Post by sin on Dec 3, 2008 8:12:56 GMT -6
Azathoth
In 1919, Lovecraft first jots down the name Azathoth in his diary, as well as references to Azazel. Lovecraft scholars believe, Azathoth is a fusion of 'Azazel' and 'Thoth'.
“As for the word Aza/Azag, it means Black or dark in an elemental sense, as well as the term Chaos. So Azag-thoth/Azathoth means, the Dark Sorcerer of Chaos who conquered time and space.”
-source: Cult of Cthulhu Forum, April 24, 2008
What do we know about Azazel?
The word's first appearance is in Leviticus 16, where a goat is designated "for Azazel" and outcast in the desert as part of Yom Kippur.
[Leviticus 16:8 That is, the goat of removal; Hebrew azazel ; also in verses 10 and 26]
• [8] He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat
• [10] But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat.
• [26] "The man who releases the goat as a scapegoat must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water; afterward he may come into the camp.
Leviticus (from Greek Λευιτικός, "relating to the Levites"). In Judaism it is third book of the Torah which are the five books of Moses, its transliteration is 'Vayikra'. In the Christian bible it is also the third book of what is referred to as the Old Testament.
The Book of Leviticus is often described as a set of legal rules, and priestly rituals, but it is also seen as the central core of a larger narrative - the Torah or Pentateuch. In this view, Leviticus is about the outworking of God's covenant with Israel, set out in Genesis and Exodus - what is seen in the Torah as the consequences of entering into a special relationship with God. These consequences are spelt out in terms of community relationships and behaviour.
The first 16 chapters and the last chapter of the book describe the Priestly Code, detailing ritual cleanliness, sin-offerings, and the Day of Atonement, including Chapter 12 which mandates male circumcision.
Chapters 17-26 describe the holiness code, including the injunction in chapter 19 to "love one's neighbor as oneself" (the Great Commandment). Among its many prohibitions, the book uses the word "abomination" 16 times, including dietary restrictions prohibiting shellfish, certain fowl, and "Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth upon all four, or whatsoever hath more feet among all creeping things that creep upon the earth, them ye shall not eat; for they are an abomination"(chapter 11); and sexual restrictions, prohibiting adultery, incest, and lying "with mankind, as with womankind" (chapter 18, see also chapter 20); the book similarly prohibits eating pork and rabbits because they are "unclean animals."
The rules in Leviticus are generally addressed to the descendants of Israel, except for example the prohibition in chapter 20 against sacrificing children to rival god Molech, which applies equally to "the strangers that sojourn in Israel", see also proselytes.
According to tradition, Moses authored Leviticus as well as the other four books of the Torah. According to the documentary hypothesis, Leviticus derives almost entirely from the priestly source (P), marked by emphasis on priestly concerns, composed c 550-400 BC, and incorporated into the Torah c 400 BC.
So how does the sacrificial goat of the Torah become the demon Azazel we know today?
"Azazel" is regarded as a compound of ["az"], strong or rough, and ["el"], mighty, therefore a strong mountain. Most modern scholars, after having for some time indorsed the old view, have accepted the opinion mysteriously hinted at by Ibn Ezra and expressly stated by Naḥmanides to Lev. xvi. 8, that Azazel belongs to the class of "se'irim," goat-like demons, jinn haunting the desert, to which the Israelites went to offer sacrifice (Lev. xvii. 7 [A. V. "devils"]). (Compare "the roes and the hinds," Cant. ii. 7, iii. 5, by which Sulamith administers an oath to the daughters of Jerusalem. The critics were probably thinking of a Roman faun.
Azazel becomes a symbolic expression of the idea that the people's sins and their evil consequences were to be sent back to the spirit of desolation and ruin, the source of all impurity. The very fact that the two goats were presented before Yhwh before the one was sacrificed and the other sent into the wilderness, was proof that Azazel was not ranked with Yhwh, but regarded simply as the personification of wickedness in contrast with the righteous government of Yhwh.
The most common depiction of Azazel.
In Moslem demonology, Azazel is the counterpart of the devil in refusing to worship Adam or acknowledging the supremacy of God. His name was changed to Iblis (Eblis), which means 'despair'.
In Paradise Lost (I, 534), Milton uses the name for the standard-bearer of the rebel angels.
Source: Encyclopedia Mythica
According to the book of Enoch, and the Kabbalistic texts the Zohar – Azazel was a fallen angel who came to earth to mate with mortal women. He gave man the gift of weapon making, and women cosmetics to enforce vanity. Azazel was bound and imprisoned in the desert by God, for introducing these ideas to mankind.
Source: Occultopedia
Enter … Thoth.
He was considered the heart and tongue of Ra as well as the means by which Ra's will was translated into speech. In the Egyptian mythology, he has played many vital and prominent roles, including being one of the two deities (the other being Ma'at) who stood on either side of Ra's boat. He has further been involved in arbitration, magic, writing, science, and the judging of the dead.
The fusion of the two, birthed something in the dark corners of Lovecraft’s mind.
Legend has it that Azathoth gave birth to the universe, and will destroy it in the end. Some modern thinkers, have equated Azathoth to the ‘Big Bang Theory’ that corresponds with the Greek and Norse creation myths; which holds that the universe was born from primal chaos.
Source: Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, Daniel Harms
Speaking the name Azathoth gives one great power over beings from outside, and his unknown secret name gives even more influence and may permenantly damage one who hears it. Not even the Necronomicon contains Azathoth’s secret name.
Azathoth
by
H. P. Lovecraft
Written in June of 1922
Published 1938
in Leaves
Azathoth
When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets sang no more of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who traveled out of life on a quest into spaces whither the world's dreams had fled.
Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were of the waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to say that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window opened not to open fields and groves but on to a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the small stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive a man to madness who dreams and reads much, the dweller in that room used night after night to lean out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the tall cities. After years he began to call the slow sailing stars by name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existance no common eye suspected. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher's window to merge with the close air of his room and to make him a part of their fabulous wonder.
There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men's calandars the tides of far spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossums and starred by red camalotes...
Azathoth is a the beginning of a never-completed novel written by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in June 1922 and published as a fragment in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death. It is the first piece of fiction to mention the fictional being Azathoth, though the entity only appears in the title. — Excerpted from Azathoth (short story) on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Azathoth. One of the Outer Gods and considered the center of all the universe. Azathoth is described by Lovecraft as "that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemies and bubbles at the center 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." Azathoth is the ruler of all Outer Gods and is considered timeless, having existed since before the creation of all the universe. None have seen Azathoth and told the tale, the mindless fluting of Azathoth's servitors as they orbit the idiot god driving simple man to his death. It is whispered that Nyarlathotep stands at Azathoth's beck and call, though what missions a mass of chaos would desire is beyond comprehension. Though never directly mentioned, it can be speculated that Azathoth is the center of creation from whence all things come, the ultimate chaos at the center of the universe which gives life and death at its fancy.
Source: Cthulhu Lexicon, Netherreal.de
“...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 started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth.”
(“The Whisperer in Darkness”)
“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.”
Speaking of Chaos, Peter J. Carroll uses Azathoth to break down the magicians beliefs. I can't help but see all the connections between this creature that was initially used as a scapegoat for sin, it develops into demon festering in the desert - to the speaker of Eldritch things, influencing man with his dark alchemy. A shapeless thing, ruler of the universe, holding knowledge of all things.
I like this creature.
How do you view Azathoth?
In 1919, Lovecraft first jots down the name Azathoth in his diary, as well as references to Azazel. Lovecraft scholars believe, Azathoth is a fusion of 'Azazel' and 'Thoth'.
“As for the word Aza/Azag, it means Black or dark in an elemental sense, as well as the term Chaos. So Azag-thoth/Azathoth means, the Dark Sorcerer of Chaos who conquered time and space.”
-source: Cult of Cthulhu Forum, April 24, 2008
What do we know about Azazel?
The word's first appearance is in Leviticus 16, where a goat is designated "for Azazel" and outcast in the desert as part of Yom Kippur.
[Leviticus 16:8 That is, the goat of removal; Hebrew azazel ; also in verses 10 and 26]
• [8] He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat
• [10] But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat.
• [26] "The man who releases the goat as a scapegoat must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water; afterward he may come into the camp.
Leviticus (from Greek Λευιτικός, "relating to the Levites"). In Judaism it is third book of the Torah which are the five books of Moses, its transliteration is 'Vayikra'. In the Christian bible it is also the third book of what is referred to as the Old Testament.
The Book of Leviticus is often described as a set of legal rules, and priestly rituals, but it is also seen as the central core of a larger narrative - the Torah or Pentateuch. In this view, Leviticus is about the outworking of God's covenant with Israel, set out in Genesis and Exodus - what is seen in the Torah as the consequences of entering into a special relationship with God. These consequences are spelt out in terms of community relationships and behaviour.
The first 16 chapters and the last chapter of the book describe the Priestly Code, detailing ritual cleanliness, sin-offerings, and the Day of Atonement, including Chapter 12 which mandates male circumcision.
Chapters 17-26 describe the holiness code, including the injunction in chapter 19 to "love one's neighbor as oneself" (the Great Commandment). Among its many prohibitions, the book uses the word "abomination" 16 times, including dietary restrictions prohibiting shellfish, certain fowl, and "Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth upon all four, or whatsoever hath more feet among all creeping things that creep upon the earth, them ye shall not eat; for they are an abomination"(chapter 11); and sexual restrictions, prohibiting adultery, incest, and lying "with mankind, as with womankind" (chapter 18, see also chapter 20); the book similarly prohibits eating pork and rabbits because they are "unclean animals."
The rules in Leviticus are generally addressed to the descendants of Israel, except for example the prohibition in chapter 20 against sacrificing children to rival god Molech, which applies equally to "the strangers that sojourn in Israel", see also proselytes.
According to tradition, Moses authored Leviticus as well as the other four books of the Torah. According to the documentary hypothesis, Leviticus derives almost entirely from the priestly source (P), marked by emphasis on priestly concerns, composed c 550-400 BC, and incorporated into the Torah c 400 BC.
So how does the sacrificial goat of the Torah become the demon Azazel we know today?
"Azazel" is regarded as a compound of ["az"], strong or rough, and ["el"], mighty, therefore a strong mountain. Most modern scholars, after having for some time indorsed the old view, have accepted the opinion mysteriously hinted at by Ibn Ezra and expressly stated by Naḥmanides to Lev. xvi. 8, that Azazel belongs to the class of "se'irim," goat-like demons, jinn haunting the desert, to which the Israelites went to offer sacrifice (Lev. xvii. 7 [A. V. "devils"]). (Compare "the roes and the hinds," Cant. ii. 7, iii. 5, by which Sulamith administers an oath to the daughters of Jerusalem. The critics were probably thinking of a Roman faun.
Azazel becomes a symbolic expression of the idea that the people's sins and their evil consequences were to be sent back to the spirit of desolation and ruin, the source of all impurity. The very fact that the two goats were presented before Yhwh before the one was sacrificed and the other sent into the wilderness, was proof that Azazel was not ranked with Yhwh, but regarded simply as the personification of wickedness in contrast with the righteous government of Yhwh.
The most common depiction of Azazel.
In Moslem demonology, Azazel is the counterpart of the devil in refusing to worship Adam or acknowledging the supremacy of God. His name was changed to Iblis (Eblis), which means 'despair'.
In Paradise Lost (I, 534), Milton uses the name for the standard-bearer of the rebel angels.
Source: Encyclopedia Mythica
According to the book of Enoch, and the Kabbalistic texts the Zohar – Azazel was a fallen angel who came to earth to mate with mortal women. He gave man the gift of weapon making, and women cosmetics to enforce vanity. Azazel was bound and imprisoned in the desert by God, for introducing these ideas to mankind.
Source: Occultopedia
Enter … Thoth.
He was considered the heart and tongue of Ra as well as the means by which Ra's will was translated into speech. In the Egyptian mythology, he has played many vital and prominent roles, including being one of the two deities (the other being Ma'at) who stood on either side of Ra's boat. He has further been involved in arbitration, magic, writing, science, and the judging of the dead.
The fusion of the two, birthed something in the dark corners of Lovecraft’s mind.
Legend has it that Azathoth gave birth to the universe, and will destroy it in the end. Some modern thinkers, have equated Azathoth to the ‘Big Bang Theory’ that corresponds with the Greek and Norse creation myths; which holds that the universe was born from primal chaos.
Source: Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, Daniel Harms
Speaking the name Azathoth gives one great power over beings from outside, and his unknown secret name gives even more influence and may permenantly damage one who hears it. Not even the Necronomicon contains Azathoth’s secret name.
Azathoth
by
H. P. Lovecraft
Written in June of 1922
Published 1938
in Leaves
Azathoth
When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets sang no more of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who traveled out of life on a quest into spaces whither the world's dreams had fled.
Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were of the waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to say that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window opened not to open fields and groves but on to a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the small stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive a man to madness who dreams and reads much, the dweller in that room used night after night to lean out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the tall cities. After years he began to call the slow sailing stars by name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existance no common eye suspected. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher's window to merge with the close air of his room and to make him a part of their fabulous wonder.
There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men's calandars the tides of far spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossums and starred by red camalotes...
Azathoth is a the beginning of a never-completed novel written by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in June 1922 and published as a fragment in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death. It is the first piece of fiction to mention the fictional being Azathoth, though the entity only appears in the title. — Excerpted from Azathoth (short story) on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Azathoth. One of the Outer Gods and considered the center of all the universe. Azathoth is described by Lovecraft as "that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemies and bubbles at the center 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." Azathoth is the ruler of all Outer Gods and is considered timeless, having existed since before the creation of all the universe. None have seen Azathoth and told the tale, the mindless fluting of Azathoth's servitors as they orbit the idiot god driving simple man to his death. It is whispered that Nyarlathotep stands at Azathoth's beck and call, though what missions a mass of chaos would desire is beyond comprehension. Though never directly mentioned, it can be speculated that Azathoth is the center of creation from whence all things come, the ultimate chaos at the center of the universe which gives life and death at its fancy.
Source: Cthulhu Lexicon, Netherreal.de
“...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 started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth.”
(“The Whisperer in Darkness”)
“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.”
Speaking of Chaos, Peter J. Carroll uses Azathoth to break down the magicians beliefs. I can't help but see all the connections between this creature that was initially used as a scapegoat for sin, it develops into demon festering in the desert - to the speaker of Eldritch things, influencing man with his dark alchemy. A shapeless thing, ruler of the universe, holding knowledge of all things.
I like this creature.
How do you view Azathoth?