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I am presenting this thread as an opportunity to make a final consideration of the "intelligence" of Azathoth and the Ultimate Gods and I encourage as much debate on this subject as possible. The current "intelligence" statement on Azathoth's page (provided my my input) is:
Unknown (Exists in a realm of ultimate Chaos beyond dimensioned space and mathematics and is described in the same manner as the Ultimate Gods - being perceived as idiotic, blind, ravenous and muttering the chaotic contents of his dreams,[7] although is ultimately inscrutable)
The confusion about the intelligence of Azathoth (and by extension the Ultimate/Other Gods) is Lovecraft's repeated terminology he uses to describe them - "blind, voiceless, tenebrous and mindless", as well as a few instances of "idiot".
"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"
"Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me,
Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space,
Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,
But only Chaos, without form or place.
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.
“I am His Messenger,” the daemon said,
As in contempt he struck his Master’s head."
"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."
Despite both the Other Gods and Azathoth both being labelled as "mindless" or "idiot", they are presented with a somewhat contradictory agency in the story The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, which seem to entirely oppose the idea of these entities being completely mindless or unintelligent.
"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. At least twice in the world's history the Other Gods set their seal upon earth's primal granite; once in antediluvian times, as guessed from a drawing in those parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts too ancient to be read, and once on Hatheg-Kla when Barzai the Wise tried to see earth's gods dancing by moonlight"
But 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.
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.
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.
Like Atal in distant Ulthar, he 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.
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.
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 despite the constant insistence of "mindlessness", the Other Gods oversee the affairs of earths gods, actively protect them, are contacted by those same gods, and are said to have a "will", not to mention the fact they have a "soul and messenger" in Nyarlathotep (implying a directive no matter how alien or fragmented) and are "possessed of singular hungers and thirsts" (despite being "without mind" - "singular" here meaning "unusual or strange", hungers and thirsts probably pointing to impulses or desires). Azathoth, also described the same way, is also said to "dream" in the sonnet. Even though this may be poetic language, dreaming still points to some degree of mental activity (even if he "can't understand them" - possibly due to the dreams themselves rather than a lacking on Azzy's part).
So the debate around their intelligence may be centred around these points:
1) Should they be considered literally mindless in the sense they have no mental existence or consciousness whatsoever?
2) Should "mindless" be considered indefinite, vague terminology to describe creatures that seem so from our perspective? (especially considering they live in a chaotic void outside reality)
3) Should "mindless" be defined as them merely being "mindless of" (indifferent) to us? (this seems to be contradicted by "...blind and without mind")
4) Are both the words "mindless" and "idiot" being used to convey a mood or atmosphere (rhetorical) rather than a literal description?
5) Is Lovecraft using "idiot" in the old Greek sense (meaning one's own, private) or in the sense of low intelligence?
6) Could they be "mindless" in the sense that they possess a completely alien form of existence, one that can't be compared to mind or intelligence due to the latters reliance on ordered and rational structures (which may not apply to chaos entities)?
7) Is it just an oversight on Lovecraft's part?
Unknown (Exists in a realm of ultimate Chaos beyond dimensioned space and mathematics and is described in the same manner as the Ultimate Gods - being perceived as idiotic, blind, ravenous and muttering the chaotic contents of his dreams,[7] although is ultimately inscrutable)
The confusion about the intelligence of Azathoth (and by extension the Ultimate/Other Gods) is Lovecraft's repeated terminology he uses to describe them - "blind, voiceless, tenebrous and mindless", as well as a few instances of "idiot".
"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"
"Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me,
Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space,
Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,
But only Chaos, without form or place.
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.
“I am His Messenger,” the daemon said,
As in contempt he struck his Master’s head."
"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."
Despite both the Other Gods and Azathoth both being labelled as "mindless" or "idiot", they are presented with a somewhat contradictory agency in the story The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, which seem to entirely oppose the idea of these entities being completely mindless or unintelligent.
"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. At least twice in the world's history the Other Gods set their seal upon earth's primal granite; once in antediluvian times, as guessed from a drawing in those parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts too ancient to be read, and once on Hatheg-Kla when Barzai the Wise tried to see earth's gods dancing by moonlight"
But 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.
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.
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.
Like Atal in distant Ulthar, he 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.
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.
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 despite the constant insistence of "mindlessness", the Other Gods oversee the affairs of earths gods, actively protect them, are contacted by those same gods, and are said to have a "will", not to mention the fact they have a "soul and messenger" in Nyarlathotep (implying a directive no matter how alien or fragmented) and are "possessed of singular hungers and thirsts" (despite being "without mind" - "singular" here meaning "unusual or strange", hungers and thirsts probably pointing to impulses or desires). Azathoth, also described the same way, is also said to "dream" in the sonnet. Even though this may be poetic language, dreaming still points to some degree of mental activity (even if he "can't understand them" - possibly due to the dreams themselves rather than a lacking on Azzy's part).
So the debate around their intelligence may be centred around these points:
1) Should they be considered literally mindless in the sense they have no mental existence or consciousness whatsoever?
2) Should "mindless" be considered indefinite, vague terminology to describe creatures that seem so from our perspective? (especially considering they live in a chaotic void outside reality)
3) Should "mindless" be defined as them merely being "mindless of" (indifferent) to us? (this seems to be contradicted by "...blind and without mind")
4) Are both the words "mindless" and "idiot" being used to convey a mood or atmosphere (rhetorical) rather than a literal description?
5) Is Lovecraft using "idiot" in the old Greek sense (meaning one's own, private) or in the sense of low intelligence?
6) Could they be "mindless" in the sense that they possess a completely alien form of existence, one that can't be compared to mind or intelligence due to the latters reliance on ordered and rational structures (which may not apply to chaos entities)?
7) Is it just an oversight on Lovecraft's part?
