Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

by Harms, Daniel

  At some point in the past, the Great Old Ones, who may have been created as the Elder God’s servants or even numbered among them, “rebelled” against the Elder Gods, taking certain documents from the possession of their foes and hiding them in the Great Library of Celaeno or with Ubbo-Sathla. In retribution for this affront, the Elder Gods came to earth and battled the Great Old Ones. This war concluded with the imprisonment of the Great Old Ones and the return of the Elder Gods to their homes. According to myth, the Elder Gods, including Nodens, Kthanid, and Yad-Thaddag, will arise to combat their ancient foes when the stars are right again and the Great Old Ones break free of their prisons.

  Other Elder Gods mentioned include Adaedu, Alithlai-Tyy, DveahtehsEyroix, Othkkartho (Nodens’ first-born son), Ovytonv, Urthuvn, Xislanyx, Xuthyos-Sihb’Bz, and Zehirete (the Pure and Holy Womb of Light). Very little is known about any of these.

  Most scholars do not accept this distinction, finding it unconvincing to equate the amoral Great Old Ones with “evil” and to postulate a “good” force opposing them. Some other myths acknowledge the Elder Gods’ existence while disagreeing about their nature:

  A. The Elder Gods may be the Great Ones, the little gods of Earth which rule the Dreamlands. According to these myths, the Great Ones came into existence during the sleep of the Great Old Ones. Finding the Old Ones in their tombs, the Elder Gods became terrified, sealed the tombs of the evil ones with the Elder Sign, and placed them in the care of Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss. When Nodens sleeps, then the Great Old Ones will emerge to rule the world. The Great Ones will be powerless to stop this or protect humanity.

  B. The Elder Gods were the creators of this universe, and made pain and suffering possible. The Great Old Ones hope to destroy the universe, and may make a better one in the aftermath.

  C. The Elder Gods are the Antarctic Elder Things, who imprisoned the Great Old Ones for unknown reasons.

  D. The Elder Gods do exist, but are no better in nature than the Great Old Ones; the outcome for humanity will be the same in the end.

  See Aphoom Zhah; Atal; Borea; Celaeno; Cthugha; Elder Key; Elder Sign; Elysia; Glyu-Vho; Great Old Ones; gods of earth; Kthanid; Mu; Nodens; N’tse-Kaambl; R’lyeh; S’ngac; star-stone; time-clock; Ubbo-Sathla; Tiania; Ulthar; Ultharathotep; Vorvadoss; Yad-Thaddag; Zathog. (“Time in the Hourless House”, Attansio;“The Book of Preparations”, Carter; “The Lurker at the Threshold”, Derleth and Lovecraft; “The House on Curwen Street”, Derleth; “The Lair of the Star-Spawn”, Derleth and Schorer (O); Outside the Circles of Time, Grant; Keeper’s Compendium, Herber; Elysia, Lumley; “The House of the Worm”, Myers; Nightmare’s Disciple, Pulver.)

  ELDER HIEROPHANT. See High-Priest Not to be Described.

  ELDER KEY. 1) (also ELDER KEYS or ELDER RECORDS) Stone tablets inscribed by the Elder Gods which Ubbo-Sathla now preserves. Their power is tremendous; the use of only one of these incantations brought our world into this universe from the parallel dimension of the Elder Gods, and others unknown may release humanity from the Great Old Ones. Only two copies of the Keys exist on earth, but they are almost inaccessible.

  It has been suggested that the Elder Keys are identical to the Tablet of Destiny, an artifact in Sumerian and Babylonian myth which allowed its user to know and control all things.

  (“The Unbegotten Source”, Carter; “Hydra”, Kuttner (O); “From the Journals of Alexander Hale, Ph. D.: The Tablets of Destiny”, Lewis; “The Snout in the Alcove”, Myers.)

  2) Sign which antehuman wizards used to ward off powerful creatures. (“The Descent into the Abyss”, Carter and Smith.)

  ELDER SCRIPT. See Tsath-Yo.

  ELDER SIGN (also SARNATH-SIGIL, SIGN OF KISH, and STAR-STONE OF MNAR). Magical symbol which the Elder God N’tse-Kaambl (or possibly the Elder Things) created. The Elder Sign usually is drawn as as a star with an eye in the center, with a pillar of flame where the pupil should be. Other versions, including one resembling an eye in a pentagon, another which looks like a leafy branch, and a sign made with the hand, are lesser-known variants which may or may not substitute for the more traditional design.

  The Elder Sign protects its user from the minions of the Great Old Ones. Why this glyph has these effects can only be conjectured. As the Elder Gods thrust the Great Old Ones into their prisons, they might have inserted memory patterns into their foes’ minds that rendered the Great Old Ones helpless against certain syllables and sigils, of which the Elder Sign was one. An Elder Sign is carved on the doorway of Cthulhu’s tomb, the supposed handiwork of three Elder Things. Likewise, large quantities of stones engraved with this symbol imprisoned Shudde-M’ell and his cthonians in G’harne and Ithaqua on Borea.

  The degree to which the Elder Sign will protect a human who holds it in front of a Mythos creature is debatable. Some say it will protect them from even human servants of the Mythos, others from the non-human followers of the Great Old Ones only, and still others hold that it provides no measurable defense whatsoever in such cases. A single stone holding off a Great Old One for even a few seconds is very unlikely.

  One reference cites the Elder Sign as setting free the imprisoned forces of darkness. The meaning of this is unclear, though, and may refer to another design entirely. The people of the Dreamlands believe that only a human can make the Elder Sign, using this to discover whether suspicious individuals are demons in disguise. At least one reference states that an Elder Sign made in the mind can be sufficient to oppose the Old Ones.

  [Lovecraft himself seems to have had no consistent idea of what the Elder Sign was supposed to mean, though later authors decided it was a protective sign. HPL once drew the Elder Sign in one of his letters, reprinted in Selected Letters III (p. 216), making it look like a short branch. Derleth did not see this letter before he came up with his own conception of the Elder Sign, the more familiar star-sign that is known today.]

  See Book of Dzyan; byakhee; Codex Dagonensis; cthonians; Elder Gods; G’harne; Mnar; Necronomicon (appendices); nightgaunts; N’tse-Kaambl; R’lyeh; Saaamaaa Ritual; Shudde-M’ell; Kish, Sign of; star-stone; T’sman Manuscript; Wilmarth Foundation; Yog-Sothoth; Ythogtha. (“The Lurker at the Threshold”, Derleth and Lovecraft; “Spawn of the Maelstrom”, Derleth and Schorer; The Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names, Hay, ed.; “The Descendant”, Lovecraft (O); “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft; “The Messenger”, Lovecraft; Selected Letters III, Lovecraft; The Burrowers Beneath, Lumley; Spawn of the Winds, Lumley; “The Snout in the Alcove”, Myers; Nightmare’s Disciple, Pulver; Necronomicon, Tyson.)

  ELDER THINGS (or PRIMORDIAL ONES; see also OLD ONES). 1) Alien creatures whose features included elements of both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. An Elder Thing resembled a cylinder that tapered at either end. From the top of this cylinder sprouted a starfish-shaped head with an eye at the end of each appendage, a set of cilia which enabled the Thing to sense its surroundings without light, and five tubes for eating. Five muscular tentacles tipped with paddles sprouted from its base, five sets of tentacles protruded at regular intervals around the cylinder’s center, and five retractable wings rounded out the creature’s anatomy. The Elder Things preferred to live beneath the water, but they could dwell on land or fly with equal ease.

  The Elder Things came to our planet when it was still young, flying to our world through outer space, possibly from Uranus or Neptune. Previously, they had conquered and seeded hundreds of other worlds with life. They built a great city near the South Pole, and migrated from there to settle much of the planet. While performing these feats of colonization, they may have created Ubbo-Sathla, the source of all earthly life, a servitor race, the shoggoths, and many forms of earthly life, including humans.

  The culture of the Elder Things was highly developed. Their art is best manifested in their bas-reliefs, which depicted their history and lives in stunning detail. Their architecture allowed them to create stupendous stone buildings, often showing a five-pointed pattern in imitation of their anatomy. This s
ame pattern could be found in their writing, appearing as dots in concentric circles along five radii, and their coinage, made of green soapstone. They appeared to have no religion, though they feared an unknown entity lurking beyond their city and revered the DNA helix as the source of all life.

  During their heyday, these beings fought wars with a wide variety of races, including the spawn of Cthulhu, the mi-go, and the Great Race of Yith. They also experienced an insurrection of their shoggoth servants that was brutally put down. Though they often triumphed, the conflicts took their toll, and the Elder Things eventually abandoned most of their cities. Their science and art, however, remained as great as ever.

  As the cold crept over their Antarctic home, the Elder Things decided that they wanted no more to do with the outer world. They removed themselves to a vast underground lake beneath their first and greatest city in the mountains near the pole. No traces of them have been discovered since, unless Professor Gordon Walmsley’s research and the reports of the Pabodie and Starkweather-Moore expeditions are to be believed.

  Recent reports from Kharkhov Station have attributed spectacular psychic abilities, including psychokinesis, telepathy, and the domination of others, to the Old Ones. These abilities may be strong enough that they manifest even after the Old Ones in an area have passed on. They also suggest that these creatures created humanity for their mental potential, which will be harvested in the near future. This is the only report this time that suggests such abilities and goals, however.

  [In “At the Mountains of Madness”, Lovecraft uses the term “Elder Things” to refer to these beings, but he uses “Old Ones” more often in that story. The “Elder Things” in “The Dunwich Horror”, on the other hand, seem much more akin to the Great Old Ones. Chaosium applies the term “Elder Things” to these creatures so as not to confuse them with the other “Old Ones”.]

  See Atlantis; Colour out of Space; Cthulhu; Elder Sign; Elder Things; Eltdown Shards; flying polyps; G’harne Fragments; mi-go; Mu; Nath; Nyogtha; Old Ones; Pnakotic Manuscripts; proto-shoggoths; R’lyeh; Shining Trapezohedron; shoggoths; Spheres of Nath; star-spawn of Cthulhu; Ubbo-Sathla; Winged Ones; Yian-Ho; yuggs. (Hive, Curran; Beyond the Mountains of Madness, Engan and Engan; “An Item of Mutual Interest”, Glancy; “At the Mountains of Madness”, Lovecraft (O); “In the Vaults Beneath”, Lumley; Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia, Ward with Kuntz.)

  2) The creatures known more commonly as flying polyps. (“The Shadow out of Time”, Lovecraft (O).)

  ELDIN THE WANDERER (?-1979). Hero of the Dreamlands. In the waking world, Eldin was Leonard Dingle, a professor of psychology and anthropology and a lecturer on the significance of dreams. He had been a well-travelled dreamer during his lifetime, and he took up residence in those lands permanently following his death. With his partner David Hero, he has been on journeys throughout the dream world. He currently serves King Kuranes as a special agent.

  See Hero. (Hero of Dreams, Lumley (O); Mad Moon of Dreams, Lumley; Ship of Dreams, Lumley.)

  ELEMENTAL THEORY. Classification system that links each Great Old One with one of the four elements. This system first appears in the works of the Comte d’Erlette, and Professor Shrewsbury later advocated the system. These classifications are as follows:

  Air: Hastur the Unspeakable, Ithaqua, Lloigor, Zhar

  Earth: Azathoth (?), Cyäegha, Nyarlathotep (?), Nyogtha, Shub-Niggurath, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth (?)

  Fire: Aphoom Zhah, Cthugha

  Water: Cthulhu, Dagon, Ghatanothoa, Hydra, Zoth-Ommog

  While this theory looks workable at first glance, it falls apart upon scrutiny. For example, if Cthulhu is indeed a water-elemental, why is he currently imprisoned under the ocean, where the water blocks his telepathic signals? And how can Yog-Sothoth, the Outer God who exists in all times and places, be connected with any certainty to the element of earth? (Some have attempted to solve this problem by classifying Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, and Yog-Sothoth as “aethyr” elementals, but this does little to alleviate the confusion.) Also, traditional thought holds that the forces of earth and air were opposites, as were those of fire and water. In this cosmology, however, the fire beings oppose their counterparts of earth, as the air beings fight those of water.

  In short, the elemental theory does appear to apply in some cases (especially in the use of the Vach-Viraj incantation on “earth” beings), but in others it easily leads to confusion and is not particularly useful.

  See Cthugha; Cthulhu; Vach-Viraj. (“Darkness, My Name Is”, Bertin; “The Book of Preparations”, Carter; “Zoth-Ommog”, Carter; “The Thing that Walked on the Wind”, Derleth (O); Keeper’s Compendium, Herber; “Those Who Wait”, Wade.)

  ELLERY, (PROFESSOR) DEWART. Professor in the Miskatonic University Department of Metallurgy who analyzed the metallic structure Gilman found in the witch-house. He later joined with other faculty members of Miskatonic to investigate the Mythos.

  See Emeritus Alcove. (Arkham Unveiled, Herber et. al.; “To Arkham and the Stars”, Leiber; “The Dreams in the Witch-House”, Lovecraft (O).)

  ELTDOWN SHARDS. Pottery shards found near Eltdown in southern England in 1882 (though one source maintains that they were found in Greenland in 1903). Psychic evidence from Professor Turkoff of Beloin College suggests that the Elder Things inscribed these ceramics and buried them when Great Britain was part of Pangaea. Lin Carter speculates that the original authors of the work were instead the Great Race of Yith. Comparisons of these shards to similar documents, however, suggest that the Elder Things were the authors, so any Great Race copies were probably translated later.

  The shards, which were discovered in a Triassic rock stratum, are inscribed with many strange markings of unknown meaning. The first two scholars to examine the Shards, Doctors Woodford and Dalton, hastily pronounced them to be untranslatable. Since the discovery of the Shards, however, several manuscripts purported to hold the true secrets of these artifacts have been circulated among certain occult groups. Around 1912, the Sussex clergyman Reverend Arthur Brooke Winters-Hall made an attempt to decipher the fragments and in 1917 published a thick pamphlet including the results of his own translation. The pamphlet was seen as being much too long to be a translation of the relatively small amount of writing found on the Shards. Nonetheless, it has been quoted in the works of many occult writers since its publication. (Gordon Whitney’s The Eltdown Shards: A Partial Translation confirms much of Winters-Hall’s work, as does Dr. Everett Sloan’s translation.)

  The book refers to the planet of Yith, from which the Great Race came to Earth, the entity known as the Warder of Knowledge, and the imprisoned mist-being PneephTaal. It also tells of the Yekubian’s colonization attempts. Many sections of this book bear a striking resemblance to the Pnakotic Manuscripts, though further work in this direction must wait for the discovery of more of the original Shards.

  Recently, another version of the Eltdown Shards was discovered inscribed on metal plates in a proto-Semitic tongue. These plates supposedly date back millions of years, but no comparison between them and the more-accepted version of the Shards has yet been attempted.

  See Avaloth; Celaeno Fragments; Pnakotic Manuscripts; Warder of Knowledge; Yekub. (“Wrath of the Wind-Walker”, Ambuehl and Price; “Zoth-Ommog”, Carter; Keeper’s Compendium, Herber; Selected Letters V, Lovecraft; “The Shadow Out of Time”, Lovecraft; “The Diary of Alonzo Typer”, Lovecraft and Lumley; “The Challenge from Beyond”, Moore et. al., “The Guardian of the Pit”, Searight; “The Warder of Knowledge”, Searight (O); “Mists of Death”, Searight and Searight; Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley.)

  ELTON, BASIL (c. 1870-?). Keeper of the North Point lighthouse near Kingsport. Basil Elton was one of the Dreamland’s greatest travellers, until he lost his dream-self in the pursuit of lost Cathuria. He was also a friend of Randolph Carter. His grandson Nathaniel continued his quest.

  See Cathuria. (“The Return of the White Ship”, Breach; “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath�
�, Lovecraft; “The White Ship”, Lovecraft (O).)

  ELYSIA. Home of the Elder Gods. Elysia is a seemingly infinite land in which the chosen of the Elder Gods from many different worlds and dimensions live together in harmony. Only those whom the Elder Gods deem worthy may enter Elysia, and the journey there is long and difficult, even with the help of Elysia’s lords themselves.

  See Elder Gods; Great Trees; N’hlathi; Tiania. (Elysia, Lumley; The Transition of Titus Crow, Lumley (O).)

  EMERITUS ALCOVE. Faculty lounge on the Miskatonic University campus that served as a meeting place for senior professors who had met with the forces of the Mythos. Its membership has included Danforth, William Dyer, Dewart Ellery, Francis Morgan, Nathaniel Peaslee, Wingate Peaslee, Hiram Upham, and Albert Wilmarth. This group was known to have continued the research which brought its members to the Mythos, and its views toward some alien species might not have been entirely unsympathetic. By the mid-Eighties, only Danforth and Morgan remained of this group.

  (“To Arkham and the Stars”, Leiber (O); Other Nations, Marsh and Marsh.)

  ENCHANTED WOOD. Forest beyond the Gate of Deep Slumber through which a dreamer enters the Dreamlands. The Enchanted Wood is relatively safe, save for the furry zoogs that inhabit it. More dangerous creatures are rumored to live in its depths.

  See Dreamlands; Oukranos; Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber; zoogs. (“The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, Lovecraft (O); “Kadath/The Vision and the Journey”, Winter-Damon.)

  EPHIROTH. Mythical land mentioned in connection with the Cthulhu myth-cycle.

  [Lin Carter used this as a synonym for Lh-Yib at one point, but this was most likely a mistake.]

  (The Burrowers Beneath, Lumley; “The Sister City”, Lumley (O).)

  ESOTERIC ORDER OF DAGON. Cult devoted to the worship of Dagon, Hydra, and Cthulhu. Captain Obed Marsh, who had learned a great deal in Polynesia about Dagon, founded the Order around 1840 in Innsmouth, Massachusetts. The new religion he preached included elements of the native tales intermingled with Holy Scripture and the doctrines of Middle-Eastern fertility cults. The Esoteric Order of Dagon drove out all other churches and fraternal orders in Innsmouth and set itself up as the only religious center in the community.