![]() This pattern of engagement with religious topics repeats throughout Lovecraft’s corpus, especially the several dozen short stories that have come to be called the “Cthulhu mythos,” since they share much of the same cosmology and narrative world as “The Call of Cthulhu.” Lovecraft’s literary successors, led by August Derleth, who co-founded Arkham House Publishers to promulgate Lovecraft’s work, expanded this rich religious vision to an even greater extent, as did later authors ( Mackley 2013). Perhaps most famously, his signature short story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” centers on the ancient god Cthulhu, his human worshippers, and those who become enmeshed in the mystery of this “dead, yet dreaming” god’s fate. Lovecraft’s stories involve demonic beings, “blasphemous cults,” and mysterious sacred texts held by orders of priests and priestesses. His work features malevolent supernatural entities that the author and his imitators variously refer to as Old Ones, Elder Gods, Outer Ones, or simply gods. Lovecraft’s (1890–1937) short stories-the most famous of which, “The Call of Cthulhu,” has led to a literary subculture and a shared mythos employed by Lovecraft’s successors. Tied to his nativist views of social decline, I argue that Lovecraft expresses in his fiction a peculiar form of millennialism, “anti-millennialism,” which entails the reversal of traditional millennialism, offering no hope in a collective salvation, but rather expectation that the imminent future would bring only decline. This article offers a close analysis of millennialism within Lovecraft’s thought, especially as expressed in three of his “Cthulhu mythos” stories: “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Dunwich Horror,” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” This article considers Lovecraft’s formative experiences and non-fiction writings so as to contextualize his approach and millennial outlook. Despite this presence of religion in Lovecraft’s work, scholars of religion have paid relatively little attention to Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos, with a few notable exceptions. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
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