HPL emphasized that allhis tales—whether they used his pseudomythology or his invented topography or not—were linked philosophically. His canonical utterance on the subject occurs in a letter to Farnsworth Wright (July 5, 1927), accompanying the resubmittal of “The Call of Cthulhu” to WTand at a time by which he had written the majority of his tales, but only a few of what most proponents refer to as his “mythos” fiction: “Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large…. To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all” ( SL2.150). As early as the fall of 1927, when Frank Belknap Long wrote “The Space-Eaters,” HPL’s associates were “adding” components to various elements of his tales—in this case, his ever-growing library of mythical volumes of occult lore (Long invented John Dee’s translation of the Necronomicon,citing it as an epigraph to his tale, although the epigraph was omitted in its first appearance in WT,July 1928). HPL cited Long’s invention in “History of the Necronomicon” (1927). In late 1929 Clark Ashton Smith wrote “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros,”
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which invented the toad-god Tsathoggua. Whether Smith was inspired by HPL’s example is debatable; in fact, it was HPL who borrowed from Smith, citing Tsathoggua in his revision of Zealia Bishop’s “The Mound” (1929–30), on which he was then working, and also in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930). Smith himself later wrote, in reference to several citations by other authors of elements he had invented: “It would seem that I am starting a mythology” (Smith to August Derleth, January 4, 1933; ms., SHSW).
In 1930 N.J.O’Neail wrote a letter to WT(March 1930) inquiring whether “Kathulos” cited in Robert E.Howard’s “Skull-Face” (1929) was related to or derived from Cthulhu. Howard in turn queried HPL as to the reality of the various mythological elements cited in HPL’s tales, to which HPL replied: “Regarding the solemnly cited myth-cycle of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, R’lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Nug, Yeb, Shub-Niggurath, etc. etc.—let me confess that this is all a synthetic concoction of my own” ( SL 3.166), going on to say that he dropped references to this myth-cycle in his ghostwritten tales purely for fun. Howard himself thereupon began dropping references to HPL’s myth-cycle in his tales, although neither he nor Smith nor Donald Wandrei nor even younger disciples such as Robert Bloch ever actually wrote stories aboutHPL’s mythic conceptions—they merely dropped references to HPL’s entities in the course of their tales, for the sake of cryptic allusiveness and verisimilitude. It is an exaggeration to say that HPL “encouraged” these imitations or elaborations of his myth-cycle; in most cases, the writers simply made additions of their own accord, and HPL (usually out of courtesy) praised the results.
August Derleth, however, appears to have become obsessed with the Mythos, from as early as 1931, when he wrote the first draft of “The Return of Hastur” ( WT,March 1939). At that time he suggested to HPL that the myth-cycle be given a name; he offered the Mythology of Hastur. HPL replied: “It’s not a bad idea to call this Cthulhuism & Yog-Sothothery of mine The Mythology of Hastur’—although it was really from Machen & Chambers & others rather than through the Bierce-Chambers line, that I picked up my gradually developing hash of theogony—or daimonogeny” (HPL to August Derleth, May 16, 1931; ms., SHSW). (HPL refers to his derivation of the term Hastur from Robert W.Chambers’s The King in Yellow[1895]; Chambers himself derived it from various tales of Ambrose Bierce. In “Some Notes on a Nonentity” [1933] HPL stated that it was from Lord Dunsany that HPL “got the idea of the artificial pantheon and myth-background represented by ‘Cthulhu’, ‘Yog-Sothoth’, ‘Yuggoth’, etc.,” suggesting that HPL was adapting the imaginary pantheon found in Dunsany’s early volumes of tales, TheGodsofPegāna[1905] and Time and the Gods[1906].) He also wrote to Robert Bloch (late May 1933): “As for the synthetic myth-cycle—I suppose I got the idea from Poe’s allusions to fabulous lands of his own dreaming, from Dunsany’s artificial pantheon, & from Machen’s portentous references to ‘Aklo letters’, ‘Voorish domes’, &c.” ( Letters to Robert Bloch,p. 11). HPL went on to say in another letter to Derleth: “The more these synthetic daemons are written up by different authors, the better they become as general background-material! I liketo have others use my Azathoths & Nyarlathoteps—& in return I shall use Klarkash-Ton’s [Clark Ashton Smith] Tsathoggua, your monk Clithanus, & Howard’s Bran” (HPL to August Derleth, August 3,
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1931; ms., SHSW). Derleth used that last sentence as a license to continue writing tales using HPL’s pseudomythology, although even before HPL’s death he warned at least one writer (Henry Kuttner) to avoid using HPL’s pseudomythological elements in his own work as doing so could hamper HPL’s ability to earn income from his own ideas. Ultimately Derleth himself departed from the tradition of HPL’s own colleagues by writing stories entirely aboutHPL’s mythic conceptions, rather than using them as “general background-material.”
In 1932 the composer Harold S.Farnese engaged HPL in an epistolary discussion of HPL’s theory and practice of weird fiction. Farnese seems to have misunderstood much of what HPL said to him, and after HPL’s final move to 66 College Street, the two lost touch with each other. Then, after HPL’s death, when August Derleth asked Farnese to lend him HPL’s correspondence for use in SL,Farnese replied (April 11, 1937; ms., SHSW) that he could not at the moment find all his letters from HPL, but he supplied what he had, as well as what he claimed was a direct quotation from one missing letter: “Upon congratulating HPL upon his work, he answered, ‘You will, of course, realize that all my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on one fundamental lore or legend: that this world was inhabited at one time by another race, who in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet love on outside ever ready to take possession of this earth again.’‘The Elders,’ as he called them” (emphasis by Farnese). This quotation does not appear in any surviving letter by HPL to Farnese or anyone else. Derleth, however, found the quotation useful in his own interpretation of the Mythos, which differed radically from what HPL himself conceived. (Derleth was unable to recall where he had obtained the quotation and, very late in life, became angry when Richard L.Tierney asked him to verify its source.) This interpretation featured several key notions: