Cultes des Goules

The Cultes des Goules is the title of a fictional book created by Robert Bloch. Both H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth have claimed to have been the book's creator. The fictional Comte d'Erlette, created by H.P. Lovecraft, is an homage to August Derleth, and said to be the author of the infamous tome.

Description

Cultes des Goules is a book of black magic and necromancy written by Francois-Honore Balfour (Comte d'Erlette) in 1702. It was published in France (Paris?, 1703) and later denounced by the church for its lurid and abhorrent depictions of necromancy, necrophagy, and necrophilia as practiced by a secret aristocratic Libertine cabal of Ghouls.

Only a handful of copies of the book remain in existence. One of the known copies was kept for 91 years in an arcane library of the Church of Starry Wisdom in Providence, Rhode Island. After Robert Blake’s mysterious death in 1935, Doctor Dexter removed the grimoire and added it to his library.

Contents

Catalogues a large cult practicing necromancy, necrophagy, and necrophilia in France.

Depending on the version, the contents may include:

• The main part of the text is an account of the Comte D'Erlette's apparently objective and restrained observations on mysterious "ghoul cults", and their shocking habits, rites, diets, and lifestyles.
• A second, auto-biographical part, even more grotesque than the main part, allegedly by the same author, is usually appended to the tome, describing his conversion to - and gleeful participation in - the activities of a ghoul cult; textual clues reveal that this section was written much later than the original part, long after the original author should have died, and does not appear in older versions of the tome; thus, this section is generally considered by responsible historians to be a skillful forgery or hoax built on the model of the works of both D'Erlette and De Sade.
  • Many versions that include this section also include a final note, uncharacteristically hysterical in tone yet still attributed to D'Erlette and allegedly written in blood on the final page of D'Erlette's own copy of the tome, in which the note's author claims to recant his involvement with ghouls and begs the "elder gods" for protection, forgiveness, and mercy against his many transgressions and crimes; most serious occult scholars agree that this note is certainly a forgery.
• Some versions of the tome include a short section describing the secrets and mysteries of the cult's inhuman and mystical origins as the descendants of "angelic fire-spirits", "djinn", or "elder gods" who were "cast out of paradise" after a "war in heaven" for practicing "Black Magic". This section was allegedly narrated by the cult's elders and transcribed by the Comte D'Erlette, though experts are divided on whether this section was genuinely written by D'Erlette: there is some indication that the extravagant faerie tale portrayed in this section might have been a "posthumous collaboration" completed by a descendant or follower, imaginatively elaborated with complete and poorly-written fiction from a few scant notes written by the Comte D'Erlette shortly before his death. By some accounts, this section might have been excerpts from the rumoured English translation of the second of the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, crudely re-translated into French; this claim is supported by rough similarities in structure and content.
• A heavily-criticized and unlikely alchemical section is sometimes appended, filled with tedious catalogues of the names of mysterious creatures, spirits, and gods arbitrarily categorized along the lines of classical alchemical elements (earth, air, fire, and water) with unique additions of the "elements" of light and shadow, whose confusing and heretical interactions are portrayed through some strange allegory of cosmic alchemy. This section appears to have been a forgery written by the Comte D'Erlette himself in imitation of a genuine alchemical work, and, though usually omitted from the tome and generally considered poorly-researched nonsense by experts on classical alchemy, is sometimes believed by cultists to hold the keys to understanding some of the more mysterious references found in earlier sections of the tome.

Original French Version

French, by François-Honore Balfour, Comte d’Erlette, 1702? Published in 1703 in France (Paris?), in a quarto edition. Only fourteen copies are known to exist, the most recent surfacing in Providence, RI, in 1906.

Expurged French Version

TO DO

Italian Translation

TO DO

Role Playing Game Stats

Original French Version 

Sanity Loss 1D10/1D4; Cthulhu Mythos +12 Percent. Average 22 weeks to study and comprehend/ 48 hours to skim.

Expurged French Version 

Sanity Loss 1D8/1D4; Cthulhu Mythos +10 Percent. Average 17 weeks to study and comprehend/ 34 hours to skim.

Italian Translation 

Sanity Loss 1D8/1D4; Cthulhu Mythos +9 Percent. Average 15 weeks to study and comprehend/30 hours to skim.

Rumors and Speculation

• The Comte d'Erlette was an 18th-century Mythos investigator whose repulsive tome was an ill-advised expose' of the activities of a secret cult of Ghouls hidden in upper-class French aristocracy; d'Erlette's investigations resulted in his death by their hands. ("Down in the Delta", Scott Glancy, 2014)
• The Comte d'Erlette was a Ghoul, and the shocking activities of the Ghoul-Cults in his tome are auto-biographical. ("Down in the Delta", Scott Glancy, 2014)
• At least two parts of Cultes des Goules detail the Comte d'Erlette's controversial "Elemental Theory" of Mythos sorcery:
  • One part describes a sort of "family tree" of the Great Old Ones and supernatural creatures categorized by the classical elements (water, fire, earth, wind) Comte d'Erlette believed they represent. (August Derleth)
  • One part describes the origin and history of the Ghouls, which Comte d'Erlette claimed were fallen "fire elementals" ("Djinn"), banished by "Heaven" to Earth, where they exact vengeance upon their heavenly persecutors by possessing and debasing human flesh. (Arabic folklore)
• The book's publication and the public outcry that resulted from its revelations before the Church intervened and suppressed it resulted in a crackdown by Paris magistrates on alleged practitioners of the cult, with dozens of accused members hanged, and others fleeing Paris or committing themselves to obscure insane asylums and convents where they seem to have disappeared under suspicious circumstances. ("Down in the Delta", Scott Glancy, 2014)
• The alchemical/elemental section of the tome concludes with a brief and enigmatic reference to "The Drowners", including Bugg-Shash and Yibb-Tstll; D'Erlette seems to regard these beings as "aligned to water", and as such "antithetical to fire"; this passage claims that "The Drowners" can be summoned to vampirically weaken and control so-called "Great Old Ones" and that a special invocation to the "fire elemental" Cthugha can be used in turn to control "The Drowners"; this invocation the author promised to provide "below", but, maddeningly, it does not appear in any known version of this tome. Some cultists claim that the invocation is encoded in some way in the tome's text, while a few occultists believe that by "below" D'Erlette was not referring to later in the tome, but to some subterranean meeting place deep in the Earth among the ghouls where the undying D'Erlette himself will teach the invocation to worthy scholars in person; however, most serious occultists seem certain that no such invocation ever existed, citing their belief that D'Erlette is "unreliable". (Y.Whateley)

Timeline

1. 1635: Antoine-Marie Augustin de Montmorency-les-Roches is born. According to some, he is later known as the Comte d'Erlette, author of Cultes des Goules. (Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley)
2. c. 1665: If Antoine-Marie Augustin de Montmorency-les-Roches is indeed the Comte d'Erlette, then Cultes des Goules is probably completed around this time. (Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley)
3. 1703: François-Honoré Balfour, if he is the Comte d'Erlette as some believe, probably publishes Cultes des Goules in this year, before shutting himself out from the world. (Call of Cthulhu 5th Ed., Petersen and Willis et al)
4. 1724: The Comte d'Erlette Francois-Honore' Balfour vanished. Four days later he was found 'torn apart by animals' on the grounds of his estate. His burial instructions included being sealed in a solid brass casket and placed in a newly-constructed concrete vault. ("Down in the Delta", Scott Glancy, 2014)
5. 1737: According to some, Cultes des Goules by the Comte d'Erlette is published in Rouen, France.
6. c. 1793: The d'Erlettes flee France and settle in Bavaria at the time of the French Revolution. They change the family name to Derleth. (Factual)

Quotes

• "Comte d'Erlette's Cultes des Goules? An invention of Bloch's. The name Comte d'Erlette, however, represents an actual (and harmless) ancestor of August W. Derleth's, who was a royalist emigre from France in 1792 and became naturalised in Germany under the slightly Teutonised name of Derleth. His son, emigrating to Wisconsin in 1835, was the founder of the Derleth line in America." - H.P. Lovecraft
• Comte D’Erlette comments on the scandalous murders in the Danish Castle of Count Magnus De la Gardie (around 1660): "I wonder what it was that the creature that came from the Count’s cursed box harvested from its victims? Did such harvesting assist its escape? Or is it another evil this Pandora’s Box has loosed upon the world?" - Pandora's Box (scenario by Glyn White)

Appearances

• The Comte d'Erlette and Cultes des Goules are mentioned at least twice by H.P. Lovecraft in his published fiction, but only in passing, among lists of fantastical books studied by background characters in "The Shadow out of Time" and "The Haunter of the Dark".