The Myth Patterns of
H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft was a great admirer of Lord Dunsany's book The Gods of Pegāna, which introduced a pantheon of newly-invented gods. Although Lovecraft went on to develop something like a pantheon of his own, he never produced a work like Dunsany's to introduce all his gods. Instead, Lovecraft's "Yog-Sothothery" developed piecemeal, through a process of accretion, with new stories contributing new gods and elder races. In the process, the same beings could be presented in very different ways in different stories. These changes were possible because none of the information is ever presented as definitive. Instead, the stories present various informants whose views are incomplete and possibly even deluded. Even the Necronomicon is presented as an incomplete and doubtful source at best [bolding in all quotes is my own]:

No book had ever really hinted of it [the cult of the Great Old Ones], though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose, especially the much-discussed couplet:
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
[HPL Call]

...I started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth.
[Whisperer]

I found myself faced by names and terms that I had heard elsewhere in the most hideous of connexions—Yuggoth, Great Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, R’lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Hastur, Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, Bethmoora, the Yellow Sign, L’mur-Kathulos, Bran, and the Magnum Innominandum—and was drawn back through nameless aeons and inconceivable dimensions to worlds of elder, outer entity at which the crazed author of the Necronomicon had only guessed in the vaguest way.
[Whisperer]

The Guide knew, as he knew all things, of Carter’s quest and coming, and that this seeker of dreams and secrets stood before him unafraid. There was no horror or malignity in what he radiated, and Carter wondered for a moment whether the mad Arab’s terrific blasphemous hints, and extracts from the Book of Thoth, might not have come from envy and a baffled wish to do what was now about to be done.
[Gates]

The reader could be pardoned for feeling whiplash at the various ways Yog-Sothoth is presented in different stories: as a servitor demon who can be called on to reanimate corpses, as an invader intent on the conquest of Earth, or as a serenely indifferent archetype of all wizards, thinkers, and artists [Case, Dunwich, Gates]. And after reading of the perils posed by deities such as Cthulhu and Yig, it is disorienting at best to encounter worshippers who regard them as benevolent father figures. [Mound]

Given the incomplete and biased nature of the sources presented in Lovecraft's stories, there has even been some question about whether any of Lovecraft's entities should really be considered "gods," or whether they are simply space aliens masquerading as gods for their deluded followers.[fn1] To me, the "gods vs. aliens" distinction seems like a false dichotomy. However, this is not the place to address the issue of terminology. Those beings in Lovecraft's stories, who have immense powers and who also have worshippers, shall be referred to here as "gods." They could also be considered demons, and might have been considered such by some of their votaries.

Overall, Lovecraft's "Yog-Sothothery" comes across less as a single myth-pattern, and more as a loosely related assortment of partially developed myth patterns, each developed on an ad-hoc basis to serve the needs of his latest story. This becomes more clear when you become aware of all the dropped threads in his work: suggestive ideas that were introduced and then never followed up, and never set in clear relation to his other concepts. This shambolic, half-disordered quality to Lovecraft's myths actually works well in the context of his stories. His various "in" references remain suggestive atmospheric hints, rather than prescriptive rules. They open up possibilities, rather than closing them off.

So as we survey Lovecraft's myth patterns, it is best not to expect a definitive, single view of what was going on in his "world." We can, however, identify many of the recurring elements, and outline the relationships that are suggested to exist between them.

Disclaimer about terminology: Lovecraft used the same or similar terms for several distinct groups of beings. To distinguish among the various types of Old Ones in Lovecraft's stories, this article refers to the invisible beings from Dunwich as the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth; the humanoid race from Mound as the Old Ones of K'n-yan; and the barrel-shaped creatures with starfish heads from Mountains as the Antarctic Old Ones. (Of course, the race from Mountains inhabited more areas than Antarctica, but the alternative of calling them the "crinoid Old Ones" struck me as too obscure.) None of these Old Ones should be confused with the Great Old Ones from Call; nor should the latter be confused with the Great Race [Time] or the Great Ones (Gods of Earth) from the dreamlands stories such as Kadath.[fn2]

Contents

• The Primal Chaos: Who's Calling the Tunes?
• The Great Ones and the Other Gods
• Nodens, the Rogue God
• Cthulhu and Company
  • Great Old Ones and Cthulhu Spawn
  • The Daughter of Cthulhu
  • Dagon, Hydra, and the Deep Ones
• Yog-Sothoth, Reanimator
  • Yog-Sothoth and the Old Ones
  • Yog-Sothoth, 'Umr at-Tawil, and the Ancient Ones
• Great, Old, Ancient, and Other Gods
  • Old Ones and Great Old Ones
  • Old Ones and Other Gods
  • Ancient Ones and Old Ones
• Gods of Good Reputation
  • Yig, Father of Serpents
  • Tulu, Spirit of Universal Harmony
  • Tsathoggua, God of N'Kai and Hyperborea
  • Ghatanothoa of the Stony Gaze
  • Shub-Niggurath, En Famille
• Rhan-Tegoth and the Return of the Old Ones
• Gods of Lost Mnar
• Gods and Devotees
• Factions and Conflicts
• The Hierarchy of Alienness
• The Prolonged of Life
• Imprisoned with the Old Ones
• Déjà Vu of the Future
• Pagan Burrowings
• Concluding Thoughts

The Primal Chaos: Who's Calling the Tunes?

The chief deity in Lovecraft's pantheon is

...that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre 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... [Kadath]

The primacy of Azathoth is attested in various works. In Lovecraft's family tree of the elder beings, Azathoth is at the beginning of the chart [Family]. The sonnet "Azathoth" tells us

Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered
Things he had dreamed but could not understand,
While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and fluttered
In idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned.

They danced insanely to the high, thin whining
Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,
Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining
Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law.
[Fungi XXII]

The leading attributes of Azathoth are: he dwells in the center of Chaos; he is "mindless," but dreaming; he is gnawing hungrily; and he gives rise to all the universes, including our own. Also, he is very dangerous to approach. Thus, the violet gas S'ngac warned Kuranes never to approach the central void where Azathoth gnaws hungrily in the dark. [Kadath]

Azathoth is closely associated with the Other Gods or Ultimate Gods.

...the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth...who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods... [Kadath]

...the awful voids outside the ordered universe where the daemon-sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in chaos amid pounding and piping and the hellish dancing of the Other Gods, blind, voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless... [Kadath]

So the Other Gods seem to form an entourage of sorts for Azathoth. Like him, they are "mindless," but they are a bit more active since they are dancing. Like Azathoth, they are dangerous:

Remember the Other Gods; they are great and mindless and terrible, and lurk in the outer voids. They are good gods to shun. [Kadath]

Some of the Other Gods exist in a larval form in interplanetary and interstellar space:

It was dark when the galley passed betwixt the Basalt Pillars of the West and the sound of the ultimate cataract swelled portentous from ahead. And the spray of that cataract rose to obscure the stars, and the deck grew damp, and the vessel reeled in the surging current of the brink. Then with a queer whistle and plunge the leap was taken, and Carter felt the terrors of nightmare as earth fell away and the great boat shot silent and comet-like into planetary space. Never before had he known what shapeless black things lurk and caper and flounder all through the aether, leering and grinning at such voyagers as may pass, and sometimes feeling about with slimy paws when some moving object excites their curiosity. These are the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, and like them are blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts. [Kadath]

Unswerving and obedient to the foul legate’s orders, that hellish bird plunged onward through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in darkness, and vacuous herds of drifting entities that pawed and groped and groped and pawed; the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, that are like them blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts. [Kadath]

A larva is a "distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults" ["Larva," Wikipedia] It is not clear whether the larvae are children of the mature Other Gods, or whether they are spawned directly by Azathoth.

The other key member of Azathoth's circle is "that frightful soul and messenger of infinity’s Other Gods, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep." [Kadath] He gives orders on behalf of the Other Gods:

So, Randolph Carter, in the name of the Other Gods I spare you and charge you to serve my will. I charge you to seek that sunset city which is yours, and to send thence the drowsy truant gods for whom the dream-world waits. [Kadath]

Nyarlathotep is intelligent, crafty, and has been known to incarnate in human form [Kadath, Nyarlathotep, Fungi XXI]. As the Black Man of the witch-cult, he helps to waylay humans into signing the book of Azathoth [WitchHouse]. It is not clear whether he is one of the Other Gods, or a servant of theirs, or a composite persona that emerges from the interaction of all of them.

It has been suggested [fn3] that Nyarlathotep actually manipulates and directs Azathoth's creative energy; Lovecraft does not specify whether the flute that "gives each frail cosmos its eternal law" is played by Azathoth or Nyarlathotep [Fungi XXII]. However, I am inclined to think that Azathoth plays the flute himself, since it gives forth "aimless waves whose chance combining / Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law." The key point here is that the flute playing is aimless, and that quality is characteristic of Azathoth rather than the scheming Nyarlathotep.

The Other Gods do not appear in Lovecraft's family tree of the gods [Family], unless possibly the direct offspring of Azathoth in that chart can be considered to be among the Other Gods. However, the chart lists only three names at this level: Nyarlathotep, the Nameless Mist, and Darkness. Lovecraft doesn't specify how many Other Gods there are, but there would seem to be more than three, especially since there are new ones that are still in their larval stage.

Azathoth existed for aeons before creating the Other Gods:

Trembling in waves that golden wisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far-off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. And as that music grew, the shantak raised its ears and plunged ahead, and Carter likewise bent to catch each lovely strain. It was a song, but not the song of any voice. Night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born. [Kadath]

It's worth pointing out that this Azathoth/Other Gods/Nyarlathotep grouping did not appear all at once. Nyarlathotep first appears in the mysterious vignette "Nyarlathotep" in 1920. Here he is identified as the soul of the "ultimate gods," but Azathoth goes unmentioned:

And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep. [Nyarlathotep]

Despite the dreamlike quality of the story, and its actual genesis in one of Lovecraft's dreams, it appears to be set in our waking world rather than in the dreamlands.

Azathoth first appears as the title of a brief fragment in 1922, but is not discussed in the text [Azathoth]. The setting is a drab city, evidently in the waking world.

The Other Gods appeared next, in 1921's "The Other Gods." This tale is explicitly set in the dreamlands, but tells us nothing of the nature or habits of the Other Gods, except that they are "gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth" [Other]. No mention is made of Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, mindlessness, chaos, flutes, or dancing. Then in 1926, "The Strange High House in the Mist" gives us a passing mention: the bearded host speaks of times "before the gods or even the Elder Ones were born, and when only the other gods came to dance on the peak of Hatheg-Kla in the stony desert near Ulthar, beyond the river Skai" [Mist].

It is in Kadath that Lovecraft first brings these elements together. Here the ultimate gods of the waking world and the Other Gods of dreamland are first identified as the same: "the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods..." [emphasis mine] It's an instance where Lovecraft seems to have belatedly identified elements that he originally conceived as being separate. Here we also learn that the ultimate gods/Other Gods are associated with Azathoth, who for the first time is introduced as the mindless peril at the center of chaos. In the process, Nyarlathotep, as the soul of the Other Gods, is also brought into Azathoth's orbit. [Kadath]

[Return to table of contents]

The Great Ones and the Other Gods

The humans of the dreamlands worship a group of beings referred to as the Great Ones (not to be confused with the Great Old Ones). They are also known as Earth's gods, the gods of Earth, or the Elder Ones. They are first referenced as a group in 1921's "The Other Gods" [Other].

Atop the tallest of earth’s peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer no man to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once inhabited; but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of rock and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only the last remains. When they left their older peaks they took with them all signs of themselves; save once, it is said, when they left a carven image on the face of the mountain which they called Ngranek. [Other]

The leading characteristics of the Great Ones are thus: their unwillingness to be seen by humans, their tendency to withdraw to more remote mountainous places to avoid us, and their nostalgic habit of occasionally revisiting the lesser peaks where they once lived.

In Ulthar, there is a Temple of the Elder Ones:

Carter, the cats being somewhat dispersed by the half-seen zoogs, picked his way directly to the modest Temple of the Elder Ones where the priests and old records were said to be; and once within that venerable circular tower of ivied stone—which crowns Ulthar’s highest hill—he sought out the patriarch Atal, who had been up the forbidden peak Hatheg-Kla in the stony desert and had come down again alive. [Kadath]

In Inganok, there is a grander temple:

On a hill in the centre rose a sixteen-angled tower greater than all the rest and bearing a high pinnacled belfry resting on a flattened dome. This, the seamen said, was the Temple of the Elder Ones, and was ruled by an old high-priest sad with inner secrets. [Kadath]

The only one of Great Ones to be mentioned by name is Nath-Horthath:

...the turquoise temple of Nath-Horthath, where the orchid-wreathed priests told [Kuranes] that there is no time in Ooth-Nargai, but only perpetual youth. [Celephais]

...Carter knew that they were come to the land of Ooth-Nargai and the marvellous city of Celephaïs. ... As it has always been is still the turquoise of Nath-Horthath, and the eighty orchid-wreathed priests are the same who builded it ten thousand years ago. [Kadath]

Though Nath-Horthath is chiefly worshipped in Celephaïs, all the Great Ones are mentioned in diurnal prayers; and the priest was reasonably versed in their moods. [Kadath]

It seems the Great Ones have human-like features, but are possibly of vast size.

...poor Atal babbled freely of forbidden things; telling of a great image reported by travellers as carved on the solid rock of the mountain Ngranek, on the isle of Oriab in the Southern Sea, and hinting that it may be a likeness which earth’s gods once wrought of their own features in the days when they danced by moonlight on that mountain. And he hiccoughed likewise that the features of that image are very strange, so that one might easily recognise them, and that they are sure signs of the authentic race of the gods. [Kadath]

At last, in the fearsome iciness of upper space, he [Carter] came round fully to the hidden side of Ngranek... Stern and terrible shone that face that the sunset lit with fire. How vast it was no mind can ever measure, but Carter knew at once that man could never have fashioned it. It was a god chiselled by the hands of the gods, and it looked down haughty and majestic upon the seeker. Rumour had said it was strange and not to be mistaken, and Carter saw that it was indeed so; for those long narrow eyes and long-lobed ears, and that thin nose and pointed chin, all spoke of a race that is not of men but of gods. [Kadath]

To me, the description seems a bit reminiscent of the stone faces of Easter Island; perhaps Lovecraft had them in mind.

It seems the Great Ones, like the Greek Gods, often mate with humans:

It is known that in disguise the younger among the Great Ones often espouse the daughters of men, so that around the borders of the cold waste wherein stands Kadath the peasants must all bear their blood. This being so, the way to find that waste must be to see the stone face on Ngranek and mark the features; then, having noted them with care, to search for such features among living men. Where they are plainest and thickest, there must the gods dwell nearest; and whatever stony waste lies back of the villages in that place must be that wherein stands Kadath. [Kadath]

All agree that one should never approach the Great Ones:

They might, Atal said, heed a man’s prayer if in good humour; but one must not think of climbing to their onyx stronghold atop Kadath in the cold waste. It was lucky that no man knew where Kadath towers, for the fruits of ascending it would be very grave. Atal’s companion Barzai the Wise had been drawn screaming into the sky for climbing merely the known peak of Hatheg-Kla. With unknown Kadath, if ever found, matters would be much worse; for although earth’s gods may sometimes be surpassed by a wise mortal, they are protected by the Other Gods from Outside, whom it is better not to discuss.

Like Atal in distant Ulthar, he [the high priest in Celephaïs] strongly advised against any attempt to see them; declaring that they are testy and capricious, and subject to strange protection from the mindless Other Gods from Outside, whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. [Kadath]

Kuranes did not know where Kadath was, or the marvellous sunset city; but he did know that the Great Ones were very dangerous creatures to seek out, and that the Other Gods had strange ways of protecting them from impertinent curiosity. [Kadath]

It is never really explained why the Other Gods protect the Great Ones from being viewed by mortals. There is some suggestion that the Other Gods exert a control over the Great Ones that is not truly benevolent, such as when

...the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep strode brooding into the onyx castle atop unknown Kadath in the cold waste, and taunted insolently the mild gods of earth whom he had snatched abruptly from their scented revels in the marvellous sunset city. [Kadath]

Of course, at that point, Nyarlathotep may have been a bad mood because Randolph Carter had just escaped his trap. But it seems the the Other Ones sometimes do act in response to requests from the Great Ones:

...few had seen the stone face of the god, because it is on a very difficult side of Ngranek, which overlooks only sheer crags and a valley of sinister lava. Once the gods were angered with men on that side, and spoke of the matter to the Other Gods. [Kadath]

There is also the following strange circumstance:

The gugs, hairy and gigantic, once reared stone circles in that wood [the enchanted wood] and made strange sacrifices to the Other Gods and the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, until one night an abomination of theirs reached the ears of earth’s gods and they were banished to caverns below. [Kadath]

We are not told the nature of the gugs' "abomination," but it may have been one of their "strange sacrifices to the Other Gods." If so, then who banished the gugs? Were the Great Ones able to banish devotees of the Other Gods? Surely one would have expected the Other Gods to protect their devotes. Or did the Great Ones appeal to the Other Gods and complain that the gugs were going too far with their "abominable" devotions?

Whatever the relationship between the Great Ones and the Other Gods, there is a great power imbalance between them. The priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah explain to Carter that other planets have their own dreamlands:

...not only had no man ever been to unknown Kadath, but no man had ever suspected in what part of space it may lie; whether it be in the dreamlands around our world, or in those surrounding some unguessed companion of Fomalhaut or Aldebaran. [Kadath]

However, the scope of the Great Ones' power is strictly limited to earth's dreamland:

From him [Atal] Carter learned many things about the gods, but mainly that they are indeed only earth’s gods, ruling feebly our own dreamland and having no power or habitation elsewhere. [Kadath]

Probably, Atal said, the place [that Carter sought] belonged to his especial dream-world and not to the general land of vision that many know; and conceivably it might be on another planet. In that case earth’s gods could not guide him if they would. [Kadath]

By contrast, the Other Gods live in the center of Chaos with their soul Nyarlathotep and the mindless, dreaming creator Azathoth. Yet the influence of the Other Gods is never far away:

It is understood in the land of dream that the Other Gods have many agents moving among men; and all these agents, whether wholly human or slightly less than human, are eager to work the will of those blind and mindless things in return for the favour of their hideous soul and messenger, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. [Kadath]

[Return to table of contents]

Nodens, the Rogue God

There is another being who seems to stand somewhat outside the groupings of the Great Ones and the Other Gods. We first encounter the hoary god Nodens in Mist. Though set in the waking world, on the cliffs outside Kingsport, the story records a seeming intrusion into the waking world from the land of dream. The sea mists, it seem, bear dreams from an undersea realm of the Elder Ones:

In the morning mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs beyond Kingsport. White and feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. And later, in still summer rains on the steep roofs of poets, the clouds scatter bits of those dreams, that men shall not live without rumour of old, strange secrets, and wonders that planets tell planets alone in the night. When tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conches in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager mists flock to heaven laden with lore, and oceanward eyes on the rocks see only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff’s rim were the rim of all earth, and the solemn bells of buoys tolled free in the aether of faery. [Mist]

In a house on the cliffs lives a man who "had communed with the mists of the sea and the clouds of the sky" for unnumbered years. Speaking to Thomas Olney, the man seems to draw a distinction between at least three classes of divinities, based on their age:

And the day wore on, and still Olney listened to rumours of old times and far places, and heard how the Kings of Atlantis fought with the slippery blasphemies that wriggled out of rifts in ocean’s floor, and how the pillared and weedy temple of Poseidonis is still glimpsed at midnight by lost ships, who know by its sight that they are lost. Years of the Titans were recalled, but the host grew timid when he spoke of the dim first age of chaos before the gods or even the Elder Ones were born, and when only the other gods came to dance on the peak of Hatheg-Kla in the stony desert near Ulthar, beyond the river Skai. [Mist]

It seems that the Other Gods are the oldest, followed by the Elder Ones, then by another group called simply "the gods." The "Elder Ones" are simply another name for the Great Ones of earth's dreamlands. The more recent group of "the gods" are not described, but they may be associated with Atlantis and perhaps with Greece, since the Titans figured in Greek mythology. Possibly all the gods of Greek and Roman mythology fall into this category.

Then Nodens makes his entrance:

And then to the sound of obscure harmonies there floated into that room from the deep all the dreams and memories of earth’s sunken Mighty Ones. And golden flames played about weedy locks, so that Olney was dazzled as he did them homage. Trident-bearing Neptune was there, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and upon dolphins’ backs was balanced a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss. And the conches of the tritons gave weird blasts, and the nereids made strange sounds by striking on the grotesque resonant shells of unknown lurkers in black sea-caves. Then hoary Nodens reached forth a wizened hand and helped Olney and his host into the vast shell, whereat the conches and the gongs set up a wild and awesome clamour. And out into the limitless aether reeled that fabulous train, the noise of whose shouting was lost in the echoes of thunder. [Mist]

The phrase "earth's sunken Mighty Ones" seems to include figures that European mythologies associate with the ocean: Nodens, Neptune, nereids, and tritons. Unlike the Great Ones of earth's dreamlands, these sea beings allow themselves to be seen by a mortal man, Thomas Olney. The Other Gods never intervene to prevent Olney from seeing them. But the viewing of them is not without cost, for thereafter Olney seems to have lost his soul, and to spend the remainder of his life in a placid, zombie-like existence:

And at noon elfin horns rang over the ocean as Olney, dry and light-footed, climbed down from the cliffs to antique Kingsport with the look of far places in his eyes. He could not recall what he had dreamed in the sky-perched hut of that still nameless hermit... [The] Terrible Old Man...afterward mumbled queer things in his long white beard; vowing that the man who came down from that crag was not wholly the man who went up, and that somewhere under that grey peaked roof, or amidst inconceivable reaches of that sinister white mist, there lingered still the lost spirit of him who was Thomas Olney.

And ever since that hour, through dull dragging years of greyness and weariness, the philosopher has laboured and eaten and slept and done uncomplaining the suitable deeds of a citizen. Not any more does he long for the magic of farther hills, or sigh for secrets that peer like green reefs from a bottomless sea. The sameness of his days no longer gives him sorrow, and well-disciplined thoughts have grown enough for his imagination. [Mist]

We learn more of Nodens in Kadath when Carter recruits the night-gaunts to assist his quest:

[Carter] had met those silent, flitting, and clutching creatures before; those mindless guardians of the Great Abyss whom even the Great Ones fear, and who own not Nyarlathotep but hoary Nodens as their lord. For they were the dreaded night-gaunts, who never laugh or smile because they have no faces, and who flop unendingly in the dark betwixt the Vale of Pnath and the passes to the outer world. [Kadath]

[Carter] spoke, too, of the things he had learnt concerning night-gaunts from the frescoes in the windowless monastery of the high-priest not to be described; how even the Great Ones fear them, and how their ruler is not the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep at all, but hoary and immemorial Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss. [Kadath]

And even were unexpected things to come from the Other Gods, who are prone to oversee the affairs of earth’s milder gods, the night-gaunts need not fear; for the outer hells are indifferent matters to such silent and slippery flyers as own not Nyarlathotep for their master, but bow only to potent and archaic Nodens. [Kadath]

Unlike the Great Ones, Nodens does not submit to Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods. Further, the Great Ones fear Noden's followers, the night-gaunts. Apparently the Great Ones are not confident that the Other Gods can protect them from the night-gaunts.

Two other aspects of Nodens are noteworthy. First, he is very old; every mention of his name is accompanied by an adjective such as archaic, hoary, or immemorial. Perhaps the implication is that Nodens is older than the Great Ones. Secondly, Nodens is the lord of the Great Abyss. Recall that the Great Ones prefer to play on high mountain peaks. Nodens, as Lord of the Great Abyss, could be considered to be their opposite. But what is the Great Abyss? We learn that steps lead down to the Great Abyss from Sarkomand, a ruined city in a little-inhabited part of the dreamlands:

Indubitably that primal city was no less a place than storied Sarkomand, whose ruins had bleached for a million years before the first true human saw the light, and whose twin titan lions guard eternally the steps that lead down from dreamland to the Great Abyss. [Kadath]

Gates to the abyss are "guarded by flocks of night-gaunts." The Great Abyss is also home to "the ghouls’ black kingdom." Though Nodens is the Lord of the Great Abyss, the ghouls are not his followers, because "ghouls have no masters." However, they are "bound by solemn treaties" with Noden's followers, the night-gaunts.

The Nodens in Kadath seems to have mutated a bit from his appearance in Mist, where he appeared as an ocean god, and the Great Abyss was evidently a reference to the depths of the sea. In Kadath, his watery associations go totally unmentioned. It's an example where Lovecraft places one of his existing creations in a different context and shows us a new aspect that was previously unsuspected.

Ultimately Carter's army of ghouls and night-gaunts is easily defeated by Nyarlathotep:

Randolph Carter had hoped to come into the throne-room of the Great Ones with poise and dignity, flanked and followed by impressive lines of ghouls in ceremonial order, and offering his prayer as a free and potent master among dreamers. He had known that the Great Ones themselves are not beyond a mortal’s power to cope with, and had trusted to luck that the Other Gods and their crawling chaos Nyarlathotep would not happen to come to their aid at the crucial moment, as they had so often done before when men sought out earth’s gods in their home or on their mountains. And with his hideous escort [Carter] had half hoped to defy even the Other Gods if need were, knowing as he did that ghouls have no masters, and that night-gaunts own not Nyarlathotep but only archaick Nodens for their lord.

But now he saw that supernal Kadath in its cold waste is indeed girt with dark wonders and nameless sentinels, and that the Other Gods are of a surety vigilant in guarding the mild, feeble gods of earth. Void as they are of lordship over ghouls and night-gaunts, the mindless, shapeless blasphemies of outer space can yet control them when they must; so that it was not in state as a free and potent master of dreamers that Randolph Carter came into the Great Ones’ throne-room with his ghouls. Swept and herded by nightmare tempests from the stars, and dogged by unseen horrors of the northern waste, all that army floated captive and helpless in the lurid light, dropping numbly to the onyx floor when by some voiceless order the winds of fright dissolved.

Nodens is not present at this scene, so it doesn't constitute a direct smackdown between him and Nyarlathotep. But to the extent that Nyarlathotep makes short work of Noden's followers, it seems implied that Nodens is actually a lesser power than the Other Gods.

There is some wiggle room here, though. For Carter ultimately escapes from Nyarlathotep's trap. And Nodens seems to assist his escape, at least as a cheerleader:

There were gods and presences and wills; beauty and evil, and the shrieking of noxious night robbed of its prey. For through the unknown ultimate cycle had lived a thought and a vision of a dreamer’s boyhood, and now there were re-made a waking world and an old cherished city to body and to justify these things. Out of the void S’ngac the violet gas had pointed the way, and archaic Nodens was bellowing his guidance from unhinted deeps.

Stars swelled to dawns, and dawns burst into fountains of gold, carmine, and purple, and still the dreamer fell. Cries rent the aether as ribbons of light beat back the fiends from outside. And hoary Nodens raised a howl of triumph when Nyarlathotep, close on his quarry, stopped baffled by a glare that seared his formless hunting-horrors to grey dust. Randolph Carter had indeed descended at last the wide marmoreal flights to his marvellous city, for he was come again to the fair New England world that had wrought him.

Ultimately though, Lovecraft presents this escape not as a triumph of good over evil, but a triumph of beauty over evil. Randolph Carter is saved by his idealized memories of his boyhood. S'ngac and Nodens only pointed the way.

One issue that Lovecraft never directly addresses is why Nyarlathotep opposes Carter's quest. Carter seeks his briefly-glimpsed, fabulous sunset city, and we learn that the Great Ones have taken up residence there. So you could argue that Nyarlathotep is simply enforcing the Other God's usual policy of "protecting" the Great Ones from being seen by mortals. But once Carter escapes, Nyarlathotep abruptly snatches the Great Ones back from the sunset city to Kadath. If Nyarlathotep was going to bring the Great Ones back to Kadath anyway, why would he oppose Carter's search for the sunset city?

It seems that one of Nyarlathotep's duties is to capture souls for Azathoth. Perhaps Azathoth literally eats souls; we know he "gnaws shapeless and ravenous." By pretending to assist Carter's quest, Nyarlathotep gets Carter to mount the shantak that will take him straight to the ultimate chaos. We see this role for Nyarlathotep again later in WitchHouse, where as the Black Man, he tries to entice Walter Gilman to sign the Book of Azathoth.

There's also an intriguing parallel between Carter and Azathoth, since both are dreamers. In Fungi XXII, we learn of Azathoth that "the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered / Things he had dreamed but could not understand." Azathoth's idiot dreams give rise to the cosmos; Carter's dreams create the fabulous sunset city, which beguiles even the Great Ones. Unlike Azathoth, Carter has an intellect, with understanding and goals. But he is not completely master of his own dreams. No sooner has he dreamed of the sunset city than it is taken from him by the Great Ones, perhaps at the behest of the Other Gods. Ultimately his salvation lies not in dreams, which are irredeemably tainted with Azathoth's chaos, but in a return to the childlike quality with which he once experienced his own home town.

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Cthulhu and Company

It is in Call [1926] that we first learn of the cult of dread Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones, who eventually serve as the center of a significant cluster of related beings and alien races in Lovecraft's work. The Great Old Ones, it seems, "lived ages before there were any men, and...came to the young world out of the sky."

These beings were far different from native Earth life. According to the cultist named Castro, "These Great Old Ones...were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape...but that shape was not made of matter." No man had ever seen them. Also, Castro refused to say how large they were.

At one time, they ruled over the earth:

There had been aeons when [the Great Old Ones] ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them...were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific.

However, "they all died vast epochs of time before men came..." Their downfall was due to changes in "the stars":

When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live.

When the stars went wrong, a being named Cthulhu was able to save the Great Old Ones:

But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu...

The relationship between Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones is not clearly explained. However, it appears that he is one of the Great Old Ones, and is the only one of them whose appearance is known:

The carven idol was great Cthulhu, but none might say whether or not the others were precisely like him.

These Great Old Ones...had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image [of Cthulhu] prove it?

It appears that there were images of the Great Old Ones at some time in the past:

They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.

Presumably these images are now lost or hidden, since no one knows what they look like anymore.

For a few reasons, we can infer that Cthulhu is the most powerful of the Great Old Ones. For one thing, Cthulhu cast the spells that preserved the whole group. Without his help, it seems the rest of the Great Old Ones would have died. Also, he is referred to as "the great priest" and he is expected to rule over Earth when the Great Old Ones return.

The Great Old Ones are omniscient, and communicate with each other telepathically. At one time, they were able to communicate with humans through our dreams:

They knew all that was occurring in the universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals.

Those [Great] Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died.

The chant meant only this: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

However, communication was cut off when the Great Old Ones' city of R'lyeh sank:

In the elder time chosen men had talked with the entombed Old Ones in dreams, but then something had happened. The great stone city R’lyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, had sunk beneath the waves; and the deep waters, full of the one primal mystery through which not even thought can pass, had cut off the spectral intercourse. But memory never died, and high-priests said that the city would rise again when the stars were right.

Meanwhile, it appears that the Great Old Ones can only communicate with humanity through certain intermediaries, whom the cultists are reluctant to discuss.

Meanwhile no more must be told. There was a secret which even torture could not extract. Mankind was not absolutely alone among the conscious things of earth, for shapes came out of the dark to visit the faithful few. But these were not the Great Old Ones.

All denied a part in the ritual murders, and averred that the killing had been done by Black Winged Ones which had come to them from their immemorial meeting-place in the haunted wood.

Then came out of the earth the black spirits of earth, mouldy and shadowy, and full of dim rumours picked up in caverns beneath forgotten sea-bottoms. But of them old Castro dared not speak much. He cut himself off hurriedly, and no amount of persuasion or subtlety could elicit more in this direction.

The cultists expect Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones to return some day, "when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity." Even when the stars are right again, Cthulhu will be dependent on his cult followers to set him free:

But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by.

The cult expects Cthulhu to rule the earth after his return:

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth.

They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky... This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu...should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway.

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Great Old Ones and Cthulhu Spawn

This account of Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones gets significantly muddied in Mountains [1931]. Professors Lake and Dyer both identify the crinoid Old Ones of Antarctica with the Great Old Ones:

How it could have undergone its tremendously complex evolution on a new-born earth in time to leave prints in Archaean rocks was so far beyond conception as to make Lake whimsically recall the primal myths about Great Old Ones who filtered down from the stars and concocted earth-life as a joke or mistake...

They were the makers and enslavers of that life, and above all doubt the originals of the fiendish elder myths which things like the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon affrightedly hint about. They were the Great Old Ones that had filtered down from the stars when earth was young—the beings whose substance an alien evolution had shaped, and whose powers were such as this planet had never bred.

The Professors are clearly either mistaken, or using the term "Great Old Ones" in a different sense than it was used in Call. The Antarctic Old Ones were never trapped in sunken R'lyeh. Indeed, they fought a war against octopoid beings identified as Cthulhu's spawn:

Another race—a land race of beings shaped like octopi and probably corresponding to the fabulous pre-human spawn of Cthulhu—soon began filtering down from cosmic infinity and precipitated a monstrous war which for a time drove the Old Ones wholly back to the sea—a colossal blow in view of the increasing land settlements. Later peace was made, and the new lands were given to the Cthulhu spawn whilst the Old Ones held the sea and the older lands. ... From then on, as before, the antarctic remained the centre of the Old Ones’ civilisation, and all the discoverable cities built there by the Cthulhu spawn were blotted out. Then suddenly the lands of the Pacific sank again, taking with them the frightful stone city of R’lyeh and all the cosmic octopi... [Mountains]

Are the Cthulhu spawn the same as the Great Old Ones? They are, at least, associated with Cthulhu. But the sequence of events seems inconsistent. In Mountains, the Cthulhu spawn are defeated when R'lyeh sinks. In Call, Cthulhu imprisons himself and the other Great Old Ones because the stars have changed, and R'lyeh doesn't sink until later. The timing of R'lyeh's sinking is also vastly different in the two accounts. In Mountains, R'lyeh sinks sometime prior to the dinosaur era, when the crinoid Old Ones found "the great reptiles proved highly tractable." In Call, R'lyeh does not sink until much later, when humanity exists, and the sinking cuts off the telepathic dream communication between Cthulhu and the early human cultists.

Of course, all the information is incomplete and is related by unreliable sources. The Cthulhu cultists relate an oral tradition. Prof. Dyer and his team reconstruct the history of the crinoid Old Ones, and their war with the Cthulhu spawn, by inspecting wall carvings, but without actually being able to read any of the Old Ones' writing. Also, it seems likely that R'lyeh has sunken and risen on multiple occasions, just as it did again briefly in 1925.

If the Cthulhu spawn and the Great Old Ones are one and the same, then it seems Dyer misunderstood the events that lead to their captivity, thinking that it resulted from R'lyeh's sinking when really it was caused previously by the changes in "the stars." If Cthulhu spawn and the Great Old Ones are different, then it is possible that the Cthulhu spawn were still active on Earth's surface long after Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones went into hibernation.

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The Daughter of Cthulhu

Another type of Cthulhu spawn crops up in Medusa [1930]: Marceline Bedard, who styles herself Tanit-Isis, the leader of a cult of decadents in Paris. She appears human, except for her profusion of lush, restless black hair that betrays her true nature as "the thing from which the first dim legends of Medusa and the Gorgons had sprung." A painting by her devotee Frank Marsh reveals her origins in ancient R'lyeh:

But the scene wasn’t Egypt—it was behind Egypt; behind even Atlantis; behind fabled Mu, and myth-whispered Lemuria. It was the ultimate fountain-head of all horror on this earth, and the symbolism shewed only too clearly how integral a part of it Marceline was. I think it must be the unmentionable R’lyeh, that was not built by any creatures of this planet—the thing Marsh and Denis used to talk about in the shadows with hushed voices. In the picture it appears that the whole scene is deep under water—though everybody seems to be breathing freely.

Her husband Denis de Russy understands when he first sees the picture:

The minute I saw it I understood what—she—was, and what part she played in the frightful secret that has come down from the days of Cthulhu and the Elder Ones—the secret that was nearly wiped out when Atlantis sank, but that kept half alive in hidden traditions and allegorical myths and furtive, midnight cult-practices...It was the old, hideous shadow that philosophers never dared mention—the thing hinted at in the Necronomicon and symbolised in the Easter Island colossi.

After Marceline's death, her servant Sophonisba reveals that Marceline was a child of Cthulhu:

Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Ya-R’lyeh! N’gagi n’bulu bwana n’lolo! Ya, yo, pore Missy Tanit, pore Missy Isis! Marse Clooloo, come up outen de water an’ git yo chile—she done daid! She done daid! De hair ain’ got no missus no mo’, Marse Clooloo.

If Marceline was literally a child of Cthulhu, it seems surprising that she looks human. Also noteworthy is that the painting depicts Marceline as being underwater in R'lyeh, thus implying that she is amphibious. Remember there is nothing to imply that Cthulhu or his spawn are water dwellers. In Cthulhu's era, R'lyeh had not yet sunk.

The painting of Marceline also gives a glimpse of some creatures who may have resided with her in R'lyeh:

The blasphemies that lurk and leer and hold a Witches’ Sabbat with that woman as a high-priestess! The black shaggy entities that are not quite goats—the crocodile-headed beast with three legs and a dorsal row of tentacles—and the flat-nosed aegipans dancing in a pattern that Egypt’s priests knew and called accursed!

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Dagon, Hydra, and the Deep Ones

Oddly, more underwater followers are introduced for Cthulhu in Innsmouth [1931]. There we learn of the Deep Ones, an aquatic race that looks like a cross between humans and frogs or fish. They like to interbreed with humans, and the hybrid offspring start out looking human but gradually become more frog-fishy until they swim off to sea. Once the transformation is complete, they are potentially immortal, like the Deep Ones themselves: "Them things never died excep’ they was kilt violent."

The link between the Deep Ones and Cthulhu is not explained, but it is clear that the Innsmouth cultists who consort with the Deep Ones are also followers of Cthulhu. For example, Zadok Allen lapses into the Cthulhu chant (Ph’nglui, etc.) when excited, and the narrator also exclaims Cthulhu fhtagn! when he contemplates joining his Deep One cousins in the sea. And when the narrator predicts that the Deep Ones will return, he says

...they would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would be a city greater than Innsmouth next time.

It turns out that the Deep Ones have the habit of requiring humans to be given to them as sacrifices. The Deep Ones may simply enjoy eating humans, but perhaps they actually offer the humans to Great Cthulhu, and this is the "tribute" that he craves.

Along with Cthulhu, the Innsmouth cult also honors two figures called Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. Dagon also figures in the name of their cult, the Esoteric Order of Dagon. It seems that Dagon and Hydra are the ultimate ancestors of the Deep Ones:

All in the band of the faithful—Order o’ Dagon—an’ the children shud never die, but go back to the Mother Hydra an’ Father Dagon what we all come from onct...

Which means that Dagon and Hydra might also be the ancestors of humanity:

Seems that human folks has got a kind o’ relation to sech water-beasts—that everything alive come aout o’ the water onct, an’ only needs a little change to go back agin.

We learn nothing more about Hydra, but there are a few small clues about Dagon. In the Old Testament, Dagon is worshipped by the Philistines. Zadok Allen associates Dagon with pagan figures who are regarded as enemies of the Christian God:

Dagon an’ Ashtoreth—Belial an’ Beëlzebub—Golden Caff an’ the idols o’ Canaan an’ the Philistines—Babylonish abominations...

Dagon also apparently figures in the much earlier story Dagon [1917]. There, a sailor finds himself on an island composed of sea floor that has suddenly been thrust up to the surface. The sailor sees an obelisk carved with figures that sound much like the Deep Ones in Innsmouth:

Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. [Dagon]

However, this species seems much very larger:

Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shewn in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. [Dagon]

In Innsmouth, the Deep One/human hybrids seem no larger than ordinary humans. It is conceivable that the full-blooded Deep Ones are larger. Alternatively, there may be multiple races of Deep Ones of varying sizes, or they may continue growing forever like lobsters, so that the oldest specimens attain to gigantic stature. The sailor in Dagon sees such a gigantic creature:

Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. [Dagon]

Polyphemus was a one-eyed giant in Greek mythology, but we are not explicitly told if the figure in Dagon has one eye or more. At any rate, the creature seems to be performing some kind of worship. It might be a Deep One that is worshipping Dagon, or it might be Dagon himself, performing worship to Cthulhu.

That almost completes the catalog of Cthulhu's aquatic allies. In Innsmouth it is hinted that the Deep Ones have an alliance with the shoggoths, who are capable of living underwater. But we will present more about that relationship anon.

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Yog-Sothoth, Reanimator

The multifaceted Yog-Sothoth appears first in 1927's Case of Charles Dexter Ward. In this story, he appears to be a sort of demon who is conjured by Joseph Curwen and his confederates, Simon Orne and Edward Hutchinson, to do their bidding. Curwen relates:

I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabac in ye——. And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow’s Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.

And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho’ know’g not what he seekes. [Case]

Apparently Curwen summons up Yog-Sothoth and sees his face. Then Yog-Sothoth provides Curwen with a significant spell. In the event of Curwen's unexpected death, this spell will ensure that one of Curwen's descendants will eventually perform the rites that bring Curwen back from the dead.

Yog-Sothoth also figures in the spells that Curwen uses to raise the dead from their "essential saltes" and to dismiss them afterwards.

Unfortunately, we never learn the full scope of Curwen's ambitions, or the exact role that Yog-Sothoth was expected to play. At first it appears that Curwen, Orne, and Hutchinson are merely trying to accumulate knowledge and power by reanimating and questioning wizards and scientists of past times.

A hideous traffick was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentrated in one man or group.

Charles Dexter Ward learns, however, that something much larger is at stake; as he writes to Dr. Willett:

Upon us depends more than can be put into words — all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe. I have brought to light a monstrous abnormality, but I did it for the sake of knowledge. Now for the sake of all life and Nature you must help me thrust it back into the dark again... So come quickly if you wish to see me alive and hear how you may help to save the cosmos from stark hell.

It is never stated whether Yog-Sothoth is the agent that forms such an extreme threat to our cosmos. Curwen, Orne, and Hutchinson include references to various beings in the salutations and closings in their letters:

My honour’d Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power.

Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.

Brother in Almousin-Metraton:
...
Yogg-Sothoth Neblod Zin
Simon O.

Nephren-Ka nai Hadoth
Edw: H.

In European magical lore, Almousin and Metraton were two angels. It is possible that the conspirators were using Almousin-Metraton as an alternate name for Yog-Sothoth. On the other hand, Nephren-Ka is an Egyptian pharaoh first referenced in Outsider. Nephren-Ka could hardly be a synonym for Yog-Sothoth, though he could possibly have been one of Yog-Sothoth's prominent devotees.

There are indications that Curwen et al are messing with powers beyond their control; so Orne writes to Curwen:

I rejoice that you traffick not so much with Those Outside; for there was ever a Mortall Peril in it, and you are sensible what it did when you ask’d Protection of One not dispos’d to give it.
[Letter from Edward Hutchinson to Joseph Curwen]

But I wou’d have you Observe what was tolde to us aboute tak’g Care whom to calle up, for you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of——, and can judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported.
[Letter from Jebediah Orne to Joseph Curwen]

I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.
[Letter from Jebediah Orne to Joseph Curwen]

Curwen may have made this very mistake when the raiding party arrived at his house:

In the light of this passage, and reflecting on what last unmentionable allies a beaten man might try to summon in his direst extremity, Charles Ward may well have wondered whether any citizen of Providence killed Joseph Curwen.

But once again, there is no indication whether the being that he called up in that last extremity was Yog-Sothoth. Possibly Curwen called up something that was lurking underground:

I am ty’d up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou’d not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou’d not waite for my com’g Backe as an Other.
[Letter from Joseph Curwen to Simon Orne]

It will be ripe in a yeare’s time to have up ye Legions from Underneath, and then there are no Boundes to what shal be oures. ...
[Letter from Edward Hutchinson to Joseph Curwen]

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Yog-Sothoth and the Old Ones

In Dunwich we encounter a modern backwoods family of Yog-Sothoth devotees, headed by Old Whateley. We learn the ultimate goal of the cultists is to bring about the return of certain beings associated with Yog-Sothoth, who are called the Old Ones. These Old Ones are hidden from us in some sort of state or location that is not space as we know it:

Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.

Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold.

Long ago, the Old Ones were in possession of Earth:

“Nor is it to be thought,” ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it, “that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone...”

He [Yog-Sothoth] knows where the Old Ones broke through of old...

Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles?

The Old Ones seem to be immortal:

The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.

The Old Ones are planning to return and take over again:

Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.

He [Dr. Armitage] would shout that the world was in danger, since the Elder Things wished to strip it and drag it away from the solar system and cosmos of matter into some other plane or phase of entity from which it had once fallen, vigintillions of aeons ago.

Meanwhile, the Old Ones are sometimes able to visit Earth temporarily, when summoned by their worshippers:

They walk ... in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons.

...they cannot take body without human blood.

The Old Ones are invisible to us:

...no one can behold Them as They tread.

They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites.

But they can be detected by their foul smell.

By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near...

As a foulness shall ye know Them.

They can also be detected by noises on the wind, or from underground:

The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness.

Sometimes the Old Ones mate with human females, who give birth to hybrid beings:

...of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them.

Yog-Sothoth has some special role to play in enabling the return of the Old Ones:

Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate.

Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet.

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.

Wilbur Whateley and his unnamed brother are the half-breed children of Yog-Sothoth and Lavinia Whateley. Wilbur's brother is more like the Old Ones than Wilbur is, and so is normally invisible:

That upstairs more ahead of me than I had thought it would be, and is not like to have much earth brain.

That upstairs looks it will have the right cast. I can see it a little when I make the Voorish sign or blow the powder of Ibn Ghazi at it, and it is near like them at May-Eve on the Hill. The other face may wear off some.

Wilbur is expected to perform various rituals to open the gates to Yog-Sothoth:

[Old Whateley, talking to Wilbur:] Open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth with the long chant that ye’ll find on page 751 of the complete edition...

“Today learned the Aklo for the Sabaoth,” it [Wilbur's diary] ran, “which did not like, it being answerable from the hill and not from the air...”

After the gates are open, apparently Yog-Sothoth and the Old Ones will make Wilbur's brother multiply:

“Feed it reg’lar, Willy, an’ mind the quantity; but dun’t let it grow too fast fer the place, fer ef it busts quarters or gits aout afore ye opens to Yog-Sothoth, it’s all over an’ no use. Only them from beyont kin make it multiply an’ work... Only them, the old uns as wants to come back...”

Wilbur, probably with help from his brother, plans to destroy all earthly life:

Grandfather kept me saying the Dho formula last night, and I think I saw the inner city at the 2 magnetic poles. I shall go to those poles when the earth is cleared off, if I can’t break through with the Dho-Hna formula when I commit it. They from the air told me at Sabbat that it will be years before I can clear off the earth, and I guess grandfather will be dead then, so I shall have to learn all the angles of the planes and all the formulas between the Yr and the Nhhngr.

I wonder how I shall look when the earth is cleared and there are no earth beings on it. He that came with the Aklo Sabaoth said I may be transfigured, there being much of outside to work on.

Apparently at some point, the Old Ones will be able to take bodily form without needing human blood. Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense for Wilbur to kill off all earth life.

What happens to the Old Ones' human devotees at this point? It is possible that the Old Ones will make an exception and allow them to live in some form. But given Wilbur's callous sacrifice of his own mother Lavinia, it seems likely that the Old Ones regard all humans as ultimately disposable.

Finally, according to Dr. Armitage, the plan was "wipe out the human race and drag the earth off to some nameless place for some nameless purpose."

So, is the Yog-Sothoth of "The Dunwich Horror" consistent with that of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward? Quite possibly. Although Curwen and his friends were invoking Yog-Sothoth to reanimate dead people, they clearly were also engaged in some greater scheme; Ward saw them as a threat to "all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe." Perhaps they were attempting to open the gates to Yog-Sothoth so the Old Ones could return.

One minor glitch is that in Case, Curwen refers to seeing Yog-Sothoth's face, whereas in Dunwich, Yog-Sothoth and the Old Ones are supposed to be invisible. Of course, you can assume that Curwen used the powder of Ibn Ghazi to temporarily make Yog-Sothoth visible. But it seems likely that, at the time he wrote Case, Lovecraft simply hadn't yet decided that Yog-Sothoth is normally invisible.

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Yog-Sothoth, 'Umr at-Tawil, and the Ancient Ones

The final major appearance of Yog-Sothoth is in Gates [1932-33], which Lovecraft revised from a draft by E. Hoffman Price. A brief resumé of the plot may prove useful here, even if you have read the story before. Randolph Carter begins by seeking "the enchanted regions of his boyhood dreams." He uses the mystic Silver Key to pass the First Gate to an extension of earth that exists outside of time. There he witnesses "a cloudy pageantry of shapes and scenes which he somehow linked with earth’s primal, aeon-forgotten past." This vision piques his curiosity so that he desires something more than simply to return to his childhood dreams.

At this juncture he meets the guide 'Umr at-Tawil, leader of a small group of cloaked beings called the Ancient Ones. Later we learn that these are manifestations of Yog-Sothoth. 'Umr at-Tawil offers to help Carter to pass through the Ultimate Gate, then performs a ritual and chants the Ancient Ones "into a new and peculiar kind of sleep, in order that their dreams might open the Ultimate Gate to which the Silver Key was a passport." Carter passes the Ultimate Gate and meets an awesome cosmic being:

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—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realised how slight and fractional all these conceptions are.

Yog-Sothoth offers to show Carter "the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast a feeble spirit." He explains that

The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing... Though men hail it as reality and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.

All beings in our universe are simply cross-sections, taken at various angles, of a number of higher dimensional archetypes.

The archetypes...are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING [Yog-Sothoth] itself . . . which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT.

At this point, Randolph Carter's quest takes a tragic turn, one that raises many questions. He asks to experience "a dim, fantastic world whose five multi-coloured suns, alien constellations, dizzy black crags, clawed, tapir-snouted denizens, bizarre metal towers, unexplained tunnels, and cryptical floating cylinders had intruded again and again upon his slumbers."

The PRESENCE warned him to be sure of his symbols if he wished ever to return from the remote and alien world he had chosen, and he radiated back an impatient affirmation; confident that the Silver Key, which he felt was with him and which he knew had tilted both world and personal planes in throwing him back to 1883, contained those symbols which were meant. And now the BEING, grasping his impatience, signified Its readiness to accomplish the monstrous precipitation.

Carter gets stuck in the mind and body of the wizard Zkauba on the planet Yaddith. The remainder of the story concerns his efforts to return to earth, regain his original human form, and claim control of his estate.

The story resembles earlier works in the Randolph Carter series in some ways. As usual, Carter is on a quest to regain childhood fancies that he has lost. However, in other respects the story stands out as a major anomaly in Lovecraft's work. In the first place, Carter's bête noire from Kadath, Nyarlathotep, makes no appearance, nor is there any mention of Azathoth or the Other Gods. Has Nyarlathotep somehow lost interest in Carter? Perhaps his earlier attempt to feed Carter to Azathoth was opportunistic, or possibly intended as a punishment for Carter's attempt to visit the fabulous sunset city where the Great Ones have taken up residence.

Further, the concept of Yog-Sothoth in Gates seems quite different from the version of him in Dunwich. True, Yog-Sothoth continues to be associated with gateways between dimensions. But in Gates, Yog-Sothoth doesn't express any interest in helping the Old Ones to return to earth. Instead, he helps a human to leave earth and experience higher realities.

Regarding Yog-Sothoth's manifestations, 'Umr at-Tawil and the Ancient Ones, Carter decides that their bad reputations are undeserved:

There was no horror or malignity in what ['Umr at-Tawil] radiated, and Carter wondered for a moment whether the mad Arab’s terrific blasphemous hints, and extracts from the Book of Thoth, might not have come from envy and a baffled wish to do what was now about to be done.

Damnation, [Cater] reflected, is but a word bandied about by those whose blindness leads them to condemn all who can see, even with a single eye. He wondered at the vast conceit of those who had babbled of the malignant Ancient Ones, as if They could pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak a wrath upon mankind. As well, he thought, might a mammoth pause to visit frantic vengeance on an angleworm.

Yog-Sothoth expresses approval and encouragement for Carter's quest:

“What you wish, I have found good; and I am ready to grant that which I have granted eleven times only to beings of your planet—five times only to those you call men, or those resembling them. I am ready to shew you the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast a feeble spirit. Yet before you gaze full at that last and first of secrets you may still wield a free choice, and return if you will through the two Gates with the Veil still unrent before your eyes.”

Of course, Nyarlathotep also made a pretense of being encouraging.

So, Randolph Carter, in the name of the Other Gods I spare you and charge you to serve my will. I charge you to seek that sunset city which is yours, and to send thence the drowsy truant gods for whom the dream-world waits.

...I myself harboured no wish to shatter you, and would indeed have helped you hither long ago had I not been elsewhere busy, and certain that you would yourself find the way. [Kadath]

Possibly Yog-Sothoth, like Nyarlathotep, is acting as a trickster. But if so, it's hard to fathom what his goal is. He doesn't send Carter to be gobbled by Azathoth, nor to any other ultimate fate. He simply fulfills Carter's wish to experience life as the wizard Zkauba on the planet Yaddith. Did Yog-Sothoth realize that Carter would get stuck there? Carter doesn't think so:

The now inaccessible BEING of the abyss had warned him to be sure of his symbols, and had doubtless thought he lacked nothing. [Gates]

Yet, it is hard to believe that Yog-Sothoth, from his standpoint outside of time, would not know that Carter was about to make a horrible mistake.

Another question is whether the story expresses E. Hoffman's Price viewpoint more than that of Lovecraft himself. Fortunately, Price's original draft of the story, "The Lord of Illusion," has been published. We find from it that Price originated almost all of the storyline, as well as the cosmology in the story, involving the discovery that we are each just cross-sections of timeless archetypal beings. Price supplies us with 'Umr at-Tawil, the Ancient Ones, and the forboding quote about 'Umr at-Tawil from the Necronomicon. However, Price does not identify the Presence beyond the Ultimate Gate with Yog-Sothoth. It is Lovecraft himself who takes that step in his revision of the story.

Lovecraft sometimes rewrote the work of his paying revision clients in a very thorough and extreme way. I'm not sure whether he would have felt the same liberty when revising a work by a friend and correspondent. But I think there are a couple of other reasons that Lovecraft might have felt inclined to retain most of Price's cosmology in the story. Consider the summary by one of the characters in the story:

“This,” said one of those assembled in a certain house in New Orleans, “is plausible to a degree, despite the terrifically incomprehensible be-scramblement of time and space and personality, and the blasphemous reduction of God to a mathematical formula, and time to a fanciful expression, and change to a delusion, and all reality to the nothingness of a geometrical plane utterly lacking in substance...”
—E. Hoffmann Price, "The Lord of Illusion"[fn4]

These concepts would not be out-of-place in a Lovecraftian tale of cosmic horror. In the original draft, Price also devotes some space to mocking conventional religions, and specifically Christianity. Lovecraft excised these passages, perhaps because they are distracting and unnecessary, or because he liked to mock religion in a more indirect way. But they are further evidence of some overlap between Price's and Lovecraft's world-views.

In the end, Yog-Sothoth remains beyond Carter's comprehension. The voice of the Presence that Carter hears is the result of his own feeble attempt to make sense of a reality that is far above his level. Faced with a revelation of the ultimate nature of reality, Carter does not ask to ascend to Yog-Sothoth's level and experience the world of infinite dimensions outside of time. Instead, he wants to explore other limited cross-sections of that ultimate reality:

Without definite intention he was asking the PRESENCE for access to a dim, fantastic world whose five multi-coloured suns, alien constellations, dizzy black crags, clawed, tapir-snouted denizens, bizarre metal towers, unexplained tunnels, and cryptical floating cylinders had intruded again and again upon his slumbers. That world, he felt vaguely, was in all the conceivable cosmos the one most freely in touch with others; and he longed to explore the vistas whose beginnings he had glimpsed, and to embark through space to those still remoter worlds with which the clawed, snouted denizens trafficked. [Gates]

Even with this relatively limited goal in mind, Carter is swiftly undone by his overconfidence. Yog-Sothoth does not need to be malignant in order to be dangerous. He simply represents a reality that mortals cannot experience safely, or while remaining sane.

Another point to remember is that Lovecraft repeatedly toys with radical changes of perspective in his later stories, beginning with the narrator's ultimate embrace of his fishy fate in Innsmouth. The jump from presenting Yog-Sothoth as an apocalyptic horror in Dunwich to a benign guru in Gates helps to underline one of Lovecraft's later themes. The point is that the views and values of other species are ultimately no more or less valid than our own, parochial human viewpoints.

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Great, Old, Ancient, and Other Ones

As we have seen, several of Lovecraft's stories refer to groups of god-like, alien beings that are not described in detail: the Other Gods/Ultimate Gods of the dreamlands stories such as Kadath, the Great Old Ones in Call, the Old Ones in Dunwich, and the Ancient Ones in Gates. The similarities make it tempting to conflate these groups. Unfortunately, Lovecraft's family tree of the gods sheds no light on the subject; it does not list any of these groups, perhaps because the chart is focused on the deities who are ancestors of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith [Family]. But on examining the individual stories, the details seem to imply that Lovecraft regarded these groups as separate.

Old Ones and Great Old Ones

Are the Old Ones in Dunwich the same as the Great Old Ones from Call? There is some resemblance, aside from the nearly identical names. Like the Old Ones, the Great Old Ones are stuck somewhere, and they want to return. The Great Old Ones were imprisoned by Cthulhu to protect them while "the stars are wrong." Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones have to wait until "the stars are right" before their devotees can safely free them. By contrast, in Dunwich, we are told only that the Old Ones plan to take earth back to "some other plane or phase of entity" from which it fell long ago.

Like the Old Ones, there is also something dimensionally odd about Cthulhu; in describing his dream of R'lyeh, the artist Wilcox described "the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone—whose geometry, he oddly said, was all wrong..." Similarly, the sailors who found risen R'lyeh "could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal, hence the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable." [Call]

Unlike the Old Ones, Cthulhu is visible; he was seen by the crew of the Alert. Further, there are stone carvings of Cthulhu. And when the Great Old Ones came from the stars, they "brought Their images with Them." [Call]

In Dunwich, there is a passing reference to Cthulhu. Regarding the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth, it is said that "Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly." This seems to imply that Cthulhu is not that closely associated with the Old Ones, and perhaps is a lesser class of being.

More importantly, the Old Ones and the Great Old Ones seem to have different gatekeeper deities: Yog-Sothoth versus Cthulhu. On the whole, it seems likely that the Old Ones and the Great Old Ones are not quite the same set of entities. Also, it seems like the Old Ones may be more alien than the Great Old Ones, since the latter can exist in our type of space at least when "the stars are right."

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Old Ones and Other Gods

Could the Old Ones in Dunwich correspond to the Other Gods/Ultimate Gods of the dreamlands stories? Recall that the Other Gods are closely associated with their soul and messenger, Nyarlathotep, and with the mindless demon sultan Azathoth. However, Dunwich makes no mention of Nyarlathotep or Azathoth. Aside from Yog-Sothoth and the Old Ones, the only deities spoken of are Cthulhu and Shub-Niggurath, and even they get only passing mentions.

Further, if you compare the attributes of these groups, there is little overlap. The Old Ones are invisible, foul-smelling, and intent on conquering earth. The Other Gods are mindless, dancing, and show no intention of leaving their abode.

The Old Ones are somehow already very close to us:

Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.

Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold.

By contrast, the Other Gods reside "at the centre of all infinity" with Azathoth.

Further, these groups must be approached through different intermediaries. Nyarlathotep is the face of the Other Gods, whereas Yog-Sothoth is the guardian and gateway for the Old Ones. Cthulhu serves a similar role for the Great Old Ones. Given all the cosmic vagueness, it is just possible to imagine that Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, and Cthulhu are actually all different gatekeepers for the same set of ultimate beings. But there doesn't seem to be anything to show that this is actually the case.

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Ancient Ones and Old Ones

In Gates, Lovecraft presents us with a new group of mysteriously advanced entities, the Ancient Ones. Given the similarity of the names, could the Ancient Ones be related to the Old Ones of Dunwich? Notably, of course, both groups are closely associated with Yog-Sothoth. Also, each group seems to reside somehow outside the world we know: the Ancient Ones in a timeless extension of Earth beyond the First Gateway, the Old Ones "not in the spaces we know, but between them."

In other respects, there seems to be little overlap between the Ancient Ones and the Old Ones. There is no implication that the Ancient Ones are locked out or that they covet Earth. There is no reference to them being invisible; if they were, why would they conceal themselves with cloaks? There is no mention that they have a horrific smell, like the Old Ones. There is no talk of them needing blood sacrifices in order to embody themselves on Earth.

More importantly, the Ancient Ones seem to embody a local facet of Yog-Sothoths' specific function as a gateway or gatekeeper. Yog-Sothoth refers to them as "MY manifestations on your planet's extension, the Ancient Ones." Under the direction of 'Umr at-Tawil, they can facilitate passage between Earth and other domains of being. By contrast, the Old Ones are dwellers in some alien plane or state, who depend on Yog-Sothoth to give them access to Earth.

There is some analogy between the Ancient Ones and the Other Gods/Ultimate Gods of Kadath. The Ancient Ones are prone to dreaming, and 'Umr at-Tawil orchestrates their dreams partly through the use of music. Similarly, the complex of Nyarlathotep/Other Gods/Azathoth involves a good deal of dreaming and dancing, orchestrated by music. But the Other Gods do not reside near Earth. Their home is the center of Ultimate Chaos, near Azathoth. The Other Gods appear to be a much higher class of beings than the Ancient Ones.

There is also little to link the Ancient Ones with the Great Old Ones of Call. There is no mention of their being affected by stars that are "right" or "wrong," nor of their wanting to return and take over Earth.

Overall, it seems that these god groups proliferated in Lovecraft's work simply because they satisfied a similar emotional or intellectual need for him. The striking point is that, despite their similarities, he did not feel the need to explain their relationship, much less to unite them in a single coherent conception.

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Gods of Good Reputation

Most of the more alien deity figures that we have discussed so far are worshipped only by secret cults among humanity, or by alien races that seem completely inhuman, like the Outer Ones from Yuggoth. Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones have an clandestine cult that was unknown to anthropologists until the 1920s. The Esoteric Order of Dagon in Innsmouth is a typically furtive branch, with secret oaths and a goal of sacrificing the rest of humanity to Cthulhu. The followers of Yog-Sothoth seem to be scattered pretty thin, with Joseph Curwen associating with only two other devotees, and the Whateley cult confined to their nuclear family. Also, whatever benefit might acrue to the cultists was clearly going to be at the expense of humanity as a whole, since Wilbur Whateley was planning to "clear off" all earth life. Similarly, Nyarlathotep is worshipped by the forbidden witch cult, using a promise of power to waylay followers into signing away their souls to Azathoth.

But in some of his later revision tales, Lovecraft reveals some entities who have had a wide and open following among human or humanoid beings. These beings fall into two general categories: those who are placated because they are feared, and those who are regarded as actively beneficial. And some of the beings, who were presented as horrifying in previous stories, receive strangely improved public relations in these tales. These stories include:

• Yig [with Zealia Bishop, 1928], concerning the beliefs of Native American peoples (Kickapoo, Pawnee, Tirawa, and Wichita).
• Mound [with Zealia Bishop, 1929-30], concerning an underground race said to be "the ancestors of all men." They look much like Native Americans, though their faces have "many subtle differences from the Indian type." Confusingly, this race is referred to as the Old Ones, although they are clearly different from the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth or the Old Ones/Elder Things of Antarctica. For clarity, we can refer to these Old Ones as the Old Ones of K'n-yan, in reference to the cavern where they live.
• Aeons [with Hazel Heald, 1933], concerning the human inhabitants of the lost continent of Mu.

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Yig, Father of Serpents

Yig introduces the eponymous Yig, Father of Serpents. It is one of Lovecraft's less cosmic conceptions, and I'm not sure how much of it was supplied by Zealia Bishop. In the story, we learn that

...Yig, the snake-god of the central plains tribes—presumably the primal source of the more southerly Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan—was an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary and capricious nature. He was not wholly evil, and was usually quite well-disposed toward those who gave proper respect to him and his children, the serpents; but in the autumn he became abnormally ravenous, and had to be driven away by means of suitable rites. That was why the tom-toms in the Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo country pounded ceaselessly week in and week out in August, September, and October; and why the medicine-men made strange noises with rattles and whistles curiously like those of the Aztecs and Mayas.

Yig’s chief trait was a relentless devotion to his children—a devotion so great that the redskins almost feared to protect themselves from the venomous rattlesnakes which thronged the region. Frightful clandestine tales hinted of his vengeance upon mortals who flouted him or wreaked harm upon his wriggling progeny; his chosen method being to turn his victim, after suitable tortures, to a spotted snake.

In Mound it transpires that the Old Ones of K'n-yan also worship Yig. But they conceive of him more broadly, as "the principle of life symbolised as the Father of all Serpents." Their daily cycle is "timed by the tail-beats of Great Yig" and their year-unit is "measured by Yig’s annual shedding of his skin." Also, they think of Yig as something more like an archetype than a living being:

Religion was a leading interest...though very few actually believed in the supernatural. What was desired was the aesthetic and emotional exaltation bred by the mystical moods and sensuous rites which attended the colourful ancestral faith.

The Old Ones' pursuit of "aesthetic and emotional exaltation" extends to offering sacrifices to Yig in lavish and cryptic shrines.

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Tulu, Spirit of Universal Harmony

Along with Yig, the deity most prominently worshipped by the Old Ones of K'n-yan is "Tulu, the octopus-headed entity that had brought them down from the stars." [Mound]

Temples to Great Tulu, a spirit of universal harmony anciently symbolised as the octopus-headed god who had brought all men down from the stars, were the most richly constructed objects in all K’n-yan; while the cryptic shrines of Yig...were almost as lavish and remarkable.

Zamacona learned that the people of K’n-yan were almost infinitely ancient, and that they had come from a distant part of space where physical conditions are much like those of the earth. All this, of course, was legend now; and one could not say how much truth was in it, or how much worship was really due to the octopus-headed being Tulu who had traditionally brought them hither and whom they still reverenced for aesthetic reasons.

Tulu had brought with him a limited amount of a certain metal that is otherwise unknown on earth:

Prominent in the contemporary religion of Tsath was a revived and almost genuine veneration for the rare, sacred metal of Tulu—that dark, lustrous, magnetic stuff which was nowhere found in Nature, but which had always been with men in the form of idols and hieratic implements.

Tulu and other gods are imprisoned beneath the sea:

At some time infinitely in the past most of the outer world had sunk beneath the ocean, so that only a few refugees remained to bear the news to K’n-yan. ...it bore out rumours of a primordially earlier sinking which had submerged the gods themselves, including great Tulu, who still lay prisoned and dreaming in the watery vaults of the half-cosmic city Relex.

As should be clear by now, the "spirit of universal harmony" is no different from Cthulhu:

Of one thing I am really glad, and that is that I could not then identify the squatting octopus-headed thing which dominated most of the ornate cartouches, and which the manuscript called “Tulu”. Recently I have associated it, and the legends in the manuscript connected with it, with some new-found folklore of monstrous and unmentioned Cthulhu, a horror which seeped down from the stars while the young earth was still half-formed; and had I known of the connexion then, I could not have stayed in the same room with the thing.

The descriptions of Tulu worship do not mention any belief that Tulu will return to rule the world again. Possibly the Tulu worshippers differ from the Cthulhu cult on the surface in this respect. Further, the Tulu worshippers do not seem to associate their god with the widespread bloodshed and anarchy that the Cthulhu worshippers crave.

The notion that Cthulhu brought the ancestors of humanity to earth is difficult in various ways. For one thing, this account only adds to Lovecraft's set of conflicting explanations for the origins of humanity, as set forth in various stories. Also, this version would mean that humanity's existence on earth is incredibly ancient, though Lovecraft's stories elsewhere tend to portray the human race as a recent development that is sadly ignorant of how many greater races and civilisations inhabited the planet before us.

On the other hand, it seems the Old Ones in K'n-yan have long lost contact with Cthulhu, since they are doubtful of his literal existence. Just as their knowledge of Cthulhu is suspect, their beliefs about their own origins may be purely mythological.

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Tsathoggua, God of N'Kai and Hyperborea

Clark Ashton Smith was the original creator of the "sluggish and baleful god Tsathoggua" [CAS Seven], but Lovecraft adopted the god enthusiastically and added substantially to his history.

According to Clark Ashton Smith, Tsathoggua as born in a foreign universe [CAS Door]. Tsathoggua's father was Ghizguth, and his mother was Zstulzhemgni. Ghizguth's androgynous parent Cxaxukluth brought them from a distant star system to Yuggoth. There, Tsathoggua lived with his parents in inner caverns to avoid the cannibalistic tendencies of Cxaxukluth. After a long while, Tsathoggua moved to Cykranosh (Saturn). [CAS Pnom] He "came down from Saturn [to Earth] in years immediately following the Earth's creation." Later, Tsathoggua was worshipped in Hyperborea, where he lived beneath Mt. Voormithadreth. This is an example of an open popular religion, rather than a secret cult. [CAS Seven] But Tsathoggua's religion lapsed by the time of the sorcerer Eibon [CAS Door].

Tsathoggua's description is actually pretty cute, at least compared to Lovecraft's usual tentacled creatures:

You shall know Tsathoggua by his great girth and his batlike furriness and the look of a sleepy black toad which he has eternally. He will rise not from his place, even in the ravening of hunger, but will wait in divine slothfulness for the sacrifice. [CAS Seven]

However, Tsathoggua's spawn are considerably less presentable. We read of:

...swart Protean spawn that had come down with Tsathoggua from elder worlds and exterior dimensions where physiology and geometry had both assumed an altogether inverse trend of development. [CAS Testament]

In CAS Tale, a pair of Hyperborean thieves appear to meet up with one of these spawn in a deserted temple of Tsathoggua. It is a pool of foul-smelling black slime that can rapidly change shape, sprouting limbs at will. It quickly engulphs one of the thieves and manages to sever a hand from the other. Lovecraft got a tremendous kick out of this story, and sprinkled references to Tsathoggua in his own stories. In Mound, Lovecraft features the Tsathoggua cult more prominently. It seems that the Old Ones of K'n-yan first learned the worship of Tsathoggua from the relics of an older race that once lived at lower level called Yoth.

When the men of K’n-yan discovered the red-litten world and deciphered its strange manuscripts, they took over the Tsathoggua cult and brought all the frightful toad images up to the land of blue light—housing them in shrines of Yoth-quarried basalt like the one Zamacona now saw. The cult flourished until it almost rivalled the ancient cults of Yig and Tulu, and one branch of the race even took it to the outer world, where the smallest of the images eventually found a shrine at Olathoë, in the land of Lomar near the earth’s north pole. It was rumoured that this outer-world cult survived even after the great ice-sheet and the hairy Gnophkehs destroyed Lomar...

The ancient polar land of Lomar previously figured in Lovecraft's tale Polaris [1918]. Lovecraft seems to imply that the Tsathoggua cult spread through Lomar to nearby Hyperborea, where it is portrayed in Smith's stories. Meanwhile, back in K'n-yan:

What ended the cult was the partial exploration of the black realm of N’kai beneath the red-litten world of Yoth...when the men of K’n-yan went down into N’kai’s black abyss with their great atom-power searchlights they found living things—living things that oozed along stone channels and worshipped onyx and basalt images of Tsathoggua. But they were not toads like Tsathoggua himself. Far worse—they were amorphous lumps of viscous black slime that took temporary shapes for various purposes. The explorers of K’n-yan did not pause for detailed observations, and those who escaped alive sealed the passage leading from red-litten Yoth down into the gulfs of nether horror. Then all the images of Tsathoggua in the land of K’n-yan were dissolved into the ether by disintegrating rays, and the cult was abolished forever.

These black slime creatures of N'kai resemble the being from the abandoned Tsathoggua temple in CAS Tale. Quite possibly they are also the same as the "spawn that had come down with Tsathoggua from elder worlds and exterior dimensions" [CAS Testament]. In a later story, Lovecraft seems to imply that these beings originated on a planet called Kythanil:

A slight change of angle could turn...a human Carter into one of those earlier entities which had dwelt in primal Hyperborea and worshipped black, plastic Tsathoggua after flying down from Kythanil, the double planet that once revolved around Arcturus; could turn a terrestrial Carter to a remotely ancestral and doubtfully shaped dweller on Kythanil itself... [HPL Gates]

In Mound, the story of the Tsathoggua cult seems to imply that the Old Ones of K'n-yan do not really know much about the beings worshipped in their religions, and would recoil in horror if they ever found out too much.

In the fragment HPL Sorceries, we learn of an offspring of Tsathoggua:

It had y^e Name Ossadagowah, which signifys the child of Sadogowah; the last a frightful Spirit spoke of by old Men as coming down from the Stars and being formerly worshipt in Lands of the North.

In the fragment, the sorcerer Richard Billington summons up Ossadagowah and then disappears. A band of Wampanaug Indians, led by their head man Misquamacus, succeeds in imprisoning Ossadagowah but cannot kill it. August Derleth later used this fragment as one of his inspirations for AWD Lurker.

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Ghatanothoa of the Stony Gaze

In Aeons [with Hazel Heald, 1933] we learn of another paleogean deity who once had a widely accepted human following. The humans on the continent of Mu, to their misfortune, had inherited a deity from the Outer Ones of Yuggoth:

The spawn of Yuggoth had perished aeons before, but had left behind them one monstrous and terrible living thing which could never die—their hellish god or patron daemon Ghatanothoa, which lowered and brooded eternally though unseen in the crypts beneath that fortress on Yaddith-Gho...

People said that if no victims were offered, Ghatanothoa would ooze up to the light of day and lumber down the basalt cliffs of Yaddith-Gho bringing doom to all it might encounter. For no living thing could behold Ghatanothoa, or even a perfect graven image of Ghatanothoa, however small, without suffering a change more horrible than death itself. Sight of the god, or its image, as all the legends of the Yuggoth-spawn agreed, meant paralysis and petrifaction of a singularly shocking sort, in which the victim was turned to stone and leather on the outside, while the brain within remained perpetually alive—horribly fixed and prisoned through the ages, and maddeningly conscious of the passage of interminable epochs of helpless inaction till chance and time might complete the decay of the petrified shell and leave it exposed to die...

And so there was a cult in K’naa which worshipped Ghatanothoa and each year sacrificed to it twelve young warriors and twelve young maidens. These victims were offered up on flaming altars in the marble temple near the mountain’s base, for none dared climb Yaddith-Gho’s basalt cliffs or draw near to the Cyclopean pre-human stronghold on its crest. Vast was the power of the priests of Ghatanothoa, since upon them alone depended the preservation of K’naa and of all the land of Mu from the petrifying emergence of Ghatanothoa out of its unknown burrows.

At one time, the cult of Ghatanothoa was widespread:

Though it flourished chiefly in those Pacific regions around which Mu itself had once stretched, there were rumours of the hidden and detested cult of Ghatanothoa in ill-fated Atlantis, and on the abhorred plateau of Leng. Von Junzt implied its presence in the fabled subterrene kingdom of K’n-yan, and gave clear evidence that it had penetrated Egypt, Chaldaea, Persia, China, the forgotten Semite empires of Africa, and Mexico and Peru in the New World.

Later, the religion was mostly stamped out, and receded to the status of an underground cult, much like the cult of the Great Old Ones:

In the end it became a hunted, doubly furtive underground affair...It always survived somehow, chiefly in the Far East and on the Pacific Islands...

Though Ghatanothoa had a wide human following at one time, he seems to have inspired fear rather than devotion. The story of his cult does not challenge or perplex us like the religions of K'n-yan in Mound, which ennoble Yig as the "principle of life" and Cthulhu/Tulu as a "spirit of universal harmony."

Sadly, Ghatanothoa is not mentioned in any of Lovecraft's other stories. Perhaps he felt that a monster created for a revision client was not eligible for re-use in his solo work.

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Shub-Niggurath, En Famille

The fertility goddess Shub-Niggurath is first introduced in Test [with Adolphe de Castro, 1927]. Both there and in other stories, there is usually little said about her, beyond an occasional exclamation of "Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!" by one crazed devotee or other. Her name is thus briefly invoked in connection with other deities including Yog-Sothoth [Dunwich]; Nyarlathotep [WitchHouse]; Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Azathoth, and Nyarlathotep [Whisperer]; Marceline Bedard [Medusa]; and Rhan-Tegoth [Museum].

However, we learn a little more of Shub-Niggurath in Mound:

One squat, black temple of Tsathoggua was encountered, but it had been turned into a shrine of Shub-Niggurath, the All-Mother and wife of the Not-to-Be-Named One. This deity was a kind of sophisticated Astarte, and her worship struck the pious Catholic as supremely obnoxious. What he liked least of all were the emotional sounds emitted by the celebrants—jarring sounds in a race that had ceased to use vocal speech for ordinary purposes.

Astarte was an ancient near Eastern goddess of war, beauty, hunting, and love. In the comparison with Shub-Niggurath, Lovecraft may have had the Phoenician version of Astarte in mind:

Like her East Semitic equivalent, Ishtar, the Phoenician Ashtart was a complex goddess with multiple aspects: being the feminine principle of the life-giving force, Ashtart was a fertility goddess who promoted love and sensuality, in which capacity she presided over the reproduction of cattle and family growth; the goddess was also the consort of the masculine principle of this life-giving force... [Astarte, Wikipedia]

In Aeons, the priest T'yog comes to believe that Shub-Niggurath is one of a number of deities friendly to humanity:

T’yog had thought long on the powers of the various gods, and had had strange dreams and revelations touching the life of this and earlier worlds. In the end he felt sure that the gods friendly to man could be arrayed against the hostile gods, and believed that Shub-Niggurath, Nug, and Yeb, as well as Yig the Serpent-god, were ready to take sides with man against the tyranny and presumption of Ghatanothoa.

Inspired by the Mother Goddess, T’yog wrote down a strange formula in the hieratic Naacal of his order, which he believed would keep the possessor immune from [Ghatanothoa's] petrifying power. With this protection, he reflected, it might be possible for a bold man to climb the dreaded basalt cliffs and—first of all human beings—enter the Cyclopean fortress beneath which Ghatanothoa reputedly brooded. Face to face with the god, and with the power of Shub-Niggurath and her sons on his side, T’yog believed that he might be able to bring it to terms and at last deliver mankind from its brooding menace.

In this menage of supposedly friendly gods, Nug and Yeb are the sons of Shub-Niggurath. This relationship is implied in Aeons and confirmed in Family. In Mound, Nug and Yeb are mentioned, but their relationship with Shub-Niggurath is not brought out:

Several times Gll’-Hthaa-Ynn paused to shew Zamacona some particular object of interest, especially the temples of Yig, Tulu, Nug, Yeb, and the Not-to-Be-Named One which lined the road at infrequent intervals, each in its embowering grove according to the custom of K’n-yan. These temples, unlike those of the deserted plain beyond the mountains, were still in active use; large parties of mounted worshippers coming and going in constant streams. Gll’-Hthaa-Ynn took Zamacona into each of them, and the Spaniard watched the subtle orgiastic rites with fascination and repulsion. The ceremonies of Nug and Yeb sickened him especially—so much, indeed, that he refrained from describing them in his manuscript.

While Mound tells us that Shub-Niggurath is the wife of the Not-to-Be-Named One, Family identifies her spouse as Yog-Sothoth. Evidently the Old Ones of K'n-yan observed a prohibition against using Yog-Sothoth's name, opting for the epithet Not-to-Be-Named One instead.

If Shub-Niggurath is friendly to humanity, it seems odd that her name is so often invoked by followers of Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu, and Nyarlathotep. In the event, T'yog's belief in her beneficent power is never put to a proper test. The scroll with Shub-Niggurath's supposed protective spell is stolen by the dastardly priests of Ghatonothoa, who substitute a false but similar-looking scroll. When T'yog meets up with Ghatanothoa without any protection, he is predictably petrified by the Dark God.

It is interesting that Lovecraft leaves this point ambiguous. He could have underlined T'yog's naiveté more forcefully by allowing T'yog to confront Ghatanothoa with Shub-Niggurath's scroll in hand. Then, if the protection failed, you might think that Shub-Niggurath is a lesser power than Ghatanothoa, or possibly even an ally of Ghatanothoa. By depriving T'yog of the scroll in advance, Lovecraft leaves open the possibility that Shub-Niggurath really is a god friendly to humanity, or at least one that can be friendly to her human devotees. In that case, the same might be true of Nug, Yeb, Yig, and even Yog-Sothoth (who also shows a seemingly friendly face in Gates).

In one of his letters, Lovecraft is less ambiguous, and espouses a more explicitly malevolent image of Shub-Niggurath and her family:

Yog-Sothoth's wife is the hellish cloud-like entity Shub-Niggurath, in whose honour nameless cults hold the rite of the Goat with a Thousand Young. By her he has two monstrous offspring—the evil twins Nug and Yeb.
[HPL to Willis Conover, Sept. 1, 1936]

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Rhan-Tegoth and the Return of the Old Ones

Like Ghatanothoa, Rhan-Tegoth is a god introduced in a revision tale and never used again [Museum, with Hazel Heald, 1932]. Rhan-Tegoth is an amphibious creature that "came to the earth from lead-grey Yuggoth, where the cities are under the warm deep sea." Rhan-Tegoth lived in the far north before mankind existed. In modern times, George Rogers, proprietor of a London wax museum, finds Rhan-Tegoth in a dormant state in great Cyclopean ruins in Alaska, up the Noatak river from Fort Morton.

There was an almost globular torso, with six long, sinuous limbs terminating in crab-like claws. From the upper end a subsidiary globe bulged forward bubble-like; its triangle of three staring, fishy eyes, its foot-long and evidently flexible proboscis, and a distended lateral system analogous to gills, suggesting that it was a head. Most of the body was covered with what at first appeared to be fur, but which on closer examination proved to be a dense growth of dark, slender tentacles or sucking filaments, each tipped with a mouth suggesting the head of an asp. On the head and below the proboscis the tentacles tended to be longer and thicker, and marked with spiral stripes—suggesting the traditional serpent-locks of Medusa. To say that such a thing could have an expression seems paradoxical; yet Jones felt that that triangle of bulging fish-eyes and that obliquely poised proboscis all bespoke a blend of hate, greed, and sheer cruelty incomprehensible to mankind because mixed with other emotions not of the world or this solar system.

Rogers says that:

It needed the nourishment of sacrifice, for It was a god. Of course I couldn’t get It the sort of sacrifices which It used to have in Its day, for such things don’t exist now. But there were other things which might do. The blood is the life, you know.

When Rhan-Tegoth is brought to life and accepts a sacrifice, it feeds in quite a brutal fashion:

Beneath it lay a crushed, almost shapeless mass which Jones was slow to classify. Was it a once-living thing which some agency had flattened, sucked dry of blood, punctured in a thousand places, and wrung into a limp, broken-boned heap of grotesqueness? ... Most of the hair was burned off as by some pungent acid, and the exposed, bloodless skin was riddled by innumerable circular wounds or incisions.

“It was a hard specimen to prepare—but of course Mr. Rogers has taught me a great deal. ... There were important chemical reactions involved. They made loud noises—in fact, some teamsters in the court outside fancy they heard several pistol shots—very amusing idea!"

There are several hints that Rhan-Tegoth is related to some of Lovecraft's other entities. The figures in Rogers' Museum include "black, formless Tsathoggua, many-tentacled Cthulhu, proboscidian Chaugnar Faugn, and other rumoured blasphemies from forbidden books like the Necronomicon, the Book of Eibon, or the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt." Among them is "the shocking form of fabulous Yog-Sothoth—only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in its malign suggestiveness." Rogers also mentions Azathoth and invokes both Cthulhu and Shub-Niggurath. We have discussed most of these beings previously. Chaugnar Faugn is a deity created by Frank Belknap Long, and this story is the only place where Lovecraft refers to him. Lovecraft seems to be deliberately throwing in elements from many different stories that were not closely related originally. To add to the confusion, Lovecraft has Rogers say:

Great is Rhan-Tegoth! Let me go! Let me go! It is starving down there beyond that door, and if It dies the Old Ones can never come back.

As we have seen previously, Lovecraft was quite promiscuous in his use of the epithet "Old Ones." In this case, it is unlikely that he refers to the Old Ones of K'n-yan or the Old Ones/Elder Things of Antarctica. Given the story's mentions of Cthulhu, Lovecraft might have the Great Old Ones in mind; but since Yog-Sothoth is also mentioned, he may have been referring to the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth. Lovecraft may have meant that the various deities of his pantheon are all Old Ones, and they all want to return to Earth together. Or he may have simply meant to be obscure, deliberately leaving the meaning of "Old Ones" vague and undefined in this case.

Equally unclear is Rogers' statement that, if Rhan-Tegoth dies, "the Old Ones can never come back." If Rhan-Tegoth is so necessary, it is odd that he was never mentioned in previous stories. In Call there was no mention that the Great Old Ones are depending on Rhan-Tegoth for their return. The cultists expect to be able to release Cthulhu from his self-imprisonment as soon as the "stars are right." And in Dunwich it appears that the Old Ones are depending only on Yog-Sothoth for their return.

In truth, I doubt that Lovecraft had anything very specific in mind with regard to Rhan-Tegoth's role. When you keep your whole mythology vague and ambiguous anyway, it is easy to add another vague element whenever it's handy. By stating that Rhan-Tegoth can enable the Old Ones to come back, Lovecraft raises the stakes in Museum. Suddenly the story is not just about a monster that kills a few people in gross ways. Instead, it's about the possible end of Earth as we know it.

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Gods of Lost Mnar

Another small set of deities is linked to Lovecraft's mythos only by geographic references. The ancient land of Mnar is introduced in Doom (1919). Before humanity, a race of curious beings lived in Mnar, in the city of Ib, beside a nameless lake. Then inhabitants of Ib are not given a name, but they were "in hue as green as the lake and the mists that rise above it; ...they had bulging eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and curious ears, and were without voice." Around 10,000 years ago, humans arrived and built the great city of Sarnath beside the same lake. The story of the conflict between the humans of Sarnath and the beings of Ib has a vague and fantastic tone, so you might suspect that it is set in some corner of Lovecraft's dreamlands. Lovecraft tells us that "the land of Mnar is very still, and remote from most other lands both of waking and of dream." In later stories, Lovecraft's narrators in the waking world speak of Ib and Sarnath as places that actually existed in mankind's youth:

To myself I pictured all the splendours of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not recall it, and thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that stood in the land of Mnar when mankind was young, and of Ib, that was carven of grey stone before mankind existed. [Nameless]

Here sprawled a palaeogean megalopolis compared with which the fabled Atlantis and Lemuria, Commoriom and Uzuldaroum, and Olathoë in the land of Lomar are recent things of today—not even of yesterday; a megalopolis ranking with such whispered pre-human blasphemies as Valusia, R’lyeh, Ib in the land of Mnar, and the Nameless City of Arabia Deserta. [Mountains]

But it turns out that the land of Mnar is one of those places in Lovecraft's fiction that has links to both the waking and dream worlds. Thus, in Doom we learn that the humans in Mnar also built the cities "Thraa, Ilarnek, and Kadatheron on the winding river Ai." And we learn in Kadath that these three cities also trade with the city of Inganok in the dreamlands:

...the city of Inganok was builded of onyx, whilst great polished blocks of it were traded...with the merchants of Thraa, Ilarnek, and Kadatheron, for the beautiful wares of those fabulous ports.

Also, in Doom the king of Sarnath gets drunk "with ancient wine from the vaults of conquered Pnath," while the vale or vales of Pnath figure in the dreamland settings of Kadath and Dreamer.

This is not the place to outline the murky metaphysical status of the waking and dream lands in Lovecraft, or the many curious connections between them. Suffice it to say that these various references serve to link Mnar to the vaguely connected world of Lovecraft's most famous creations. And so the gods of Mnar deserve a small place in the pantheon of Lovecraft's mythos deities. The beings of Ib, we learn, "worshipped a sea-green stone idol chiselled in the likeness of Bokrug, the great water-lizard; before which they danced horribly when the moon was gibbous." The Ib dwellers had other gods, but their names are lost, and we know only that the men of Sarnath cast their idols in the lake:

Thus of the very ancient city of Ib was nothing spared save the sea-green stone idol chiselled in the likeness of Bokrug, the water-lizard. This the young warriors took back with them to Sarnath as a symbol of conquest over the old gods and beings of Ib, and a sign of leadership in Mnar.

The men of Sarnath also have many gods, though only three are mentioned by name:

On the ground were halls as vast and splendid as those of the palaces; where gathered throngs in worship of Zo-Kalar and Tamash and Lobon, the chief gods of Sarnath ... whose incense-enveloped shrines were as the thrones of monarchs. Not like the eikons of other gods were those of Zo-Kalar and Tamash and Lobon, for so close to life were they that one might swear the graceful bearded gods themselves sate on the ivory thrones.

And there were many small shrines and temples where one might rest or pray to small gods.

However, Bokrug the water lizard gets the last laugh. A thousand years after humanity slaughtered all the beings of Ib, the Ib-things somehow return, either rising from the lake or descending, like their ancestors, from the moon above, to wreak a final doom on Sarnath. Thereafter, the city of Sarnath disappears, leaving only a marsh.

But half buried in the rushes was spied a curious green idol of stone; an exceedingly ancient idol coated with seaweed and chiselled in the likeness of Bokrug, the great water-lizard. That idol, enshrined in the high temple at Ilarnek, was subsequently worshipped beneath the gibbous moon throughout the land of Mnar.

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Gods and Devotees

Previously, we noted the existence of three major clusters of god-entities in Lovecraft's work: the Azathoth cycle, including Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods; the Cthulhu cycle, including the Great Old Ones, Dagon, Hydra, and Marceline Bedard; and the Yog-Sothoth cycle, including the Old Ones, Shub-Niggurath, 'Umr at-Tawil, and the Ancient Ones. And we noted the evidence that the Other Gods, Great Old Ones, and Old Ones are distinct groups of beings. It is reasonable to wonder about the relations between the beings of these cycles: whether they are allies, enemies, or simply unconcerned with each other.

Lovecraft never addresses this point directly. However, in a letter from 1927 [Family], he establishes that Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, Nug, Yeb, Cthulhu, and Tsathoggua are all cousins descended from Azathoth.

Further, in several stories from 1929 onward, Lovecraft provides examples of common worshippers who were devoted to beings from all of these his primary cycles. In a similar way, Lovecraft introduces characters that worship both these existing gods and the newer gods that he introduced in revision stories.

• In Mound (1929/30), the Old Ones of K'n-yan are portrayed as followers of a real smorgasbord of entities including principally Tulu (Cthulhu) and the snake-god Yig. When the latter was first introduced in the earlier Zealia Bishop collaboration Yig (1928), there was nothing to link Yig to the rest of Lovecraft's creations. So Yig was inducted into the pantheon after the fact. Additionally, the Old Ones of K'n-yan worship members of the Yog-Sothoth cycle, including Shub-Niggurath, Nug, Yeb, and the Not-To-Be-Named One (an alias for Yog-Sothoth). A couple of passing references suggest that the Old Ones of K'n-yan also followed Azathoth and Nyarlathotep. And it is established that the denizens of K'n-yan also dabbled with Tsathoggua worship at an earlier stage, before abandoning it.
• In Whisperer (1930), the Outer Ones from Yuggoth are associated with the worship of Azathoth, Cthulhu, Shub-Niggurath, Tsathoggua, and Yog-Sothoth. In Aeons (1933), we also learn of their "hellish god or patron daemon Ghatanothoa."
• In Man (1932), Daniel Morris reveres Shub-Niggurath, Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, and possibly Nyarlathotep (at least, one of Morris' ancestors "made the bargain with the Black Man").
• In Museum (with Hazel Heald, 1932) George Rogers worships the newly-introduced deity Rhan-Tegoth, along with Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu. Rogers also keeps sculpted figures of Chaugnar Faugn, Tsathoggua, and Yog-Sothoth, and refers in passing to Azathoth. [Museum 1932]
• In Aeons (1933), the humans of Mu worship Ghatanothoa, Shub-Niggurath, Nug, Yeb, and Yig.

Thus, Lovecraft's principle deities have not only family ties but many worshippers in common.

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Factions and Conflicts

Having established a degree of commonality among Lovecraft's alien gods, we now turn to the issue of what rivalries or conflicts exist among them.

We have seen the most noteworthy example previously: in Kadath, Nodens and his followers, the night-gaunts, side with Randolph Carter in defiance of Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods. Although Nyarlathotep is able to sweep the night-gaunts aside, Carter makes good his escape in part due to Noden's cheer-leading. However, Nodens disappears from Lovecraft's fiction after 1927, so we never learn any more of him.

We have seen also how T'yog of ancient Mu attempted to invoke Shub-Niggurath, Nug, and Yeb against Ghatanothoa [Aeons]. Similarly, Alfred Clarendon refers to Shub-Niggurath, Nug, Yeb, and something called the Nemesis of Flame as allies with which to counter Surama, who was a follower of Nyarlathotep. And Surama is consumed by fire in the end, though we do not learn if the Nemesis of Flame is truly an entity or simply a name for the cleansing power of fire in general. [Test]

In Doom, the gods worshipped in Sarnath fail to protect men from the vengeance of the drowned beings of Ib and their deity, Bokrug the water lizard.

In Mound, the Old Ones of K'n-yan believe in space-devils who are hostile to their own gods and had caused earth catastrophes:

At some time infinitely in the past most of the outer world had sunk beneath the ocean, so that only a few refugees remained to bear the news to K’n-yan. This was undoubtedly due to the wrath of space-devils hostile alike to men and to men’s gods—for it bore out rumours of a primordially earlier sinking which had submerged the gods themselves, including great Tulu, who still lay prisoned and dreaming in the watery vaults of the half-cosmic city Relex. No man not a slave of the space-devils, it was argued, could live long on the outer earth; and it was decided that all beings who remained there must be evilly connected.

On the other hand, the Old Ones of K'n-yan seem to be an unreliable source, since they have lost contact with the gods they worship. Similarly, their naïvete is suggested by the way they adopted the Tsathoggua cult, only to abandon it later in horror after encountering Tsathoggua's black-slime followers. So their "space-devils" could be a myth invented to explain the cataclysms that sank elder continents.

In WitchHouse, Lovecraft gives an uncharacteristic nod to Christianity. Walter Gilman is being strangled by Keziah Mason when he manages to brandish a crucifix at her.

He felt the chain of the cheap crucifix grinding into his neck, and in his peril wondered how the sight of the object itself would affect the evil creature...At sight of the device the witch seemed struck with panic, and her grip relaxed long enough to give Gilman a chance to break it entirely. He pulled the steel-like claws from his neck, and would have dragged the beldame over the edge of the gulf had not the claws received a fresh access of strength and closed in again. This time he resolved to reply in kind, and his own hands reached out for the creature’s throat. Before she saw what he was doing he had the chain of the crucifix twisted about her neck, and a moment later he had tightened it enough to cut off her breath.

We are also told that Gilman has lost the crucifix before he is killed by Brown Jenkins. So the story leaves open the possibility that the crucifix might have saved him.

In Haunter, Robert Blake prays to Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth to save him from the Haunter of the Dark (an avatar of Nyarlathotep). Blake may believe that Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth are more powerful beings than Nyarlathotep. In any case, his appeals seem to fall on deaf ears.

In Yig, the Wichita Indians call on their god Tiráwa for protection against Yig:

They kept the drums pounding to drive Yig away, and called down the aid of Tiráwa, whose children men are, even as the snakes are Yig’s children.

Apparently Tiráwa's protection is sketchy at best, since the Wichitas also find it necessary to placate Yig by making offerings to him and by avoiding harming his children, the snakes.

Lovecraft's various alien races fight many wars against each other, but is not clear that the gods favor one race over another. It is true that two races, the Cthulhu-spawn and the Deep Ones, are strongly associated with Cthulhu. Also, after the shoggoths rebel from the Antarctic Old Ones, they seem to become allies of Cthulhu and the Deep Ones. Thus, in Innsmouth, Zadok Allen rants:

Them haouses north o’ the river betwixt Water an’ Main Streets is full of ‘em—them devils an’ what they brung—an’ when they git ready... I say, when they git ready... ever hear tell of a shoggoth?...

The narrator additionally mentions seeing a shoggoth when he visits the Deep Ones' city of Y’ha-nthlei in his dreams.

It is from Zadok Allen that we learn that the lost "Old Ones" left behind certain charms that are fatal to the Deep Ones:

Wal, come abaout ‘thutty-eight—when I was seven year’ old—Obed he faound the island people all wiped aout between v’yages. Seems the other islanders had got wind o’ what was goin’ on, an’ had took matters into their own hands. S’pose they musta had, arter all, them old magic signs as the sea-things says was the only things they was afeard of. No tellin’ what any o’ them Kanakys will chance to git a holt of when the sea-bottom throws up some island with ruins older’n the deluge...In some places they was little stones strewed abaout—like charms—with somethin’ on ‘em like what ye call a swastika naowadays. Prob’ly them was the Old Ones’ signs.

They’d ruther not start risin’ an’ wipin’ aout humankind, but ef they was gave away an’ forced to, they cud do a lot toward jest that. We didn’t hev them old charms to cut ‘em off like folks in the Saouth Sea did, an’ them Kanakys wudn’t never give away their secrets.

The Deep Ones could never be destroyed, even though the palaeogean magic of the forgotten Old Ones might sometimes check them.

There are so many types of "Old Ones" in Lovecraft, that it is difficult to tell which are being referred to here. However, there are at least two possibilities.

Robert M. Price has suggested that the Antarctic Old Ones might be the source of the "magic signs" against the Deep Ones.[fn5] In Mountains, it is said that the Antarctic Old Ones fought a war against the Cthulhu spawn.

Another race—a land race of beings shaped like octopi and probably corresponding to the fabulous pre-human spawn of Cthulhu—soon began filtering down from cosmic infinity and precipitated a monstrous war which for a time drove the Old Ones wholly back to the sea—a colossal blow in view of the increasing land settlements. Later peace was made, and the new lands were given to the Cthulhu spawn whilst the Old Ones held the sea and the older lands. ... From then on, as before, the antarctic remained the centre of the Old Ones’ civilisation, and all the discoverable cities built there by the Cthulhu spawn were blotted out. Then suddenly the lands of the Pacific sank again, taking with them the frightful stone city of R’lyeh and all the cosmic octopi...

It happens that the Antarctic Old Ones left behind certain small stones that could be interpreted as charms:

Have found peculiar soapstone fragment about six inches across and an inch and a half thick, wholly unlike any visible local formation. Greenish, but no evidences to place its period. Has curious smoothness and regularity. Shaped like five-pointed star with tips broken off, and signs of other cleavage at inward angles and in centre of surface. Small, smooth depression in centre of unbroken surface...Carroll, with magnifier, thinks he can make out additional markings of geologic significance. Groups of tiny dots in regular patterns. Dogs growing uneasy as we work, and seem to hate this soapstone.

The explorers later conclude that the smaller such stones were probably used as money.

There was extensive commerce, both local and between different cities; certain small, flat counters, five-pointed and inscribed, serving as money. Probably the smaller of the various greenish soapstones found by our expedition were pieces of such currency.

So, in summary, the Antarctic Old Ones were enemies of the Cthulhu-spawn; and if the Old Ones developed charms against the Cthulhu-spawn, it is conceivable that these charms might also be effective against other allies of Cthulhu, such as the Deep Ones. The Old Ones also left behind small stone objects. So it is possible that these Old Ones were the source of the "charms" that the Polynesians were able to use against the Deep Ones. On the other hand, the descriptions of the stone charms of the Polynesians don't tally with the stones left by the Old Ones. For the charms are nowhere described as being five-pointed, and they bear an image of a swastika rather than patterns of small dots. Further, a swastika is a symbol with four broken arms, and the Old Ones would be more likely to use symbols with fivefold symmetry.

Another possibility is that the charms were left by the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth rather than the Antarctic Old Ones. The Necronomicon says of these Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth:

They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. [Dunwich]

Robert M. Price interprets this passage as evidence that Cthulhu was punished and R'lyeh destroyed by the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth.[fn6] If so, then the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth could be the source of the charms that vanquish the Deep Ones. However, there are a couple of points against this theory. If this passage means that the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth smited R'lyeh, then it also means that they smited Kadath. But there is no indication in Lovecraft's fiction that Kadath was ever destroyed or even damaged. Instead, it stills exists, albeit in a fairly remote corner of the dreamlands. [Kadath] Further, as we have noted previously, Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth have worshippers in common, such as the Outer Ones from Yuggoth.

Overall, the identity of the Old Ones who left the "charms" against the Deep Ones must remain an open question.

It seems that the Outer Ones from Yuggoth also have some mysterious adversaries. In a letter from Henry Akeley's impersonator, we are told:

Actually, they [the Outer Ones] have never knowingly harmed men, but have often been cruelly wronged and spied upon by our species. There is a whole secret cult of evil men (a man of your mystical erudition will understand me when I link them with Hastur and the Yellow Sign) devoted to the purpose of tracking them down and injuring them on behalf of monstrous powers from other dimensions. It is against these aggressors—not against normal humanity—that the drastic precautions of the Outer Ones are directed. [Whisperer]

Sadly, this was the only one of Lovecraft's stories to mention Hastur or the Yellow Sign, so it is not clear what concept Lovecraft had of them. These names come from 1890's tales by Robert W. Chambers, where they apparently figure in a cursed play called The King in Yellow. In these stories, it seems that Hastur might be the name of a former king of the celestial city of Carcosa, and the Yellow Sign is an emblem that seems to bring doom to whomever receives it. In terms of his own myth-pattern, Lovecraft might have intended Hastur to be another alien god, one that is hostile to the Outer Ones. Since the Outer Ones are worshippers of several of Lovecraft's main gods (Azathoth, Cthulhu, Ghatanothoa, Shub-Niggurath, Tsathoggua, and Yog-Sothoth), it is conceivable that Hastur is also an enemy of those gods. We shall never know for sure.

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The Prolonged of Life

George Rogers' fear that Rhan-Tegoth might starve to death is a bit of an anomaly [Museum]. A general feature of Lovecraft's alien gods is that they are older than dust; yet there is no mention of them aging or dying. One character's hapless exclamation could be taken as emblematic of Lovecraft's whole myth pattern:

“Old! Old! Old!” he would moan over and over again, “great God, they are older than the earth, and came here from somewhere else...” [Mound]

Of the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth, we are told:

The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. [Dunwich]

Similarly, we are told of the Great Old Ones that

...although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu... [Call]

and:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die. [Call]

We are not told Marceline Bedard's age, but the painter Frank Marsh associates her with R'lyeh, Atlantis, ancient Egypt, and Zimbabwe, and says that his portrait of her would "crystallise the secrets of 75,000 years." And although Marceline is killed, it seems that her snakelike tresses continue to live. [Medusa]

Ghatanothoa is evidently also very old, since he was the "hellish god or patron daemon" of the Outer Ones, who "colonised the earth before the birth of terrestrial life." He is still alive during the time of the humans of ancient Mu, when he petrifies the heretic T'yog. And in modern times, Richard Johnson feared that Ghatanothoa might come forth again:

Despite all my assurance that the whole matter was purely mythical, I could not help shivering at the notion of a latter-day emergence of the monstrous god, and at the picture of an humanity turned suddenly to a race of abnormal statues, each encasing a living brain doomed to inert and helpless consciousness for untold aeons of futurity. [Aeons]

Rhan-Tegoth survived in a dormant state since three million years ago, and there is no telling how much older it might be. Since it came from Yuggoth, it is possible that the Outer Ones brought it to Earth like Ghatanothoa, before the dawn of earth life. [Museum]

Tsathoggua was a deity that Lovecraft adopted from Clark Ashton Smith, and we know from the latter's stories that Tsathoggua came from Saturn to Earth in years immediately following the earth's creation [CAS Seven], when the earth was still no more than a steaming morass [CAS Door]. Yet Tsathoggua continued to be active at least until the time of the human civilization of Hyperborea, and there is no implication that he ever died.

Even though such beings might be immortal, most of them are not beginningless. In Family, Lovecraft traces the gods' descent through several generations from the first principle, Azathoth. As his kidnappers are taking Randolph Carter to the moon, he encounters a younger generation of the Other Gods:

Then with a queer whistle and plunge the leap was taken, and Carter felt the terrors of nightmare as earth fell away and the great boat shot silent and comet-like into planetary space. Never before had he known what shapeless black things lurk and caper and flounder all through the aether, leering and grinning at such voyagers as may pass, and sometimes feeling about with slimy paws when some moving object excites their curiosity. These are the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, and like them are blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts. [Kadath]

And there was evidently a long period before Azathoth created any offspring; for, during a later kidnapping, as Carter is carried helplessly toward the void of Azathoth, he hears a melody that "was old when space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born." [Kadath]

Although Family shows Yog-Sothoth as a child of the Nameless Mist and Darkness, and a grandchild of Azathoth, Lovecraft also described Yog-Sothoth as beginningless in a letter three years later:

Has Yog-Sothoth a pedigree? No. He always existed. Since he has no parents, I've never meet 'em.
{HPL to Willis Conover, Sept. 1, 1936]

The whimsical tone of the later letter might suggest that Lovecraft was just joking around and not really trying to be consistent with his existing myth-pattern. On the other hand, the letter repeats information from Family by stating that Yog-Sothoth's wife is Shub-Niggurath, and his children Nug and Yeb. So Lovecraft did not break with all his previous ideas about Yog-Sothoth, he only upgraded Yog-Sothoth a bit by saying that he always existed. As fans, we can rationalize these references a bit by pointing to the abstract-sounding nature of "Nameless Mist" and "Darkness," which sound almost more like preconditions to creation than created beings themselves.

Interestingly, Family was written about the time that Lovecraft finished writing Gates, and in that story it is made clear that Yog-Sothoth exists in some sense outside of time:

It [Yog-Sothoth] 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.

Time...is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present, and future.

...the entities outside the Gates command all angles, and view the myriad parts of the cosmos in terms of fragmentary, change-involving perspective, or of the changeless totality beyond perspective, in accordance with their will.

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The Hierarchy of Alienness

In Lovecraft's mythology, contrasts are sometimes drawn between beings based on how alien they are. The quality of alienness is based partly on these beings having originated far, far away. Another aspect of alienness is that these beings may be constituted of a different type of matter, and adapted to different laws of physics, than obtain now on Earth. A third aspect is that their motives and thought processes might be incomprehensible to us. In each area of Lovecraft's mythos, there is an implied hierarchy among the beings based on how alien they are.

Thus, in the dream cycle, Azathoth is at the top of the heap, existing in an infinite void and generating whole universes with his dreams. He is said to be "mindless," which is odd considering that he has dreams, which are generally considered a type of mental experience. But the description of Azathoth is apparently a metaphor for a being whose nature we cannot truly comprehend. Below Azathoth, the Other Gods are still mindless, but are given to dancing, which makes them sound more embodied and active than Azathoth. Somehow emerging from or latent within the Other Gods is the still more concrete being Nyarlathotep, a devious fellow who has plans and emotions, and sometimes adopts human form. Below Nyarlathotep are the gods of earth. Compared to the Other Gods, earth's gods are described as "the mild, feeble gods of earth." But humanity is on a still lower level. Relative to humanity, the gods of earth are referred to as the Great Ones, and sages repeatedly warn Randolph Carter of the dangers of defying them. [Kadath]

Within this hierarchy, Nodens seems to occupy a level a bit lower than Nyarlathotep, but higher than the Great Ones. Nodens' entourage, the Mighty Ones, might be about on the same level as the Great Ones. Below this, it seems there may exist more recent earthly gods, who are not as old as the Great Ones. These may be the beings currently worshipped by religions in the waking world. [Kadath, Mist]

In Family, Yog-Sothoth is listed as a grandchild of Azathoth, and so presumably lower in the overall hierarchy. But Yog-Sothoth is the chief of another group of beings, being the supreme archetype among a set of archetypes who exist outside of time and are masters of infinite dimensions. Below Yog-Sothoth are his manifestations on earth's extension, the Ancient Ones and their leader 'Umr at-Tawil. [Gates] The Old Ones worshipped by the Whateleys seem to be a lower class of being. Far from being masters of all dimensions, they are dimensionless and unable to reach our world without help. At a lower level still are Yog-Sothoth's half-human spawn: Wilbur Whateley and his brother, the Dunwich Horror. [Dunwich]

Cthulhu would seem to be less alien than the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth. The Old Ones are invisible to us, but even Cthulhu can hardly see them. [Dunwich] Still, Cthulhu is evidently fairly alien, since he and the Great Old Ones are constrained by celestial changes that don't affect us; thus, they currently have to hide under a protective spell to survive the fact that "the stars are wrong." Also, as we have mentioned previously, the laws of geometry seem to be warped in Cthulhu's neighborhood. Beneath Cthulhu in his hierarchy are the Great Old Ones. It is not clear how similar Cthulhu is to the Great Old Ones, but he is evidently their leader, and is expected to eventually revive them and "resume His rule of earth." [Cthulhu]

The other beings associated with Cthulhu seem able to live normally on Earth even while "the stars are wrong." Thus, they are overall probably less alien than Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones. Of these, Rhan-Tegoth is alien in the sense that it came to Earth from "from lead-grey Yuggoth, where the cities are under the warm deep sea." It is also long-lived, and capable of surviving in a dormant state for at least three million years. [Museum] Similarly, the Deep Ones are able to operate freely on the Earth today. We know less about Dagon and Hydra, but if they are ancestors of the Deep Ones, then they are probably fairly similar. [Innsmouth] Marceline Bedard's origins are even murkier. But her great longevity and snake-like hair, which lives on after the death of her body, suggest that she is also fairly alien to normal Earth standards.

Among the several intelligent races that have inhabited Earth, it would seem that the Cthulhu spawn and Outer Ones (Mi-Go) are more alien than the Antarctic Old Ones:

It was curious to note from the pictured battles that both the Cthulhu spawn and the Mi-Go seem to have been composed of matter more widely different from that which we know than was the substance of the Old Ones. They were able to undergo transformations and reintegrations impossible for their adversaries, and seem therefore to have originally come from even remoter gulfs of cosmic space. The Old Ones, but for their abnormal toughness and peculiar vital properties, were strictly material, and must have had their absolute origin within the known space-time continuum; whereas the first sources of the other beings can only be guessed at with bated breath. [Mountains]

The Old Ones of K'n-yan believe that Cthulhu "had brought them down from the stars," yet they are "the ancestors of all men" and are described as looking much like Native Americans. They form an example of a species that became more alien after arriving here, having become more attenuated and less material over time:

It seemed that the infinite ancientness of these creatures had brought them strangely near to the borderline of spirit...

The Old Ones themselves were half-ghost—indeed, it was said that they no longer grew old or reproduced their kind, but flickered eternally in a state between flesh and spirit. [Mound]

Some of the other intelligent races of Earth may be of purely terrestrial origin. This may be true, for example, of the "the cone-shaped things that peopled our earth a billion years ago," and "the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind"—at least, until both species are psychically replaced by minds of the Great Race, "the beings of a dying elder world, wise with the ultimate secrets." [Time] The green, voiceless beings of ancient Ib may be alien only in the sense of having preceded humanity. And for all we know, the denizens of the Nameless City may be equally homegrown, even though the passage of time has reduced them to a "half-transparent," vestigial state. [Nameless]

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Imprisoned with the Old Ones

Some of Lovecraft's most famous stories concern beings who ruled earth once, and are trying to return and resume their rule. Currently, it seems, these beings have limited access to our planet. Some circumstance is preventing their return.

Thus, Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones were victims of some change in "the stars." Because the stars are "wrong," Cthulhu had to place himself and the Great Old Ones under a protective spell. But a side effect is that they cannot emerge on their own. Even when the stars come "right" again, Cthulhu will be dependent on his cultists to set him free. [Call] Similarly, the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth lost their status as rulers of Earth. We are not told how the Old Ones lost their place; only that they now abide "not in the spaces we know, but between them...undimensioned and to us unseen." Also, the Old Ones want to drag the earth "away from the solar system and cosmos of matter into some other plane or phase of entity from which it had once fallen, vigintillions of aeons ago." [Dunwich]

It is easy to fall into the assumption that all of Lovecraft's more alien god-entities are in a similar predicament: somehow locked out of our planet or even our cosmos. But is this assumption correct? Were these beings once here all together as a group, and did they all lose access at once? The evidence is surprisingly thin.

Azathoth dwells in an ultimate void at the center of all infinity. Mindless but dreaming, he has no motives or desires to go anywhere, though he does "gnaw hungrily," perhaps on souls brought to him by Nyarlathotep. The Other Gods/Ultimate Gods who dance near Azathoth are similarly "blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts" [Kadath], but there is no indication that they ever lived on earth or that they want to move here. Their soul and messenger, Nyarlathotep, has incarnated on Earth on multiple occasions, including in ancient Egypt [Fungi XXI], ancient Rome [Family], and as the Haunter of the Dark [Haunter]. He also seems to be scheduled for a return sometime soon, if Nyarlathotep can be taken as a prophetic dream. And he moves about freely in the dreamlands [Kadath]. Far from being locked out, Nyarlathotep seems to be a being who comes and goes as he pleases.

Regarding the lesser deities associated with Cthulhu, unfortunately we learn very little of Dagon and Hydra. It seems they are the ultimate ancestors of the Deep Ones.

All in the band of the faithful—Order o' Dagon—an' the children shud never die, but go back to the Mother Hydra an' Father Dagon what we all come from onct...

Like the Deep Ones, Dagon and Hydra are presumably immortal. And since they are water beings, they were clearly not discomfited by the sinking of R'lyeh. Also, the narrator of Dagon saw a being who might be Dagon himself. The balance of the evidence seems to imply that Dagon and Hydra are probably still on the loose.

Similarly, Marceline Bedard of Medusa is linked with Cthulhu and ancient R'lyeh, but there is no mention of her ever having been imprisoned. Frank Marsh's painting portrays her in underwater R'lyeh, but the image is evidently an allegorical one.

The minute I saw it I understood what—she—was, and what part she played in the frightful secret that has come down from the days of Cthulhu and the Elder Ones—the secret that was nearly wiped out when Atlantis sank, but that kept half alive in hidden traditions and allegorical myths and furtive, midnight cult-practices.

It's all pretty vague, but again there's no mention of her having ever been immobilized by Cthulhu's protective spell, as the Great Old Ones were. Instead, she seems to play some role in the cult that will eventually act to free Cthulhu when the "stars are right" again.

Regarding Yog-Sothoth's family of Shug-Niggurath, Nug, and Yeb, there is no mention of their location or how active or inactive they may be. T'yog of ancient Mu invoked Shub-Niggurath, Nug, and Yeb against Ghatanothoa [Aeons]. In modern times, Alfred Clarendon threatened to invoke them as well. [Test]

Lovecraft adopted Tsathoggua from Clark Ashton Smith's stories, which recount that Tsathoggua was born in a foreign universe [CAS Door], and moved from Cykranosh (Saturn) to Earth in years immediately following the earth's creation [CAS Seven]. Lovecraft tells us of Tsathoggua worship in caverns beneath Oklahoma (N'kai, Yoth, and K'n-yan), but does not specify whether Tsathoggua was physically present there. [HPL Mound] Later, Tsathoggua lived below Mt. Voormithadreth in Hyperborea [CAS Seven]. In all these mentions, Tsathoggua seems to have freedom of movement.

Tsathoggua's offspring, Ossadagowah, was called "out of the Sky" by Richard Billington. A group of Wampanaug Indians, led by Misquamacus, were able to imprison Ossadagowah in a hole under a stone with the Elder Sign. [HPL Sorceries] This makes Ossadagowah the only one of Lovecraft's alien god-beings who was deliberately captured and imprisoned against his will.

Ghatanothoa, a god of the Outer Ones, was left behind them in the crypts beneath the fortress on Mount Yaddith-Gho in prehistoric Mu [Aeons]. We have no information about what happened to Ghatanothoa after Mu sank, except that he still has worshippers:

Though none knew to what bottomless deep the sacred peak and Cyclopean fortress of dreaded Ghatanothoa had sunk, there were still those who mumbled its name and offered to it nameless sacrifices lest it bubble up through leagues of ocean and shamble among men spreading horror and petrifaction.

We are never told Yig's location, though he was worshipped by the Old Ones of K'n-yan [Mound], and by Native American tribes from Guatemala to the Oklahoma plains [Yig]. Since the Oklahoma land rush days of 1889, the locals have become secretive.

Now no old-timer in middle Oklahoma, white or red, could be induced to breathe a word about the snake-god except in vague hints.

The "infinite and invincible" Rhan-Tegoth was found in three million year-old Cyclopean ruins in Alaska. At the time, it was in a dormant state, but we are not told why it had lapsed into this condition, except perhaps through hunger: [Museum]

The thing on that throne didn’t move—and we knew then that It needed the nourishment of sacrifice.

Rhan-Tegoth's devotee George Rogers managed to revive it with rituals and sacrifices, but was concerned that it needed to eat again soon:

It is starving down there beyond that door, and if It dies the Old Ones can never come back.

At the story's conclusion, it appears that the Roger's sidekick Orabona has managed to kill and preserve Rhan-Tegoth for display. But it is natural to wonder whether Rhan-Tegoth is really dead, or has just lapsed into its dormant state again.

Since Rhan-Tegoth was inactive when first discovered, it is natural to wonder if Rhan-Tegoth was laid under the same spell that Cthulhu cast on the Great Old Ones. And Rogers is apparently also a devotee of Cthulhu: "Rhan-Tegoth—Cthulhu fhtagn—Ei! Ei! Ei! Ei!" he exclaims. However, it appears that Rhan-Tegoth was active around three million years ago, whereas Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones have been waiting dreaming since long before that. Also, Rhan-Tegoth and Cthulhu are evidently not very similar beings. In the description of Rhan-Tegoth's city, there is no mention of the geometric distortions—the partial suspension of normal Euclidean space-time—that are observed at Cthulhu's home in R'lyeh. Nor is there any mention of Rhan-Tegoth being affected by whether "the stars are wrong," as the Great Old Ones are.

In summary, there is little to suggest that the bulk of Lovecraft's alien gods are imprisoned, locked out, or otherwise disabled. Those that are (the Great Old Ones, the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth, Ossadagowah, and Rhan-Tegoth) seem to be varied types of beings who are being hampered by substantially different types of problems: stars that are wrong, lack of access to our dimension, deliberate imprisonment, or a lack of sacrifices.

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Déjà Vu of the Future

We have seen a couple of Lovecraft's cults who expect their deities to return sometime in the future. The cult of the Great Old Ones believe:

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. [Call]

Similarly, the followers of the Old Ones of Yog-Sothoth believe [Dunwich]:

Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.

He [Dr. Armitage] would shout that the world was in danger, since the Elder Things wished to strip it and drag it away from the solar system and cosmos of matter into some other plane or phase of entity from which it had once fallen, vigintillions of aeons ago.

In the same story, we learn that Wilbur Whateley expects the earth to be "cleared off" until "there are no earth beings on it."

Both stories leave a feeling that the eventual return of these beings is foreordained, and the best we can do is to postpone the inevitable. But it is not clear that the futures foreseen by these two cults are the same, or even compatible. So what are we to make of these apocalyptic expectations? Is Lovecraft's mythos a bit like Scandinavian mythology, where the forces of darkness will conquer in the end? Or are the cultists expressing a mere, desperate hope for a future that may not ever come?

Lovecraft gives us a partial answer in his late masterpiece Time. There, we learn of the Great Race, who are able to project their minds through time and consequently have knowledge of the future. The narrator meets several personalities from Earth's future, including

...the Australian physicist Nevil Kingston-Brown, who will die in A.D. 2518...

...Yiang-Li, a philosopher from the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan, which is to come in A.D. 5000...

...Nug-Soth, a magician of the dark conquerors of A.D. 16,000...

Humanity's eventual fate is evidently too dire to specify:

What was hinted...of the fate of mankind produced such an effect on me that I will not set it down here.

A series of races will inhabit Earth after mankind:

After man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world.

Later, as the earth’s span closed, the transferred minds would again migrate through time and space—to another stopping-place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury. But there would be races after them, clinging pathetically to the cold planet and burrowing to its horror-filled core, before the utter end.

Of earthly minds there were...two from the arachnid denizens of earth’s last age...

These references do not purport to be a complete list of the races that will inhabit Earth in the future. Nevertheless, it seems noteworthy that the neither Cthulhu's Great Old Ones nor Yog-Sothoth's Old Ones are mentioned. Perhaps the Great Old Ones and the Old Ones will each succeed in gaining control of Earth at some time in the future; but if so, they apparently will fade away and be replaced by other species in time. However, it seems more likely to me that they never will succeed at all. Both the Great Old Ones and the Old Ones are beings so exceedingly alien, that their return would probably transform Earth into something quite different. Recall that Cthulhu is associated with spatial distortions that are suggestive of different laws of physics. And the Old Ones want to drag earth "away from the solar system and cosmos of matter into some other plane or phase of entity from which it had once fallen, vigintillions of aeons ago." Such drastic events, if they do lie in Earth's future, would surely have been mentioned by the aliens in Time.

I doubt that Lovecraft really thought this issue through, since it wasn't necessary for the purposes of his story when he wrote Time. As we have seen, Lovecraft could dramatically repurpose or else totally neglect his earlier creations if they didn't suit the needs of his latest story. However, as fans, we are free to indulge in a little rationalization. With that in mind, I would point out that the time-traveling capability of the Great Race more or less trumps any other kind of alien powers.

This, they indicated, was the greatest race of all; because it alone had conquered the secret of time. It had learned all things that ever were known or ever would be known on the earth, through the power of its keener minds to project themselves into the past and future, even through gulfs of millions of years, and study the lore of every age. From the accomplishments of this race arose all legends of prophets, including those in human mythology.

And the weak point of both the Old Ones and the Great Old Ones is that they depend on earthly cultists to set them free. For their own purposes, the Great Race may intervene in history whenever these cults come close to succeeding. Humanity may thus be unwitting beneficiaries of Lovecraft's greatest race.

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Pagan Burrowings

In surveying Lovecraft's work, there is a natural tendency to focus on his most popular stories and those that make use of his main clusters of background lore: the alien gods of the Necronomicon, the dreamlands of Randolph Carter, and the eldritch New England towns of Arkham, Innsmouth, and Dunwich. But Lovecraft's oeuvre includes other works that have mythological elements, yet are not explicitly linked to his better-known tales.

In Poetry and the Gods (1920, with Anna Helen Crofts), the protagonist has a vision and is told that

In thy yearning hast thou divined what no mortal else, saving only a few whom the world rejects, remembereth; that the Gods were never dead, but only sleeping the sleep and dreaming the dreams of Gods in lotos-filled Hesperian gardens beyond the golden sunset. And now draweth nigh the time of their awaking, when coldness and ugliness shall perish, and Zeus sit once more on Olympus.

George Wetzel has pointed out how this story anticipates some themes of Lovecraft's mythos fiction, including the idea of gods who are sleeping and communicate with their followers through dreams. However, in this story the gods are of the Greek pantheon.[fn7]

Also from the Greek pantheon, the god of sleep is briefly referenced in the short work Hypnos. However, it appears that the name serves only as a metaphor for the narrator's dream life.

In The Horror at Red Hook (1925), the protagonist discovers a cult in a New York slum. The nature of the cult is not clearly explained, but is apparently linked to a smorgasbord of pagan traditions. There are (inaccurate) references to "the Yezidis, last survivors of the Persian devil-worshippers." The story also references Magna Mater, a mother goddess of ancient Rome; Hecate, a goddess of ancient Greece; and Lilith, a she-demon of Mesopotamian and Jewish tradition. (Magna Mater also shows up in the Exham Priory cult in Rats, but there her worship seems to be a cover for some native British cult that is older than Roman influence.)

The Horde of the Wizard-Beast (1933, with Robert H. Barlow) takes place "on a planet of strange beasts and stranger vegetation...an elder world where all things might happen." There, a creature called Oorn serves as the supposed spokesperson of the gods, though his messages are actually determined by the local priesthood. The sardonic humor of the tale is reminiscent of Clark Ashton Smith's tales of Tsathoggua, which were much-beloved by Lovecraft. But this story remains an outlier with no apparent links to Lovecraft's other creations.

In an opium vision, the narrator of The Crawling Chaos (1920-21, with Elizabeth Berkeley) encounters a divine child and a god and goddess who speak of a heavenly realm:

In Teloe beyond the Milky Way and the Arinurian streams are cities all of amber and chalcedony. And upon their domes of many facets glisten the images of strange and beautiful stars. Under the ivory bridges of Teloe flow rivers of liquid gold bearing pleasure-barges bound for blossomy Cytharion of the Seven Suns. And in Teloe and Cytharion abide only youth, beauty, and pleasure, nor are any sounds heard, save of laughter, song, and the lute. Only the gods dwell in Teloe of the golden rivers, but among them shalt thou dwell.

Though Cytharion certainly sounds like it belongs in Lovecraft's dreamlands, it is in fact much more remote, being located "beyond the Milky way." Randolph Carter's adventures, by contrast, take place in Earth's dreamlands. The gods in The Crawling Chaos are not named, nor are we ever to learn more of them.

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Concluding Thoughts

I can't help wondering what Lovecraft would have made of this article, if he had lived to read it. He seems to have had a playful attitude toward beings of his myth-pattern. This attitude is well-illustrated in his letters, such as when he traces his own descent from Nyarlathotep [Family], or when he refers in a familiar, almost affectionate way to Yog-Sothoth:

Has Yog-Sothoth a pedigree? No. He always existed. Since he has no parents, I've never met 'em. He isn't housebroken, so I generally try to chain him outside. When he sends forth a pseudopodic tentacle (which can pass through the most solid walls) and begins to grope around inside the house, I usually call his attention to something going on in another galaxy—just to get his mind off local things. Yog doesn't always have long, ropy arms, since he assumes a variety of shapes—solid, liquid, and gaseous—at will. Possibly, though, he's fondest of the form which does have 'em. I've never encouraged him to scratch my back, since those whom Yog-Sothoth touches are never seen again . . .
[HPL to Willis Conover, Sept. 1, 1936]

Were any child to be reared in isolation, and surrounded from infancy with the religious precepts of Tsathoggua, YOG-SOTHOTH, or the Doles, his inner emotions would all through life inform him positively of the truth of Tsathogguanism, Yog-Sothothery, or Dolatry, as the case might be. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat With a Thousand Young! God! I wonder if there isn't some truth in some of this? What is this my emotions are telling me about Great Cthulhu? Ya-R'lyeh! Ya-R'lyeh—Cthulhu fhgthagn . . . . . n'ggah . . . ggll . . . . . Iä!
[HPL to Frank Belknap Long, Nov. 22, 1930; playfully dated 1730]

Even so, he showed amused toleration toward his credulous and imaginative friend William Lumley, who took the myth-pattern very seriously indeed:

He is firmly convinced that all our gang—you, Two-Gun Bob, Sonny Belknap, Grandpa Eich-Pi-El, and the rest—are genuine agents of unseen powers in distributing hints too dark and profound for human conception or comprehension. We may think we're writing fiction, and may even (absurd thought!) disbelieve what we write, but at bottom we are telling the truth in spite of ourselves—serving unwittingly as mouthpieces of Tsathoggua, Crom, Cthulhu, and other pleasant Outside gentry. Indeed—Bill tells me he has fully identified my Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep . . . . . . . so that he can tell me more about 'em than I know myself! With a little encouragement, good old Bill would unfold limitless chronicles from beyond the border—but I like the old boy so well that I never make fun of him.
[HPL to Clark Ashton Smith, Oct. 3, 1933]

Curiously, Lovecraft expressed regret that his horrific creations are not, in fact, real:

Much as I would like to live in a cosmos full of my favorite Cthulhus, Yog-Sothoths, Tsathogguas, and the like, I find myself forced into agreement with men like Russell, Santayana, Einstein, Eddington, Haeckel, and so on. Prose is less attractive than poetry, but when it comes to a choice between probability and extravagance, I have to let common sense be my guide.
[HPL to August Derleth, Dec. 10, 1931]

On the whole, I imagine Lovecraft would be amazed that anyone would comb through the minutiae of his stories as if they were deserving of such intense and labored interpretation. And of course, this article is only a small example of the reams of similar material that have been written by various people about Lovecraft's myth pattern and its connections to the work of other horror authors. In truth, a good part of the fascination of Lovecraft's work arises from the deliberate vagueness and inconsistency of his background lore. If you've read this far, then I hope you will continue to enjoy the open-endedness of his conceptions.

Iä! Lovecraft fhtagn!

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References

1. Robert M. Price,"The Last Vestige of the Derleth Mythos," in S. T. Joshi (ed.), Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos. Lakeland, FL: Miskatonic River Press, 2011.

2. For an introduction to these terminology issues, see "A Lovecraftian Taxonomy" in Robert M. Price, H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990

3. I seem to recall having seen this idea in an essay by Robert M. Price, but am now unable to locate the reference. If you can identify the source, please contact me at jfm.baharna@gmail.com.

4. E. Hoffmann Price, "The Lord of Illusion," in Robert M. Price (ed.), Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos. Random House Worlds. Kindle Edition.

5. "The Lovecraft-Derleth Connection," in Robert M. Price, H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990.

6. "Cthulhu Elsewhere in Lovecraft," in Robert M. Price, H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990.

7. George Wetzel, "The Genesis of the Cthulhu Mythos," in Darrell Schweitzer (ed.), Discovering H.P. Lovecraft. Wildside Press. Kindle Edition.

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