The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus of Lovecraft's famous short story The Call of Cthulhu (first published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928) - to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors. Writer Richard L. Tierney later applied the term "Derleth Mythos" to distinguish between Lovecraft's works and Derleth's later stories.
Authors writing in the Lovecraftian milieu use elements of the Mythos in an ongoing expansion of the fictional universe.
Lovecraft often referenced the "Great Old Ones," a loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space; they once ruled the Earth and are established as having since fallen into a death-like sleep. According to writer David E. Schultz, Lovecraft never meant to create a canonical Mythos but rather intended his imaginary pantheon to merely serve as a background element, with Lovecraft himself humorously referring to his mythos as "Yog Sothothery" (critic Dirk Mosig coincidentally suggested the term Yog-Sothoth Cycle of Myth be substituted for Cthulhu Mythos). This view is reinforced by another literary critic, who stated "Lovecraft's imaginary was never a static system but rather a sort of construct that remained ever adaptable to its creator's developing personality and altering interests... [T]here was never a rigid system that might be posthumously appropriated... [T]he 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."
Price, however, believed Lovecraft's writings could be divided into three distinct categories: the "Dunsanian" (written in the vein of Lord Dunsany), "Arkham" (occurring in Lovecraft's fictionalized New England setting,), and "Cthulhu" (the cosmic tales) cycles. 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.
Although not formalised and acknowledged as a mythos per se, Lovecraft did corresponded with contemporary writers (Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Henry Kuttner, and Fritz Lieber - a group referred to as the "Lovecraft Circle") - and shared story elements: Robert E. Howard's character 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) and "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936). Many of Howard's original unedited Conan stories also form part of the Cthulhu Mythos.
As Lovecraft conceived the deities or forces of his mythos, there were, initially, the Elder Gods... [T]hese Elder Gods were benign deities, representing the forces of good, and existed peacefully...very rarely stirring forth to intervene in the unceasing struggle between the powers of evil and the races of Earth. These powers of evil were variously known as the Great Old Ones or the Ancient Ones... —August Derleth, "The Cthulhu Mythos"
Price suggests that the basis of Derlerth's systemization are found in Lovecraft, stating: "Was Derleth's use of the rubric 'Elder Gods' so alien to Lovecraft's in At the Mountains of Madness? Perhaps not. In fact, this very story, along with some hints from "The Shadow over Innsmouth", provides the key to the origin of the 'Derleth Mythos'. For in At the Mountains of Madness we find the history of a conflict between two interstellar races (among others): the Elder Ones and the Cthulhu-spawn." Derleth himself believed that Lovecraft wished for other authors to actively write about the myth-cycle as opposed to it being a discrete plot device. Derleth expanded the boundaries of the Mythos by including any passing reference to another author's story elements by Lovecraft as part of the genre: just as Lovecraft made passing reference to Clark Ashton Smith's Book of Eibon, Derleth in turn added Smith's Ubbo-Sathla to the Mythos.
Derleth also attempted to connect the deities of the Mythos to the four elements (air, earth, fire, and water), but was forced to adopt artistic licence and create beings to represent certain elements (air and fire) to legitimise his dichotomy. In applying the elemental theory to beings that function on a cosmic scale (e.g. Yog-Sothoth) some authors created a separate category termed aethyr. Derleth matched earth against fire and air against water, which is inconsistent with the classical elements pairings.
{|class="wikitable" |+Derleth's elemental classifications !Air !Earth !Fire !Water |- |Hastur*Ithaqua*NyarlathotepZhar and Lloigor* |CyäeghaNyogthaShub-NiggurathTsathoggua |Aphoom-ZhahCthugha* |CthulhuDagonGhatanothoaMother HydraZoth-Ommog |}
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