For the past 25 years, I have been a worshipper of Cthulhu. I have practised His magicq and His rites, I have studied His lore; through dreams, visions and books and I have tried in every way to conform to the Way of Cthulhu, a transformation as Painful as it is Glorious. In some, or most respects, I have been successful; from time to time, extremely so.

My life was turned upside down in 1969, when I first was introduced to the alluring lore of the Great Ones. When young people in those days mainly were interested in social and political matters, with a dash of peace & love, I became entranced, as did the seamen of Odyssevs, by the Call of Cthulhu. I have travelled all over the world to search for relics and traces of the Old cults. Some journeys have been a success, others have not.

During my time working with, and worshipping this (-ese) entities, I have come in close contact with the Greatest of them all; Cthulhu. He has taught me strange and wonderful secrets during my sleep, secrets best not told to the faint-hearted or the fool.

For some time now, I have been able to access the Internet from my home, I have read alt.horror.cthulhu regularily, and from time to time visited the diverse home pages with assorted Cthulhu- and Lovecraft-related material.

The thing that upsets me the most is that some people have made it popular to regard Cthulhu as funny. They write "funny" songs about Him, there are Cthulhu-jokes, and "funny" Cthulhu-stories.

During all my years dealing with Cthulhu, I have come to know many aspects of Him. He can (justifiably) said to be fair, intelligent, enormous, ugly, great, cruel, gargantuan, tentacled, angry, brilliant, raving, etc., etc., BUT HE IS _NEVER_ FUNNY!

This misconception of Him shows a great lack of thorough research and real interest. The strange thing is that most people seem to have read Lovecraft, and I have not yet seen a single passage where he even hints that Cthulhu is in the least funny. Do you think that Gustaf Johansen thought it was funny when Cthulhu sped towards him on the shores of R'lyeh? I can assure you, he did not. Do you think it will be funny when R'lyeh rises, and He conquers the earth once again? It will be the Day of Reckoning. It will be Glorious. It will be Beautiful. It will be the Great Sacrifice. It will be Marvellous. BUT IT WILL _NOT_ BE FUNNY!

My plea is thus: Before you start to think of Cthulhu as funny, do some research; read everything by Lovecraft, study ancient assyro-babylonian and sumerian mythology, study the Necronomicon (if you can get hold of it), and soon enough you will discover for yourself that Cthulhu is many-faceted, but funny isn't one of them.

Jurgen Oppenheimer, Fr. Rigor Mortis; Head of the Conclave of Cthulhu, and Grand Keeper Secretary of the Great Ennead, Schwarzwald, October 1994.

Obituary