecraft's, used the creature's name to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors, the Cthulhu Mythos. The short story " The Dunwich Horror" (1928) refers to Cthulhu, while " The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930) hints that one of his characters knows the creature's origins ("I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth.") The 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness refers to the "star-spawn of Cthulhu", who warred with another race called the Elder Things before the dawn of man. Lovecraft conceived a detailed genealogy for Cthulhu (published as "Letter 617" in Selected Letters) and made the character a central reference in his works. His worshippers chant " Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn " ("In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.") The short story asserts the premise that, while currently trapped, Cthulhu will eventually return. The imprisoned Cthulhu is apparently the source of constant subconscious anxiety for all mankind, and is also the object of worship, both by many human cults (including some within New Zealand, Greenland, Louisiana, and the Chinese mountains) and by other Lovecraftian monsters (called Deep Ones and Mi-Go ). The short story that first mentions Cthulhu, "The Call of Cthulhu", was published in Weird Tales in 1928, and established the character as a malevolent entity, hibernating within R'lyeh, an underwater city in the South Pacific. Its head is depicted as similar to the entirety of a gigantic octopus, with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth. Lovecraft describes a statue of Cthulhu as: "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." Ĭthulhu is said to resemble a green octopus, dragon, and a human caricature, hundreds of meters tall, with webbed, human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back. Others use the pronunciation Katulu or Kutulu or / k ə ˈ t uː l uː/ Description Long after Lovecraft's death, Chaosium, publishers of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, influenced modern pronunciation with the statement, "we say it kuh-THOOL-hu", even while noting that Lovecraft said it differently. The name is often preceded by the epithet Great, Dead, or Dread. Cthulhu has also been spelled in many other ways, including Tulu, Katulu, and Kutulu. According to Lovecraft, this is merely the closest that the human vocal apparatus can come to reproducing the syllables of an alien language.
Joshi points out, however, that Lovecraft gave different pronunciations on different occasions. The 'u' is about like that in 'full', and the first syllable is not unlike 'klul' in sound, hence the 'h' represents the guttural thickness" (see discussion linked below).
Lovecraft transcribed the pronunciation of Cthulhu as Khlûl′-hloo, and said, "the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The chthonic, or earth-dwelling, spirit has precedents in numerous ancient and medieval mythologies, often guarding mines and precious underground treasures, notably in the Germanic dwarfs and the Greek Chalybes, Telchines, or Dactyls. Invented by Lovecraft in 1928, the name Cthulhu was probably chosen to echo the word chthonic (Ancient Greek "of the earth"), as apparently suggested by Lovecraft himself at the end of his 1923 tale " The Rats in the Walls". 1 Etymology, spelling, and pronunciationĮtymology, spelling, and pronunciation.