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The multiverse hasn't been created by Azathoth (Cthulhu Mythos revision)

Jockey-1337

Jockey-1337

1,482
168
Have a look at the quote:

[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 daemo said,

As in contempt he struck his Master's head.]


1) Azathoth doesn't contain the multiverse within his dream.

[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."]

The multiverse has been created by the flute player. We can see him at the very picture .


2) There is some kind of space around him. It is a "space" (void) where the Outer Gods live.

[While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and fluttered
In idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned.]


3) [Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered]

Well... Yog has the similar description:

[As time wore on he strove harder and harder to utilize the monstrous lore of Yaddith in finding a way back to the abyss and the omnipotent ENTITY.

-Through the Gates of the Silver Key]


4) Yog's size:

[Then, in the midst of these devastating reflections, Carter's beyond-the-gate fragment was hurled from what had seemed the nadir of horror to black, clutching pits of a horror still more profound. This time it was largely external—a force or personality which at once confronted and surrounded and pervaded him, and which in addition to its local presence, seemed also to be a part of himself, and likewise to be coexistent with all time and coterminous with all space. There was no visual image, yet the sense of entity and the awful concept of combined localism, identity, and infinity lent a paralyzing terror beyond anything which any Carter-fragment had hitherto deemed capable of existing.

In the face of that awful wonder, the quasi-Carter forgot the horror of destroyed individuality. It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realized how slight and fractional all these conceptions are.

- Through the Gates of the Silver Key]

Yog-Sothoth is about as big as you can get. It encompasses all of time and space while also filling the void that exists outside of everything.


5) But Yog-Sothoth is not everything, that's an overinterpretation. He's "allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence", but he is not existence itself.

In Gates of the Silver Key it's explicitly the case that Yog is only one of the Ultimate Archetypes and that there are others.


6) And the Archetypes/Ultimate Gods can touch Azathoth itself

[Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law. "I am His Messenger," the daemo said,

As in contempt he struck his Master's head.]


All in all I think it would be a good idea:

a) to upgrade all Outer Gods to tier 0 (we will get the 1st tier 0 pantheon on the wiki. Also, for being a tier 0 character(s) the one(s) should overshadow other 1-As in the same way 1-As overshadow mortals. The Outer Gods fit this status well and they never was beaten on the wiki by 1-As of other fictional universes).


b) downgrade Yog and Azzy to tier 1-A.


c) get rid of tier 0 at all (tier 0 is a useless thing IMHO).


What do you think?
 
I'm not well-aware of Cthulhu Mythos, but I suppose that the revision makes sense. I'm really suspicious about the upgrade to Tier 0 though.
 
In regards to number 1:

1) Azathoth doesn't contain the multiverse within his dream.

[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."]

That doesn't mean the flute player created the multiverse, it means the flute player gives the multiverse laws.

as for number 2, it doesn't really mention space other than mentioning things being near him, which could very well just be a way of describing things to give us a limited understanding of it.

With 3, yes other beings have impressive descriptions, but as far as I've heard Lovecraft himself wrote a note in which Azathoth was the source of the other entities, so it seems more likely to be true with him.

I haven't read Gates of the Silver Key, so I can't comment on any other Ultimate Archetypes.

I don't understand what your point is in number 6, yes they can touch him, so?
 
Azathoth dreamed everything that existed and doesn't. Saying that Azathoth did not create; seems to be a technicality.
 
> That doesn't mean the flute player created the multiverse, it means the flute player gives the multiverse laws.

The flute is the only known thing which can affect a whole multiverse.

"Azathoth's dream = all of existence" thing is either fanon or something invented by another author. Lovecraft never says anything of the sort.

Where does Lovecraft write down that existence IS Azathoth's dream? Where do you get this idea that we are all a part of Azathoth?


>as for number 2, it doesn't really mention space other than mentioning things being near him, which could very well just be a way of describing things to give us a limited understanding of it.

["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]

It is another argument to support the idea. If Azathoth is a true tier 0 character he would contain infinities within himself.

But he doesn't contain the thing. He exists at the centre of it.


> With 3, yes other beings have impressive descriptions, but as far as I've heard Lovecraft himself wrote a note in which Azathoth was the source of the other entities, so it seems more likely to be true with him.


Azathoth allegedly rules all of time and space and he is allegedly the progenitor of all the other Cthulhu Mythos deities, but even if both of those things were true there wouldn't be any indication of how powerful Azathoth is compared to Yog-Sothoth.

In fact, as far as I'm aware at least, Yog-Sothoth is the only Cthulhu Mythos deity ever described as outright omnipotent in one of Lovecraft's stories.


> I don't understand what your point is in number 6, yes they can touch him, so?


The point is that the Outer Gods should be more or less at the same level. One of them can be stronger than another one, but they don't transcend each other and they cannot destroy each other with a thought. Actually, even the weakest of them (Nyarlathotep) can touch the strongest one (Azathoth).


> I haven't read Gates of the Silver Key, so I can't comment on any other Ultimate Archetypes.

The cosmology described in Through the Gates of the Silver Key is incompatible with the idea that Yog-Sothoth has any kind of "parent" deity or other creator.


This is words of Lovecraft himself :

[Has Yog-Sothoth a pedigree? No, he has always existed.]
 
I am pretty sure that Through the Gates of the Silver Key explicitly states that even the entities we visualize and identify as the "Outer Gods" are but fractionary conceptions of things unfathomably vast and incomprehensible. The statement comes up when Randolph Carter is being enlightened about the nature of existence by what is supposed to be Yog, even.

Even then, not having created the Multiverse doesn't disprove Azathoth being Tier 0, there are several cases in both Fiction and Religion / Philosophy where the Supreme Being is an unmanifest and unknowable passive force, while the Creator of Existence is but a lesser being who is either subservient to, or completely ignorant of said Force.

Also

>Says that Yog being the Embodiment of Everything is an overinterpretation

>It is called a "One-in-All and All-in-One of Limitless Being and Self" in the very quote you posted.

:thinking:
 
> Even then, not having created the Multiverse doesn't disprove Azathoth being Tier 0, there are several cases in both Fiction and Religion / Philosophy where the Supreme Being is an unmanifest and unknowable passive force, while the Creator of Existence is but a lesser being who is either subservient to, or completely ignorant of said Force.


1) Well... that it the point of the thread. We need to change the description in Azathoth's profile.

We need to clean the profiles from fanon and/or EU and we need to upgrade all Outer Gods to tier 0 or downgrade Azathoth from tier 0 to tier 1-A because of the contradictions.


2) There are some characters such as Gan and The Star Maker who contain infinities within themselves and there is nothing outside them but they are tier 1-A characters whereas Azathoth is a tier 0 character despite the contradictions.


EDIT:

>It is called a "One-in-All and All-in-One of Limitless Being and Self" in the very quote you posted.


He's "allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence", but he is not existence itself as I said before.


[It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self--not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep--the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign--yet in a flash the Carter-facet realized how slight and fractional all these conceptions are.

~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key]
 
Jockey-1337, Katias was joking with Tier Outer Gods.

All conscious existence like all Outers Gods is part Yog-Sothoth beings anyway.
 
> The Outer Gods and their flute is a part of Azathoth's dream.

> The Outer Gods use the flute to keep Azathoth asleep.

6737062-9n1nu


> Even Yog who encompasses all of time and space while also filling the infinite void that exists outside of everything is just a part of Azathoth's dream.

> Azathoth sits at the centre of infinity.

6737062-9n1nuiuouio


Sorry for memes, I just want to show the contradictions.
 
1. "Azathoth doesn't contain the multiverse within his dream."

Yeah, it's kinda a metaphor and not literal or an exact representation of what's truly happening, but he sorta does. Yog-Sothoth is everything, and Azathoth "created" him, but we'll get to that, later.

"The multiverse has been created by the flute player. We can see him at the very picture"

Said picture is not a canon source. This is an example of something Lovecraft actually drew. You are also aware that Lovecraft put Azathoth as the source of everything in his family tree, and in-universe he's repeatedly referred to as "the lord of everything" and other such titles, yes? He is not outranked by some random other god with a flute due to an artist's depiction of the character.


2. "There is some kind of space around him. It is a "space" (void) where the Outer Gods live."

Such limited descriptions of beings like this are very explicitly limited and fractional views by beings who cannot understand the full extent of these entities. Such is made clear in Through the Gates of the Silver Key. Which we'll talk more about in just a second, as well.


3."Well... Yog has the similar description"

Yes, the difference being that the author shared his direct opinions on which is above the other, and it's not like this is contradicted by some story where one gets the shit beaten out of them or something.


4. "Yog-Sothoth is about as big as you can get. It encompasses all of time and space while also filling the void that exists outside of everything."

This is true.


5. "But Yog-Sothoth is not everything, that's an overinterpretation. He's "allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence", but he is not existence itself."

This is false.

"In the face of that awful wonder, the quasi-Carter forgot the horror of destroyed individuality. 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." - Through the Gates of the Silver Key

Yog is directly stated to be "of limitless being and self". This thing of limitless being and self is then immediately said to be allied to the ultimate, unbounded sweep of existence that outreaches all confines. The intention here is pretty clear.

"In Gates of the Silver Key it's explicitly the case that Yog is only one of the Ultimate Archetypes and that there are others."

This is not what it says.

"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." - Through the Gates of the Silver Key

Yog is set apart from the others and explicitly referred to as the "SUPREME ARCHETYPE". The quote about an "All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self" refers explicitly to Yog, not the other archetypes. Their descriptions are not the same, nor is Yog treated as just another one of them without anything to set it apart.

"All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it." - Through the Gates of the Silver Key

Notice how normally, it is made clear that the beings formed from an archetype are descended lines of beings and every phase of an individual being. This is also not the case for Yog. Notice the explicit mention of all great wizards, thinkers, and artists of every world being a facet of Yog as opposed to just every being from a single descended line.

Notice also, how Carter eventually gets a vague representation of the other archetypes in his mind's eye, but Yog is not visible at all, and consistently just referred to as a "PRESENCE".

Pretty much everything given sets Yog apart from being just another one of the archetypes.


6. "And the Archetypes/Ultimate Gods can touch Azathoth itself"

I am confused as to why you think one of the 1000 manifestations of an Other God punching the fractional conception of his master in the head and doing absolutely nothing is reason to doubt anything, when we're told such things are already beyond perspective and change, and that we're just experiencing small portions of them. We know for a fact this isn't as simple as "Nyarlathotep just punching Azathoth right in the face".


As for the solutions proposed:

  • I do not think upgrading an entire pantheon to Tier 0 is a good idea, especially when, as I mentioned before, normal archetypes do not actually get the same description as Yog does. They are distinctly different, and only Yog is mentioned as being allied to the void in which these archetypes live.
  • I do not think remotely sufficient evidence has been presented to remove Yog or Azathoth from Tier 0. The most I would argue is removing Yog if we ever implemented that there could only be a single Tier 0 (instead of at most a pair representing a certain relationship). Under the current system, there is no reason for a change.
  • Getting rid of Tier 0 is an entirely different discussion.
 
@Azathoth

Thanks for the answer but I still don't see where we get "everything is a part of Azathoth's dream" or "Azathoth is the source of everything" idea.

To the best of my knowledge, the family tree is a fanmade thing.

"Lord of All" is just a title, it is not a good argument. Anyway, Yog's "All in One" and "Omnipotent" is as impressive as "Lord of All" and more impressive than "Daemon Sultan".


We still see 2 inconsistencies:

1) We know the flute can affect Azathoth's state. But according to the current Azathoth's profile, the flute is a part of his dream as well as everything else, so what caused his dream in the first place? Otherwise, why it keeps him asleep then?

So we have an inconsistency, a chicken-egg situation.


2) Yog should exist outside of Azathoth anyway. Otherwise, he is not everything (or he is no allied to everything). It is simple.
 
"everything is a part of Azathoth's dream" is more a simplification or general idea than something that is 100% true, yeah.

Azathoth being the source of everything is confirmed by the family tree, which was made by Lovecraft and taken directly from one of his letters. There are, however, other family trees online that are either fan made or created by later writers, which are the things we don't take into account.

The idea is not "Azathoth is the supreme being strictly because he is called the Lord of All", but that he is the supreme being because Lovecraft himself seemed to view him as such, and treats him as the progenitor of everything in his loose mythology.

1. Azathoth's "dream" is less literal and more a metaphor, and I do agree that treating such a thing as a strictly literal event causes problems. The entity is not really "dreaming" in the way we think of it, and even in Lovecraft's work, dreaming results in transportation to an alternate plane of existence as opposed to just being a function of the unconscious mind. Almost everything we actually hear or know about these beings in most stories refers to what cannot be more than fractional conceptions of them. We know things like how every race's idea of "Yog-Sothoth" is but the smallest piece of the real thing, limited by perspective. We know that names like "Azathoth" are but titles used to "mercifully cloak" things we can't hope to understand. We know these beings exist outside the limits of perspective, and that because of that, most of what we think we know about them isn't remotely what it seems. Through the Gates of the Silver Key makes this pretty clear.

"It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realised how slight and fractional all these conceptions are." - Through the Gates of the Silver Key

"I guessed—from hints which made even my informant pause timidly—the secret behind the Magellanic Clouds and globular nebulae, and the black truth veiled by the immemorial allegory of Tao. The nature of the Doels was plainly revealed, and I was told the essence (though not the source) of the Hounds of Tindalos. The legend of Yig, Father of Serpents, remained figurative no longer, and I started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth." - The Whisperer in Darkness

"To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change. But the entities outside the Gates command all angles, and view the myriad parts of the cosmos in terms of fragmentary, change-involving perspective, or of the changeless totality beyond perspective, in accordance with their will." - Through the Gates of the Silver Key

2. I don't know if I'd use the word "outside", but I would say it's fully possible both exist "within" each other, in a certain way. However, in cases like this, it's hard to understand the full extent of their relationship, since we're talking about a being who is defined as not having the limited sense of self we apply to everything else...and the being who it "originated" from, despite there not actually being change and all things being a changeless totality, forever. It doesn't really seem feasible to put a 100% concrete relationship between the two aside from the fact that Yog "originates" from Azathoth, according to Lovecraft. Going beyond that gets difficult due to the nature of both and how Lovecraft never included both in the same story.
 
@Azathoth

Does any of this information need to be incorporated into the profiles to avoid future misunderstandings?
 
Hey, I hope I'm not necro-ing this thread or posting somewhere I shouldn't (kinda new, still learning) but I just wanted to give my two cents on a couple things that might help clear up a bit of the sticking points (or make everything worse, who knows). Now, most of this is my interpretation rather than direct quotes explaining author intent, as I think that's been covered better than I could ever do, so take everything with a grain of salt.

First I wanted to touch on Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and Nyalarthotep and the idea of lineage and divinity. As has been mentioned several times, there appear to be paradoxes caused by the descriptions of Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth, with the former often described as the source of everything, with all that is a result of his unconscious bubbling chaotic mind, and the latter described as coterminous with all of time and space but outside of them. Well, the way that this paradox is resolved is by looking at those two entities and Nyarlathotep as similar to the Catholic Trinity. All three deities are separate, distinct entities generally speaking, but at some base level they are, if not the same being, connected in a very close way.

Looking at them as a twisted godhead also makes their personalities and powers very interesting. I think it's pretty well known that Lovecraft wasn't a big fan of religion, and if you look at these three deities through that filter, they each represent a very twisted version of the most common "types" of God Christians tend to believe in: Azathoth is the all-powerful creator who made everything but then left creation to its own devices and has little to do with anything he's made; Nyarlathotep is the god who walks among mankind and guides them personally and directly, answering prayers, leading humanity towards its best self/its future; Yog-Sothoth is the omnipotent and omnipresent god who is everywhere and everything, the easiest to "find" but hardest to understand.

The second idea/interpretation is that at some point, Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, and Azathoth were literally the same being. Some event (in author August Derleth's stories it was a war with the Elder Gods) caused Azathoth to be rendered into a brainless, comatose blob of chaos and Yog-Sothoth trapped outside of this universe/reality. The idea is that Yog-Sothoth is basically Azathoth's omnipotence given form and kept separate from his body for obvious reasons. Likewise, Nyarlathotep is Azathoth's mind, or at least his consciousness.

Those two personal interpretations aside, a couple quick thoughts: I was always under the impression that Yog-Sothoth was more powerful than, at the very least equal to Azathoth. Yes, he is a descendant of Azathoth (probably), but Zeus was a descendant of Cronus and was unquestionably more powerful. Yog-Sothoth is certainly more important to the mythos, showing up in far more stories.

As for Azathoth, the flute player, and the creation/maintenance of reality, a couple things: when I read that passage about the flute player giving law to the multiverse, I don't see it as exclusively the flute player's doing. Just before this:

Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,
Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining

Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law.
we read this:

But only Chaos, without form or place.

Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered

Things he had dreamed but could not understand
Now, to me, that implies that it's not the flute alone giving law to the cosmos, but that "waves whose chance combining" with Azathoth's mutterings are what are really the root cause of that.

And lastly, the thing about reality being Azathoth's dream and whether it's real or a metaphor or what. Well, while there is evidence to suggest that Azathoth's dreams do play a part in the creation and stabilization of the material universe/multiverse, it is more metaphorical. And the way it's used as a metaphor is less to describe how Azathoth's mind works or through what means it created or maintains the universe, and more in the sense of "if Azathoth wakes up everything is over" kind of a way. It's explicitly stated a few times across the mythos that if the entourage of musician and dancing gods stopped even for a second that Azathoth would awaken, and that the universe would not survive that event. Whether that means reality itself is a literal dream that will just fade away once Azathoth is conscious again or the his awakening will just unleash so much destructive power that the material universe/multiverse will just kind of cease to exist is vague, up to interpretation, and ultimately pretty meaningless as there won't be anything that can witness said event and also relate it to the human mind in any capacity that we could understand or contextualize.
 
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