cult of c(thul)hu

''they worshiped , so they said, the great old ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. those old ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. ...

''those first men formed the cult around small idols which the great ones shewed them; idols brought in dim aeras from dark stars. ... meanwhile the cult, by approriate rites, must keep the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophesy of their return.''

h.p.lovecraft; the call of cthulhu.

against the commonplace

''wearied with the commonplaces of a prosaic world, ... st.john and i had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devestating ennui ... which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear i mention with shame and timidity--that hideous extremity of human outrage, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing ...

''our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled an universe of terror and decay to excite our jaded sensibilities ... it was a secret room, far, far underground; around the walls of this repellant chamber were cases of antique mummies ... niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution ...

''statues and paintings there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by st.john and myself. a locked portfolio bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnamable drawings which it was rumoured goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge ... whilst in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity

''it is of this loot in particular that i must not speak ... thank god i had the courage to destroy it long before i thought of destroying myself.''

h.p.lovecraft, the hound.

elliptical tiara

'' most interesting of all was a glancing reference to the strange jewelry associated with innsmouth. ... the fragmentary descriptions were bald and prosaic, but they hinted to me an undercurrent of persistent strangeness. something about them seemed so odd and provocative that i could not put them out of my mind, ... i resolved to see the local sample said to be a large queerly proportioned thing ... evidently meant for a tiara ...

'' even now i can hardly describe what i saw though it was clearly enough a sort of tiara, ... as if designed for a head of almost freakishly elliptical outline. its condition was almost perfect, and one could have spent hours in studying the striking and puzzling untraditional designs-- ... chased or moulded in high relief on its surface with a craftmanship of incredible skill and grace ... 

'' there was a curiously disturbing element hardly to be classified or accounted for. at first i decided that it was the queer other-worldly quality of the art which made me uneasy ... however i soon saw that my uneasiness had a second and perhaps equally potent source ... among these reliefs were fabulous monsters of abhorrent grotesqueness and malignity--half ichthyic and half batrachian in suggestion ... every contour of these blasphemous fish-frogs was overflowing with the ultimate quintessence of unknown and inhuman evil. ''

''but the worst shock came when  my uncle shewed me  the orne jewellery in a downtown safe-deposit vault. some of the items were delicate and inspiring enough, but there was one box of strange old pieces descended from my  mysterious great-grandmother which my uncle was almost reluctant to produce.  ... as my uncle  began slowly and grudgingly to unwrap the things he urged me not to be shocked by the strangeness and frequent hidiousness of the designs.  artists and archeologists who had seen them pronounced the workmanship superlativley and exotically exquisite, though no one seemed able to define their exact material or assign them to any specific art tradition. there were two armlets, a tiara , and a kind of pectoral; the latter having in high relief certain figures of an almost unbearable extravagance.

''he seemed to expect some demonstration when the first piece--the tiara--became visible, but i doubt if he expected quite what actually happened. i did  not expect it, either, for i thought i was thoroughly forewarned regarding what the jewellery would turn out to be.

h.p.lovecraft;the shadow over innsmouth.