Parallels in Pagan Religions
[August Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos]

Some of the characters in Derleth stories also note parallels between beings of the Cthulhu Mythos and those of traditional pagan religions and legends:

In a great many of the scattered phenomena presented to anthropologists, among others, there existed a certain pattern common to all. [Lurker]

I commend him likewise to the study of certain parallelisms—a comparison between Ithaqua, the Wind-Walker of the ancient myth-patterns, and the Wendigo of the northwoods Indians; between the Devourer, the War-God of the Quechua-Ayars, and Cthulhu of the mythos—to mention but two which occur to me and to which I have given some little thought. [Curwen]

Now, you know that there is a marked resemblance among the religious beliefs and myth-patterns of the Atlanteans, the Mayans, the Druids, and others, and we are constantly finding basic similarities, particularly connecting the seas and the skies, as for instance, in the god Quetzalcoatl, who bears parallelisms to the Hellenic Atlas, in that he supposedly came from some place in the Atlantic Ocean to bear the world on his shoulders. Not only in religion, but in pure legend also, as for instance, in the extension of god-credos to human giants, whose origin is supposedly also the sea—the western seas, to be precise, as did the Greek Titans, the island giants of Spanish tales, and the Cornwall giants of sunken Lyonesse. I mention this to point the curious linkage to tradition that goes back to primal times, when it was believed that great beings resided in the depths of the sea, a belief which clearly gave rise to that secondary belief about the origin of giants. We ought not to be surprised at the evidence of such cult-survivals as that on Ponape, since there is every precedent for it . . . [Lurker]

 . . . the Cthulhu myth-pattern . . . surviving with recognizable facets in newer religious symbols—in Quetzalcoatl and others among the Gods of Aztec, Mayan, and Inca religions; in the idols of Easter Island; in the ceremonial masks of the Polynesians and the Northwest Coast Indians, where the tentacle and octopoid shape which were the marks of Cthulhu persisted . . . [Seal]

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