Ladies and Gentlemen of the press; my fellow Americans.  Thank you for giving me the opportunity today to speak to you about matters of personal belief.

Recently my religious convictions—those associated with Cthulhu Worship and the Esoteric Order of Dagon—have constituted themselves a campaign issue.  Although no other current candidate for a presidential party nomination has been asked to justify his religious beliefs, and although I do not believe that my beliefs require justification, I have decided, in order that I might allay misgivings and settle misunderstandings, to devote a few remarks to the place of Cthulhu Worship in the American tradition.

First let me say that, if I were elected President of the United States, I would regard myself as the leader and chief representative of all Americans, not just of those who happen to be, like me, members in good standing of the Esoteric Order of Dagon.  Let me add that the basic tenets of the Order are identical with those of many other faiths that have also played a role in shaping the values of our nation—such as the Iroquois war-god cult, the Aztec Huitztliputztli cult as practiced by the ancestors of many Mexican-descended American citizens, Voodoo, and Santeria.  According to the Necronomicon of the “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred, the first Cthulhu Worshippers came to these shores in the company of the Mayflower Pilgrims.  Anyone who has read H. P. Lovecraft knows that the Minions of Cthulhu have played a central role in organizing the religious life of many remote regions of the American Northeast, especially in the hill country of Vermont, and of inaccessible parts of the Mississippi Delta.  Indeed, Cthulhu Worship and the Esoteric Order of Dagon have been subject to organized persecution directed from the Federal Government.  In 1926, in Innsmouth, Massachusetts, United States Marshals and soldiery of the United States Army and Marine Corps raided Innsmouth, arresting and jailing many citizens.  A Navy submarine fired torpedoes into the offshore, underwater crypts maintained by the Order and dedicated to the Holy Mysteries of Great Cthulhu.  Charges of cannibalism, virgin sacrifice, and interspecies breeding although whipped up by the yellow press were never proven.

What are the main tenets of Cthulhu Worship?  You’ve all heard, I’m sure, how exotic and creepy they are.  But nothing could be farther from the truth.  Simply put, Great Cthulhu is the mightiest of the Great Old Ones who ruled earth tens of millions of years ago before the so-called Elder Gods ousted them, sending some into eternal exile.  The Great Old Ones were, in fact, the creators of the human race, drawing forth the first humans from the primordial slime to serve and placate them in the cavernous underground temples of those days.  The Elder Gods confined Cthulhu in a trans-dimensional tomb, based on non-Euclidian geometry, in the stone city of ancient R’lyeh, which they then caused to sink below the waves of what would later become the South Pacific.  These events gave rise to the profoundest words of the Order’s liturgy:  Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl ftaghn! Or: “In his house at stone R’lyeh, Great Cthulhu lies sleeping.”  Another important phrase in our liturgy—“That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die”—is practically a mainstream Christian motif.

John Adams wrote, in a secret note penned at the time of the American founding, that, “Freedom requires Cthulhu Worship, just as Cthulhu Worship requires freedom.  Iä!  Iä!  Cthulhu ftaghn!”  And so I say to you, the voters, in the same spirit: From the wells of night to the gulfs of space, and from the gulfs of space to the wells of night, ever be the praises of Great Cthulhu of Tsathoggua and of him who may not be named!

Thank you and may God bless you.