User blog:DaringAttitude4/Lovecraft Cosmology and Misconceptions

• Cosmology
• Bestiary

Introduction

Hello users! This blog aims to cover the cosmology as it is written in the stories of Howard Philips Lovecraft and the Lovecraft Circle. I will go over each and every detail that has been given regarding the cosmic structure of the Cthulhu Mythos, formally known as Yog-Sothothery. I will also clear a few misconception such as Azathoth dreaming up all of existence.

Universes and Dimensions

• In essence, there are infinite higher spatial dimensions in the Mythos, with everything in a lower-dimensional space being derived from an infinitesimal portion of something in a higher dimension, the latter of which corresponds to "substance and reality," while the former is "shadow and illusion." This hierarchy, as mentioned before, has no end, and extends up to the "dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity."

“	"The waves surged forth again, and Carter knew that the BEING had heard. And now there poured from that limitless MIND a flood of knowledge and explanation which opened new vistas to the seeker, and prepared him for such a grasp of the cosmos as he had never hoped to possess. He was told how childish and limited is the notion of a tri-dimensional world, and what an infinity of directions there are besides the known directions of up-down, forward-backward, right-left. He was shewn the smallness and tinsel emptiness of the little gods of earth, with their petty, human interests and connexions—their hatreds, rages, loves, and vanities; their craving for praise and sacrifice, and their demands for faith contrary to reason and Nature."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

“	"Then the waves increased in strength, and sought to improve his understanding, reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an infinitesimal part. They told him that every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some corresponding figure of one more dimension—as a square is cut from a cube or a circle from a sphere. The cube and sphere, of three dimensions, are thus cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions that men know only through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five dimensions, and so on up to the dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity. The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness reached by the First Gate, where ’Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient Ones. Though men hail it as reality and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

• These higher dimensions are not necessarily properties that span the whole cosmology, however, and a single spacetime continuum can easily be construed as having an indefinite number of higher-dimensional planes within itself.

“	"Any being from any part of three-dimensional space could probably survive in the fourth dimension; and its survival of the second stage would depend upon what alien part of three-dimensional space it might select for its re-entry. Denizens of some planets might be able to live on certain others—even planets belonging to other galaxies, or to similar-dimensional phases of other space-time continua—though of course there must be vast numbers of mutually uninhabitable even though mathematically juxtaposed bodies or zones of space. It was also possible that the inhabitants of a given dimensional realm could survive entry to many unknown and incomprehensible realms of additional or indefinitely multiplied dimensions—be they within or outside the given space-time continuum—and that the converse would be likewise true. This was a matter for speculation, though one could be fairly certain that the type of mutation involved in a passage from any given dimensional plane to the next higher plane would not be destructive of biological integrity as we understand it. Gilman could not be very clear about his reasons for this last assumption, but his haziness here was more than overbalanced by his clearness on other complex points. Professor Upham especially liked his demonstration of the kinship of higher mathematics to certain phases of magical lore transmitted down the ages from an ineffable antiquity—human or pre-human—whose knowledge of the cosmos and its laws was greater than ours."	„
	~ The Dreams in the Witch House

Greater Multiverse

• This is not strictly the endpoint of the material world, even, as the spacetime continuum itself is nothing but one among endless universes that themselves form an infinite chain comprising the atoms of a "super-cosmos" existing as an even larger world.

“	"I have said that there were things in some of Akeley’s letters—especially the second and most voluminous one—which I would not dare to quote or even form into words on paper. This hesitancy applies with still greater force to the things I heard whispered that evening in the darkened room among the lonely haunted hills. Of the extent of the cosmic horrors unfolded by that raucous voice I cannot even hint. He had known hideous things before, but what he had learned since making his pact with the Outside Things was almost too much for sanity to bear. Even now I absolutely refuse to believe what he implied about the constitution of ultimate infinity, the juxtaposition of dimensions, and the frightful position of our known cosmos of space and time in the unending chain of linked cosmos-atoms which makes up the immediate super-cosmos of curves, angles, and material and semi-material electronic organisation."	„
	~ The Whisperer in Darkness: VII.

• And this hierarchy extends even further, with universes existing within larger universes, and escaping from the latter and into the former is compared to breaking through the bonds of (Local) material limitations entirely.

“	"But what place is this? Is it Paradise or Hell? This is not the world I have known since birth. And those stars-I have never seen them before. Those constellations are mightier and more fiery than I ever knew in life." "There are worlds beyond worlds, universes within and without universes," said the ancient. "You are upon a different planet than that upon which you were born; you are in a different universe, doubtless in a different dimension," "Then I am certainly dead." "What is death but a traversing of eternities and a crossing of cosmic oceans? But I have not said that you are dead." "Then where in Valka's name am I?" roared Kull, his short stock of patience exhausted. "Your barbarian brain clutches at material actualities," answered the other tranquilly. "What does it matter where you are, or whether you are dead, as you call it? You are a part of that great ocean which is Life, which washes upon all shores, and you are as much a part of it in one place as in another, and as sure to eventually flow back to the Source of it, which gave birth to all Life. As for that, you are bound to Life for all Eternity as surely as a tree, a rock, a bird or a world is bound. You call leaving your tiny planet, quitting your crude physical form-death!" "But I still have my body." "I have not said that you are dead, as you name it. As for that, you may be still upon your little planet, as far as you know. Worlds within worlds, universes within universes. Things exist too small and too large for human comprehension. Each pebble on the beaches of Valusia contains countless universes within itself, and itself as a whole is as much a part of the great plan of all universes, as is the sun you know. Your universe, Kull of Valusia, may be a pebble on the shore of a mighty kingdom. "You have broken the bounds of material limitations. You may be in a universe which goes to make up a gem on the robe you wore on Valusia's throne or that universe you knew may be in the spiderweb which lies there on the grass near your feet. I tell you, size and space and time are relative and do not really exist."	„
	~ Kull: The Striking of the Gong

• As said above, all of these material, spatio-temporal realms are nothing but an infinitesimal "small wholeness" encompassed by the First Gate, a construct separating the physical realm from the dark formlessness that transcends it. Past it, there are only metaphysical worlds beyond the concepts of time, space and dimensions entirely, which are appropriately described as "trans-dimensional" and "undimensioned" multiple times.

The First Gate

“	"By the time the rite was over Carter knew that he was in no region whose place could be told by earth’s geographers, and in no age whose date history could fix. For the nature of what was happening was not wholly unfamiliar to him. There were hints of it in the cryptical Pnakotic fragments, and a whole chapter in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred had taken on significance when he had deciphered the designs graven on the Silver Key. A gate had been unlocked—not indeed the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from earth and time to that extension of earth which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

“	"Memory and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines amidst the seething chaos, but Carter knew that they were of memory and imagination only. Yet he felt that it was not chance which built these things in his consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable and undimensioned, which surrounded him and strove to translate itself into the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind of earth may grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulfs outside time and the dimensions we know."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

• Likewise, upon traversing the First Gate, Randolph Carter finds himself completely detached from the limitations of space and time, and loses his physical form entirely in the process, becoming identifiable neither as a child nor as an adult, but only as a vague, abstract impression of an entity named "Randolph Carter.

“	"For the rite of the Silver Key, as practiced by Randolph Carter in that black, haunted cave within a cave, did not prove unavailing. From the first gesture and syllable an aura of strange, awesome mutation was apparent—a sense of incalculable disturbance and confusion in time and space, yet one which held no hint of what we recognise as motion and duration. Imperceptibly, such things as age and location ceased to have any significance whatever. The day before, Randolph Carter had miraculously leaped a gulf of years. Now there was no distinction between boy and man. There was only the entity Randolph Carter, with a certain store of images which had lost all connexion with terrestrial scenes and circumstances of acquisition. A moment before, there had been an inner cave with vague suggestions of a monstrous arch and gigantic sculptured hand on the farther wall. Now there was neither cave nor absence of cave; neither wall nor absence of wall. There was only a flux of impressions not so much visual as cerebral, amidst which the entity that was Randolph Carter experienced perceptions or registrations of all that his mind revolved on, yet without any clear consciousness of the way in which he received them."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

“	"Almost stunned with awe, and with a kind of terrifying delight, Randolph Carter’s consciousness did homage to that transcendent ENTITY from which it was derived. As the waves paused again he pondered in the mighty silence, thinking of strange tributes, stranger questions, and still stranger requests. Curious concepts flowed conflictingly through a brain dazed with unaccustomed vistas and unforeseen disclosures. It occurred to him that, if those disclosures were literally true, he might bodily visit all those infinitely distant ages and parts of the universe which he had hitherto known only in dreams, could he but command the magic to change the angle of his consciousness-plane. And did not the Silver Key supply that magic? Had it not first changed him from a man in 1928 to a boy in 1883, and then to something quite outside time? Oddly, despite his present apparent absence of body, he knew that the Key was still with him."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

• And as mentioned before: This is only the First Gate, and after passing through the Ultimate Gate leading directly to the outer void outside of existence, Carter perceives a multiplicity of them.

“	"Randolph Carter’s advance through that Cyclopean bulk of abnormal masonry was like a dizzy precipitation through the measureless gulfs between the stars. From a great distance he felt triumphant, godlike surges of deadly sweetness, and after that the rustling of great wings, and impressions of sound like the chirpings and murmurings of objects unknown on earth or in the solar system. Glancing backward, he saw not one gate alone, but a multiplicity of gates, at some of which clamoured Forms he strove not to remember."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: IV.

Hierarchy of Gates/Vacua

• Now, to showcase that this is fact a proper hierarchy of levels of existence, we then take a step aside and look at another important story that explains a great deal about the cosmology: Hypnos. In it, the narrator and the title character use special drugs to project their astral forms into a universe of dreams, described as deeper and of a more fundamental level than the world of time, space and matter, which is described as being birthed out of it, in the same way a bubble of smoke emanates out of the pipe of a jester.

“	"Of our studies it is impossible to speak, since they held so slight a connexion with anything of the world as living men conceive it. They were of that vaster and more appalling universe of dim entity and consciousness which lies deeper than matter, time, and space, and whose existence we suspect only in certain forms of sleep—those rare dreams beyond dreams which come never to common men, and but once or twice in the lifetime of imaginative men. The cosmos of our waking knowledge, born from such an universe as a bubble is born from the pipe of a jester, touches it only as such a bubble may touch its sardonic source when sucked back by the jester’s whim. Men of learning suspect it little, and ignore it mostly. Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed. One man with Oriental eyes has said that all time and space are relative, and men have laughed. But even that man with Oriental eyes has done no more than suspect. I had wished and tried to do more than suspect, and my friend had tried and partly succeeded. Then we both tried together, and with exotic drugs courted terrible and forbidden dreams in the tower studio chamber of the old manor-house in hoary Kent."	„
	~ Hypnos

• And within this universe, Hypnos and the unnamed narrator then begin to ascend into increasingly more primal levels of reality, becoming less and less restricted by the limitations of the material world as they plunge into more remote regions. The breaking of these limitations is represented in this world by a series of cloudy "obstacles" which the two occasionally tear through during their travels.

“	"Among the agonies of these after days is that chief of torments—inarticulateness. What I learned and saw in those hours of impious exploration can never be told—for want of symbols or suggestions in any language. I say this because from first to last our discoveries partook only of the nature of sensations; sensations correlated with no impression which the nervous system of normal humanity is capable of receiving. They were sensations, yet within them lay unbelievable elements of time and space—things which at bottom possess no distinct and definite existence. Human utterance can best convey the general character of our experiences by calling them plungings or soarings; for in every period of revelation some part of our minds broke boldly away from all that is real and present, rushing aërially along shocking, unlighted, and fear-haunted abysses, and occasionally tearing through certain well-marked and typical obstacles describable only as viscous, uncouth clouds or vapours."	„
	~ Hypnos

• Then, they eventually come across remote areas that the narrator describes as "limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity" that unfold entirely new perceptions of infinity upon the two, with the narrator himself eventually reaching a final obstacle, incalculably denser than the last, which he is unable to penetrate, but which Hypnos passes through without much difficulty.

“	"There was a night when winds from unknown spaces whirled us irresistibly into limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity. Perceptions of the most maddeningly untransmissible sort thronged upon us; perceptions of infinity which at the time convulsed us with joy, yet which are now partly lost to my memory and partly incapable of presentation to others. Viscous obstacles were clawed through in rapid succession, and at length I felt that we had been borne to realms of greater remoteness than any we had previously known. My friend was vastly in advance as we plunged into this awesome ocean of virgin aether, and I could see the sinister exultation on his floating, luminous, too youthful memory-face. Suddenly that face became dim and quickly disappeared, and in a brief space I found myself projected against an obstacle which I could not penetrate. It was like the others, yet incalculably denser; a sticky, clammy mass, if such terms can be applied to analogous qualities in a non-material sphere."	„
	~ Hypnos

• As the narrator abandons the world of dreams and his perception shifts back to that of the material world, he also describes his sense of infinity itself as reverting to the local scale, indicating that these "vacua" indeed marked higher levels of infinity, which he and Hypnos ascended through to eventually reach the void outside of all existence, inhabited by the Ultimate Gods.

The Ultimate Void

“	"The tension of my vigil became oppressive, and a wild train of trivial impressions and associations thronged through my almost unhinged mind. I heard a clock strike somewhere—not ours, for that was not a striking clock—and my morbid fancy found in this a new starting-point for idle wanderings. Clocks—time—space—infinity—and then my fancy reverted to the local as I reflected that even now, beyond the roof and the fog and the rain and the atmosphere, Corona Borealis was rising in the northeast. Corona Borealis, which my friend had appeared to dread, and whose scintillant semicircle of stars must even now be glowing unseen through the measureless abysses of aether. All at once my feverishly sensitive ears seemed to detect a new and wholly distinct component in the soft medley of drug-magnified sounds—a low and damnably insistent whine from very far away; droning, clamouring, mocking, calling, from the northeast."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

• This hierarchy is then referenced again in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, where Randolph Carter is dragged out of the material world and into the Ultimate Void by Nyarlathotep's hunting-horrors, and after leaping off of the monster before it can bring him to the Court of Azathoth at the center, he is described as falling through "endless voids" before returning to his home in Boston. Interesting to note is that he is also described as falling through them for aeons, in his perspective.

“	"Onward unswerving and relentless, and tittering hilariously to watch the chuckling and hysterics into which the siren song of night and the spheres had turned, that eldritch scaly monster bore its helpless rider; hurtling and shooting, cleaving the uttermost rim and spanning the outermost abysses; leaving behind the stars and the realms of matter, and darting meteor-like through stark formlessness toward those inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time wherein black Azathoth gnaws shapeless and ravenous amidst the muffled, maddening beat of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

“	"Thick though the rushing nightmare that clutched his senses, Randolph Carter could turn and move. He could move, and if he chose he could leap off the evil shantak that bore him hurtlingly doomward at the orders of Nyarlathotep. He could leap off and dare those depths of night that yawned interminably down, those depths of fear whose terrors yet could not exceed the nameless doom that lurked waiting at chaos’ core. He could turn and move and leap—he could—he would—he would— Off that vast hippocephalic abomination leaped the doomed and desperate dreamer, and down through endless voids of sentient blackness he fell. Aeons reeled, universes died and were born again, stars became nebulae and nebulae became stars, and still Randolph Carter fell through those endless voids of sentient blackness. Said voids being described as "sentient blackness" also lines up with passages from the Necronomicon quoted in Through the Gates of the Silver Key, which describes the horrors beyond the First Gate as "Blacknesses."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

“	“And while there are those,” the mad Arab had written, “who have dared to seek glimpses beyond the Veil, and to accept HIM as a Guide, they would have been more prudent had they avoided commerce with HIM; for it is written in the Book of Thoth how terrific is the price of a single glimpse. Nor may those who pass ever return, for in the Vastnesses transcending our world are Shapes of darkness that seize and bind. The Affair that shambleth about in the night, the Evil that defieth the Elder Sign, the Herd that stand watch at the secret portal each tomb is known to have, and that thrive on that which groweth out of the tenants within—all these Blacknesses are lesser than HE Who guardeth the Gateway; HE Who will guide the rash one beyond all the worlds into the Abyss of unnamable Devourers. For HE is ’UMR AT-TAWIL, the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OF LIFE.”	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

“	"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."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

“	"I have said that there were things in some of Akeley’s letters—especially the second and most voluminous one—which I would not dare to quote or even form into words on paper. This hesitancy applies with still greater force to the things I heard whispered that evening in the darkened room among the lonely haunted hills. Of the extent of the cosmic horrors unfolded by that raucous voice I cannot even hint. He had known hideous things before, but what he had learned since making his pact with the Outside Things was almost too much for sanity to bear. Even now I absolutely refuse to believe what he implied about the constitution of ultimate infinity, the juxtaposition of dimensions, and the frightful position of our known cosmos of space and time in the unending chain of linked cosmos-atoms which makes up the immediate super-cosmos of curves, angles, and material and semi-material electronic organisation."	„
	~ The Whisperer in Darkness: VII.

“	"Their main immediate abode is a still undiscovered and almost lightless planet at the very edge of our solar system—beyond Neptune, and the ninth in distance from the sun. It is, as we have inferred, the object mystically hinted at as “Yuggoth” in certain ancient and forbidden writings; and it will soon be the scene of a strange focussing of thought upon our world in an effort to facilitate mental rapport. I would not be surprised if astronomers became sufficiently sensitive to these thought-currents to discover Yuggoth when the Outer Ones wish them to do so. But Yuggoth, of course, is only the stepping-stone. The main body of the beings inhabits strangely organised abysses wholly beyond the utmost reach of any human imagination. The space-time globule which we recognise as the totality of all cosmic entity is only an atom in the genuine infinity which is theirs. And as much of this infinity as any human brain can hold is eventually to be opened up to me, as it has been to not more than fifty other men since the human race has existed."	„
	~ The Whisperer in Darkness: V.

“	"As he bathed and changed clothes he tried to recall what he had dreamed after the scene in the violet-litten space, but nothing definite would crystallise in his mind. That scene itself must have corresponded to the sealed loft overhead, which had begun to attack his imagination so violently, but later impressions were faint and hazy. There were suggestions of the vague, twilight abysses, and of still vaster, blacker abysses beyond them—abysses in which all fixed suggestions of form were absent. He had been taken there by the bubble-congeries and the little polyhedron which always dogged him; but they, like himself, had changed to wisps of milky, barely luminous mist in this farther void of ultimate blackness. Something else had gone on ahead—a larger wisp which now and then condensed into nameless approximations of form—and he thought that their progress had not been in a straight line, but rather along the alien curves and spirals of some ethereal vortex which obeyed laws unknown to the physics and mathematics of any conceivable cosmos. Eventually there had been a hint of vast, leaping shadows, of a monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and of the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute—but that was all. Gilman decided 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."	„
	~ The Dreams in the Witch House

• Beyond that, obviously, is the outer void beyond existence inhabited by the Ultimate Gods, which is described as a place where no dreams reach. This is consistent with how the narrator of Hypnos was unable to penetrate the last obstacle leading to it, in spite of attaining a similar nature to the title character during his travels throughout higher spheres of reality. It is also described as an ultimate, genuine infinity, which holds the local spacetime globule (And presumably the rest of existence as well) as an atom of itself, and Walter Gilman, an expert mathematician who had also studied eldritch lore, concluded that it exists beyond the mathematics of any cosmos.

The Ultimate Mystery

• In Through the Gates of the Silver Key, we are introduced to the idea that reality as perceived by mortals and lesser beings is nothing but a fragmentary, partial illusion that exists as an imperfect aspect of the true nature of the world, which is a changeless, static oneness devoid of any differentiations, that exists beyond all perspectives.

“	"Time, the waves went on, is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present, and future. Men think of time only because of what they call change, yet that too is illusion. All that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously. These revelations came with a godlike solemnity which left Carter unable to doubt. Even though they lay almost beyond his comprehension, he felt that they must be true in the light of that final cosmic reality which belies all local perspectives and narrow partial views; and he was familiar enough with profound speculations to be free from the bondage of local and partial conceptions. Had his whole quest not been based upon a faith in the unreality of the local and partial? After an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of few-dimensioned zones call change is merely a function of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the angles of cutting—being circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola according to that angle, yet without any change in the cone itself—so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change. But 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.	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

• The inhabitants of this ultimate reality are the true selves The Outer Gods known as The Archetypes, eternal, unchanging and uncreated entities who participate in this totality beyond all divisions, and hold all lesser entities as nothing but facets of themselves.

“	"All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal “Carter” outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

“	"The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING itself . . . which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

Azathoth, The Reality Dreamer?

There is a common idea that Azathoth is responsible for dreaming the entire setting into existence (Including the Ultimate Gods and the void in which they reside), which will cease to exist once he eventually awakens, and so on and so forth.

As has been known for quite a while, by now, this whole concept is quite frankly pure headcanon that has little basis to actually back it up. For reference, this is the excerpt that serves as the primary piece of evidence supporting it:

“	Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me, Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space, Till neither time nor matter stretched before me, But only Chaos, without form or place. Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered Things he had dreamed but could not understand, While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and fluttered In idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned. They danced insanely to the high, thin whining Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw, Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law. “I am His Messenger,” the daemon said, As in contempt he struck his Master’s head.	„
	~ Fungi from Yuggoth: XXII. Azathoth.

As you can see, there is not much suggesting that all of existence is Azathoth's dream in here, especially when this quote is viewed in a vacuum and with no preconceived notions in mind. Instead, it just says that Azathoth lies dormant in the center of the Ultimate Void, and mutters the contents of his own dreams, which are things that even he cannot understand.

For the matter, eldritch entities being in a state of "dreaming" is a recurring motif throughout all of Lovecraft's works, and the most well-known instance of it is Cthulhu himself, with the phrase that describes his current state being ”Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” or, in English: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

This is repeated in the higher echelons of the cosmology, where the Ancient Ones, the entities who reside past the First Gate and guard the entrance to the Ultimate Void, are described as residing in a dormant state, partaking in cosmic dreams until an explorer presents themselves to them and seeks to pass through the Ultimate Gate.

“	"At last, continued the Swami, the swaying and the suggestion of chanting ceased, the lambent nimbuses around the now drooping and motionless heads faded away, while the cloaked Shapes slumped curiously on their pedestals. The quasi-sphere, however, continued to pulsate with inexplicable light. Carter felt that the Ancient Ones were sleeping as they had been when he first saw them, and he wondered out of what cosmic dreams his coming had wakened them. Slowly there filtered into his mind the truth that this strange chanting ritual had been one of instruction, and that the Companions had been chanted by the Most Ancient One into a new and peculiar kind of sleep, in order that their dreams might open the Ultimate Gate to which the Silver Key was a passport. He knew that in the profundity of this deep sleep they were contemplating unplumbed vastnesses of utter and absolute Outsideness with which the earth had nothing to do, and that they were to accomplish that which his presence had demanded."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

• So, no, Azathoth being in a dreaming state doesn't necessarily equal him being the dreamer of all existence, in the context of the verse's themes and motifs. Likewise, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that he is on the same level of existence as the other Ultimate Gods: For instance, he is often described as sitting on a throne at the very center of the outer chaos, surrounded by servants that play music to him for eternity.
  • And, of course, you have the excerpt above, where Nyarlathotep literally punches him in the face out of contempt.

This will aim to cover the bestiary of creatures and entities found in the stories of Howard Philips Lovecraft and the Lovecraft Circle. I will go over each and every detail that has been given regarding the characters of the Cthulhu Mythos, formally known as Yog-Sothothery. If you are looking for the Lovecraftian cosmology, you may find it here.

Hypnos

• Much of the relevant information for Hypnos is able to be found in the cosmology blog here. So, consider this section a continuation of sorts of the section titled "Beyond the First Gate". The narrator, forced awake by their inability to breach the final obstacle, waits for Hypnos to wake up as well. However, the reaction Hypnos has to what he saw beyond that barrier traumatizes the narrator, with Hypnos himself having been drawn to permanent insanity.

“	"I had, I felt, been halted by a barrier which my friend and leader had successfully passed. Struggling anew, I came to the end of the drug-dream and opened my physical eyes to the tower studio in whose opposite corner reclined the pallid and still unconscious form of my fellow-dreamer, weirdly haggard and wildly beautiful as the moon shed gold-green light on his marble features. Then, after a short interval, the form in the corner stirred; and may pitying heaven keep from my sight and sound another thing like that which took place before me. I cannot tell you how he shrieked, or what vistas of unvisitable hells gleamed for a second in black eyes crazed with fright. I can only say that I fainted, and did not stir till he himself recovered and shook me in his phrensy for someone to keep away the horror and desolation."	„
	~ Hypnos

• Long after this, when the protagonists agree never to sleep again and go out of their way to accomplish this, there comes a point where they can't do it anymore, and eventually, as Hypnos falls asleep, the protagonist senses that something is about to happen.

“	"The tension of my vigil became oppressive, and a wild train of trivial impressions and associations thronged through my almost unhinged mind. I heard a clock strike somewhere—not ours, for that was not a striking clock—and my morbid fancy found in this a new starting-point for idle wanderings. Clocks—time—space—infinity—and then my fancy reverted to the local as I reflected that even now, beyond the roof and the fog and the rain and the atmosphere, Corona Borealis was rising in the northeast. Corona Borealis, which my friend had appeared to dread, and whose scintillant semicircle of stars must even now be glowing unseen through the measureless abysses of aether. All at once my feverishly sensitive ears seemed to detect a new and wholly distinct component in the soft medley of drug-magnified sounds—a low and damnably insistent whine from very far away; droning, clamouring, mocking, calling, from the northeast."	„
	~ Hypnos

• They note of the bolded sentence above. It sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

“	"And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep."	„
	~ Nyarlathotep

“	"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."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath</ref>

• That's right- the realm Hypnos found himself in is none other than the Outer Void. There are more quotes of this nature, but I think these two are enough. If you aren't convinced, let's take a look at another excerpt from this story:

“	"Especially was he afraid to be out of doors alone when the stars were shining, and if forced to this condition he would often glance furtively at the sky as if hunted by some monstrous thing therein. He did not always glance at the same place in the sky—it seemed to be a different place at different times. On spring evenings it would be low in the northeast. In the summer it would be nearly overhead. In the autumn it would be in the northwest. In winter it would be in the east, but mostly if in the small hours of morning. Midwinter evenings seemed least dreadful to him. Only after two years did I connect this fear with anything in particular; but then I began to see that he must be looking at a special spot on the celestial vault whose position at different times corresponded to the direction of his glance—a spot roughly marked by the constellation Corona Borealis."	„
	~ Hypnos

• Now let's compare it to some quotes from The Dreams in the Witch House, where the protagonist (Walter Gilman) is being influenced and toyed with by Nyarlathotep:

“	"He was good for nothing that morning, and stayed away from all his classes. Some unknown attraction was pulling his eyes in a seemingly irrelevant direction, for he could not help staring at a certain vacant spot on the floor. As the day advanced the focus of his unseeing eyes changed position, and by noon he had conquered the impulse to stare at vacancy. About two o’clock he went out for lunch, and as he threaded the narrow lanes of the city he found himself turning always to the southeast. Only an effort halted him at a cafeteria in Church Street, and after the meal he felt the unknown pull still more strongly."	„
	~ The Dreams in the Witch House

“	"The southeastward pull still held, and only with tremendous resolution could Gilman drag himself into the old house and up the rickety stairs. For hours he sat silent and aimless, with his eyes shifting gradually westward. About six o’clock his sharpened ears caught the whining prayers of Joe Mazurewicz two floors below, and in desperation he seized his hat and walked out into the sunset-golden streets, letting the now directly southward pull carry him where it might. An hour later darkness found him in the open fields beyond Hangman’s Brook, with the glimmering spring stars shining ahead. The urge to walk was gradually changing to an urge to leap mystically into space, and suddenly he realised just where the source of the pull lay." "It was in the sky. A definite point among the stars had a claim on him and was calling him. Apparently it was a point somewhere between Hydra and Argo Navis, and he knew that he had been urged toward it ever since he had awaked soon after dawn. In the morning it had been underfoot; afternoon found it rising in the southeast, and now it was roughly south but wheeling toward the west. What was the meaning of this new thing? Was he going mad? How long would it last? Again mustering his resolution, Gilman turned and dragged himself back to the sinister old house."	„
	~ The Dreams in the Witch House

“	"Gilman awakened in his bed, drenched by a cold perspiration and with a smarting sensation in his face, hands, and feet. Springing to the floor, he washed and dressed in frantic haste, as if it were necessary for him to get out of the house as quickly as possible. He did not know where he wished to go, but felt that once more he would have to sacrifice his classes. The odd pull toward that spot in the sky between Hydra and Argo had abated, but another of even greater strength had taken its place. Now he felt that he must go north—infinitely north. He dreaded to cross the bridge that gave a view of the desolate island in the Miskatonic, so went over the Peabody Avenue bridge. Very often he stumbled, for his eyes and ears were chained to an extremely lofty point in the blank blue sky."	„
	~ The Dreams in the Witch House

• So yeah, it is all but directly stated that Hypnos was driven insane by the Outer Void and the Other Gods within.

The Ancient Ones

• When Randolph Carter appears in the Outer Extension, he recalls a passage from the Necronomicon, where Abdul Alhazred writes about a Veil that no one should dare to penetrate (which will be relevant much later on) and how the Outer Extension houses vile creatures who will lead the seeker to their demise and should be avoided at all costs.

“	“And while there are those,” the mad Arab had written, “who have dared to seek glimpses beyond the Veil, and to accept HIM as a Guide, they would have been more prudent had they avoided commerce with HIM; for it is written in the Book of Thoth how terrific is the price of a single glimpse. Nor may those who pass ever return, for in the Vastnesses transcending our world are Shapes of darkness that seize and bind. The Affair that shambleth about in the night, the Evil that defieth the Elder Sign, the Herd that stand watch at the secret portal each tomb is known to have, and that thrive on that which groweth out of the tenants within—all these Blacknesses are lesser than HE Who guardeth the Gateway; HE Who will guide the rash one beyond all the worlds into the Abyss of unnamable Devourers. For HE is’UMR AT-TAWIL, the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OF LIFE.”	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

• However, as Carter gets to know the Ancient Ones, he realizes that the Necronomicon was wrong: the Ancient Ones display a lack of malicious intent, leading Carter to the understanding that the idea that they would ever wish to harm humanity is childish.

“	"The Guide knew, as he knew all things, of Carter’s quest and coming, and that this seeker of dreams and secrets stood before him unafraid. There was no horror or malignity in what he radiated, and Carter wondered for a moment whether the mad Arab’s terrific blasphemous hints, and extracts from the Book of Thoth, might not have come from envy and a baffled wish to do what was now about to be done. Or perhaps the Guide reserved his horror and malignity for those who feared."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

“	"Carter guessed what they were, whence they came, and Whom they served; and guessed, too, the price of their service. But he was still content, for at one mighty venture he was to learn all. Damnation, he reflected, is but a word bandied about by those whose blindness leads them to condemn all who can see, even with a single eye. He wondered at the vast conceit of those who had babbled of the malignant Ancient Ones, as if They could pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak a wrath upon mankind. As well, he thought, might a mammoth pause to visit frantic vengeance on an angleworm."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

• Additionally, 'Umr at-Tawil is described as being greater than the "blacknesses" existing beyond the First Gate three quotes above. This lines up with other passages from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath where Randolph Carter falls through what are described as "endless voids of sentient blackness."

“	"Thick though the rushing nightmare that clutched his senses, Randolph Carter could turn and move. He could move, and if he chose he could leap off the evil shantak that bore him hurtlingly doomward at the orders of Nyarlathotep. He could leap off and dare those depths of night that yawned interminably down, those depths of fear whose terrors yet could not exceed the nameless doom that lurked waiting at chaos’ core. He could turn and move and leap—he could—he would—he would— "Off that vast hippocephalic abomination leaped the doomed and desperate dreamer, and down through endless voids of sentient blackness he fell. Aeons reeled, universes died and were born again, stars became nebulae and nebulae became stars, and still Randolph Carter fell through those endless voids of sentient blackness."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

• For additional context, these voids are found when Randolph Carter is being taken out of the material world and into the Ultimate Void.

“	"Onward unswerving and relentless, and tittering hilariously to watch the chuckling and hysterics into which the siren song of night and the spheres had turned, that eldritch scaly monster bore its helpless rider; hurtling and shooting, cleaving the uttermost rim and spanning the outermost abysses; leaving behind the stars and the realms of matter, and darting meteor-like through stark formlessness toward those inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time wherein black Azathoth gnaws shapeless and ravenous amidst the muffled, maddening beat of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

• The Ancient Ones are companions of 'Umr at-Tawil and guardians of the Ultimate Gate whose power, in conjunction with the magic of the Silver Key, is needed to open the Ultimate Gate to the void of the Ultimate Gods.

“	"At last, continued the Swami, the swaying and the suggestion of chanting ceased, the lambent nimbuses around the now drooping and motionless heads faded away, while the cloaked Shapes slumped curiously on their pedestals. The quasi-sphere, however, continued to pulsate with inexplicable light. Carter felt that the Ancient Ones were sleeping as they had been when he first saw them, and he wondered out of what cosmic dreams his coming had wakened them. Slowly there filtered into his mind the truth that this strange chanting ritual had been one of instruction, and that the Companions had been chanted by the Most Ancient One into a new and peculiar kind of sleep, in order that their dreams might open the Ultimate Gate to which the Silver Key was a passport. He knew that in the profundity of this deep sleep they were contemplating unplumbed vastnesses of utter and absolute Outsideness with which the earth had nothing to do, and that they were to accomplish that which his presence had demanded."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

• So, seeing as the Ancient Ones are the companions to 'Umr at-Tawil, to whom the sentient blacknesses beyond the First Gate are seen as lesser, and the Ancient Ones' power is necessary for being able to safely cross the Ultimate Gate that takes one to the domain of the Outer Gods.

Randolph Carter

• Randolph Carter is the protagonist of several stories written by H.P. Lovecraft, as well as the focus of Lovecraft's first novella, The Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath. His bloodline had lived in Arkham for many years, dating all the way back to the wizard Edmund Carter, who had come to Arkham in order to escape the Salem Witch Trials. On top of all this, Carter began to visit the mysterious Dreamlands at an incredibly young age, further driving his lifelong love of mysticism and the paranormal. Throughout his life, Carter has been one of the few mortals to encounter beings such as Nyarlathotep, Nodens, and even The Supreme Archetype.

• Upon traversing the First Gate, Randolph Carter finds himself completely detached from the limitations of space and time, and loses his physical form entirely in the process, becoming identifiable neither as a child nor as an adult, but only as a vague, abstract impression of an entity named "Randolph Carter."

“	"For the rite of the Silver Key, as practiced by Randolph Carter in that black, haunted cave within a cave, did not prove unavailing. From the first gesture and syllable an aura of strange, awesome mutation was apparent—a sense of incalculable disturbance and confusion in time and space, yet one which held no hint of what we recognise as motion and duration. Imperceptibly, such things as age and location ceased to have any significance whatever. The day before, Randolph Carter had miraculously leaped a gulf of years. Now there was no distinction between boy and man. There was only the entity Randolph Carter, with a certain store of images which had lost all connexion with terrestrial scenes and circumstances of acquisition. A moment before, there had been an inner cave with vague suggestions of a monstrous arch and gigantic sculptured hand on the farther wall. Now there was neither cave nor absence of cave; neither wall nor absence of wall. There was only a flux of impressions not so much visual as cerebral, amidst which the entity that was Randolph Carter experienced perceptions or registrations of all that his mind revolved on, yet without any clear consciousness of the way in which he received them."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: III.

• As Carter sits upon the Ancient Ones' pedestal, he is greeted by the other Ancient Ones, who then tell him that his ambitions have allowed him to become one of them.

"Now the whole assemblage on the vaguely hexagonal pillars was greeting him with a gesture of those oddly carven sceptres, and radiating a message which he understood: “We salute you, Most Ancient One, and you, Randolph Carter, whose daring has made you one of us.”"

• This is supported much later on in the story, when Carter recalls that the Silver Key's magic transformed him from an adult into a child, and then again into a vague entity outside of time and space.

“	"As the waves paused again he pondered in the mighty silence, thinking of strange tributes, stranger questions, and still stranger requests. Curious concepts flowed conflictingly through a brain dazed with unaccustomed vistas and unforeseen disclosures. It occurred to him that, if those disclosures were literally true, he might bodily visit all those infinitely distant ages and parts of the universe which he had hitherto known only in dreams, could he but command the magic to change the angle of his consciousness-plane. And did not the Silver Key supply that magic? Had it not first changed him from a man in 1928 to a boy in 1883, and then to something quite outside time? Oddly, despite his present apparent absence of body, he knew that the Key was still with him."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

• So, given that the magic of the Silver Key allowed Carter to untether himself from space and time and become one of the Ancient Ones. While meeting The Supreme Archetype, Randolph Carter is presented with a choice: he may either turn back and descend from the Gates back to material reality, continuing to live in ignorance with the Veil (as spoken of by the Necronomicon) left untouched for him; or, he may penetrate the Veil and behold the Ultimate Mystery, obtaining complete knowledge of the cosmos. Carter, of course, chooses the latter.

“	“What you wish, I have found good; and I am ready to grant that which I have granted eleven times only to beings of your planet—five times only to those you call men, or those resembling them. I am ready to shew you the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast a feeble spirit. Yet before you gaze full at that last and first of secrets you may still wield a free choice, and return if you will through the two Gates with the Veil still unrent before your eyes.”	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: IV.

• Among many other things, Randolph Carter learns that every life he has ever lived and will live, as well as every stage in each one of these lives, is an infinitesimal phase of one ultimate, eternal "Carter" archetype, which we learn is actually chief among the Archetypes - The Supreme Archetype itself.

“	"All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal “Carter” outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case." "A slight change of angle could turn the student of today into the child of yesterday; could turn Randolph Carter into that wizard Edmund Carter who fled from Salem to the hills behind Arkham in 1692, or that Pickman Carter who in the year 2169 would use strange means in repelling the Mongol hordes from Australia; could turn a human Carter into one of those earlier entities which had dwelt in primal Hyperborea and worshipped black, plastic Tsathoggua after flying down from Kythanil, the double planet that once revolved around Arcturus; could turn a terrestrial Carter to a remotely ancestral and doubtfully shaped dweller on Kythanil itself, or a still remoter creature of trans-galactic Shonhi, or a four-dimensioned gaseous consciousness in an older space-time continuum, or a vegetable brain of the future on a dark radio-active comet of inconceivable orbit—and so on, in the endless cosmic circle." "The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING itself . . . which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

The Ultimate Gods

• Randolph Carter, who at this point is an Ancient One, observes the Outer Gods and deems them to transcend his conceptualization altogether.

“	"While most of the impressions translated themselves to Carter as words, there were others to which other senses gave interpretation. Perhaps with eyes and perhaps with imagination he perceived that he was in a region of dimensions beyond those conceivable to the eye and brain of man. He saw now, in the brooding shadows of that which had been first a vortex of power and then an illimitable void, a sweep of creation that dizzied his senses. From some inconceivable vantage-point he looked upon prodigious forms whose multiple extensions transcended any conception of being, size, and boundaries which his mind had hitherto been able to hold, despite a lifetime of cryptical study."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

“	"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."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

• The Outer Gods naturally inhabit the Ultimate Void, which as proven in the cosmology blog here, is an abyss of pure nothingness and chaos that represents an absolute infinity beyond the mathematics of any cosmos of which all of existence is nothing but an atom. Being a place where no dreams reach, it also resides beyond a vast hierarchy of "limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity" that unravel increasingly profound and abstract perceptions of infinity in a world of pure dreams that lies completely beyond a fractal of infinite-dimensional spacetimes. They are mutable entities who are capable of reproduction, and Carter himself comes across larval Ultimate Gods multiple times during his journeys. This depiction, in turn, fits in with the family tree, as well.

“	"It was dark when the galley passed betwixt the Basalt Pillars of the West and the sound of the ultimate cataract swelled portentous from ahead. And the spray of that cataract rose to obscure the stars, and the deck grew damp, and the vessel reeled in the surging current of the brink. Then with a queer whistle and plunge the leap was taken, and Carter felt the terrors of nightmare as earth fell away and the great boat shot silent and comet-like into planetary space. Never before had he known what shapeless black things lurk and caper and flounder all through the aether, leering and grinning at such voyagers as may pass, and sometimes feeling about with slimy paws when some moving object excites their curiosity. These are the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, and like them are blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

“	"Unswerving and obedient to the foul legate’s orders, that hellish bird plunged onward through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in darkness, and vacuous herds of drifting entities that pawed and groped and groped and pawed; the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, that are like them blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

• And they are stated to have been born at the same "time" as space itself:

“	"Trembling in waves that golden wisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far-off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. And as that music grew, the shantak raised its ears and plunged ahead, and Carter likewise bent to catch each lovely strain. It was a song, but not the song of any voice. Night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Nyarlathotep

• Nyarlathotep is the servant and child of Azathoth, Lord of All Things. Moreover, he is the messenger of the Outer Gods as a whole, as well as their collective soul:

“

"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."

„

"Past all these gorgeous lands the malodorous ship flew unwholesomely, urged by the abnormal strokes of those unseen rowers below. And before the day was done Carter saw that the steersman could have no other goal than the Basalt Pillars of the West, beyond which simple folk say splendid Cathuria lies, but which wise dreamers well know are the gates of a monstrous cataract wherein the oceans of earth’s dreamland drop wholly to abysmal nothingness and shoot through the empty spaces toward other worlds and other stars and the awful voids outside the ordered universe where the daemon-sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in chaos amid pounding and piping and the hellish dancing of the Other Gods, blind, voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless, with their soul and messenger Nyarlathotep."|The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath}}

“	"Earth’s gods were not there, it was true, but of subtler and less visible presences there could be no lack. Where the mild gods are absent, the Other Gods are not unrepresented; and certainly, the onyx castle of castles was far from tenantless. In what outrageous form or forms terror would next reveal itself, Carter could by no means imagine. He felt that his visit had been expected, and wondered how close a watch had all along been kept upon him by the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. It is Nyarlathotep, horror of infinite shapes and dread soul and messenger of the Other Gods, that the fungous moon-beasts serve; and Carter thought of the black galley that had vanished when the tide of battle turned against the toad-like abnormalities on the jagged rock in the sea."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

“	"And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep."	„
	~ Nyarlathotep

“	"Old legends are hazy and ambiguous, and in historic times all attempts at crossing forbidden gaps seem complicated by strange and terrible alliances with beings and messengers from outside. There was the immemorial figure of the deputy or messenger of hidden and terrible powers—the “Black Man” of the witch-cult, and the “Nyarlathotep” of the Necronomicon."	„
	~ The Dreams in the Witch House

• The "Black Man" mentioned in the previous excerpt, by the way, can freely access the Ultimate Void and reach the throne of Azathoth at its center, and can even take mortals with him.

“	"The dreams were meanwhile getting to be atrocious. In the lighter preliminary phase the evil old woman was now of fiendish distinctness, and Gilman knew she was the one who had frightened him in the slums. Her bent back, long nose, and shrivelled chin were unmistakable, and her shapeless brown garments were like those he remembered. The expression on her face was one of hideous malevolence and exultation, and when he awaked he could recall a croaking voice that persuaded and threatened. He must meet the Black Man, and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the centre of ultimate Chaos. That was what she said. He must sign in his own blood the book of Azathoth and take a new secret name now that his independent delvings had gone so far."	„
	~ The Dreams in the Witch House

• Another avatar of Nyarlathotep can call down waves of destruction from the Ultimate Void to attack the Earth itself, and is also implied to have caused the death of the Sun here.

“	"It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds to see Nyarlathotep; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst ruins, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments. And I saw the world battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning; struggling around the dimming, cooling sun."	„
	~ Nyarlathotep

• The same avatar is capable of easily destroying the Earth and its moon on his own.

“	"Soon from the sea a noxious birth began; Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold; The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolled Down on the quaking citadels of man. Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play, The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away."	„
	~ Fungi from Yuggoth: XXI. Nyarlathotep.

• Both the death of the Sun and the destruction of the Earth are depicted in another story. Although it is not explicitly correlated to the work of Nyarlathotep, the fact that this story is titled The Crawling Chaos should suggest as much, since it is Nyarlathotep's most well-known title.

“	"There was not any pounding now, but only the unearthly roaring and hissing of waters tumbling into the rift. The smoke of that rift had changed to steam, and almost hid the world as it grew denser and denser. It seared my face and hands, and when I looked to see how it affected my companions I found they had all disappeared. Then very suddenly it ended, and I knew no more till I awaked upon a bed of convalescence. As the cloud of steam from the Plutonic gulf finally concealed the entire surface from my sight, all the firmament shrieked at a sudden agony of mad reverberations which shook the trembling aether. In one delirious flash and burst it happened; one blinding, deafening holocaust of fire, smoke, and thunder that dissolved the wan moon as it sped outward to the void. And when the smoke cleared away, and I sought to look upon the earth, I beheld against the background of cold, humorous stars only the dying sun and the pale mournful planets searching for their sister."	„
	~ The Crawling Chaos

Yog-Sothoth

• All existence and knowledge is encompassed under Yog-Sothoth. Encompasses The Outer Gods within itself, and exists as a direct personification of the Ultimate Gate and that which exists beyond it.

“	"Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread."	„
	~ The Dunwich Horror

Azathoth

• Azathoth is described at multiple points as the lord of all existence:

“	"Before his eyes a kaleidoscopic range of phantasmal images played, all of them dissolving at intervals into the picture of a vast, unplumbed abyss of night wherein whirled suns and worlds of an even profounder blackness. He thought of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose centre 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 daemoniac flute held in nameless paws."	„
	~ The Haunter of the Dark

“	"There were suggestions of the vague, twilight abysses, and of still vaster, blacker abysses beyond them—abysses in which all fixed suggestions of form were absent. He had been taken there by the bubble-congeries and the little polyhedron which always dogged him; but they, like himself, had changed to wisps of milky, barely luminous mist in this farther void of ultimate blackness. (...) Eventually there had been a hint of vast, leaping shadows, of a monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and of the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute—but that was all. Gilman decided 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."	„
	~ The Dreams in the Witch House

“	"The passage through the vague abysses would be frightful, for the Walpurgis-rhythm would be vibrating, and at last he would have to hear that hitherto veiled cosmic pulsing which he so mortally dreaded. Even now he could detect a low, monstrous shaking whose tempo he suspected all too well. At Sabbat-time it always mounted and reached through to the worlds to summon the initiate to nameless rites. Half the chants of the Sabbat were patterned on this faintly overheard pulsing which no earthly ear could endure in its unveiled spatial fullness. Gilman wondered, too, whether he could trust his instinct to take him back to the right part of space. How could he be sure he would not land on that green-litten hillside of a far planet, on the tessellated terrace above the city of tentacled monsters somewhere beyond the galaxy, or in the spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of Chaos wherein reigns the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth?"	„
	~ The Dreams in the Witch House

“	"Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me, Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space, Till neither time nor matter stretched before me, But only Chaos, without form or place. Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered Things he had dreamed but could not understand, While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and fluttered In idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned." They danced insanely to the high, thin whining Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw, Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law. “I am His Messenger,” the daemon said, As in contempt he struck his Master’s head.	„
	~ Fungi from Yuggoth: XXII. Azathoth.

• Azathoth gave birth to the Outer Gods as well as creation itself. For context, refer to this family tree and compare it to the quote below.

“	"Trembling in waves that golden wisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far-off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. And as that music grew, the shantak raised its ears and plunged ahead, and Carter likewise bent to catch each lovely strain. It was a song, but not the song of any voice. Night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

The Archetypes

• in Through the Gates of the Silver Key, we are introduced to the idea that reality as perceived by mortals and lesser beings is nothing but a fragmentary, partial illusion that exists as an imperfect aspect of the true nature of the world, which is a changeless, static oneness devoid of any differentiations, that exists beyond all perspectives.

“	"Time, the waves went on, is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present, and future. Men think of time only because of what they call change, yet that too is illusion. All that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously. These revelations came with a godlike solemnity which left Carter unable to doubt. Even though they lay almost beyond his comprehension, he felt that they must be true in the light of that final cosmic reality which belies all local perspectives and narrow partial views; and he was familiar enough with profound speculations to be free from the bondage of local and partial conceptions. Had his whole quest not been based upon a faith in the unreality of the local and partial? After an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of few-dimensioned zones call change is merely a function of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the angles of cutting—being circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola according to that angle, yet without any change in the cone itself—so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change. But 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."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

• This portrayal of the Ultimate Gods, however, appears only once, in this specific story, and greatly conflicts with how they are depicted in the rest of Lovecraft's works. Thankfully, Through the Gates of the Silver Key itself already offers an explanation of sorts to this apparent inconsistency, namely:

“	"To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change. But 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."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

To paraphrase that, the Archetypes are stated to be capable of experiencing the cosmos either as the unchanging, undivided wholeness that it truly is, or in the form of fragmentary, change-involving perspectives that they naturally exist beyond, in accordance to their own will. In essence, this would mean that they can actively choose to perceive reality as local identities that other stories identify as "The Ultimate Gods," which are far more limited, lower equivalents of their true selves.

• This is then supported by another passage of the story, where Randolph Carter identifies The Supreme Archetype as the same entity that denizens of lower worlds worshipped under the name of Yog-Sothoth, and at the same time, he realizes that even the identity of "Yog-Sothoth" is nothing but an illusory, fractional conception of a much greater being.

“	"In the face of that awful wonder, the quasi-Carter forgot the horror of destroyed individuality. It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realised how slight and fractional all these conceptions are."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: IV.

The case of contradictory descriptions of the Outer Gods is much more than simply a case of changeless beings presenting as changeable to lesser beings- the Outer Gods as fragmentary, changing entities have limitations that simply don't apply to their eternal, archetypal states. The only logical conclusion is that these two modes of existence of the Outer Gods should be separated for the purposes of indexing, with them in their greater state - the static, eternal state of oneness - being identified as The Archetypes, and the lesser state that still beholds some limits should be labeled The Ultimate Gods. The former is what they are called by the Supreme Archetype, and the latter is how they are referred to in every other story.

The Supreme Archetype

• The Supreme Archetype is an all-encompassing oneness that exists as "All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self," acting as the animating essence of all existence that subsumes even the "ultimate mystery" which underlies all manifested phenomena and in which the Archetypes themselves participate in. "Yog-Sothoth" is notably a slight and fractional conception of it.

“	"It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realised how slight and fractional all these conceptions are."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: IV.

• The BEING then addresses Randolph Carter, and its "voice" is compared to universes converging unto and assaulting Carter relentlessly.

“	"And now the BEING was addressing the Carter-facet in prodigious waves that smote and burned and thundered—a concentration of energy that blasted its recipient with well-nigh unendurable violence, and that followed, with certain definite variations, the singular unearthly rhythm which had marked the chanting and swaying of the Ancient Ones, and the flickering of the monstrous lights, in that baffling region beyond the First Gate. It was as though suns and worlds and universes had converged upon one point whose very position in space they had conspired to annihilate with an impact of resistless fury."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: IV.

• The BEING's first words to Carter reveal that the Ancient Ones, including the all-knowing 'Umr at-Tawil, are its avatars on the Earth's Outer Extension. It follows up by praising Carter's ascent from selfish curiosity and childish desires to a noble wish for the selfless pursuit of knowledge.

“	"“Randolph Carter,” IT seemed to say, “MY manifestations on your planet’s extension, the Ancient Ones, have sent you as one who would lately have returned to small lands of dream which he had lost, yet who with greater freedom has risen to greater and nobler desires and curiosities. You wished to sail up golden Oukranos, to search out forgotten ivory cities in orchid-heavy Kled, and to reign on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, whose fabulous towers and numberless domes rise mighty toward a single red star in a firmament alien to your earth and to all matter. Now, with the passing of two Gates, you wish loftier things. You would not flee like a child from a scene disliked to a dream beloved, but would plunge like a man into that last and inmost of secrets which lies behind all scenes and dreams.”"	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: IV.

• The BEING then presents Randolph Carter with a choice: he may either turn back and descend from the Gates back to material reality, continuing to live in ignorance with the Veil (as spoken of by the Necronomicon) left untouched for him; or, he may penetrate the Veil and behold the Ultimate Mystery, obtaining complete knowledge of the cosmos. Carter, of course, chooses the latter.

“	“What you wish, I have found good; and I am ready to grant that which I have granted eleven times only to beings of your planet—five times only to those you call men, or those resembling them. I am ready to shew you the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast a feeble spirit. Yet before you gaze full at that last and first of secrets you may still wield a free choice, and return if you will through the two Gates with the Veil still unrent before your eyes.”	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: IV.

• Among many other things, Randolph Carter learns that every life he has ever lived and will live, as well as every stage in each one of these lives, is an infinitesimal phase of one ultimate, eternal "Carter" archetype, which we learn is actually chief among the Archetypes - The Supreme Archetype.

“	"All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal “Carter” outside space and time—phantom projections differt which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case." "A slight change of angle could turn the student of today into the child of yesterday; could turn Randolph Carter into that wizard Edmund Carter who fled from Salem to the hills behind Arkham in 1692, or that Pickman Carter who in the year 2169 would use strange means in repelling the Mongol hordes from Australia; could turn a human Carter into one of those earlier entities which had dwelt in primal Hyperborea and worshipped black, plastic Tsathoggua after flying down from Kythanil, the double planet that once revolved around Arcturus; could turn a terrestrial Carter to a remotely ancestral and doubtfully shaped dweller on Kythanil itself, or a still remoter creature of trans-galactic Shonhi, or a four-dimensioned gaseous consciousness in an older space-time continuum, or a vegetable brain of the future on a dark radio-active comet of inconceivable orbit—and so on, in the endless cosmic circle." "The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING itself . . . which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

The Relationship of Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth and The Supreme Archetype

• It is interesting to note that The Supreme Archetype and Yog-Sothoth have very similar statements, All existence and knowledge is encompassed under Yog-Sothoth. Encompasses the other The Outer Gods within itself, and exists as a direct personification of the Ultimate Gate and that which exists beyond it while The Supreme Archetype is described as an all-encompassing oneness that exists as "All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self," itself and chief among The Archetypes who are the true selves of the entities beyond the Ultimate Gate. Are Yog and The Supreme Archetype the same being? To answer this question we must consider Yog's origin.

“	"Trembling in waves that golden wisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far-off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. And as that music grew, the shantak raised its ears and plunged ahead, and Carter likewise bent to catch each lovely strain. It was a song, but not the song of any voice. Night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born."	„
	~ The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

• Azathoth gave birth to the Outer Gods as well as creation itself as shown in this family tree. Yog is an Outer God so he and The Supreme Archetype can't be the same. But if that's the case then what of Azathoth? If it really the created all existence does that mean he created The True Reality and it's habitants, The Archetypes? To answer this we must revisit what The True Reality is.

“	"Time, the waves went on, is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present, and future. Men think of time only because of what they call change, yet that too is illusion. All that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously. These revelations came with a godlike solemnity which left Carter unable to doubt. Even though they lay almost beyond his comprehension, he felt that they must be true in the light of that final cosmic reality which belies all local perspectives and narrow partial views; and he was familiar enough with profound speculations to be free from the bondage of local and partial conceptions. Had his whole quest not been based upon a faith in the unreality of the local and partial? After an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of few-dimensioned zones call change is merely a function of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the angles of cutting—being circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola according to that angle, yet without any change in the cone itself—so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

• The Ultimate Mystery is the changeless, static oneness devoid of any differentiations, that exists beyond all perspectives. The inhabitants of this ultimate reality, then, are the Archetypes, eternal, unchanging and uncreated entities who participate in this totality beyond all divisions, and hold all lesser entities as nothing but facets of themselves.

“	"All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal “Carter” outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case.	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

“	"The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds."	„
	~ Through the Gates of the Silver Key: V.

• Azathoth couldn't be the creator of this world because it and it's habitants are eternal and changeless. So what do way make of this? Well we don't really get an answer on The real relationship of this three beings but we could try to make sense of it.

Given how the whole message of the story is that individuality is nothing but an illusion inherent to lower realities, as well as how Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth themselves act as complementary counterparts to one another in the context of the cosmology (Yog-Sothoth being all-encompassing and holding all of past, present and future as one within himself, while also simultaneously embodying the Ultimate Gate, and Azathoth being the nucleus who resides at the center of its infinity, governing all of existence from his throne), I believe it's reasonable to say that Yog embodies the creation Azathoth created (not The True Reality), and Azathoth is either the first thing to exist (in a lower fashion then The True Reality and The Archetypes, not being a part of it.) or is the first thing to come into existence (How is unknown and The True Reality and The Archetypes have always existed, so they don't count), with Nyarlathotep being a direct descendant. This, in turn, elaborates on Azathoth's significance to the Cthulhu Mythos: he is the Lord of All Things who rules time and space from the center of infinity, but with this in mind, he is also akin to a demiurge who gave birth to creation as well as to the manifestations of the Archetypes in the Other Gods.

The Supreme Archetype on the other hand is the all-encompassing oneness that exists as "All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self," acting as the animating essence of all existence that subsumes even the "ultimate mystery" which underlies all manifested phenomena and in which the Archetypes themselves participate in, holding even the Ultimate Abyss and its transcendent inhabitants as facets of itself, even Azathoth and Yog. Because of both Azzy's and Yog's significance to the Cthulhu Mythos, it can also be speculated that the two of them is the representation of The Supreme Archetype.