We lay claim to what we name and therefore assume ownership. Names are powerful. They provide the designator with dominion and power over what is being named, see Genesis 2:19-20 or demonology. This is the same reason why we provide names to heat waves, hurricanes, and weather events in general, or talk about bomb cyclones and atmospheric rivers. It’s why we redefine words like inflation, pandemic, virus, or vaccine. It’s why we call January 6th Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, etc. By invoking trauma and history we can control emotion. By personalizing something we can both control it and use it to control other people. From Hollywood to professional sports, and from media to healthcare, images, names and descriptions of octopus or squid are legion. Hollywood in particular is obsessed with using Lovecraftian images in movies, television shows, and even in the music industry. Consider the ink of these creatures, like black goo from the X Files, a vehicle to perpetuate an agenda. Ink is in the pen, which is mightier than the sword at creating new worlds and ideas. Professional hockey has the Seattle Kraken, a team that plays in climate pledge arena, yet another obsession of the ever changing narrative. Social media companies like Meta have recently used the squid as the centerpiece of their advertising campaign. In a new comic miniseries Rick and Morty are plunging into a pit of Lovecraftian horror, while Batman does the same for his next animated movie. The U.S. Army has the Typhon missile system, recently delivered by Lockheed. The Kraken is even a bitcoin trading platform. Now, in a place you would least expect it, even the world of health and medicine has classified a new ‘coronavirus’ variant as the Kraken - with Basilisk, Argus (giant), Chiron (son of Cronus) and Typhon (god of chaos/storms) coming soon. Literally. It’s everywhere. Such a name implies terror, as countless sailors felt about the legendary sea monster of the same name. In fact, the only reason that you would name something Kraken is if you wanted to frighten people by drawing on the energy of Cthulhu. With recent sightings of a Typhon-like monster in North Carolina and a literal Kraken-Octopus in BC, Canada, it seems that through these invocations of monsters, titans, etc., are literally being drawn (like a pen) into our world through sympathetic magic.
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