Trump, Cthulhu, & the Chaos Star

By Nicolette Preradovic

            It’s January 20^th, 2017. Donald Trump just got sworn into office and became the 45^th President of the United States of America. I’m watching the inauguration LIVE on my Smart TV and making innocuous seven word statements on Facebook regarding this ironically satirical historic event, when an image pops up in my news feed. The image is a surrealist painting of Donald Trump symbolized as a giant Kraken, comfortably nesting on top of the White House. Seven giant brownish-orange tentacles expand outwards in every direction, coiling themselves around various objects, instruments, and characters. Like the octopus, the kraken is typically known to have eight tentacles, however, the image only displays seven- one tentacle is left out. (I imagine that it hides in the background, behind the White House, possibly symbolizing Trump’s private life, underhand dealings, or secret meetings.) There is a giant cloud of smoke rolling in from the upper left hand corner. It starts off a dark charcoal color then fades into a pale grey, just before hitting the clear blue sky on the right, then fades into the colors of a setting sun. Trump’s head is giant, and his yellow toupee sits on top of his head like a banana peel. (Which I would advise the citizens of America not to slip on.)

            The first tentacle (starting clockwise from Trump’s ginormous head) comes up from behind the White House. It coils up into the air, propping a vanity mirror in front of Trump’s smug expression. As he looks into his reflection, eyebrows raised, you get the sense that he is pleased with himself, even though the gaze of his eyes suspiciously suggest otherwise. The second tentacle sticks up mid-air into the blue sky, holding a smart phone with the twitter home page displayed on the screen: a bird, outlined in white, appears ready to take flight. The third tentacle wraps its midriff around the Capitol Hill building while extending the tip of its coil around a baby’s bottle, holding it tight. A different perspective emerges between the fourth and fifth tentacle. Two lines of characters form as they enter the White House from the concrete sidewalk. Vanishing into the unknown black hole of a door, we have a member of the KKK, a man wearing a black cloak, a soldier with a gold bullet for a head, a Soviet army commander, an oil (man?), a clown playing the accordion and laughing as a dollar flies around close by, and in the other line a row of greedy business men with the crooked hog as the caboose, giving us the thumbs up while smoking a cigar in his top hat. Instead of coiling around the characters, the tentacles are ushering the characters in with a guiding embrace. To the left of our central focus, is the Supreme Court, being wrapped by Krak’s sixth tentacle while the seventh tentacle holds on to three nuclear missiles, midair, against the giant puff of smoke.

            All of these images are relevant to what I will be discussing. Because decoding each and every image in the painting will take up too much time, I’ve decided to stick with a more abstract and broadened symbol here. One which has evolved over the decades and has developed its own metalanguage of associations, and has proven itself to envelope all of these different dynamic signifiers into one coherent mode of activity: the symbol of the chaos star. I say “activity” because it is a symbol that represents action, as opposed to signifying a story or concept. Now, I know what you must be thinking! How did I get the chaos star out of this particular image which is nothing but metaphorical political satire encompassed into a single painting? In the book “Mythologies,” Barthes explains to us that myth always comes under the heading of metalanguage: the depolitization which it carries out often supervenes against a background which is already naturalized, depoliticized by a general metalanguage, which is trained to celebrate things and no longer “act them.” (256) We can say that the painting is an artistic response that uses one set of symbols or “metalanguage” as a means of explaining Trump’s presidency, which does in fact appear to be a “celebration” of some old mythological ideal (Christianity?...particularly “white”). Or, we can go further into the depths of the mythological layering taking place here and examine how mythology has unfolded over time in order to bring us to this bombastic moment! I chose the latter. The following essay is a process of “UN-masking” or “UN-layering.”

            Mark Bryan, the artist of the painting, made a very clear statement on his art web page that the mythical image he used was that of a kraken, and not an octopus. His exact words are, “I had reservations about using an octopus like image because they really are amazing intelligent beings. I apologize to them everywhere.” This statement works really well in exposing the ways which these mythical layers have piled themselves on in our culture over the years. The kraken has not been used much as a significant emblem of cultural symbolism and does not display the norms, especially in the world of trend setters. There was the Kraken Black Spiced Rum that came out a while back, which looks cool on the shelves of liquor stores and displayed on glass shelves at the local bar, but I don’t actually know anyone who drinks it on a regular basis, (unless we want to conclude that Trump is the main consumer of this mythology!) – The fact that Bryan uses the kraken as Trump’s signifier over the octopus is a sign of his contention. “A mythological sea monster of Norwegian lore” derived from the word krake, signifying an animal that is twisted or unhealthy; crooked: these are the words on Mark Bryan’s page. An octopus, however- now that is a creature which has reached its glory during the Obama years of cultural appropriation. How ironic that it is a symbol of diversity, variability, mystery, vision, insight… camouflage. The octopus was everywhere! Kids from my generation (and younger) were getting octopus tattoos and there was octopus jewelry in every store: from Target to Hot Topic to Forever 21; a major fashion icon it was. But where did it come from? How did it get here? Both of the answers to these questions come from a very dark, very recluse, very mystical and magical world known as the Cthulhu Mythos. Yes, of course, the octopus is a very real animal, ever elusive and mysterious in its own right, and it’s not like these octopus trends weren’t accompanied by other “mysterious” animals, like the owl or cat. But that’s not what we’re going to be talking about here. We will only be looking at culture as a manifestation and layering of previous culture, through art and literature, not wildlife. For wildlife is a code that can never be cracked; humans are only but simulations of that life. Which explains why writers and artists are so haunted by it. Let’s take H.P. Lovecraft for instance, and the Cthulhu Mythos.

            H.P. Lovecraft’s rise to popularity was quick and sudden. I don’t mean quick in the sense that it happened overnight, but like most great writers, he didn’t reach his fame till long after he was dead. Once that happened, he soared! Lovecraft emerged from the world of being a cult fiction figurehead to being known as the “Master of Horror.” One of the major stories that brought him to fame was “The Call of Cthulhu,” which is about a giant octopus-man monster that rises from the depths of the ocean to terrorize earth. It’s been noted that Lovecraft was inspired by a sonnet written by Alfred Tennyson in 1830 called, “The Kraken,” – so the myth relates. However, it wasn’t until 2004 that a book was released by Phil Hines (a man known for his work in the field of chaos magick) that began to tie together the Cthulhu Mythos with the Chaos Star. The book was called “The Pseudonomicon” and explains in approximately 80 pages how you can get closer to “The Old Ones” (Cthulhu Mythos) and use the monster of madness (Cthulhu) as a symbol for a chaotic God, who is endlessly available to you in your path working chaote (a chaos magician) adventures. A web of significations indeed, and all interchangeably related. So much so, that the Cthulhu Mythos has its own metalanguage and provides an explanation of every single monster and dark entity imagined by Lovecraft. It is a mythological system developed by Lovecraft fans for Lovecraft fans. Cthulhu isn’t going anywhere! Some of the funniest political satire I ever read during the Presidential Campaign was printed on black t-shirts saying “Cthulhu for President: Why Choose the Lesser Evil?” It’s no doubt that the great monster octopus-man Cthulhu has made his way from the underground culture of cult fiction into the mainstream, but the pace at which this mythological entity is procreating its significations is astounding.

            Now, I want to get into the nitty gritty of the origins of the chaos star. Its origins stems from a man named Michael Moorcock, when he wrote, “The Eternal Champion,” in the 1970’s. “The Eternal Champion” is a story about a hero, Erekosë, who is incarnated into a multiverse system for the purpose of saving the human race from the evils of the world, a completely different idea representing the 8-pointed star from our visions of it thus far. The symbol in the Moorcock series represents chaos and order, or “law,” and one of hero’s missions is to restore balance in the multiverse system. Restoring balance in this sense means not allowing chaos to overpower the law or the law to overpower chaos. Though, what “law” is he referring to here? Aleister Crowley, who wrote “The Book of the Law,” in 1904, describes this 8-pointed star or the “law” as “energy” that scatters at “high velocity,” perhaps we can than say that the “law” is the energy and the “chaos” is the scattering of that energy. Peter J. Carroll, who wrote “Liber Null” and “Psychonaut” in the 1980’s describes the chaos star as “psychological anarchy […] The aim is to produce inspiration and enlightenment through disordering our belief structure.” And, in fact, that is exactly what chaos magick does. It holds the idea that belief is a tool and used liberally and extremely individualistically. Each chaos magician holds within them their own variations of inspiration and belief, feeling free to use whatever god/entity/spirit suits their needs in the moment, and then discarding it when it no longer produces results. It is a dismantling of ordered belief systems so you can create new ones. The 8 arrows pointing in all directions from the star is an active statement of possibility, creativity, and shifting paradigms. This is why the hero, Erekosë, is able to have multiple identities and can actively move through the layers of the multiverse system to accomplish his goals, even if those goals are eternal.

            Cthulhu, Erekosë, the chaos star, the octopus, and the kraken, are all interchangeably members of a metalanguage that have one thing in common: they all pose as symbols for the signification of action. They traverse all functioning systems of cultural appropriation because they work and “act” in multidimensional realms of persuasion. Their symbolism catches on, it clings to their surroundings much like an emotional vampire and pulls those who are vulnerable into their web of significations. The one who uses the chaos symbol is the creator and the one who manifests other mythological symbols and their significations. What we see today with the Trump Presidency is a “celebration” of this action. One which was inevitable due to all the years Trump spent studying our culture long before he hit the campaign trail. The uneasiness the masses feel with Trump as President has as much to do with his open rhetoric against the mob as it has to do with the mob’s inability to reflect on itself. The lack of awareness that the image they present is the same image they get back through Trump’s tweets. There is most definitely a background mythological system at work here, the All-American White Christian rhetoric, the question is, which mask does Trump wear? That of the Chaos Magician or the White Christian? And if they are interchangeable, (as the chaos star presents), how can we use this symbol to restore balance in our malfunctioning nation?