Can anyone help me find a essay on the Cthulhu mythos which identifies Hastur as being merely another name of Cthulhu.
I read it a few years ago while I was doing the majority of my Mythos buying, but i cannot for the life remember in which volume it was found or who the author was.
I suspect it may have been in one of the Newer chaosium collections as a preface but it does not appear to be any that I own and I do not recall ever withdrawing such a collection from the library.
And I have to say I’m disappointed. I was expecting something more along the lines of "In my application to Miskatonic University, I want to explore some of the origins of the strange and loathsome creatures that stalk me in the night. Perhaps someone with knowledge of the Elder Gods would help in trying to…oh god! Nooo! AAAAAAAA! It’s got me! Tell the world, it’s coming! Tell the world! Tell… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
MrVisible I’ve found that I haven’t needed to seek information about the creatures from outside sources since I started offering up the appropriate… tribute.
Don’t remember where I saw it, but Hastur is definatly not the great tentacled one. Actually, IIRC, Hastur wasn’t even created by Lovecroft. He was created by Robert W. Chambers and lovecraft borrowed (I think he asked permission first) the concept.
However, I think Hastur is “he who is not to be named”.
Oo! A rare opportunity to drop science, before Uke or Auntie Pam get here (has Auntie Pam been around lately?).
HPL is right (as you might expect of a guy named HPL) about Hastur, to my knowledge. He was created by Robert W. Chambers in his book The King in Yellow, is not Cthulhu, but is “he who is not to be named.”
Remember Carcosa!
Anyway. While we’re on the subject, I’ll mention that, if we’re beginning from the assumption that the only Cthulhu story worth the name is a Lovecraft Cthulhu story, there really isn’t any such thing as a Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft mentioned a bunch of the same entities in different stories, and he and other writers name-checked each others’ creations for what Lovecraft would call (every single chance he got) “versimilitude,” but there really wasn’t all that much attention paid to continuity as we know it in the contemporary fanboy sense. Lovecraft didn’t really build a world like the Star Trek or Marvel Universes. You can blame August Derleth and the rest of the hacks-what-came-after for the idea of a Cthulhu Mythos. (Admission: I’ve never read any of Derleth’s stuff, or indeed any non-Lovecraft “Mythos” stories at all, but the consensus seems to be that Derleth, though he gets a big yay for keeping H.P.L.'s work in print, pretty much missed the point, creatively, when writing “in the tradition” of Lovecraft.)
Just to clarify - I am no confusion about the status of Great Old One creation - as I have read around the area to the tune of a few hundred stories and essays (Lux Fiat if you are avoiding the {so called} Mythos due to the generally poor quality stick with Lovecrafts contempories and precursors e.g. Clark Ashton-Smith,Frank Belknap Long or R.W. Chambers).I was merely enquiring about the location/author of this particular text.
Cool. Sorry about all the extra info, then. I do have Chambers’ The King in Yellow, which I enjoyed. I’ll no doubt get around to reading Long and Ashton-Smith at some point, too, probably sooner now due to your specific recommendation.
