NationStates Jolt Archive

I think that most of you who have ever read much of HP Lovecraft's work has heard the classic Cthulu Rite chant:
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
i want to know how the heck do you pronounce that? sound files would be helpful.

So i guess not a lot of people know the chant?

edit: oops, double post ><

Actually, I do. But I have problems pronouncing it too.

I pronounce Ia! (I hunger) as ee-ya!
But it's ok to mispronounce it, the language isn't even human :P

I think that most of you who have ever read much of HP Lovecraft's work has heard the classic Cthulu Rite chant:
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
i want to know how the heck do you pronounce that? sound files would be helpful.

Ya! Ya! Cuth-who-lou fet-tang! Fen-gluey mug-glue-when-eff Cuth-who-lou are-lay wagga-neigh-gull fet-tang!

This are things man never meant to know. ;)

I think that most of you who have ever read much of HP Lovecraft's work has heard the classic Cthulu Rite chant:
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
i want to know how the heck do you pronounce that? sound files would be helpful.
Humans can only make rudimentary attempts at pronouncing it. It's in a language developed by the Great Old Ones, and suited to their vocal organs, not ours. Through proper rites one can ask the Old Ones to alter his vocal aparatus and allow him to speak the chant clearly and correctly, but most of us have to struggle along with pitifull, inadequate human vocal cords.

I should add that you really don't want to pronounce this anywhere close to correctly, unless you can run very, very fast. :p

I should add that you really don't want to pronounce this anywhere close to correctly, unless you can run very, very fast. :p
Or unless you have the proper sacrifices ready and have properly prepared the site of the ceremony. Then you'll be OK. (provided being stark, raving mad is considered OK)

I should add that you really don't want to pronounce this anywhere close to correctly, unless you can run very, very fast. :p

Nah - its a descriptive sentence, rather than an invocation.

Nah - its a descriptive sentence, rather than an invocation.
I don't have a copy of Call of Cthulhu handy right now so I may be wrong, but in the part where Inspector Legrasse led the raid on Castro and his fellow cultists in the Louisiana swamp weren't the cultists chanting that sentence? If so that would make it both a descriptive sentence and an invocation.

I don't have a copy of Call of Cthulhu handy right now so I may be wrong, but in the part where Inspector Legrasse led the raid on Castro and his fellow cultists in the Louisiana swamp weren't the cultists chanting that sentence? If so that would make it both a descriptive sentence and an invocation.

It's basically both a greeting and an invitation to lunch. :p

If so that would make it both a descriptive sentence and an invocation.

Only if they were actually invoking something with it. cf. Our Father, who art in heaven...

...Cuth-who-lou...Close, but not quite...

Great C'thulhu's name is pronounced closer to this: Cut-ool-hoo. Not for the Great Old Ones, our soft human sillibants! Mind you, it doesn't much matter if you misprnounce the name anyway - Dread C'thulhu will still blast your mind to flinders. At the very least. He (it?) might smash you to a paste, or eat you, if he decides he likes you...

Close, but not quite...

Great C'thulhu's name is pronounced closer to this: Cut-ool-hoo.

Not according to a chap called Lovecraft its not - Khlul'hloo.

He (it?) might smash you to a paste, or eat you, if he decides he likes you...

Ascribing human emotions such as 'liking' to Cthulhu is deeply mistaken, especially with regard to humans: we are irrelevant to him.

Anyhoo, Yog Sothoth is much cooler than Cthulhu. He doesn't spend all his time in his sunken city dead and dreaming. He actually is busy doing stuff.

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 fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.
—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror"


Plus he, like the deep ones and the ghouls, can father children with human women, which makes him somehow related to us.

Not according to a chap called Lovecraft its not - Khlul'hloo.Which makes both our previously posted versions wrong - I guess we're both squid-bait.

:p

IRT "Like" I don't mean "I feel warmth towards that person" but rather "That looks tasty" or "l think I'd like to squash that bug." Of course we're insignificant and irrelevent - far lower than gnats are to humans. Just as our motives are unknowable to gnats, so are Great C'thulhu's to us, but sometimes, we notice the gnats. Sometimes, (God forbid!), Dread C'thulhu notices us...

He notices some of us.

Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around tall idols which the Great Ones shewed them; idols brought in dim eras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.

taken from an online version of "The Call of Cthulhu" that I just found here.
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecallofcthulhu.htm

Plus he, like the deep ones and the ghouls, can father children with human women, which makes him somehow related to us.I wouldn't take that as any kind of indication of relationship - Any more than I'm related to a black hole. In fact, I suspect I'm far more closely related to a black hole than Yog Sothoth is to anything human. It simply means that Yog Sothoth is more inclined to use humans to further his (its?) unknowable motives than some of the other hyper-dimensional beings out there.

I wouldn't take that as any kind of indication of relationship - Any more than I'm related to a black hole. In fact, I suspect I'm far more closely related to a black hole than Yog Sothoth is to anything human. It simply means that Yog Sothoth is more inclined to use humans to further his (its?) unknowable motives than some of the other hyper-dimensional beings out there.
I like to think he's somehow genetically similar enough to hybridize with us.

Hmmm.

No, I rather doubt the Great Old Ones use anything that a modern biologist would recogzie as DNA as their building blocks... I take it more as an example of a Great Old One bending its will and power towards a desired end - The results are real, though the process and mechanics are totally alien to our perceptions.

Hmmm.

No, I rather doubt the Great Old Ones use anything that a modern biologist would recogzie as DNA as their building blocks... I take it more as an example of a Great Old One bending its will and power towards a desired end - The results are real, though the process and mechanics are totally alien to our perceptions.
Well it's still kinda cool. Plus the kids'll have blood sucking tentacles!

Plus the kids'll have blood sucking tentacles!
Now, that is kinda cool. :D Plus, they can terrorize your boss, if he doesn't give you that raise!

Now, that is kinda cool. :D Plus, they can terrorize your boss, if he doesn't give you that raise!
you don't need to terrorize him per se. just show him a picture.

Now i think of it, he may think it's photoshopped. better bring them to work then.

Do you hear the pipes, Cthulhu?
They were being played by shoggoths on the shores of Carcosa
Can you hear our prayers, Cthulhu?
Deep in sunken R'lyeh waiting for the rightness of a star?
Where the Deep Ones worship Dagon, Mother Hydra in sea chambers built afar?

Chorus:
There was chanting in the air that night
The stars were right, Cthulhu!
You were dreaming of your destiny
Beneath the sea, Cthulhu!
Though the Elder Gods have cast you down
Have no regret
As the Al-Azif has prophesized, R'lyeh will rise, Cthulhu!

We are waiting O Cthulhu
Sacrificing virgins while the nightgaunts hover 'gainst the moon
Seeking power O Cthulhu
Drawing sigils in their blood and Elder Signs and other runes
They were dying drenched in madness and the eldritch vapors of a thousand dooms
(chorus)

You are sleeping Great Cthulhu
Never knowing the unspeakable things we do in your name
But don't worry Great Cthulhu
We will carry on destroying without sanity or shame
Till the universe resounds with all the sounds of lost souls shrieking out in pain
(chorus)

As the Al-Azif has prophesized, R'lyeh will rise, Cthulhu!

I suppose, everyone here knows this:

http://www.macguff.fr/goomi/unspeakable/WEBIMAGES/CARTOON/u53-invoc4.jpg