The 13 Gates of the Necronomicon

by Donald Tyson

  Or it may be that, like the termite, the breeder of the colony is much larger in size than its workers. The queen termite is enormous relative to the others of its species. We do not know what Mother Hydra looks like, because Lovecraft never even hinted at her appearance, but perhaps she is radically different in shape, and also much larger, than Father Dagon. Human myths about the hydra suggest that this monster does not look like a Deep One. Perhaps in the race of the Deep Ones, both the female and male of the breeding pair are larger than their progeny. It may even be that Dagon and Hydra traveled through space to this planet for the specific purpose of breeding a new race beneath our seas, just as a queen bee sets out from an existing hive to found a new hive at a distant location. We are not told by Lovecraft that Dagon and his mate are alien to this planet, but it seems likely to me.

  Even though it is obvious that The Call of Cthulhu was in large measure inspired by the earlier story Dagon, Cthulhu and Dagon are not the same and should not be confused. Cthulhu and his octopoidal spawn are a land-dwelling race that was trapped beneath the waves when R'lyeh unexpectedly sank under them while they lay in suspended animation in their stone houses to avoid the poisonous rays from the stars. The race to which Dagon belongs is water-dwelling. The substance of which the body of Cthulhu is composed is wholly alien to normal Earth matter, but the body of Dagon appears to be of physical flesh. It closely resembles in its shape and substance the bodies of the Deep Ones. For these reasons it is clear that the people of Innsmouth do not worship Cthulhu under a more familiar name, but worship a completely different being.

  The Deep Ones live in stone cities with many pillars in the deepest rifts in the floors of the world's oceans. Lovecraft named only one of their cities, Y'ha-nthlei, which is located in the ocean chasm that lies off Devil Reef, just outside Innsmouth harbor in the Atlantic. They are said to have the resources to rise up from the depths in the millions and destroy the entire race of humanity, but refrain from doing so in part because they prefer to interact and interbreed with human beings. Children born from a union between a Deep One and a human resemble humans in their childhood and youth, but become more like Deep Ones as they age. At around age seventy years they take to the ocean for good, and cease to dwell on the land, but sometimes return to it for brief visits.

  Dagon is either the god or the patriarch of this vast undersea race. It may be that he is both. Ancestor worship is common among human cultures. It is not difficult to imagine that a single living ancestor, grown both ancient beyond measure and gigantic in dimension, would be worshipped by his distant descendants as a god. The people of Innsmouth swore loyalty to Dagon with three oaths of increasingly serious significance. Lovecraft did not provide the text of these oaths, but old Zadok Allen, who refused to take the third oath, said that he would rather die than take it.

  (Dagon; The Shadow Over Innsmouth)

  The Greek god of wine and vegetation, son of the god Zeus and the woman Semele of Thebes. While still a child he was kidnapped by the Titans, who slit his throat with a sacrificial knife while he gazed enraptured at his own image in a mirror. They cut up his corpse, boiled the pieces, then roasted them. Zeus was attracted by the odor. He killed the Titans and resurrected Dionysos. This god is mentioned by Lovecraft in a list of Greek boy-gods.

  (The Electric Executioner)

  An alien creature who is the Guardian of the Ancient Gateway.

  (The Diary of Alonzo Typer)

  God or patron demon of the Mi-Go of Yuggoth, a deathless being who resided in the crypts below a great stone fortress built long before the evolution of humanity by the Mi-Go upon Mount Yaddith-Gho, in the ancient kingdom of K'naa on the lost continent of Mu. Long after the Mi-Go returned to Yuggoth, their god continued to burrow beneath the fortress. Any who might look upon the Dark God, as it was known in K'naa, instantly turned to stone and leather on the outside, but remain alive and conscious within. To prevent its descent down the mountain from the crypts of YaddithGho, a cult ruled by a hundred wealthy priests performed a yearly sacrifice of twelve young warriors and twelve maidens in a marble temple at the base of the mountain.

  The deathless demon was also worshipped by this "hidden and detested" cult in Atlantis and on the plateau of Leng. The writer of Nameless Cults, von Junzt, asserted that the cult of Ghatanothoa had existed in subterranean blue-litten K'n-yan. It was rumored to have survived in "Egypt, Chaldaea, Persia, China, the forgotten Semite empires of Africa, and Mexico and Peru in the New World." Lovecraft called the demon a behemothic monstrosity and described it in the following terms: "gigantic-tentacled-proboscidian-octopus-eyed-semi-amorphous-plastic-partly squamous and partly rugose."

  (Out of the Aeons)

  A title applied to Nyarlathotep by the Mi-Go and their secretive human cult in the hills of Vermont. The Great Messenger is characterized as the "bringer of strange joy to Yuggoth through the void" and the "Father of the Million Favoured Ones"-presum- ably a reference to the race of the Mi-Go that dwells on Yuggoth, who seem to worship Nyarlathotep.

  (The Whisperer in Darkness)

  Hastur first appeared as a pastoral god in Haita the Shepherd, an 1893 short story by Ambrose Bierce. The name was adopted by Robert W. Chambers for use in his series of stories collected under the 1895 anthology title The King In Yellow. It is probably the work of Chambers that inspired Lovecraft to use the name of this god. In The Whisperer in Darkness, Hastur is a god worshipped by a human cult that serves the purposes of "monstrous powers from other dimensions" that seek to track down and do injury to the Mi-Go dwelling in secrecy on our planet. Lovecraft does not reveal why these powers should seek to harm the Mi-Go.

  (The Whisperer in Darkness)

  Thought to be an avatar of Nyarlathotep, this strange god shuns the light. It may be called by means of the irregularly faceted black crystal known as the Shining Trapezohedron. This god knows all occult secrets, but demands of his worshippers sacrifice in human blood. He was called through the crystal and adored in Providence, Rhode Island, by the occult sect known as the Church of Starry Wisdom. This sect was driven out of the town in 1877 by enraged Irish locals when attention was drawn to the mysterious and recurring disappearance of children in the vicinity of the gothic-revival stone church on Federal Hill used by the sect. However, the Haunter remained hidden in the complete dark of the steeple, above the tower room where it had been evoked. In 1935 the writer Robert Blake stirred it to awareness by gazing into the Trapezohedron in the tower room of the church. It was prevented from leaving the abandoned church by the electric lighting of the city, but when the city power failed, it was freed.

  (The Haunter of the Dark)

  Literally, "Hummingbird of the South," a war god and sun god of the Aztecs, and a great wizard. According to legend, his mother was impregnated with a ball of feathers. His sister tried to end his life in the womb by killing his mother, but he sprang forth fully formed and killed his sister, then cut off her head and cast it into the sky, where it became the Moon. He also slew many of his four hundred siblings, and threw them into the heavens, where they became stars. Every morning he uses the serpent of fire (the first ray of the rising Sun), as a weapon to conquer his hostile siblings, allowing the dawn to come and turn night into day. His Aztec worshippers sustained his strength for this daily battle by giving him human hearts in sacrifice. He was also a god of death and guide to the underworld.

  (The Electric Executioner)

  A handsome youth, the companion of Hercules. He was dragged down into a spring by water nymphs, who could not resist his beauty, and his corpse was never found. One in a list of Greek boy-gods mentioned by Lovecraft.

  (The Electric Executioner)

  Greek demigod in the form of a youth who served as attendant for the goddess Demeter. He was a manifestation of the Phrygian Bacchus, and was sometimes called the son of Bacchus. He led the ceremonies of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Iacchus (also spelled Iakchos) is said to have received his name from the ecstatic cry iakkhe! that the worshippers
of Demeter shouted during their processions.

  (The Electric Executioner)

  Greek god of sad songs, who took the form of a youth. The muse Calliope is sometimes said to be his mother.

  (The Electric Executioner)

  God of the dream city Thalarion, known as the City of a Thousand Wonders. He is represented by an eidolon, or carven image, that is nowhere described, but he must be a terrible god, since the streets of the city are littered with the bones of those who have dared to look upon his image. They are driven mad and doomed to walk the streets, haunted by daemons, for eternity. Those who enter the carven gate Akarial never leave the city or are heard from again.

  (The White Ship)

  A demoness who has her origin in ancient Sumer. She was associated with crib death, the mysterious death of infants in their cribs for no obvious physical reason. Sometimes young babies simply stop breathing and die. This was attributed to Lilith. In the folklore of the Jews she became the bride of Samael, the Jewish equivalent to Satan, and the queen of Hell. In some Jewish tales she is the first wife of Adam, before Eve.

  Lovecraft made her the goddess worshipped by a cult of Kurdish devil worshippers known as the Yazidi who lived in Red Hook, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. She was worshipped with the sacrifice of kidnapped children. Her worshippers bathed her feet in their blood. Lovecraft described her as a "phosphorent thing," and wrote, "in the blood of stainless childhood the leprous limbs of phosphorescent Lilith were laved." She has for her throne a golden pillar within a large cavern that opens to the sea, and in Lovecraft's story she is adept at swimming.

  (The Horror at Red Hook)

  Greek god of flax, the fibers of which are used to make linen.

  (The Electric Executioner)

  One of the three bearded gods worshipped at the lakeside city of Sarnath before its destruction. Along with Zo-Kalar and Tamash, Lobon sat on an ivory throne, his statue so cunningly fashioned that it had the appearance of life. The seated statues of the three gods of Sarnath were located within long halls forever filled with the scent and smoke of burning incense. These halls were all on the ground level the largest of the seventeen religious temples at Sarnath, which possessed a tower a thousand cubits tall. The temples were built from "a bright multi-colored stone not known elsewhere" but what the statues of the gods were made from is not stated. Each god probably had his own hall, since the text speaks of the "halls" of the gods. The statues of the gods were probably of human dimensions, since they could be so easily mistaken for living men.

  (The Doom That Came to Sarnath)

  An obscure deity worshipped in the rituals of the Mi-Go and their cult of human followers in Lee's Swamp, at the base of the western slope of Dark Mountain. From his title the god would seem to be male. He is mentioned along with the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, which seems to be a title for Shub-Niggurath. This has led to the assumption that the Lord of the Woods is a male form of Shub-Niggurath, perhaps the same as the Black Goat of the Woods. However, it is quite possible that a different deity is intended, the consort of the Black Goat rather than the Black Goat herself. It has even been speculated that the Black Goat is a different deity from ShubNiggurath, or, at least, a different avatar or embodiment.

  (The Whisperer in Darkness)

  The title is Latin for "the Great Unnamable," and is mentioned among a list of names and terms with the "most hideous of connections" in Lovecraft's story The Whisperer in Darkness. It is possible that Azathoth, whose true name must never be spoken aloud, is intended. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath Azathoth is referred to as the "boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud." It is less likely that this title applies to the god Hastur, even though the writer August Derleth linked the two in his stories.

  (The Whisperer in Darkness)

  The mate of Dagon, who gave birth to the race of amphibian man-like creatures known as the Deep Ones. In the Order of Dagon, a religious cult that grew up in the New England town of Innsmouth, Mother Hydra was worshipped along with Father Dagon. In Greek mythology, the Hydra was a monster with many heads and poisonous breath that dwelt in the Lake of Lerna in Argolis, a district of Greece. The Hydra was killed by Hercules as one of his twelve labors. The lake no longer exists, but according to the ancient Greek historian, Pausanius, it was too deep to be measured, and anyone who tried to swim across it was sucked under and never seen again. It was considered one of the entrances to the Underworld. How closely Mother Hydra corresponds to the description of the Greek Hydra is impossible to guess, since Mother Hydra was never described by Lovecraft.

  (The Shadow Over Innsmouth)

  The chief god worshipped in the city of Celephais, which lies in the dreamlands.

  (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)

  The Lord of the Great Abyss, this ancient god is described as "hoary and immemorial Nodens" in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, where he is mentioned most frequently by Lovecraft. The night-gaunts are his servants, and under his protection they have no need to fear the Old Ones, but defy even the will of Nyarlathotep. It is evident from the delight expressed by Nodens when Randolph Carter escapes the treachery of Nyarlathotep that no love is lost between these two deities. Lovecraft characterizes him as "potent and archaic." He is mentioned in company with Neptune in The Strange High House in the Mist, and the abyss in which he dwells must be a watery abyss, since he comes to the house riding on a giant seashell.

  Nodens is an actual Celtic god worshipped in Britain in pre-Roman and Roman times. He was known as Nodens the Catcher, and was a hunter deity. All his power was supposed to reside in his grasping hand. Arthur Machen mentioned Nodens in his work The Great God Pan, which Lovecraft knew well. In Machen's story, the god's name occurs on a Latin inscription, where he is described as "Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or abyss)." He was also worshipped in Ireland under the name "Nuada," and was associated with water, sunlight, youth and healing. The name of this god has been linked with the Welsh word nudd (fog), which may in part explain Lovecraft's characterization of him as "hoary."

  (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath; The Strange High House in the Mist)

  A god worshipped in the subterranean land of blue-litten K'n-yan. He is the husband of Shub-Niggurath. A slightly different form of the title of this god is used by the cult of the Mi-Go that gathered in Lee's Swamp, at the base of the western slope of Dark Mountain in Vermont. There the god is titled "Him Who is not to be Named." The title Magnum Innominandum (Latin for "the Great Not-To-Be Named") may be yet a third title for this mysterious god. The cultists of the Mi-Go called the goddess Shub-Niggurath "the Black Goat of the Woods," and also invoked a being known as the Lord of the Woods, who may be the same as Him Who is not to be Named.

  A descriptive title is not the same as a true name, in an occult sense. A descriptive title refers to one aspect of a god, but its true name embodies its essential identity. The god of the Hebrews had one true name, which in Roman times everyone but the priests at the Temple in Jerusalem were forbidden to utter, but many descriptive titles such as "the Wrathful," "the Mighty One," "the Ancient of Days," and so on, which could be freely spoken. To know the true name of a god, or of anything else for that matter, is to possess power over it.

  Thanks to the writings of August Derleth, who identified Him Who is not to be Named with the god Hastur, the general opinion is that the Not-To-Be-Named One is Hastur. There is no reason to suppose that Hastur is the Not-To-Be-Named One, or Him Who is not to be Named, other than Derleth's unfounded assumption.

  (The Mound; The Whisperer in Darkness)

  Twin monstrosities of blue-litten K'n-yan, the ceremonies of which were found by the sixteenth-century Spaniard Zamacona in the story The Mound to be too sickening to be described. They are mentioned in Out of the Aeons in connection with Shub-Niggurath, along with the serpent-god Yig, and may be her twin children. The high priest of ShubNiggurath in Mu is said to have "the power of Shub-Niggurath and her sons on hi
s side." In The Last Test, reference is made to the underground shrines of Nug and Yeb in connection with Irem, the City of Pillars, in the Crimson Desert.

  (The Mound; The Last Test; Out of the Aeons)

  Of all the alien deities who descended to this planet in the distant past from beyond the stars, Nyarlathotep is the most personable, if we may use this term to describe a being who invariably inspires terror in the human heart. He sometimes walks the surface of the Earth in the form of a man, and talks directly to individual human beings in their own languages. He involves himself in human affairs and enjoys causing suffering. He has many forms, and may be described as faceless since his true face, if indeed he has such a thing, is unknown. He appears as the mysterious Black Man of the witch cult of Western Europe.

  Nyarlathotep began as an enigmatic Egyptian sage in one of Lovecraft's dreams. Lovecraft described this dream, which he had been having repeatedly since the age of ten, in a December 21, 1921, letter to Rheinhart Kleiner. In the dream, a stage performer is touring New England giving shows that astound audiences. Lovecraft's close friend Samuel Loveman, who took so active a role in Lovecraft's other dream that became The Statement of Randolph Carter, wrote to Lovecraft in this dream urging him not to miss the stage show of Nyarlathotep, should this extraordinary performer come to Providence. "He is horrible-horrible beyond anything you can imagine-but wonderful," Loveman wrote. "He haunts one for hours afterward. I am still shuddering at what he showed."

  In the dream, Nyarlathotep gives a show in Providence, and although Lovecraft is warned by others not to go near him, he attends. Nyarlathotep is not so much a stage magician as a kind of esoteric prophet who combines a cinema show with a practical exhibition of the strange and marvelous. His performance is divided into two parts, a silent film presentation during which he narrates an explanation of what is appearing on the screen, followed by a demonstration that involves electrical devices and is presumably connected in some way with the things shown in the film. Lovecraft characterized the cinematic part of the performance as "horrible-possibly prophetic."