Dear Editor -

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Great Cthulhu. Papa says, "If you see it on alt.horror.cthulhu, it's so," Please tell me the truth, is there a Great Cthulhu who will rise from the watery depth of the Pacific to clear the Earth of all living things?

------ Virgina Marsh

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the fever of enlightenment given to them by a so-called "enlightened" age. They do not believe in anything unless it carries the weight of scientific authority. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. Reality is that which can be cataloged and measured, to be spooned out in rational doses to the common people. All minds, Virgina, whether they be adult's or children's, are little. In this vast chaos we laughingly call the universe, man is a mere insect, a bug, whose intellect has as much chance of grasping the whole truth, as an ant has of understanding non-Euclidian geometry.

Yes, Virgina, there is a Great Cthulhu. He exists as certainly as the cold unfeelingness of the cosmos exits, and you know that this meaninglessness abounds and gives to your life its highest absurdity. Alas! how comfortable would be the world if there were no Cthulhu! It would be as comforting as if a Santa Claus truly did care and reward children for doing good. There would be childlike faith then, a world of sweet believable poetry and romance to make existence idyllic and appealing. The external light with which childhood fills the world would never end.

Not believe in the Great Cthulhu! You might as well not believe in Hastur or the Necronomicon. You might get your papa's science books and Skeptical Inquirers to see if Cthulhu is mentioned in any historical contexts or if R'lyeh truly does rest under the Pacific Ocean, but even if you did not find either mentioned in your 'holy' books, what would that prove? Nobody sees or knows of Cthulhu, but that is no sign that there is no Great Cthulhu. The most real things in the world are those that we cannot know through the senses. Can the headache of your friend be felt by you? No, but his pain affects your life regardless. Do you feel the angst of living a life you never wanted through any of your five senses? No, yet the despair remains. Yet if such realities are known but are never seen, then why should other's ignorance of the unseen lead us to share in their blindness. By what right have they earned your obedience? Nobody can conceive of the inconceivable, including your leaders of thought.

You tear apart the rattle of a baby to see what lies inside to make such noise, but the tiny balls there can not explain or illustrate the fear of a hostile world, that makes that baby clutch and shake that rattle so. Only reaching for insanity can push aside the curtain of our hopes and view with stark madness the emptiness that lies beyond. Is that reality? Is that the truth? To give an answer is to replace the curtain with but one more. And it is this, that makes the Great Cthulhu as true and as real as any veil we place on the chaos beyond. If one must create a meaning, why not the Great Cthulhu. At least the choice is free.

Thank Azathoth! The Great Cthulhu lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virgina, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to await the time when the stars are right again. For with those which eternal lie, with strange eons even death may die.

(From Editorial Page, Arkham Advertiser, 1928)

---Steven Harris
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~sh323089