by Donald Tyson
In his poem "Night-gaunts," which is part of the sonnet cycle Fungi From Yuggoth, he added the detail that the barbed tails of the creatures are forked. Bifurcation is symbolically associated with evil because it suggests lies or deceptions-the forked tongue of the snake, for example, or the cloven hoof of the Devil. The facelessness of the creatures suggests that they may have represented for Lovecraft some horror he did not wish to confront or recognize consciously. In the poem he names the needle-like mountains over which the night-gaunts drop him the "jagged peaks of Thok."
In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath Lovecraft's alter ego, Randolph Carter, enlists the aid of the ghouls through their leader, the former avant garde artist of Boston, Richard Pickman, who has reverted to his ghoulish origins. The ghouls, in turn, call upon their allies the night-gaunts, with whom they share strong treaty obligations. The night-gaunts serve the ghouls of the dreamlands as flying steeds and carry the ghoul warriors into battle.
Early on in his quest, Carter received the information that the night-gaunts have their caves near the mountain Ngranek. In trying to find out about these creatures, Carter asked some rather curious questions concerning them of lava-gatherers working on the lower slopes of Ngranek-he inquired if the night-gaunts "sucked blood and liked shiny things and left webbed footprints." The frightened lava-gatherers denied these specific matters. So specific are the questions that it is tempting to believe that Carter had heard other rumors of the night-gaunts and their nature. These three characteristics are not denied elsewhere, so I believe they are accurate, in spite of the denials of the lava-gatherers, who did not wish to invoke the night-gaunts by talking about them.
While sleeping on a ledge high on the face of the mountain, Carter was seized by the night-gaunts, who first stripped him of his sword, then bore him up into the air, one holding his neck and another his feet while the rest of the flock clustered around. When Carter struggled, the night-gaunts tickled him until he stopped. They were completely silent, even the beating of their wings. Carter characterized the touch of their paws as "cold and damp and slippery." There is little doubt that Lovecraft in this passage was merely describing his recurring dream of childhood. He added the detail to their description that the horns on their heads "curved inward toward each other."
They are described as "mindless guardians of the Great Abyss whom even the Great Ones fear." They fly ceaselessly between the Vale of Pnath and the passes to the outer world. The night-gaunts are wholly of the dream world. It does not appear that they ever leave it, unless they are the winged creatures who serve the cult of Cthulhu in the swamps near New Orleans-but this is doubtful. Many of the other inhabitants and places in the dreamlands have their representations in waking reality. Pickman, for example, exists both in the dreamlands and also in the waking world. So do the ghouls. The plateau of Leng is a place in the dreamlands, but also a place on the surface of the waking world, although precisely where it is located, Lovecraft never definitely states, suggesting in one place in his fiction that it is in Asia and in another place that it is in Antarctica.
The night-gaunts carried Carter over the Peaks of Throk that had so terrorized Lovecraft as a child, and deposited him safely on the pile of bones at the base of the cliff that led to the barren, boulder-strewn plain on which the ghouls had their burrows. Eventually Carter was able to enlist the aid of the ghouls through the mediation of Pickman, and after many adventures, including a war between the ghouls and the moon-beasts, was carried through the air to Kadath, the end of his quest, by the nightgaunts, who have allegiance with the ghouls and with the god Nodens, but not with the other gods of Earth or with Nyarlathotep and his alien kind.
The night-gaunts that tormented Lovecraft's childhood dreams become in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath the means of Carter's salvation. Lovecraft transmutes their power to useful purposes, and in this way mitigates its terror. Lovecraft came to terms with the night-gaunts on a personal level, and achieved a kind of truce with them. It might be argued that much of Lovecraft's fiction is an attempt to exorcise his own personal demons. This is certainly the case with the night-gaunts.
(Fungi from Yuggoth; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
The Wichita Indians of Oklahoma call the apparitions seen from a distance atop ancient Indian mounds on the plains the "old people" or "they who dwell below." They do not recognize the tribe of these spectres, who wear strange costumes and carry strange weapons, and do not claim them as kin, but are afraid of the ghosts and avoid them. The "old people" are the psychic projections of the subterranean race of K'nyan, a race not originally native to this planet. Their reddish or copper-colored skin leads to the mistaken initial impression that they are Native American. They have the power to project their images when they dream, and it is these images that are sometimes seen on the Indian mounds. They are also able to physically walk through solid objects, and sometimes set up sentries at the entrance to their tunnels that are located beneath these mounds, to ward off human beings.
(The Mound)
The creatures known shoggoths were created by the Elder Things to serve as their slaves. The crinoid race controlled them by hypnotic commands that were projected telepathically. Alhazred mentioned them briefly in the Necronomicon, writing that they were unknown on this planet except in the dreams of those who chewed "a certain alkaloidal herb." He was mistaken. In the Lovecraft mythos, shoggoths were created on Earth by the genetic sciences of the Elder Things before they created, for their amusement, the forms of life that presently flourish across our world. The shoggoths have never died off. Some still survive beneath the ground and deep in the seas.
The bodies of shoggoths resemble giant amoebas, and like the amoeba they reproduce by fission. They move by expanding and contracting their viscose substance, and eat by surrounding and engulfing their prey. They possess the ability to extrude sensory organs such as eyes and ears, and manipulatory limbs such as arms, as these are required. When the limbs or organs are no longer needed, they are reabsorbed into the amorphous body. By expanding their bodies, they can lift and move enormous blocks of stone. The Elder Things employed them as workers to build their great undersea cities. Their strength is almost beyond limit-they may well be the strongest things that have ever lived on the Earth.
Lovecraft described shoggoths in At the Mountains of Madness as "a viscous jelly which looked like an agglutination of bubbles." When contracted into a spherical shape, the bodies of the early shoggoths measured approximately fifteen feet in diameter. Later in their history the Elder Things evolved shoggoths that were even larger. The explorers of the Miskatonic Expedition to Antarctica encountered one of the later shoggoths, which was said to be "vaster than any subway train," black in color, and faintly self-luminous. It was characterized as a "plastic column of fetid black iridescence." It formed eyes that glowed with greenish light on its forward surface as it rolled its body along a tunnel, which its bulk completely filled, in pursuit of the fleeing explorers. Shoggoths have no fixed shape of their own, but are able to stretch and mold their masses into any shape that is necessary for their immediate purposes.
Over the passage of ages shoggoths began to develop their own independent intelligence. This allowed them to at times defy the hypnotic commands of the Elder Things, which made them increasingly treacherous slaves. Around a hundred and fifty million years ago they rose up in rebellion against their masters, killing the crinoids by decapitating them. They were only subjugated after much trouble through the use of atomic disintegrators. Even so, they never again became the docile and mindless slaves they once had been. The Elder Things were forced to watch and control them with constant vigilance. Though shoggoths can live quite well on land, and are highly resistant to cold and other extremes of weather, the crinoid race for a long period discouraged them from emerging from the seas when they themselves established their land cities, so as to avoid the considerable burden of controlling them. Eventually, however, they were forced to breed giant land shoggoths t
o aid in their survival in an increasingly hostile climate.
Shoggoths possess the power to extrude vocal organs. They use these to communicate with each other in the piping language of the Elder Things, which they remember from ancient times, for they are virtually deathless. Like human beings, they learn through imitation. They are superb natural mimics. The Miskatonic scientists exploring the passage leading to the underground sea from beneath the crinoid city heard one shoggoth issue the eerie cry "Tekeli-Ii! Tekeli-li!" What this means is unknown, but the shoggoths must have learned it from their masters, in the same way that parrots imitate human speech. It may be a cry of alarm, or warning. On the walls of this passage the shoggoths had inscribed works of art in imitation of the style of the Elder Things.
Lovecraft hinted darkly that it was the unruly shoggoths who were responsible for the final abandonment of the great land city of the crinoids in Antarctica. Those bred to live and work on the land simply became too dangerous to control, and the Elder Things retreated to the warm depths of the subterranean sea in a great cavern far below the frozen surface. The shoggoths held the surface alone, apart from the giant blind, albino penguins that move through the tunnels under the deserted city. These penguins swim in the waters of the subterranean sea, and provide food for the shoggoths. Eventually the shoggoths triumphed completely over the crinoids and came to rule the underwater city in the deep cavern, just as they possessed unopposed except for the penguins the remains of the last land city of their former masters.
In The Thing on the Doorstep Lovecraft alluded to the "pit of the shoggoths," which is located at the bottom of a flight of six thousand steps. This may perhaps be the "black pit" mentioned in connection with "proto-shoggoths" during the insane ravings of the explorer Danforth after his escape from the deserted city of the Elder Things in At the Mountains of Madness.
(At the Mountains of Madness; The Thing on the Doorstep; The Shadow Over Innsmouth)
In his short story Imprisoned With the Pharaohs, ghostwritten for Harry Houdini, Lovecraft asked the question, 'What huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent?" The answer he gave to this question in his story was a gigantic monster that dwells in the vast subterranean chambers beneath the Pyramids, and is never seen in its entirety, "the unknown God of the Dead, which licks its colossal chops in the unsuspected abyss, fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist." According to Egyptian legend, the face of the Sphinx is that of the pharaoh Khephren, who was buried beneath the Second Pyramid on the Giza Plateau, close to this mammoth sculpture. However, Khephren did not build the Sphinx; he merely uncovered it from beneath the sand of centuries and repaired the damage it had suffered from erosion. In the process of this renovation, he had the worn face recarved to match his own features.
The famous stage magician and escape artist Harry Houdini encounters this monster when he becomes trapped beneath the Pyramids. It is of such vast dimensions that at first he only sees its paw as it reaches for its sacrifice of corpses through a great cavern mouth. When its head appears and he realizes what he is looking at, the shock is so strong that he flees and falls into unconsciousness. When he wakes in the dawn on the open sands of Giza beneath the face of the Sphinx, he firmly tells himself that what he saw was only a dream.
(Imprisoned with the Pharaohs)
An intelligent race of vegetable entities will inhabit the planet Mercury in the distant future. They are described by Lovecraft only as "bulbous." The time-spanning Great Race of Yith will project their minds into the bodies of these beings as the surface of the Earth becomes uninhabitable.
(The Shadow Out of Time)
A species of ghoul spawned in the dead cities of the upper dreamland.
(The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath)
A small, brown race of the dreamlands, furtitive and secretive. They live in burrows for the most part, but a few dwell in the hollow trunks of great trees. Fungi is their nourishment, along with an occasional meal of meat. There are rumors that men have disappeared near where the zoogs lurk, both in the waking world and in the dreamlands. They cannot travel far outside the dreamlands, but move freely through its parts that are nearest the waking world. They delight in gathering stories, which they tell around their forest campfires. The cats of Ulthar arch their backs in challenge when zoogs approach. The zoogs gave Randolph Carter a bottle of moon-wine when he stopped to converse with them.
(The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
The Key to the Fourth Gate
Sun passes through Pisces: March 12-April 18
Constellation is represented by two kinds of fish tied together at their tails by the two ends of a loose cord, which is attached to a fixed point at its midlength.
Right Pillar: Alpherg (The Pouring Point of Water). Astronomical designation: Eta Pi- scium. Astrological nature: Saturn Jupiter. Influence: Magnitude: 3.8. Color: yellow. Sun crosses: April 15. Location: northern end of the cord that links the fishes. Comments: This star marks the beginning of the sidereal zodiac.
Left Pillar: Al Rischa (The Cord). Astronomical designation: Alpha Piscium. Astrological nature: Mars-Mercury. Influence: Magnitude: 4. Color: green-blue. Sun crosses: April 22. Location: knot or fixed point in the middle of the cord linking the fishes. Comments: In ancient times this star was brighter, but it has dimmed.
The astral gate of Pisces lies between the star of its right pillar, located on the northern section of the cord linking the fishes, and the star of its left pillar, which occupies the fixed midpoint of the cord. The sun enters the gate around April 15 when it crosses the longitude of Alpherg, the star of the right pillar, and leaves the gate around April 20, when it crossed the star of the left pillar, Al Rischa. The transition of this narrow gate takes seven days.
The key to the Fourth Gate opens the constellation Pisces, allowing entry into the section of the walled city of the Necronomicon that contains the monsters of the mythos. Use it for divining information or receiving dreams about monstrous creatures and outrages to nature mentioned in Lovecraft's writings.
Seal of the Fourth Key on the Fourth Gate
Face the direction of the compass ruled by the Fourth Gate, which is southeast by east-that is, slightly to the left of the southeast point. Visualize the closed gate of the walled city before you just as though it were a real gate in an ancient walled city, and make sure that it is large enough for you to walk through. Take the time to create it on the astral level in precise detail.
With the image of the gate clear in your mind and projected upon the astral level to the direction southeast by east, speak the following invocation to Yog-Sothoth, taking care to insert those references that are specific to the Fourth Gate:
Guardian of the Gate! Defender of the Door! Watcher of the Way! Who art the stout Lock, the slender Key, and the turning Hinge! Lord of All Transition, without whom there is no coming in or going out, I call thee! Keeper of the Threshold, whose dwelling place is between worlds, I summon thee! Yog-Sothoth, wise and great lord of the Old Ones, I invoke thee!
By the authority of the dreaded name, Azathoth, that few dare speak, I charge thee, open to me the gateway of Pisces the Fishes that lies between the blazing pillar Alpherg on the right hand and the blazing pillar Al Rischa on the left hand. As the solar chariot [or, lunar chariot] crosses between these pillars, I enter the city of the Necronomicon through its Fourth Gate. Selah!
Visualize the key of the Fourth Gate in your right hand some six inches long and made of cast silver. Feel its weight, texture, and shape as you hold it. Extend your right arm and use the key as a pointer to project upon the surface of the gate the seal of the key, which should be visualized to burn on the gate in a line of white spiritual fire. Point with the astral key at the center of the gate and speak the words:
In the name of Azathoth, Ruler of Chaos, by the power of Yog-Sothoth, Lord of Portals, the Fourth Gate is opened!
Visualize the gate unlocking and opening inward of its own accord up
on a shadowed space beyond. On the astral level, walk through the gateway and stand in the dark space beyond. Focus your mind upon the particular monster of the mythos that you wish to investigate and open yourself to receive communications or impressions from this horrifying being. In a more general sense, the ritual of the Fourth Gate may be used to scry or communicate with any monstrous spirit or alien being that is grossly deformed or misshapen in mind or body.
After fulfilling the purpose for which this gate was opened, conclude the ritual by astrally passing out through the gate and visualizing it to close. Draw the seal of the Fourth Key on the surface of the gate with the astral key in your hand, and mentally cause it to lock itself shut, as it was at the beginning of the ritual. Speak the words:
By the power of Yog Sothoth, and authority of the supreme name Azathoth, I close and seal the Fourth Gate. This ritual is well and truly ended.
Allow the image of the gate to grow pale in your imagination and fade to nothingness before you turn away from the ritual direction.
The Fifth Gate
great deal of the charm and sense of place in Lovecraft's fiction stems from his determination to locate most of his stories in his native New England. He broke this rule on rare occasions, but for the most part his own tales are set in the countryside with which he had been intimately familiar from boyhood, and which he loved with a passion. His tombstone, erected by admiring fans long after his death, bears the motto, "I am Providence." The words are derived from one of Lovecraft's letters in which he makes this proclamation. So potent was his sense of time and place that he could scarcely separate his own being from the townscapes and countryside in which it had developed.
When he married Sonja Greene and went to live with his new wife in New York City, the shock of removal from his familiar Providence haunts and the disruption it caused to his thoughts and emotions nearly killed him. He contemplated suicide with such seriousness that he took to walking around the crowded, noisy streets of New York with a small bottle of deadly poison in his pocket, so that he could at any time he felt the impulse end his own life. It was perhaps more a blessing to Lovecraft than a burden when his wife was forced to leave New York and seek employment in Cleveland. The forced separation gave Lovecraft the excuse to return to Providence alone-a move that saved him from suicide, even though it ended his brief marriage.