The Crawling Chaos

It may be just me, or it may be just coincidence, (either explanation is probable), but I can recall dreams of places and things I never have seen before. Of course, nothing is really that strange about that. However, when these things crop up in the real world, it's occasionally unnerving. Take, for example, a recurring nightmare. It centers around a place called Lemuria, which is a legendary continent, country or island, not unlike Atlantis in this way. At any rate, the Lemurian society in my nightmare is an advanced one, but jaded and decadent. Having grown weary of the world, they become evil and corrupt in a search for new experiences. As a result, medical and genetic experimentation is common among Lemurian scientists, although they too have been touched by the corruption in their society. Their experiments go beyond the realm of pure science and even the basic pursuit of knowledge into the realm of the monstrous. What they produced doesn't bear telling here, luckily they tend to have short life spans. Just an overly active imagination on my part? Probably. The strange thing is, this dream occurred, name and all, before I had ever heard of Lemuria in waking life. The strange thing is, there really is a legend of Lemuria- the name prompted some perverse whim to go look it up, and I found that the legends told that Lemuria was indeed an ancient and advanced society- destroyed in part because of their rampant genetic experimentation.
There were also instances of dreaming of Cthulhu, the giant monster/god from space. The story, written by H. P. Lovecraft, says that this entity long ago came to Earth, and inhabited a city called R'Lyeh, constructed according to Cthulhu's ideas, which are not like ours- geometry and structure were completely alien to a human mind. However, the stars in the sky proved to be his downfall, as when their positions change, they rendered the Earth completely unlivable for Cthulhu, subject as he was to their influence. However, his body was not composed of normal flesh- rather, it was a substance that regenerates itself. (this is also alluded to in the story). The result is that Cthulhu cannot die- he was, however, forced to retreat into the city and remain locked away in a tomb or chamber inside. While there, his body is preserved by its regeneration- whatever decays or eats at him has no effect, as the substance of his body simply regenerates again and again. And so there he sat, unable to leave, but able to project his thoughts outward across the world. The result was that men heard these things, and formed a religion around him- Cthulhu promising them that they would inherit the earth if they remain faithful to him and rouse him when the stars are once again right to let him walk on the Earth. Then, however, the city sank into the ocean. This proved to be a problem- Cthulhu's mental projections can't penetrate water. However, the cult was established, and was said to continue on always. The dreams I had were of his return- a huge thing, as Lovecraft put it, 'miles high', that looked down from the sky and sought out people, despite our comparative small size.
The reason this all seems interesting is that Lovecraft himself, author of all these stories and creator of what's now known as the Cthulhu Mythos, first had the inspiration for these things in dreams. They seemed rather detailed, and some people point to this as indicating that what Lovecraft did was tap unconsciously into something that had long been known to the human race, although kept concealed deep in our subconscious. The surprising consistency of these dreams, and their organization does lend some credit to this, although I tend to think there are more broad archetypes of gods and monsters than the specific entities Lovecraft saw. An example is the story Nyarlathotep, which was based on a dream- the author claims to have dreamed of recieving a letter from a friend, informing him that Nyarlathotep would be in Providence (Rhode Island, Lovecraft's home town), and not to miss the performance. In the story, Nyarlathotep appears as a performer or lecturer, drawing people into his control.
All Lovecraft's stories point to a common theme of beings beyond anything known to mankind- most are completely inhuman, by our own standards monstrous and cruel, but not actually evil. We would feel no more remorse about calling an exterminator than they would about wiping out an entire continent. Although these beings pretty much ignore people, they sometimes may make use of them as slaves or a source of food or entertainment. It's an interesting perspective, and makes the place of man seem small and insignificant. Exactly what role humanity does play in the universe, who really can say? Perhaps only the role we ourselves choose, consciously or unconsciously.
There is a good collection of Lovecraft's stories available on-line. While not complete, (I don't think a complete collection exists, although multiple books are out there) this is one of the better ones I've found. The language is somewhat dated, and perhaps a little hard to understand, but the stories are genuinely engaging and more than a little creepy.
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/index.html
Kudos to Dagon for putting together a great collection~
Check out also the Dark Art gallery- if you're into that kind of art. Actually, I think it's pretty good on its own artistic merits.