Necronomicon [cont.]
Cthonie is known in the Orphic lore as “an abode of demons.” The word demon is derived from the Greek “daimon” which signifies super-human forces but can also signify a kind of muse or spirit of inspiration. The poet Hesiod (who gave us the story of Pandora’s box) wrote of daimons as men who, in death, gain a kind of power or energy (see my review of War in Heaven in this thread). The evil connotation of a demon is essentially a Christian invention. We should understand Cthonie as being full of super-human or incalculable powers. In terms of Cthulhu’s dreams, these would fall under daimon as a spirit of inspiration as it is one of these dreams that inspires the sculpture of Wilson in the story “The Call of Cthulhu”:
This species of spider was discovered in 1994 and was named by its discoverer Pimoa cthulhu.
The Mad Arab of the “Simonomicon” makes persistent use of the name “Kutulu” and both Crowley and Lovecraft, completely independent of one another it would seem, made use of the word “tulu.” Lovecraft referred to Tulu-metal as a kind of sacred magnetic stone once used as currency in his story “The Mound” (1929-30) while Crowley’s tulu is a word or phrase from his “moon language” that means “shall attain” or “that attained” or “who attained.” Oddly, in his Liber Stella e Rubeae, Crowley uses tulu in a ritual that he specifies should be performed upon “…a fair altar in the midst, extended upon a black stone.” One can only wonder what kind of stone Crowley meant. (For what it’s worth, the Tulu are also a Dravidian people of India who speak a language also called Tulu.) In his commentary on his Book of the Law, Crowley claims “CTHAH 666” is what the spirit Aiwass (whom he claims dictated the book to him) meant by “Abomination of Desolation” adding up to 718.
The Commentaries of AL: Chapter III
In “The Mound,” Tulu is also a god who brought the Tulu-stone to earth. He makes later reference in the story to “the squatting octopus-headed thing…called Tulu” and goes on to connect it to Cthulhu. The story is a wealth of information of the Old Ones. For example, they were half-ghost and did not age or reproduce but “flickered eternally between flesh and spirit.” However, they still needed to breathe so when they shut themselves inside the earth, great caverns from the surface provide them with air but every so often, a hapless straggler or intrepid explorer finds his way down one of these caverns and never returns. (The authorship of the story is attributed to Zealia Bishop, one of his many protégés, but it was a complete re-write by Lovecraft that ended up seeing print in abridged form but, as always, he gave all the credit to the protégé.)
Black stones from “out there” figure prominently into religion. Mircea Eliade referenced the kings of Malaya keeping a block of iron which was held as sacred likely due to the reverence that peoples around the world held for pure iron, which before the Iron Age, could only be found in meteorites. Just as the Tulu-metal was used as currency by the Indians of Mexico in Lovecraft’s story, Indians of the American Southwest and in Mexico did, in fact, use pieces of the huge meteorite that formed the enormous crater at Canyon Diablo in Arizona as currency in pre-Columbian times. The sacred stone at Delphi in Ancient Greece was believed by the Greeks to have been thrown to the earth by the Titan Kronos. In the Hebrew bible, Jacob sleeps by resting his head on a betyl stone and has a dream about a ladder or stairway (the Ladder of Lights?) leading from earth to heaven up to the very throne of God. The Hebrew word for meteorite is “betyl.” When Jacob awakes, he builds a temple around that stone.
Conical meteorites are considered the most valuable. Even today, meteorites fetch a lot of money. One woman’s $300 car was destroyed by a large one. A collector purchased the stone from her for $69,000. Another collector gave her $10,000 for the car.
Another type of venerated black stone isn’t actually a stone at all but glass. They are called tektites and no one is sure where they come from. Some scientists say tektites were earthly debris forced into space from various extra-terrestrial impacts and then fell back to earth. Other say tektites were ejected from the moon by violent volcanic activity. The only thing both sides agree on is that tektites fell through the atmosphere. Large samples are exceedingly rare although there exists one in excess of 50 lbs. They date from about 14 million years ago.