by Donald Tyson
Long ago the Old Ones made war against a time-spanning race from a world called Yith. Great is the power of the Old Ones but greater still was the science of Yith, for all knowledge both past and future lay open to them. The Yithians banished to exile beneath the ground all those Old Ones who had dwelt on the surface of this world in windowless stone cities, sealing the entrances to their caverns with massive doors of black stone. There were other Old Ones not of the cities who took no part in the war, but fled into the heavens through the gates of Yog-Sothoth. The Yithians made no attempt to pursue them. In this way the Old Ones were divided. Those bound to this world by the craft of the Yithians endure below, deep under the ruins of the bygone cities of the time lords, but the Old Ones who did not take part in the war continue to dwell in the airy heights between this world and the higher worlds. Only now and then, when the walls between worlds thin and the gates gape, do they descend to walk in wild places as of old, unseen and unknown.
They cannot long tolerate the surface of this world, for with the passage of aeons the stars have gone wrong in the sky and send down rays poisonous to the alien flesh of the Old Ones. Their old foes, the Yithians, have departed into the future, but the Old Ones are unable to claim their heritage until the stars complete their helical turnings and once more come right in the heavens, as they were of old. Then will the gates of Yog-Sothoth open wide, and the Old Ones descend from the sky and ascend from their crypts to rebuild their windowless cities upon the ruins that remain, and rule this world and all that subsist upon it. Men shall become their slaves, as they were when mighty Cthulhu cast his thoughts across land and sea into their dreams, before R’lyeh sank beneath the waves.
Long have the Old Ones who dwell in the heights sought to breed in the wombs of mortal women hybrids that can tolerate the poison of the stars. To those who aid them in this purpose they grant occult knowledge and power over other men. Sometimes these hybrid offspring resemble their fathers, and walk the earth vast and invisible, while others favor their mothers and wear shapes that approximate the human body. They lack purpose until inhabited by the minds of the dwellers in the heights, and then they seek to fulfill the great labor of the Old Ones, the Work of the Trapezohedron, the reason for which that race traveled across the vasts of space and through many dimensions of reality to reside on this globe. The children of men who aid them in their work are rewarded. Those who hinder them are punished.
By the Long Chant of the Necronomicon is the gate of Yog-Sothoth opened, and the way laid bare for the Old Ones to descend into their prepared vessels of lower flesh, both those of mixed blood and those wholly human. Only mortals who have prepared themselves are worthy to carry for a time the spirits of the Old Ones and serve their great work of restoration, the elevation of the fallen queen of heaven to her empty throne. No mortal possessed by an Old One can bear the presence of that spirit for more than a cycle of the moon without madness. They are ancient beyond reckoning and their alien thoughts are not wholesome to the minds of men, but rot the tissues of the brain and render them down to a putrid slime.
Great in the heavens are the Old Ones, low in the dust is man, but higher than mankind are those men who dedicate themselves in service to the great work of the Old Ones, the cleansing of this world that will alone restore her purity, and allow her elevation back to her former high estate, from which she fell into this pit, where she is ceaselessly defiled by life.
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The Fallen Earth
Before the glistening effluvium of this universe spilled forth from the cosmic egg, the globe upon which we dwell was the goddess Barbelzoa, beloved and only daughter of he whose true name may not be spoken, but who is called in the tongue of the Old Ones, as it is used among our race, Azathoth. She sat upon the left hand of the throne of creation, and her beauty and wisdom were the twin shining stars of her eyes, so resplendent that no shadow could endure to approach to the throne. The music of her father’s flute trilled forth with pure harmonies, and the twelve gigantic gods who dance upon empty space about the throne, sustaining the web of realities with their measured steps, continued with grace and decorum. The trilling notes of the flute spiraled outward unsullied and brought forth a universe filled with bright stars.
The chief messenger and soul of the dancing gods, who is named Nyarlathotep in the tongue of the Old Ones as it is used by men, looked upon Barbelzoa from his throne seat at the right hand of Azathoth, and he desired to possess her purity. Behind the back of her father, he took the virgin goddess by force, in a way that is not like the way of men, but is without the joining of flesh. He gained nothing by his treachery, for her brightness died within his darkness and left behind it only a bitterness on his tongue. In her shame, the goddess could not bear to face wise Azathoth on his throne, who could see into all hearts. She cast herself despairing down from the mount of the triple wisdom seat, down the ninety-three steps and over the edge of the abyss into the wilderness of stars.
The lower she fell, the more of her shining substance turned to dull and solid matter. Nyarlathotep pursued her like a stooping dragon. She heard his cry of rage in her mind and pressed her transformed body of dense matter around herself to conceal her shining nature. Tighter and tighter she wrapped her solidifying form around herself, so that she became a globe no different in outward features from millions of other globes that revolve around the stars spun forth on the music of her father’s flute. The weight of matter pressing upon her soul sent her into a deep sleep that is like death. This she did not anticipate, but she could not escape it. In this sleep she dreams, and watches in her dreams what transpires upon the surface of the sphere that is her material body, but she never remembers her true name, or how she cast herself from a high estate down through the gateways of many dimensions into this hellish plane.
When Azathoth learned of Barbelzoa’s plunge into the depths of matter, his grief drove him mad. With his own fingernails he raked out his eyes, and in sympathy the twelve dancing gods became blind. His flute shrieked and cracked, so that it no longer gave forth pure notes, but forever after made music that was imperfect. He tore off his fine robes and squatted naked and disheveled on his throne, which turned black from the blackness of his despair. He forgot himself in madness. His hair became matted, his body clotted with his own filth. He could not cease to play his flute, for that is his very reason to exist, but the music that came forth was disordered, and caused the dancing of the twelve blind gods to stumble and falter. The creations that arose from their dance were flawed.
After measureless ages of searching the length and breadth of the cosmos, Nyarlathotep found the sphere of Barbelzoa circling a small but ancient yellow star, far removed from the center of creation. In spite of all his arts, he failed to awaken her from her dreaming slumber at the center of this world. He called upon the servants of his kind who are known as the Old Ones to raise this sphere from the pit of matter to the high seat from which she had fallen, but the Old Ones were frustrated by the countless forms of life that had arisen to inhabit the lands and seas of its surface. So much corporeal life could not be lifted through the highest gate.
Nyarlathotep then commanded that the surface of the earth be wiped clean of all life, but before the Old Ones could fulfill his command, they were attacked by the time-travelers from Yith, who are wisest of all races in the universe and potent in warfare. The Old Ones were defeated and their forces split, some imprisoned in caverns beneath the ground and others sheltering themselves between the spheres of the heavens behind the sealed gates of Yog-Sothoth. Before they could reunite their forces, the stars went wrong in the heavens, and the colors of their conjoined rays became poisonous to the alien flesh of the Old Ones. The Yithians departed into the distant future, but the Old Ones remain, trapped by the stars and by time itself.
The great work of the Old Ones is to sterilize this world of all life, purifying it so that it is made fit to elevate through the highest gate of
Yog-Sothoth. Matter may with some awkwardness pass through the lower gates, but so much matter cannot be elevated through the final gate to the throne of creation. Only living matter that has become mingled with the substance of the Old Ones, and in this way transformed into hybrids half of humanity and half of the Old Ones, becomes fit for this transition. This intermingling may be accomplished not merely through the mingling of flesh, but through the mind and soul, which have the power to purify the body.
Nyarlathotep rages. He holds the mad Azathoth in contempt, but cannot kill him and take his place on the highest seat of the black throne of chaos, for if the flute of Azathoth ceased to trill its notes, and the twelve blind gods halted their dance, everything would come to an end in darkness and silence, even Nyarlathotep himself. He cannot possess the goddess Barbelzoa, for she is protected by her armor of dense matter, formed from her own solidified body, which has become her prison, and perhaps her tomb. Nyarlathotep strides across the sands of this world in the shape of a man, and he rages and schemes how to raise this globe with its shining core up to the place from which it fell so that the goddess shall be released.
First, he must restore the rule of the Old Ones upon the earth. This he seeks to accomplish through the use of human agents, and other agents who dwell in the deep places of the world that are not human. Yog-Sothoth aids him in his work, but not always willingly, for Yog-Sothoth did not approve of the violation of the goddess. Yog-Sothoth loves order and harmony and laments its loss. He aids Nyarlathotep in the hope that harmony will be restored to the cosmos when Barbelzoa awakens, but he is no friend to Nyarlathotep, and will act to frustrate the messenger of the dancing gods when opportunity presents itself.
Men and women who are wise serve Nyarlathotep, for his service is the royal road to wealth and power, and to forbidden knowledge of the lost arts of magic. Yet they never fail to give honor to Yog-Sothoth who is the gate through which all travelers must pass. Even more do they honor mad Azathoth, who is the source of all power, including that of Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth. Remember this and be wise: Yog-Sothoth opens the gate, Nyarlathotep shows the way, but Azathoth on his black throne, at the center of the chaos his madness has created, is the fulfillment of the quest. When the fallen Barbelzoa awakens and is restored to the left hand of her father, his madness will end, and true service will be remembered.
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Azathoth
Azathoth is the leader of the twelve dancing gods, the greatest of these archons and the creator of our universe, which is formed on the nothingness of space itself from intervals of sound and silence. Before the fall of his daughter Barbelzoa, who in her self-chosen exile became this earthly sphere, he piped forth the fabric of creation with elegant and stately harmonies that became beautiful things, but his grief at the loss of his daughter drove him mad, and in his drooling idiocy his music is shrill with discordances, and becomes things that are imperfect. The left-hand seat of the triple throne remains vacant. The gods continue to dance, but their steps falter and hesitate.
The blind idiot god on his black throne is still the source of all that occurs. Nothing can be done without his approval, but in his madness he gives it capriciously. Nyarlathotep on the right-hand seat of the triple throne rages at his own impotence, for no matter how vast his ambition and his lust for power, he is dependent on the approval of Azathoth, and without it he remains impotent. By lies and tricks and beguilements he wins the favor of the idiot god, who pipes the dark purposes of Nyarlathotep into being without considering the consequences of his plots.
Witches and wizards carried through the gates of Yog-Sothoth in dreams to the foot of the black throne by Nyarlathotep claim that Azathoth has the shape of a corpulent man deformed and stunted like a dwarf, but many times the size of the tallest giant that dwells in our sphere. His face is compressed and misshapen, his blind eyes are pits that ooze mucus, his blubbery lips drool as he pipes his cracked flute of bone. Rolls of fat hang down his filthy chest, and his matted black hair dangles across his rounded shoulders. His skin is gray, for he has long dwelled in darkness. The twelve who dance around the throne upon the air issue forth sighing breaths of sorrow as they pass, lamenting for the old times of beauty and light.
All these forms are no more than appearances glimpsed in dreams, for no man has stood before the throne in his own flesh and lived to tell of it. Nyarlathotep carries up the souls of those who swear to do him service, so that their names can be confirmed in the great book that is kept beneath the black throne, the book that is called the Necronomicon. Their bodies he does not carry up, for the fiery heat of the center of all creation and destruction would strip the flesh from their bones and leave them no more than ashes ground under the feet of the dancing gods.
There is a secret teaching that declares Azathoth to be the very vortex at the center of chaos from which all emerged, and into which all returns. His music is said to be no more than the eternal howling of this maelstrom, and that all who venture near it are drawn in and consumed as though by a hungry mouth, without discrimination as to rank or kind. The universe itself is said to be no more than excrement cast forth from the anus of the naked idiot god, which in the fullness of time he will consume in his madness, and thus repeat the cycle of creation and destruction.
The true name of Azathoth is known to but a few, and is not to be spoken aloud, for to speak his true name is to invoke his confirmation of whatever is willed, either for good or ill. His true name is the pattern of all creation. In his madness he gives his fiat capriciously, so that those who invoke his approval oftentimes wish they had remained silent. Even Nyarlathotep invokes the name of Azathoth with dread, never knowing if it will enable his purposes or frustrate them, and always gnashing his teeth at the necessity to seek the force of realization for his judgments from the idiot god. For it is only the music of Azathoth that makes or destroys. His madness renders Azathoth unpredictable, and causes all magics to be uncertain in their efficacy.
The true name of Azathoth is called the tetractys among Greek philosophers, but is known as the Tetragrammaton (in the Greek tongue) among the Hebrews. It is represented by ten dots in four rows, arranged in the form of a triangle with a single dot in the top row, two in the row beneath, three in the third row, and four in the final row, so that they define a triangle with equal sides. However, the tetractys is only half of the mystery of the name. The full mystery is revealed when a second tetractys is inverted and laid over the first, so that a figure is defined by the resulting thirteen dots that has the shape of a star with six points.
The top row has one dot, but the second either two or four, depending on which of the interlocking triangles is favored, the third row three dots, the fourth row either two or four, depending on which triangle is brought foremost in the mind, and the final fifth row has a single dot. This figure is the same when viewed from the top or from the bottom. The first and fifth rows are identical, composed of the monad, which are both the source and the final termination. The second and fourth rows are also the same, but they are dual in their natures, either twofold or fourfold. The third row is shared by both the upright and the inverted tetractys.
True Name of Azathoth
This geometric figure may be turned so that any of its six points is uppermost, and it will have the same structure. These six points represent the six directions of space, which form pairs of opposites that are north-south, east-west, up-down. The inner circle of six dots about the central dot represent the seven lords of the Old Ones, with Azathoth at the center of all; the inner and outer circles of twelve dots stand for the twelve blind gods that dance about the throne of Azathoth. The Hebrews have written of this in their Kabbalah, but obscurely to conceal it from the foolish. This star of thirteen points is the true name of Azathoth, which has an articulation of sounds that can destroy the universe when rightly voiced.
This is the seal of Azathoth, by which he is to be adored and petitioned. It
differs from his sigil, which is also based upon the letters of his common name but is extracted from the magic square of the sun. This seal is built up from the primal letter glyphs in his common name and is the soul of that name. Use it in all works and rituals done in his name and by his authority.
Seal of Azathoth
Sigil of Azathoth
Azathoth is best invoked for works that fall under the authority of the sphere of the sun, such as works of integration and wholeness, of self-expression and self-awareness. The place in space naturally ruled by him is the center, which lies at the heart of the six directions.
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Nyarlathotep
he who is the messenger and the soul of the blind archons who dance about the black throne of Azathoth is drawn to this earth because it is the fallen body of the goddess Barbelzoa, who cast herself from heaven into the starry pit of matter. He schemes and plots how to wipe our world clean of all material life, so that it may be elevated back to its original high estate, but he is powerless to act except at the capricious whims of mad Azathoth. He whispers his purposes into the ear of Azathoth, but some the blind idiot god heeds, and to others he remains deaf.
Even so, Nyarlathotep is the most potent of all the Old Ones. Before the fall, it had been his custom to sit on the right-hand side of the throne of Azathoth and execute the will of Azathoth on the cosmos. Now, Azathoth has no conscious will of his own, and Nyarlathotep follows his own purposes. He likes to walk up and down upon the earth in the form of a man, which he appropriated ages ago in ancient Egypt. The original soul of the pharaoh was consumed in his cold fire, and Nyarlathotep took up habitation in his shell of flesh, which he rendered deathless by means of his alchemy.