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Liber Minor - H P Lovecraft

H P Lovecraft

The stories of Howard Phillip Lovecraft have provided us with a rich mythology of strange deities, among them Azathoth, C'thulu, Yog Sothoth and Nyarlathotep. He brought fame to the book known as the Necronomicon or Book of Dead Names.

Speculation could lead us to beleive that much of Lovecrafts mythos is based on the real Necronomicon, which Lovecraft had access to, due to his father's involvement in Egyptian Freemasonry. Of course, the theory is that his dad went mad from reading the Necronomicon and died mad.

Azathoth and Nyarlathotep

Azathoth is described as the blind mindless god who rules from a throne of chaos at the centre of the universe. Nyarlathotep is his messenger, the crawling chaos, the black man. He is supposedly 7 or 8 feet tall, with skin as black as the dark void of Azathoths throne.

Pete Carroll gives a different description of Azathoth in Liber Kaos & The Psychonomicon. Here we learn that it was originally a term used by the alchemists to mean an increase in azoth, or increasing etheric (morphic) fields in contemporary terms. Supposedly H P Lovecraft called this egregore the Blind Mad God at the Centre of Chaos out of fear. The god is only blind in the sense that it can only be invoked into someone with their eyes closed or blindfolded, and will vanish upon opening. It is only mad in that it communicates only in telepathy while the operator performs psycho-babble glossolalia.

Kenneth Grant links Azathoth with the Qabalistic Sphere of Chokmah. This links Azathoth with Adam Kadmon, and hence Baphomet.

See the stories The Dreams in the Witch-House, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Other Gods and the fragment Azathoth.

Yog Sothoth and Nodens

Yog Sothoth is a strange deity that sits outside of space and time. He is completely impartial and amoral. According to Kenneth Grant, he is linked with the Qabalistic Sphere of Daath. This links him with certain deities such as Set.

H P Lovecraft often makes cryptical references to "Deep and hoary Nodens". Grant calls Nodens the god of the Abyss. Since Daath is the Abyss, this links Nodens with Yog Sothoth.

See the stories The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, and especially The Silver Key and Through the gates of the Silver Key.

Cthulu

Cthulu, apparantly is a Mile high monster, whose image is somewhat a cross between a human, a dragon and an octopus. Reality distorts around him and space becomes non-euclidian.

Grant links Cthulu with Qabalistic Binah.

See the stories At the Mountians of Madness, and especially The Call of Cthulu.


Further Reading

Pete Carroll Liber Kaos & the Psychonomicon ISBN 0-87728-742-2

Kenneth Grant Hecate's Fountain ISBN 1-871438-96-9

George Hay (ed), Colin Wilson (introduction by) The Necronomicon, The Book of Dead Names ISBN 1-871438-16-0


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. This Page was written by Frater Mithrondal 1232 on 21 May 1998. Last updated 21/05/1998.

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