Yog Sothoth

Yog Sothoth by PJ Church

 Yog Sothoth, one of the entities  from the Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos, one of the great "Old Ones."  Here's a lovely quote from the short Story The Dunwich Horror:

"Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread."

Decades ago, back when I still had time to read fiction, I first encountered the mention of Yog Sothoth in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shay's epic Illuminatus! trilogy.  This book is a surreal blend of fact and fiction.  In the novel, Yog Sothoth is the creature imprisoned in the Pentagon in Washinton DC.  I'd never thought about the occult significance of the Pentagon's shape and design before, and one of the scenes in the book references an actual occurrence in 1967, in which anti-Vietnam War activists, including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin circled the Pentagon and performed an exorcism on the Pentagon in an attempt to end the war.  Or to freak out the norms (muggles). 

Needle-felted Merino Wool

It was back in the 1980's when I encountered Illuminatus! and it was an influential book in shaping my worldview, mystical sensibilities, and sense of humor.  The book weaves together practically every major conspiracy from the pre-history of Atlantean civilization to the murder of JFK, written in a style influenced by William Burroughs, Orson Welles, and James Joyce. I've heard some literary folk describe it as a more challenging read than Ullysses. 

Long before the Pastafarians and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, there were a couple satirical, yet functionally useful, religions that I bumped into.  The Church of the Sub-genius, in which I become ordained, and Discordianism, in which I'm a pope. It's not hard.  If you wish to be a Discordian pope, you simply declare yourself so.  This speaks to something about the nature of religious bullshit: personal empowerment vs. mental slavery.  Contributing to Operation Mindfuck became a significant high school hobby for me. 

If you haven't explored the concepts of Discordianism and the goddess Eris, it's a fascinating story, full of synchronicity and weirdness, especially the fact that it's founding text, the Principia Discordia was first printed in 1963 on New Orlean's DA Jim Garrison's Xerox machine.  (Yes, THAT Jim Garrison, the guy who first investigated the "conspiracy" to kill JFK.) 

Created 5-23-17 thru 6-6-17

In the Illuminatus! trilogy, Shea and Wilson worked the Discordians in as a ragtag band of counter-culture rebels fighting against the Illuminati, a shadowy conspiracy founded by a Bavarian monk and Freemason Adam Weishaupt in 1776.  Who or what the Illuminati actually is or isn't, and even whether "they" are the "good guys" or the "bad guys" is an ever shifting target in the book, the point of which, in my opinion, is to subvert all paradigms and to facilitate in the reader stone-cold paranoia, or a freedom from that paranoia into a place of agnosticism and skepticism, a place from which you can begin to see that nothing is true, and that everything is a construct.  At the time, encountering a lot of folks who read this book, I noticed people came out the other side of this book sounding like nut-job conspiracy monger Alex Jones, or they came out fairly liberated from the sea of bullshit in which we swim.  If they were able to actually read it at all. 

Consider this excerpt from Illuminatus!, which is itself an excerpt from the Principia Discordia:

“Hang on for some metaphysics. The Aneristic Principle is that of order, the Eristic Principle is that of disorder. On the surface, the Universe seems (to the ignorant) to be ordered; this is the aneristic illusion. Actually, what order is “there” is imposed on primal chaos in the same sense that a person’s name is draped over his actual self. It is the job of the scientist, for example, to implement this principle in a practical manner and some are quite brilliant at it. But on closer examination, order dissolves into disorder, which is the ERISTIC ILLUSION. "

It didn't take long for this to lead to an encounter with Chaos Magic, a paradigm of DIY esotericism which first seemed to peak in the 80's, and which over the last couple years has experienced a huge resurgence in popularity for some reason.   Along with Discordianism, it's a whole other topic you might wish to peruse if any of this has been of interest to you.  Of the many precepts of Chaos Magic, one that often strikes a chord with people is the notion that you can just as easily work with fictional entities as the supposedly non-fictional ones.  Of course, if you actually explore, you will find that it is just as easy and effective to work with Shiva, Jesus, Odin and Zeus as it is with Cthulhu, Batman, the Easter Bunny and Sherlock Holmes.  Archetypes and constructs activated in the ritual space.

This particular soft, cuddly, merino-wool sculpture of Yog Sothoth was inspired by physicist and chaos author Peter J. Carroll's book "The Portal's of Chaos."  It's a wonderful collection of archetypes, drawing on everything from the Egyptian Pantheon to the classical planet archetypes of Venus and Mercury.  And of course, the "fictional" entities described by pulp novelist H.P. Lovecraft.

   

Excerpt from Portals of Chaos, by Peter J Carroll

THE KEY AND THE GUARDIAN OF THE GATE.  THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GATES.

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE ALL ARE ONE IN YOG SOTHOTH.

THE SPAWN OF THE BLANKNESS OF PRIMAL TIME AND SPACE

THE NETHERMOST OUTPOSTS OF TIME AND SPACE,

THE LURKER AT THE THRESHOLD OF OUTER SPACE

THE BREAKER APART OF THE IRIDESCENT GLOBES,

THE CONGERIES OF GLOWING SPHERES CONTERMINOUS WITH TIME AND SPACE

THE KEY TO THE OUTSIDE OF THE UNIVERSE WE INHABIT.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHERE THE OLD ONES BROKE THROUGH OF OLD

AND WHERE THEY SHALL BREAK THROUGH AGAIN.

THE MASTERY OF SPACE-TIME GEOMETRY OF THE UNIVERSE.

THE OMNISCIENCE ACROSS SPACETIME