Azathoth

Azathoth is a deit y in the Cthulhu Mythos and Dream Cycle stories of writ er H. P. Lovecraft
and other authors. He is the ruler of the Other Gods,[1] and may be seen as a symbol for
primordial chaos,[2] being the most powerful entit y in the Cthulhu Mythos.[3]

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 edit or 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".[4] Price also points to
the alchemical term "Azoth", which was used in the tit le of a book by Arthur Edward Wait e,
the model for the wizard Ephraim Wait e in Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep".[5]
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."[6] In a letter to
Frank Belknap Long, Lovecraft ties this plot germ to Vathek, a supernatural novel by William
Beckford about a wicked caliph.[7] Lovecraft's attempts to work this idea into a novel
foundered (a 500-word fragment survives,
first published under the tit le "Azathoth"[8]
in the journal Leaves in 1938),[9] although Azathoth
Lovecraftian scholar Will Murray suggests
that Lovecraft recycled the idea into his Cthulhu Mythos
Dream Cycle novella The Dream-Quest of
Unknown Kadath, writ ten in 1926.[10] character
Price sees another inspiration for Azathoth
in Lord Dunsany's Mana-Yood-Sushai, from
The Gods of Pegana , a creator deit y "who
made the gods and thereafter rested." In
Dunsany's conception, MANA-YOOD-
SUSHAI sleeps eternally, lulled by the music
of a lesser deit y 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.[11] Artist's depiction of
Azathoth
Fiction First "Azatho
Aside from the tit le of the novel fragment,
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was
appearance
the first fiction by Lovecraft to mention
Azathoth: Created H. P.
[O]utside the ordered universe [is]
by Lovecraft
that amorphous blight of
nethermost confusion which
 blasphemes and bubbles at the
center of all infinity—the In-universe
boundless daemon sultan
Azathoth, whose name no lips dare information
Species Other
speak aloud, and who gnaws
hungrily in inconceivable,

God
unlighted chambers beyond time
and space amidst the muffled,
maddening beating of vile drums
and the thin monotonous whine of
accursed flutes.[12] Title Nuclear
Verse 22 of Lovecraft's 1929 poetry cycle Chaos
Fungi from Yuggoth is entit led "Azathoth"
and consists of the following: Daemon
Sultan
Blind
Out in the mindless void the
daemon bore me

Idiot
Past the bright clusters of
dimensioned space,

God
Till neither time nor matter
stretched before me,
But only Chaos, without form or
place.
Here the vast Lord of All in Children Nyarlathote
darkness muttered
Things he had dreamed but could (son)
not understand,
While near him shapeless bat- Nameless
things flopped and fluttered
In idiot vortices that ray-streams Mist
fanned.
They danced insanely to the high,
thin whining
(offspring)
Of a cracked flute clutched in a
 monstrous paw,
Darkness
(offspring)
Whence flow the aimless waves
whose chance combining
Gives each frail cosmos its eternal

Relatives Yog-Sotho
law.
"I am His Messenger," the daemon

(grandson
said,
As in contempt he struck his

Shub-Nigg
Master’s head.[13]

The "daemon" that claims to be Azathoth's

messenger is identified by later authors as (granddau
Nyarlathotep, another of Lovecraft's deit ies.
Lovecraft referred to Azathoth again in
Nug (grea
"The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931), where
the narrator relates that he "started wit h
grandchild
loathing when told of the monstrous
nuclear chaos beyond angled space which Yeb (great
the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked
under the name of Azathoth".[14][15] Here grandchild
"nuclear" most likely refers to Azathoth's
central location at the nucleus of the Wilbur Wh
cosmos and not to nuclear energy, which did
not truly come of age until after Lovecraft's (great-
death. grandson)
In "The Dreams in the Wit ch House" (1932),
the protagonist Walter Gilman dreams that Cthulhu (g
he is told by the wit ch Keziah Mason that
"He must meet the Black Man, and go wit h great-gran
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
Tsathoggu
take a new secret name.. . What kept him
from going wit h her.. t o the throne of Chaos
where the thin flutes pipe mindlessly was
the fact that he had seen the name (great-gre
'Azathoth' in the Necronomicon, and knew it
stood for a primal horror too horrible for grandson)
description."[16] 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 entit y Azathoth, which rules all
time and space from a curiously environed black throne at the centre of Chaos".[17] He later
fears finding himself "in the spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of Chaos wherein
reigns the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth".[18]
The poet Edward Pickman Derby, the protagonist of Lovecraft's "The Thing on the
Doorstep", is a poet whose collection of "nightmare lyrics" is called Azathoth and Other
Horrors.[19]

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".[20]
In a letter to a friend who jokingly claimed descent from Jupit er, Lovecraft drew up a detailed
genealogy charting his and fellow writ er Clark Ashton Smit h's shared descent from
Azathoth, through Lovecraft's creation Nyarlathotep and Clark-Smit h's Tsathoggua,
respectively. As nowhere stated in Lovecraft's published work, primordial Azathoth here is
made ancestor, through his children Nyarlathotep, "The Nameless Mist," and "Darkness," of
Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, Nug and Yeb, Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, several deit ies and
monsters unmentioned outside the letter, and a few of Lovecraft's and Ashton-Smit h's
fancifully-posit ed human forebears.[21]
Other writers

August Derleth
Many other Mythos writ ers have referred to Azathoth in their stories. August Derleth, in
his novel The Lurker at the Threshold, depicts the entit y as a leader in a cosmic upheaval akin
to Lucifer's rebellion in Christian mythology. In a passage attributed to the Necronomicon of
Abdul Alhazred, Derleth writ es:

(T)hose daring to oppose the Elder Gods who ruled from Betelgueze, the Great Old
Ones who fought against the Elder Gods...were instructed by Azathoth, who is the
blind idiot god, and by Yog-Sothoth....[22]

In another passage, Derleth quotes a prophecy:

(Y)e blind idiot, ye noxious Azathoth shal arise from ye middle of ye World where
all is Chaos & Destruction where He hath bubbl'd and blasphem'd at Ye centre
which is of All Things, which is to say Infinity....

The Elder Gods punished Azathoth by rendering him mindless and blind, according to
Derleth.
Ramsey Campbell
In "The Insects from Shaggai", Ramsey Campbell describes the extraterrestrial creatures of
the tit le as worshippers of "the hideous god Azathoth", practicing "obscene rit es" that
involved "atrocit ies practiced on still-living victims" in Azathoth's conical temple. After fleeing
from the destruction of their home planet of Shaggai, the insects teleported the temple
across the universe, eventually ending up in a forest near Campbell's fictional town of
Goatswood.[23]
Ronald Shea, the narrator of Campbell's story, enters the temple after visit ing the forest
and discovers a twenty-foot idol that "represented the god Azathoth—Azathoth as he had
been before his exile Outside":

[I]t consisted of a bivalvular shell supported on many pairs of flexible legs. From
the half-open shell rose several jointed cylinders, tipped with polypous appendages;
and in the darkness inside the shell I thought I saw a horrible bestial, mouthless
face, with deep-sunk eyes and covered with glistening black hair.[24]

At the story's climax, Shea catches a glimpse of "what the idiot god might now resemble":

I saw something ooze into the corridor—a pale grey shape, expanding and
crinkling, which glistened and shook gelatinously as still-moving particles dropped
free; but it was only a glimpse, and after that it is only in nightmares that I imagine
I see the complete shape of Azathoth.[25]

In "The Mine on Yuggoth", Edward Taylor had found Azathoth's other name, N______ (not
given in full) in the Revelations of Glaaki. If one is confronted by a mythos being, the name, if
spoken, will scare it away. Edward Taylor fails to use it .
Gary Myers
Gary Myers makes frequent mention of Azathoth in his stories, both those set in the
Lovecraftian Dreamlands and those set in the waking world. In "The Snout in the Alcove"
(1977), the dreamer protagonist is distressed to find himself in the Dreamlands to which he
had vowed never to return. He had made his vow because of a prophecy which said that:

[P]resently the benign Elder Ones would be deposed by infinity’s Other Gods, who
would drag the world down a black spiral vortex to the central void where the
demon sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in the dark....[26]

In "The Last Night of Earth" (1995), the Dreamlands sorcerer Han briefly ponders:

[T]he allegorical figure of Azathoth, the primal monster who had given birth to the
stars at the beginning of time, and who, according to an obscure tradition, would
devour them at its end.[27]

In Myers' story "The Web" (2003) (in Edward P. Berglund, ed The Disciples of Cthulhu II:
Blasphemous Tales of the Followers (Chaosium),) the two teen protagonis ts read this passage
from an internet version of the Necronomicon:

Azathoth is the Greatest God, who rules all infinity from his throne at the center of
chaos. His body is composed of all the bright stars of the visible universe, but his
face is veiled in darkness.[28]

Thomas Ligotti
Thomas Ligotti's short story "The Sect of the Idiot" (1988) mentions a circle of non-human
worshippers composed of wizened, hideous creatures. The story's epigram—a "quotation"
from the Necronomicon—reads "The primal chaos, Lord of all.. the blind idiot god—
Azathoth," suggesting that it is that entit y whom the creatures worship.[29]
Ligotti has stated that many of his short stories make allusions to Lovecraft's Azathoth,
although rarely by that name. An example of this is the story "Nethescurial", which portrays
an omnipresent, malevolent, creator deit y once worshipped by the inhabit ants of a small
island. This being slowly infiltrates the life of the story's narrator, first via a manuscript
describing it s cult.

Nick Mamatas
Nick Mamatas's 2004 novel Move Under Ground, set in a world where Cthulhu has taken
power and only the Beats oppose him, the power of the Great Old Ones twists the
constellations into new shapes, using them as vessels for his surrogates; among them, Jack
Kerouac observes the "red stars of Azathoth". Neal Cassady later becomes a chosen one of
Azathoth, gaining immense powers to be used against Cthulhu in the process.

Joseph S. Dale
Joseph Dale's novel 'Azathoth Rising' is a series of vignettes where the Necronomicon is
completed by Abdul Ad-Hazred, then throughout history is discovered and translated
(sometimes wit h great difficulty). The book is watched over by another of Lovecraft's
characters, Nyarlathotep, who attempts to get various people of power to cast one or
other of the spells in the fabulous book ostensibly to gain power. This is of course a trap, as
several of the people find out to their chagrin. Dale has, as he says in his prelude, taken
considerable license wit h historical accuracy, but he apologizes to the purist and asks the
reader to enjoy the story anyway.
Call of Cthulhu role-playing game
In the Call of Cthulhu RPG, Azathoth is categorized as an Outer God together wit h
Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, and others.

The Azathoth Cycle

In 1995, Chaosium published The Azathoth Cycle, a Cthulhu Mythos anthology focusing on
works referring to or inspired by the entit y Azathoth. Edit ed by Lovecraft scholar Robert M.
Price, the book includes an introduction by Price tracing the roots and development of the
Blind Idiot God. The contents include:

"Azathoth" by Edward Pickman Derby

"Azathoth in Arkham" by Peter Cannon
"The Revenge of Azathoth" by Peter
Cannon
"The Pit of the Shoggoths" by Stephen
M. Rainey
"Hydra" by Henry Kuttner
"The Madness Out of Time" by Lin
Carter
"The Insects from Shaggai" by Ramsey
Campbell
"The Sect of the Idiot" by Thomas
Ligotti
"The Throne of Achamoth" by Richard
L. Tierney & Robert M. Price
"The Last Night of Earth" by Gary
Myers
"The Daemon-Sultan" by Donald R.
Burleson
"Idiot Savant" by C. J. Henderson
 "The Space of Madness" by Stephen
Studach
"The Nameless Tower" by John Glasby
"The Plague Jar" by Allen Mackey
"The Old Ones’ Promise of Eternal Life"
by Robert M. Price
References

1. Steadman, John L. (2015). H.P. Lovecraft

and the Black Magickal Tradition: The
Master of Horror's Influence on Modern
Occultism (https://books.google.com/boo
ks?id=v1ZOBwAAQBAJ&q=azathoth+love
craft&pg=PA124) . Weiser Books. p. 125.
ISBN 978-1578635870. Retrieved
6 March 2020.
2. Bilstad, T. Allan (2009). The Lovecraft
Necronomicon Primer: A Guide to the
Cthulhu Mythos (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=MevMCyh7hRUC&q=azathot
h+lovecraft) . Llewellyn Publications.
pp. 53–55. ISBN 978-0738713793.
Retrieved 6 March 2020.
3. Taylor, Reece (2022-12-11). "Why
Lovecraft's Most Powerful God Can't Be
Adapted to Film" (https://www.cbr.com/lo
vecraft-azathoth-adaptation-problem/) .
CBR. Retrieved 2023-12-26.
4. H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror" (htt
ps://archive.today/20090108052810/htt
p://www.mythostomes.com/content/view/
63/70/) , The Dunwich Horror and
Others, p. 158.
5. Robert M. Price, The Azathoth Cycle, pp.
v-vi.
6. cited in Price, The Azathoth Cycle, p. vi.
7. Letter to Frank Belknap Long, June 9,
1922; cited in Price, The Azathoth Cycle,
p. vi.
8. "H. P. Lovecraft's original fragment,
'Azathoth'" (http://mythostomes.com/inde
x.php?option=com_content&task=view&id
=34&Itemid=70) Archived (https://web.ar
chive.org/web/20070814112342/http://m
ythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_c
ontent&task=view&id=34&Itemid=70)
2007-08-14 at the Wayback Machine
 9. "Publication History for H. P. Lovecraft's
'Azathoth'" (http://www.hplovecraft.com/
writings/fiction/az.asp) , The H. P.
Lovecraft Archive.
10. Price, The Azathoth Cycle, p. vii.
11. Price, The Azathoth Cycle, pp. viii-ix.
12. H. P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of
Unknown Kadath, in At The Mountains of
Madness, p. 308.
13. " "Fungi from Yuggoth" by H. P. Lovecraft"
(https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/te
xts/poetry/p289.aspx) . The H.P. Lovecraft
Archive.
14. H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in
Darkness", The Dunwich Horror and
Others, p. 256.
15. Harman, Graham (2012). Weird Realism:
Lovecraft and Philosophy (https://books.g
oogle.com/books?id=XQ_tBAAAQBAJ&q=
azathoth+lovecraft&pg=PA235) . Zero
Books. p. 235. ISBN 978-1780992525.
Retrieved 6 March 2020.
16. H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch
House", At the Mountains of Madness, pp.
272–273.
17. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch
House", p. 282.
18. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch
House", p. 293.
19. H. P. Lovecraft, "The Thing on the
Doorstep", The Dunwich Horror and
Others, p. 277.
20. H. P. Lovecraft, "The Haunter of the
Dark", The Dunwich Horror and Others, p.
110.
21. Lovecraft, H. P. (1967). Selected Letters
of H. P. Lovecraft IV (1932–1934). Sauk
City, Wisconsin: Arkham House. Letter
617. ISBN 0-87054-035-1.
22. August Derleth, The Lurker at the
Threshold, in The Watchers Out of Time,
p. 133.
23. Ramsey Campbell, "The Insects from
Shaggai", The Azathoth Cycle, pp. 86-87.
24. Campbell, "The Insects from Shaggai", pp.
89, 91.
25. Campbell, "The Insects from Shaggai", pp.
91-92.
26. Gary Myers, "The Snout in the Alcove",
The Year's Best Fantasy Stories 3, pp.
205-206.
27. Myers, "The Last Night of Earth", The
Azathoth Cycle, p. 132.
28. Myers, "The Web", The Disciples of
Cthulhu II, p. 54.
29. Thomas Ligotti, "The Sect of the Idiot"
(1988), The Azathoth Cycle, 93–102.

Sources

Harms, Daniel (1998). The Encyclopedia

Cthulhiana (https://archive.org/details/
encyclopediacthu00dani) (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 (https://librivox.o

rg/search?title=The+Dunwich+Horror&
author=LOVECRAFT&reader=&keywor
ds=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_t
ype=either&recorded_language=&sort
_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&
search_form=advanced) public
domain audiobook at LibriVox
The Gods of Pegāna (https://librivox.o
rg/search?title=The+Gods+of+Peg%C
4%81na&author=DUNSANY&reader=&
keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&pr
oject_type=either&recorded_language
=&sort_order=catalog_date&search_pa
ge=1&search_form=advanced) public
domain audiobook at LibriVox
Vathek (https://librivox.org/search?titl
e=Vathek&author=BECKFORD&reader
=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all
&project_type=either&recorded_langu
age=&sort_order=catalog_date&searc
 h_page=1&search_form=advanced)
public domain audiobook at LibriVox

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