(The Dunwich
Horror, H.P. Lovecraft)
The above is the single longest and most coherent paragraph ever written by Lovecraft on the nature of his alien cosmic 'gods'. For the most part he was content to use their strange names in hints and veiled references, implying bodies of lore which he would never actually write.We
can profitably digress here to briefly discuss the names and nature of these
beings. Vast lists of names
invented by dozens of horror writers over decades can be compiled. Since the
focus of this paper is on Lovecraft’s own writing I’ll offer just a short
summary of the beings that the Old Gent himself invented. For the sake of
brevity I will focus on five primary beings that were invented by Lovecraft
himself, from whole cloth, and which played a part in numerous tales. If I have left out your favorite Eldritch Horror, please forgive me.
Azathoth – Outside the ordered universe [is] that
amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the
center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips
dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers
beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and
the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes
Dream-Quest of Unknown Kaddath
In Dreams In the
Witch-House we read of …the Throne of Azathoth at the center of Ultimate Chaos.
Azathoth
was the first of the GOO (Great Old Ones) to be invented by Lovecraft. It seems
to combine elements of his Arabian Nights fascination with his interest in
quantum physics, a path traceable along the path of HPL’s interests as his life
progressed. Azathoth first appears in the Dreamlands cycle tales; which largely preceded the mythos
tales. They were influenced by the Irish fantasist, Lord Dunsany (Edward
Plenkett). It was from
Dunsany that Lovecraft learned the notion of an invented pantheon of deities and
fantasy settings. Rather than set his glittering cities on another planet or in
the hollow earth, Lovecraft created a landscape of dreams, somewhat objectively
real, into which ‘skilled dreamers’ could find their way. We’ll look at that in
more detail in a later chapter. In the Dreamlands Azathoth seems to be more of the Arabian
nights sort of daemonic figure, who is promoted to the center of the Mythos
pantheon as time goes by. By the time he appears in Dreams he is a strange
thing sitting at the confluence of the quantum planes through which the mortal
hero wanders. He is also presented as the chief god of the Witch-cult, though
not the chief actor. That place belongs to another of the GOO.
Nyarlathotep - And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out
of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and
looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say
why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries,
and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands
of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always
buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into
instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences - of electricity and
psychology - and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away
speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one
another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest
vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of a nightmare.
There was the
immemorial figure of the deputy or messenger of hidden and terrible powers -
the "Black Man" of the witch cult, and the "Nyarlathotep"
of the Necronomicon.
Dreams In The Witch House
Dreams in the Witch House.
Nyarlathotep
begins in HPL’s stories as a traveling wonder-worker, a cross between NikolaTesla and one of the
various popular cult gurus of his time. He crosses the country – the world –
with his show of horrors and wonders and leaves behind him ordinary people
filled with extraordinary images and ideas. In the Dreamlands he is plainly a
god, inspiring terror and manipulating events in secret. Once again HPL claimed
to have heard the name first in a dream but the
Egyptian tone of the word is obvious, and the central imagery of the figure is
ancient Egyptian.
As
the figure evolves we learn the story of Nephren Ka, a Khemetic sorcerer who
makes a pact with Nyarlathotep. He becomes a Pharaoh, only to eventually be
ousted, his name and face erased from monuments, leaving a number of ‘faceless
Pharaoh’ images for hapless modern protagonists to excavate. Lovecraft’s
influences here are obvious. From our present time the mix of Egyptian
antiquities seems a central part of ‘occult’ practice. In Lovecraft’s day it
was all quite esoteric, not to mention often misunderstood. Lovecraft was
drawing on the newspaper headlines of his day more than any
esoteric doctrine.
Lovecraft
returns to themes of Nyarlathotep as herald and voice of the Great Old Ones.
Unlike the other entities he does not seem restrained or imprisoned, and
appears in several forms to mortals. While Lovecraft returned occasionally to
the idea of witchcraft, he did little with the tropes of practical magic or
spellcasting. Rather he elevated the blasphemies of the medieval witches’
sabbath into a strange cosmic gnosis, in Dreams in the Witch House. Obviously
this was inspirational to both Kenneth Grant, as we have mentioned, and to his later
imitators.
Yog Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is
the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present,
future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through
of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod
earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them
as They tread.
The Dunwich
Horror
It was an
All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self — not merely a thing of
one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of
existence's whole unbounded sweep — the last, utter sweep which has no confines
and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which
certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has
been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous
brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign...
Through the
Gates of the Silver Key
The
most directly magical of the GOO, Yog Sothoth is invoked by Lovecraftian
sorcerers as both a source of magical power and as a means of bringing through
things from ‘Outside’ into the mortal world. This concept of the Outside is
central to Lovecraft’s cosmicism, and one that meshes well with world occult
traditions. Likewise many cultures have liminal figures and gatekeeper gods
that resonate with Yog Sothoth. However HPL’s description takes us beyond any
human norms. Yog Sothoth never assumes a human form. It appears, when it must,
as “a congeries of iridescent globes” - a phrase that puts me in mind of aerial
wads of frog or fish eggs.
However
inhuman, Yog Sothoth can be conjured, and conjured by. He fathers children in
The Dunwich Horror, and aids the alchemical sorcerers to raise the dead in The
Case of Charles Dexter Ward. He – it – remains a lurking presence, seldom
revealed.
I’ll
venture outside the Lovecraft authorial canon a moment to mention the August
Derleth Mythos story (often sold as a collaboration with HPL, but based purely
on a few of his notes) “The Lurker on the Threshold”. Typically, Derleth
attempted to reveal what HPL left implicit. His character describes Yog Sothoth
as:
...great globes of light massing toward the opening, and not alone these,
but the breaking apart of the nearest globes, and the protoplasmic flesh that
flowed blackly outward to join together and form that eldritch, hideous horror
from outer space, that spawn of the blankness of primal time, that tentacled
amorphous monster which was the lurker at the threshold, whose mask was as a
congeries of iridescent globes, the noxious Yog-Sothoth, who froths as primal
slime in nuclear chaos beyond the nethermost outposts of space and time!
The title of this novella – “The Lurker on the
Threshold”, recalls the Theosophical term “The Dweller on the Threshold”. This
refers to an evil or dangerous entity that blocks the occult student from
making proper progress toward spiritual goals. The Dweller must be overcome if
the student is to progress. Considering the voracious and even seductive nature
of the GOO this seems related to Yog Sothoth only by the idea of the Threshold
itself, and the coolness of the name. The Lurker is waiting to get in, not to
keep us out.
Cthulhu
It lumbered
slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity
through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of
madness. … The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms
of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter,
force, and cosmic order.
The Call of Cthulhu
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl
fhtagn"
"In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits
dreaming.”
In
Cthulhu we find ourselves moving from the quantum realm to the realm of
Newtonian matter, more or less. Unlike the first three entities, Cthulhu has a
specific material form, and a specific existence in the history of earth.
Cthulhu
is described as the ‘cousin’ of the GOO, and as their High Priest. He is
specific enough in shape to have a world-wide tradition of idols depicting him,
and is said to have ruled the Earth in the Old One’s names in the ancient
prehistory of the world. He established his city of R’lyeh in the pacific
ocean, and from there presided over a period in which the GOO were more readily
present in the world, along with other interstellar or transdimensional races.
One of the latter is said to have invented humanity, breeding earth-life in
their vats of quasi-sorcerous science and creating us as a slave race.
Without attempting to fix a chronology (HPL never did), we read that at a
certain point there was conflict between Cthulhu’s administration and other
races. Perhaps it was this, or perhaps simply a change in cosmic alignment that
caused R’lyeh to sink beneath the sea, imprisoning Cthulhu in a sleep of death.
The GOO were also shut further away from material earth, and the race of
humanity slowly became the masters of bits of the world.
In the present day of the Cthulhu Mythos, Great Cthulhu is dead beneath the
Pacific ocean in his great throne tomb. Of him it was written in the
Necronomicon
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange eons, even death may die.”
And with strange eons, even death may die.”
Cthulhu is said to ‘wait dreaming’ for the stars to be right again, enabling him to rise and restore the gates to the Old Ones. His dreams reach out to sensitive minds among mortals, and he leads them to deeds of ritual worship and sorcery (and art and creativity…) that amount to madness in the eyes of society. It is most plainly Cthulhu who inspires human cult activity, along with Yog Sothoth and Nyarlathotep. Those three might be considered the great trinity of Lovecraftian cultism, but there is another being invented by HPL himself who deserves mention.
Shub-Niggurath
Ever Their praises, and abundance to
the Black Goat of the Woods. Iä! Shub-Niggurath!
Iä!
Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
The Whisperer
in Darkness
The least thoroughly-drawn of Lovecraft’s primary Great Old Ones,
Shub-Niggurath nevertheless has resonances with occultism that make it
interesting to this analysis. While
there is some dispute about their identity, The title Black Goat of the Woods
With a Thousand Young is usually thought to describe Shub-Niggurath, and when
HPL employed the figure in his revisions (stories he rewrote for others under
their names, for a fee) he plainly associated it with the many-breasted
goddesses of the Middle East. Shub-Niggurath is as close to a goddess as HPL
wrote, and so has a certain durability among occultists.
Lovecraft
may have been consciously imitating European witch-lore in his use of the goat.
Certainly he associates this GOO with his ‘witch-cult’, perhaps again
influenced by the popularity of Margaret Murray’s work. While the witch-cult in
Dream in the Witch House centers around Nyarlathotep, in The Thing On the
Doorstep we find Edward Derby, the hapless protagonist, saying:
"My brain! My brain! God, Dan - it's tugging - from
beyond - knocking - clawing - that she-devil - even now - Ephraim - Kamog!
Kamog! - The pit of the shoggoths - Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a
Thousand Young!...
"The flame - the flame - beyond body, beyond life -
in the earth - oh, God!"
As
always, we can only ‘dimly espy’ what might be the point of involvement with
these beings.. In the tales only a very few mortals ever seem to benefit from
working with the mythos – and that benefit is usually depicted as a successful
transformation into a monster. The Innsmouth worshippers of Father Dagon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_One
gain gold and immortality, at the expense of their humanity. Ephraim Waite
becomes a mad murderer in his pursuit of unending life. Joseph Curwen’s
experiments lead only to sorrow for himself and his descendants.
The
Great Old Ones are so alien to human life and thought that to us they are
mainly simply hazards. If they have any discernible agenda it seems only to
regain entry into the mortal world, to return and rule where they once ruled.
On to part 5
On to part 5
Dear Readers, it's off to Starwood at the end of this week, so I'll try to post something when I get home. Hope you're having a marvelous summer...
