Archetypes

Archetypes (1, of Yog-Sothoth)

[HPL Gates (online text)]: People of the ultimate abyss, with an infinite number of dimensions, or perhaps existing outside all dimensions. They are "prodigious forms whose multiple extensions transcended any conception of being, size, and boundaries." They exist outside of time with no past, present, or future.

Individuals in our world are each three-dimensional cross sections of one or another of the archetypes. Cross sections of the same archetype at different angles correspond to different individuals. Examples are Randolph Carter and the wizard Zkauba, who dwell in different solar systems, but who are both slices of the Yog-Sothoth archetype. Slight changes of the angle of a slice can also correspond to different stages in the life of a single individual, such as Randolph Carter. Of all the archetypes, Yog-Sothoth is supreme, and is the source of "all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists" on every world.

Lovecraft and his coauthor, E. Hoffman Price, do not provide any information about the other archetypes. Since Yog-Sothoth is an archetype, it is conceivable that some of Lovecraft's other major beings are also archetypes. For example, Azathoth could be an archetype of dreamers or creators, Nyarlathotep could be the archetypal messenger, and Shub-Niggurath could be an archetype of fertility. The Other Gods could all be archetypes, or they could all be cross-sections of Azathoth. Cthulhu could be the archetype of priests. It is a disturbing cosmology, since it implies that we are each derived from one of these unspeakably alien beings, or at least that we have a common source with them.

No information is presented about the appearance of these archetypes. Since they are beings of higher dimensions, they presumably cannot be perceived or visualized by humans.

Archetypes (2, of Mt. Voormithadreth)

[CAS Seven (online text)]: Beings who are the ultimate source of all things on Earth. They exist in the Cavern of the Archetypes beneath Mt. Voormithadreth in Hyperborea. They are "dim, uncertain, wavering, and . . . composed of loosely organized elements." They include the "rocks and fauna and vegetable forms of a crassly primitive world," as well as the prototypes of various dinosaur species. When the human Ralibar Vooz was sent to the cavern, he was eaten by a tyrannosaur archetype, but was able to burst free because "the tyrannosaurus’ body-plasm, though fairly opaque, was more astral than material."

The Cavern also includes the prototypes of humanity, described as "two entities of vaguely human outline. . . gigantic, with bodies almost globular in form," that "seemed to float rather than walk." They regarded Vooz as a poor specimen, "coarse and egregiously perverted from the true model."

Another archetype is Zyhumë, an androgyne more or less spheroid elk who is the parent of Yhoundeh. [CAS Pnom]

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