The Old Ones’ Promise of Eternal Life
(Some Fanciful Exegesis of the Necronomicon)
by ROBERT M. PRICE, PH.D.

<b>The Unexplainable Couplet</b>
Of the scant words of Abdul Alhazred quoted by H. P.
Lovecraft, probably the most famous are these:
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
These lines appear first in “The Nameless City”, where they
are said to have been “sung" spontaneously by Alhazred upon
waking from tortured slumber amid haunted desert ruins. The
rhyme is dubbed an “unexplainable couplet”¹ by the narrator
of “The Nameless City”, and no doubt many have found it so.
Nonetheless, there are evident in Lovecraft’s work at least two
viable explanation, and we will suggest still a third interpretation,
shedding new light upon the origin, history, and motives of the
Cthulhu cult.

<b>Levels of Meaning</b>
The most obvious meaning of the rhyme is that spelled out in
“The Nameless City.” There, despite the fact that the poem is
still characterized as “unexplainable” at the end of the story,
the meaning is made quite clear: Alhazred had dreamed of the
ages-long repose of the pre-human saurian race which “lies
eternal” below, perhaps awaiting an end to their self-imposed
captivity. What the narrator seems to mean is that Alhazred’s
couplet has been <i>hitherto</i> unexplainable. Indeed, the frantic
explorer of the nameless city probably wished that it had
<i>remained</i> unexplainable! Now he knew only too well what
nocturnal revelation had prompted Alhazred to sing.
The riddle would seem to have been rather simply solved,
though the solution is far from mundane. Yet in “The Call of
Cthulhu”, we learn that a deeper, even more disturbing,
meaning lurks beneath the text. The mestizo sailor Castro had
contacted Chinese members of the cult of the Old Ones, who
claimed “that there were double meanings in the <i>Necronomicon</i>
of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which initiated might read as
they chose, especially the much-discussed couplet,
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”²
Again, the context puts to rest the “much discussion”, since
it is now frightfully plain that the reference is to the Great Old
Ones, who had “all died vast epochs of time before man
came”, yet their imprisonment in sunken “tombs” is really only
a state of dormancy, and “there were arts which could revive
Them when the stars had come round again to the right
positions in the cycle of eternity.”³ At that point, the “eternal
lying” in wait will have ended, and “death itself [will] die”, i.e.,
the Old Ones will awaken from their dreaming exile.
We are left to ask about the first explanation, that offered
in “The Nameless City.” Was the story of Alhazred's dream
mere legend? Was the application of the rhyme to the
subterranean race a mistake? Not necessarily. In fact, we are
probably to surmise that, just as the old man Castro had
located the Old Ones not only “under the sea” but also “inside
the earth”, even so what Alhazred saw in his dream was
another group of Old Ones imprisoned beneath the desert
sands.⁴
In both cases, the creatures are said to be inhuman
dwellers on earth who had flourished before the appearance of
man, only to disappear from earth’s surface about or before
that time. And in the case of each, it is at least implied that
they may end their seclusion, to repossess the earth. So
perhaps the meaning of the couplet as revealed in “The
Nameless City” and in “The Call of Cthulhu” is the same.

There is another possibility, hinted at in neither of the
stories considered so far. According to the interpretation to be
proposed here, the couplet concerns in the first instance, not
the fate of the Old Ones, but rather that of their human
servitors, the members of the degenerate Cthulhu cult. In Short,
the rhyme is a promise that “they shall inherit the earth.” But
to see this, one must first undertake a brief and speculative
analysis of the history of the poem.

<b>The Work of the “Mad Poet”?</b>
It may be somewhat surprising to suggest at the outset that
the famous lines are falsely ascribed to Abdul Alhazred. Instead,
it is proposed, the Mad Arab simply quoted a much older
epigram which had formed part of the lore of the Cthulhu cult
for centuries before his time. Alhazred’s <i>Necronomicon</i> has
virtually become the Bible of the cult of the Old Ones since its
writing (at least it has served as the main source of
information on the cult for those outside). But it is important to
remember that the book is a record of much older information
compiled by Alhazred. The legend fragments collected by Castro
suggest that the cult was the original religion of mankind. And
while this claim doubtless reflects nothing more than the
etiological pedigree claimed by most religions, it is plain that
Cthulhu worship was a good deal older than the eighth century
Arab to whom we owe most of our knowledge of it. In his
famous rhyme, he may have preserved a key piece of the
sacred lore of the Old Ones. Lovecraft’s own “History of the
<i>Necronomicon</i>” attributes much of Alhazred’s knowledge to
actual records discovered by him underground in the nameless
city itself (presumably the huge mural descried in “The
Nameless City”). Even if we take this for the exaggeration of
legend, actual quotes from the nefarious text make it clear that
the mad Arab did in fact rely on earlier sources. He refers to
<i>The Book of Thoth</i>⁵ and to the sayings of the sage Ibn
Schacabao⁶ in various connections.
The chief objection to our hypothesis would seem to be the
inherent plausibility of the attribution of the rhymed couplet to
Alhazred, who was after all known as “the mad poet.”⁷ Let us
pause momentarily to consider the appellation. It places
Alhazred in the class of <i>kahins</i>, or “Arabian oracle-mongers”
(H. A. R. Gibb) well known in the Arabia of this period.⁸
These were men believed to be possessed or inspired by jinn
(elemental spirits of the desert). They might be either seers or
poets. The jinn served the seers as familiar spirits whispering
(actually “cackling”) into their ears secrets overheard from the
heavenly beings. They inspired the poets in the manner of a
muse, enabling those formerly ungifted and illiterate suddenly to
compose and recite.⁹ As an alleged revealer of arcane truths
by the agency of desert demons (those whose “buzzing”
provided the Arabic title <i>Al Azif</i>). Alhazred was naturally put
into this category as a “mad poet” by his contemporaries.¹⁰

Interestingly, this fact goes a long way toward explaining the
gruesome legend concerning Alhazred’s death related by his
biographer Ebn Khallikan. The twelfth century writer lived at a
time when the kahins were presumably no longer familiar to a
devout Muslim population hostile to pagan diviners. Thus he
has confused the story of Alhazred’s “prophetic calling” with
that of his death. The initiation of a kahin was a rather violent
hysterical fit. “The Arabian poet was [characteristically] thrown
to the ground by a <i>jinni</i> who kneeled upon his chest. … To
the bystander the attack appears as a falling to the ground,
where the victim writhes in cramps, as if he were struck down
by an invisible hand. But the victim himself experiences the
spell [of hysteria] as a literal attack, in which something
frequently chokes and crushes him like a demon. At times he
imagines that his body is being cut to pieces or pierced.”¹¹
One story of such a fit concerns the “calling” of the poet
Hassan Ibn Thabit, who was walking down a public street in
Medina.¹² Similarly, Muhammed himself was said to have been
called to his prophetic vocation in a vision wherein the angel
Gabriel choked him, commanding him to “Recite!” Seen against
this background, the account of Ebn Khallikan bears a sense
far-removed from that intended by the biographer himself:
Alhazred is “seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight
and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen
witnesses.”¹³ Obviously, the original scene, since beclouded by
either legend or misunderstanding, was simply that of Alhazred's
first “attack” of mantic inspiration, occurring in a public place,
and thus precisely paralleling that of Hassan Ibn Thabit.
Incidentally, the text published in 1971 by Lin Carter under
the title “The Doom of Yakthoob, from the <i>Necronomicon</i>”,
contains a story which would seem to account for Ebn
Khallikan’s story of Alhazred’s death in a different way. In this
text, Alhazred himself chronicles the grisly death of his own
mentor Yakthoob, in terms strikingly reminiscent of those used
by Ebn Khallikan: “The Abomination … caught up the Master
in one claw … and plucked and tore at him … [while] the
hapless Yakthoob squealed and flopped in the clutches of the
Claw … .”¹⁴ Assuming this passage to be authentic, it would
seem that the incident came to be circulated orally, without
regular recourse to the text of the <i>Necronomicon</i>, copies of
which were naturally scarce. And in the course of time, the tale
was transferred to the character of Alhazred himself, as the
protagonist rather than the narrator.

However, as tempting as this explanation is, we must
reluctantly pass it by. For the text is clearly spurious. The style
of the piece (vastly more hideous than the abominations it
portrays) reveals at once its secondary nature—it cannot
possibly have come from the hand responsible for the eerie
revelations quoted by Lovecraft in, e.g., “The Dunwich Horror”
and “The Festival.” Besides this, Carter himself notes the
dubious textual history of the “Yakthoob” passage. “Most
editions of the <i>Necronomicon</i> omit, for some reason which I
shudder to conjecture, the little-known ‘First Narrative’ [i.e., of
Yakthoob]. … My own copy of Alhazred—a virtually priceless
manuscript in [Dr. John] Dee’s own hand—luckily contains this
rare episode … .”¹⁵ So the passage in question appears only
very late in the textual tradition. Any textual critic will recognize
“The Doom of Yakthoob” as an interpolation (rather than
having been previously omitted and somehow eventually
restored from whatever source, as Carter imagines). And the
origin of this gloss is evident. It represents a garbled
development of Ebn Khallikan’s already garbled story of
Alhazred’s death (actually, of his prophetic calling). So the
relation between the “Yakthoob” story and that preserved by
Ebn Khallikan is just the reverse of what would at first seem
the case. And the origin of the interpolation cannot be earlier
than the twelfth century, fully four hundred years after
Alhazred’s day, since it is dependent upon Ebn Khallikan's
work.

So much for the authenticity of the “Yakthoob” narrative.
We are primarily concerned with showing that the renowned
couplet attributed to Alhazred is not his own work either, but
in this case a quotation by him of an earlier source rather
than a later interpolation by someone else¹⁶ into his text. H.
A. R. Gibb, a specialist in Arabic literature, describes the
utterances of kahins such as Hassan Ibn Thabit being in “a
sinewy oracular style cast into short rhymed phrases, often
obscure.”¹⁷ Does this not seem to describe the couplet
attributed to Alhazred? On the surface, yes. But there are two
problems in attributing the verses to the mad Arab . The first
is that other extant fragments of the <i>Necronomicon</i> do not
match this distinctive style. Take, for instance, the extended
quote which appears in “The Dunwich Horror.” The text is
generally “poetic” in expression, but is not readily recognizable
as verse. Two apocryphal glosses on Alhazred’s text, attributed
to him in Derleth’s <i>The Lurker at the Threshold</i> and “The
Keeper of the Key”, while they obviously cannot be adduced as
direct evidence, do accurately reflect the stark contrast in style.
In these texts, the verses appear set off from the surrounding
prose with what is clearly a formulaic introduction to a
quotation: “... when it shall be shown that
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange eons even death may die.”¹⁸
and, “Again, it should be shown that … ,” etc.¹⁹ Another
apocryphal text quoted by Lin Carter also preserves the
distinction, again with the same introductory formula: “… when
it shall be shown that … ,” etc.20 It is reasonable to assume
that the canonical text must have included the poem in much
the same manner, implying that it is a quotation.

<b>The Original Language</b>
The second important consideration militating against Alhazred's
authorship is that while there is a superficial resemblance
between the style of our couplet and that of the inspired
verses of the kahins, there is an even more striking
congruency with the repetitive parallelism of older Hebrew
poetry such as we find in the Old Testament psalms. As is well
known, Hebrew poetry did not have to rhyme, but depended
instead on the device of phrasing the same thought in slightly
different ways, for example:
“The heavens declare the glory of God
The firmament showeth his handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1)
There are several possible variations, including antithetic
parallelism, wherein an idea is emphasized by juxtaposing it
with its corollary:
“The heavens are the Lord’s
But the earth hath he given to the children of men.” (Psalm
115:16)

There is also staircase parallelism, wherein each phrase
repeats the last but adds a new element:
“Blessed is the man who
<i>walketh</i> not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor <i>standeth</i> in the way of sinners,
nor <i>sitteth</i> in the seat of the scornful.” (Psalm 1:1)
Clearly the verses attributed to Alhazred are of this kind,
exhibiting the same parallel structure. Each line echoes the
other, though the second adds a new emphasis: Not only have
men mistaken for death that which is only age-long hibernation,
but it is promised that this hibernation will reach its end
eventually.

Thus far, the Hebraic cast of the couplet would seem to
push it further back in time than Abdul Alhazred’s day, but
how much further? Another clue is provided by the appearance
(at least in the English translation) of the words “eternal” and
“aeons” in the first and second lines respectively. The parallel
just noted between the verses is made much more distinct if
we suppose that they were originally composed in Greek, where
the two words are simply different forms of the word <i>aion</i>, or
“age.” English “eternal” would then translate the Greek phrase
<i>eis tous aionous</i>, i.e., “unto the ages”, “always”, or “forever.”
Seen this way, the verses would seem to have been
composed under the literary influence of the Septuagint, the
Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. We find the same
kind of “Hebraism with a Hellenistic flavor” in documents like
the Gospel according to John, or the Epistle to the Hebrews,
both in the New Testament. The prologue to John’s gospel is a
long poem or hymn on the Logos, written in Greek but
employing Hebraic staircase parallelism. The dramatic dialogue
between Jesus and Nicodemus in chapter 3 also uses Hebrew
parallelism (“Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the
Kingdom of God … unless a man is born of water and the
Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” 3:3, 5). Yet the
point of the parallel depends on the pun implied in the
equivocal use of <i>anothen</i>, which can mean either “again” or
“from above”, and is here supposed to mean <i>both</i>. In exactly
the same way, we are going to suggest, the word aion is used
with a double meaning in the verses quoted by Alhazred. The
use of the pun not only secures the Greek linguistic origin of
the poem, but also indicates its place of origin in the history of
religions.

<b>The Cthulhu Cult and Gnosticism</b>
What kind of religious <i>sitz-im-leben</i>, or setting, is implied by
the combined Hebraic-Hellenistic character of our poem? We
have already noted the resemblance to early Christian
compositions. A movement closely related to early Christianity,
conceptually if not even genetically, was Gnosticism, the
“hydra-headed heresy”, so named because of the bewildering
variety of sects and schools that proliferated under its canopy.
Common to all forms of Gnosticism, however, was a dualistic
orld view, whereby the world of matter was denigrated as the
creation of an imbecilic “demiurge”, the last in a series of
<i>Aions</i>(!), or divine emanations from a distant and unknowable
godhead. Gnostics perceived their existence as imprisonment in
ignorance by malevolent <i>archons</i>, planetary rulers, on whose
account the Gnostic devotees were kept alienated from the
Aions, in whose realm they themselves longingly perceived their
own true home.
The roots of Gnosticism were almost as manifold as the
sectarian forms it eventually assumed. Among the sources of
Gnostic mythology were Zoroastrian dualism (which later
resurfaced as Manicheism), Neo-Platonism (with its doctrine of
divine emanations), and esoteric Jewish exegesis (wherein
various portions of the Scriptures were attributed not to divine
but to demonic or angelic inspiration). Jewish influence is
manifest in the frequent use of Old Testament figures in
Gnostic apocalypses, such as the apparently pre-Christian
“Apocalypse of Seth” discovered in the Nag Hammadi library.²¹
Gnostic literature, then, stems from just such a
Hebraic-Hellenistic milieu as we have proposed for the poem
quoted by Alhazred. Not only so, but the system of Gnostic
mythology also parallels the Cthulhu Mythos in several key
respects. First, both Gnostics and Cthulhu cultists regarded
themselves as “strangers in a strange land”, devotees of the
entities obscured from sight in the present age. Gnostics sought
to attain the secret knowledge (<i>gnosis</i>) enabling the soul to
soar free into the realm of the <i>Aions</i> after death, whereas
Cthulhu cultists sought to restore the direct rule of their gods
on the earth. But both worked for future salvation by
overcoming the alienation between the world in which they lived
and the gods which they served.
In both cases, the world was seen as the creation of a
mindless demiurge (called “Azathoth” by Cthulhu cultists).
Gnostics generally vilified the demiurge as a malevolent
prankster or bungler, for though he is one of the <i>Aions</i>, not
the <i>archons</i>, he represents the emanation farthest removed
from godhead, and is sort of a deformed monster. And the
“blind idiot god” Azathoth, unlike the rest of the Old Ones,
seems to be held in some contempt even by his servants: “I
am His Messenger,’ the daemon said/As in contempt he struck
his Master’s head.” Paralleling the Gnostic dismissal of the
creation of the earth by the demiurge as the act of a lunatic,
the Cthulhu Mythos has the earth “moulded in play” by an
“idiot chaos”, (though the entities Azathoth and Nyarlathotep
are confused here).²²

Finally, both groups envisioned a “transvaluation of values”
implied by their negation of the standards of the present world
order. While some Gnostics practiced radical asceticism as their
manner of world rejection, others, more notoriously, trod the
path of wild libertinism, reminiscent of the brothels and
“sodalities” of the Marquis de Sade. This is a moral anarchism
glorifying perversion and blasphemy simply out of delight in the
forbidden. Angela Carter describes it as “the lonely freedom of
the libertine, which is the freedom of the outlaw, a tautological
condition that exists only for itself and is without any meaning
in the general context of human life.”²³ But this is exactly the
point. Gnostics (and Cthulhu cultists) could for the present see
only the present order and the need to subvert and defy it.
Thus St. Epiphanius, the fourth century heresiologist, his
<i>Panarion</i> (a sort of <i>Unaussprechlichen Kulten</i>) detailed the
stomach-turning of the practices of the various Gnostic sects.
For example, The Marcosians ritually imbibed urine and
menstrual blood. (The point was the same as that of the
coprophagy practiced by de Sade’s libertines, to do the
disgusting for its own sake and so to flout all standards).
Cthulhu cultists, by all accounts, went ever farther. Lovecraft
mentioned “mad cacaphonous orgies” which propriety forbade
him describe save with disturbing hints like “noxious” and
“detestable.”
In light of the above analysis, the milieu of our poem’s
origin would seem to have been orgiastic Gnosticism as
practiced in the early centuries of the Christian Era. The “Old
Ones”, in that context, were known as <i>Aions</i>, the Greek word
for “age” which had undergone transformation until it could
also denote a personified cosmic power. This development,
incidentally, can be traced via the “two ages” dualism of Jewish
apocalypticism (current from about two hundred years before
to two hundred years after Christ). Here, as the New
Testament witnesses, “this evil age” (<i>aion</i>) was the kingdom
of Satan. Aion came to mean a world age, and, derivatively,
the power who ruled it. Since most Gnostics rejected the God
of the Old Testament as a false god, they could embrace the
Jewish-Christian “Satanic <i>aion</i>” as their own god(s), in the
cosmological system outlined above. And for the Gnostics, their
ivine Aions were alien, or “strange”, to the present world
order. They longed one day to bask in the direct rule of the
Aions once again, in a world not estranged from them.

Here, then, is the double meaning of the enigmatic verses
quoted by Alhazred. It depends on the pun implied in the two
uses of the word “<i>aion</i>”, as “age” and as divine entity. On
the surface, the subject is the Old Ones; it is they who “lie
eternal” until the passing of “strange” (i.e., unimaginably vast)²⁴
ages, at which time their apparent “death [will] die”, and
their exile of slumber will end. But those readers with the
“gnosis” will perceive themselves as the subject of the rhyme.
They are “that [which] is not dead [and] can eternal lie.” Now,
 to “lie eternal” (<i>meinai eis tous aionous</i>) means not “to
abide forever” (as do the Old Ones in R’lyeh) but rather “to
await the <i>Aions</i>.” Those who do await them faithfully are “not
dead”, because death itself will pass away “with strange <i>aions</i>”:
not “with the <i>passing of unimaginable ages</i>”, but “with <i>the
advent of unearthly Aions</i>.” The poem promises eternal
reward to the human servitors of Cthulhu and his kin: “for
then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free
and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals
thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling
joy.”²⁵ The faithful servants of the Old Ones will be
transformed. As the Elder John contemplated the apocalyptic
advent of Christ, “What we will be has not yet been made
known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like
him” (I John 3:2). Wilbur Whateby muses, “I wonder how I
shall look when the earth is cleared and there are no earth
beings on it.”²⁶ The Cthulhu cultists, then, are to be
transfigured into the image of the Old Ones²⁷, whereupon
they will riotously destroy the “unbelievers”, clearing the earth
of human beings. After this orgy of destruction “all the earth
would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.”²⁸
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
When placed in its original linguistic and historical context,
the “unexplainable couplet” recorded by Abdul Alhazred in the
<i>Necronomicon</i> is seen not to be his own work. Rather it is
revealed as an ancient piece of traditional lore stemming from
the Gnostic cult of the <i>Aions</i>. And its secret meaning can be
discerned as the Old Ones’ promise of eternal life.

<b>Footnotes</b>
1. H. P. Lovceraft, “The Nameless City”, in <i>Dagon and Other
Macabre Tales</i> (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House: Publishers,
1965), pp. 99, 109.
2. H. P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”, in <i>The Dunwich
Horror and Others</i> (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House: Publishers,
1963), p. 146.
3. H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu,” in <i>The Dunwich
Horror</i>, p. 144
 Brian Lumley offers a similar double reference for the
Necronomicon passage first quoted in “The Festival.” In The
Burrowers Beneath (New York: DAW Books, 1974), the text,
which originally had no apparent reference to the Old Ones , is
now made to have such a deeper meaning.
4. <i>Ibid</i>, pp. 143-144.
 Thus there is some foundation to Derleth's depiction of the
Old Ones as being "imprisoned" in various desolate recesses of
the earth (though not space). Derleth errs, however, in making
this seclusion other than self-imposed. There is no suggestion in
Lovecraft or in the canonical Necronomicon that the Old Ones
were “banished” by superior force.
5. H. P. Lovecraft with E. Hoffmann Price, “Through the Gates
of the Silver Key”, in <i>At the Mountains of Madness and
Other Novels</i> (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House: Publishers,
1964), p. 407.
6. H. P. Lovecraft, “The Festival”, in <i>Dagon and Other
Macabre Tales</i>, p. 195.
7. Lovecraft, “The Nameless City”, p. 99.
8. H. A. R. Gibb, <i>Mohammedanism, an Historical Survey</i>
(New York: The New American Library, 1958), p. 36.
9. Tor Andre, <i>Mohammed the Man and His Faith</i> (New
York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960), p. 29.
10. Muhammad as a revealer of supernatural secrets, was also
placed by his contemporaries in this category, the aptness of
which he rigorously denied: “No, your compatriot is not mad ...
nor is this the utterance of an accursed devil” (Surah 81:22,
25). “It is no poet's speech: scant is your faith! It is no
sooth-sayer's divination: how little you reflect!” (Surah
69:41-42). <i>The Koran</i>, trans. by N. J. Dawood (Baltimore:
Penguinn Books, 1975).
11. Andre, <i>Mohammed the Man and His Faith</i>, pp. 45-46.
12. <i>Ibid</i>, p. 29.
13. H. P. Lovecraft, <i>A History of the Necronomicon</i> (West
Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1980), n.p.
14. Lin Carter, “The Doom of Yakthoob, from the
<i>Necronomicon</i>” <i>The Arkham Collector</i>, Spring 1971, p. 322.
15. <i>Ibid</i>, p. 320.
16. Perhaps our culprit is the notorious scribe Lankar of
Callisto, whom scholars suspect of having similarly expanded the
texts of <i>The Book of Eibon</i> and <i>The Nemedian Chronicles</i>.
His interpolations are usually easily discernible by their style.
Who can say where his glosses will be discovered
next—perhaps the <i>Red Book of Westmarch?</i>
17. Gibb, <i>Mohammedanism</i>, p. 36.
18. H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, The Lurker at the
Threshold (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1968), p. 179. On the
distinction between the “canonical” <i>Necronomicon</i> (that quoted
and interpreted by Lovecraft) and the “apocryphal” (material
stemming from August Derleth, Lin Carter, Brian Lumley and
others), see “Higher Criticism and the <i>Necronomicon</i>”, by the
present writer, <i>Lovecraft Studies</i>, Spring 1982.
19. August Derleth, “The Keeper of the Key”, in <i>The Trail of
Cthulhu</i> (Sauk City WI: Arkham House: Publishers, 1962), p.
175.
20. Lin Carter, “Zoth-Ommog”, in <i>The Disciples of Cthulhu</i>,
ed. Edward P. Berglund (New York: DAW Books, 1976), p.
175.
21. See James M. Robinson, ed., <i>The Nag Hammadi Library
in English</i> (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1977). On
Gnosticism in general, see Hans Jonas, <i>The Gnostic Religion</i>
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1963); Elaine Pagels, <i>The Gnostic
Gospels</i> (New York: Random House, 1979); Rudolf Bultmann,
<i>Primitive Christianity</i> (New York: The New American Library,
1974), pp. 162-174.
22. H. P. Lovecraft, “Fungi from Yuggoth”, in <i>Collected Poems</i>
(Sauk City, WI: Arkham House: Publishers, 1963), Sonnet XXII,
“Azathoth”, p. 125; and Sonnet XXI, “Nyarlathotep”, p. 124.
23. Angela Carter, <i>The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of
Pornography</i> (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1980), p.
99.
24. The “strange aeons” in the couplet bears much the same
sense as the phrase “almost blasphemous … forgotten aeons
normally closed to our species” in <i>At the Mountains of
Madness</i>, p. 46.
25. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, p. 145.
26. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror“, p. 189.
27. Robert Bloch describes something like the transfiguration
envisioned here when he has Mark Dixon turn into the “Son
of Cthulhu.” “His image blurred, wavered; limbs melting, then
multiplying—sprouting and spreading from a faceless, expanding
form in which mere mortality merged into a greater guise of
gigantic godhood.” <i>Strange Eons</i> (Los Angeles: Pinnacle Books,
1979), p. 248.
28. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, p. 145.