Legendary Catastrophes
[August Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos]

Laban Shrewsbury interpreted many legendary catastrophes as being memories of the battle between the Elder Gods (1) and Great Old Ones (3):

Consider almost all the ancient writings which speak of a great catastrophe which involved the earth. Look to the Old Testament, to the battle of Beth-Horon, led by Joshua. ‘And he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gideon; and thou, Moon, in the Valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed. . . .’ Look to the Annals of Cuauhtitlan of the lore of the Nahua Indians of Mexico, which speak of an endless night, a tale verified by the Spanish priest, Fra. Bernadino de Sahagun, who, coming to the New World a generation after Columbus, told of the great catastrophe in which the sun rose but a little way over the horizon and then stood still, a catastrophe witnessed by the American Indians. And the Bible again: ‘As they fled from before Israel . . . the Lord cast down great stones upon them in Azekah, and they died. . . .’ There are parallel accounts in other ancient manuscripts—the Popul Vuh of the Mayas, the Egyptian Papyrus Ipuwer, the Buddhist Visuddhi-Maga, the Persian Zend-Avesta, the Hindu Vedas, many another. There are curiously coincidental records left in ancient art—the Venus tablets of Babylon, found in the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, certain of the panoplies at Angkor-Vat, which you must know—and there are the strangely altered clocks of ancient times—the water clock of the Temple of Amon at Karnak, now inaccurate for day and night; the shadow clock of Fayum, Egypt, inaccurate, too; the astronomical panel in the tomb of Senmut, in which may presumably have been correct for Senmut’s time. And these stars, I submit, are not just accidentally those of the Orion-Taurus group, held to be the seat of both the Elder Gods—who are believed to exist at or near Betelgeuse—and at least one of the Ancient Ones, Hastur; and were presumably home to all the Ancient Ones. So that the catastrophe duly recorded in the old documents may very well have been evidence of the titanic battle which was waged between the Elder Gods and the rebellious Ancient Ones. [Island]

Shrewsbury's thesis is curious because the events of the great battle are supposed to have taken place before humanity existed. Perhaps he was assuming the existence of racial memories going back to our prehuman ancestors. Or perhaps he thought that tales of the great battle had been passed down to us by nonhuman entities.

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