Azathoth

Azathoth
Azathoth
Cthulhu Mythos character
	Artist's depiction of Azathoth
First appearance	"The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"
Created by	H. P. Lovecraft
In-universe information
Species	Other God
Title	Nuclear Chaos; Daemon Sultan; Blind Idiot God; Lord of All Things; Lord of Nighted Chaos
Children	Nyarlathotep (son); Nameless Mist (offspring); Darkness (offspring)
Relatives	Yog-Sothoth (grandson); Shub-Niggurath (granddaughter); Nug (great-grandchild); Yeb (great-grandchild); Wilbur Whateley (great-grandson); Cthulhu (great-great-grandson); Tsathoggua (great-great-grandson); Hastur (great-grandson); Ithaqua (great-great-grandson); Zhar and Lloigor (great-grandchild) and The Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath (great-grandchild)

Azathoth is a deity in the Cthulhu Mythos and Dream Cycle stories of writer H. P. Lovecraft and other authors. He is the supreme deity of the Cthulhu Mythos and the ruler of the Outer Gods,^[1] and may also be seen as a symbol for primordial chaos,^[2] therefore being the most powerful entity in the entirety of the Cthulhu Mythos.^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]

Azathoth is referred to as the "daemon-sultan" and "Lord of All Things", whose throne is at the center of "Ultimate Chaos".^[5] In his genealogy chart from 1933 of his mythos, Lovecraft places Azathoth as the single being at the very top from which everything else descends.

The name "Azathoth" was first mentioned in a note from 1919 by Lovecraft, and Azathoth was first formally introduced in the novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which was finished in 1927, but not published until 1943, though the name was the title of an unfinished novel in 1922 by Lovecraft, which was not published until 1938.

H. P. Lovecraft

Inspiration

The first recorded mention of the name Azathoth was in a note Lovecraft wrote to himself in 1919 that read simply, "AZATHOTH—hideous name". Mythos editor Robert M. Price argues that Lovecraft could have combined the biblical names Anathoth (Jeremiah's home town) and Azazel—mentioned by Lovecraft in "The Dunwich Horror".^[7] Price also points to the alchemical term "Azoth", which was used in the title of a book by Arthur Edward Waite, the model for the wizard Ephraim Waite in Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep".^[8]

Another note Lovecraft made to himself later in 1919 refers to an idea for a story: "A terrible pilgrimage to seek the nighted throne of the far daemon-sultan Azathoth."^[9] In a letter to Frank Belknap Long, Lovecraft ties this plot germ to Vathek, a supernatural novel by William Beckford about a wicked caliph.^[10] Lovecraft's attempts to work this idea into a novel floundered (a 500-word fragment survives, first published under the title "Azathoth"^[11] in the journal Leaves in 1938),^[12] although Lovecraftian scholar Will Murray suggests that Lovecraft recycled the idea into his Dream Cycle novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, written in 1926.^[13]

Price sees another inspiration for Azathoth in Lord Dunsany's Mana-Yood-Sushai, from The Gods of Pegana, a creator deity "who made the gods and thereafter rested." In Dunsany's conception, Mana-Yood-Sushai sleeps eternally, lulled by the music of a lesser deity who must drum forever, "for if he cease for an instant then Mana-Yood-Sushai will start awake, and there will be worlds nor gods no more." This oblivious creator god accompanied by supernatural musicians is a clear prototype for Azathoth, Price argues.^[14]

Fiction

Other than the fragmentary draft described above, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was the first fiction by Lovecraft to mention Azathoth, and describes his realm as being beyond any and everything, and in which no dreams reach, placing it beyond the Dreamlands:^[15]

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.

Verse 22 of Lovecraft's 1929 poetry cycle Fungi from Yuggoth is entitled "Azathoth", and consists of the following:

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.^[16]

The realm in Fungi from Yuggoth is described as the chaos that is beyond dimensioned space, time, matter, form, and place. The "daemon" that claims to be Azathoth's messenger is identified by later authors as Nyarlathotep, another of Lovecraft's deities.^[17]

Fritz Leiber describes Azathoth as the only Lovecraftian entity that is unarguably a deity instead of a powerful alien. Leiber says he is the "perfect personification of the purposeless, mindless, cruelly indifferent cosmos of materialistic belief".^[18]

Lovecraft referred to Azathoth again in "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931), where the narrator relates that he "started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth".^[19]^[20] Here "nuclear" most likely refers to Azathoth's central location at the nucleus of the cosmos and not to nuclear energy, which did not truly come of age until after Lovecraft's death.

In "The Dreams in the Witch House" (1932), the protagonist Walter Gilman dreams that he is told by the witch Keziah Mason that "He must meet the Black Man, and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the centre of ultimate Chaos… He must sign in his own blood the book of Azathoth and take a new secret name… What kept him from going with her...to the throne of Chaos where the thin flutes pipe mindlessly was the fact that he had seen the name 'Azathoth' in the Necronomicon, and knew it stood for a primal horror too horrible for description."^[21] Gilman wakes from another dream remembering "the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute", and decides that "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".^[22] He later fears finding himself "in the spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of Chaos wherein reigns the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth".^[23] Gilman notes that the realm itself "obeyed laws unknown to the physics and mathematics of any conceivable cosmos".^[24]

The fictional poet Edward Pickman Derby, the protagonist of Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep", collects "nightmare lyrics" in a book called Azathoth and Other Horrors.^[25]

The last major reference in Lovecraft's fiction to Azathoth was in 1935's "The Haunter of the Dark", which tells of "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 demonic flute held in nameless paws".^[26] His title of "blind idiot god" is not to be taken as being of lesser intelligence or ignorance, but rather that Azathoth is detached from human affairs and is incomprehensible to the human mind.^[5] David Punter says that Lovecraft chose words to describe Azathoth with little regard to their literal meaning and instead arranged them like an incantation. In Punter's view, Azathoth represents Lovecraft's fear that irrationality could destroy the natural order. Thus, Azathoth can not be sought or understood in any meaningful way.^[27]

In a letter to a James F. Morton in April of 1933, Lovecraft details a family tree containing his mythos, with Azathoth at the top of the tree, in which all beings below descend from it, with Lovecraft himself posited at the bottom of the tree. With Azathoth the ancestor, his creation goes through his children such as Nyarlathotep, "The Nameless Mist," and "Darkness," of Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, Nug and Yeb, Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, and several deities and monsters that are unmentioned outside the letter, and some of Lovecraft's and Clark Ashton Smith's fancifully-posited human forebears.^[28]

The Azathoth Cycle

In 1995, Chaosium published The Azathoth Cycle, a Cthulhu Mythos anthology focusing on works referring to or inspired by the entity Azathoth. Edited by Lovecraft scholar Robert M. Price, the book includes an introduction by Price tracing the roots and development of the Blind Idiot God.^{[citation needed]}

Notes

References

^ Agnew, Jeremy (2018). The Age of Dimes and Pulps: A History of Sensationalist Literature, 1830-1960. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. p. 198. ISBN 978-1-4766-6948-9.
^ Bilstad, T. Allan (2009). The Lovecraft Necronomicon Primer: A Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos. Llewellyn Publications. pp. 53–55. ISBN 978-0738713793. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
^ Leiber Jr., Fritz (1980). Joshi, S. T. (ed.). H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism. Ohio University Press. p. 54. ISBN 0-8214-0577-2.
^ Datlow, Ellen, ed. (2014). Lovecraft's Monsters. San Francisco, CA: Tachyon Publications. p. 363. ISBN 978-1-61696-121-3.
^ ^a ^b ^c Enright, Lyle; Bennett, Nick (2022). "When God Goes Mad: Lovecraft, Von Balthasar, and the Split between Transcendence and Goodness". In Freeman, Austin M. (ed.). Theology and H.P. Lovecraft. Lexington Books/Fortress Academic. pp. 132–133. ISBN 9781978711709.
^ Taylor, Reece (2022-12-11). "Why Lovecraft's Most Powerful God Can't Be Adapted to Film". CBR. Retrieved 2024-04-29.
^ H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", The Dunwich Horror and Others, p. 158.
^ Robert M. Price, The Azathoth Cycle, pp. v-vi.
^ cited in Price, The Azathoth Cycle, p. vi.
^ Letter to Frank Belknap Long, June 9, 1922; cited in Price, The Azathoth Cycle, p. vi.
^ "H. P. Lovecraft's original fragment, 'Azathoth'" Archived 2007-08-14 at the Wayback Machine
^ "Data Page for "Azathoth"". www.hplovecraft.com. Retrieved 2024-05-13.
^ Price, The Azathoth Cycle, p. vii.
^ Price, The Azathoth Cycle, pp. viii-ix.
^ ""The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H. P. Lovecraft". www.hplovecraft.com. Retrieved 2024-12-18.
^ ""Fungi from Yuggoth" by H. P. Lovecraft". The H.P. Lovecraft Archive.
^ Tyson, Donald (2012). The 13 Gates of the Necronomicon: A Workbook of Magic. Llewellyn Worldwide. p. 112. ISBN 9780738726298.
^ Leiber, Fritz (2003). Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark. Wildside Press. pp. 277–278. ISBN 9780809500789.
^ H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness", The Dunwich Horror and Others, p. 256.
^ Harman, Graham (2012). Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy. Zero Books. p. 235. ISBN 978-1780992525. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
^ H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", At the Mountains of Madness, pp. 272–273.
^ Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", p. 282.
^ Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", p. 293.
^ ""The Dreams in the Witch House" by H. P. Lovecraft". www.hplovecraft.com. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
^ H. P. Lovecraft, "The Thing on the Doorstep", The Dunwich Horror and Others, p. 277.
^ H. P. Lovecraft, "The Haunter of the Dark", The Dunwich Horror and Others, p. 110.
^ Punter, David (1996). The Literature of Terror: Volume 2: The Modern Gothic. Routledge. pp. 42–43. ISBN 978-0-582-29055-6.
^ Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft (1976). Derleth, August; Turner, James (eds.). Selected Letters IV (1932–1934). Arkham House. p. 183. ISBN 978-0-87054-035-6.

Sources

Harms, Daniel (1998). The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. ISBN 1-56882-119-0.
Petersen, Sandy (April 2001). Call of Cthulhu (5th ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. ISBN 1-56882-148-4.
Price, Robert M. (e.d.) (1995). The Azathoth Cycle (1st ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. ISBN 1-56882-040-2.

External links

The Dunwich Horror public domain audiobook at LibriVox
The Gods of Pegāna public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Vathek public domain audiobook at LibriVox

[1] Agnew, Jeremy (2018). The Age of Dimes and Pulps: A History of Sensationalist Literature, 1830-1960. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. p. 198. ISBN 978-1-4766-6948-9.

[2] Bilstad, T. Allan (2009). The Lovecraft Necronomicon Primer: A Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos. Llewellyn Publications. pp. 53–55. ISBN 978-0738713793. Retrieved 6 March 2020.

[3] Leiber Jr., Fritz (1980). Joshi, S. T. (ed.). H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism. Ohio University Press. p. 54. ISBN 0-8214-0577-2.

[4] Datlow, Ellen, ed. (2014). Lovecraft's Monsters. San Francisco, CA: Tachyon Publications. p. 363. ISBN 978-1-61696-121-3.

[:0-5] Enright, Lyle; Bennett, Nick (2022). "When God Goes Mad: Lovecraft, Von Balthasar, and the Split between Transcendence and Goodness". In Freeman, Austin M. (ed.). Theology and H.P. Lovecraft. Lexington Books/Fortress Academic. pp. 132–133. ISBN 9781978711709.

[6] Taylor, Reece (2022-12-11). "Why Lovecraft's Most Powerful God Can't Be Adapted to Film". CBR. Retrieved 2024-04-29.

[7] H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", The Dunwich Horror and Others, p. 158.

[8] Robert M. Price, The Azathoth Cycle, pp. v-vi.

[9] ted in Price, The Azathoth Cycle, p. vi.

[10] Letter to Frank Belknap Long, June 9, 1922; cited in Price, The Azathoth Cycle, p. vi.

[11] "H. P. Lovecraft's original fragment, 'Azathoth'" Archived 2007-08-14 at the Wayback Machine

[12] "Data Page for "Azathoth"". www.hplovecraft.com. Retrieved 2024-05-13.

[13] Price, The Azathoth Cycle, p. vii.

[14] Price, The Azathoth Cycle, pp. viii-ix.

[15] ""The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H. P. Lovecraft". www.hplovecraft.com. Retrieved 2024-12-18.

[16] ""Fungi from Yuggoth" by H. P. Lovecraft". The H.P. Lovecraft Archive.

[17] Tyson, Donald (2012). The 13 Gates of the Necronomicon: A Workbook of Magic. Llewellyn Worldwide. p. 112. ISBN 9780738726298.

[18] Leiber, Fritz (2003). Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark. Wildside Press. pp. 277–278. ISBN 9780809500789.

[19] H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness", The Dunwich Horror and Others, p. 256.

[20] Harman, Graham (2012). Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy. Zero Books. p. 235. ISBN 978-1780992525. Retrieved 6 March 2020.

[21] H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", At the Mountains of Madness, pp. 272–273.

[22] Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", p. 282.

[23] Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", p. 293.

[24] ""The Dreams in the Witch House" by H. P. Lovecraft". www.hplovecraft.com. Retrieved 2024-12-12.

[25] H. P. Lovecraft, "The Thing on the Doorstep", The Dunwich Horror and Others, p. 277.

[26] H. P. Lovecraft, "The Haunter of the Dark", The Dunwich Horror and Others, p. 110.

[27] Punter, David (1996). The Literature of Terror: Volume 2: The Modern Gothic. Routledge. pp. 42–43. ISBN 978-0-582-29055-6.

[28] Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft (1976). Derleth, August; Turner, James (eds.). Selected Letters IV (1932–1934). Arkham House. p. 183. ISBN 978-0-87054-035-6.

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v t e Cthulhu Mythos
Writers	H. P. Lovecraft Robert Bloch Clark Ashton Smith Robert E. Howard Frank Belknap Long August Derleth Fritz Leiber
Deities	Azathoth Cthulhu Hastur Nyarlathotep Shub-Niggurath Tsathoggua
Species	Deep Ones Elder Things Hounds of Tindalos Mi-Go Serpent Men Shoggoth
Related	Aklo Dream Cycle Alan Moore's The Courtyard Neonomicon Providence
Lists	Anthologies Books Characters Works influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos

v t e H. P. Lovecraft
Bibliography
Short stories	"The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist" "The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"
Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time
Novels	The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "Poetry and the Gods" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Under the Pyramids" "The Curse of Yig" The Mound "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A' the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx"
Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth
Essays	The Cancer of Superstition "Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
Locations	Arkham Lovecraft Country R'lyeh
Characters	Randolph Carter Harley Warren
Deities	Azathoth Cthulhu Nyarlathotep Shub-Niggurath Hastur
Books about	H. P. Lovecraft: A Life H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia Lovecraft: A Biography Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos H. P. Lovecraft: He Who Wrote in the Darkness (biographical comic)
Themes/concepts	Cosmicism Cthulhu Mythos Lovecraftian horror Necronomicon
Legacy	Lovecraft fandom Lovecraft studies Works influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos H. P. Lovecraft (band) H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society Lovecraft (crater)
Related	Aklo Dream Cycle Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary) Sonia Greene (wife) "The Thing in the Moonlight"
Category

Azathoth
Cthulhu Mythos character
Artist's depiction of Azathoth
First appearance	"The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"
Created by	H. P. Lovecraft
In-universe information
Species	Other God
Title	Nuclear Chaos Daemon Sultan Blind Idiot God Lord of All Things Lord of Nighted Chaos
Children	Nyarlathotep (son) Nameless Mist (offspring) Darkness (offspring)
Relatives	Yog-Sothoth (grandson) Shub-Niggurath (granddaughter) Nug (great-grandchild) Yeb (great-grandchild) Wilbur Whateley (great-grandson) Cthulhu (great-great-grandson) Tsathoggua (great-great-grandson) Hastur (great-grandson) Ithaqua (great-great-grandson) Zhar and Lloigor (great-grandchild) and The Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath (great-grandchild)