Editing Cthulhu Mythos (section)

===First stage===
An ongoing theme in Lovecraft's work is the complete irrelevance of mankind in the face of the cosmic horrors that apparently exist in the universe. Lovecraft made frequent references to the "[[Great Old Ones]]", a loose pantheon of ancient, powerful [[deities]] from space who once ruled the Earth and have since fallen into a deathlike sleep.<ref name="Harms" />{{rp|viii}} While these monstrous deities were present in almost all of Lovecraft's published work (his second short story "[[Dagon (short story)|Dagon]]", published in 1919, is considered the start of the Mythos), the first story to really expand the pantheon of Great Old Ones and its themes is "[[The Call of Cthulhu]]", which was published in 1928.

Lovecraft broke with other pulp writers of the time by having his main characters' minds deteriorate when afforded a glimpse of what exists outside their perceived reality. He emphasized the point by stating in the opening sentence of the story that "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lovecraft |first=H.P. |title=The Call of Cuthulhu |date=2014 |publisher=Start Publishing LLC |isbn=978-1609772697 |location=Lanham, MD}}</ref>

Writer [[Dirk W. Mosig]] noted that Lovecraft was a "mechanistic materialist" who embraced the philosophy of [[Cosmicism#Cosmic indifferentism|cosmic indifferentism]] and believed in a purposeless, mechanical, and uncaring universe. Human beings, with their limited faculties, can never fully understand this universe, and the [[cognitive dissonance]] caused by this revelation leads to insanity, in his view.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Mosig|first1=Yozan Dirk W.|publisher=Gothic Press|editor=[[Gary William Crawford]]|url=https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1311861|title=Lovecraft: The Dissonance Factor in Imaginative Literature|date=1979}}</ref><ref name="Mariconda">{{Cite book |last=Mariconda |first=Steven J. |title=On the Emergence of "Cthulhu" & Other Observations |date=1995 |publisher=Necronomicon Press |isbn=978-0940884816 |location=West Warwick, RI}}</ref>

There have been attempts at categorizing this fictional group of beings. Phillip A. Schreffler argues that by carefully scrutinizing Lovecraft's writings, a workable framework emerges that outlines the entire "pantheon"{{mdash}}from the unreachable "Outer Ones" (e.g., [[Azathoth]], who occupies the centre of the universe) and "Great Old Ones" (e.g., Cthulhu, imprisoned on Earth in the sunken city of [[R'lyeh]]) to the lesser castes (the lowly slave [[shoggoth]]s and the [[Mi-Go]]).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shreffler |first=Philip A. |title=The H. P. Lovecraft Companion |date=1977 |publisher=Greenwood Press |isbn=978-0837194820 |location=Westport, CN |pages=156–157}}</ref>

David E. Schultz said Lovecraft never meant to create a canonical Mythos but rather intended his imaginary pantheon to serve merely as a background element.<ref name="Connors">{{Cite book |last=Connors |first=Scott |title=A Century Less a Dream: Selected Criticism on H. P. Lovecraft |date=2002 |publisher=Wildside Press |isbn=978-1587152153 |edition=1st |location=Holikong, PA}}</ref>{{rp|46, 54}} Lovecraft himself humorously referred to his Mythos as "Yog Sothothery" (Dirk W. Mosig coincidentally suggested the term ''Yog-Sothoth Cycle of Myth'' be substituted for ''Cthulhu Mythos'').<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mosig |first=Yōzan Dirk W. |title=Mosig at Last: A Psychologist looks at H. P. Lovecraft |date=1997 |publisher=Necronomicon Press |isbn=978-0940884908 |edition=1st |location=West Warwick, RI |page=28}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Yog-Sothothery |url=http://www.timpratt.org/611.html |access-date=November 28, 2012 |publisher=Timpratt.org}}</ref> At times, Lovecraft even had to remind his readers that his Mythos creations were entirely fictional.<ref name="Mariconda" />{{rp|33–34}}

The view that there was no rigid structure is expounded upon by [[S. T. Joshi]], who said

{{blockquote|Lovecraft's imaginary [[cosmogony]] was never a static system but rather a sort of aesthetic construct that remained ever adaptable to its creator's developing personality and altering interests.... There was never a rigid system that might be posthumously appropriated..... The essence of the mythos lies not in a pantheon of imaginary deities nor in a cobwebby collection of forgotten tomes, but rather in a certain convincing cosmic attitude.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Joshi |first=S. T. |title=Miscellaneous Writings |date=1995 |publisher=[[Arkham House]] |isbn=978-0870541681 |edition=1st |location=Sauk City, WI |pages=165–166 |author-link=S. T. Joshi}}</ref>}}

Price said Lovecraft's writings could at least be divided into categories and identified three distinct themes: the "Dunsanian" (written in a similar style as [[Lord Dunsany]]), "[[Arkham]]" (occurring in Lovecraft's fictionalized [[New England]] setting), and "Cthulhu" (the cosmic tales) cycles.<ref name="Price" />{{rp|9}} Writer Will Murray noted that while Lovecraft often used his fictional pantheon in the stories he ghostwrote for other authors, he reserved Arkham and its environs exclusively for those tales he wrote under his own name.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Van Hise |first=James |title=The Fantastic Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft |date=1999 |publisher=James Van Hise |edition=1st |location=Yucca Valley, CA |oclc=60496802 |asin=B000E9KQXS |pages=105–107}}</ref>

Although the Mythos was not formalized or acknowledged between them, Lovecraft did correspond, meet in person, and share story elements with other contemporary writers including [[Clark Ashton Smith]], [[Robert E. Howard]], [[Robert Bloch]], [[Frank Belknap Long]], [[Henry Kuttner]], [[Henry S. Whitehead]], and [[Fritz Leiber]]{{mdash}}a group referred to as the "Lovecraft Circle".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Joshi |first=S.T. |title=H.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism |chapter=Lovecraft Criticism: A Study |date=1980 |page=23 |publisher=[[Ohio University Press]] |isbn=978-0821405772 |location=Athens, OH}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book | last=Herron |first=Don |editor-last=Schweitzer |editor-first=Darrell |title=Discovering Classic Fantasy Fiction: Essays on the Antecedents of Fantastic Literature |chapter=Of the Master, Merlin, and H. Warner Munn |date=1996 |page=129 |publisher=Wildside Press |isbn=978-1587150043 |location=Gillette, NJ}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Weird Tales Story |date=1977 |editor-last=Weinberg |editor-first=Robert E. |editor-link=Robert Weinberg (author) |last=Long |first=Frank Belknap |author-link=Frank Belknap Long |page=49 |chapter=Recollections of Weird Tales |publisher=FAX Collector's Editions |isbn=0-913960-16-0}}</ref>

For example, Robert E. Howard's character [[Cthulhu Mythos biographies#Von Junzt, Friedrich Wilheim|Friedrich Von Junzt]] reads Lovecraft's ''[[Necronomicon]]'' in the short story "The Children of the Night" (1931), and in turn Lovecraft mentions Howard's ''[[Unaussprechlichen Kulten]]'' in the stories "Out of the Aeons" ([[1935 in literature|1935]]) and "The Shadow Out of Time" ([[1936 in literature|1936]]).<ref name="Price" />{{rp|6–7}} Many of Howard's original unedited ''[[Conan the Barbarian|Conan]]'' stories also involve parts of the Cthulhu Mythos.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Howard |first1=Robert E. |url=https://archive.org/details/comingofconanc00robe |title=The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian |last2=Schultz |first2=Mark |date=2003 |publisher=Del Rey/Ballantine Books |isbn=0345461517 |edition=1st |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/comingofconanc00robe/page/436 436] |url-access=limited}}</ref>