Ghatanothoa

Ghatanothoa is a fictional character in the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft. The being first appeared in the short story "Out Of The Aeons" (1935) by Lovecraft and Hazel Heald.

Ghatanothoa in the mythos

Ghatanothoa is a Great Old One and is so hideous that anyone who gazes upon it (or even a perfect replica) is petrified into a living mummy. The victim is permanently immobilized, the body taking on the consistency of leather and the internal organs and brain preserved indefinitely, yet fully aware. Only the destruction of the subject's brain can free it from its hellish prison, though the unfortunate is likely to be incurably insane long before the welcomed release.

Ghatanothoa is currently trapped beneath Mount Yaddith-Gho in sunken Mu. He was brought to Earth from the planet Yuggoth (Pluto in Lovecraft's fiction) by an ancient, alien race, possibly the Mi-goJoshi-39. Ghatanothoa was worshipped by the ancient Muvians, who both feared and respected him because of his ability to turn any humans that beheld him into living, thinking statuary.

Many attempted in vain to defeat Ghatanothoa; most notably T'yog, the High Priest of Shub-Niggurath, whose story is recounted in Friedrich von Junzt's grimoire Unaussprechlichen Kulten or Nameless Cults (Robert E. Howard's answer to Lovecraft's Necronomicon). T'yog created a scroll which was supposed to protect him from the petrifying effect of gazing upon Ghatanothoa. But T'yog was defeated after Ghatanothoa's priests stole the scroll and replaced it with a fake one. This occured in the Year of the Red Moon, which is B.C. 173,148 according to von Juntz.

Other connections to the mythos

In Lin Carter's Xothic legend cycle, Ghatanothoa is said to be the first born of Cthulhu; his siblings, in order of birth, are Ythogtha, Zoth-Ommog, and Cthyllacarter_tree. Colin Wilson connected Ghatanothoa to the alien, reptilian race of energy beings—the Lloigor—as the deity's servants. Even though Ghatanothoa is widely regarded as a water elemental because he is called Cthulhu's son, he nonetheless holds distinction as the Lord of the Volcanoes.

References

• Carter, Lin. "The Thing in the Pit" (1980) in The Xothic Legend Cycle, Robert M. Price (ed), 1997. Chaosium, Inc. ISBN 1-56882-078-X.

• Harms, Daniel. "Ghatanothoa" in The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.), pp. 115-16. Chaosium, Inc., 1998. ISBN 1-56882-119-0.

• Joshi, S. T., "Lovecraft's Other Planets" in Selected Papers on Lovecraft, 1st printing, West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1989. ISBN 0-940-88423-2.

• Lovecraft, Howard P. and Hazel Heald. "Out of the Aeons" (1935).

• Tierney, Richard L. The House of the Toad (1993).

• Wilson, Colin. "The Return of the Lloigor" (1969).

Notes

1. ^ Though the aliens in question are presumed to be the Mi-go (Harms, The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana pp. 115), S. T. Joshi does not hold this view. In his essay "Lovecraft's Other Planets", Joshi argues that these beings are an older and perhaps indigenous race of Yuggoth. Citing Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931), Joshi notes that the structures on Yuggoth were "built by some elder race extinct and forgotten" before the Mi-go arrived. It is Joshi's conclusion, therefore, that these elder beings—and not the fungi from Yuggoth— are "the alien spawn of the dark planet Yuggoth" (as quoted from "Out of the Aeons") that brought Ghatanothoa to Earth and built the stone fortress on Yaddith-Gho. (Joshi, "Lovecraft's Other Planets", Selected Papers on Lovecraft, pp. 39.)
2. ^ This theory is a subject of debate among fans of Lovecraftian fiction, because neither Heald or Lovecraft confirmed this. Also, Ghatanothoa's form and behaviour are much more like that of a particularily powerful and monstrous Lloigor than the sea creature-like qualities of other spawn of Cthulhu.

External link

• "Out of the Aeons" by H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald.

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