Here is more of my incessant ranting.
Some points to consider with Azathoth intelligence section:
- Described in the same manor as the rest of the Other Gods, "blind, mindless"
- "...spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of Chaos wherein reigns the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth" The strange conjunction of his idiocy/mindlessness and him "ruling all time and space" seems almost paradoxical or contradictory. I don't know if this is intentional or just an oversight, but it reminds me of "....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." which is similarly strange with them having a will despite their descriptions
- Azathoth is a name that "mercifully cloaks" a "monstrous nuclear chaos" as we learn in The Whisperer in Darkness. Therefore, most of what the narrators say about it is merely a signifier for something unsignifiable
- Azathoth supposedly mutters his dreams (dreams he can't understand). I think this is not necessarily due to a lack of cognition from Azathoth himself, but the dreams are totally incomprehensible and chaotic in of themselves - a poetic way of describing an emergence of pure, nonsensical chaotic energy/force/reality-substance that holds within itself completely new and untranslated laws of existence to be then aimlessly piped to create and define new universes
* Just how "mindless" is Azathoth (and the Other Gods) supposed to be? And what context should the word be taken?
- We know the Other Gods are "blind, mindless" and "possessed of singular (strange/unusual) hungers and thirsts"
- In terms of characterization of these entities, common descriptions (when characters like Randolph Carter or Walter Gilman come close to these outer voids) include "hideous laughter/cackling/tittering", "screaming", "gnawing/ravenous/hungrily" as well as the "gibbering/muttering" of Azathoth himself
- Get angry at those trying to contact Dreamlands gods
- Carter falls through "endless voids" of "sentient blackness"
- "Mindless" could be possibly interpreted in these ways in regards to the entities
1) Possessing no powers of comprehension of any sort, basically an amoeba or virus (I think this is unlikely due to their characterizations)
2) Possessing no sense of reason/rationality and driven by alien instincts. Perhaps in "Freudian" terms, they don't possess "ego/super-ego" (the rationality/decision-making/sense-of-self) and are purely "id-driven" (id being the instincts, desires that stem from the unconscious). That being said, the "id" of the Other Gods is completely alien in of itself (singular/strange hungers and thirsts). David Punter, a professor of Gothic studies, says this in "The Literature of Terror: Volume 2: the Modern Gothic: "...
human life must be bounded by convention and by the rigid schemes of social classification, a view which Lovecraft bore out in his person; only conventions and classes protect us from the mindless and destructive pleasure of the instincts - which are, surely, the blind "gargoyles" of which he speaks."
3) Don't possess a "mind" humans can understand, therefore "mindless" by our perspective (Nyarlathotep himself refers to them as mindless in Dream-Quest, though he may be dumbing-it-down for a human like Randolph Carter).
4) Mad or insane (they do
dance insanely as the poem puts it, and Nyarlathotep is mentioned as a "Mad faceless god howling blindly" in Rats in the Walls, and another quote from a correspondence seems to add weight to this: "
Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the pathos of fruitless aspiration". It seems Lovecraft's common usage of "idiot" in relation to these entities could also be a synonym for this.
I think points 2, 3 and 4 are the most likely due to evidence, and point 1 is the most unlikely, which is ironic as this is how they might be perceived by many people.
Concluding thoughts:
The Other Gods and Azathoth
- characterized as ravenous, screaming, cackling/laughing
- explicitly stated to have a will (despite seemingly contrary descriptions)
- get angry at those who defy them (Barzai the Wise, lava on Ngranek, setting their "seal")
- the fact they even have a "soul and messenger" which further proves they have desires and wills
Now you know the extent of my OCD