Flying Spaghetti Monster vs. Cthulhu: The Anagrammatic Poems

It’s H. P. Lovecraft’s birthday today (August 20), so in his honor I thought I’d do something special to celebrate the Cthulhu Mythos as well as science and reason.

In the current Skeptical Inquirer, Jonathan C. Smith presents the “Pastafarian Quatrains,” a series of poems created through anagrams of the phrase “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” Intended as a satire of the tendency of the religious to see patterns where none exist, the quatrains seem to present the Monster’s own gospel about reason, angels, and G-strings. The poems “work” by cherry-picking seemingly sensible results from the millions of potential anagrams, most of which are sheer nonsense, and then attributing the selections to divine inspiration.

Not to be outdone, I reasoned that if the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) spoke through anagrams, surely Great Cthulhu did the same. The Church of the FSM asks visitors to reject the "false god" Cthulhu, and this obviously cannot stand. Cthulhu can do whatever the FSM can do! My initial foray into the unplumbed depths of madness came from producing anagrams of the phrase “Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!” The results were amazing! Surely, Cthulhu spoke to me.

The following miniature epic describes the descent into madness of the speaker, who has sought knowledge about the Old Ones and has instead encountered Nyarlathotep, who sends the speaker to a locked hut watched over by the Fungi from Yuggoth, within which is a “calf” of Shub-Niggurath, who guards a hatch leading to the gulf of outermost space and the depths of madness. By the end of the poem, the speaker is a prisoner facing a terrible Mythos fate.

Factual high hunt.
“Factual thing, huh?”
Ugh. Fact haul thin.
“Chant faith, lug.” Uh!

Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!
Chant fail. Ugh. Hut
Latch. Ha! Fungi hut.
Ah, latch unfit. Ugh!

“Uh, unlatch gift.” Ha!
Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!
I flaunt hatch. Ugh!
Huh. Giant calf hut.

Ugh. Titan calf? Huh?
Huh. Titan calf hug!
Caught flat in. Huh?
“Tug! Lift haunch.” Ha!

Uncaught! Hah. Lift
Hatch. Laugh if nut.
A nuthatch gulf. Hi!
Ha! Gulf hatch unit…

Laugh! Hatch unfit!
Hatch fail! “Ugh, nut.”
Huh, Fungi at latch.
Ah, Fungi latch hut.

Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!
Huh. Chant fail! “Tug,
nut.” Hatch fail! Ugh!
Uh, chain that gulf!