Clark Ashton Smith deities
Encyclopedia
The Clark Ashton Smith deities are supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 entities created for the Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...

 universe of shared fiction by California-based horror writer and poet Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

.

Abhoth


[H]e described a sort of pool with a margin of mud that was marled with obscene offal; and in the pool a grayish, horrid mass that nearly choked it from rim to rim... Here, it seemed, was the ultimate source of all miscreation and abomination. For the gray mass quobbed and quivered, and swelled perpetually; and from it, in manifold fission, were spawned the anatomies that crept away on every side through the grotto. There were things like bodiless legs or arms that flailed in the slime, or heads that rolled, or floundering bellies with fishes' fins; and all manner of things malformed and monstrous, that grew in size as they departed from the neighborhood of Abhoth. And those that swam not swiftly ashore when they fell into the pool from Abhoth, were devoured by mouths that gaped in the parent bulk.

Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

, The Seven Geases


Abhoth ("The Source of Uncleanliness") resides in the cavern of Y'quaa
Y'qaa
Y'qaa or Y'quaa is one of the underground realms under Mount Voormithadreth from the writings of Clark Aston Smith's Hyperborean cycle. Several of the Old Ones from the Cthulhu Mythos live there, most notably Ubbo-Sathla....

 beneath Mount Voormithadreth. It is a horrid, dark gray protean mass and is said to be the ultimate source of all miscreation and abomination.

Obscene monsters constantly form in Abhoth's gray mass and crawl away from their parent. No two of Abhoth's children are alike. In general, they are complex life forms, but the majority of them are simple-minded acting on impulse. Their forms can be anything from amorphous blobs and singular body parts, to queer humanoids and monstrous mutants. Abhoth's tentacles and limbs grab many of them, pulling them back and devouring them. Most of those that escape simply wander off, only a few of them tend to their sire's needs. Abhoth has a twisted and cynical mind, and can communicate telepathically
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...

 with others near him.

Abhoth is also mentioned in Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
Colin Henry Wilson is a prolific English writer who first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson has since written widely on true crime, mysticism and other topics. He prefers calling his philosophy new existentialism or phenomenological existentialism.- Early biography:Born and...

's The Mind Parasites.

Abhoth is one of the Ancient Ones in the board game Arkham Horror
Arkham Horror
Arkham Horror is an adventure board game designed by Richard Launius, originally published in 1987 by Chaosium and most recently published in 2005 and revised in 2007 by Fantasy Flight Games. In both editions, players take on the role of investigators in H. P. Lovecraft's Massachusetts town of...

. He is included in the Dunwich Horror expansion.

Atlach-Nacha

In the short story The Seven Geases (1934
1934 in literature
The year 1934 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The first Flash Gordon comic strip is published.*Boris Pasternak and Korney Chukovsky are among those present at the first Congress of the Soviet Union of Writers....

), Atlach-Nacha is the reluctant recipient of a human sacrifice given to it by the toad-god Tsathoggua
Tsathoggua
Tsathoggua is a fictional supernatural entity in the Cthulhu Mythos shared fictional universe. He is the creation of Clark Ashton Smith and is part of his Hyperborean cycle....

.

Atlach-Nacha resembles a huge spider with an almost-human face. It dwells in a huge cavern deep beneath Mount Voormithadreth, a mountain in the now vanished kingdom of Hyperborea in the Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

. There it spins a gigantic web, bridging a massive chasm between the Dreamlands and the waking world. Some believe that when the web is complete, the end of the world
End times
The end time, end times, or end of days is a time period described in the eschatological writings in the three Abrahamic religions and in doomsday scenarios in various other non-Abrahamic religions...

 will come, because it will create a permanent junction with the Dreamlands allowing monsters to move freely into the waking world.

Atlach-Nacha probably came to Earth from the planet Cykranosh
Cykranosh
Cykranosh is the fictional name for the planet Saturn in the Cthulhu Mythos. Cykranosh is the creation of Clark Ashton Smith and is part of his Hyperborean cycle...

 (or Saturn
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...

 as we know it today) with Tsathoggua
Tsathoggua
Tsathoggua is a fictional supernatural entity in the Cthulhu Mythos shared fictional universe. He is the creation of Clark Ashton Smith and is part of his Hyperborean cycle....

. Because of its appearance, Atlach-Nacha is often referred to as the Spider-God(dess) and is believed to be the regent of all spiders. Furthermore, the giant, bloated purple spiders of Leng
Leng
Leng is a fictional cold arid plateau in the Cthulhu Mythos, whose location seems to vary entirely from story to story. The Plateau of Tsang, referenced by H. P...

 are thought to be its children and servitors.

There is some disagreement about its gender. In Smith's original story, Atlach-Nacha is referred to as a male, but in later stories by other authors, it is implied to be a female.

Rlim Shaikorth

Rlim Shaikorth appears as a huge, whitish worm with a gaping maw and eyes made of dripping globules of blood. One of Rlim Shaikorth's avatars is known as the White Worm and is part of Smith's Hyperborean cycle
Hyperborean cycle
The Hyperborean cycle is a series of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith that take place in the fictional prehistoric setting of Hyperborea . Various elements in Smith's cycle have been borrowed by H. P. Lovecraft, most notably the "toad-god" Tsathoggua...

.

The White Worm travels on a gigantic iceberg
Iceberg
An iceberg is a large piece of ice from freshwater that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water. It may subsequently become frozen into pack ice...

 called Yikilth, which it can guide across the ocean. In its colossal ice-citadel, the White Worm prowls the seas, blasting ships and inhabited land masses with extreme cold. Victims of the White Worm are frozen solid, their bodies appearing eerily white, and remain preternaturally cold—they will not melt nor warm even when exposed to fire. (The Coming of the White Worm, 1941
1941 in literature
The year 1941 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Frank Herbert marries Flora Parkinson.*F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished work, The Last Tycoon, is edited and published by Edmund Wilson.-New books:...

)

Ubbo-Sathla


There, in the grey beginning of Earth, the formless mass that was Ubbo-Sathla reposed amid the slime and the vapors. Headless, without organs or members, it sloughed from its oozy sides, in a slow, ceaseless wave, the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life. Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. About it, prone or tilted in the mire, there lay the mighty tablets of star-quarried stone that were writ with the inconceivable wisdom of the pre-mundane gods.

Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

, Ubbo-Sathla


Ubbo-Sathla ("The Unbegotten Source", "The Demiurge
Demiurge
The demiurge is a concept from the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy for an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe. The term was subsequently adopted by the Gnostics...

") is described as a huge protoplasm
Protoplasm
Protoplasm is the living contents of a cell that is surrounded by a plasma membrane. It is a general term of the Cytoplasm . Protoplasm is composed of a mixture of small molecules such as ions, amino acids, monosaccharides and water, and macromolecules such as nucleic acids, proteins, lipids and...

ic mass resting in a grotto deep beneath the frozen earth. The being is of a monstrous fecundity, spontaneously generating primordial single-celled organisms that pour unceasingly from its shapeless form. It guards a set of stone tablets believed to contain the knowledge of the Elder Gods.

Ubbo-Sathla is said to have spawned the prototypes of all forms of life on Earth; though whatever its pseudopods touch is forever devoid of life. Ubbo-Sathla is destined to someday reabsorb all living things on Earth.

Ubbo-Sathla possibly dwells in gray-litten Y'qaa. The being may also dwell in Mount Voormithadreth and may have spawned another of its residents, the being Abhoth, whose form and nature is very similar. This similarity has led some writers to speculate that Ubbo-Sathla and Abhoth are the same entity viewed at different epochs under different names. The tablets that Ubbo-Sathla guards have been oft sought by sorcerers, though no sorcerer has yet succeeded in acquiring them.

Yhoundeh

In Smith's The Door to Saturn, Yhoundeh the elk-goddess is the name of the deity worshipped in the waning days of Hyperborea
Hyperborean cycle
The Hyperborean cycle is a series of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith that take place in the fictional prehistoric setting of Hyperborea . Various elements in Smith's cycle have been borrowed by H. P. Lovecraft, most notably the "toad-god" Tsathoggua...

. Yhoundeh's priests also banned Tsathoggua's cult, and her inquisitors punished any heretics. As the Hyperborean civilization drew to a close, Yhoundeh's priests fell out of favor and the people returned to the worship of Tsathoggua.

According to the Parchments of Pnom, Yhoundeh is the wife of Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep, also known as the Crawling Chaos, is a malign deity in the Cthulhu Mythos fictional universe created by H. P. Lovecraft. First appearing in Lovecraft's 1920 prose poem of the same name, he was later mentioned in other works by Lovecraft and by other writers and in the tabletop...

, avatar of the Outer Gods.

Alila

The "queen of perdition and goddess of all iniquities," Alila is worshipped in central Zothique
Zothique
Zothique is an imagined future continent featured in a series of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith. Zothique is also the title of the cycle of tales which take place there. In terms of number and extent, the Zothique cycle is the largest collection of stories written by Smith...

. (The Witchcraft of Ulua.)

Basatan

Basatan is a sea-god, also known as the Master of the Crabs.

Basatan possesses a ring with supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 powers. Basatan may be associated somehow with the constellation
Constellation
In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....

 Cancer
Cancer (constellation)
Cancer is one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for crab and it is commonly represented as such. Its symbol is . Cancer is small and its stars are faint...

. (Master of the Crabs, 1948
1948 in literature
The year 1948 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel is renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction....

)

Ililot

Zothiquean goddess of love, but "a darker goddess" in the kingdom of Yoros. (The Dead Will Cuckold You.)

Mordiggian

This god is worshipped in the city of Zul-Bha-Sair and nowhere else on Zothique.


It was a bulk of darkness, black and opaque, that somehow blinded the eyes with a strange dazzlement. It seemed to suck the flame from the red urns and fill the chamber with a chill of utter death and voidness. Its form was that of a worm-shapen column, huge as a dragon, its further coils still issuing from the gloom of the corridor; but it changed from moment to moment, swirling and spinning as if alive with the vortical energies of dark eons.

Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

, The Charnel God

Ojhal

Ojhal is a virgin goddess worshipped in northern Zothique. (The Black Abbot of Puthuum, 1936.)

Thamogorgos

A powerful entity of the Outer Void. His coursers are so large that they can trample a large building with a single hoof. The archimage Namirrha summoned them to destroy an entire nation. (The Dark Eidolon, 1935.)

Thasaidon

Thasaidon is the ruler of the Seven Hells. He is mentioned in several stories of the Zothique Cycle, but figures most prominently in The Dark Eidolon (1935). Most sorcerers make pacts with this evil being, and he seems to be Zothique's analog to Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...

.

Vergama

Vergama is a mysterious god worshipped in Zothique.


...He gave thanks to Vergama who, throughout the whole continent of Zothique, was deemed the most powerful and mysterious of the genii, and was thought to rule over the heavens as well as the earth.

Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

, The Last Hieroglyph

Yululun

Yululun is a minor deity in Zothique. He is the "Keeper of the Tombs". (The Weaver in the Vault)

Dweller in the Gulf

The Dweller in the Gulf appears in a short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 of the same name by Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

, first published in 1932
1932 in literature
The year 1932 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*E. V. Knox replaces Sir Owen Seaman as editor of Punch magazine.*Samuel Beckett's first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, is rejected by several publishers....

. The Dweller in the Gulf lives deep beneath the surface of the planet Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

, but may have originated elsewhere. It is worshipped exclusively by a blind, troglodyte
Caveman
A caveman or troglodyte is a stock character based upon widespread concepts of the way in which early prehistoric humans may have looked and behaved...

 sect of the Martian race, the Aihai, and can be ritually summoned by the stroking of its idol.

The Dweller resembles a massive, eyeless, soft-shelled tortoise
Tortoise
Tortoises are a family of land-dwelling reptiles of the order of turtles . Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise...

 but has a triangular head and two whiplike tails. At the ends of its tails are two bell-shaped suckers used for the ceremonial— usually forced— removal of its discoverers' eyes, turning them into the deity's blind, mute servitors.

Ong

A lion-faced god of uncertain attributes. His priests are said to be "dreadful magicians and mysteriarchs." (The Abominations of Yondo, 1929.)

Quachil Uttaus

Quachil Uttaus can reduce all living tissue that he comes into contact with to dust (and is therefore similar to another of Smith's characters, Ubbo-Sathla). Quachil Uttaus is usually associated with age, death, and decay.


It was a figure no larger than a young child, but sere and shriveled as some millennial mummy. Its hairless head, its unfeatured face, borne on a neck of skeleton thinness, were lined with a thousand reticulated wrinkles. The body was like that of some monstrous, withered abortion that had never drawn breath. The pipy arms, ending in bony claws, were outthrust as if ankylosed in a posture of an eternal dreadful groping. (The Treader of the Dust, 1935
1935 in literature
The year 1935 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* June 15 - W. H. Auden enters a marriage of convenience with Erika Mann.* July 30 - Allen Lane founds Penguin Books to publish the first mass market paperbacks in Britain....

)


Quachil Uttaus is one of the Ancient Ones in the board game Arkham Horror
Arkham Horror
Arkham Horror is an adventure board game designed by Richard Launius, originally published in 1987 by Chaosium and most recently published in 2005 and revised in 2007 by Fantasy Flight Games. In both editions, players take on the role of investigators in H. P. Lovecraft's Massachusetts town of...

. He is included in the Innsmouth Horror expansion.

Vulthoom

Vulthoom appears in the Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

 story of the same name, first published in the September 1935
1935 in literature
The year 1935 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* June 15 - W. H. Auden enters a marriage of convenience with Erika Mann.* July 30 - Allen Lane founds Penguin Books to publish the first mass market paperbacks in Britain....

 issue of Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....

. The being is also known as Gsarthotegga and "The Sleeper of Ravermos".

"Vulthoom" (short story)

In the story, Vulthoom is the Martian Aihai's equivalent of Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...

. Though most rational people believe him to be a myth, he is nonetheless greatly feared by the lower class. In truth he is a mysterious being from another universe, exiled by his fellows there and lying in wait on Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

 in the underground city of Ravermos. He plans to take over Mars and then conquer Earth as his next trophy. Because of his vast intellect and advanced technology, he seems godlike, but is in reality merely a very powerful alien who must rest for millennia at a time. While under the influence of the hallucinogenic
Psychedelics, dissociatives and deliriants
This general group of pharmacological agents can be divided into three broad categories: psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants. These classes of psychoactive drugs have in common that they can cause subjective changes in perception, thought, emotion and consciousness...

 perfume of an alien blossom, one man envisioned Vulthoom as a gigantic, otherworldly plant, but the being's true form is unknown.

The DC Comics character Power Ring is associated with an entity named Volthoom.

Xexanoth

Xexanoth, summoned by the priest Calaspa, is apparently the bane and mortal enemy of the time god Aforgomon, the latter deity possibly an Avatar
Avatar
In Hinduism, an avatar is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation," but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation"....

 of the Outer God Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth is a cosmic entity of the fictional Cthulhu Mythos and the Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft. Yog-Sothoth's name was first mentioned in his novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward...

. (The Chain of Aforgomon, 1935
1935 in literature
The year 1935 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* June 15 - W. H. Auden enters a marriage of convenience with Erika Mann.* July 30 - Allen Lane founds Penguin Books to publish the first mass market paperbacks in Britain....

.)
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