신화의 범위[]
러브크래프트[]
러브 크래프트는 미지의 공포에 대한 상상력으로 가득찬 작가이다. 그는 너무 초월적이라 인간이 인식하는 것조차 불가능한 존재들에 대한 내용을 써내렸고 생전에 그의 가치관과 생각을 여러 친구들과 함께 나누며 작품 활동을 이어갔다.
러브크래프트 서클[]
위에서 말했다시피 러브 크래프트는 그의 친구들과 서로의 가치관을 공유했다. 때문에 친구들은, 러브 크래프트가 짜둔 설정을 토대로 쓴 소설을 쓴 적이 있다.
그와 설정을 공유했던 작가들은 다음과 같다.
-Clark Ashton Smith
-Robert E Howard
-Robert Bloch
-Frank Belknap Long
-Belknap Long
이들의 모든 작품이 러브 크래프트와 설정을 공유하는 것은 아니다.
어거스트 덜레스[]
어거스트 덜레스 역시 러브 크래프트 생전 그와 가치관을 공유하던 친구였으나 너무나 러브 크래프트의 의도에서 벗어난 덜레스의 행적 때문에 다른 친구들과 분리해서 취급한다.
2차 설정[]
.
러브크래프트[]
차원 공간[]
인간의 우주는 무한하다.(아마도 3차원 우주)
In time he grew so impatient of the bleak intervals of day that he began buying drugs in order to increase his periods of sleep. Hasheesh helped a great deal, and once sent him to a part of space where form does not exist, but where glowing gases study the secrets of existence. And a violet-coloured gas told him that this part of space was outside what he had called infinity. The gas had not heard of planets and organisms before, but identified Kuranes merely as one from the infinity where matter, energy, and gravitation exist. CELEPHAÏS
3차원 우주는 다중우주(궁극의 무한대)를 이루는 무한 원자 사슬 중 하나의 원자에 불과하다.
I have said that there were things in some of Akeley’s letters—especially the second and most voluminous one—which I would not dare to quote or even form into words on paper. This hesitancy applies with still greater force to the things I heard whispered that evening in the darkened room among the lonely haunted hills. Of the extent of the cosmic horrors unfolded by that raucous voice I cannot even hint. He had known hideous things before, but what he had learned since making his pact with the Outside Things was almost too much for sanity to bear. Even now I absolutely refuse to believe what he implied about the constitution of ultimate infinity, the juxtaposition of dimensions, and the frightful position of our known cosmos of space and time in the unending chain of linked cosmos-atoms which makes up the immediate super-cosmos of curves, angles, and material and semi-material electronic organisation.
THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS: VII
시공간 연속체에는 무한한 추가 차원이 있을 수 있다.(모든 우주에 적용되는 것이 아니다.)
Any being from any part of three-dimensional space could probably survive in the fourth dimension; and its survival of the second stage would depend upon what alien part of three-dimensional space it might select for its re-entry. Denizens of some planets might be able to live on certain others—even planets belonging to other galaxies, or to similar-dimensional phases of other space-time continua—though of course there must be vast numbers of mutually uninhabitable even though mathematically juxtaposed bodies or zones of space. It was also possible that the inhabitants of a given dimensional realm could survive entry to many unknown and incomprehensible realms of additional or indefinitely multiplied dimensions—be they within or outside the given space-time continuum—and that the converse would be likewise true.THE DREAMS IN THE WITCHHOUSE P. 9
우주(무한한 크기) 밖의 더 큰 우주의 무한 계층이 있다. 3차원 우주가 다중우주(궁극의 무한대)의 구조를 이루는 원자에 불과하다는 점을 고려하면 더 큰(혹은 더 높은 차원의) 우주는 낮은 차원의 우주를 무한소로 취급할 것이다.
343. TO FRANK BELKNAP LONG
Young Man:—
Feby. 20,1929
Glad you found the commonplace-book and cuttings of interest. Have you started your novel, or any short tales? Another thing you could use is that Hispano-Roman dream I described a year ago October. I proba-bly shan't ever get around to writing it up, so if you can find the letter containing it, you're welcome to the thing... The actual cosmos of pattern'd energy, including what we know as matter, is of a contour and nature absolutely impossible of realisation by the human brain; and the more we learn of it the more we perceive this circumstance. All we can say of it, is that it contains no visible cen-tral principle so like the physical brains of terrestrial mammals that we may reasonably attribute to it the purely terrestrial and biological phae-nomenon call'd conscious purpose; and that we form, even allowing for the most radical conceptions of the relativist, so insignificant and tem-porary a part of it (whether all space be infinite or curved, and trans-galactic distances constant or variable, we know that within the bounds of our stellar universe no relativistic circumstance can banish the ap-proximate dimensions we recognise. The relative place of our solar sys-tem among the stars is as much a proximate reality as the relative posi-tions of Providence, N.Y., and Chicago) that all notions of special rela-tionships and names and destinies expressed in human conduct must necessarily be vestigial myths. Moreover, we know that a cosmos which is eternal (and any other kind would be a paradoxical impossibility)can have no such thing as a permanent direction or goal; since such SELECTED LETTERS would imply a beginning and ending, thus postulating a larger creating and managing cosmos outside this one-and so on ad infinitum like a nest of Chinese boxes. This point remains the same whether we con-sider eternity as a measure of regular pattern-movements (time) or as a fourth dimension. The latter merely makes all these intimations of a cosmos which our senses and calculations present to us. We must admit at the outset that the spectacle gives us no indications of a central con-sciousness or purpose, and suggests no reason why a cosmos should pos.sess such; that it renders the notion of special human standards and des.tinies absurd; and that it makes the idea of a permanent direction or goal improbable to the point of impossibility. Theoretically it can be al-most anything--but when we have not the faintest shadow of reason for believing certain specific things exactly contrary to all the principles of probability and experience in our limited part of space, it becomes a piece of hallucination or affectation to try to believe such things. Here are we-and yonder yawns the universe. If there be indeed any central governor, any set of standards, or any final goal, we can never hope to get even the faintest inkling of any of these things; since the ultimate reality of space is clearly a complex churming of energy of which the human mind can never form any even approximate picture, and which can touch us. only through the veil of local apparent manifestations which we call the visible and material universe. So far as analogy and probability go, there is strong presumptive evidence on the negative side-evidence based on the observation of small material systems like the electrons of an atom or the planets circling the sun. This evidence tells us that all small units of mass-energy are (that is, all humanly visible and conceivable presentations of such units are) rotating systems orga-nised in a certain way and preserving a balance and dovetailing of func-tions, absolute regularity and the exclusion of chance, (and hence of vo-lition or conscious action) and the infinite uniformity of this system of interlocking rotations and forms of regularity, seem to confront us wherever we delve beneath the surface; so that these circumstances ac-tually form the sum total of all our knowledge of the composition and administration of infinity. To say that such an array of evidence suggests a central will, a one-way direction, and a special concern for any one of the infinitesimal temporary force-combinations which form incidents of the eternal cycles within cycles of constant rearrangement, is to utter simple and unadulterated damn foolishness.
러브 크래프트의 편지
무한한 진공[]
히프노스는 무한한 진공을 건널 때 진공의 벽을 하나 깨부술 때마다 더 높은 무한대에 직면했다.
Among the agonies of these after days is that chief of torments—inarticulateness. What I learned and saw in those hours of impious exploration can never be told—for want of symbols or suggestions in any language. I say this because from first to last our discoveries partook only of the nature of sensations; sensations correlated with no impression which the nervous system of normal humanity is capable of receiving. They were sensations, yet within them lay unbelievable elements of time and space—things which at bottom possess no distinct and definite existence. Human utterance can best convey the general character of our experiences by calling them plungings or soarings; for in every period of revelation some part of our minds broke boldly away from all that is real and present, rushing aërially along shocking, unlighted, and fear-haunted abysses, and occasionally tearing through certain well-marked and typical obstacles describable only as viscous, uncouth clouds or vapours. Hypnos
히프노스가 지나간 진공은 비물질적 영역으로 묘사된다.
There was a night when winds from unknown spaces whirled us irresistibly into limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity. Perceptions of the most maddeningly untransmissible sort thronged upon us; perceptions of infinity which at the time convulsed us with joy, yet which are now partly lost to my memory and partly incapable of presentation to others. Viscous obstacles were clawed through in rapid succession, and at length I felt that we had been borne to realms of greater remoteness than any we had previously known. My friend was vastly in advance as we plunged into this awesome ocean of virgin aether, and I could see the sinister exultation on his floating, luminous, too youthful memory-face. Suddenly that face became dim and quickly disappeared, and in a brief space I found myself projected against an obstacle which I could not penetrate. It was like the others, yet incalculably denser; a sticky, clammy mass, if such terms can be applied to analogous qualities in a non-material sphere. HYPNOS
또한 시간이 환상이 되는 곳이기도 하다.
Of the progress of time we kept no record, for time had become to us the merest illusion. I know only that there must have been something very singular involved, since we came at length to marvel why we did not grow old. HYPNOS
히프노스가 지나간 무한한 진공은 비물질적이며 (각 차원의 우주는 원자 우주이다.) 시간을 단순히 환상으로 간주한다는 것은 진공이 무한 차원의 우주 너머에 있다는 것을 암시할 수도 있으나 진공 너머를 진정한 비물질이라고 한 것을 감안하면 고차원 공간일 확률이 높다.(또한 러브크래프트는 4차원을 황혼의 심연으로 묘사하기도 한다.)
일차 관문[]
인간의 세상은 일차 관문으로 도달한 작은 전체성의 3차원적 단계이다
The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness reached by the First Gate, where ’Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient Ones. Through the Gates of the Silver Key
변화, 가계, 변화는 제한적인 차원의 특성이다.
All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal “Carter” outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case. Through the Gates of the Silver Key
카터는 움라트 타윌의 마법이 아니었다면 일차 관문에서부터 개성이 환상이라는 사실을 깨달았을 것이다.
As the waves paused again, Carter began to comprehend, vaguely and terrifiedly, the ultimate background of that riddle of lost individuality which had at first so horrified him. His intuition pieced together the fragments of revelation, and brought him closer and closer to a grasp of the secret. He understood that much of the frightful revelation would have come upon him—splitting up his ego amongst myriads of earthly counterparts—inside the First Gate, had not the magic of ’Umr at-Tawil kept it from him in order that he might use the Silver Key with precision for the Ultimate Gate’s opening. Anxious for clearer knowledge, he sent out waves of thought, asking more of the exact relationship between his various facets—the fragment now beyond the Ultimate Gate, the fragment still on the quasi-hexagonal pedestal beyond the First Gate, the boy of 1883, the man of 1928, the various ancestral beings who had formed his heritage and the bulwark of his ego, and the nameless denizens of the other aeons and other worlds which that first hideous flash of ultimate perception had identified with him. Slowly the waves of the BEING surged out in reply, trying to make plain what was almost beyond the reach of an earthly mind. Through the Gates of the Silver Key
또한 무제한적인 차원을 하나의 원뿔, 유한한 차원을 그것의 단면(원뿔의 일부)으로 묘사한다. 작은 전체성이라는 이름과 인간 세상은 그것의 3차원적 단계라는 설명, 마법이 아니었다면 일차 관문에서부터 개성의 파괴(무제한 차원의 특성)를 느꼈을 것이라는 독백을 고려하면 작은 전체성은 무제한적인 차원이다.
궁극의 심연[]
궁극의 심연은 차원 공간 너머에 있다.
Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me,
Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space,
Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,
But only Chaos, without form or place.
Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered
Things he had dreamed but could not understand,
While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and fluttered
In idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned.
They danced insanely to the high, thin whining
Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,
Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining
Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law.
'I am His Messenger,' the daemon said,
As in contempt he struck his Master’s head."
Fungi From Yuggoth
히프노스는 무한한 진공을 건너 궁극의 심연에 도착했고 심연의 존재들의 시선에 미쳐버렸다.
"But it was not that distant whine which robbed me of my faculties and set upon my soul such a seal of fright as may never in life be removed; not that which drew the shrieks and excited the convulsions which caused lodgers and police to break down the door. It was not what I heard, but what I saw; for in that dark, locked, shuttered, and curtained room there appeared from the black northeast corner a shaft of horrible red-gold light—a shaft which bore with it no glow to disperse the darkness, but which streamed only upon the recumbent head of the troubled sleeper, bringing out in hideous duplication the luminous and strangely youthful memory-face as I had known it in dreams of abysmal space and unshackled time, when my friend had pushed behind the barrier to those secret, innermost, and forbidden caverns of nightmare.
And as I looked, I beheld the head rise, the black, liquid, and deep-sunken eyes open in terror, and the thin, shadowed lips part as if for a scream too frightful to be uttered. There dwelt in that ghastly and flexible face, as it shone bodiless, luminous, and rejuvenated in the blackness, more of stark, teeming, brain-shattering fear than all the rest of heaven and earth has ever revealed to me. No word was spoken amidst the distant sound that grew nearer and nearer, but as I followed the memory-face’s mad stare along that cursed shaft of light to its source, the source whence also the whining came, I too saw for an instant what it saw, and fell with ringing ears in that fit of shrieking and epilepsy which brought the lodgers and the police. Never could I tell, try as I might, what it actually was that I saw; nor could the still face tell, for although it must have seen more than I did, it will never speak again. But always I shall guard against the mocking and insatiate Hypnos, lord of sleep, against the night sky, and against the mad ambitions of knowledge and philosophy."
Hypnos
아더 갓 혹은 원형[]
아더 갓(혹은 절대신)은 시공간 너머 진정한 무한대에 존재한다.
Their main immediate abode is a still undiscovered and almost lightless planet at the very edge of our solar system—beyond Neptune, and the ninth in distance from the sun. It is, as we have inferred, the object mystically hinted at as “Yuggoth” in certain ancient and forbidden writings; and it will soon be the scene of a strange focussing of thought upon our world in an effort to facilitate mental rapport. I would not be surprised if astronomers became sufficiently sensitive to these thought-currents to discover Yuggoth when the Outer Ones wish them to do so. But Yuggoth, of course, is only the stepping-stone. The main body of the beings inhabits strangely organised abysses wholly beyond the utmost reach of any human imagination. The space-time globule which we recognise as the totality of all cosmic entity is only an atom in the genuine infinity which is theirs. And as much of this infinity as any human brain can hold is eventually to be opened up to me, as it has been to not more than fifty other men since the human race has existed. THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS: V.
앞서 말한 차원과 진공은 광대(아자토스 옆에서 연주하는 절대신)의 파이프에서 나온 방울에 불과하다.
Of our studies it is impossible to speak, since they held so slight a connexion with anything of the world as living men conceive it. They were of that vaster and more appalling universe of dim entity and consciousness which lies deeper than matter, time, and space, and whose existence we suspect only in certain forms of sleep—those rare dreams beyond dreams which come never to common men, and but once or twice in the lifetime of imaginative men. The cosmos of our waking knowledge, born from such an universe as a bubble is born from the pipe of a jester, touches it only as such a bubble may touch its sardonic source when sucked back by the jester’s whim. Men of learning suspect it little, and ignore it mostly. Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed. One man with Oriental eyes has said that all time and space are relative, and men have laughed. But even that man with Oriental eyes has done no more than suspect. I had wished and tried to do more than suspect, and my friend had tried and partly succeeded. Then we both tried together, and with exotic drugs courted terrible and forbidden dreams in the tower studio chamber of the old manor-house in hoary Kent. HYPNOS
히프노스를 시선만으로 미치게 했다.
"But it was not that distant whine which robbed me of my faculties and set upon my soul such a seal of fright as may never in life be removed; not that which drew the shrieks and excited the convulsions which caused lodgers and police to break down the door. It was not what I heard, but what I saw; for in that dark, locked, shuttered, and curtained room there appeared from the black northeast corner a shaft of horrible red-gold light—a shaft which bore with it no glow to disperse the darkness, but which streamed only upon the recumbent head of the troubled sleeper, bringing out in hideous duplication the luminous and strangely youthful memory-face as I had known it in dreams of abysmal space and unshackled time, when my friend had pushed behind the barrier to those secret, innermost, and forbidden caverns of nightmare.
And as I looked, I beheld the head rise, the black, liquid, and deep-sunken eyes open in terror, and the thin, shadowed lips part as if for a scream too frightful to be uttered. There dwelt in that ghastly and flexible face, as it shone bodiless, luminous, and rejuvenated in the blackness, more of stark, teeming, brain-shattering fear than all the rest of heaven and earth has ever revealed to me. No word was spoken amidst the distant sound that grew nearer and nearer, but as I followed the memory-face’s mad stare along that cursed shaft of light to its source, the source whence also the whining came, I too saw for an instant what it saw, and fell with ringing ears in that fit of shrieking and epilepsy which brought the lodgers and the police. Never could I tell, try as I might, what it actually was that I saw; nor could the still face tell, for although it must have seen more than I did, it will never speak again. But always I shall guard against the mocking and insatiate Hypnos, lord of sleep, against the night sky, and against the mad ambitions of knowledge and philosophy."
Hypnos
원형은 궁극의 관문 너머 절대 심연에 거주하며 낮은 차원의 존재는 추측만으로만 그 존재를 가늠해 볼 수 있다.
파동이 떨리면서, 원형의 존재들은 '절대의 심연'에서 사는 자들인데, 형체가 없고 설명할 길이 없어서 낮은 차원의 세계에서는 소수의 몽상가만이 추측할수 있다고 말했다. 실버 키의 관문을 지나서
존재의 가계, 성장, 시간의 흐름뿐만 아니라 모든 현실의 원형이다.
파동이 전하기를, 제한된 차원에서 사는 존재의 가계와 개개인의 성장은 차원 외부 공간에 있는 하나의 근원적이고 영원한 존재에게서 비롯된다고 했다. 아들, 아버지, 할아버지 같은 개인과 영아, 유아, 소년, 성인같은 성장 단계는 근원적이고 영원한 하나의 존재가 끝없이 변화하는 과정의 일부분에 지나지 않았다. 실버 키의 관문을 지나서
묵직한 침묵 뒤에 파동은 계속해서 제한된 차원에서 사는 존재들이 변화라고 칭하는 것은 정신의 기능에 불과하며, 그것은 외부세계를 다양한 우주의 차원과 다르게 보는 시각이라고 말했다. 망토 쓴 형체들이 다양한 각에서 잘린 원뿔형이듯이 영원불멸의 현실이라는 부분적인 견해는 그에 상응하는 우주의 각과 함께 변한다고 했다. 의식의 다양성이라는 측면에서 보면, 극히 드문 경우를 제외하고 내부 세계의 연약한 존재들은 스스로 통제하는 방법을 모르기 때문에 노예에 불과하다. 금기된 지식을 탐구하는 소수의 학자만이 미약한 통제력을 얻음으로써 시간과 변화를 정복한다. 그러나 관문 외부의 존재들은 모든 상황을 통제한다. 또한 자신들이 원하는 대로, 우주의 무수한 부분들을 단편적이고 유동적인 개념으로 이해하기도 하고, 사물의 상관관계를 초월하여 변화없는 전체의 개념으로 이해하기도 한다. 실버 키의 관문을 지나서
아자토스[]
아자토스는 모든 무한대의 중심에 존재한다.
There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH
러브 크래프트는 아자토스가 모든 악몽의 아버지라고 생각한다.
You have by now, I trust, received evidence of the safe arrival of the unnameable eidolon at the Temple of Azathoth, & of the ecstatic gratitude felt by all the priests therein. That it is a relique of aeons older than Cthulhu none would for a moment deny; & the general disposition is to account it none other than Tsathoggua. One very aged pontiff, upon whose forehead is branded a sign which no living man can interpret, & whose statements about his own length of years are wholly incredible, goes so far as to link the image with primal Azathoth, the mindless Lord of Nighted Chaos who is the father of all other horrors & is coeval with the Ultimate Abyss itself; but so audacious a guess is looked upon with fear by most of the priests, to whom even a faint thought of Azathoth is menacing & disquieting........
요그소토스[]
요그소토스는 과거, 현재, 미래이다.
"Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread." The Dunwich Horror
요그소토스는 최고의 원형으로 사람에서부터 원형까지의 초월적 존재론적 진보를 약간의 진전으로도 간주하지 않는다.
침묵이 계속되는 동안, 랜돌프 카터는 떠오르는 생각과 질문을 전했다. 그 절대의 심연에서 그는 자신의 원형에서 나온 모든 분신들과 똑같은 거리에 있음을 알았다. 즉, 인간 혹은 비인간, 지구 혹은 지구 외부의 존재, 은하 혹은 은하 외부의 존재, 특히 가장 호기심이 느껴지는 가장 먼 곳의 존재까지 그 거리는 똑같았다. 실버 키의 관문을 지나서
요그소토스는 원형들마저 포함하는 전체이자 완벽한 존재로 묘사된다.
충격 때문에 카터의 분신은 개성을 말살당했다는 공포마저 잊었다. 무수한 존재와 자아가 '하나 속의 전체'이자 '전체 속의 하나'였다.하나의 시공간에 있는 사물뿐 아니라, 완벽하게 진화된 어느 존재의 본질과도 결합된 느낌이었다. 그 완벽한 존재는 상상과 수학적 계산을 초월했기에 그 정체를 알 수 없었다. 그것은 지구의 일부 비밀 의식에서 조심스럽게 전해지고, 여러가지 신의 이름으로 불리었다는 요그-소토스 일지도 몰랐다. 유고스라는 곳의 갑각류 종족이 요그-소토스를 초월자로 숭배했다. 두뇌가 나선형의 수증기 형태로 이루어진 그 갑각류들은 해독할수 없는 표식을 통해서 요그-소토스를 알아본다고 했다. 그러나 카터는 그 같은 생각들이 얼마나 하찮고 단편적인 것인지 깨달았다.
(중략)
카터의 채워지지 않는 욕망과 우주의 비밀에 대한 선조들의 금기는 최고 원형에서 파생된 자연스러운 결과였다. 모든 세계의 위대한 마법사, 위대한 사상가, 위대한 예술가는 모두 '그것'의 일부분이다.
요약[]
우주=1
작은 전체성=1
아더 갓(혹은 원형)=작은 전체성 보다 위
아자토스=아더 갓보다 위
요그소토스(혹은 최고 원형)=아자토스보다 위 혹은 아자토스에서 존재론적 위계를 높이는 것만으로는 도달할 수 없는 수준에 있음.