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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.
~ HPL , The Dunwich Horror


This subject contains information from the "Lovecraft Circle" Myth Cycles, and while guided by HPL are not based on his work alone. Yog-Sothoth is a fictional cosmic entity and Outer God created by H. P. Lovecraft. He is a core part of the Cthulhu Mythos (which Lovecraft would refer to facetiously as "Yog-Sothothery"). Born of the Nameless Mist, he is the progenitor of Cthulhu, Hastur the Unspeakable, and the ancestor of the Voormi. He is also the father of Wilbur Whateley.

Description

Like many Lovecraftian gods, Yog-Sothoth has many different appearances throughout the various stories of the Mythos, by various authors. However, there seems to be a common agreement that Yog-Sothoth visually manifests as a mass of glowing orbs, with eyes or tendrils in some versions, and in others simply the orbs. It is heavily implied that Yog-Sothoth is omniscient, and is locked outside the universe, meaning he can know and see all of space-time all at once, which means there is no secret hidden from Yog-Sothoth.

Appearances

"Yog-Sothoth's name was first mentioned in HPL: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. He goes on to be the driving force of HPL: "The Dunwich Horror," in which he fathers twin children with a human. (That story includes a lengthy quote from the Necronomicon about Yog-Sothoth: Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth....")

He is encountered by Randolph Carter in HPL: "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", the only Lovecraft story in which Yog-Sothoth seems to speak.

The entity is described as "a congeries of iridescent globes" (HPL: "The Horror in the Museum", AWD: "The Lurker at the Threshold"). In the EXP: Hay Necronomicon, 13 of these are named :

  1. Gomory
  2. Zagan
  3. Sytry
  4. Eligor
  5. Durson
  6. Vual
  7. Scor
  8. Algor
  9. Sefon
  10. Partas
  11. Gamor
  12. Umbra
  13. Anaboth

Invocations

Yog-Sothoth is called upon from time to time to assist mortals in performing occult deeds or rituals. The most notable instances of these events are recorded in "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" and "The Dunwich Horror."

Resurrection

One ritual involving Yog-Sothoth makes use of the "essential salts" of a deceased individual to resurrect them from the dead. The incantations involved with this are transcribed approximately as follows:


Y'AI'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE-L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH



The incantation to put down the resurrected individual is the partial syllabic reverse of the first, and reads:


OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L-EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO



Incarnation

In one case involving the town of Dunwich, Yog-Sothoth is known to have been summoned for the purposes of impregnating a human female, who then gave birth to two partially-human children. The summoner was the husband/"father" of the Whateley family, who was known to have stood on a hill in a circle of stones with the Necronomicon while shouting the name of Yog-Sothoth from the summit.

Quotes

"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. 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.
~ Yog-Sothoth addressing Randolph Carter , Through the Gates of the Silver Key



In Other Media

Doctor Who

Yog-Sothoth, also called the Great Intelligence, appears in the BBC science fiction show Doctor Who as the military strategist of the Great Old Ones, who were the equivalent of the Time Lords in a previous universe. Escaping to the Doctor's Universe, Yog-Sothoth discovered it had gained god-like powers and decided to play out the various gambits and games it had only been able to simulate before. Over the millennia, it mounted millions of campaigns against inhabited planets using conquered races to bolster its forces. However, the Intelligence is deliberately malign and petty, a stark contrast to the cosmically indifferent alien entity depicted by Lovecraft. (ADJ: Millennial Rites)

Fate/Grand Order

Yog-Sothoth (also known as Sut-Typhon) appears in the mobile game Fate/Grand Order. The Singularity's Demon God Pillar, Räum, trapped the town of Salem in a perpetual loop of the Witch Trials in an effort to use Abigail Williams to summon Yog-Sothoth; finally succeeding on the loop in which the Chaldea Security Agency interfere, when he killed the Singularity's version of Lavinia Whateley (a fictional character summoned for the purpose of giving Abigail a friend). Abigail/Yog-Sothoth is weakened to the point where she can be defeated when Circe and Sheba create a magecraft barrier that seals up the Gates from the inside, taking Abigail's attack on the outside world onto themselves. (EXP: Pseudo-Singularity IV - The Forbidden Advent Garden: Salem)

Housing Complex C

Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu and the Deep Ones are alluded to in the anime Housing Complex C. Posing as a 9-year-old girl named Kimi Shirokado, Yog-Sothoth is revealed to have orchestrated many of the series events, such as trapping Housing Complex C and the nearby town of Kurosaki in a time loop where it is always the summer of 2000. Kimi's time loop is then intruded by the Koshide Family, descendants of the Deep Ones who commit ritual sacrifices in Yog-Sothoth's name so the deity could revive Cthulhu. Concealing the murders by turning the victims into moss while trying to maintain peace, Kimi becomes gradually disillusioned with humanity's refusal to change its violent ways and eventually kills the Koshides after seeing no more need to conceal her true identity. Kimi/Yog-Sothoth then breaks the time loop, providing a Mideastern intern named Kanchan with a protective charm for his kindness so he can survive the time loop's destruction.

In Popular Culture

  • George Olshevsky and Bruce Chilton named the nonconvex snub polyhedra after some other Great Old Ones, with the Small retrosnub icosicosidodecahedron as "Yog-Sothoth", them being the first to build an accurate physical representation of the polyhedron.[1]

External links

Gallery

Main article: Yog-Sothoth/Gallery

References

  1. 21st SCIENCE & TECHOLOGY, Vol. 9, No.1 Spring 1996
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