Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (18 page)

The women scream these words in the tongue of the Old Ones,
Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Iä! Iä!
Their voices that echo in the caverns resemble the yelping of dogs, for there is nothing human in the sound. When the worshippers begin to couple, it is the women who mount on top of the men, in honor of the supremacy of the goddess as the womb of creation. The theological books of the Hebrews make veiled allusion to this practice in their fables concerning Lilith, who was the wife of Adam before Eve, and who had union with him on top rather than beneath; and the Babylonians had similar stories of a demoness of lust that bore strange children from the seed she stole away from sleeping men in the dark of night. In truth, Lilith is no other than Shub-Niggurath, even though the scribes of the Hebrews dared not write her name.

She visits the men who seek union with her in their dreams, but only if their lust is great. When she comes to the bed, she presses upon the chest of her lover and takes her pleasure on top of his sleeping body, and from his ecstasy she gives birth to monsters of a lesser kind, those that inhabit the desert places of the world and lie in wait to murder travelers beneath the moon. From the seed of the Old Ones her womb gives rise to great abominations, but from the seed of men it yields lesser evils. In dreams she cloaks her form so that men do not withdraw from her, but when she visits her worshippers she comes as she truly appears, and they welcome gladly her bestial kisses, for she makes their virility unending.

The worship of Shub-Niggurath is greatest in the lands of Lebanon and around the salt inland sea, but she is also adored with orgy and sacrifice along the upper tributaries of the Nile, on the western shore of the Red Sea, and between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Yet these are only the chief centers of her cult, for her worship spans this world in lands both known and uncharted, carried far and wide by her roving cult as it moves from place to place in its caravans. It has been the cause of much misery and countless mysterious deaths, since her worshippers must have human flesh for their sacrifices during her highest rites, and where infants cannot be procured they use the flesh of travelers, for the disappearance of a traveler causes less inquiry than the vanishing of a local dweller.

The magi gave to Shub-Niggurath the sphere of Venus as her natural harmony, because Venus is a goddess noted for her concupiscence, who brings fertility to beasts and crops; however, the life-giving power of Venus is wholesome, whereas that of the prolific goat is verminous and foul. As a charm to ward her off during sleep, they engrave upon a plate of copper the seal of the goddess formed on the number square of Venus, which has seven rows and seven columns, each of which sums 175, and the total of all the numbers of the square is 1,225. Some scholars profess the opposite belief, that the seal of the prolific goat attracts the goddess to the bed, and both opinions are true, depending on how the seal is employed, for if it is laid with the engraving downward against the chest, it attracts, but with the engraving upward to the sky, it repels.

A young man of Yemen who wished to punish a rival in the love for a woman bribed a servant of the rival to bury the seal of this goddess beneath his master’s sleeping place with the engraving down. In the span of a single cycle of the moon, the rival was so troubled by nightly visits of Shub-Niggurath in his dreams that his flesh wasted away and he went mad. The woman gave her love to the remaining suitor, who enjoyed it for a term until the revolving wheel of fortune stole her from his embrace.

f all the lords of the Old Ones, only Nyarlathotep appears wholly in the likeness of a man. The shapes of the Old Ones are not fixed, but express their nature through a harmony between form and intention; yet it is possible for them to change their appearance within the bounds of this accord, and Nyarlathotep chooses to come to his worshippers as a man of greater than average height who is in all respects human save one: that he has no face but only a blackness where a face should be seen. As the face of Azathoth is darkly bright and radiates outward, so the face of Nyarlathotep his half brother is a void that draws inward both heat and light and never releases them. He is the eater of souls.

Why he comes in the shape of a man is not known, but it may be to better have dealings with humankind, since he is reputed to enjoy the company of men when they drink wine and gamble, and the bodies of women with whom he lies in lust. He speaks as a man speaks but his voice has the coldness that lies between the stars, and few wish to hear his sardonic laughter, for then there will be death. Men are to him as playthings to a child—to be taken up for a time, then abruptly cast away and trodden into the earth. Even so, he teaches great mysteries to those who worship him, but always leading to evil works, for he delights in wickedness.

Those who dwell in the Empty Space and seek knowledge in the tombs and caverns of the earth sometimes see Nyarlathotep walking alone across the sands as though lost in thought, wrapped from brow to toe in a swirling black cloak with a hood, a caul upon his face, rings glittering upon the fingers of his hands like so many stars. It is dangerous to approach him at these times. His dealings with men are at his choosing, and his patience is brief. With a single word can he burn the flesh from the bone, so that the skeleton of an unwary man remains standing a moment before it collapses with a dry clatter at his feet. Yet he is capricious, and it may suit his whim to teach a secret to the audacious fool who accosts him.

When he appears it is oftentimes with the piping of a flute, and the reason is that he has been with his half brother Azathoth at the center of the universe, and through the open gateway that Yog-Sothoth has not yet sealed can for a time be heard the trilling of thin notes that set the hairs on the neck upright. He is not so inconvenienced in his coming to our world as the other Old Ones, though why this should be so remains unknown; perhaps it is the human shape he wears that partly shields him from the poison of the stars. Whatever the reason, he serves the Old Ones as their messenger among men. It is he who keeps the true gods of our race hostage in Kadath in the cold waste of the south, and who deprives them of their minds and makes them dance to the flute of Azathoth.

A necromancer newly cast forth into the great wastes came upon a tall man robed all in black who stood upon the crest of a dune beneath the stars, head cocked to the side as though listening to music, though no sound broke the silence of the night save the wind. His face was shadowed in the depths of his hood and his back was turned. Emboldened by his disregard, the desert dweller crept up the slope of the dune with knife drawn, his intent to slit the throat of the stranger and steal his cloak and boots. When he raised the knife, he found that he could not move. The stranger turned and gazed at him, and he screamed, for there was no face in the hood, only two glittering stars. For a dozen heartbeats the stars pierced his soul and flayed it open. The stranger turned without a word and walked away, and the dweller fell to his knees and wept over the loss of such exquisite emptiness.

Nyarlathotep is a trickster who may temporarily put on any form to beguile the wits of those to whom he appears. He delights in lies and misdirection, and for amusement will corrupt the thoughts, so that it is unwise to trust overmuch in his teachings, for sometimes they are sound and precious, but other times they are fatal if pursued. Wisest of the Old Ones with the exception of Yig, who is wisest of all, he knows the lore of magic not merely of this world but of many others. He is called by his worshippers the Myriad-Formed Messenger, but by his detractors he is known as the Chaos That Crawls. Neither dare speak his name without dire need, for to name him aloud on the tongue is to invoke him, even though he is not seen, for he comes to those who call him by name cloaked in shadow so that he is unknown, and studies them to learn their purpose; then he may aid, curse, or slay, according to his humor.

Because he is the wisest of the Old Ones, and a trickster, and the messenger and herald of these gods, the magi of the Tigris joined him with the sphere of Mercury, quickest of the planets and messenger of the Olympian gods, he who is most learned in speech and in the art of writing. They used as a charm the seal of the god inscribed on a plate of electrum formed upon the number square of Mercury, having eight rows and eight columns, each with a sum of 260, and the total number of this square is 2,080. It was their belief that the square, when worn over the heart, would avert the wrath of Nyarlathotep, as a token having power over his coming and going; but it would be unwise to place overmuch faith in the efficacy of this charm.