Hello everyone! I'd like to share some of my dream content, as well as some contemporary/popular, modern mythology, from the H.P. Lovecraft Mythos that relates:

By far, the most reoccurring themes in my dreams are connected to the ocean. The two most common images are the enormous crashing tsunami, and the lurking behemoth below the water.

I see the lurking shadow of some enormous being under the surface of the water probably 2 or 3 nights every week. Most of the time I react to it as if it's something to be afraid of, that I need to get out of the water to stay safe. Most of the time it's a huge undefined shadowy form, too deep to make out exactly what it is. Sometimes it's a shark and attacks me. Sometimes it's benign and behaves as if it doesn't even notice my existence. I've mainly interpreted this as a metaphor for some deep, powerful force in the psyche. There is something about it that feels both foreign and familiar at the same time, like it's somehow part of me, and somehow beyond me. I've usually interpreted it as some aspect of the Shadow archetype (it's literally a Shadow in the water), but I have never really been able to discern it's identity or deeper meaning. I've made a point about trying to get to know it better, but it's eluded me. 

With the dreams about tsunamis, sometimes I just see the wave building up, sometimes it crashes on me. Sometimes I escape it and survive, other times I go under and drown. Recently, after making an intention to get to know the Shadowy behemoth in the water mentioned above, I encountered a large wave in a dream. This one was different, however, of previous manifestations of the collossal wave. It had a face, and the wave seemed to stop breaking, just standing there with the wave curled over. It had small ocean sprite-like creatures surrounding it. I couldn't quite make out their form, but I got the sense that they were helpers of this oceanic titan. A conversation occurred between myself and all of the beings present, but I can't remember a single thing other than it had something to do with the intention that I had set before going to sleep of getting to know the deep shadowy behemoth. 

I'd like to dive into (yes, this is a pun) parallels in my dreams to the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. H.P. Lovecraft's most well known story is called "The Call of Cthulu". Cthulu could be described as a Titan from space. He resides under the ocean in the sunken and destroyed interdimensional city of "R'lyeh" in the South Pacific, in a sort of hibernation-death state. His dreams while in this state manifest in the world as unrest and strife. Cthulu sits under the sea, waiting to awaken again, at which point he will destroy the entire world.

A key facet of Lovecraft's mythos is that none of the "Elder Gods", such as Cthulu, have malevolent intent in their destructive aura. Lovecraft describes the actions of such characters from the frame of the mechanist perspective, that they are cosmic-scale forces that were just set into motion by the universe, and have no regard, positive or negative, for their actions upon the microscopic and meaningless inhabitants of Earth. The blind, uncaring universe is a central theme in the Lovecraft mythos. So, in a sense, Cthulu is the mythological representation of the destructive forces of the modern Psyche, entrenched in the "house of constipated reason", as Terence McKenna calls it. Cthulu represents both the mechanistic de-spiriting of the world, and the removal of responsibility for the destructive forces imposed by modern scientism/technologism/hyper-rationalism, while simultaneously giving it a totally unscientific, irrational mythological spirit. Quite the paradox.

Something I have noticed is that people who are into the Lovecraft mythos, more often then not, tend to be into hyper-rationalism/scientism/technologism. There is something about it in their relation to it that reminds of me of the "flying spaghetti monster", a mockery of Spirit, while at the same time creating Spirit. They unconsciously worship Cthulu, as the mechanism-reinforcing mythology resonates with them strongly. In some sense, people very deep into the Cthulu mythos embody the "Cthulu Cultists" described in the Lovecraft stories, who invoke Cthulu and attempt to awaken him from his slumber through various rituals and sacrifices (technological rituals and socio-ecological sacrifice?). 

I don't necessarily feel as if the shadowy figures in the water in my dream have the same flavor and feel as Cthulu, as a purely destructive and chaos-inducing force, but it does evoke a similar feeling of fear of the unknown lurking below. There is something about my ocean-shadow dreams that does feel similar to the cosmic-scale, titanic power of Cthulu, but it also doesn't feel totally detached and mechanistic like Cthulu does. Maybe you could call me a "reformed Cthulu Cultist", as I have made a 180 degree flip, having been almost religiously obsessed with science and rationalism earlier in my life. And now, with this perspective in mind, maybe this Shadowy force in the water represents the rational/scientific part of me that I have subdued under the waters of the subconscious. 

In my opinion, H.P. Lovecraft basically condensed modern, global Shadow content into literary form. Another one of the Elder Gods of the mythos is known as "Nyarlathotep", and the eponymous story that describes him lines up perfectly with the global symptoms of climate change: a city-society obsessed with the wonders that electrical power and science brings, increasingly destabilizing the environment and seasonal weather patterns, leading ultimately to death for all of Nyarlathotep's followers. You can read the story "Nyarlathotep" here.

Anyways, I can go on and on, but I think the Lovecraft mythos has some relevance to the current world situation, and popular fascination with this mythos says something very meaningful about the collective unconscious.