On the Origin of the Gods

On the Origin of the Gods: Ancient and Modern

by E. Hoffmann

How do gods arise? What is the origin of the gods? It was asserted in my essay on the Egyptians that language and mythology arise together; now it is necessary to employ a deeper examination of the mechanism that gives rise to this state of affairs.

We notice that animals try to communicate their emotional states to each other and to us-a cat purrs, a dog growls, etc. The difference between humans and animals is that humans can imagine an activity or emotional state without preforming the activity or being in the emotional state. Although, it must be admitted that if a person spends too much time imagining an emotional state they will end up in that state in an attenuated form. We can also attach a trigger to imagine an activity or emotional state; this is the origin of language. Imagining is a process of sublation. When we can either imagine an activity or state without preforming the activity or emotional state, we have turned that scenario into a higher order thought: sublation. When scenarios and emotional states are sublated we call this thinking. In thinking we can compare scenarios, tear them apart or join them with other scenarios. This process of the imagination continues to happen when we sleep. In sleep the imagination has greater freedom, due to its being freed from the limitations of the physical or waking world. In dreams we see the strangest combinations of scenarios and emotions. It would seem emotional content drives dreams. In the dream world, we try to solve our problems in the most fantastic ways. There are stories throughout history where solutions to problems happened in dreams. This has conferred a numinous quality on the dreamworld. It is well known that the practice of incubation was the most common way to communicate with the gods in the ancient world. This caused dream imagery being used as religious imagery. To have a god, we still need one more element. That element is projection. Projection is the primary way humans deal with the world.

To illustrate the power of projection, let us look to the concept of ownership. Ownership is the process of projecting emotion onto the physical world. When we own something we project our emotion onto the owned object. Legal systems give an objective framework to this projection. The legal system tells a person what he can and cannot project his emotions on to. A man can project his emotions on his wife or house, but cannot do this for someone elses wife or house. Here we have the whole basis of law. Projection also leads to personalization. When we project emotions on to a thing, we tend to think of the thing as having the projected emotions. Observe how children project emotions onto toys. They tend to name the object they project on, and have conversations with these objects.

Gods are dream images projected and personalized as controlling principles in the world or cosmos. These dream images of gods tend to take human form with the heads and faces of animals. It would seem the head or face was always regarded as a controlling feature or the key to personality from earliest times. It is often the feeling of an animal that is projected and personalized in the head or face, such as the god Sobek. Sobek can be said to be in the projected and personalized feeling of the crocodile. This is also found in demonologies. Demons in grimoires are usually depicted as having human form with animal or bestial faces.

When one of these dream images is accepted by a community of people, it is chosen because it represents the emotions and desires of the community.

F.H. Bradley when writing about religious miracles expressed the opinion that we should not believe anything happened in ancient times that does not still happen today. Let us now turn Bradley's dictum around. Do we still see this process happening today? We can answer with an unqualified yes. What diverts us from seeing the process continuation is that it no longer happens in religious institutions. The heads of the current churches are as against inspiration as the most hard headed atheist-materialist. Since organized religion takes a dim view of inspiration, it has moved into the genre of fantasy literature.

Most scholars of literature regard Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel. Mary Shelley claimed she got the inspiration to write Frankenstein in a waking dream. She is said to have had a vision of the “pale medical student” that would become the hero of her novel. This is a modern myth that has become very popular, but we still lack a god.

To find the first fantasy writer to invent a new pantheon of gods, we must turn to the Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany. Lord Dunsany invented a fantasy world called Pegana, along with active gods. Again, we find Lord Dunsany's inspiration came from dreams. All the gods and the lands of Pegana are but a dream. Lord Dunsany's writings never gained much popularity outside of fantasy circles, but he was a big inspiration to other fantasy writers. One in particular will be the subject of the rest of this essay: H.P. Lovecraft.

H.P. Lovecraft had one of the most extraordinary imaginations in history. To illustrate the power of Lovecraft's imagination we must examine a condition known by psychology as Isolated Sleep Paralysis, or I.S.P. It is commonly called the “Old Hag Syndrome” or “hag attacks”. I.S.P. Occurs in every culture and age, although the imagery of the condition is conditioned by the culture the sufferer belongs to. It is undoubtedly the source for the modern alien abduction phenomenon. The best book written on the subject is “The Terror That Comes in the Night” by David Hufford. In the book Hufford breaks the phenomenon into four characteristics: Awakening from sleep, hearing or seeing someone enter the room, feeling pressure on the chest, and an inability to move or cry out. A typical case of I.S.P. Would go something like: a person wakes up and hears footsteps. She sees a figure enter the room with burning red eyes. She tries to move or cry out but cannot. She feels an intense feeling of fright. The figure settles on her chest, then it is over. The sleeper either really wakes up or is able to move around and just feels confused. Sometimes an out of body experience can occur.

Now let us turn to Lovecraft's experience of I.S.P. Lovecraft started having these experiences when he was six years old. For Lovecraft's experience we shall turn to Donald Tyson's reconstruction of the experience in his book “The Dreamworld of H.P. Lovecraft.” Tyson has reconstructed the experience from his letters; I have edited the account to save time.

“..a six year old boy lies like that on his back in bed, staring sightlessly through the impenetrable darkness, a quilt clutched under his prominent chin....his mind is fixed on one thing-to stay awake, no matter how hard the effort, no matter what the cost...but he is so very tired. His eyelids droop. They come, as they always do, sliding up the window sash and stepping noiselessly into his room, darkness against darkness, naked bodies edged with flickering silver light that defines their shapes, slanted pairs of blood-red eyes bob in the black like ghostly lanterns as they surround his bed. Never do they utter a word- how could they, for they have no mouths. Membranous wings lie folded against their backs. Slender barbed tails flick the air restlessly. Without a rustle they draw the covers off his bed. He sees them as if floating in the air above-sees his own body shiver on the sheet unable to move, unable to scream. It has happened so many times, but its inevitability only makes the horror worse.

Long black fingers clutch at the flesh of his belly, lifting him, twisting him through the opened window and into the night sky, over the city. The stars turn and roll beneath him as the creatures pass him back and forth, their touch an insidious tickling sensation..faster, higher for an eternity they carry him on, flapping leathern wings until the familiar New England landscape is transformed into something alien and terrifying. He glimpses skylines of strange domed cities and silhouettes of alien temples to unknown gods...at last tiring of their amusement, they allow him to drop...as he tumbles screaming.”

The above account should give some idea of the extraordinary power of Lovecraft's imagination. What makes this account more impressive is that Lovecraft was an atheist from an early age. Lovecraft remained a materialist and atheist throughout his life. He believed the arguments for God were on the same level as the arguments for Santa Claus.

If Lovecraft had lived in 1000 BCE he would have been regarded as a prophet, in the middle ages or early Renaissance as a warlock or possessed. Lovecraft was living in the early twentieth century, so he became a writer of fantastic fiction. Tyson speculates that Lovecraft wrote in order to gain some sort of control over his own dream life.

We must understand something of Lovecraft's fiction before examining the god Lovecraft created. Maurice Levy has written an admirable study of Lovecraft's fiction. Levy contends that the horror in Lovecraft's fiction always comes from the depths of the abyss. From far away, the alien. It may be from the depths of outer space, the deep sea, or the long dead past. The alien god s of Lovecraft are seen as evil by humans, but are not intrinsically evil. They have their own agenda, and regard humans as insects that get in their way. This is why Lovecraft is compared to Franz Kafka; humans are just not all that important. The horror of Lovecraft can also be genetic, from a corrupted bloodline. The gods of Lovecraft seem obsessed with mutiny wit humans to invade the human realm; they are so alien they cannot exist in the normal space time continuum. The most important god Lovecraft created was named Cthulhu.

The reason Cthulhu is the most important god Lovecraft created is because he is the most popular. For a god to be more than a dream image it must resonate with people.

In appearance Cthulhu has a humanoid form with the head of a squid or octopus; with a face full of writhing tentacles. Note, the comparison with the Egyptian gods and popular representation of demons. As with the Egyptian gods let us look to the head of Cthulhu to give us the clue to his personality: let us look into the face of the god in order to understand him. The octopus or squid head impresses us with his sheer alienness. The squid and octopus are both creatures of the depths. Unlike the Egyptian god Anubis with the head of a dog there is no familiarity. Cthulhu represents a new feeling projected out onto a god.

Lovecraft lived though World War I. This was a time when people began to recognize that technology was going to transform the world. World War I started out looking like most wars of history, with marching infantry and horse cavalry. It ended with tanks, air planes, and submarines. Impersonal technologies were changing the world. No longer did a soldier have to see an enemy to kill them, a gas canister fired by long range artillery killed people instead. With a new impersonality never before known to history, World War I destroyed the optimism of the nineteenth century. Now technology could kill as easily as it could help humankind. This is the feeling of Cthulhu, he is alien but he is also us. He is the projected feelings and emotions of humankind. Lovecraft's fiction is also about the transformation of individuals and groups by genetic meddling from outside forces. Is this fear of genetic meddling an intricate expression of the very real questions genetic engineering shall soon force upon us? Do we choose to become better, smarter, more beautiful versions of our present selves or do we truly become the spawn of Cthulhu?