Arcane Aliens and Manic Mutations

HPL's reality contains a diversity of physical (and semi-physical) races of intelligent beings. Many located on other planets, both within and beyond our solar system, others deriving from alternative dimensions. In general they can also be seen as instantiating the otherness from the modern human, whether in terms of 'transcendental' exoticness or apparent 'primitivity' or both.Those significant to the Lovecraftian narrative are those who have visited, still visit, or secretly live on Earth. The majority of these races are so advanced, either technologically or magically, or both, as to appear to be supernatural beings to the less advanced. In fact HPL cleverly blurs the distinctions between 'alien beings' and 'alien god' in his writings (the term Old One can in fact be used to denote a monsterous ancient god or a monsterous alien, or even a humanoid alien that traffics with the Great Old Ones who are always alien gods. Though even here the boundary blurs as Great Old Ones may possess any being, even alien 'Old Ones', as was probably originally the case with Cthulhu).

Another feature of these beings is their intimate involvement with the evolution of life on Earth, and so they mostly exist in our distant past. Their evolutionary involvement however is often indifferent and its results 'accidental', a post Darwinian, 'materialist creationism' with a nihilistic twist!

Symbolically however we can see these entities as archetypes for stages in evolution on earth, or as the forces that are manifesting these evolutionary stages. HPL's cosmology fits this interpretation so well that it is difficult not to believe he had this metaphor in mind, or that it haunted his unconscious. Their physicality reflecting their status as biological archetypes rather than the archetypes of the magical domain, represented by the Great Old Ones.

Magically we can use these entities in various ways. They are obviously the most fictitious of all his entities, though they are based on common images from our biological history, as well as universal perceptions of otherness. We may not want to generate thought forms of most of these but we can identify with them as archetypes of primitive stages of our own evolution. The aliens in a sense being us in a pre-human past. This will become more apparent as we proceed.

The Elder Things (HPL was deliberately vague with his naming, reflecting the confused perspectives of the protagonists in his stories. A case in point is that he uses the name Old Ones to refer both to the primal deities of Chaos as well as the first physical alien race to visit the Earth, also known as the Elder Things. The two are quite seperate, though in this case there may be a hidden meaning in the confusion, as the evolution of his physical Earth strangely mirrors the evolution of his Cosmos).

When they arrived via somekind of interstellar 'flight' the Earth had just ended its Chaos period (see Mythos Page), Cthuga had long departed Earth (probably to the Trojan asteroids, remnants of his homeworld, along with his fire demons), while the 'fire vampires' had withdrawn to the Earth's molten core, and since have only rarely visited the surface. But Ghroth (the Harbinger aka Nemesis), the servitor of Azathoth in our solar system, harried the Earth mercilessly, bringing asteroidal and cometry bombardments that boiled the seas away countless times since they first formed after the Earth's cooling by Nodens. The bombardment can thus be seen as representing Azathoth's counter attack, or merely a general whim for a degeneration to chaos on it's part. This last period of chaos lasted from the departure of Cthuga around 4 billion years ago until the celestial armory was exhausted, and the last volleys brought the panspermic arrival of life, and the first visitation of Shub Niggurath, around 3 billion years ago. This panspermia was basically bacterial in origin, and perhaps pathogenic on some worlds, but here terraformed the planet in such away that an oxygenated atmosphere formed, as well as a UV shielding Ozone layer, allowing complex single cell lifeforms to emerge, stabilizing the planet into an ecosystem around 2 billion years ago. Of course Shub Niggurath was not intent on this course of action, it merely represented another more creative aspect of chaos, the mindless proliferation of life carried with it from Outer Space. The War of the Outer Gods thus ended its direct phase on Earth. This was the situation when the Elder Things first arrived on a world whose single land mass was still largely unstable and volcanic.

The Elder Things colonized the world's oceans building huge underwater cities. In the early days they had the ability to fly and traverse space (a talent perhaps learned from interdimensional races). Combining superscience and magic the Elder Things generated multicellular organisms on Earth to act as servants and food. This was performed by the creation of a divine avatar (of Shub Niggurath?) in the form of the amebic monstrosity known as Ubbo-Sathla. A semi-physical being, who absorbed inorganic matter and transformed it to organic matter, and turned the organic matter, and single cell lifeforms, that it devoured into complex organic structures. This created a body for itself, as well as the spawn that budded off of it, only to be devoured again unless they quickly fled. Thus the Elder Things accelerated evolution and brought life to Earth from chaos. It can be hypothesised this involved the scientific creation of an intelligent plasma (a chaotic system), magically charged with a powerful thoughtform, that became the vessel for an invoked entity.

The primary spawn of Ubbo-Sathla were the Shoggoth, beings with a similar form to it, but the ability to morph. These beings had a rudimentary nervous system enabling them to become organic robots (their life cycle was rigidly managed thus they left no fossils). A much simpler offspring was the vegitative outgrowth that evolved into intelligent seaweed, the Elder Ones staple foodstuff. Over time the Elder Things let the spawn of Ubbo-Sathla proliferate and mutate in an uncontrolled way, both to diversify their food and slave supply and simply for their amusement. This was particularly true during the Pre-Cambrian Ice Age (750-550 million years ago) when they became trapped under the frozen seas and became indigenous rather than colonial, slowly losing their interstellar abilities. Following end of the Ice Age, the Cambrian explosion that resulted from this diversification distributed 'complex lifeforms' all over the planet with the resultant flood. These were principally relatively simple sponges, jellyfish, flatworms, and the more complex trilobites and the eel-like pikaia, from which vertebrates (such as us) would evolve, as well as the first predators that regulated their eco-system, such as the sea-spiders.

It is likely that the generation of the thoughtform at the heart of Ubbo-Sathla was the product of the 'group mind' of the Elder Things - perhaps somewhat like the Krell's 'monster' in the science fiction film Forbidden Planet, that would become possessed by forces from the ID. in this sense the Elder Ones and Ubbo-Sathla represent the source of life on Earth, and dwelling within their subaquatic homes can be seen as the primal archetypes of physical life here.

The Elder Things constantly mutated to suit their environment and so several sub-species developed.

Symbolically - Ubbo-Sathla thus represents the evolution of life on Earth (biological and instinctual) and its mutations. We can magically identify with it to return to our biological source. This would enable us to influence our own mutation and body modification from a magical basis. If powerful and widespread enough it might also effect species mutation in general, or specifically that of other individuals. This applies to the human and non-human evolution. A magic transformation of bodies that could be permanent or temporary. The temporary form allowing the transformed to experience otherness, the permanent form effecting its physical evolution. In uniting with Ubbo-Sathla we also achieve union with all life on Earth at the most primal level. The Elder Things themselves can be seen in a sense as the agents of Ubbo-Sathla and similarly identified with.

The Hounds of Tindalos
These mysterious beings should be mentioned here as in all probability they are the creations of the Elder Things. The 'hounds', really unimaginable monsters that no one has ever seen and lived to tell the tale, haunt the angles of space-time. Which in Lovecraftian means essentially the 'tunnels of hyperspace'. They kill just about everything they meet instantly and will follow their trails across a galaxy in order to do so. But they appear to originate on Earth at a time when life was beginning. They are a total mystery in the literature. The most likely explanation is that they were the 'guard dogs' of the Elder Things, the only sentient life on Earth at the time, who probably used interdimensional travel. They could have been programmed to hunt down the Elder Thing's enemies, or any 'alien' lifeforms (including us), attempting to use the angles to travel to or from the Earth. After the Elder Things lost their interdimensional ability these would have been abandoned and become 'strays'. Those that still survive thus carry on their dimly remembered 'duties'. Given the atypical reaction of the real dog in the Dunwich Horror to the alien chimerae, perhaps the 'hounds' can also possess their earthly counterparts in extreme cases?

The Great Race of Yith

The Cambrian Age (550 million ya) saw lobster-like creatures emerge from the seas - closely followed by giant spiders, scorpions, and a little later the first amphibians - and colonize the land. Shortly after the first land plants and fungi, operating in a symbiotic mode had made it inhabitable. A lost species of this age are known only to HPL (perhaps due to their later annihilation), these are sometimes refered to as 'the cones', fungoid beings of roughly conical shape with tentacular limbs. They had the most advanced nervous system on the Earth at this time, though that hardly ammounted to even the nerve bundles of the sharks soon to appear in the seas. But it was at this time that a space and time travelling super-race, from the dying world of Yith, mutually transvoked with the cones and incarnated in their bodies. Why such an advanced race should choose such a primitive host is unknown, but this act may have been born out of desperation, the cones lack of resistance and malleability, the scarcity of inhabited planets, or the peripheral location of Earth in an interstellar wilderness away from most of the powerful races. Perhaps there was even a similarity of form which made the cones 'attractive'. The original cone 'minds' dying with their homeworld. As HPL recounts in 'The Shadow Out of Time', these beings travelled through time and space by mind exchange and amassed great knowledge and mental powers through this exchange process (which included some of the most inteligent beings in the universe). For most of their history they lived in a great city in what became Australia (then part of Antartica) in cone form, but continually sent out psychic voyagers from this base.

'In the bodies they inhabited on the Earth, they were tall and cone-shaped, rising to a point with four strange appendages, two terminating in claws, a third in a "trumpet", and the fourth, a yellow globe which functioned as a sensory organ. The unique ability of this scientifically advanced race was to travel through time by swapping minds with creatures of another era. This allowed them to satisfy their interest in human culture, science, and occult beliefs. Occupied beings - their minds transferred to Yithian bodies against their will - learned as much as possible about the societies in which they dwelt; meanwhile, the "captive minds" were simultaneously queried by skilled inquisitors. The most compliant of whom were given limited freedom and access to the great Yithian libraries, before being returned to their own bodies, with partially erased memories and horrendous nightmares'.

In Lovecraft's stories the Yithians warred with their neighbours the Elder Things but these battles were civilised and inconclusive compared to later wars, and the two kept each other in check in the region, with the Elder Things expanding north and populating the primitive Earth, with the aid of their Shoggoth, and the Yithians confined to their great city in the south.

It can be surmissed that the Yithian possession of the cone bodies evolved them considerably, proliferating their nervous matter and generating complex neural nets within them. Otherwise their great intelligence would have been lost. This in turn was probably responsible for the rapid evolution of the nervous systems of terrestrial species (shark to amphibian to reptile to mammal) witnessed in the fossil record. Probably by viral transmission and genetic mutation which carried the potential for higher level Yithian neural structures (an accidental version of the genetic programming by Timothy Leary's hypothetical ancient aliens). Thus just as the Elder Things can be seen as the archetypes of the source of biological evolution, the Yithians can be viewed as the archetypes of past neural evolution and its future potential. Mind rather than body. Both archetypes can thus be utilised appropriately.

All these intelligent species obviously practised cremation, or we would find fossils of them. Though HPL claimed in his story 'The Mountains of Madness' that rare Elder Thing fossils had been found and suppressed!

Symbolically - the Yithians thus represent the development of mind and consciousness on Earth. In identifying with them we can return to a primeval consciousness which is at one with all consciousness on Earth (and perhaps beyond), and can also gain knowledge from this union. This is in fact not unlike the Yithian's fictional project of mind transfer.

Chaos Resurgent : The Flying Polyps and the Spawn Of Cthulhu

The next wave of invaders were chaotic and destructive. The Flying Polyps came from deep space, and most likely another dimension entirely. Forming a bridgehead on Tond (a world 'just outside the known solar system') 600 M ya, they colonised Neptune and Uranus (the Mi-Go repelling them from Pluto), and arrived on Earth around 400 M ya. According to HPL, 'the flying polyps were a horrible elder race of half polypous, utterly alien entities... They were only partly material and had the power of aerial motion, despite the absence of wings... They exhibited a monstrous plasticity and ... temporary lapses of visibility... singular whistling noises and colossal footprints made up of five circular toe marks seemed also to be associated with them'.

The Polyps waged war against the Elder Things but primarily attacked the less numerous Yithians first. But they were eventually defeated by them and sealed up in underground tombs. However shortly after the asteroid bombardment of the Cretaceous period, which wiped out the dinosaurs 50 million years later, they were released and launched a devastating attack on the Yithian civilisation, destroying it utterly. Surviving Yithians transvoked into the bodies of the Beetlemen of the far future, the descendents of cockroaches, who inherited the Earth after the extinction of the human race. A counter attack by the Elder Things then drove the Polyps back underground.

While the narrative motive of the Polyps appears to have been at first pure conquest and then revenge, on a
symbolic level they seem to represent the specific enemies of the mind generating archetypes from Yith. Thus probably represent the material repressed by the ego and its consequent eruptions. The fact that they also attacked the Elder Things demonstrates the physiological dangers of neurosis.

SPAWN OF CTHULHU from XOTH and their deity GREAT CTHULHU originally of the 23rd Nebula

The Spawn of Cthulhu arrived from deep space (and probably another dimension) around 350 M ya. An octopoid race travelling from, or via, Xoth (Sothis / Sirius) who worshipped Cthulhu, and first evoking him on their colony in the 23rd Nebula, in their own image, before calling him to Earth with them. The Spawn seem to have desired the destruction of all life on Earth, as a sacrifice to their god. From their first base on the island of R'lyeh in the Pacific they waged a ruthless war on the Elder Things, and to a lesser extent on the Yithians. And with the aid of their advanced technology, magick and the power of their god, drove the former to the polar regions or back into the ocean. This agenda of displacement and depopulation would indicate they were interested in the inorganic features of Earth, and perhaps were in fact exploitive miners of somekind. Certainly when they first arrived they burrowed deep into the Earth, and only later built a surface city on the Isle of R'lyeh. Ultimately however they formed a treaty with the Elder Things and Yithians and territorial boundaries were drawn up. But after 'offending' the Elder Gods their entire island was sunk over night, with only the few survivors seeking safety in deep caverns, where they survived for millions of years. Their colonies in other parts of the Pacific were later inhabited by early humans who took to worshipping the sleeping Cthulu, and perhaps gave him a more humanoid image in part.

One legend however is that Cthulhu is released by the passage of the planet being Ghroth every 62 million years, and is responsible for the Ice Ages and attendant catastrophes that wiped out so much life on Earth (often locking up the oceans with ice lowering sea levels and 'raising R'lyeh'). In other versions of this story the spawn are banished to the Dreamlands (which HPL seems to regard as similar to an underworld prison in some regions).

Thus the Spawn of Cthulhu represent those eruptive forces of chaos and destruction that would exterminate all life on Earth, or mutate it into subservient form. The counterbalence to the life creating Elder Things. Suitable servants of Great Cthulhu who not surprisingly were later thought of as his 'demon offspring'.



Symbolically - the Flying Polyps, surpressed invaders opposing the Yithian 'mind spawners', can be seen as those repressed ideas and emotions, that seem totally alien to us, but can destroy us if not dealt with in ways other than repression. The Spawn of Cthulu, the dark side of our biological evolution, as enemies of the Elder Things, could be seen as our repressed darker side, again totally alien to us, or instinctual, bestial shadows, that need to be released and integrated. Thus in part Cthulhu is the collective shadow or Great Beast.


The Shoggoth Are Revolting

150 million years ago the Shoggoth developed sentience and rebelled against the Elder Things. After a long war most were domesticated and returned to service. Those that didn't remained in ruined cities or later joined forces with the Deep Ones.

This may be a parable on the fact that evolution does not always travel in a predictable direction.

Magically - the Shoggoth are best used as thought form servitors, being designed to be relatively controllable and now rooted in the collective imagination.


NOTE : These above alien races of 'old ones' seem to fall into an interesting fourfold pattern with the Elder Things of and Ubbo-Sathla / Shub Niggurath in polarity with the Spawn of Cthulhu, in what is basically an Earth-Water duality (though a reversible one, these being normally a Mountain-Sea pair though also Sea-Cavern pair). While the Yith (of Yog Sothoth? Being non physical time-space travellers) and the destructive Flying Polyps (of the thanototic Not-to-be-Named-One?) form an Energy/Fire-Aerial/Air polarity. This is the nearest the pantheon gets to an elemental arrangement akin to Derleth's attempt. It does not mean these roles are fixed though or that these entities actually are 'elementals' as Derleth contended, just that they follow a pattern. An identical pattern on a lower octave is found with the next four races the Serpent People of Yig - the Deep Ones of Dagon, as well as the non physical Lloigor - the Azithothic Shan/Mi-Go duality.

The Mi-Go

Basically a race of interplanetary miners and resource exploiters, though on a more subtle level than many, they first arrived on Yuggoth (Pluto) as early as 600 million years ago. Here they stayed for millennia before secretly arriving on Earth during the Cthulhu period of 350 - 300M ya. Mostly an infiltrative rather than an invasive race, they seem to have been detected by the Elder Things late in their history (around 100 M ya), prompting a war which eventually saw waves of Mi-Go arriving and forcing most of the by then degenerated Elder Things into the oceans or to Antartica.

They returned to their secretive ways and allegedly still survive within the Earth in significant numbers today. Using a geometrical symbolic system to communicate they can be summoned by the use of the psychic projection of these signs (probably the Aklo signs). A fact that HPL claimed initiated the seal and sigil forms of magic when their signs were recorded in the Necronomicon. Primitive people thought of them as demons. However one of the Mi-Go mysteries is that they refer to themselves as the Outer Ones, a name usually reserved for the Outer Gods. This may be hubris on the part of the Mi-Go, or alternatively might be due to their ruling class actually being incarnate Old Ones from the Outside. This could explain the identity of the million favoured ones fathered by Nyarlathotep mentioned in the Mi-Go mythos, an identification supported by the Indian legends HPL writes identify the Winged Ones with Ursa Major. Their reverance for Shub Niggurath could identify their maternal line. The emnity between the Mi-Go and the cult of the King in Yellow, may instantiate the ancient rivalry of Shub Niggurath and the paranoaic Not-to-Be-Named One.

Magically - the Mi Go, as terrifying raiders, or alien abductors, secretly amongst us, who may wisk our brains off to Pluto, represent the fear of the extraterrestrial journey, or the evolutionary leap into space (a darker version of Timothy Leary's extraterrestrial circuit mythos). A fear that holds us back and needs to be exorcised.


The Serpent People

A race of aliens who first colonized the north polar regions of Hyperborea long after the Elder Things had retreated. Probably initially arriving by vehicles of somekind, though they later seem stranded on Earth. They worshipped, Yig, an offspring of Shub Niggurath, who manifested in their reptilian form. A heretical faction were devoted to Tsathoggua, as were heretical Mi Go, and brought this Great Old One to Earth. They probably arrived as recently as 5 million ya and were the first humanoid race to inhabit the Earth.

The Serpent People isolated a roughly humanoid simian creature, of similar form to themselves, and genetically engineered it into the first pre-human hominid. These early hominids called the Voormis were used as slaves. They rebelled around 1 million years ago and drove out the Serpent People, creating the first Tsathoggua worshipping kingdom of Hyperborea. Renegade Voormis later evolved into early Man (Neanderthal) around 200,000 BC, who in turn later invaded Hyperborea and drove out the Voormis (who seem to have become the Yetis and Big Foot of the world). This second kingdom of Hyperborea spawned the 'civilisations' of Mu and Lemuria in the Pacific.

The Serpent People themselves founded several shortlived kingdoms on Earth before retreating into the caverns of the Dreamworld. Serpent People continued to walk the earth, sometimes disguised as humans, long into Atlantean times (100,000 BC to 10,000 BC), perhaps indicating somekind of hybridisation was occuring, or that their sorcerers were masters of shapeshifting. But the last were killed or driven underground by known prehistoric times (c 10,000 BC).

The Serpent People are intimately connected with the evolutionary development of the human race, much like the serpent of Eden.

Symbolically - they represent the egoic forces, the Will to Power as it manifests in Man, that can liberate us in self creation, or create the repressive ego of modern humanity. The archetype thus has its function in this field.



The Lloigor

The penultimate definite ET race to visit Earth, invisible vortices of psychic energy, though they sometimes appear as giant reptilian creatures, akin to the mythical dragons of legend. They came from the Andromeda Galaxy to the land of Mu around 50,000 BC and used 'human' slaves as their labor force. The Lloigor could possess humans and use them as their vehicles. When their power dwindled, the Lloigor retreated below ground and left their former slaves to their own devices. Eventually, these early humans migrated from Mu and populated the Earth, including that part which became Atlantis. The Atlanteans were the first to record tales of Cthulhu and the other 'Great Old Ones' according to the literature.

In recent history, the Lloigor are too weakened to pose any real threat to humanity. Nonetheless, they can draw psychic energy from sleeping humans in nearby towns or villages—the victims so affected awaken feeling drained or ill, yet regain all lost vitality by nightfall— with which they can perform strange, preternatural feats, such as causing mysterious explosions or altering the flow of time.

The possessive powers of the Lloigor may have led to the mutation of Neanderthal Man on Mu into their Cro Magnon descendents, and to have mutated modern man into developing greater psychic powers. They are to Man as the Yithians were to all life, just as the Serpent People are to Man as the Elder Things were to life on Earth.

Magically - they are similar to the fetches of witches, the beings that contain our higher and magical powers, or the part of us that is magical. Though here they require a draining psychic preparation to contact to such a powerful degree. This process creating fears of vampirism amongst many.

The People of K'n-yan

'(In K'n-yan) in a pair of vast niches, one on each side, the monstrous, nitre-encrusted images of Yig and Tulu squatted, glaring at each other across the passage as they had glared since the earliest youth of the human world.' - H P Lovecraft, The Mound

The origin of the people of K'n-yan is a mystery. Outwardly identical to humans though inwardly alien and in possession of powerful psychic abilities, this people were culturally and technologically advanced when the Muvians were still in their Stone Age. They later traded with Atlantis, but when this island was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age they withdrew into subterranean cities, where they may still remain, at least in the Dreamlands.

Their origin is still in dispute, while their appearance leads many to regard them as a human civilization, gaining advance through their close initial alliance with the technologically and psychically superior Serpent People, others regard this advancement and internal alienness as evidence of an extraterrestrial origin (presumably a race whose powers included the ability to shapeshift). Whatever the truth their isolation in historic times leads to their exclusion in from human civilisation and their close alliance with the extraterrestrial Serpent People marks them out as 'alien' and in this scheme will be regarded as principly extraterrestrial.

K'n-yan is the name for their underground civilisation, a blue litten world believed to lie beneath Oklahoma, though possibly part of the Dreamlands now, or even then. It lies directly above red litten Yoth, deep caverns once inhabited by the Serpent People,who fled here to escape the destruction of their last surface kingdoms in Valusia. In Yoth they built great cities, of which only ruins now remain. Explorers from K'n-yan visited Yoth frequently to learn more of the Serpent People's great scientific arts. Beneath Yoth was the almost mythical N'Kai, a realm of almost total darkness and the home of Tsathoggua. Explorers from K'n-yan met with disaster when they first visited N'kai, encountering the deadly, amorphous Spawn of Tsathoggua, rubbery black, ameboid shapeshifters. N'kai was thus sealed off by them.

Their largest city was Tsath, the capital of K'n-yan, named after Tsathoggua, a deity once worshiped there, as a shapeshifting force of inertia and darkness, but later rejected. Their last gods being Yig and Tulu (Cthulhu) whose idols stand side by side in their temples. Initially a technological civilisation with a complex mechanistic culture, the automation of life in K'n-yan enabled them to reject this culture and adopt an aristocratic, libertine hedonism as an alternative, which allegedly became swiftly 'decadent and increasingly cruel' according to some commentators. In their elitist but 'socialistic' society individual behavior was dictated by strict social norms rather
than law, and the leadership selected through breeding and enculturation. Work not automated allegedly performed by captives from the surface. Only small colonies were said to exist in K'n-yan today, probably of diverse nature, and rumour had it that they still meddled in the affairs of mankind in service of their gods.

Symbolically - We can see a reflection of modern conspiracy theory in all this, a myth of a decadent hidden elite with special powers, at the pinnacle of an automated society, like us but 'alienated' from mainstream human culture and often cruel. Their gods Yig and Tulu revealing the dominance of both Ego and Shadow in their culture, and the closure of N'kai their repressed aspects. They are thus a paranoid projection, though perhaps one with elements of truth, and even one with pronoiac potential. They are intimately linked with the Serpent People.

The Shan

The last visitors to Earth, so far. A race of small sentient insectoid beings from the planet Shaggai. They degenerated into a race of depraved, hedonistic sadists, and many became the devotees of Azathoth (in a 'manifest form' called Xada-Hgla), which they awoke and contacted via their pyramid shaped dimensional portal devices. This turned them into a cult of psychopathic monsters who travelled the universe seeking prey. The liberals on Shaggai were depraved, but sane, sadists, while the extremists were totally insane. They were eventually destroyed with their world by the forces they had unleashed. A small group arrived on Earth with their last transdimensional pyramid and hid in the Severn Valley in 1600 AD. Here they developed the ability to transvoke into their victims who they slowly turned into psychopaths.

The Shan thus account for extreme violent insanity in historical times and the psychic degeneration of Man.

Symbolically - They are our shadows in the sence of the aspects of personality, such as sadism, we might repress. In extreme repressive cases these might be the pathologically 'ids' of the psychopath, while in most they are their everyday shadows. They can be utilised in dealing with our own shadows.
On a political level they can be seen as all those fascist, terrorist and criminal forces that are often unleashed and manipulated by higher forces (whether clans of Serpent Man or K'n-yan), as well as those who they lose control of.



Space Chimaera

'Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimaeras - dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies - may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition - but they were there before. They are transcripts, types - the archtypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body - or without the body, they would have been the same... That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual - that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy - are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence'. - Charles Lamb: Witches and Other Night-Fears, opening verse to the Dunwich Horror by H P Lovecraft.

While not a definite being in the literature the 'Space Chimaera' may be the only rational explanation of the 'thing' in the Dunwich Horror that visited Earth almost a century ago. The clue to its real nature and name being given in the opening verse of the story. The father of the monstrousities that were the Whately Twins was said to be Yog Sothoth, though how a cosmic principle could pass on its genetic makeup remains a mystery. What is certain is whatever came through the portal when Yog Sothoth was evoked and the Gate opened was biological enough to sire offspring and magical enough to overcome the species barrier. Thus given HPL's famous narrator perspectivism the Yog Sothoth identification was probably an error. Anything coming through the portal after Yog was evoked would naturally be identified with him. In fact what the entity was is a Space Chimaera.

It is not hard to imagine the plan, a race of alien beings who worship the Old Ones, probably from the Xoth region, who hit on the notion of fathering children on alien worlds and fostering on them the idea that when they grow they will open the portal again, allowing through an alien horde or even the Great Old Ones themselves. To enable them a considerable portion of alien genetics would be added to their genotype by overcoming the species barrier and allowing hybridisation. It is even possible that Cthulhu, sometimes said to have been a high priest of his earliest disciples was physically originally such a hybrid. Successful portal openers would then leave their planet and impregnate a woman on another world and the cycle continues. Thus these beings would become complex hybrids over time, though these may be rare due to the apparent difficulty in the success of such a project. The father of the Whately Twins appears to have been the Reptillean offspring of a mammalian octopoid hybrid, possibly the descendent of a Cthulhu Spawn. It is interesting that this hybrid deployed its genetype with the older material at the base of the phenotype, perhaps deliberately facillitating the required 'homeworld face'. A failure of this feature to emerge may have led to the sealing up of such creatures, in dens such as caverns or barns. It is also by no means impossible that such beings could also have been the possessed and chosen vehicles for the Old Ones themselves.

Symbolically - This combines the fear of the unknown with the 'horror' of the hybrid. But could also be utilised positively as the benefits of hybridisation for diversity and the evolution of extraterrestrial culture and space travel. Both a warning and a guide to those who would work with any non-human forms.

Non ET parallel Races

The Deep Ones

These are a mystery. They appear to be a degenerate race of humans who de-evolve back to more primitive forms of life, however their devotion to Dagon, an Old One who appears as a gigantic version of themselves, indicates there is something more to them than this. They also may function as 'elemental servitors' to Dagon.

Dagon was a minor Great Old One in the service of Cthulhu, who presumably arrived with him. He alone escaped the sinking of R'lyeh though sought refuge at the bottom of the sea. The original Deep Ones may have been his servitors. If these original Deep Ones possessed human devotees and mutated them into an atavistic aquatic form, this may have spawned a human race of the Deep Ones, mutant fish-people, who mate with humans and propagate through their young, who themselves gradually devolve into complete Deep Ones.

Modern Deep Ones consist of Dagon and his spawn, plus humanoid Deep Ones in various stages of 'degeneration'. They were first seen on Earth in Lake Titicaca around 500,000 BC. It was probably later in their evolution during interaction with humans that they became predominantly humanoid. They have a millennia old rivalry with the Old Ones of the Oceans or Elder Things, as well as their allies, such as the Serpent People. The former devising most of the signs and formuli against them.

The Deep Ones are associated with the de-evolution of humanity in the same way that the Serpent People are linked to human physical and egoic evolution. They can also act as guides in the aquatic regions of the Dreamlands (with some risk). Some also regard them as our future , but this may be a hybrid form which allows ideal travel in the Dreamlands.

Symbollically - they are our atavistic tendendies or the negation of the ego (as dangerous as its over-inflation). They are thus the opposite pole of the Serpent People (who expand egoic tendencies). Deep Ones thus regress to the rule of preconscious instinctual forces, and eventually lose all individuality, returning to the sea of the collective unconscious, or Dagon. More positively dreamtime or tranced explorations of the collective unconscious can be greatly assisted by the servitors of Dagon, the original Deep Ones. And a human Deep One hybrid with sufficient ego retention could create a proficient astral traveller with the power of conscious hypnogogia.

 

Credits (1) - Artwork by Copyright 1999 Ruud Dirven / Dagon Used with permission