The Cosmology of the Blessed and the Damned

A Summary of our Yog Sothothery


Herein lies an outline of the Chaosmology of the Arcane Temple of Shub Niggurath. Details of practical workings are only available to initiates of the Temple. The subject matter is difficult as we are dealing with the foundations of our reality here. It thus should not be taken as any form of dogma but rather as a continually evolving model, based on experimental exploration and study. The eldritch EOD encourages all its members to freely experiment without any preconception, thus this information can be viewed as an archaic optional map for new explorers. Like all such maps it contains both fact and fantasy and much terra incognita, and can be improved and expanded by anyone. Our circle of adepts has achieved more success than most in this area, but still recognise its inherent Mystery. Our Temple focuses on the oppositional Panform, Dionysian energies of Shub Niggurath, Hastur and Nodens, but also works with the entire pantheon. We work with the energies of Kaos, using the 'fictitious' images drawn from the deep unconscious of H P Lovecraft as our symbols. These symbols are deeply embedded in popular culture, and therefore the collectice unconscious, so far more accessible and relevant than abandoned ancient myths, themselves largely fictional organisations of esoteric experience.

Simply put the energies involved in these workings are of the pure chaos encircling a central Void, from which all ordered form both emerges from and returns to. That is they are the formless forces of pre-manifest, Primal Kaos, both creative and destructive. Unlike some, we do not regard any of these forces as simply 'dark', 'evil' or 'malicious', however, like most psychic phenomena, they function through the filter of the operator and take on the latter's attitudes and assumptions in relation to them. As Buddhists put it, 'if on encountering a demon we see it as a demon it will remain so, but on realising it exists in our mind we are liberated from it'. But in addition the phenomena also appears to be strongly conditioned by local environmental situations (both material and psychological), and tends to magnify even small influences. Emphasising a groundedness that escapes the sometimes naive Buddhist analysis. That is in general - beyond any foundational cultural archetypes - their assumed forms, in relation to our psyche, reflect and greatly magnify the mindset of their perciever and their situation. Thus great caution and skillful practise is far more essential to these workings than any other. For this reason they are ideally restricted to experienced adepts or their guided groups. Failing to observe this can only lead to disaster and unimaginable horror!

Within this schema there is a direct parallel between the objective and subjective, that is the manifest universe is to the pre-manifest Void, as the emergent rational ego is to the irrational unconscious (both its individual and collective levels). This relationship is fundamental to Lovecraft's fiction, where the farshores of the Dreamlands equate with the home of the Old Ones, and their 'fictional' inspiration is found in dreams and subjective impressions. Lovecraft's unique psychology gave him an access to this domain in his dreams, as well as in his intuitive responce to the fiction of the other writers he drew on.

The Chaos underlying reality may be understood scientifically in terms of the 'illogical' quantum chaos beneath the apparently ordered phenomena of the physical world (a fact at all scales according to decoherence theory). As well as its possible existential parallel, in the Fortean weirdness randomly erupting within ordinary reality. This potential for 'meaninglessness' to a rational essentialist like Lovecraft was a source of terror, a world gone mad. But for those who regard arbitrary, human meaning as objectifiable, it has an amazing potential.
At the present time we can not decide between these with any certainty, so reality is open to all possibilities and subject to individual interpretation. Similarly the Chaos may be psychologically seen as the unconscious roots of awareness and subjective life, out of which a rational mind and self evolves. Or the chaos of all our perceptions, desires and ideas, and their symbols, ordered into a mental structure or a language. Even as the chaos of individual organisms out of which social communities may evolve. All three emergences, material, psycho-linguistic and social, being entwined processes. The intention is neither to reduce one to the other but show their mutual entanglement. Yet we can equally simplify what we describe to approximations of order and chaos in any of these domains alone. Technically the Void can refer to that deepest degree of chaos totally beyond human cognition, or the nothingness that this chaos emerges from. For us this is a meaningless distinction, though alien minds may grasp what to mankind is inconcievable.

Fortunately we need not think at this complex philosophical level on a day to day basis, for myth and poetic
narrative provide a useful analogical language for us. Such analogues are more than mere metaphor though as
they are arguably the encultured pre-rational language of our intuitive unconscious, the logic of dream. Moreover the entities of such myths are more than dead symbols, in my experience they are the 'intelligences' behind the processes operating within our '(un)conscious' reality. Just as in a sense we are too. However when we talk of gods and demons here their precise nature will be left open to the reader, they thus can be taken as analogues for purely mechanical processes, the poetic approach; or the 'consciousnesses' - or even the 'self aware consciousness' - within those processes, dubbed the panpsychic approach, according to the readers own understanding and aesthetic.

The Mythos and its Application

PART ONE - The Basics


A. The Outer Gods

According to Lovecraft, the Outer Gods are simply all those originating from outside the Manifest Universe, having their birth before the appearance of any Universe, whether by spontaneous Big Bang or some random Zero Point Energy fluctuation. Even a book as traditional and conservative as the Bible states, "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the Deep,...." Already dividing Chaos into a night-like Void and an ocean-like Deep, both ancient images of the unmanifest and the foundations of 'Heaven and Earth'. This Chaos, or Void, is universally seen as existing before the emergence and ordering of the universe. It is the Ain Soph of the Kabbalists, the Taoist's T'ai Hsu, the Primal Ocean and the Abyss. Lovecraft uncharacteristically describes it in nirvanic terms in his short story Ex Oblivion. While absolutely without form we can cloth them with images, the Egyptians did this with the benign, primal Goddess Nuit and the Greeks with Nox or Night. It can also be terrifying, the Hebrew word for Deep, Tahom, being related not only to the word for Ocean, but also the monsterous demon Tiamat.

To be more precise we should say that the Outer Gods, those that are experienced and described, are capable
of being conceptualised in some primitive way, and attributed a form. This means they are not now part of the
Void, but rather are those energies on the edge of Chaos, barely capable of being conceived. They are the gates to and from the Void, which channel its energies, as the masques of the Chaos, on the border between the purely chaotic and the absolute unknowable. The ultimate liminal zone, leading to a world some regard as nirvanic and others as horrific.

The beings representing these force for Lovecraft are divided into two primary classes, or great waring clans (as befits chaos), the Elder Gods, or Titans, which represent those forces of chaos which benefit the Cosmos (fertilising forest fires or floods, volcanic eruptions etc), and the Other Gods (aka the Great Old Ones), who represent those dangerous forces shut out from the ordered world in order for it to manifest at all, and whose only role is apocalyptic or as a protective fear barrier around the Abyss. These latter forces can break into our world however, and when they do tend to be mindlessly destructive or at the very least to be bearers of chaos and disruption. When they lie on the borders of our world they seem to be a disappative influence, drawing things to the Abyss (which can be deadly or transcendental depending on how handled). Their most commonly experienced form was the eclipse, originally seen as the devouring of the sun or moon by a chaos demon. Or mythically the as the serpents beneath the 'world tree' gnawing at its roots. Both classes of Outer God are essentially non-dualistic, arational, ineffable and formless, but when encountered via our minds have a form projected onto them. That form, and its relation to us, will depend on our expectations, enculturation, current psychological state and our attitude to chaos (whether it be horror or ecstacy).

The Other Gods (the original Great Old Ones)

We have suggested that these forces can be seen as horrific as Tiamat, or as awesome as an 'Eclipse Demon' when they intrude into the ordered world. Such forces can be active or passive manifestations, when active they can be an outpouring of mindless, disruptive or destructive energy seeking to reduce everything back to nothingness, when passive they can lure into oblivion. Our intuition can realise their nature and clothes them appropriately in terms of our responce to them. This is how Lovecraft regarded them in the main. Their appearance in the world is usually met with an equally powerful responce from the Cosmos. If they have any role at all it is an apocalyptic one, and a dark, catastrophic phase of transformation, which alas in times of severe crisis is sometimes necessary. At the end of time they are destined to rule our world, briefly. On the other hand (or perhaps tentacle) there is another side to them. Lovecraft does not always portray them as negative and destructive, sometimes they are simply 'misunderstood'. Just as Tiamat herself is described as a 'gorgeous' deity in the earliest Mesopotamian texts. These beings are deeply ambiguous. The primary Great Old One in Lovecraft's fiction is Azathoth.

Azathoth

There are two faces of Azathoth in Lovecraft's writing:

'... the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose center sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demoniac flute held in nameless paws'. —H. P. Lovecraft, The Haunter of the Dark

'Outside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes..'. —H. P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

But Azathoth can also be experienced as follows:

'There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window...' —H. P. Lovecraft, Azathoth

Two very different encounters with Azathoth. The first clearly reveals Lovecraft's attitude to the chaos and meaninglessness he percieved deep in the heart of all things and beings. A 'Mad God' whose motivations are random whims, usually manifest in destructive or nihilistic ways. Azathoth here clearly represents that primal chaos (or rather one 'image' of it) that has been shut out of the universe, though ocassionally breaks through to cause mayhem and catastrophe. In another aspect he also represents the most primeval inner atavism in Mankind, the realm of the most basic survival instincts, of fight or flight, mindless fear or hate, impulses often released in the mental confusion and disorientation he can evoke. Accordingly few can 'see Azathoth' and remain sane, and thus he has no known fixed image (parodying religion). He can only be partially imagined
as being like the monsterous Other Gods that dance around his throne - outer emanations of his influence. great seething masses of pseudopodic chaos, writhing in 'knotted clumps of pandemonium'!

Note for the adept: such primality is often associated with the lowest levels of being in Tantric and Kabbalistic practise, rather than the higher reaches of the Abyss and Void beyond it. However this common perspective is based on the arbitrary hierarchy of levels used in those transcendental systems. From the perspective here the Void is the same at the top and bottom, within and without and on all sides, as these relative directions are meaningless in respect to it. Just as there is no subconscious and superconscious mind, only a single unconscious one. The forms its domains take are manmade interfaces not inherent units. In advanced versions of these systems
this is well known of course, it is one reason why it is said Malkuth is in Kether and Kether in Malkuth, and why the ancient Tibetans once placed the ultimate 1000 petaled lotus at the base of spine rather than the crown. All these peripheries are linked to the one Void.

In contrast however, on a deeper level even archaic gods like Azathoth are governed by the wyrd rhythms and melodies of the 'alien music' that surrounds them, and for some are not quite as monsterous. The early prose poem Azathoth describes his domain as a great hypnotic void beyond the stars, outside of our understanding. Azathoth's form is clearly in the mind of the beholder. The occultist Austin Osman Spare seems to have seen in Lovecraft's Great Old Ones a vision of beings manifesting his notion of Kia, the primal chaos that can be contacted via the 'Inbetween', or the gaps within ordered reality, liminal gateways from where magical powers originate. It is clear however that in most accounts by Lovecraft this is not the case, and only the very few are capable of seeing entities of this kind as anything other than terrifying and maddening. The same view is found in most parallel esoteric traditions. In Lovecraft's pessimistic 'fiction' no cults worship Azathoth apart from the criminally insane, and a sadistic alien insectoid race known as the Shan! He clearly feels Azathoth is beyond most people's ability to encounter and retain any ordered structure, he drives insane and is nearly always a destructive force. Such views are reinforced however by his conservative psychology, which saw human and other life as driven by negative atavistic forces (a kind of scientification of 'original sin'?).

Azathoth's main cultural form as a mad demon king maybe a masque made of layers of human and alien madness and destructiveness, his main legacy in the world, that we have dressed him in. Just as the average human unconscious, at root our instinctual self, has become a reservoir of repressed neuroses and complexes. Azathoth can be all hell let loose, but alas sometimes a necessity. Dealing with this is not easy, shutting him out is the tradition, but this only makes him stronger. The only way to deal with him seems to be to accept him not as a demon but as the root of Being, as in the great nirvanic poem Azathoth, or alternatively to sublimate difficult aspects of him in artforms, as in the Music of Erich Zann. None of this is easy and could be seen as a kind of cosmic psychotherapy.

One form of Azathoth some cannot easily escape is human madness, or mental breakdown, in these conditions the unfortunate have no choice but to dance to the demon sultan's tune, and must try to live with it relatively harmlessly. Fortunately most do, which perhaps indicates Lovecraft's perception is little pessimistic. For the most fortunate of these who recover, the Mad God may even bring a personal apocalypse leading to a new world. But fortunately he also has less intense emanations that are easier to deal with, as we shall see.

"Geniuses and crazy people are both out in the middle of a deep ocean; geniuses swim, crazy people drown. Most of us are sitting safely on the shore. Take a chance and get your feet wet". -Micheal Gelb

"The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ...So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!” Rimbaud

'.

Yog-Sothoth

Azathoth has a curious alter-ego

'Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread'. —H. P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror

'Imagination called up the shocking form of fabulous Yog-Sothoth – only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in its malign suggestiveness'. —H. P. Lovecraft, The Horror in the Museum

'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...' —H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price, Through the Gates of the Silver Key


Yog-Sothoth is in a sense the contrary of Azathoth, but equally an aspect of manifestation of the same Chaos.
In attempting to define Azathoth, a chaos which contains all and cannot be described, we exclude part of him. This part is Yog-Sothoth. Where Azathoth is typically 'situated' at at the core of existance, or at its chaotic beginning and end, Yog-Sothoth is everywhere and exists at all times, or rather is beyond any place or time, and the ultimate non-locality. Much more closely akin to Spare's 'Inbetween'. Where Azathoth is equated with the outside of the manifest universe, Yog-Sothoth is on the boundary between the manifest and unmanifest (unable to be a part of manifestation). The closest of the Other Gods to us and the Gatekeeper of the Great Old Ones. Evoking him is to open those gates. Where Azathoth is said to be 'mad and stupid', Yog-Sothoth is 'wise and knows all'. Where Azathoth is seen as highly energetically active in his own realm, albeit in a deep trance, and only briefly sleeps, Yog-Sothoth is usually in state of slumber and inactive until briefly awakened, but then knows all and is all wise. His wisdom is a kind of cosmic memory, an akashic record. Where Azathoth can be malefic Yog Sothoth is always detached. He can help or hinder the Old Ones who pass his portals.

In Lovecraftian fiction, the awakeners of Yog-Sothoth do so to open the gates to Kaos, or gain an often costly Gnosis. Fortunately he rarely awakes completely and usually functions through the Great Old Ones who serve him, or manifest his influence. He also acts as the guardian keeping the Gates of Chaos closed, much like the way the Chaos Serpent of traditional paganism becomes the World Serpent that encircles the world (though in Lovecraft's version perhaps more to preserve his own realm than ours). He is thus the ultimate of all the Dwellers on the Threshold, and more psychically terrifying even than Choronzon!

Like Azathoth, no one can behold the chaos that is Yog-Sothoth and remain sane, but he can be percieved in the 'Halls of the Other Ones' as a silhouette behind a shimmering veil. On Earth he manifests in his infamous multi-globular shape, as in the above image, an adopted form, perhaps a manifestation of this veil.

Yog Sothoth is thus a relatively safe manifestation of Chaos to deal with, though caution is still required as he is the gate of the Great Old Ones and a potentially destructive force in his own right. He has many of the dark traits of Azathoth, though none the less is free of many of the more dangerous aspects of alter ego. He is called via the North Lunar Node and banished through the South Lunar Node (the points of eclipse).

Yog Sothoth also has the strange characteristic in Through the Gates of the Gates of the Silver Key as a kind of Godhead. In that all beings including Lovecraft's alter ego in the story are an aspect of him. Everything thus in a sence buds off of this being of chaos, so he can be seen as far more than just an Other God or Old One.
GEB'L—EE'H
Yog -SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y

Footnote : Within the Chaotic Inflation Cosmology of Big Bang Astrophysics the whole universe looks like a cluster of chaotic spheres in random combination (our ordered universe being just one sphere in the total 'chaosmos'). Perhaps Yog Sothoth, as seen through and in the boundary of our universe (the veil?), thus takes this form? Was Lovecraft that psychic?

The Great Old Ones

The remaining Other Ones can be regarded as the 'disruptive' emanations of Kaos. The offspring of Azathoth or Yog Sothoth in effect. There are an infinite number of such beings, generally refered to as the Great Old Ones due to their association with a planet's primeval, unformed past. One way to understand this is in terms of a time when the Earth was not quite formed or ordered and was thus ruled by the Great Old Ones. Later this was displaced by a primeval order that was associated with the Elder Gods, which was later still displaced by the civilised pagan order represented by the Earth Gods (the classical deities of world mythology). By the end of this process the Elder Gods were seen as chthonic primeval forces to be kept at bay and were carefully channeled, while the Great Old Ones were the remnants of a banished primal chaos and mostly disruptive on escape. Some of these dwelt with Azathoth outside the ordered world, while others were 'imprisoned' in the infernal depths of various planets or cast adrift in deep space. They are as numerous and diverse as is the sentient being's capacity to create thought forms to embody such manifestations of Kaos. All these classes
of being have their magical role.

The most ubiquitously encountered on Earth are Shub Niggurath, the black goat of a thousand young; the unspeakable Magnum Innominandum; Tsathoggua, the chthonic toad god; sleeping Cthulhu, Yigg, the serpent lord; and that 'crawling chaos' manifest as Nyarlathotep.

The first two are best understood in terms of a psychological model, subsequently translated to objective terms. Shub Niggurath, who will be dealt with on a seperate page, basically represents the Eros Libido, human and cosmic, the mindless urge to expand, reproduce, and simply fuck, a chaotic expansion, while the Magnum Innominandum, aka the Nameless Mist, N'yog-Sothep and the King in Yellow, is its opposite, the Thanatos, or death instinct, human and cosmic, the urge to destroy, or simply contract and die. One is the outpouring of chaos in nature, the other the descent of nature into the void. For this reason the latter entity
is considered highly dangerous and never named (or evoked). For whereas Azathoth may be destructive in random episodes, the Nameless One is perhaps best understood as the constant compulsion to destruction and dissolution, of self as much as the other. The Nameless One also has a more entropic aspect - concerned with the slower dissolution of form and of negative decadence drifting into death - in the form of the King in Yellow (named after decay, and the 'yellow years' of Fin de Siecle bohemian nihilism), who is sometimes regarded as hir avatar.

The Nameless One and Shub Niggurath can thus be considered siblings or partners, as psychologically they are the raw twin currents of the unruly Cosmic Id, unrestricted lust and sadistic aggression, though they are often in conflict they can also form strange alliances. Both are typically experienced in excess, due to their lack of all restraint, and their transcendence of civilized norms. The Namless Red Mist is that which arises internally and obscures reason in anger, or externally clouds the skies with the fumes and eruptive fiery emissions of the volcano. Cultural myths often contain sublimated channels of these forces, typically Eros and Thanatos, who are essentially Elder Gods, as well as their civilised forms, Jupiter and Saturn, Venus and Mars etc, the Earth Gods.

The other Great Old Ones are the third generation of entities associated with various 'ancient inhabitants' of Earth and will be dealt with below.


Nyarlathotep is slightly different, he seems to be the manifest, intelligent thought form for the chaotic power of Azathoth. He could be regarded as an avatar of Azathoth, though it seems more accurate to view him as
a constructed tulpa, channeling its disruptive influence, and acting as a vessel or agent, through which the power of the Great Old Ones can operate in our human world. The Great Old Ones themselves are generally either too primal or too transhuman, in terms of their state of consciousness, to communicate with humans or to share the same rational framework with us. Nyarlathotep in contrast has a human-like mind, and attendant ego, which enables him to interact with humanity and form plans that we can understand, and so either support or hinder. Archetypally he is a dark Trickster / Psychopomp type figure, a sinister Hermes or Black Man of the covens. He generally appears in secular human society in a charismatic 'sorcerer' or 'eccentric genius' role, who brings a strange new technology to the world. However this technology is either a distracting glamor and spectacle, or sows the seeds of mankind's destruction, and in general undermines us in the stories. He ultimately heralds the Armageddon, and his true form is said to be that of a monsterous being known as the 'crawling chaos' (a fine metaphor adoptable for the current ecological crisis perhaps). He is the hybrid interface between Mankind and the Great Old Ones. In the stories he is the latter's created, semi-autonomous agent, orchestrating devious plans to bring them to power once more. A more metaphysical interpretation of this mythic narrative might be to regard him as that element of Azathothic chaos that exists in the human psyche and manifests it self both as creative genius and our destructive, libidinous and self centred tendencies. The disruption humanity brings to the world, as well as our capacity to criticize, rebel and to transform it. In our present state of being the archetype of this aspect of us is often dominated by the negative mode of this and appears as a Satanic or Setian figure. Even though at his worst he merely brings the crisis and destruction required for rebirth. Of course a positive end is not guaranteed as he brings only the first phase of this the rest is up to us. He is best viewed as the sum total of our egocentric disruptiveness and instinctual nihilistic traits, and appears to be heavily conditioned by the psycho-social environment he manifests in.

Magical experience has revealed he operates with the assistance of lesser daemonic servitors, one of whom has identified itself as Queb, whose name appears to be based on Quib, the Arabic for 'Master', and perhaps an inversion of a Welsh name for the Pooka or Puck, Bwcc. Popular imagery also assigns the infamous Men in Black of UFO lore to his disruptive staff.



'And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences - of electricity and psychology - and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of a nightmare'. — H.P. Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep

The most active of HPL's Elder Gods however, and their nominal leader, is Nodens the Hunter, a nomadic entity, originally from Orion, who hunts the Great Old Ones, across the Dreamlands, and on our Earth, where he often dwells, as well as across the vastness of Space. His role appears to be to combat the eruptions of chaos in the world and preserve a minimal order within it. Though he is somewhat unruly himself, as he is also the Lord of the Abyss,where he dwells when on Earth, or in the Dreamlands of Earth. In fact some do not regard Nodens as an Elder God at all, classifying him as something more akin to a Great Old One because of this, though this title probably merely reflects his primevalness. Again we see a parallel with Greek myth and the primitive Titans who while opposing chaos are cast into Tartarus by Zeus and the Olympians to make way for civilisation. Nodens in this reckoning is equivalent to Chronos (and by association with Set and Marduk etc in their opposition to chaos monsters, and more pertinently with the Celtic Nuada's opposition to the demonic Formorians, before he becomes the Romano-British Nodens, who can thus be regarded as his direct model). Consciously Lovecraft may have based Nodens on Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan. In the novel of the same name, Machen, who was one of Lovecraft's favourite authors, describes a late Roman inscription hinting that the British Nodens is actually the titular god Pan. While at other times he seems more of a Neptunian archetype. The historical Nodens was said to be a hybrid of Hermes, Neptune, Mars and Silvanus (Pan) by the Romans. In Lovecraft, ultimately even Nodens, like Chronos, seems too primeval for the Earth Gods to bear and so is cast out of Mount Kadath into the Abyss. Becoming the archetypal 'Dark Lord of the Underworld', where he is served by winged daemons known as Night Gaunts. Nodens is regarded as eqaul in power to Nyarlahotep and his primary enemy.

Nodens is also a close ally of the Goddess of Ulthar, and perhaps even her consort or father. Where as she rules over cats he rules over dogs (including the dog that kills Old One hybrid Wilbur Whatley). On Earth he acts as the Elder God's counterpart and foil to Nyarlathotep, and is often associated with the sea. In Lovecraft he first arrives on the Moon as it is formed, and uses its control over the Earths newly condensed oceans to chase off the Great Old One Cthuga, lord of chaotic fire (the cooling molten Earth?). He also has many similarities with the ancient Semitic Sea God Ea, or El, who was associated with the Great Flood, and whose consort or daughter Asherah may be regarded as another aspect of Ulthar. He may also be equated with the waxing moon, as his alterego Nyarlathotep - sometimes said to dwell on the dark side of the Moon - is equated with the waning moon.

The Elder Gods in general demonstrate many parallels with the Great Old Ones, who predate them. They can thus be regarded as the forces of Chaos, born of Night, that have been channeled into an emergent order in the world that is still primeval. The 'creative tides flowing in the primal ocean', 'forces of desire and becoming', or the necessary contradiction within chaos - the 'ordering elements within chaos itself'. In psychological terms they are the source of the Will or Shadow Will aspects of the Unconscious, from which the Ego and the egoic Earth Gods originate.

Interlude :: The Dreamlands

'He prayed long and earnestly to the hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold wastes where no man treads. But the gods made no answer and showed no relenting, nor did they give any favouring sign when he prayed to them in dream, and invoked them sacrificially through the bearded priests of Nasht and Kaman-Tha, whose cavern temple with its pillar of flame lies not far from the gates of the waking world'. — H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

To reach the Dreamlands, a dreamer must find an unusual stairway in a conventional dream and walk down the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber to face the judgment of powerful gatekeepers, Great Gods named Nasht and Kaman-Tha (perhaps equivalent to the brothers of Morpheus, who presided over phobias and fantasies?). If judged worthy (the mastery of fantasy and phobia?) the dreamer is allowed to descend the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber, and emerges in the Enchanted Wood. Physical paths are also possible, through rare portals, but often involve the death of the traveller. Similar steps exist on other worlds, such as the 'seven and nine' Onyx Steps of the Mi-Go's first homeworld.

Though the term "Dreamlands" typically refers to the dimension accessible by human dreamers, all of the other inhabited planets have their own dreamlands. Reaching these other realms from the terrestrial Dreamlands is possible but difficult according to Lovecraft.

The Dreamlands are divided into three continents, seperated by a single ocean, divided into four regions, each named for its cardinal direction, and a vast subterranean world. The sky above it (which contains other stars with their own Dreamlands) opens up into Kaos and the Void (perhaps today viewable as a central black hole).

The West is the most well-known region of the Dreamlands and is probably the most peopled as well. It is where dreamers emerge from the Steps of Deeper Slumber. The port of Dylath-Leen, the largest city of the Dreamlands, lies on its coast (inhabited by 'Arabian sorcerers', and 'Men of Leng', who serve the Crawling Chaos). The town of Ulthar, where no man may kill a cat, is also located here (harbouring ancient Atal the 'Patriarch' of the Temple of the Elder Gods. Where is hidden a copy of the Pnakotic Manuscripts). Other important cities are Hlanith (a coastal jungle city) and Ilarnek (a desert trade capital). The land of Mnar and the ruins of the lost city of Sarnath are found at the southern border. The ancient Enchanted Wood - of the mysterious ratlike Zoogs (perhaps serviteurs of Shub Niggurath) - lies in its centre. All these places are said to be the constructs of great dreamers of ancient times. It joins geographically with the South.

The South is the southern coastal region of the continent shared by the West along with the islands of the Southern Sea, including the Isle of Oriab, the largest. The South's land-locked regions and its coastal areas are known as the Fantastic Realms, because they contain nightmarish and sometimes incomprehensible zones (gates to other worlds). Otherwise, the islands of the Southern Sea are said to be 'fairly normal'.

The East is a continent that is largely uninhabited, except for Ooth-Nargai. The city of Celephaïs is the capital of Ooth-Nargai and was created from whole cloth by its god-like monarch King Kuranes, the greatest of all recorded dreamers (though a 'down and out' on Earth). Beyond Ooth-Nargai are The Forbidden Lands, dangerous realms into which travel is interdicted, the domain of the Great Old Ones, where lies the Gate of Chaos.

The North is a cold, mountainous continent notorious for its Plateau of Leng, a violent region shared by man-eating spiders and satyr-like beings known as the 'Men of Leng' (debauched servitors and servants of Shub Niggurath). It opens up into portals found in Antartica (known to the Elder Things) and Tibet. It houses the ancient Tibetan Monastry of the High Priest Not To Be Described, who serves The King in Yellow and the Crawling Chaos. Surrounding it are the ruins of Sarkomand (beneath is 'The Abyss' in which dwells Nodens, as does the 'King of the World' in his kingdom of Agharti, beneath Samarkand in some Asian myths). The North also has a number of friendlier places, such as the city of Inganok, famous for its onyx quarries. The deepest reaches of the North are said to hold Unknown Kadath, the home of the Great Ones, the Gods of Earth. Kaddath is described as a combination of Mount Olympus and Shamballah and connects through portals to the highest mountains of Earth, usually to the north of sacred centres, principally the Himalayas. Its denizens being less powerful than either Nodens or Nyarlathotep are sometimes invaded by them and ruled or suppressed accordingly.

The Underworld is a subterranean region that runs beneath the whole of the Dreamlands. It is dimly lit by a mysterious phosphorescence known as the "death-fire". Its principle inhabitants are demons and ghouls, who can physically enter the waking world through crypts. Humans who become 'abyssally obsessed' can also become ghouls. The Underworld is also home to the Gugs, monstrous giants banished from the surface by the Earth Gods for 'untold blasphemies'. The 'Great Abyss', a realm that lies below the ruins of Sarkomand, is a massive cavern that joins with all parts of the Underworld. It connects with the upper Dreamlands by a stairway in Sarkomand. The Abyss is ruled by the Elder God Nodens, who is served by the demonic nightgaunts. Nodens rests here in between raids on the Great Old Ones, via Sarkomand and the volcano of Ngranek on the isle of Oriab, whose upper slopes are guarded by his Nightgaunts. Typically Night Gaunts may attack stray humans, while some ghouls may befriend them.

It is likely that all of HPL's cavernous worlds really lie within the Underworld of the Dreamlands.

The Underworld's deepest realm is the Vale of Pnath, a dangerous lightless chasm inhabited by enormous unseen worms called Bholes, great devouring forces akin to the Nordic serpents beneath the World Tree.

The Moon has a parallel in the Dreamlands and is inhabited by the dreaded Moon-Beasts, probably servitors of the Magnum Innominandum (dwelling also on the Nameless Rock in the sea of the Earth's Dreamlands), amorphous frog-like creatures allied to Nyarlathotep who also dwells here. It is possible for a ship to sail off the edge of the Dreamlands and travel through space to the Moon! Here on the Moon's darkside also lies a Gate of Chaos.

(source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamlands)

PART TWO

The Mystery of Hastur

The most mysterious Outer God of all is Hastur, 'Lord of the Shepherds'. Hastur is another primeval divinity who wanders interstellar space, and is sometimes classed as a Great Old One, particularly as a monsterous consort of Shub Niggurath, and sometimes as an Elder God, much like Nodens, with whom he is sometimes confused. He can be the most dangerous of the Outer Gods, but is also sometimes regarded as an entirely benign god in some stories. To settle this literary confusion he is best regarded as a hybrid or bridge between the two races of Outer Gods, a kind of 'missing link'. In many ways he is like a Derridean differance which deconstructs the Great Old One - Elder God polarity within the Outer Gods. Like Noden's he seems to have been influenced by Machen's conception of Great God Pan, perhaps explaining his association with both Nodens and the Black Goat of the Woods. Hastur is only mentioned once by HPL in vague name only terms,
so we cannot appeal to him as our authority here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastur). Worse still Derleth confuses the matter further by unfortunately conflating him with the Magnum Innominandum (aka the King in Yellow), based on his misreading of the vague HPL quote that mistakenly links him with the king's infamous 'yellow sign'. But a careful reading of his Old One associations in the wider literature reveals he is closer to Shub Niggurath, an identification also compatible with the HPL quote (though see end note for a compromise).

An exploration of his classical roots may help clarify him further. In Greek Myth the 'God of the Shepherds' refers to either Pan or Aristaios-Nomios (who may be equivalent forms of the horned Lord of the Animals), and occassionally to Hermes. While in Sumerian myth Ea (El in Canaan), a primal Neptunian archetype, linked with the Oannic Sea Goat, is the 'Shepherd God', and Osiris fills this role for the Egyptians (an image HPL also uses for Nyarlahotep). He thus seems closest to Nodens, coloured with even darker imagery. However, unlike Nyarlahotep, Hastur has no obvious connections with Egypt, nor with the sea, unlike Oannus or crusty Nodens, he is also far wilder the friendly Hermes. Of Aristaios-Nomios however the Greeks say:

'One day when Kyrene was tending her sheep down by the river, Apollon carried her off from Haimonia (in Northern Greece) and set her down among the Nymphai of the land in distant Libya near the Myrtosian Mount. There she bore him a son called Aristaios, who is remembered now in the cornlands of Haimonia as Agreus (the horned hunter, related to bull horned Zagreus, the old Minoan hunter god) and Nomios (the shepherd's god and goat herder)... A Delphic prophecy counselled Aristaeus to sail to Ceos, where he would be greatly honoured. He did so and found the islanders suffering from sickness under the stifling and baneful effects of the Dog-Star Sirius. Aristaeus discerned that their troubles arose from murderers who were hiding in their midst. When the miscreants were found out and executed, and a shrine erected to Zeus, the great god was propitiated and decreed that henceforth the Etesian Wind should blow and cool all the Aegean for 40 days from the rising of Sirius (the heat of the star was thus reduced). But the Ceans continued to propitiate the Dog-Star, just before its rising, just to be sure'.- Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2.498 and Hyginus, Poetic Astronomy.

This final quote is of great significance to those in the Temple of Shub Niggurath who also work with the Dionysian paradigm. For this heroic act is in other myths attributed to Iacchus, the Sothic torchbearer of the Eleusinian Mysteries, who tames or sublimates the seering heat of the star Sirius (see the seminal text Dionysos, by Karl Kerenyi, and the Sothic Mysteries, in Oracle Magazine issue 4 for details). This indicates
that Iacchus and Aristaeus (and therefore Nomios and Agreus) were probably all one and the same. This is further indicated by the common identification of Agreus / Zagreus with Dionysos in the Orphic Mysteries, and the modern association of Iacchus with Dionysos, or Bacchus as the Romans knew him. This also seems to connect to the only mention of Dionysos by Lovecraft, in the Electric Executioner, with the following evocation:

"Here, O Youth - a libation! Wine of the cosmos-nectar of the starry spaces - Linos-Iacchus-Ialemus-Zagreus-Dionysos-Atys-Hylas - sprung from Apollo and slain by the hounds of Argos - seed of Psamathe - child of the Sun - Evoe! Evoe!" - H.P. Lovecraft, The Electric Executioner.

The hyphens clearly indicate Lovecraft regards all these names as equivalent and having the same reference. Linos (the wine press) and Zagreus (the hunter) are both alternative names later used for Dionysos. Iacchus as we have seen is linked to Dionysos. Atys, Ialemus and Hylas, are three dying Adonis like fertility gods, the later snatched away by water nymphs. Orpheus, the bardic youth similarly killed by Maenadic nymphs, was thought of as the incarnation of Dionysos, but the son of Apollo. The reference to the hounds of Argos evoke the death of the hunter Acteon, the son (aspect?) of Aristaios, or Agreus, torn apart by his own dogs as was Dionysos by the Titans. Aristaios himself being a son of Apollo. Thus confirming the identity of Dionysos, Iacchus and Aristaios-Acteon, and all dying, divine youths, at least as far as Lovecraft is concerned. This labyrinthine comparative mythology - also taken in the context of the close relationship of 'Dionysos of the Black Goat Skin' with Pan, his herald in the Mysteries - would indicate that Dionysos would be considered a universal equivalent to the 'God of the Shepherds' by Lovecraft, and so identical to Hastur. The significance of this, apart from our cultic bias, being that Dionysos is the principal deity in the Mysteries who stands between opposites, god-beast, male-female, order-chaos, heaven-hades. He also appears as anything between an Adonis like figure and a multi-headed Hydra daemon. Thus perfectly fitting the role of Hastur as both Great Old One and Elder God.

Note also that in Lovecraftian terms Sirius is associated with the Great Old Ones. The Spawn of Cthulhu arrive with their god from Xoth or Sothis (Sirius) for example. Thus Hastur, as Iacchus or Aristaios, counters this often negative influence as does Nodens. On the other hand Iacchus is the power of Sothis (Sirius), as it is held in his torch, so we have a hybrid once more. Sirius also sometimes represents the hunting dog of Orion or Nodens. Similarly Dionysos is also known as the 'Black Goat' (the original model for Shub Niggurath). But this also traditionally connects him to his companion Pan, and Nodens also has Pan associations as we have seen, as does Hastur. Furthermore in other myths as Dionysos Nyktelios he is a son, or grandson, of Nox. Just as Chronos (Nodens) is her grandson in other myths. It could thus be said then that this Dionysian Hastur is the hybrid of Nodens and Shub Niggurath in particular.

Note: It should be noted here of Chamber's different use of the name Hastur. In the book The King in Yellow he claims Hastur to be the name of one of the stellar homes of his phantom, along with 'nearby' Aldebaran and the Hyades. This would indicate that Hastur refers to the Pleiades, their primary neighbour. However while it may also imply the Outer God Hastur is associated with the Pleiades/Hastur, it does not imply that these two Outer Gods are identical or even related. Though perhaps it is an indication that Hastur in his ambiguity also stands between the Elder Gods and Great Old Ones in general, as well as between Nodens and Shub Niggurath in particular, and so perhaps does contain some element of the Not-to-Be-Named-One and the King in Yellow as well. Perhaps it was this aspect that mislead Derleth. See Starlore for more.

B. Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones

The Great Old Ones are technically the Lesser Other Gods. While this distinction is not always made, and the term Great Old Ones often applied to all the Gods of Chaos (as it has been until now above, as a useful term enabling us to drop clumsy phrases like 'Lesser Other Gods' or 'Lesser Outer Gods'). But it is also useful in reference to those beings that are resident on Earth or other planets, rather than outside Time and Space as are the Outer Gods proper. As such the Great Old Ones can be said to represent the chaos of the 'the abyss inbetween' imprisoned in the manifest universe, while the Elder Gods represent its primal creative emanations and the Other Ones represent the Chaos beyond the world.

The Great Old Ones are usually mythologically described as the offspring of the Outer Gods, but can be more
accurately be understood as emanations or powers of those entities in specific or local situations. Therefore
we do not need to concern ourselves unduly with controversial issues of parentage.Though their mating may indicate the combination the powers of more than one source. And their generations indications of a budding off of these emanations, perhaps with an attendent diminishing of power and local specification. Cultural modification is no doubt also a factor in the latter case.

The first localised Great Old Ones often also represent the primal chaotic conditions on each planet, such as Great Cthuga, who in HPL's narrative first appears when his small native planet flung from Fomalhaut hits the molten ball that was our Primeval Earth, convulsing it into turmoil. His own planet shattering into the Trojan Asteroids, while Earth's orbiting debris later becomes the Moon, with Cthuga as the alien planet's volcanic core crashing deep into the Earth's magma. A perfect allegory generating all the chaos and perturbations of the Earth in one foul swoop! With Great Cthuga its intelligence. Fomalhaut was also claimed as the first home of Nyarlahotep, who mythically may thus be said to have first visited Earth with Cthuga (perhaps a myth of him even directing it here was in Lovecraft's mind). The Hubble telescope recently presented the star as oddly resembling the 'Eye of Sauron' as represented in the film version of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, another great visionary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomalhaut

Some Great Old Ones probably evolve through centuries of evocation by various insane cults on certain planets who effectively generated thought forms to contain these forces. The most powerful of whom were usually expelled very quickly by the Elder Gods, and either sealed in the abysses of their planets or confined to the Dreamlands (or both). More often they may have been created in order to identify and encapsulate forces that needed to be controlled in the same way shamans personify the ailments they heal. However this does not stop them telepathically communing with those who approach their prisons, nor does it prevent their cult followers temporarily releasing them again. Such chaotic entities from the deep are not unique to HPL, but feature in most cultures, such as the Fomori of Celtic Myth.

The most powerful Great Old One to be imprisoned on Earth is said to be the infamous Cthulhu. Cthulhu was the offspring of Yog Sothoth and Nug (aka Naggoob according to HPL), the latter itself the hybrid offspring of Shub Niggurath and Yog Sothoth. A truly incestuous monster from the Cosmic Id. Cthulhu was first evoked on Earth in ancient R'lyeh an island in the Pacific Ocean, the first Mu. He originally emerged on Vhoorl, a planet in the 23rd Nebula, later arriving on Earth with his disciples an alien race from Xoth (Sirius), known as the Spawn of Cthulhu, who first ruled the island. Their 'abominations' are said to have led to the eventual destruction of that ancient civilisation, the submergence of the island and the confinement of Cthulhu in a tomb beneath the ocean floor. In HPL it is unclear if the tomb of Cthulhu, who now lies 'dead but dreaming', is a hibernatory cave beneath the Pacific, or a realm beneath the ocean in the Dreamlands, where the living remnants of R'lyeh are still to be found, but either way it is a metaphor for the Abyss. If he is ever released it is believed it will herald the end the world. Affiliating him with the biblical Abaddon and Leviathon.

Other Great Old Ones present on Earth include Tsathoggua (the Sleeper of N'kai) and Yigg (the Father of Serpents). The former is a shapeshifting, furry toadlike being, from a long lineage of Azathoth spawn. First evoked on Yuggoth (Pluto), by a cult of Mi-Go, from his original 'home' the binary star Xoth (Sirius). He was then called to Earth in Hyperborean times, via Saturn, partly causing an Ice Age in the process. He seems to be a devouring force of instant death and Saturnian inertia in our world but spends most time in deep sleep, representing perhaps an inertia against manifestation within chaos. Now it resides asleep in the dark caverns of N'Kai, beneath red litten Yoth and blue litten K'n-yan under Oklahoma (or in the Dreamlands beneath Y'quaa in the Underworld)! It is a being of the deepest realms of chaos and the void. It also brought the Old One Atlach-Nacha into our world from the Dreamlands, and set it the task of building a great web that would span and connect these realms. When complete all the horrors of nightmare will enter our world, and are said to have increasingly have leaked across since the task was begun.

Yigg, a giant reptilian humanoid, is a son of Shub Niggurath and the god of the 'serpent people' of the Dreamland caverns of the Americas. He takes their image, though also appears as vast serpent, sometimes multi-headed. An instinctual force, called the Great Serpent in Lemuria according to Howard, and 'Set' by Atlanteans and their allies (though he actually describes Apep). He gives great power, usually at the risk of loss of self control and obsession (the symbol of which in later literature is the Serpent Crown. Perhaps raised Kundalini?). His half brothers Yeb, Lord of Ghouls, and Nug, the servant of Abhoth, the horrorific twin offspring of Shub Niggurath and Yog Sothoth are believed to be sleeping beneath the last forests of Europe and the jungles of Africa, and appear as smaller more destructive forms of Shub Niggurath.

Various ghoulish lower beings serve the Great Old Ones in the way elementals serve the gods in conventional myth.

C. The Deep Ones

The Great Old Ones are served by hordes of less powerful beings called the Old Ones, such as the Dark Young of Shub Niggurath, or humanoid beings such as the Satyrs of Leng and Vampiric Ghouls, some of whom were once human, human Old One hybrids. The Elder Gods also have their elemental servitors, often more anthropomorphic, though no less ghoulish, such as the bat winged Night Gaunts who serve Nodens in his hunting expeditions against the Great Old Ones and their followers.

Amongst the most ubiquitous of these beings on Earth are the Deep Ones, fish-like merfolk who reproduce by possessing humans in the womb and slowly mutating their bodies, thus becoming completely physical for as long as their human hosts survive. They are led by aquatic Old Ones, also often called Deep Ones, who live in the oceans of the world. the leader of whom is the monsterous, giant being Lovecraft called Dagon after the Phoenician sea god regarded as a demon by the Hebrews. Not surprisingly these entities also worship Cthulhu, perhaps indicating their origin amongst the people of R'lyeh. Dagon is sometimes said to be a son of Cthulhu, emphasizing a continuation between the Great Old Ones and their servitors.

Some of these servitors are made of 'dream stuff', but others are said to generate a semi-physical, gelatinous flesh like 'ectoplasm', as can the Great Old Ones given enough energy!

D. The Great Ones or Earth Gods

The Great Ones, the Gods of the Earth, or Kadathians, are simply the anthropomorphicised deities of familiar mythology. They are natural forces of the manifest world given a more definite and humanized archetypal form by ancient culture and imagination. For HPL as part products of the human imagination they dwell in Mount Kadath in the northern region of the misty Dreamlands. They may also be seen as more domesticated or civilized offspring of the Elder Gods, just as the Olympians were born of the Titans.

They also include within their ranks those Outer Gods who may be on Earth at any one time, and who have power over them. Primarily Ulthar, Nodens, Nyarlathotep, the King in Yellow and Hastur.

The offspring of Elder Goddesses often put in an appearance on Earth too, the Daughters of Ulthar; Mistresses of Dark Magic; and manifestations of the Weaving Goddess, all in their own way the emanations of Nox.

Only the most powerful of the Great Ones are any match for the numerous Great Old Ones of course, and none but the Elder Gods can challenge the Other Ones, hence the latter's popularity with 'sinister cults' in HPL's world. Many Great Ones here can even be outmatched by powerful magicians operating in the Dreamlands, such as King Kuranes.

The Greek Cosmogenies then focus on the primeval creative deities, who closely parallel the little HPL says about the Elder Gods. Lovecraft's greatest vision however, confirmed by the Book of Hastur, is in his insight into the Hordes of Chaos, the Other Gods, who even the Greek texts declared were just as important as the creator deities in the greater scheme of things. Thus according to Greek Myth Nox gave birth not only to the primary deities of creation but also to Chaos and a horde of 'horrible, painful, cruel, brooding, mocking and malignant offspring.' (Hesiod's Theogony, 212). A fairer assessment might see them as just not user friendly, the 'negative' aspects of existance. The Greeks say little more of them than their names for them: Moros, or Doom; Phthonus, or Emnity; Apate, or Deceit; Momos, or Mockery; and the vampiric Keres, as well as their more infamous siblings, who found an active life on Earth with Hastur, Eris, Thanatos and Nemesis. Her most dangerous offspring however was Ophion (her lover in her Eurynome archetype), the unruly Serpent God (Apep), who impregnates her as the North Wind creating the Cosmos, but is later cast into Hades by Kronos (or herself). Ophion is identical to the spawn of Tartarus, the great serpent Typhon, reborn in the world through Gaia. Such beings are often seen as responsible for the destructive forces of nature. We might also include the Hecatonchires, or hundred handed ones, in this list. Their appeasing cults often remerging after great natural disasters, such as the eruption which destroyed the ancient Minoan civilisation, after which weird Giant Octopi came to be worshiped, or the legendary sinking of Atlantis. The Book of Hastur concurs with these stories but indicates the Greek Myths have been considerably moderated for a squeamish audience.

For Egyptians the situation was similar, but vaguer, the primeval entity was Nu or Nun, the Cosmic Ocean.
But in Memphis and Hermopolis this primal ocean was said to consist of or be inhabited by the Ogdoad, eight monsterous deities, in four divine couples, the females having the heads of serpents and males the heads of toads. Their names were Nun and Naunet (Abyss, Waters), Heh and Hauhet (Infinity, Eternity), Kuk and Kauket (Darkness), and Amon and Amaunet (Invisibility, Darkness). This was also adopted by the Hebrews whose tradition of the Hidden God, and its sequential manifestion as Ain (Nothing), Ain Soph (Infinity) and
Ain Soph Aur (Pleroma, Chaos) mirrored it, as well as the Orphic scheme. The product of which being the High God 'I Am' (Uranus), and his offspring the immanent gods El (Kronos-Poseidon), and his son Yahweh (Zeus). Though even Yahweh was once more like El, as Yawu, 'Lord of Chaos and Destruction', and Yamu, 'Lord of the Ocean of Chaos'. Often at war with himself (later splitting into that odd couple Jehovah and Satan).
The Egyptian model paralleled the Hesiodic-Homeric scheme which was probably derived from it, while the Hebrew tradition parallels a later Orphic conception which later greatly influenced it in turn.

In the Eyptian scheme the Ogdoad were eventually banished to the Underworld from where they oversaw the source of the Nile and its Flood and opened and closed the Gates of the Sun. A more disruptive emanation from them being Apep, the serpent which attacks the Sun and was believed to cause eclipses and general chaos.

Nox was also a source of creation and order, understood as the 'creative tides' that arise within Kaos. The deepest of these were known to the Greeks as the Fates (the Wyrd), beings dwelling in a dark cavern (or well) who generated the destiny of the World (often spontaneously and mysteriously). Another was Philotes, the power of affinity and the mysterious interconnectedness of all things (who was probably a more subtle precursor of Eros, the first 'gravity like' force to emerge from the Cosmic Egg, which pulled together the dualistic Uranus-Gaia). But the most significant for sentient life was Hypnos, the younger brother of Aether, ruler and creator of the dreamworld, who represents the first emergence (and submergence) of self awareness and will. The Book of Hastur indicates that all of these were rather dreamy, pre-conscious entities, usually operating in a trance like state, and dwelt in the caverns of the Dreamlands in the liminal space between the unconscious source of being and the waking world.


The Indo-Tibetan Connection

Parallels to these Greek myths can be found in most Indo-European mythologies, though often less developed. More surprisingly, similar images are found in Tibet, though these can be partly explained via adopted Indian imagery. Here we read of Za, a terrifying multi-eyed, serpentine or tentacular, demon, that stands at the gates of the greatest mysteries. Such 'guardian demons' could be seen as equivalent to Azathoth standing on the threshold of chaos and the void, but in this case serving a more optimistic, protective role, scarying off the uninitiated. Though this did not stop the ancient Tibetans offering human sacrifices to it! This seems to be due to its earlier role as an eclipse demon which 'ate' the Sun and Moon, causing outbreaks of chaos in the world. A phenomena closely associated with the Black Sun cult. Similarly tentacular and serpentine demons were seen in the Bon Po religion as primeval deities of the land or manifestations of primal emotions and instincts.

Many of these myths came from India where the better known Tantric mythos, of the creation of the world
via the union of the awesome Shiva and Kali-Shakti, was supplimented by some very Lovecraftian myths.
Most notably the so called 'Face of Glory', a monsterous, bodiless, lion's head, associated with Rahu, the Dragon's Head, itself a demonic personification of the North Lunar Node (the eclipse point in the lunar orbit associated in Lovecraft with Yog Sothoth, as we have seen). The 'Face of Glory' was supposedly an angry emanation of Shiva in some myths, projected to counter Rahu, and was so ferocious it devoured everything it saw, including its own body, in others it was Rahu himself. In both cases it became a guardian at the gates
of the gods. It was of course the prototype of Za, and basically another form of the chaotic, eclipse demon. Complimentary to this was the Makara, a chaos dragon, usually regarded as the mount of Varuna, though sometimes also of Kama or Shiva. This was part dragon, part elephant and part fish (paralleling Noden's triplicity), but unlike the devouring Rahu it represented a creative chaos, a monster that continually spewed out new creations. When viewed as negative this being would be seen as equivalent to Shub Niggurath, but
it was more often seen as a primeval fertility deity, and so perhaps closer to Nodens. Interestingly it was originally represented together with Rahu, which constantly devoured everything the Makara expelled from its mouth. Later the two were fused into a single daemonic entity representing the continual cycle of creation and destruction, a more primal Shiva. Thus also mirroring both the Hastur hybrid and the dichotomy within the Great Old Ones. This was exported to China as a Chaos Dragon, whereas in Arabic countries it became a humanoid creature constantly eating the vines that spewed from its mouth. Some scholars see in this the origin of the Green Man in medieval carvings, which was often also shown with a Green Dragon, much like the Makara, which had also been exported from India westwards into Arabia.

Mount Voormithadreth
Mount Voormithadreth is a four-coned extinct volcano and is the tallest peak in the Eiglophian mountains. It was once the dwelling place of various horrors, including the toad-god Tsathoggua and the spider-god(dess) Atlach-Nacha. Its tunnels appear to connect to the Underworld of the Dreamlands.

Y'quaa
The gray-litten cavern of Y'quaa is the dwelling place of Abhoth, the Source of Uncleanliness (an aspect of Shub Niggurath). It is indirectly connected with the Cavern of Archetypes. Atlach-Nacha originated here.

The Cavern of Archetypes
The Cavern of the Archetypes is a vast cavern beneath Y'quaa, were dwell the thoughtforms of all life on this earth, produced by Ubbo-Sathla (the 'god' of the alien Elder Things mentioned in last section) who dwells here. Yigg, Nug and Yeb also once resided here. Deepest still is the black pit (or N'Kai) in which dwells Tsathoggua and his deadly, amorphous spawn, black rubbery amoeboid shapeshifters.