This is how, according to old beliefs, that Cthulhu - an underwater inhabitant looks.

For 12 centuries, terrible legends have been walking about this book. It is called the Book of Evil, the Book of Calling the Dead, the Book-Key that opens the gates to hell. Most people know this book from the South American films "The Sorcerer" and "The Return of the Living Dead". But Hollywood thrillers are Hollywood thrillers.

- At first this book was called "Al Azif", which can be freely translated as "Howling of the night demons", - knows the recognizable writer Pavel Gross. - It was written by Abdul Alhazred from Yemen (government in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula). In search of truths and enlightenments, he traveled all over the Middle East. For two years he lived near the ruins of Babylon, for 5 years he studied the hidden caves of Memphis, for 10 years he wandered across the southern desert of Arabia, which at that time was called Rub al Khaliyah ("Empty Quarter"), and now is called Dakhna ("Dark Red Desert"). According to popular belief, this place is inhabited by evil spirits and all kinds of evil spirits that serve the Shaitan and the angel of destruction. Alhazred spent 10 years in this desert. His last years he lived in Damascus, where about 700 AD and wrote the book "Al Azif". In the introduction, he stated that he saw the fabulous Irem - the City of Columns, or in another way the City of the Old. According to Arab legends, representatives of the race that preceded the human race once lived there. They were called "Nephilim" - giants. It was also believed that under the ruins of the town there was a sanctuary with manuscripts about the knowledge of this old civilization.

In the 10th century, "Al Azif" was translated into Greek and received a new name - "Necronomicon" (Greek - "necro" - "dead", "nomos" - "experience", "customs", "rules"). Around 1230 the book was translated into Latin, but it retained its Greek title. In the 16th century, the manuscript fell into the hands of Dr. John Dee, who translated it into British. Dee is a legendary man. Winner of Queen Elizabeth of Britain, one of the greatest scientists, alchemist, sorcerer, sorcerer. The most splendid courts of Europe challenged the honor of hosting him.

They say that since the 17th century, the world has always had the same number of copies of this mysterious book. It seems that the followers of ordinary religious organizations tried to kill the Necronomicon, there are always 96 handwritten copies in circulation. But only seven of them have real value, in other words, they can serve as gateways to other dimensions: three in Arabic, one in Greek, two in Latin, and one in British (the one that came from the pen of John Dee).

Don't wake the sleeping dragon

- The speech in the book is about the black secrets of the nature of the Earth and the Universe, - says Gross. - It contains some deities that were worshiped by the most ancient. Yog-Sototh and Azatoth were considered especially necessary. Yog-Sototh is an omnipresent and all-embracing being, personifying the past, true and future. In the center of it lives a twin brother - Azatoth. This midget is the pillar of the entire universe and the king of the worlds. It emits into infinity "waves of probability" from which "sets of abilities are created for every cosmos and every creature in the Universe." The researchers say Azathoth's thought is closely intertwined with the most recent models of quantum physics. It's even hard for me to imagine that at the beginning of centuries the inhabitants of the Arabian deserts understood the arithmetic of chaos, the laws of parallel spaces and similar topics that our modern science is just beginning to guess.

Further "Necronomicon" reports on the mysterious power inherent in the Earth. She is personified by the dragon Cthulhu - a deity whose round face was depicted with a dozen tentacles. Some Orientalists believe that he was the high priest of the Old Ones. And there is a legend according to which if the sorcerer summons him at the wrong time, then Cthulhu will rise from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and strike the population of the earth with an unheard-of disease - fits of madness, from which neither old nor young will be saved. Also, the legend says that the dreams of people are the thoughts of Cthulhu, and our life is his dream. When the deity wakes up, we will disappear. So it's best not to wake up Cthulhu.

Who are Others

Other gods are also noted in the book. Specifically, they lure people who yearn for immense power to the Necronomicon. At various times, countless expeditions were equipped to the heart of the Arabian deserts. Napoleon Bonaparte, Richard Francis Burton (British traveler, 1821 - 1890), Zhora Gurdjieff (esotericist, philosopher, 1872 - 1949), Adolf Hitler, hundreds of representatives of various intelligence agencies - all of them were united once by a single goal: to find the City of the Old and enlist the support of the terrible, but powerful forces. The book contains signs and spells for invoking Other gods. One of them, Shub-Niggurath, appeared in the form of a dark goat. By the way, he was worshiped not only by the Arabs, Greeks and Egyptians, but also by the Sumerians - the oldest civilization of the world's population.

Approximately one third of the book is devoted to the management of shoggoths - amorphous "eels" made from bubbles of protoplasm. The oldest made them as servants, but the Shoggoths, possessing reason, quickly left their control and since that time have been acting on their own.

Another fascinating race is the Deep. They live in the depths of waters and caves. Their appearance resembles a mixture of fish, frog and man, and they are ruled by the deity Dagon, an ally of Cthulhu.

And the most vile creatures are ghouls or ghouls. They look like humans in almost everything, but their breed is usually given by fangs and scary facial features.

“Many people perceive magic from fairy tales and cartoons,” says Gross. - Here is a funny little man waved his wand, and creme brulee appeared. In fact, everything is even worse. In the old treatises, chemical formulas, the structure of apparatus for genetic experiments, the concept of cloning and splitting an atom are given. There you can find blueprints for a psychotronic weapon and a training base for enslaving human souls. The power of the Necronomicon is aimed at making sure that the book falls into the hands of only self-centered and power-hungry people. Of all the black mysteries of the Universe, they usually choose the worst, and the fruits of their labors fall heavily on the population of the earth.

* Cthulhu is a tricky deity living in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. At the moment, his name has become a household name on the Web.

Skeptic's worldview

Historian, orientalist Zhora Ramazanov:

- Arab Abdul Alhazred was a mad addict. So in his crazy fantasies, a lot of all kinds of evil spirits could be seen. In addition, the original - the Arabic original is lost, and everything that has come down to us - only free translations. Now versions of the Necronomicon are kept in the English Museum, the State Library of France, the library of the Harvard Institute, the Institute of Buenos Aires. Other copies are kept by private individuals. They are studied by students and teachers without any risk to life from non-existent sorcerers and genies.

Cthulhu - a mythical creature from the novel by Howard Lovecraft "The Call of Cthulhu". As a meme, it symbolizes an unknown crap and is used in a variety of situations, mainly in online communication.

Origin

Cthulhu is first mentioned in Howard Lovecraft's short story The Call of Cthulhu (1927), where it is described as a gigantic creature with a tentacled head, a humanoid body covered with scales, and a pair of wings. Buried under water in his dead crypt city in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The character was probably inspired by the Sumerian deity Enki and the legends of the kraken.

The Cthulhu meme became popular in 2006, when during an Internet conference, President Vladimir Putin was asked the question "How do you feel about the awakening of Cthulhu?" Despite the fact that the question received almost 17,000 votes and hit the top, it was never asked. But later, Putin still answered it.

Speaking about his attitude towards Cthulhu, the president said that he was suspicious of “all otherworldly forces,” RIA Novosti reports.

“If someone wants to turn to true values, then it is better to read the Bible, Talmud or Koran. There will be more benefits, ”the president said.

Since then, Cthulhu has been the subject of many jokes, photojams, humorous cartoons and other creativity on the Internet.

The memes "fkhtagn" and "zohavat" are also associated with Cthulhu. Cthulhu zohavaite fseh - the erratic of the phrase "Cthulhu seizes everyone", the motto of the cultists of Cthulhu, meaning the inevitability of the end of humanity.

Some associate the popularity of Cthulhu with the community in LiveJournal ru_unspeakable, in which a comic strip with this character appeared. In addition, the popularity of Cthulhu has increased thanks to the game "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth", created from the stories of Lovecraft.

Value

Mem of Cthulhu is broadly associated with any unknown entity or abstract phenomenon. But in a narrow sense, Cthulhu is a symbol of the apocalypse or Complete Fuck. It is believed that Cthulhu is dozing, but when he wakes up, the end of the planet will come (hello Pelevin).

Also, the legend says that people's dreams are the thoughts of Cthulhu, and our life is his dream. When the deity wakes up, we will disappear. So it's best not to wake up Cthulhu.

Gallery

"... The aged Castro recalled fragments of terrifying legends, in the background
which fade all the discourses of Theosophists and who represent man and
our whole world, as something recent and temporary. There were times when on earth
other Beings prevailed, and they created great Cities. As told
immortal Chinese, the remains of these Creatures can still be discovered: they
turned into Cyclopean stones on the islands of the Pacific Ocean. They all died
long before the appearance of a person, but there are ways in which you can revive them,
especially when the stars return to their favorable position in the cycle of eternity.
After all, They themselves came from the stars and brought their images with them,
The Great Elders, Castro continued, were not made entirely of flesh and
blood. They have a form - for does not this figure serve that
proof? - but their form is not embodied in matter. When the stars take over
favorable position, They will be able to move from one world to another, but
while the stars are poorly located. They cannot live. However, although They are no longer
live, but They never completely died. They all lie in stone houses in
Their huge city R "liehe, protected by the spells of the mighty Cthulhu, in
waiting for a great rebirth, when the stars and the Earth are ready for their
coming. But even at this moment, the release of Their bodies should be facilitated
some kind of external force. The spells that make Them invulnerable
at the same time do not allow them to take the first step, so now they can
just lie awake in the dark and think until countless millions of years
sweep by. They know everything that happens in the universe, because
the form of their communication is the transmission of thoughts. So even now They
talking to each other in their graves. When, after endless
chaos, the first people appeared on Earth, the Great Elders turned to the most
sensitive of them by introducing dreams into them, for only such
the way Their language could reach the consciousness of people.
And so, Castro whispered, these first people created a cult around little
idols that the Great Elders showed them: idols brought in long ago
erased from the memory of the century, from the dark stars. This cult will never end
it will persist until the stars again take a good position, and
secret priests will raise the great Tsthulhu from his grave to revive him
subjects and restore His authority on earth. Time will be easy
recognize, for then all people will become like the Great Elders - wild and
free, find themselves on the other side of good and evil, throw aside the laws and,
morality, they will scream, kill and have fun. Then the freed Elders
will show them new tricks on how to scream, kill and have fun, enjoying
itself, and the whole earth will burn with an all-destroying fire of freedom and ecstasy, Until those
since then, the cult, with the help of its rites and rituals, must retain in memory
these ancient ways and proclaim the prophecies of their revival.
In the old days, the chosen people could talk to the buried
Elders while sleeping, but then something happened. Great stone city
R "lieh, with its monuments and tombstones, disappeared under the waves; and the deep waters,
full of a single primary secret through which even thought cannot pass,
this ghostly communication was also cut off. But the memory never dies and the supreme
the priests say that the city will rise again when the stars take a favorable
position. Then her black spirits, ghostly and forgotten, will rise from the earth,
full of rumors dug from the bottom of the forgotten seas. But that's about old Castro
have no right to speak. He abruptly cut off his story, and in the future, no
attempts could not get him to speak. It is also strange that he categorically
declined to describe the size of the Elders. The heart of this religion, he says,
is located in the middle of the unknown deserts of Arabia, where it sleeps in
inviolability Yrem, City of Columns. This belief has nothing to do with
the European cult of witches, and is practically unknown to anyone except his
adherents. There is not even a hint of it in any of the books, although how
told by the immortal Chinese, in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab author
Abdul Alhazred has lines with a double meaning that a beginner can
read at your own discretion, in particular such a verse, repeatedly
discussed:
"Not only the dead can lie forever,
And in strange times even death can die "..."

"... movable
curiosity, Johansen's men raced forward on the captured yacht, while,
being at 47 degrees 9 minutes south and 126 degrees 43 minutes
west longitude, did not stumble upon the coastline, where in the middle of the sticky mud
and silt discovered reedy masonry that was nothing
other than the materialized horror of that planet - the nightmarish corpse city
R "liehom, built in immemorial prehistoric times by giant
hideous creatures descending from the dark stars, There lay the great
Cthulhu and its countless hordes, hidden in green slimy stone
tombs, sending the very messages that in the form of nightmares
penetrated into the dreams of sensitive people, and the faithful servants were called on a campaign with a mission
liberation and revival of their overlords. All this is Johansen and not
suspected, but God knows, soon he saw so much that it was quite
enough!
I assumed that only the very tip of the monstrous, crowned
monolith of the citadel, under which lay the great Cthulhu, protruded over
surface of the water. When I thought about the length of the part that leaves
deeper, I immediately had the thought of suicide. Johansen and his sailors
were seized with awe at the cosmic grandeur of this
wet Babylon of ancient demons, and, apparently, without any
clues guessed that this could not be the creation of ours or any
another civilization from planet Earth. A thrill of unimaginable size
greenish stone blocks, from the stunning height of the huge carved
monolith, from the stunning similarity of colossal statues and bas-reliefs with
strange figurine found in the ship's altar of the Vigilant, clearly
is felt in every line of the mate's ingenuous narration.
Having no idea what futurism is, Johansen nevertheless
approached him in his image of the city. Instead of a precise description
any structure or building, it is limited only to general
impressions of giant corners or stone planes - surfaces
too large to be created on this planet, in addition covered
frightening images and writing. I mentioned here her statements about
corners, as it reminded me of a moment in Wilcox's account of his
dreams. He said that the geometry of the space that appeared to him in a dream,
was anomalous, non-Euclidean and frighteningly filled with spheres and dimensions,
different from what we are used to. And now the illiterate sailor felt
the same when looking at a terrible reality. Johansen and his crew have landed
on the sloping muddy bank of this monstrous acropolis, and steel, sliding,
clamber up titanic, oozing blocks that are never
could be a ladder for mortals. Even the sun in the sky looked distorted
in the miasma emanating from this immersed bulk, and the threat and danger
lurked evilly in these mad, elusive corners of carved stone, where
the second glance caught a depression in the place where the first one found
convex.
Something very similar to fear gripped all travelers even before
when they saw anything other than rocks, silt, and algae. Each of them
would have run away if not for the fear of being ridiculed by the others, and
because they only pretended to be looking for something - as it turned out, completely
to no avail - some small souvenir to remember this place.
The Portuguese Rodriguez was the first to climb the foot of the monolith and
shouted that he had found something interesting. The rest ran up to him and all
together with curiosity stared at the huge carved door with the already familiar
depicting a cephalopod dragon. She looked like, Johansen wrote, like a door
barn; they all immediately realized that this was the door due to the ornate
decorated lintel, threshold and jambs, although they could not solve does it lie
it is flat, like a hatch door, or it stands obliquely, like the door of an outer cellar. how
said Wilcox, the geometry here was completely wrong. It was impossible with
to say with confidence whether the sea and the surface of the earth are horizontal or
no, since the relative location of everything around
phantasmagorically changed.
Bryden pressed the rock in several places, but to no avail. Then
Donovan gingerly felt around the edges of the door, pressing down on each area.
separately. He climbed along a giant moldy stone
is, one might think that he was climbing, if only this thing, after all
did not lay horizontally, then very softly and slowly an acre panel
began to sink down and they realized that she was balancing in an unstable
balance, Donovan slid down the jamb, joined his
comrades, and now they all together watched the strange decline
a monstrous carved portal. In this fantastic world of prismatic
distortion, the plate moved completely unnaturally, diagonally, so that
all the rules of motion of matter and the laws of perspective seemed "violated."
The doorway was black, and the darkness seemed almost material.
After a few moments, this darkness burst out like smoke after
centuries of imprisonment, but by ": as he swam into the wrinkled
humpbacked palate on flapping webbed wings, before their eyes it became
dim the sun. From the depths that opened, a completely unbearable
stench, and Hawkins, who had a keen hearing, caught a disgusting squelching
the sound coming from below. And then, clumsily thundering and exuding mucus,
It appeared in front of them and groped its green,
jelly-like excesses through the black doorway into the tainted atmosphere
poisonous mad city.
At this point in the manuscript, poor Johansen's handwriting became almost
unintelligible, Of the six people who did not return to the ship, two died here
however, on the spot - in his opinion, simply from fear. The creature to describe was
impossible - for there is no language suitable for conveying such depths of screaming
timeless madness, such a terrible contradiction to all the laws of matter,
energy and cosmic order. Walking, or rather, hobbling mountain
vertex. Righteous God! What's so surprising that on the other end
land an outstanding architect went mad, and poor Wilcox, having received
telepathic signal, got a fever? Green sticky spawn of stars
awoke to claim my rights. The stars have re-occupied the favorable
position, and what the ancient cult failed to achieve with all its
rituals, was by pure chance carried out by a handful of completely
harmless sailors. After billions of years of imprisonment, the great Cthulhu was again
free and longed to enjoy this freedom.
Three were swept away by giant claws before any of them
stirred. God rest their souls, if somewhere in this universe
there is a resting place. They were Donovan, Guerrera, and Engstrom. Parker
slipped as the survivors, lost their heads in fear, rushed to
the boat up the giant steps covered with a green crust, and Johansen assured
that Parker was as if swallowed by the masonry. Finally up to the boat
only Bryden and Johansen himself came running: they desperately began to row towards
"Vigilant", and the monster plopped into the water and now, wasting time,
floundered along the shore.
Despite the apparent lack of labor, they managed to run
"Watchful" and sail away. Slowly picking up speed, the yacht began to churn this
dead water, and meanwhile, near the stone heaps of the ruinous shore,
which in no way could be called the earth, the titanic Being is something
mumbled and drooled, like Polyphemus sending curses after
the receding ship of Odysseus. Then the great Cthulhu, many times more
powerful than the legendary Cyclops, began their pursuit, raising giant
waves with their cosmic strokes. Bryden has lost his mind.
From that moment on, he only laughed all the time with short pauses until those
until death overtook him. Johansen, on the other hand, wandered in almost complete despair
across the deck, not knowing that
take.
However, Johansen did not give up. Knowing that the Being is without difficulty
will overtake the "Vigilant", even if he moves at full steam, he decided to
desperate step: setting the car to the fullest, took off on the bridge and abruptly
turned the steering wheel. Powerful waves rose and salt water boiled. When
the car gained full speed again, the brave Norwegian pointed the bow of the ship
straight onto the monstrous jelly that followed him, towering above the dirty foam
stern of the devil's galleon. The monstrous upper part of the cephalopod with
fluttering tentacles rose almost to the bowsprit of a staunch yacht, but
Johansen drove the ship forward.
There was an explosion, as if a giant bubble burst, behind it -
the hideous sound of a titanic jellyfish being cut, accompanied by
the stench of a thousand open graves.
In an instant, the ship was covered with an acrid and blinding green cloud, so that
all that was visible was the fiercely boiling water aft; and although - God
all-merciful! - scattered shreds of the nameless messenger of the stars gradually
reunited into their sickening original form, the distance between him
and the yacht grew rapidly.
It was all over ... "

© Howard Loughcraft. Call of Cthulhu

When Cthulhu wakes up ...

When Cthulhu wakes up ...

In one of Vladimir Putin's annual live online conferences with Russian citizens, he was asked how he felt about the awakening of Cthulhu, a monster sleeping at the bottom of the ocean that can affect the human mind. The question was clearly pressing - after all, 16 682 users voted for it via the Internet!

Putin found it difficult to give an immediate answer about his attitude to Cthulhu. After the end of the communication session with the people and the consultation of some expert, who had at least roughly what it was about, the Russian leader told at the subsequent meeting with the press that he was suspicious of any otherworldly forces.

The statement, of course, is very ambiguous, for the Lord God and his saints are also forces not of this world, but it must be admitted that Cthulhu, as a phenomenon of a very special kind, caused Vladimir Vladimirovich's suspicious attitude quite reasonably.

Notes of a Mad Arab

The cult of Cthulhu, which due to the heavenly coincidences, which will be discussed below, causes the fears of the heads of many states, for a long time remained in the darkness of scientific oblivion on the part of ethnographers and religious scholars. It was the property of a few scattered and isolated sects.

The first mention of the worship of Cthulhu is found in "Kitab al-Azif" - the work of the medieval Arab traveler and occultist Abdullah ibn-Khazred. This book was written in Damascus around 730 and is not so much mystical as a historical treatise by an elderly wanderer about what was and is gone.

There were many works of this kind in the enlightened Arab East. A native of Yemen, Abdullah ibn-Khazred traveled a lot - from Western India to present-day Morocco and Tunisia, easily learned foreign languages \u200b\u200band never missed an opportunity to boast of his ability to read and translate manuscripts that other scholars could not cope with. The Yemeni scholar showed particular interest in forgotten beliefs, secret cults and dark superstitions of various tribes and sects that he met on his way.

The famous American writer Howard Lovecraft calls him "the mad Arab." In fact, even if by modern standards he sometimes behaved eccentrically, his actions are fully justified by the desire to achieve a goal characteristic of any serious traveler and ethnographer.

In the final book of his entire life - "Kitab al-Azif", the scientist spoke about a sect or, rather, a group of sects that worship the Elder Gods and seek to help them subjugate the entire Earth to their power.

The primary role in this is played by the high priest of the Elder Gods, the monstrous half-man-half-lizard Cthulhu, sleeping like a dead sleep in the abyss of the sea and under the water column waiting in the wings for a heavenly sign. Then, with the help of adepts, who will send a collective energy impulse designed to enter into resonance with the forces of the astrological alignment, Cthulhu will wake up and awaken the Elder Gods. Until then, adherents do not allow their religion to fade away, regularly conducting rituals and chants.

All these beliefs would have remained the property of researchers of the history of religions, if at the beginning of the 20th century the location of the sunken city of R'Laih and the crypt of the sleeping priest of the Elder Gods, Cthulhu, had not been precisely established.

Arctic devil

For the first time, representatives of European civilization spoke about Cthulhu in 1860. The Princeton University Arctic Expedition searched Iceland and Greenland for ancient Viking sites and runic inscriptions carved on stones. The hypothesis of the discovery of America by Scandinavian sailors, which was popular in those years, was tested.

The inscriptions were not found, but on the west coast of Greenland they found an endangered tribe of Eskimos who worshiped the devil - tornasuk. In any case, neighboring tribes argued so, trying to stay away from adherents of a frightening religion.

This was doubly strange, given the cruel and sometimes savage pagan rites common among the Eskimos of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic.

The head of the expedition, professor of anthropology Joel Korn, visited the fading tribe in isolation and even managed to get the chief shaman to talk. The tribe had a fetish: a small figurine of porous black-green stone, standing on a high granite boulder. The Eskimos danced around him, greeting the sunrise after the long polar winter. There, near the boulder, human sacrifices of captives or tribesmen were performed.

Professor Korn was interested in rituals hitherto unknown among the Eskimos, passed down from generation to generation since time immemorial. Of particular interest was the chant, which was addressed to the figure symbolizing the devil. These were the words of a completely different language, unknown to science and unlike anything else!

The shaman meticulously reproduced the devilish liturgy for the curious professor. It turned out that the Eskimos worshiped the mighty Cthulhu sleeping at the bottom of the sea and made sacrifices to him, assuring him of their loyalty and expectation of his awakening.

The publication of Korn's report in the annual collection of the British Royal Geographical Society, of which the professor was a member, aroused the interest of the enlightened world. The court poet Alfred Tennyson immediately reacted to this with the famous poem "Cthulhu":

Far from the storms raging over him
At the bottom of the abyss, under the abyss of the waters above,
Deep sleep, eternal and deaf,
Cthulhu sleeps soundly; a rare ray will flash

In the bottomless darkness; covered with flesh sides
Giant sponges with eternal armor.
And looks up at the faint light of day,
From many hidden corners

Throwing out a sensitive network of living branches,
Polypus gigantic predatory forest.
He sleeps for centuries, monstrous worms

Swallowing in a dream; but wait for the day -
The hour of the last fire will come;

And into the world of people and inhabitants of heaven
For the first time he will surface - and all will come to an end.

The priest in the dark crypt

Interest in the degenerating Eskimo tribe quickly faded away, and the next time they started talking about Cthulhu was in 1908.

At a meeting of the American Archaeological Society in New Orleans, police inspector John R. Legrasse brought a figurine of black and green stone for identification. The statuette was captured during a police raid in Louisiana forests. A sect of idolaters, suspected of human sacrifice, held their hideous services on an islet in the middle of a swamp. The mestizos, taken by surprise, hardly resisted.

The police were able to find the decomposed remains and an eight-foot granite pillar with an incongruously tiny stone idol on top. Since Legrasse, who was investigating the case, failed to identify the strange cult, the conscientious inspector turned to specialists.

To his surprise, the figurine sparked a fierce interest in Professor William Channing Webb, who took part in Korn's Arctic expedition almost half a century ago as an intern. Webb stated that the fetish of the mestizo strongly resembles the idol of the Eskimo devil worshipers. But how could the statuette get from distant Greenland to the South of America?

Obviously, these were two different statues. Professor Webb asked if the policeman knew about the chants of the cultists? This was also recorded in the inspector's papers. The strange litany in an unknown language sounded like a pitiful imitation of the phonetics of absolutely inhuman words, which presupposed a physiological structure of the speech apparatus that did not at all resemble the earthly one. But these were the words that William Webb heard on the west coast of Greenland!

Two identical cults, two identical figurines among savage tribes in different parts of the world - it was incredible! The inspector added that during the interrogations he found out the translation of the pagan chant: "In his house in R'Laih, the dead Cthulhu is waiting in his sleep." The arrested mestizos told a lot about the Elder Gods and the great priest in a dark crypt at the bottom of the sea. Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who was visiting New Orleans, sketched the statue of Cthulhu.

Lovecraft, an extraordinarily erudite man, made a connection between these two strange sects and the description of forgotten cults made in Kitab al-Azif. He outlined his observations in the story "The Call of Cthulhu", thanks to which he gained a lot of admirers, including in today's Russia.

Modern sectarians who worship a ruthless and bloodthirsty high priest of time immemorial conduct role-playing games to find a place in the furious world of Cthulhu and the Elder Gods. And the results of the Internet voting, which took place during the communication of Russians with the leader of the country, when more than 16 thousand people were simultaneously thinking about the awakening of the monster, is a good example of a fair popularity of the Elder Gods.

Strange ruins

The final chord in this story was the discovery in 1925 by the crew of the yacht "Alert" huge strange ruins that rose from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean as a result of seismic activity in the region of 47 degrees 9 minutes south latitude and 126 degrees 43 minutes west longitude. So the city of R'Laih was found, which, however, soon sank again.

Research carried out by the US Navy in the second half of the twentieth century did not remain a state secret for long. The phenomenon was recognized as real. The heads of state left Cthulhu alone until better times. Regarding him with suspicion and apprehensively waiting for the great Sleeping Priest to awaken.

Apophis - a sign of darkness and death

But what then, according to the Cthulhu admirers, will happen? Yes, in essence, everything is the same as described in any legend about the end of the world: heavenly fire devouring everything in its path; floods that will swallow most of the land; terrible diseases that will bring to the grave those who did not know about the existence of Cthulhu; the triumph of his few followers and their relocation to some other spheres - either purely astral, or completely material ...

But there is one circumstance that temps the desire to enroll this cult in the category of superstitious delirium. According to the approximate calculations of Ibn Hazred, who, like any enlightened Arab in those days, possessed knowledge of astrology, Cthulhu will wake up around 2030. Approximately the same date turned out according to the calculations of the expert on occultism Howard Lovecraft - from 2029 to 2031.

Both lived at a time when such a prospect could not particularly frighten their contemporaries. But the indicated period is very worrisome for modern astronomers: in their opinion, there is a great chance that in 2029 the Earth will collide with the asteroid Apophis, named after the ancient Egyptian god of darkness and destruction.

"Pfsmo will wake up Cthulhu," said the legend of the Eskimo devil worshipers. What is this - an accidental consonance? Or - it's scary to think! - is it still a memory of the future?