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It's safe to assume that most of the original Mythos material written by H.P. Lovecraft and his peers, including Clark Ashton Smith and Frank Belknap long are canon. Not sure how far this extends, like whether the Robert E. Howard pulp stuff is also canon.
The origins of Humanity are still a mystery on Golarion, so who knows?
There is no reason to assume that the activities of the Great Old Ones and their servitors on Golarion in any way mirror those on Earth.
Also, I don't think Reign of Winter proves the current year on Golarion matches 1921 A.D. on Earth, but more likely suggests a distance in light years between Golarion and Earth. More than one thread discussed this without reaching a definite conclusion.
Then again, I have a vague (and quite possibly false) memory of James Jacobs or one of the other developers stating that Golarion and Earth were in separate galaxies, so who knows?
Creative Director
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Considering that in his own work Lovecraft was often contradictory about "canonical" elements, it's a bit unfair to expect us to quantify all of his writing (and beyond that, all the writing of all mythos tales) as canon.
Instead, we do what everyone who's expanded upon the mythos does—we come up with our own interpretation of what is and isn't canonical for these characters, as far as Golarion is concerned.
How we handle Hastur and Carcosa in the Strange Aeons adventure path is a GREAT example of this, since Hastur is one of the MOST complicated characters, canon-wise, in the mythos. He/she/it has gone from being a god of shepards to a city to a place to a dude to a Great Old One to entropy to more... but he/she/it can only be one thing in the context of Golarion. That means that it's canonical ONLY for Golarion.
The Lovecraftian mythos has played a part in my homebrew games from early on. Maybe not by name, but they are hinted at in certain circles.
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Ah so inshouldnt be putting lovecraft works in my pathfinder timeline, gotcha
You can put in whatever you want! It's YOUR timeline, you don't need the blessing of "canon" to write the stories you want to write. If you want Cthulhu to sell groceries in Galt, than DO SO if it builds the story you're trying to immerse your players in.
I'm not sure why it would suggest anything about distance in light years. You travel from Golarion to Earth by the Hut's magic without any noticeable time lapse.
Took me a while to relocate this post. Nothing official here, but it's the source of my bringing up light years.
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What's great about the Cthulhu Mythos is that inherently, both in game terms and the reality of what's written by real authors, it's impossible to nail down 'canon'.
As a designer for Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder, that fact alone made me make a sanity check. I wanted to make sure our designs were 'canon' and "actually like it is in the book". While we've achieved this for many of the creatures in HP Lovecraft's works, to do it for everything imagined that's now "in" the Cthulhu Mythos is impossible.
For example let's look at some of the well known Canon creatures. Dark Young, Hunting Horrors, Dimensional Shamblers, Star Vampires, and Servitors of the Outer Gods. All of those were actually developed by Sandy Petersen when he wrote Call of Cthulhu RPG.
Even the use of the common terms for the clear categories of Lovecraftian entities such as Great Old Ones, Outer Gods, Elder Gods, and Great One are also creations of Sandy Petersen's that are now the commonplace way to categorize the awesome monstrosities found in the mythos.
In recently chatting with Paizo's creative director James Jacobs (who were delighted is working with Sandy and the team here at Petersen Games on Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder) he pointed out how great it is that different interpretations in game mechanics can be expressed with creatures in the Mythos.
At the risk of sounding like a commercial, that's why the Petersen Games Cthulhu Mythos book includes all of the Paizo's stats for creatures and Petersen Games stats for the same creatures so GM can choose which works best for them.
James is right on the money on this. The Cthulhu Mythos's 'canon' gives the GM the most flexibility possible of any mythology.
Have fun and stay sane.