DAGON, SAUROIDS AND LOVECRAFT -

H. P. Lovecraft was arguably one of the most original horror writers of the early 20th century. All of his tales wove a mythos, a world that was based on forgotten realms and races that exist somewhere on the periphery of our world. In one of his most powerful stories, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", he tells of a race of aquatic beings that lived in the deep ocean. Their desire was to intermingle and breed with the surface dwellers, producing a "man-fish" or amphibious horror of some sort.

In the ancient near east Dagon was known as the half-fish, half-man god. The priests of Babylon wore hats that resembled the heads of fish and eventually became what we know as the "bishop's mitre" or the hat that you see cardinals, popes and bishops wear in the Roman church today.

Well Dagon meets his match and more in the book of Samuel:

1Sa 5:3-7 And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again. And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him. Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon‘s house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day. And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, The ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us: for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our god

(Lovecraft refers to this God of Israel as the "bland god of the baptists" in "The Strange High House in the Mist". Obviously he never read this portion of the Bible!) Dagon in the first humiliation is forced to bow before the Ark thus acknowledging the majesty of Jehovah. Since the Philistines missed the picture, Dagon is humiliated completely and has his head and hands cut off, symbolic of the death of an enemy, before the Ark of Jehovah. Not very bland, this God of Israel!

We turn then to the idea of the serpent or sauroids that may dwell in some other dimension very near earth or beneath our feet today. Could this be what Lovecraft was referring to but in an aquatic sense? A much older race of "Dagonites"? The linking of the serpent with Satan has been there from the start. Now we know Dagon's ancestry too (and his very early "end"). But does this reveal anything to us about the Underwater Bases and the persistence of the "Dagon" mythos? I think back to the recent sci-fi series that tried to make headway on NBC, "Surface"... the creatures there were very "Dagonlike"...