View source for Azathoth

{{Short description|Fictional deity in the Cthulhu Mythos}}
{{about|a deity in fiction|the short story named after it|Azathoth (short story)}}
{{distinguish|Anathoth|Astaroth|Ashtoreth|Ataroth|Azeroth}}
{{Infobox character
| name = Azathoth
| series = [[Cthulhu Mythos]]
| image = Azathoth.jpg
| caption = Artist's depiction of Azathoth
| first = "[[Azathoth (short story)|Azathoth]]"
| last = 
| creator = [[H. P. Lovecraft]]
| portrayer = 
| voice = 
| lbl1 = 
| data1 = 
| lbl2 = 
| data2 = 
| nickname = 
| alias = 
| species = [[Cthulhu Mythos deities#Other Gods|Other God]]
| gender = 
| occupation = 
| title = Nuclear Chaos<br />Daemon Sultan<br />Blind Idiot God<br />Lord of All Things<br />Lord of Nighted Chaos
| family = 
| spouse = 
| significant_other = 
| children = [[Nyarlathotep]] (son)<br />[[Nameless Mist]] (offspring)<br />[[Cthulhu Mythos deities#Darkness|Darkness]] (offspring)
| relatives = [[Yog-Sothoth]] (grandson)<br />[[Shub-Niggurath]] (granddaughter)<br />[[Nug and Yeb|Nug]] (great-grandchild)<br />[[Nug and Yeb|Yeb]] (great-grandchild)<br />[[Wilbur Whateley]] (great-grandson)<br />[[Cthulhu]] (great-great-grandson)<br />[[Tsathoggua]] (great-great-grandson)<br /> [[Hastur]] (great-grandson)<br /> [[Ithaqua]] (great-great-grandson)<br />Zhar and Lloigor (great-grandchild) and The Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath (great-grandchild)
| religion = 
| nationality = 
}}

'''Azathoth''' is a deity in the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] and [[Dream Cycle]] stories of writer [[H. P. Lovecraft]] and other authors. He is the supreme deity of the Cthulhu Mythos and the ruler of the [[Cthulhu Mythos deities#Outer Gods|Outer Gods]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Agnew |first=Jeremy |title=The Age of Dimes and Pulps: A History of Sensationalist Literature, 1830-1960 |publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers |year=2018 |isbn=978-1-4766-6948-9 |location=Jefferson, North Carolina |pages=198 |language=en}}</ref> and may also be seen as a symbol for [[Chaos (cosmogony)|primordial chaos]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bilstad |first1=T. Allan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MevMCyh7hRUC&pg=PA53 |title=The Lovecraft Necronomicon Primer: A Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos |date=2009 |publisher=Llewellyn Publications |isbn=978-0738713793 |pages=53–55 |access-date=6 March 2020}}</ref> therefore being the most powerful entity in the entirety of the Cthulhu Mythos.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Leiber Jr. |first=Fritz |author-link=Fritz Leiber |title=H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism |publisher=Ohio University Press |year=1980 |isbn=0-8214-0577-2 |editor-last=Joshi |editor-first=S. T. |editor-link=S. T. Joshi |pages=54 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Lovecraft's Monsters |publisher=[[Tachyon Publications]] |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-61696-121-3 |editor-last=Datlow |editor-first=Ellen |editor-link=Ellen Datlow |location=San Francisco, CA |pages=363 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last1=Enright |first1=Lyle |title=Theology and H.P. Lovecraft |last2=Bennett |first2=Nick |publisher=Lexington Books/Fortress Academic |year=2022 |isbn=9781978711709 |editor-last=Freeman |editor-first=Austin M. |pages=132–133 |language=en |chapter=When God Goes Mad: Lovecraft, Von Balthasar, and the Split between Transcendence and Goodness}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Taylor |first=Reece |date=2022-12-11 |title=Why Lovecraft's Most Powerful God Can't Be Adapted to Film |url=https://www.cbr.com/lovecraft-azathoth-adaptation-problem/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=CBR |language=en}}</ref>

Azathoth is referred to as the "daemon-sultan" and "Lord of All Things", whose throne is at the center of "Ultimate Chaos".<ref name=":0" /> In his genealogy chart from 1933 of his mythos, Lovecraft places Azathoth as the single being at the very top from which everything else descends.

The name "Azathoth" was first mentioned in a note from 1919 by Lovecraft, and Azathoth was first formally introduced in the novella ''[[The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath]]'', which was finished in 1927, but not published until 1943, though the name was the title of an [[Azathoth (short story)|unfinished novel]] in 1922 by Lovecraft, which was not published until 1938.

==H. P. Lovecraft==

===Inspiration===
The first recorded mention of the name Azathoth was in a note Lovecraft wrote to himself in 1919 that read simply, "AZATHOTH—hideous name". Mythos editor [[Robert M. Price]] argues that Lovecraft could have combined the biblical names [[Anathoth]] ([[Jeremiah]]'s home town) and [[Azazel]]—mentioned by Lovecraft in "[[The Dunwich Horror]]".<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, [https://archive.today/20090108052810/http://www.mythostomes.com/content/view/63/70/ "The Dunwich Horror"], ''The Dunwich Horror and Others'', p. 158.</ref> Price also points to the [[alchemy|alchemical]] term "[[Azoth]]", which was used in the title of a book by [[Arthur Edward Waite]], the model for the wizard Ephraim Waite in Lovecraft's "[[The Thing on the Doorstep]]".<ref>Robert M. Price, ''The Azathoth Cycle'', pp. v-vi.</ref>

Another note Lovecraft made to himself later in 1919 refers to an idea for a story: "A terrible pilgrimage to seek the nighted throne of the far daemon-sultan Azathoth."<ref>cited in Price, ''The Azathoth Cycle'', p. vi.</ref> In a letter to [[Frank Belknap Long]], Lovecraft ties this plot germ to ''[[Vathek]]'', a supernatural novel by [[William Thomas Beckford|William Beckford]] about a wicked [[caliph]].<ref>Letter to Frank Belknap Long, June 9, 1922; cited in Price, ''The Azathoth Cycle'', p. vi.</ref> Lovecraft's attempts to work this idea into a novel floundered (a 500-word fragment survives, first published under the title "[[Azathoth (short story)|Azathoth]]"<ref>[http://mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=70 "H. P. Lovecraft's original fragment, 'Azathoth'"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070814112342/http://mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=70 |date=2007-08-14 }}</ref> in the journal ''Leaves'' in 1938),<ref>{{Cite web |title=Data Page for "Azathoth" |url=https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/az.aspx |access-date=2024-05-13 |website=www.hplovecraft.com}}</ref> although Lovecraftian scholar Will Murray suggests that Lovecraft recycled the idea into his [[Dream Cycle]] novella ''[[The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath]]'', written in 1926.<ref>Price, ''The Azathoth Cycle'', p. vii.</ref>

Price sees another inspiration for Azathoth in [[Lord Dunsany]]'s [[Mana-Yood-Sushai]], from ''[[The Gods of Pegana]]'', a creator deity "who made the gods and thereafter rested." In Dunsany's conception, MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI sleeps eternally, lulled by the music of a lesser deity who must drum forever, "for if he cease for an instant then MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will start awake, and there will be worlds nor gods no more." This oblivious creator god accompanied by supernatural musicians is a clear prototype for Azathoth, Price argues.<ref>Price, ''The Azathoth Cycle'', pp. viii-ix.</ref>

===Fiction===
Other than the fragmentary draft described above, ''[[The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath]]'' was the first fiction by Lovecraft to mention Azathoth, and describes his realm as being beyond any and everything, and in which no dreams reach, placing it beyond the [[Dream Cycle|Dreamlands]]:<ref>{{Cite web |title="The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H. P. Lovecraft |url=https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dq.aspx |access-date=2024-12-18 |website=www.hplovecraft.com}}</ref>

{{blockquote|There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.}}

Verse 22 of Lovecraft's 1929 poetry cycle ''[[Fungi from Yuggoth]]'' is entitled "Azathoth", and consists of the following:

{{blockquote|Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me<br>Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space,<br>Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,<br>But only Chaos, without form or place.<br>Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered<br>Things he had dreamed but could not understand,<br>While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and fluttered<br>In idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned.<br>They danced insanely to the high, thin whining<br>Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,<br>Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining<br>Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law.<br>"I am His Messenger," the daemon said,<br>As in contempt he struck his Master’s head.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/poetry/p289.aspx|title="Fungi from Yuggoth" by H. P. Lovecraft|website=The H.P. Lovecraft Archive}}</ref>}}

The realm in ''Fungi from Yuggoth'' is described as the chaos that is beyond dimensioned space, time, matter, form, and place. The "daemon" that claims to be Azathoth's messenger is identified by later authors as [[Nyarlathotep]], another of Lovecraft's deities.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tyson |first=Donald |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q-gJK_zagEcC&pg=PA112 |title=The 13 Gates of the Necronomicon: A Workbook of Magic |publisher=Llewellyn Worldwide |year=2012 |isbn=9780738726298 |pages=112 |language=en}}</ref>

In a 1930 letter, Lovecraft describes Azathoth as "the mindless Lord of Nighted Chaos who is the father of all other horrors & is coeval with the Ultimate Abyss itself".<ref>{{Cite book |title=Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith: 1922-1931 |publisher=Hippocampus Press |year=2020 |isbn=9781614981756 |editor-last=Schultz |editor-first=David E. |volume=1 |language=en |editor-last2=Joshi |editor-first2=S. T.}}</ref>{{Efn|The Ultimate Abyss is stated in "[[Through the Gates of the Silver Key]]" to be where the archetypes reside, the true and unimaginable forms of the Outer Gods, who are "formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds", though as facets of the Supreme Archetype. Further lies the Ultimate Gate itself, which "leads fearsomely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter". Further noted is that "the entities outside the Gates command all angles, and view the myriad parts of the cosmos in terms of fragmentary, change-involving perspective, or of the changeless totality beyond perspective, in accordance with their will".<ref>{{Cite web |title="Through the Gates of the Silver Key" by H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price |url=https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/tgsk.aspx |access-date=2024-12-13 |website=www.hplovecraft.com}}</ref>}}  [[Fritz Leiber]] describes Azathoth as the only Lovecraftian entity that is unarguably a deity instead of a powerful alien.  Leiber says he is the "perfect personification of the purposeless, mindless, cruelly indifferent cosmos of materialistic belief".<ref>{{cite book|title=Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark|last=Leiber|first=Fritz|publisher=[[Wildside Press]]|year=2003|isbn=9780809500789|pages=277–278}}</ref>

Lovecraft referred to Azathoth again in "[[The Whisperer in Darkness]]" (1931), where the narrator relates that he "started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear [[wikt:chaos|chaos]] beyond angled space which the ''[[Necronomicon]]'' had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth".<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness", ''The Dunwich Horror and Others'', p. 256.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Harman |first1=Graham |title=Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy |date=2012 |publisher=Zero Books |isbn=978-1780992525 |page=235 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XQ_tBAAAQBAJ&q=azathoth+lovecraft&pg=PA235 |access-date=6 March 2020}}</ref> Here "nuclear" most likely refers to Azathoth's central location at the nucleus of the cosmos and not to [[Nuclear physics|nuclear energy]], which did not truly come of age until after Lovecraft's death.

In "[[The Dreams in the Witch House]]" (1932), the protagonist Walter Gilman dreams that he is told by the witch Keziah Mason that "He must meet the [[Nyarlathotep|Black Man]], and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the centre of ultimate Chaos.... He must sign in his own blood the book of Azathoth and take a new secret name.... What kept him from going with her...to the throne of Chaos where the thin flutes pipe mindlessly was the fact that he had seen the name 'Azathoth' in the ''Necronomicon'', and knew it stood for a primal horror too horrible for description."<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", ''At the Mountains of Madness'', pp. 272–273.</ref> Gilman wakes from another dream remembering "the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute", and decides that "he had picked up that last conception from what he had read in the ''Necronomicon'' about the mindless entity Azathoth, which rules all time and space from a curiously environed black throne at the centre of Chaos".<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", p. 282.</ref> He later fears finding himself "in the spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of Chaos wherein reigns the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth".<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", p. 293.</ref> Gilman notes that the realm itself "obeyed laws unknown to the physics and mathematics of any conceivable cosmos".<ref>{{Cite web |title="The Dreams in the Witch House" by H. P. Lovecraft |url=https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dwh.aspx |access-date=2024-12-12 |website=www.hplovecraft.com}}</ref>

The fictional poet Edward Pickman Derby, the protagonist of Lovecraft's "[[The Thing on the Doorstep]]", collects "nightmare lyrics" in a book called ''Azathoth and Other Horrors''.<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "The Thing on the Doorstep", ''The Dunwich Horror and Others'', p. 277.</ref>

The last major reference in Lovecraft's fiction to Azathoth was in 1935's "[[The Haunter of the Dark]]", which tells of "the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose center sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demonic flute held in nameless paws".<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "The Haunter of the Dark", ''The Dunwich Horror and Others'', p. 110.</ref> His title of "blind idiot god" is not to be taken as being of lesser intelligence or ignorance, but rather that Azathoth is detached from human affairs and is incomprehensible to the human mind.<ref name=":0" />  [[David Punter]] says that Lovecraft chose words to describe Azathoth with little regard to their literal meaning and instead arranged them like an incantation.  In Punter's view, Azathoth represents Lovecraft's fear that irrationality could destroy the natural order.  Thus, Azathoth can not be sought or understood in any meaningful way.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Literature of Terror: Volume 2: The Modern Gothic|last=Punter|first=David|pages=42–43|publisher=[[Routledge]]|isbn=978-0-582-29055-6|year=1996}}</ref>

[[File:LovecraftMythosFamilyTree.jpg|thumb|Genealogy of Cthulhu mythos (1933)|294x294px]]

In a letter to a [[James Ferdinand Morton Jr.|James F. Morton]] in April of 1933, Lovecraft details a family tree containing his mythos, with Azathoth at the top of the tree, in which all beings below descend from it, with Lovecraft himself posited at the bottom of the tree. With Azathoth the ancestor, his creation goes through his children such as Nyarlathotep, "The Nameless Mist," and "Darkness," of [[Yog-Sothoth]], [[Shub-Niggurath]], [[Nug and Yeb]], [[Cthulhu]], [[Tsathoggua]], and several deities and monsters that are unmentioned outside the letter, and some of Lovecraft's and [[Clark Ashton Smith]]'s fancifully-posited human forebears.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lovecraft |first=H. P. Lovecraft |url=https://archive.org/details/h.-p.-lovecraft-selected-letters-iv-1932-1934/page/n108 |title=Selected Letters IV (1932–1934) |date=1976 |isbn=978-0-87054-035-6 |editor-last=Derleth |editor-first=August |pages=183 |publisher=Arkham House |editor-last2=Turner |editor-first2=James}}</ref>

==''The Azathoth Cycle''==
In 1995, [[Chaosium]] published ''The Azathoth Cycle'', a [[Cthulhu Mythos anthology]] focusing on works referring to or inspired by the entity Azathoth. Edited by Lovecraft scholar [[Robert M. Price]], the book includes an introduction by Price tracing the roots and development of the Blind Idiot God.{{cn|date=May 2024}}

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Sources==
*{{cite book|last=Harms|first=Daniel|title=The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana|edition=2nd|year=1998|location=Oakland, CA|publisher=Chaosium|isbn=1-56882-119-0|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediacthu00dani}}
*{{cite book|last=Petersen|first=Sandy|author-link=Sandy Petersen|title=Call of Cthulhu|date=April 2001|edition=5th|location=Oakland, CA|publisher=Chaosium|isbn=1-56882-148-4}}
*{{cite book|last=Price|first=Robert M. (e.d.)|author-link=Robert M. Price|title=The Azathoth Cycle|year=1995|edition=1st|location=Oakland, CA|publisher=Chaosium|isbn=1-56882-040-2}}

==External links==
* {{librivox book | title=The Dunwich Horror | author=H. P. LOVECRAFT}}
* {{librivox book | title=The Gods of Pegāna | author=Lord DUNSANY}}
* {{librivox book | title=Vathek | author=William BECKFORD}}

{{Cthulhu Mythos}}
{{H. P. Lovecraft}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Cthulhu Mythos deities]]
[[Category:Evil deities]]
[[Category:Fictional amorphous creatures]]
[[Category:Fictional gods]]
[[Category:Fictional monsters]]
[[Category:Chaos gods]]
[[Category:Literary characters introduced in 1943]]
[[Category:Male literary villains]]
[[Category:H. P. Lovecraft characters]]