cultists of cthulhu

So, I often see the Religion of Evil willingly worshipping some kind of Eldritch Abomination or whatever. In World Of Warcraft, for example, there's the Twilight Cultists and the Cult of The Damned, which worship the Old Ones and the Lich King.

My question is: what would make a person worship a world-destroying abomination?

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=135

Considering that most current religions have someone capable of destroying the world or at least humanity, why does anyone worship their god-figures?

I mean really, let's face it. If you take the Abrahmic god at face value he's only promised he won't kill us with a flood again. He hasn't promised he won't kill us. Hinduism has Shiva, who has been given leave to kill us all if they feel like it.

I'm not sure if there's a Buddhist world-destroyer, but I wouldn't be surprised.

There's not. That is so not zen.

Indeed, God of the Abrahamic religions is a textbook Eldritch Abomination except we don't see God and God talks to us. So, I mean, it can come down to twisted (lack of) logic, or simple mind control on the part of the abomination. After all, mind slaves can be useful...

Buddhism is a lot more than Zen, you know.

Anyway, more seriously, there's also the promise of power; being uplifted to the level of the dark gods.

edited 24th Jul '11 7:43:28 PM by Tzetze

Buddhism is a lot more than Zen, you know.

I do know. The zen part was a joke. But buddhism doesn't have any real deities besides the bodhissatvas (which don't really count anyway) right?

And most post-Lovecraft cosmic horrors, in the hands of simplifying hacks, can make you go insane by merely looking at them. Motivations kind of go out the window when the motif of harmful sensation comes into play.

Also, I'm pretty sure there's an island of morons that worship Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, so real life religion can get even weirder than fiction.

I think a religion with a strict moral code works well as a Religion of Evil. "Cleanse the impure" and all that."

Possibly there's the hope that the horror won't destroy those that worship it. Also, there might be a certain element of nihilism in it; some may genuinely be attracted to the notion of everything being destroyed. As Alfred said in The Dark Knight, some people just want to watch the world burn.

In the throes of religious conviction, an individual might not even care about their own life, or whether their soul achieves some kind of "reward." The may feel that helping this powerful entitity achieve its ends is enough in itself, is "right" because the entity is a genuine source of otherworldly power.

Why does anyone worship anything? Maybe the cult is promising power to people who can't expect any in a normal world. Maybe their narrative makes sense to some people when all the others don't. Maybe the cultists are hedonists who can't get a rush from anything less than human sacrifice and contact with extradimensional creatures. Maybe these people have nothing to live for, and rather than simply commit suicide, try to take everyone else down with them.

The Bodhisatta and Celestial Buddha gods are only a part of Vajrayana and Mahayana canon. A few countries that are primarily Theravadan do worship certain Bodhisatta though. Like Thailand and its love for Guanyin.

Gods are always a part of Buddhist canon however. It's just that Theravada doesn't have a defined pantheon. Theravadan Buddhists instead tend to just adopt whatever the country's cultural gods are. Mahayana and Vajrayana do this as well in addition to their Buddhism specific pantheons.

There are two sorts of gods. Deva and Asura. Deva are very happy beings that live peaceful lives in the Deva realm. By and large they ignore lesser beings and have severe empathy problems. Lower leveled Deva occasionally aid lesser beings in a variety of ways that range from advice to dreams regarding the future. The Deva realm seems to exist in a separate space-time field from the human and animal realms.

The Asura are very violent and prideful gods. They are prone to murderraping things just because they were looked at slightly funny. Asura live in their own realm as well or share the Deva realm. Asura also tend to not give a fuck about the well being of lesser beings. Deva will at least sort of apathetically go "Oh well that's bad" whereas an Asura will probably find some way to make it even worse just because they can.

Gods in Buddhism can be generally defined as "Any sentient and sapient living being that is longer lived than a human and possessing greater strength, intelligence, knowledge of how the universe works, or reasoning ability than a human".

This essentially means that gods in Buddhism are sufficiently advanced aliens. They are also not automatically worthy of worship solely because they are gods. The amount of gods that are concerned with humanity is very small in comparison to how many exist and the amount of these gods who are worthy of worship is even smaller. For every one Guanyin you have umpteen million Deva who don't give a fuck. There's also many Asura who will willing fuck your shit up just because they can. Gods aren't necessarily in the right. In fact they're just as flawed as humans if not more so.

Gods are also not behind the laws of the universe or the creation of the universe. They are bound to the universe and its laws just as we are. They may seem to have special powers that break those laws, but in actuality they just happen to know how to manipulate them better than we do. They must however play by the rules still. You just have to know how to play.

What Buddhism does lack in all branches is a creator God that is specific to Buddhism. In fact questions about such a being were met with "I refuse to answer this question" by The Buddha. What creator Gods Buddhists do believe in have been filched away from other religions. There are for example Christian Buddhists.

edited 26th Jul '11 2:42:28 PM by Aondeug

It really just comes down to Alternate Character Interpretation. Consider that in real life, a lot of Gods arguably aren't "evil" , but are definitely Eldritch Abominations. Consider the Christian God: he can do pretty much whatever he wants because he's God. He created good and evil. It really just comes down to the religion/cult believing that whatever they worship is a higher being than themselves.

edited 28th Jul '11 7:03:00 AM by MegaRock35

Isn't the whole thing usually with cthulhu cultists that cthulhu will eat the cultists first and leave everyone else to suffer in a hell world until they die slowly and painfully?

In Call of Cthulhu the cultist being interrogated explains that when the Great Old Ones awaken, mankind will become like the; wild and free, unbound by morality or reason. Men will laugh and dance and kill eachother, and the Old Ones will teach men new ways to laugh and dance and kill. Basically, they're a bunch of crazy anarchists.