Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (17 page)

There is a mystery known to few, that his flute is cracked and can give no pure sound. It is explained by sages that when he blew the first great note that began the outpouring of worlds, the force of the sound was so vast that no instrument could endure it, not even the flute that made it; but this is the reasoning of children, and the truth is elsewhere, for the crack in the flute is a way of expressing the imperfection inherent in all created things. All that is made is imperfect, for perfection can have no form or texture in the mind; Azathoth himself is imperfect, being blind and blubbering as he pipes. Yet how can the creator who was never made be himself imperfect? Consider this riddle and be wise. Only the breath that bears the sound ever outward
in
widening circles, unseen and formless, is perfect, for the sound is but a pattern pressed upon the breath, but the breath pervades all; if it did not, how would the sound be carried to the farthest reaches of space? It is not the breath we know, but the subtle essence of breath that can neither be seen nor felt, and is forever unknowable.

The flute of Azathoth both makes and unmakes the worlds in ceaseless combinations that are like dancers spinning on the woven carpet of time. There can be no creation without destruction, and no destruction without creation; to unmake a thing is to make something else, and each time a thing is made, something is destroyed. The idiot god on his black throne does not choose what shall rise into being, or what should pass away, but only maintains a balance and constant order in the number and pitch of his notes. These piping sounds are numbers, for they interact in ratio and proportion; all things are made of numbers; men are formed in their flesh by the arithmetic of Azathoth, who gathers his sums and brings forth shapes.

No created being has seen Azathoth save only Nyarlathotep, who is called the Chaos That Creeps by writers who fear even to voice his name. In Azathoth is order, in Nyarlathotep is disorder; they are half brothers and can never be separated, for even when far apart in space, Azathoth forever creates the patterns and Nyarlathotep forever disperses them. It was the blind idiot god who piped forth the universe, but it is whispered that it shall be the Crawling Chaos who on the last day of time shall snatch the flute from his blubbering lips and break it, ending all forevermore. Nyarlathotep looks upon his half brother with contempt, yet knows full well that he is as dependent on the song of the flute as all other things; this enrages him so that he waits in eagerness for the last day.

Concerning the face of Azathoth no pen has written, unless the writer lied, for no living creature can look upon it and endure its terrible heat and black radiance that is like the reverberating unseen rays of heated iron that strike and prickle the skin, or crisp and sizzle it when too near. Only Nyarlathotep, who has no face of his own, has gazed into the countenance of the idiot god, and even he is dazzled by its fires and must turn away after an instant.

Azathoth receives no supplicants in his black halls of uncouth angles and strange doors, nor does he ever hear prayers or answer them. Endlessly he pipes, and endlessly he devours his own substance, for his hunger is insatiable. Nothing is taken into his body from beyond, and nothing is expelled, for he consumes his own wastes after the custom of idiots. Music alone issues outward from him, yet it has no substance or form; its semblance of form arises from the ever-present breath that pervades creation and bears it along; in itself the music is only number upon number, and so cannot be truly said to proceed from Azathoth, for how can a number possess motion through space?

Despite the indifference of their god, members of the cult of Azathoth emulate his music and dance accompaniment, spinning and revolving on the wind they create with their own turning motions, pipes pressed to their lips and their eyes rolled heavenward. The dance is their ecstasy, the music itself their prayer. In this way they seek unity with the center of all things. They wear as a pledge of their faith the seal of the idiot god over their hearts.

Men ask in the marketplace in idle talk why the world was created; there is no answer, for the world was made without thought by an idiot to whom good and evil are the same. He hungers and feeds yet is never satiated; he pipes and hears but does not see. Of sorrow he knows nothing; neither has he felt happiness. He pipes with patience, and the music of his flute rolls outward in trilling waves that rise and fall upon the breath of the cosmos, and the notes fulfill their patterns and move inexorably toward the last day, when the fury of his half brother shall be expressed and there will come silence.

The wise men of the Tigris, learned in the ways of the stars, placed Azathoth in the sphere of Sol, because both are at the center of things, the god at the center of creation and the sun at the center of the wandering bodies of the heavens. As the sun is hot and bright, so is the palace of Azathoth located in a place of great heat, and his face is blinding in its radiance that darkly shimmers. They gave to him the number square of the sun, having six rows and six columns, each making the sum of 111; and the sum of all is 666. This is the number of the Beast of the Christians, and wisely was it chosen, for the Beast shall usher in the last of days.

The magi make the seal of the god that is formed on this square into a charm upon a plate of gold and wear it to attract money and substance, and to insure health of the body, on the reasoning that all things come into being from the music of Azathoth, therefore his square must bring forth substantial virtues such as vitality of the flesh and the increase of wealth. Their reasoning is flawed, for as the god creates, so he destroys.

f the fecundity of the earth there is no end; her womb breeds monsters unglimpsed by those who dwell under the sun, and her twisting entrails crawl with things white and blind. These are the children of Shub-Niggurath, who is called the Goat With One Thousand Young by those who dare not speak her name. She is of the gender of a woman, for what except the womb brings forth fleshy life upon the ground, or beneath it? Those who worship her with images most often depict her with the head of a goat; this is not her true visage, which is bestial but unlike any beast known to men, yet it may be that the image of the goat was chosen as appropriate due to the ruttiness of this animal, which is proverbial.

Her statues are black and made of stone, and are often of human size, though some are smaller for the convenience of carrying in those lands where her worship is severely punished. They show the goddess standing upright, four horns bristling from her hairy head, her mouth snarling with savage teeth like those of a wolf. Her arms and hands are those of a woman, but her legs and feet those of a goat. She is ever naked, her torso covered with innumerable round breasts to suckle her countless progeny, but that which is most shocking to those who strive to suppress her cult is the gaping and exposed state of her genitals; by this her worshippers express that Shub-Niggurath is the womb of the night from which all creatures of nightmare issue.

In the ancient time, great Cthulhu lay with her and bred upon her the armies that overthrew the Elder Things, for the manner of her bringing forth is not one after the way of women, nor even a score after the way of mice, but myriads of myriads of children issue from her womb, which never closes. It has been ages since last she lay with her cousin, and most of his children are dead or have sought their dwellings deep beneath the sea and under the surface of the ground, for they hate the light of the sun and, being of the same substance as the Old Ones, cannot easily endure the noxious rays of the stars that presently keep Cthulhu imprisoned at R’lyeh. When the stars are right, and darkness covers the earth, they will issue forth from their deep pits and lakes, and from the ocean, and fulfill the will of the Old Ones as they did in the beginning of things.

Her rites are wild ecstasies of debauch during which brother lies with sister, mother with son, father with daughter, and infants conceived in this unlawful way are sacrificed to the prolific goat, and their blood consumed in wine to produce intoxication and visions; so also are the bodies boiled in great pots, and their flesh consumed by the revelers, who recognize no restraint of law and practice any outrage against religion. They are accustomed to meet in caverns during the night hours, both for greater security against detection and also because the deep places are the wombs of the world, sacred to Shub-Niggurath.

With red and blue and yellow pigments they paint their faces and bodies, for they worship naked after the way of the goddess; upon their backs they paint her seal; the men dance with their virile members inflamed and erect, and the woman dance obscenely, opening and closing their bent knees to expose their genitals, and shaking their heads and their breasts while screaming invocation of the goddess to the beat of drums and the drone of flutes; around blazing fires they dance, the flames rising higher than their elevated hands, and the men gash their arms with blades and spatter the blood on the thighs of the women to make them more fertile.