Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

by Harms, Daniel

  In 1789, when James Boon, now an old man, was still the head of the community, the aged pastor gained a copy of Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis. He incorporated this book into his services, and on Halloween of that year he and his congregation attempted a ceremony contained within that volume. On that night, all of the people of Jerusalem’s Lot vanished and were never seen again.

  [Though Stephen King also uses a town called ‘Salem’s Lot in the novel of the same name, the two are not the same.]

  See De Vermis Mysteriis. (“Jerusalem’s Lot”, King (O).)

  JOHANSEN, GUSTAF. Sailor from Oslo who served as the second mate of the ship Emma. On March 22, 1925, during a voyage between Valparaiso, Chile, and Auckland, New Zealand, the Emma was set upon by the ship Alert, resulting in the deaths of the captain and first mate. Johansen took command and pushed on, landing on an island the next day where six of his crew were killed. Rescuers found Johansen, the only survivor of the Emma’s crew, on April 12. An enquiry at Sydney turned up very little, and Johansen and his wife moved from Dunedin back to Oslo. Shortly thereafter, Johansen died in a dockside accident.

  See Johansen Narrative. (“The Call of Cthulhu”, Lovecraft (O).)

  JOHANSEN NARRATIVE. Diary written by Gustaf Johansen in which he tells of his accidental journey to the risen corpse-city of R’lyeh on March 23, 1925, and what he encountered there. The anthropologist Francis Thurston bore it away from Johansen’s widow, and it has since become an important document for investigators of the Cthulhu Mythos.

  See Johansen, Gustav; R’lyeh. (“The Call of Cthulhu”, Lovecraft (O); The Burrowers Beneath, Lumley.)

  JUK-SHABB. Great Old One resembling a shining sphere which constantly changes color and speaks with its worshipers telepathically. This being rules the world of Yekub and its centipede-like inhabitants. Though not necessarily malevolent toward humans, Juk-Shabb will protect any Yekubians who are harmed in its presence.

  See Yekub. (“The Eyes of a Stranger”, Aniolowski; “The Challenge from Beyond”, Moore et. al. (O).)

  JUNZT, FRIEDRICH WILHEIM VON. See von Junzt, Friedrich Wilheim.

  K

  KA-HARNE. See G’harne.

  KA-RATH. See Quachil Uttaus.

  KADATH IN THE COLD WASTE. Mountain on the peak of which the onyx Castle of the Great Ones was built. Kadath usually lies in the far north of the Dreamlands, beyond the Plateau of Leng. According to other tales, it may be found on a gigantic mountain chain in the Antarctic, somewhere near Mongolia, or in ruins far underground in modern-day Turkey. Some have even gone so far as to say that Kadath was a vast city of the Elder Gods that covered our entire planet at one time.

  Kadath is the home of the gods of Earth, and there they remain, protected by the Other Gods. Kadath is a terrible place for mortals to visit, as the gods do not take kindly to anyone invading their mountain retreat, and the dreamer Randolph Carter is the only one known to have done so. Kenneth Grant equated Kadath with Kether, the Kaballistic sephiroth whose attainment leads to oneness with God.

  See Carter, Randolph; Cold Waste; Dreamlands; gods of Earth; Leng; Ngranek; Yr-Nhhngr; yuggs. (“The Seal of R’lyeh”, Derleth; “The Alchemist’s Notebook”, Hurd and Baetz; “At the Mountains of Madness”, Lovecraft; “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft; “The Other Gods”, Lovecraft (O); The Mind Parasites, Wilson.)

  KADATHERON. Town on the river Ai which is located in either the Dreamlands or the distant past, depending on which authority is consulted. Kadatheron lies near Sarnath, though it never achieved that city’s grandeur. It has seen numerous ruling dynasties over the years. It is most famous for the brick cylinders of ancient lore that are held there.

  See Brick Cylinders of Kadatheron. (“The Lure of Leng”, DeBill; “The Doom that Came to Sarnath”, Lovecraft (O); “The Sister City”, Lumley.)

  KADIPHONEK, MOUNT. See Noton and Kadiphonek, Mounts.

  KAGWAMON K’THAAT. Book written by Adolphus Clesteros in the 13th century. For reasons which are still unclear, Clesteros chose to write the volume in a language of own invention called W’hywi.

  Only one copy of the Kagwamon K’thaat exists. The book appeared once in France in the hands of a secretive cult, whose members annotated the pages in Latin. Its present whereabouts are unknown. The book probably deals with cthonians and other such beings.

  (“Dark Carnival”, Hargrave (O); “The Summoning”, Lotstein.)

  KAMAN-THAH. See Nasht and Kaman-Thah.

  KAMOG. Name by which Ephraim Waite was known to the members of a coven in Maine. It might also have been the magical name of Noah Whateley, and that of a beaked spirit evoked by the Cult of the Skull.

  (“The Thing on the Doorstep”, Lovecraft (O); “Acute Spiritual Fear”, Price; “A Mate for the Mutilator”, Price.)

  KANT, ERNST. German baron and witch-hunter who lived around the turn of the century. The Baron dedicated his life to investigating the supernatural. In his later years, however, he came to believe that an alien being called Yibb-Tstll was controlling his mind. Shortly thereafter, he was confined to a Westphalian sanitarium, in which he later died. Kant was the father of Joachim Feery.

  See Feery, Joachim; Yibb-Tstll. (“Aunt Hester”, Lumley; “The Horror at Oakdeene”, Lumley; “The Mirror of Nitocris”, Lumley (O).)

  KARA-SHEHR (Turkish for “The Black City” and known to the Arabs as Beled el-Djinn, “City of Devils”). Deserted city located in the wastes of Arabia. Refugees from Assyria whose homeland had been conquered by the Babylonians were the builders of Kara-Shehr. A magician named Xuthltan cursed the city when its king tried to learn the location of a great treasure from him, and the native tribes still shun its ruins. Abdul Alhazred had spent some time there, and he refers to it in the Necronomicon as the “City of Evil”.

  Some have said that the Nameless City is identical with Kara-Shehr, but this is not the case. Kara-Shehr has been described as a relatively intact fortress built by humans, while the Nameless City was built by reptilian creatures and has been almost completely destroyed.

  [Karashar or Karashahr (also known as Agni or Yen-Ch’i) is in China’s Xinjiang province, and was at one time an important site on the Silk Road. I have been unable to find any Turkish folklore relating to it.]

  See Fire of Asshurbanipal; Xuthltan. (“H. P. Lovecraft: The Gods”, Carter; “Mnomquah”, Carter; “The Fire of Asshurbanipal”, Howard (O); “The Nameless City”, Lovecraft.)

  KARAKAL. Great One who dwells in the Hall of the Flowing Stones at Kadath. In Hyperborean times, he was thought of as the sun god who guarded against the darkness beyond the sky. In the Dreamlands, he has some celestial attributes, but has become more of a fire-god. He is the lord of the lightning-based creatures known as the minions of Karakal, and his priests maintain an altar with an ever-burning flame.

  (“Wizards of Hyperborea”, Fultz and Burns; H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, Petersen et. al. (O); S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands, Petersen et. al.)

  KARNAK, BOOK OF. See Book of Karnak.

  KAROTECHIA. Occult studies department formed within the SS in 1939. The Karotechia reported directly to Hitler and Himmler, seeking magical and other unconventional methods of warfare to aid the Nazi cause. The United States anti-paranormal organization Delta Green foiled many of the Karotechia’s attempts to alter the war in their masters’ favor. It is unlikely that any remnants of the Karotechia survived the end of Hitler’s Germany.

  See Ahu-Y’hloa; PISCES. (Delta Green, Detwiller, Glancy, and Tynes (O).)

  KASSOGTHA. Great Old One resembling a mass of writhing snakes, with a mouth filled with sharp teeth at one end. Kassogtha was Cthulhu’s brother and mate, who sired twin daughters, Nctosa and Nctolhu, who are confined to the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. Imprisoned in a black hole in the Monoceros constellation, she can be summoned to earth through a ritual involving sex, death, and a chant from Fu-Shen’s Zhou Texts.

  See Zhou Texts. (Nightmare’s Disciple, Pulver (O).)

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p; KATH. Distant world the Nug-Soth once visited.

  (“Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, Lovecraft and Price (O).)

  KATHULOS. See L’mur-Kathulos.

  KEANE, ABEL. Student from New Hampshire who came to Boston to study divinity. After becoming involved in the affairs of Andrew Phelan, a former inhabitant of his apartment, Keane vanished. He is believed to have drowned under mysterious circumstances.

  (“The Watcher from the Sky”, Derleth (O); Other Nations, Marsh and Marsh.)

  KEEPER OF THE YELLOW SIGN. Entity which is entrusted with keeping the Yellow Sign out of the hands of the uninitiated. The Keeper possesses a human corpse to carry out its mission, following a trail of those who have been in possession of the Sign until it has regained it. One individual afflicted with multiple personalities once called upon the Keeper to destroy his other “self”; how this would have been accomplished is unknown.

  (“The Yellow Sign”, Chambers (O); “The Madman”, Harmon; “Hands of the Living God”, Harms.)

  KESTER LIBRARY. Library located in Salem, Massachusetts. Miskatonic University acquired it in 1977 and has moved its collection of books on American history, religion, and folklore to that collection. The prizes of its occult collection are a Wormius Necronomicon and the original text of the Ponape Scripture.

  See Necronomicon (appendices). (“The Fishers from Outside”, Carter; “The Salem Horror”, Kuttner (O); Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley.)

  KHEM. Prehistoric Egypt. Khem was founded around 9,500 BC by the Vanir when they overthrew ancient Stygia; its name probably derives from that of Khemi, Stygia’s chief port. The pharaohs of the first dynasty of Khem were drawn from the northerners, and they ruled for thousands of years. The people of Khem were visited by a space ship that became the first pyramid. As an experiment, the alien inhabitants of the ship bred with the humans of Khem, spawning deformed half-human monstrosities. They then overthrew the first dynasty and placed their disguised offspring on the throne.

  The second dynasty of Khem ruled for six generations, and its pharaohs built the first stone pyramids of Khem. The last pharaoh was Khasathut, whose mind was as deformed as his body. Around 7,000 BC Khasathut was overthrown by a commoner named Khai of Khem, whose victory stemmed from his use of surprising technological innovations against the pharaoh. With his queen, Ashtarta, Khai founded the third dynasty of Khem. At this same time, possibly due to the great magics unleashed during the war between Khasathut and Khai, the once fertile lands of Khem turned to desert. This may have led to the nation’s destruction, as the period between Khem’s fall and Egypt’s rise is mostly unknown.

  [“Khem” is an Egyptian word meaning “black”, a reference to the fertile soil by the Nile. The Egyptians used this word, or the associated “Kemet” (“black land”), to refer to their own land. Khem was also an Egyptian god of agricultural fertility. Some writers refer to Khem as a pre-Egyptian country, but others such as Tierney, use the name to refer to the time of Egyptian history between the fall of Stygia and the ancient world of the first century A.D.]

  See Stygia. (“The Hour of the Dragon”, Howard; “The Hyborian Age”, Howard; Khai of Ancient Khem, Lumley (O); The Winds of Zarr, Tierney; “The Worm of Urakhu”, Tierney)

  KHEPHNES. Man who lived during Egypt’s Fourteenth Dynasty and learned the secrets of Nyarlathotep.

  (“The Shadow out of Time”, Lovecraft (O).)

  KHRISSA. City of basalt which sat at the northern edge of Theem’hdra. Khrissa’s priests vowed that only they could keep the glaciers from rolling over the rest of the world, demanding hundreds of human sacrifices every year for success in their task. After a war, however, savages from further south besieged Khrissa. The outcome of this siege has been lost to history, but Ithaqua took up his faithful ice-priests to the moon Dromos circling Borea, where they have dwelt ever since.

  See Mylakhrion. (In the Moons of Borea, Lumley (O).)

  THE KING IN YELLOW. 1) Play formerly thought to have been written in the late 19th century by an unknown playwright (possibly named Castaigne) who later attempted suicide. New evidence suggests that the first two scenes were the work of Christopher Marlowe, the author of Doctor Faustus. John Croft and William Shakespeare made an abortive attempt to finish it, but Shakespeare’s scruples intervened. The Shakespeare/Croft section was destroyed in a house fire in 1666, and the homeowner accidentally bound the Marlowe section into a book of his wife’s poetry. “Castaigne” rediscovered it in 1891 and completed the play, possibly while staying at the Broadalbin Hotel in New York.

  Some details of the play remain unclear, such as whether it was originally in French (as Le Roi en Jaune) or English, or whether the first publication was in 1890 or in 1895. After its appearance, the government and churches denounced it, and the city of Paris banned the play. Since then, other editions have been published secretly. Publications, some in the original tongue and others translated, have appeared in London, Edinburgh, Chicago, Zagreb, Budapest, Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Belgrade, Sofia, Bucharest, and Sarajevo. Daniel Mason Winfield-Harms translated a French edition into English in 1930 in Buffalo before his unfortunate death. The Cassilda Press edition of 1919 is the only one on which we have reasonably complete bibliographic data.

  Though it contains much contradiction and allegory, The King in Yellow is a dangerous work which leads the imaginative and unstable to madness. The first act is relatively bland, but this only allows the second, more horrible act to have a greater impact.

  Fragments of the play have turned up among the work of other authors, such as the late playwright Charles Vaughan (1902-66). It may be that the play is in actuality one of Kenneth Grant’s “akashic grimoires” which exist on a higher plane and may be perceived subconsciously by authors who then record them. The less mystical authorities insist that a work called the “Yellow Codex” served as the source for all of these poets.

  Unconfirmed reports of the play’s performance continue to circulate, though most of these have never been completed.

  During my research into this topic, I have found two different versions of this play, each having its own interpretation of its various elements. A synopsis of both is included herein, in the interest of completeness. Which one is truly correct is unknown; evidence from one performance suggests that The King in Yellow is different for every reader or member of the audience.

  A. The two act play begins on another world in the city of Yhtill, under the stars of Aldebaran and the Hyades. The majority of the play concerns the intrigue in the royal court between the claimants to the throne of Yhtill—the Queen, Thale, Uoht, Cassilda, Aldones, and Camilla. Cassilda, the Queen, was selected by her father over Aldones. For revenge, he now convinces Uoht to forge documents with the Queen’s seal and Camilla to arrest him for doing so. Thale, the third child who has joined the priesthood, witnesses these events with the High Priest Naotalba.

  The royal family hears of a mysterious stranger who wears a Pallid Mask and the horrid Yellow Sign who comes to Yhtill at about the same time as a strange ghostly city appears across the Lake of Hali. The royal family questions this figure, but they learn nothing. At a masked ball, the figure reveals that he wears no mask and has come to announce the end of the dynasty. Camilla goes mad, and the queen tortures the Stranger to death. At the same time, she orders the death of the prisoners, inadvertently killing her son Uoht who is imprisoned with them.

  Madness sweeps the land, and the sounds of invasion are heard. The dreaded King in Yellow appears in Yhtill as the mysterious city on the lake’s far side disappears. The King states that Yhtill has passed away and now only the city of Carcosa lies on the shore of the lake. He slays both Aldones and Thale, proclaiming the death of both rationality and irrationality and his own eternal rule.

  B. The setting is the city of Hastur, which has been at war with its neighbor Alar for countless years. The children of the ruling queen, Uoht, Thale, and Camilla, pester their mother, Cassilda for the crown so that the dynasty might continue, but
she puts off giving it away. Cassilda then learns that a figure wearing a pallid mask and bearing the Yellow Sign has been seen in Hastur. Counseled by the high priest Naotalba, she calls this stranger into the palace. The stranger, named Yhtill, offers the queen a chance to break free from the domination of the King in Yellow, who dwells in Carcosa across the Lake of Hali and rarely interferes in the works of humans. By wearing the Pallid Mask, all those in the city may throw off the dread of the Yellow Sign as he has.

  Believing what the stranger has told her, the queen holds a masquerade at which each person wears the Pallid Mask. When the time comes to unmask, Yhtill reveals that he wears no mask, and has come from Alar to wreak vengeance upon Hastur’s people. This outrage does not go unnoticed by the King in Yellow, who comes to bear away Yhtill. The King promises Cassilda that he will allow the victor of the war between Hastur and Alar to rule the world, but on one condition: that the people of Hastur and their descendants wear their Pallid Masks for all time. As the play ends, the King in Yellow departs, leaving the courtiers in despair.

  See Alar; Aldones; Camilla; Cassilda; Cordelia; Demhe; Hali; Hastur; Last King; Naotalba; Pallid Mask; Thale; Uoht; Yellow Codex; Yellow Sign; Yhtill. (“More Light”, Blish; “In the Court of the Dragon”, Chambers; “The Repairer of Reputations”, Chambers; “The Yellow Sign”, Chambers (O); “The King of Shreds and Patches”, Hynes; “In Memoriam”, Johnson and Price; “Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?”, Ross; The King in Yellow, Ryng; “Tattered Souls”, Schwader; “Sosostris”, Tynes; Tatters of the King, Wiseman; “The Peace that Will Not Come”, Worthy.)

  2) An avatar of Hastur, or possibly Nyarlathotep, who is the title character of this play. The King in Yellow usually appears as a gigantic human dressed in tattered yellow robes, occasionally with wings or a halo. It usually appears in places of depression and madness wearing the Pallid Mask, which conceals the hideousness of its appearance. Worship of this being has increased dramatically in recent years, and many artists and intellectuals have fallen under the King’s sway. Some say that the King might have been human in the past, and that another might some day take his place.