For what it's worth, Lovecraft himself had a rather extensive library. (See "Lovecraft's Library," assembled by ST Joshi, for details.) I've seen several references to his Grandfather's library as well, but I don't know the details.

Lovecraft had read W. Scott-Eliot's "Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria," (See page 178 of Joshi's "More Annotated HP Lovecraft&quot and "The Call of Cthulhu" probably best represents Lovecraft's vision of Atlantis. It is interesting that in "The Last Test" (a revision by Lovecraft & Adolphe de Castro) one of the characters claims that "there are things in Alhazred's Azif which weren't known in Atlantis!"

Lovecraft may have been aware of Sumer, but he seems to have been more interested in ancient Egypt. See "Nyarlathotep," "Beneath the Pyramids," "The Nameless City," etc.

It is definatly a disturbing thought that we are not as much in control as we would like to believe. We wouldn't stand a chance against beings as powerful as what Lovecraft describes. It would like be ants trying to attack and kill us.

I'm curious about something. Did Lovecraft ever descibe how the old ones were banished in the first place?

Well, they say "there is a pleasure in being mad that only madmen know" (see the Spanish Friar, I believe).

Madmen, in my opinion, are revealed things others are not. It is possible that Lovecraft was mildly insane.

Dawn, Lovecraft comes across as quite lucid in his letters. Very disturbed at times, but lucid. Was he mildly insane? Perhaps. He may have been a product of his time and circumstances... This has been discussed in the thread on his racism. I don't think we can conclude that he was mentally ill based only on his fiction, as it required a keen intellect to write as he did.

There is still the possibility that there may have been something really wrong with HPL. Some of his letters do not seem to be the product of an entirely healthy mind. He certainly had enough disturbing experiences to traumatize a normal individual, though he may not have been entirely normal.

Skavenhorde, I'm not aware of any references in Lovecraft to a general banishing of the Old Ones. If I recall correctly, Cthulhu and his spawn sealed themselves into their great stone houses when the stars were no longer right for them to exist, planning to reemerge when the stars were right again. Aeons later, R'lyeh sank beneath the sea, taking the Star-Spawn with it.

For the decline and fall of the Elder Things (sometimes called the Old Ones), see Lovecraft's short novel, "At the Mountains of Madness."

The idea of the Old Ones being banished by the Elder Gods for practicing black magic, rebelling, or misbehaving in some other way is not really Lovecraftian, and may have originated with August Derleth.

basically i see the old ones as symbols of the darkside of the collective unconsciousness of humanity. love craft basically tapped into what was inside his imagination and put it on paper with a little bit of study mythological stories and ideas of carl jung of course. however it is possible that we all may have a race memory of a conflict between two opposing cosmic forces that visit our world either from space or other planes of existence.

You raise a good point...but this topic was 5 months dead.