Cthulhu Mythos

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

@Matt

Pretty much. Yog-Sothoth itself in its original descriptions functions more like a state of being (the ultimate/only true state of being) than anything remotely resembling a character with goals.

Which is why EU stories that have Outer Gods (as in, not their avatars) in wars are really, really weird.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Honestly, EU Lovecraft is nerfed as ****. Next to no writer understands the power of Lovecraft's original vision.

 

[Hat_mchat]

If all outer gods are achetypes, does that mean in every universe there is a lesser 3-D nyarlathotep? As in a simple human nyarlathotep facet walks among us on earth just like randolph carter. Presumably randolph carter's archetype is stronger than Nyarlathotep's so he would be no different. Also does that mean that randolph carter's archetype is an amorphous blob of tentacles like all the outer gods? I'm now starting to get the impression that every living being in all universes are simply facets of respective outer gods. So they aren't really separate entities. Nyarlathotep could be mr average joe next door working an office job.

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

Sorta. Nyar likes using direct avatars with knowledge of the fact they are indeed Nyarlathotep to actually accomplish things. Though everything is, regardless, a fractional reflection of the Outer Gods. It's part of why Carter's sense of self was totally destroyed.

 

[Hat_mchat]

What's the difference between the void beyond the first gate and the void beyond the ultimate gate? Also what makes hypnos so inferior to the outer gods, they are both 1-A, how are the outer gods more beyond?

 

[Hat_mchat]

Also i don't quite understand what hypnos is. He's not an outer god obviously, he is however apparently tier 1-A, despite acting like a normal person with human friends. Does he need drugs to transcend dimensions? Why did they both have to fall asleep? Why was ge afraid of falling asleep, surely he either wouldn't need sleep as he is 1-A or why would sleeping cause him to visit the outer gods? What is so special about dreams, does he need to dream to be 1-A?

Ok wow a lot of questions, feel free to just ignore them as i understand there is a lot.

EDIT: *breathes in* why do outet gods on the wiki have conceptual manipulation as an ability? Are the outer gods beyond existence and non-existence? What exactly does lovecraft mean by the word 'perspective' in reference to the outer gods?

EDIT 2: This is about Nyarlathotep's page: can you explain the following abilities: Type 5 immortality, omniscience and conceptual embodiment?

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

The area beyond the first gate is tangentially connected to reality. It doesn't appear so much as a full-on void as it does an almost dream-like, half-real collection of hazy shapes. It holds the gate to the ultimate void, which is guarded by 'Umir at-Tawil.

1-A is a ludicrously vast tier. Hypnos, despite going well beyond the base requirements after a while, was a little fish in a big pond compared to the Outer Gods.

Hypnos is Hypnos. Later writers use the term "Elder Gods" to refer to entities such as Nodens and him. He is portrayed in Lovecraft's story as the god/personification of sleep that the ancient Greeks believed him to be. In sleeping and providing the narrator with "exotic drugs", he takes the narrator's consciousness along with his to a place outside of time and space. Lovecraft very often focused on the idea of dreaming being a method of travel to other planes, to which the physical body was not important.

Sleep is essentially Hypnos' realm, and as stated in the narration, it keeps him, and by extension the narrator, ageless and timeless. Hypnos only becomes terrified of entering what he once thought to be his realm after a chance encounter with things beyond his comprehension (the Outer Gods). He refuses to fall back asleep as he does not want to risk catching their attention, and thus his physical body begins to be affected by time, once more. One night, he simply cannot take it any more, and proceeds to enter the realm of sleep. This results in his demise.

It's not so much that Hypnos needs anything to be 1-A so much that it is his physical body is merely a vessel, while his dreaming self is the real Hypnos. This can be seen by all aging being reversed as soon as Hypnos returns to sleep, or how even after he is destoyed, the statuesque form of his physical body is otherwise untouched. This ties back into a quote from Through the Gates of the Silver Key; "That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality."

When Lovecraft talks about the Outer Gods being beyond all perspective, he means it quite literally. Things like change, sense of self, being, interaction, boundary,what is real and unreal, etc. etc. etc. are all things that are a matter of perspective. These are entities that are not bound by that. For instance, they do not have a sense of "I am" or "We are". This is a perspective governed by a sense of self. But they are, in Lovecraft's words, of limitless being and self, because they are all things.

 

[Hat_mchat]

I'd like to make a new thread in questions and answers regarding power in the mythos where i can dump some questions.

 

[Hat_mchat]

https://vsbattles.com/vsbattles/793606?useskin=oasis

Here is the thread

 

[Hat_mchat]

On Dagon's page it says he is 100m tall. I just got lovecraft the complete fiction and read dagon, however the inscriptions on the monolith show dagon to be slightly smaller than a whale. How do you explain this. Then again, it could just be a normal deep one that was fighting the whale. Also when dagon emerged from the water, he hugged the monolith and bowed. Why would he bow if he was the object of worship?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

The monolith is in-universe mythology inscribed by illiterate tribal men from thousands of years ago.

 

[Hat_mchat]

Presumably that's mentioned in a later story then. Why does dagon bow to the monolith though? Is he their object of worship?

 

[Hat_mchat]

Is the 'fungi from yuggoth' in any physical media? I couldn't see it in the complete fiction.

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/poetry/p289.aspx

 

[Hat_mchat]

Thanks for the link.

I noticed, lovecraft uses the word 'fancy' alot. What does he mean by it?

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

In many cases, he uses it with the definition relating to imagination, in mind.

 

[Hat_mchat]

I've got through about 8 stories in Lovecraft The Complete Fiction and was wondering whether everything would make sense of i just read the pages in order. It seems they are ordered by the date at which they are written. I know you said to read randolph carter in order, but will it still be okay if i read the book in order. The randolph carter stories seem to be far apart, so i was worried i might forget the details of the last chapter of the story.

I must say that I've really come to enjoy his early short stories that aren't part of the mythos. I'm particularly fond of the white ship.

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

Aside from the Carter stories, there's nothing you're forced to read in order, so feel free to skip around, at will.

Oh, that's a good one.

 

[Hat_mchat]

Ok i just finished the story nyarlathotep and was confused by the ending: "Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. 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."

Could you summarise this preferably sentence by sentence for a full understanding. I didn't at all get the screamingly sentient and dumbly delirious part.

Also could you find a quote for nodens hunting great old ones and for nyarlathotep being a match for nodens.

Thank

 

[Hat_mchat]

I'm sort of trying to find justification for tier 1-A nyarlathotep outside fungi from yuggoth, not that i dismiss it, i just would like to see other sources.

 

[Hat_mchat]

Bzzt

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

@Hat

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath has several 1-A Nyar statements. The Dreams in the Witch House also has one for one of his avatars.

Nodens' feats should be on my blog, as well.

As for the quote you posted, here are some simple explanations;

"Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell."

This is basically just akin to saying something like "God only knows if I was awake or hallucinating".

"A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low."

The narrator is seeing the horrors of the cosmos.

"Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness."

The narrator seeing "vague ghosts" of beings beyond the known universe.

"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."

Flowery way of saying "Nyarlathotep is the messenger of the unfathomable gods who are outside of space and time".

 

[Hat_mchat]

Are cities like Sarnath, Lomar and Ulthar set in Earth's far past or in the dreamlands? I've seen many maps of the dreamlands showing the cities in the dreamlands, but I've also seen references in the doom that came to sarnath referring to it as an ancient city on earth.

 

[Hat_mchat]

Beep

 

[Hat_mchat]

Also i know this seems like extreme doubt, but is there any proof that the archetypes mentioned in 'Through the gates of the silver key' are the same as the outer gods associated with the whining of flutes that appears in stories like hypnos? Also when are they called outer gods?

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

Also i know this seems like extreme doubt, but is there any proof that the archetypes mentioned in 'Through the gates of the silver key' are the same as the outer gods associated with the whining of flutes that appears in stories like hypnos? Also when are they called outer gods?

Depends entirely on how deep you want to go. Some of the Archetypes are only archetypes of a single lineage (example: the Carter Archetype). However, those archetypes (ones similar to Carter's) are directly descended from the supreme Archetype, which is Yog-Sothoth, as opposed to just being contained within it. Logic would follow other Archetypes need something to be descended from, as their Archetypes, if not Yog-Sothoth, would need to be something inhabiting the same ultimate state of existence.

As an example, you would first have the Carter archetype, who is the archetype of Carter and all his lineage in all possible conceptions.

• "Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal "Carter" outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case."

Then we see that above this is the Supreme Archetype (Yog), from whom Carter's own Archetype is directly cut, and learn that all great wizards, thinkers, and artists were ultimately cut from here.

• "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."

If you just want to know why the flute thing is associated with them, here's excerpts about the Outer Gods from both The Dreams in the Witch House and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

• "There were suggestions of the vague, twilight abysses, and of still vaster, blacker abysses beyond them—abysses in which all fixed suggestions of form were absent. He had been taken there by the bubble-congeries and the little polyhedron which always dogged him; but they, like himself, had changed to wisps of milky, barely luminous mist in this farther void of ultimate blackness. Something else had gone on ahead—a larger wisp which now and then condensed into nameless approximations of form—and he thought that their progress had not been in a straight line, but rather along the alien curves and spirals of some ethereal vortex which obeyed laws unknown to the physics and mathematics of any conceivable cosmos. Eventually there had been a hint of vast, leaping shadows, of a monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and of the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute—but that was all. Gilman decided he had picked up that last conception from what he had read in the Necronomicon about the mindless entity Azathoth, which rules all time and space from a curiously environed black throne at the centre of Chaos." - The Dreams in the Witch House

• "There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as 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 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 whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep." - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

Also one that I almost forgot.

• "Before his eyes a kaleidoscopic range of phantasmal images played, all of them dissolving at intervals into the picture of a vast, unplumbed abyss of night wherein whirled suns and worlds of an even profounder blackness. He thought of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose centre 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 daemoniac flute held in nameless paws." - The Haunter of the Dark

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

Also when are they called outer gods?

The funny thing is, I believe "Other Gods" was the most common term used for them in Lovecraft's original writing, to suggest something along the lines of "Gods other than the ones we know".

 

[Hat_mchat]

Thanks for the reply, i assume the void beyond the ultimate gate is the ultimate chaos then due to similar names so the entities beyond the gate are the outer gods. Although it seems speculative as i still can't really see direct proof that the entities beyond the ultimate gate are in fact outer gods, but more than likely true.

Anyway, could you answer the question above the one you answered, about the dreamlands and how the cities are both there and in Earth's past?

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

I'm fairly certain Sarnath was in fact on Earth. The Dreamlands map may be due to it often being treated as part of the Dream Cycle.

The Mound states that Lomar is near the north pole.

Ulthar is part of Earth's Dreamlands according to Dream-Quest.

That said, things were played fast and loose with many parts of the mythos, so it's not uncommon for later writers to shift locations around.