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Page 4 of 4 Derleth's involvement Derleth had his own take on the mythos and tried to make it conform to his own Roman Catholic values and dualism. Instead of a universe of meaninglessness and chaos, Derleth's mythos is a struggle of good versus evil.Derleth once wrote: As Lovecraft conceived the deities or forces of his mythos, there were, initially, the Elder Gods... [T]hese Elder Gods were benign deities, representing the forces of good, and existed peacefully at or near Betelgeuze in the constellation Orion, very rarely stirring forth to intervene in the unceasing struggle between the powers of evil and the races of Earth. These powers of evil were variously known as the Great Old Ones or the Ancient Ones...
—August Derleth, "The Cthulhu Mythos" Lovecraft was an atheist,and claimed that Kant's ethical system "is a joke." Because of this, Derleth's theories about the Cthulhu Mythos are inconsistent with Lovecraft's design. The Mythos was never intended to be a cohesive, singular entity; instead, it should be regarded as simply a collection of ideas that can be used in separate works to provoke the same emotions. Another difference with Derleth's mythos is that the Elder Gods never appear in Lovecraft's writings, except for one or two who appear as "Other Gods" such as Nodens in Lovecraft's "The Strange High House in the Mist" (though perhaps this is an example of how "very rarely [they stir] forth"; i.e., usually never). Furthermore, the Great Old Ones, or Ancient Ones, have no unified pantheon. Indeed, the term "Ancient Ones" appears in only one Lovecraft story, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (moreover, the story is actually a collaboration between Lovecraft and his friend and correspondent E. Hoffmann Price). Elemental theory Derleth also connected the deities of the Mythos to the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water. This system left gaps which Derleth filled in by creating the beings Ithaqua, representing air, and Cthugha, representing fire. However, the system has a few problems. For example, Derleth classified Cthulhu as a water elemental, but if this were so, how could he be trapped beneath the ocean and how could his psychic emanations be blocked by water? Another problem arises when applying the elemental theory to beings that function on a cosmic scale (such as Yog-Sothoth)—some authors have tried to get around this by creating a separate category of aethyr elementals for Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth. Finally, Derleth matched the earth beings against the fire beings and the air beings against the water beings, which is not consistent with the traditional elemental dichotomy (namely, that air opposes earth and fire opposes water). *Deity created by Derleth.
**Deity incorporated by Derleth. Conclusion To his credit, Derleth became a publisher of Lovecraft's stories after his death[20]. Lovecraft himself was very critical of his own writings and was often easily discouraged, especially when faced with any rejection of his work[21]. Were it not for Derleth, Lovecraft's writings and the Cthulhu Mythos might have remained largely unknown. See also
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