by Donald Tyson
(Polaris; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
A red star the light of which brightens and dims periodically. It is what is known as an eclipsing binary star-two stars revolve around a common center, and approximately every three days, the dimmer stellar body, Beta Persei B, passes in front of the brighter, Beta Persei A, causing Algol to dim as seen from Earth for a period of around ten hours. There is a third star in this system, Beta Persei C, but it plays no part in this regular dimming. The name `Algol" means "the ghoul" or, more loosely translated, "the demon." It has the most evil reputation of any star in the night sky. The Arab astronomers reviled it for the ill-fortune its rays carried when in significant astrological aspect in the horoscope of a man.
Algol is the location of an evil light-being referred to by Lovecraft in his story Beyond the Wall of Sleep only as the "oppressor." It was attacked by another light-being seeking vengeance for a past wrong on February 22, 1901. The being, which called itself a Nemesis, had been until then trapped in the body of an ignorant hill-country man from the Catskills named Joe Slater. When Slater died, the entity was released into the cosmos to fulfill its delayed vengeance against the oppressor dwelling in the star Algol. The arrival of the Nemesis at Algol manifested itself in the form of a nova, or new star, which burst into existence near Algol in the year 1901. Novas are not actually new stars, but explosions of existing stars, which cause them to become visible for the first time due to their increased brightness, but ancient astronomers did not know this and assumed that they were new stars being born.
Lovecraft, who was a keen amateur astronomer, had nothing to say in his story about the limitation of the speed of light, which would have delayed the observation from Earth of the nova that burst forth near Algol until approximately ninety-three years after its occurrence. However, the entity that inhabited Joe Slater demonstrated from remarks it made to the narrator of Lovecraft's story that it could travel through time. It must be assumed that when it left the flesh of the dying man Slater, it traveled not only through space toward Algol, but back through time, so that its battle with the oppressor took place in the past, but was witnessed in the present by astronomers on Earth as a nova on the same night that Slater died.
(Beyond the Wall of Sleep)
Described as winking "ruddily" just before dawn above a cemetery on a low hill. Most stars do not wink-atmospheric disturbances cause them to appear to flicker even though their light remains constant. This is more apt to occur when the star is near the horizon, as its light passes through more intervening air. The exceptions are variable stars, such as Algol, which actually do increase and decrease in brightness, although this change in magnitude is more gradual than a winking or flickering.
(Polaris)
In The Haunter of the Dark, the poet Robert Harrison Blake refers to the "ultimate void of the black planets." At the time he makes the reference, he is under the telepathic influence of an avatar of Nyarlathotep, a creature that cannot bear any amount of light, so it is reasonable to assume that the black planets are the home of this creature, which was called to Earth through the black stone known as the Shining Trapezohedron. It may be speculated that these planets circle a dead star that emits no light.
(The Haunter of the Dark)
A star beyond our galaxy, the central cavern of which is inhabited by a race of intelligent beings that have dealings with the Mi-Go. By "dark," Lovecraft presumably means that the star has exhausted all its nuclear fuel and has gone cold. The brains of a number of these beings were kept by the Mi-Go in metal cylinders in Vermont.
(The Whisperer in Darkness)
A plateau on the surface of Venus riddled with holes that are rumored to conceal an unknown alien species.
(In the Walls of Eryx)
A plateau on Venus that is also known as Eryx, which contains a remarkable maze formed from transparent walls that are completely invisible to the human eye.
(In the Walls of Eryx)
A misty lake upon an alien planet in the Hyades star cluster, upon the shore of which is located the fabulous city of Carcosa. Further along the lake is the city of Yhtill. This unnamed planet has twin suns, and more than one moon. Lake Hali is mentioned by Robert W. Chambers in his 1895 story collection The King In Yellow, and it was from this source that Lovecraft derived the name. Chambers got the name from the 1891 story An Inhabitant of Carcosa by the writer Ambrose Bierce, who used it for a character, not a place.
(The Whisperer in Darkness)
One of the outer moons of Jupiter, which is not specified by Lovecraft in The Shadow Out of Time, had a race of intelligent beings six million years in the past. It was visited by the time-traveling Yithians in their cosmos-spanning search for new knowledge. The outer moons are those that lie beyond the orbit of Callisto, the outermost of the four Galilean moons, large moons observed by Galileo in 1610, which were for centuries the only moons of Jupiter known. Lovecraft may have intended Himalia, discovered in 1904; Elara, discovered in 1905; Pasiphie, discovered in 1908; or Sinope, discovered in 1914.
The fourth moon is said in Beyond the Wall of Sleep to be the home of a proud race of insect-philosophers. Probably the moon Ganymede is intended-it is the fourth moon in order from Jupiter of those discovered prior to 1919, the year Lovecraft wrote his story. In 1892 the small moon Amalthea was discovered inside the orbit of the innermost of the four Galilean moons, lo, making Ganymede the fourth moon of those known to Lovecraft. The assumption is often made that Lovecraft's fourth moon is Callisto, but Lovecraft was an amateur astronomer and would have been well aware of the existence of Amalthea.
In Through the Gates of the Silver Key mention is made of "an untellable secret from the close-glimpsed mists of Jupiter." This reference is to the planet Jupiter itself, which is covered in thick cloud bands. No indication is given as to what this secret might be, but it may have involved the Great Red Spot, a vast anti-cyclonic storm on Jupiter that has been raging for many centuries, and was visible to Galileo when he first examined Jupiter through his telescope.
(The Shadow Out of Time; Beyond the Wall of Sleep)
A world on the edge of our solar system, that lies beyond the orbit of Pluto.
(Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
A double planet that at one time revolved around the star Arcturus. It was the home of a race that flew across the gulf of space to Earth and settled in ancient Hyperborea, where they worshipped Tsathoggua. By "double planet" Lovecraft probably meant a planet with a moon that is almost as large as the planet itself.
(Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
The surface of this planet is occupied by sprawling "cyclopean ruins." In making this revelation, Lovecraft anticipated those who claim that there is a great stone face lying on the Martian surface, and that it is surrounded by pyramids and other structures. Astronomers dismiss these more recent speculations as misinterpretations of photographic information.
(Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
This planet will be inhabited in the future by an intelligent species of bulbous vegetable beings who will be taken over by the time-spanning minds of the Great Race of Yith in one of their periodic migrations of self-preservation. The Yithians will go to Mercury from Earth after leaving the bodies of the race of intelligent beetles that will arise on Earth following the passing away of mankind.
(The Shadow Out of Time)
In At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft indicated that the material that formed the Moon had been wrenched from the South Pacific by some unspecified cataclysm. The theory that the Moon was formed from material torn away from the Earth was quite popular among scientists, as a way of accounting for why our planet, alone among the smaller rocky planets of this star system, should have such a large satellite. In the same story it is said that the scientist Danford, whose mind was shattered when he looked back at the mountains of madness in Antarctica while fleeing from the city of the Elder Things in an airplane, sometimes mutters about "the moon-ladder," but there i
s no explanation as to what he may intend by this cryptic term.
In The Doom That Came to Sarnath, the alien race that inhabited the gray stone city of Ib, in the land of Mnar, was said on the brick cylinders of Kadatheron to have descended to Mnar in the distant past one night while wrapped in a mist, along with their city and the lake on the margin of which it was situated. Long after the destruction of Ib by the men of Sarnath, the stone idol of the god of Ib, Bokrug the water-lizard, was worshipped in the high temple at Ilarnek at the phase of the gibbous Moon.
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath relates that the gods of Earth like to dance on mountaintops under the moonlight. The zoogs gave Randolph Carter a flask of moonwine, a highly intoxicating alcoholic liquor brewed on the Moon. The cats of Earth's dreamlands leap from tall spires to the Moon, and frolic on its far side, which Lovecraft inaccurately referred to as its "dark side." There is no dark side of the Moon-both the side turned to us and the far side are by turns illuminated and dark as the Moon revolves around the Earth. The seas of the dreamlands are plied by black galleys from the cities on the far side of the Moon, which are inhabited by inhuman moon-beasts. These moon-beasts employ the almost-human inhabitants of the plateau of Leng as their agents in dealings with men.
(At the Mountains of Madness; The Doom That Came to Sarnath; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
The brains of two beings from this planet were kept in metal cylinders by the Mi-Go of Vermont. Lovecraft hints at the strangeness of the appearance of these creatures, but gives no details. The surface of Neptune is spotted by white fungi.
(The Whisperer in Darkness; Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
The Pole Star links the souls of two men across a span of 26,000 years. In the time of the northern kingdom of Lomar it occupied the celestial pole, and in our own time it has returned to this position in the heavens. A man of Olathoe, a city in Lomar, betrayed his people by falling asleep on guard duty beneath the rays of this star, resulting in the slaughter of his city by an attacking army. In the America of the present another man, into whom the soul of the guard has reincarnated, suffers each night beneath the accusing, icy gaze of Polaris, aware of his crime in his former life but unable to make amends.
According to Joshi (A Dreamer, p. 109) this story was inspired by a dream Lovecraft had in the spring of 1918, in which Lovecraft found himself hovering as a disembodied awareness above a strange city of "many palaces and gilded domes" that lay between ranges of "gray, horrible hills." Lovecraft transformed his dream city into the Olathoe of his story.
(Polaris)
A planet more distant than Yuggoth-which we know as Pluto-where the Haunter of the Dark, who is an avatar of Nyarlathotep, stopped on its long flight across space on leathern wings from the black planets to our Earth. Lovecraft mentions in The Shadow Out of Time an "unknown trans-Plutonian planet" within our solar system, but eighteen million years in our future. Perhaps Shaggai is that unnamed planet. Or it may be that Shaggai lies entirely outside the solar system.
(The Haunter of the Dark; The Shadow Out of Time)
A world in one of the twenty-eight galaxies beyond our Milky Way that are accessed by the race on Yaddith using light-beam or light-wave envelopes. It is one of the worlds beyond our galaxy visited by Randolph Carter while he inhabits the alien body of a wizard of Yaddith named Zkauba. Two other worlds visited by Carter in the same manner are Mthura and Kath. Carter mentions no details about these worlds.
(Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
The only human settlement on the planet Venus. At the time the events related in the story in the Walls of Eryx occur, this town has existed for seventy-two years. Since Venus is presently uninhabitable, we must assume that this story is set in the distant future, or in some alternative reality.
(In the Walls of Eryx)
A planet beyond the orbit of Pluto that will be the habitation of a race of half-plastic entities some eighteen million years in our future. We know of them only because they are visited by the time-travelers of the Great Race of Yith.
(The Shadow Out of Time)
An intelligent race will evolve on Venus in the distant future, long after the human race has ceased to exist. The time-traveling Yithians visited future Venus in their projected minds to inhabit the bodies of this race and to acquire their collective knowledge.
(The Shadow Out of Time)
In The Diary of Alonzo Typer, Yaddith is mentioned in a note written in low Latin by the wizard Claes van der Heyl on a piece of dried reptilian skin. The note is wrapped around a strange key found by the occultist Alonzo Typer in 1935, in the old deserted farmhouse of the van der Heyl clan, in the decaying village of Chorazin, located near Attica in the state of New York. The wizard wrote, "may the Lords of Yaddith succor me," when referring to his dreaded use of the key.
Yaddith is a distant planet inhabited by an alien race. In Through the Gates of the Silver Key a member of that race, the wizard Zkauba, found himself unwillingly forced to share his inhuman body with the consciousness of Randolph Carter, who took command of it and used it in an effort to find his way back to his own body.
(The Diary of Alonzo Typer; Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
The alien planet in a distant galaxy that is the home of the worm-like race, to which the mind of George Campbell was transported when he gazed into the depths of a crystal cube in the Canadian woods. Its blue sun casts a sapphire light over its surface. This name was not invented by Lovecraft, but appears in the portion of the collaborative story The Challenge From Beyond that was written by Robert E. Howard.
(The Challenge From Beyond)
The planet of origin of the Great Race, described by Lovecraft as "that black, aeondead orb in far space." The Yithians were able to explore the distant past of their home world by the use of their mental time traveling.
(The Shadow Out of Time)
The planetoid we know as Pluto. It is inhabited by the alien race of fungoidal crustaceans called the Mi-Go, who dwell in great windowless cities of black stone and grow fungus for their food in lightless gardens. This fungoidal race worships Nyarlathotep on Yuggoth, and also Yog-Sothoth, whom they call "the Beyond-One." An earlier vanished race built cyclopean bridges on Yuggoth that span rivers of flowing black pitch, but the Mi-Go have no record of their appearance or nature, although their works endure. Yuggoth is the most recent of the planets colonized by the Mi-Go-in The Whisperer in Darkness it is referred to as "the youngest child" of the star-spanning empire of the MiGo, the origin of which lies beyond "the Einsteinian space-time continuum or greatest known cosmos."
It may have been the earlier unknown race that colonized the Earth before the beginnings of terrestrial life, and placed the god Ghatanothoa in a crypt beneath the fortress atop Mount Yaddith-Go on the continent of Mu, which has since sunk beneath the waves of the Pacific. Lovecraft referred to them only as the "Yuggoth-spawn" and the "Elder Ones." If so, it may also have been this earlier race that fashioned the Shining Trapezohedron on Yuggoth before that stone was carried to Earth. These beings Lovecraft called the Old Ones. Both these works are usually attributed to the Mi-Go. However, the Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi is of the opinion (Selected Papers on Lovecraft, p. 39) that Ghatanothoa was brought to Earth and worshipped by the earlier race, which may have been indigenous to Yuggoth.
In The Horror in the Museum, the ten-foot tall amphibious creature with six legs named Rhan-Tegoth that was conveyed to London by George Rogers from northern Alaska originally came from Yuggoth, or at least Rogers believed this to be the case. Rogers spoke of "lead-gray Yuggoth, where the cities are under the warm deep sea." In Medusa's Coil, Marceline de Russy threatened to call up with magic "what lies hidden in Yuggoth."
(The Whisperer in Darkness; Out of the Aeons; The Haunter of the Dark; The Horror in the Museum; Medusa's Coil; Through the Gates of the Silver Key )
The Key to the Eighth Gate
Sun passes through Cancer: July 20-August 10
Constellati
on is represented by a crab or crayfish.
Right Pillar: Al Tarf (Arabic: al-tarf-The End). Astronomical designation: Beta Cancri. Astrological nature: Saturn-Mercury. Influence: Magnitude: 3.5-a binary. Color: orange. Sun crosses: July 20. Location: southern foot of the crab. Comments: Little lore is given for this star.
Left Pillar: Acubens (Arabic: al-Zubanah -The Claws). Astronomical designation: Alpha Cancri. Astrological nature: Saturn-Mercury. Influence: malevolent and poisonous. Magnitude: 4.2-a binary. Color: white. Sun crosses: August 4. Location: arm of the southern claw. Comments: This star was once the brightest in Cancer.
The astral gate of Cancer lies between the star of its right pillar, located on the southern foot of the Crab, and the star of its left pillar, on the arm of the southern claw. The sun enters the gate by crossing the longitude of Al Tarf, the star of the right pillar, around July 20. The solar transition of this wide gate takes fifteen days. The Sun exits the gate around August 4, when it crosses the longitude of the star of the left pillar, Acubens.
The key to the Eighth Gate opens the constellation Cancer, the dimmest of all the zodiacal constellations, allowing entry into that part of the walled city of the Necronomicon that concerns the alien worlds dreamed by Lovecraft. Use it for divining information or receiving dreams about the astral landscapes and cities of other planets.