H.P. Lovecraft's old ones, cthulhu synthesis.

A reading of page 751 of the fictional Necronomicon, from The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft.

Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of Earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod Earth's field, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.

The Horror in Clay. Call of Cthulhu, by H.P. Lovecraft.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things—in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain. I think that the professor, too, intended to keep silent regarding the part he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him.

The Carol of the Old Ones
Lyrics by A.H. Leman, to the tune of ``Carol of the Bells'' by M. Leontovich:

There in the night stars are now right.
Eons have passed: now then at last
Prison walls break, Old Ones awake!
They will return: mankind will learn
New kinds of fear when they are here.
They will reclaim all in their name;
Hopes turn to black when they come back.
Ignorant fools, mankind now rules
Where they ruled then: it's theirs again
Stars brightly burning, boiling and churning
Bode a returning season of doom
Scary scary scary scary solstice
Very very very scary solstice
Up from the sea, from underground
Down from the sky, they're all around
They will return: mankind will learn
New kinds of fear when they are here
Look to the sky, way up on high
There in the night stars are now right.
Eons have passed: now then at last
Prison walls break, Old Ones awake!
Madness will reign, terror and pain
Woes without end where they extend.
Ignorant fools, mankind now rules
Where they ruled then: it's theirs again
Stars brightly burning, boiling and churning
Bode a returning season of doom
Scary scary scary scary solstice
Very very very scary solstice
Up from the sea, from underground
Down from the sky, they're all around.
Fear
(Look to the sky, way up on high
There in the night stars now are right)
They will return.

--Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, Call of Cthulhu

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” --call of Cthulhu
"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.."

They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky.Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R'lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him.

There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.

These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape — for did not this star-fashioned image prove it? — but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die...


synthesis:

Mankind dwells on the island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinite time and space, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of Earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. There are others, older than man's gods who think little or care about us. Not in the spaces we know, but between them,into the terrifying vistas of reality where they are imprisoned. In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. But that is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons can even death die.
Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. Look to the sky. There the night stars align as they did long ago. Up from the seas and underground arise the awakening old ones to reclaim what was once theirs. The old ones who were whispered to us in our dreams. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet; Whereby the prison walls crumble. We shall surely flee from the sight into madness or a dark oblivion. The mountains shall boil. the air shall burn. The unseen who now walk among us will glow brightly as hot iron.

When time is shattered, you will know, and be consumed in the forsaken darkness everlasting.