Chaosium Digest Volume 25, Number 5 Date: Sunday, April 12, 1998 Number: 4 of 4 Contents: Gathering Darkness, Part Two (Evan Franke) CTHULHU NOW -------------------- From: Evan Franke Subject: Gathering Darkness: A Keynote Address, Part Two System: Call of Cthulhu [continued from V25.4] EUROPE This continent is a paradox. Attached to Asia and across the middle sea from Africa, it can be seen as the lesser of three sister continents. Humans came later to Europe, as did social and technical advances diffused from parts of Africa and Asia where they were independently developed. Still Europe is a cradle for many great traditions, and proved even better as a crucible for refining foreign elements brought by trade, conquest, and invasion. For in the end, through barbaric periods and dark ages, Europe holds the foundations for the modern world. For better or worst, the dominant forms of economy, urbanization, and modern technology in the world flowed from this continent with its successive world empire builders. While in the past there have been brighter spots on the globe, and in the future the world may see a swing in the influence of human ideas, the present still belongs to realities dreamed and refined in Europe. Human Geography Europe as a continent demonstrates an incredibly diverse human geography, inserted into a varied and yet tiny landscape. Here there are elements that resonate strongly and clearly with what we see as the modern world. London, Paris, and Vienna, Berlin, these are modern cities, with modern culture, enriched by the presence of ancient foundations and landscapes with long memories. At some basic level the essence of the modern Western world exists in Europe. This is just a superficial reading, however. Europe is a small scale continent in terms of area, but in terms of complexity and diversity of language, culture, and societies, Europe is a rich and unhomogenized collection of very old societies. In the last centuries, much of that diversity has been masked or suppressed by the emergence of the nation-state (a European original), which emphasized territorial integrity, a single national language, and a centralized capital which held predominance as a cultural and social showpiece. We understand Europe mainly through the image presented through the centers of the powerful nation states, England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and perhaps Spain and Poland. There are, however, so many more facets to European society: different ethnic groups, traditions, and dialects spread between grand cities and tiny farming villages put there through historical accident or design. Yet, from outside we see these tiny villages and forgotten enclaves fleetingly, or as quaint sideshows. However, these are as much a defining part of European reality as London, Paris, or Berlin. Witness the way reality is bending in the 1990's around the ethnic and religious fragmentation of former nation states like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, shattering the illusion of the unitary state. Mythography Each foundation laid in Europe seems to rest upon something just a little older. Though much of what built Europe were ideas from Asia and Africa, Europe sustained quite a few innovations of its own, and successfully integrated new concepts to build societies with enduring cultures. One can find incredibly sustained traditions in building sites, libraries, and in ancient family lines. In Europe, the weight of history and tradition are heavy and memories are long. This means that Mythos influence not only is entrenched, but has probably been maintained in any given instance (a building site, a burial ground, a family line, a sacred shrine) for many centuries. Not only that, but this weight of history has frequently cloaked forbidden things in accepted tradition and respectability. However, the fortunate reality of Europe is that with such enduring institutions, there are frequently enduring records. Literacy was imported to Europe, but once there, was always maintained, sometimes widely, sometimes by a tiny elite, but there are records, observations, chronicles and commentaries which date very, very far back. The matter is one of finding such things, and that is not easy. It is not just that certain forces may not want one to make discoveries, but also that vast libraries and archives are maintained by all to frequently tight fisted governments, private organizations, or scholarly institutions, which, while never having been able to catalog the material themselves, will not easily let others have access. A final consideration of leads to and influence by the Mythos in Europe is the scope of the European empires. Spain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and England, just for starters, all had incredible influence throughout the world with empires of trade and conquest, and they all brought many things home: objects, people, written records. All of these spoils of empire had an impact on Europe at one time, and many residues of that impact, whether material or conceptual, are still to be found buried in the culture of Europe. NORTH AMERICA This continent consists of three substantial nations: Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Though their history is intimately related, there have been at times, no three stranger bedfellows. The overlay of three nation-states onto the continent, however, fools many people into missing the incredible mix of cultures, histories, and societies ranged across North America, some of which have readily ignored the artificial boundaries maintained by countries. There are millions of stories to be found in North America for this has been a continent where worlds have collided again and again. Human Geography The physical geography of North America is as complex as any on the planet. North America extends from the tropics in southern Mexico to the frozen ice of the Arctic Circle, and in between there are generous swaths of deserts, prairie, forests, and agricultural landscapes, as well as great lakes, rivers, mountains and valleys. The human influence on the land has been pervasive, and North America houses some of the greatest urban populations in the world. Yet there are still broad open spaces, remote natural settings and empty lands to contrast with the vast built environments of New York, Los Angeles, or Mexico City. The debate of when humankind first entered North America rages on, but a safe bet seems about 35,000 years ago. These peoples came as hunters across the Bering Strait in several waves of immigration. Every habitable environment was eventually filled with people, and many different ways of life became established, from settled agriculturalists, who eventually supported dense urban societies, to scattered hunter-gatherers, who moved in a yearly round, eternally moving with the cycle of the seasons. These peoples altered the landscape of North America, some in subtle ways, others through massive transformations. Most of these alterations harmonized well with the land, though some resulted in catastrophes like agricultural collapse. The people lived as people around the globe have always lived, mostly in fellowship, sometimes in intense conflict. With the coming of the imperial European powers, conflict intensified and life changed forever. In Mexico the high cultures of the Aztecs and the Maya were crushed and absorbed into the Spanish Empire. England and France played one native people off against the other, though the English were more apt to deport or destroy whole peoples. Eventually, through conquest, and especially through the spread of disease (much unintentional, some very intentional) the native peoples lost the bulk of their populations, and the land became "virtually uninhabited." Those that were left were pushed aside, exterminated, or absorbed, and the colonizers and conquerors defined the modern reality of the nations of North America. Everywhere on this continent can now be seen the influence of colonial society, of pioneers, of people forced into slavery, and a continuing stream of immigrants, refugees, and exiles. The already complex human landscape of Native America has been scrambled and overlain with an additionally complex set of ideas and objects brought from every corner of the globe. If Europe was able to absorb and refine ideas with which she ruled the world, then North America has gone even farther with the concept. But not without great pain, for the nations of North America are nations made tumultuous through their diversity, held together by vision and promise, torn apart through betrayal and hypocrisy. Every kind of a ideal and horrific human landscape can be found in North America, it is a continent that has it all. Mythography Much like Australia, the original inhabitants of North America, however diverse, had a certain underlying collective unconscious, a link from the past, defining the present and guiding them into the future. Even more so than in Australia, however, these unifying ties were disrupted by the colonialist invaders. The colonial powers brought their own baggage, the old ways from Europe, some of which could blend surprisingly with native beliefs, others which we totally foreign concepts. The conversion of the character of North America from a land laden with meaning grown out of itself, to a land with meanings imposed from the outside, has been continually complicated with the vast array of new meanings imported by immigrants, willing and unwilling. Many Asians and Africans came to North America much against their will and yet they contributed to the mythic landscape, and many more people voluntarily came from Europe, Asia and Africa to escape their old realities and to transform into a new people. These peoples have created new cities, new technologies and many new religions. For the Mythos this has meant many things. The ways that native peoples coped with the Mythos, after long trial and error, have been suppressed or lost in many cases. Despair and greed has turned many towards the Mythos. However, the diversity of relations to the Mythos has complicated Mythos designs since differing sinister traditions have worked against each other as much as they have worked against the Humanity. Also the diversity of peoples in North America has allowed for many traditional ways of opposing the Mythos to bring their best ideas together and form even stronger shields against the horror of Mythos entities. These few new hopes notwithstanding, what has been lost still cannot be replaced entirely with what has been gained, and some of the creatures of the Mythos have learned that alloying traditions can work strongly in their favor as well. Added to this is the immensity of urban technological society on the continent. High technology is still relatively new to humankind, and it has turned more and more towards the Mythos as an ally rather than served as a defense for modern Humanity. The human heart of darkness lurks everywhere in the urbanized landscape of North America, and the Mythos feeds well of it. Further, and of great concern, the involvement of technology in our everyday life advances faster than most humans comprehend its impact, and as North America hurtles into its future we must be wary of what ghosts lurk in our machines. PACIFIC ISLANDS The vast Pacific Ocean is peppered with a variety of Islands, most of which constitute Polynesia. While widely separated, the Islands held within the vast triangle formed between Easter Island, New Zealand, and Hawaii were settled by a single population which, in a vast and long term migration, slowly but resolutely navigated from island to island, creating unique expressions of an underlying common culture. Human Geography There are all variety of paradises balanced against truly challenging landscapes within Polynesia. Polynesia began to be settled some 3,500 years ago, but that colonization was not complete until just 1,000 years ago with the settlement of New Zealand. Few ties between islands were ever maintained until European explorers rediscovered the links between these scattered islands. They, of course, divided up Polynesia into spheres of influence, portioning out islands to different imperialist governments, and now the islands of Polynesia pertain to or are administered by European founded states. Mythography Polynesia has an extraordinary mythology based on concepts of the sacred, royalty, sacrifice, and usurpation. The rulers have often been seen as a separate ethnic group or race from the ruled. Polynesian culture is, of course, intimately linked to the sea. There are fascinating ruins, remains and mysteries, all apparently man-made, throughout this Pacific region. The amount of Mythos penetration into Polynesia may be great, but, the Polynesians may also have developed, out of necessity, some of the most active and effective defenses against the watery menaces of Cthulhu's kin. While Harold Hadley Copeland's pioneering studies from the early part of this century (e.g. "Polynesian Mythology, with a Note on the Cthulhu Legend-Cycle") opened the scholarship on the interaction of the Mythos and these islands, little research has followed and we have only begun to learn from the history and cultures of the region. SOUTH and CENTRAL AMERICA Linked by shared historical experiences and culture, these regions have all to frequently been subjected to offhand generalizations obscuring the large and small regional differences which makes this continental area a place of magic and mystery. These lands house the largest zones of tropical biodiversity in the world and contain vast mountainous regions where humans created unique and enduring ways of life. This is also a region of continuing human conflict and emblematic examples of human cruelty. Once these areas were the chessboard upon which the struggle of the superpowers played out in the western hemisphere. Now it is an area of uncertain future, with possibilities for economic renewal and utter social disintegration. These are lands of contrasts, of places more European than Europe, of people steadfastly true to their indigenous heritage, of vastly rich and incredibly poor, of virgin forest and stifling urbanism. There are mysteries here, and the map to both heaven and hell drawn out of the human heart. Human Geography Central America sits firmly in the tropics and has colorful locales that belie the difficulty of every day life for the majority of its inhabitants. South America seems dominated by both the Amazon rain forest and the Andes mountain range, but also has vast deserts, coastal oases, vast pampas (plains), frigid fjords, and coniferous forests. All of these environments were inhabited by well adapted native peoples who had begun to fill these spaces between 20,000 and 14,000 years ago. There were agriculturalists, hunter gatherers, and pastoralists, many interdependent on one another. The Andes mountains and the Peruvian coast proved areas which spawned notable high cultures: urban centered theocracies and empires which collected and spread symbols and ideas which became almost universal throughout South America. Central America and northern South America received influence from the high cultures in Mexico and Peru, but most of their societies remained independent and unaligned until the arrival of the Spanish. Groups that lived in the vast rain forests remained largely uncontacted, even through much of the Spanish and Portuguese conquests. These peoples were largely able to escape the impact of invaders whether they be imperial conquerors of from Inka or the Spanish Crown, until the modern era. The policies of the colonial powers have played an enormous role in creating the societies of these regions. Most models of organization came from the Iberian Peninsula, which created a very stratified society based on a combination of class and ethnicity, with the higher classes living in the cities, the highest class, of European stock, in the centralized capital, and the lowest classes belonging to the indigenous ethnic groups predominantly living impoverished rural or urban existences. Between the European transplants and the oppressed indigenous populace is the vast bulk of middle and lower classes of mixed ethnicity, the mestizos. In general the countries are run by an elite from the capital, supported by enormous and corrupt branches of state bureaucracies and the military. Law is applied unevenly, and money and connections are what get one by. Introduced into this for the modern world is the vast scourge of the drug trade, largely based on cocaine. Coca, which is grown throughout the tropical Andean region, is a plant with many medicinal and ritual uses throughout the region, but once chemically processed, it becomes a potent, addictive, destructive, and lucrative drug. The money generated in most countries by the drug trade rivals that of most of their other exports. Money buys prestige and power, and the influence wielded by leading drug traders rivals the governments in many countries. Military officials are generally pleased to look the other way if they can have money and arms to fight revolutionaries, and government officials pad their income and often fill Swiss bank accounts, while some terrorists add to their ideological cannon a sustaining interest in the drug trade. With all of the other problems of poverty, class and ethnic oppression, corruption, and militarism, drugs add a deadly factor into the culture and politics of the region. Mythography There were many diverse facets to the mythic unconscious of this region. In Central and South America, the organized cults and spiritual practices were largely destroyed, but the native folk religions combined with Catholicism to form new indigenous belief systems, superficially European, but intrinsically native. Spirit beliefs and Shamanism still exist throughout South America, especially in the Amazon. In the High Culture centers throughout South America, such as Cuzco, Moche, Chan Chan, and Tiwanaku, there may have been influence from the powers of the Mythos, but this is a largely untested hypothesis. Certainly South and Central America present resources which beings of the Mythos may desire, such as the rare genetic combinations from the diverse biology, mineral wealth, and human resources. How native peoples have dealt with the Mythos and how they may have been influenced or resisted that influence still requires research. Certainly all of the urban, impoverished landscape is a hotbed for Mythos activity, as is the drug trade. Violence, suffering and destruction are rife throughout the region, and the negative energy is consequently palpable throughout much of the territory. There are many undiscovered places on this continent, there is a feeling of secrets still, in the mountain peaks, in the deep jungle, buried in the deserts. Whether these secrets are human, pre-human or extraterrestrial, has yet to be seen. CONCLUSION Early students of the Mythos tended to believe that civilized Europeans were the least influenced by the Mythos, while non-western cultures, with different moral ideals and values, must be the most Mythos influenced. Now, after decades of historical and anthropological research, we find that Western civilization may simply be the least aware of Mythos influence, while traditional non-western cultures are much more aware of the Mythos, and the majority take measures to shield themselves from it. The landscape of the human heart is reflected in the way that Humanity has shaped its environment. From this brief survey, we can see that the dangers to our world and our species flow most directly from ourselves. Surely the Mythos has had a hand in crafting our doom, but our own participation must be our first concern. Humanity dwells far too often in its heart of darkness, but I believe that with study and perseverance a light of hope may lead us out of darkness long enough to give hope to our children and their children. With knowledge and courage, we can hold back the tide of darkness a little longer by defeating our first and worst enemy: ourselves. --