Ithaqua

Last updated

Ithaqua (the Wind-Walker or the Wendigo ) is a fictional character in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The titular creature debuted in August Derleth's short story "Ithaqua", which was based on Algernon Blackwood's tale The Wendigo . It controls snow, ice and cold, and can walk through the sky as easily as it walks on earth. [1]

Ithaqua in the mythos

Ithaqua is one of the Great Old Ones and appears as a horrifying giant with a roughly human shape and glowing red eyes. He has been reported from as far north as the Arctic to the Sub-Arctic, where Native Americans first encountered him. He is believed to prowl the Arctic waste, hunting down unwary travelers and slaying them gruesomely, and is said to have inspired the Native American legend of the Wendigo and possibly the Yeti.

Ithaqua's cult is small, but he is greatly feared in the far north. Fearful denizens of Siberia and Canada often leave sacrifices for Ithaqua—not as worship but as appeasement. Those who join his cult will gain the ability to be completely unaffected by cold. He often uses Shantaks, a dragon-like "lesser race", as servitors. A race of subhuman cannibals, the Gnophkehs, also worshiped him, [2] along with Rhan-Tegoth and Aphoom-Zhah. [3]

Ithaqua figures prominently in Brian Lumley's Lovecraft-based Titus Crow series, ruling the ice-world of Borea. In Lumley's works, Ithaqua periodically treads the winds of space between Earth and Borea, bringing helpless victims back to Borea to worship him among its snowy wastes. He frequently attempts to reproduce with humanoid females, hoping to create offspring which can surpass his own limitations, imposed by the Elder Gods, and so help free the rest of the Great Old Ones. It is suggested that Ithaqua has the ulterior motive of desiring offspring to assuage his bitter loneliness, as he is the only one of his kind. None of his surviving offspring to date has accommodated him, all turning against him at some point.

Anders Fager's "The Wish of the Broken Man" describes how 18th-century Scandinavian Saami worship "Ittakka" and calls up on him to create blizzards. It also fingers Ittakka/Ithaqua as responsible for the 1718 Carolean Death March. [4]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Derleth was inspired by Blackwood's tale (who himself based the Wendigo on a creature from Native American Indian legend), but gave the creature a Lovecraftian name. (Price, "Ghost Riders in the Sky", "Who Has Seen the Wind?", The Ithaqua Cycle, pg. xi.)
  2. ↑ "Crazy Ivan's Timeline of Werewolf and Therianthrope Fiction Archived 2011-07-17 at the Wayback Machine "
  3. ↑ "A Hyperborean Glossary by Laurence J. Cornford"
  4. ↑ "Anders Fager (2011). Collected Swedish Cults. Stockholm, Sweden: Wahlström & Wistrand. ISBN   9789146220961."

Related Research Articles

Cthulhu Mythos Shared fictional universe based on the work of H. P. Lovecraft

The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent and protégé of Lovecraft, to identify the settings, tropes, and lore that were employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors. The name Cthulhu derives from the central creature in Lovecraft's seminal short story, "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928.

Rlyeh fictional lost city that first appeared in the H. P. Lovecraft short story "The Call of Cthulhu"

R'lyeh is a lost city that was first documented in the H. P. Lovecraft short story "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in Weird Tales in June 1928. R'lyeh is a sunken city in the South Pacific and the prison of the entity called Cthulhu.

The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh…was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults.

Cthulhu fictional cosmic entity

Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft and first introduced in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published in the American pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon of Lovecraftian cosmic entities, the creature has since been featured in numerous popular culture references. Lovecraft depicts Cthulhu as a gigantic entity worshipped by cultists. Cthulhu's appearance is described as looking like an octopus, a dragon, and a caricature of human form. Its name was given to the Lovecraft-inspired universe where it and its fellow entities existed, the Cthulhu Mythos.

Shub-Niggurath fictional deity in the Cthulhu Mythos

Shub-Niggurath, often associated with the phrase "The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young", is a deity in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The only other name by which H. P. Lovecraft referred to her was "Lord of the Wood" in his story The Whisperer in Darkness.

<i>The King in Yellow</i> book of short stories by American writer Robert W. Chambers

The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. The book is named after a play with the same title which recurs as a motif through some of the stories. The first half of the book features highly esteemed weird stories, and the book has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler, S. T. Joshi and T. E. D. Klein as a classic in the field of the supernatural. There are ten stories, the first four of which mention The King in Yellow, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it. "The Yellow Sign" inspired a film of the same name released in 2001.

Azathoth Outer God in the Cthulhu Mythos

Azathoth is a deity in the Cthulhu Mythos and Dream Cycle stories of writer H. P. Lovecraft and other authors. He is the ruler of the Outer Gods.

Hastur entity in the Cthulhu Mythos; created by A. Bierce in "Haïta the Shepherd" (1893); briefly mentioned in H. P. Lovecrafts "The Whisperer in Darkness"

Hastur is an entity of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Yog-Sothoth is a cosmic entity in the Cthulhu Mythos and Dream Cycle of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Yog-Sothoth's name was first mentioned in Lovecraft's novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The being is said to take the form of a conglomeration of glowing spheres. It is an all-knowing deity, which means it knows the past, present, and future.

A Hunting Horror is a fictional monster in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The creature was first mentioned in Lovecraft's novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926).

Cyäegha is a deity in the Cthulhu Mythos and first appeared in Eddy C. Bertin's short story "Darkness, My name Is" (1976).

Elder Sign an icon in the Cthulhu Mythos

The Elder Sign is an icon in the Cthulhu Mythos, whose stories describe it as a form of protection against evil forces. Although not described in Lovecraft's work, he illustrated it in correspondence as a line with five branches. Mythos writer August Derleth described the Elder Sign as a warped, five-pointed star with a flaming pillar in its center, and it is this interpretation which has become the most popular in subsequent Mythos literature.

Unaussprechlichen Kulten is a fictional book of arcane literature in the Cthulhu Mythos. The book first appeared in Robert E. Howard's short stories "The Children of the Night" (1931) and "The Black Stone" (1931) as Nameless Cults. Like the Necronomicon, it was later mentioned in several stories by H. P. Lovecraft.

Zhar is a fictional deity in the Cthulhu Mythos. The being first appeared in the short story "The Lair of the Star-Spawn" (1932) by August Derleth and Mark Schorer.

The following characters appear in H.P. Lovecraft's story cycle — the Cthulhu Mythos.

The following tables and lists feature elements of the Cthulhu Mythos, that are often shared between works within that fictional setting.

The Deep Ones are creatures in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The beings first appeared in Lovecraft's novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931), but were already hinted at in the early short story "Dagon". The Deep Ones are a race of intelligent ocean-dwelling creatures, approximately human-shaped but with a fishy appearance. They regularly mate with humans along the coast, creating societies of hybrids.

The Xothic legend cycle is a series of short stories by American writer Lin Carter that are based on the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, primarily on Lovecraft's stories "The Call of Cthulhu" and "Out of the Aeons".

A number of supernatural characters appear in the Cthulhu Mythos. While many of these beings have godlike qualities, they do not fit the standard categories. Nonetheless, they are noteworthy for their infrequent or sometimes singular appearances in the mythos.

The Wendigo is a novella by Algernon Blackwood, first published in The Lost Valley and Other Stories.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.