Parallels in Christianity
[August Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos]

Derleth's narrators often remark on a similarity between the Cthulhu Mythos and the more familiar struggle between God and Satan in Christianity:

Yet it was not uninteresting, though it represented a familiar pattern. It was the old credo of the force of light against the force of darkness, or at least, so I took it to be. Did it matter whether you called it God and the Devil, or the Elder Gods and the Ancient Ones, Good and Evil or such names as the Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss, the only named Elder God, or these of the Great Old Ones . . . [The] Ancient Ones [Great Old Ones (3)] had been banished—as was Lucifer from Eden—when once they revolted against the Elder Gods . . . [Gable]

And the striking parallel which forced itself upon me, a divinity student, a parallel which could not be overlooked, was plain—the similarity between the tale of the revolt of the Great Old Ones against the Elder Gods, and that other, more universally known tale of the revolt of Satan against the forces of the Lord. [Sky]

Since this initial rebellion—which was basically in a legend pattern paralleling the rebellion of Satan and his followers against the arch-angels of Heaven—the Great Old Ones had continually sought to regain their power to war against the Elder Gods . . . [Valley]

One of the narrators viewed the Cthulhu Mythos as merely a distorted version of Christianity:

This lore which was his primary concern was, in fact, a distortion of ancient Christian legend; reduced to its most simple terms, it was a record of the cosmic struggle between forces of good and forces of evil . . . [Valley]

However, other narrators view the Cthulhu Mythos as far older:

Apparently the mythology springs from a common source with our own legendary Genesis, but only by a very thin resemblance; sometimes I am tempted to say that this mythology is far older than any other—certainly in its implications it goes far beyond, being cosmic and ageless, for its beings are of two natures, and two only: the Old or Ancient Ones, the Elder Gods, of cosmic good, and those of cosmic evil . . . [Hastur]

. . . the Elder Gods, the Ancient Ones, whose very struggle did indeed parallel the ancient legends of mankind, even before the setting down of the banishment from heaven of Satan and his followers. [Keeper]

Indeed, the Cthulhu Mythos was evidently passed down to humanity from some older source:

Was this pattern after all not familiar? The Elder Gods could so easily have become the Christian Trinity; the Ancient Ones could for most believers have been altered into Sathanus and Beelzebub, Mephistopheles and Azarael. Except that they were co-existent, which disturbed me, though I knew that systems of belief constantly overlapped in the history of mankind. / More—there was certain evidence to show that the Cthulhu myth-pattern had existed not only long before the Christian mythos, but also before that of ancient China and the dawn of mankind, surviving unchanged in remote areas of the earth  . . . so that in a sense it might be said that the Cthulhu mythos was primal. [Seal]

Yes, but don’t forget that there exists no legend which is not firmly rooted to something, even if that something existed in a long, long forgotten past beyond memory of man—malign Hastur, who called to his aid the spirits of the elements and subdued them to his will, those elementary forces which are still worshipped in far out-of-the-way places in this world—the Wind-Walker, and Ithaqua, god of the great white silence, the one god of whom no totems bear sign. After all, have we not our own Biblical legend of the struggle between elemental Good and Evil as personified by our deity and the forces of Satan in the pre-dawn era of our earth? [Ithaqua]

A member of the Great Race theorized that Christianity was inspired by a distorted memory of the events of the Cthulhu Mythos:

They had occupied Earth until they had become involved in the titanic struggle between the Elder Gods and the Ancient Ones [Great Old Ones (3)] for the domination of the cosmos, a struggle which, he told me, accounted for the Christian Mythos among mankind, for the simple minds of early men had conceived of their ancestral memories of this struggle as one between elemental Good and elemental Evil. [Space]

Holy Men

When "holy men from the interior of Europe" re-imprisoned the Cthulhu spawn, they called upon the Elder Gods (1) rather than upon the Christian God:

"O, Elder Gods, from your impenetrable fastnesses, look down and confirm, extend your power once more. Go down, you Evil Ones, and remain forever in eternal darkness. Hosts of mad Cthulhu, spawn of unspeakable Hastur, loathsome brood of Yog-Sothoth, get you down into everlasting sleep. Never again shall you rise upon the fair earth. Go, in the name of those Elder Gods, the Old Ones, whom once you sought to displace." [Depths]

It is not clear from the story whether these "holy men" were priests of Christianity or of some older, pagan religion. Still, it is tempting to assume they were Christian because they were written of by the monk Clithanus. If so, it's striking that they didn't include a "Through Jesus Christ Our Lord" in the prayer.

St. Augustine, on the other hand, seems to have understood the beings of the Cthulhu Mythos as ultimately subordinate to the creator God, the God of Christianity:

The five-pointed star being the key, with this key I imprison you in the Name of Him Who Created All Things, Spawn of Elder Evil, Accursed in the Sight of God, Follower of Mad Cthulhu, who dared return from ever damned R’lyeh, I imprison you. May none ever effect your freedom. AUGUSTINE, BISHOP [OutThere]

Soul Danger

But only if danger pressed close—for the danger of the Deep Ones and all who are allied to them, insisted Phelan, is as great to the soul as to the body. [Sky]

Yet I am not unaware of a strong aura of danger, of mortal menace which abounds everywhere—not the evil of Satanism, but a greater evil beyond that, more primal and terrible. I cannot define it, but I feel that my very soul is in the greatest danger. . . . [Gorge]

The evil of the Great Old Ones is worse than humans can even conceive of:

Because it was corpulent, and its face of a horrible malignance, the squatting figure [of Cthulhu] had about it an unavoidable force—a vivid, unforgettable impression of great evil,—not evil, as it is commonly understood, but a terrible, soul-destroying horror transcending evil as mere men can know it. [Gorge]

“Conniving with the Devil?” She tittered again. “It was wus’n that. It was suthin’ nobody can tell.” [Lurker]

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