|
Lin Carter's theogony "H. P.
Lovecraft: The Gods" has reached the heights of apotheosis. It has itself
become part of the Cthulhu Mythos, inasmuch as Brian Lumley places it alongside
the Cthäat Aquadingen and other nitrous volumes of hellish lore in his
story "The House of the Temple". And the glossary is quite useful,
though dated. Lumley, Carter, and others have added new demons to the horde,
including Ybb-Tsll, Shudde-M'ell, Zoth-Ommog and Ythogtha. But the omission of
Robert E. Howard's Gol-Goroth is less understandable, and the compiler surely
risked the wrath of the Old Ones by neglecting him . . . or it, or whatever.
Gol-Goroth's lore may be reconstructed
from hints dropped here and there throughout five interrelated tales by Howard.
They are "The Black Stone", "The Children of the Night", "The
People of the Dark", "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth", and "The Thing on the
Roof". This cycle of stories shares elements including the mention of the
"mad poet" Justin Geoffrey ("Stone" and "Roof";
see also Howard and Derleth, "The House in the Oaks"), Von Junzt's Unaussprechlichen
Kulten ("Stone", "Children" and "Roof"), lost
aboriginal races (all five), an ancient carven obelisk ("Stone",
"People"), and a monstrous deity ("Stone", "Gods",
"Roof", "Children", and possibly "People"), who may be
explicitly named Gol-Goroth ("Gods", "Children").
Our first task is to make sure we can
speak of a single mythological system presupposed in these stories. After all,
there are some discrepancles, and the name Gol-Goroth does not appear in all the
tales. First we may note the grisly similarities between the orgiastic rites
ascribed to the cultus in the various stories. "The Black Stone"
speaks of "a curious legend of a strange deity which the witch-people of
Xuthltan were said to have invoked with chants and wild rituals of flagellation
and slaughter." This "slaughter" included human sacrifice. The
same is true of the cult of Gol-Goroth in "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth". There
we are told that "youths and maidens die at the waxing and waning, the
rising and the setting of the moon before Gol-Goroth, on whose altar a fresh
human heart ever throbs!" In "Gods", the god is explicitly called
Gol-Goroth, while in "Stone" its name is chanted but the narrator
cannot hear what is being said. Note, however, the prominence of the name.
In two stories ("Stone" and
"Roof") where the deity is not named, its high priest is said to wear
a ceremonial talisman, a jewel carven in the shape of a toad and hanging from a
chain. In "Gods", where Gol-Goroth is named, there is mention of a jade
medallion hanging from a chain about the neck of the king, who is however a
puppet of the high priest of Gol-Goroth. The medallion is not described except
that it is intricately carven from jade.
What does Von Junzt have to say about the
cult? In "Roof", the narrator relates that, "seeking some clue in Von
Junzt's volume, I read again of the Temple of the Toad, of the strange
pre-Indian people who worshipped there, and of the huge tittering, tentacled,
hooved monstrosity that they worshipped." The common presence of the toad
talisman worn by the priests in "Roof" and "Stone" would
strongly Imply that the tentacled moniter of "Roof" is to be
identified with the "toad-like" deity that crouches atop the obelisk
in "Stone", even though Von Junzt apparently mentioned no cult associated
with the obelisk in his brief allusion to it. At any rate, this god would seem
to be the same as Gol-Goroth in "Gods". ("There are many gods in Bal-Sagoth,
but the greatest of all is Gol-Goroth, the god of darkness who sits forever in
the Temple of Shadows.") While Von Junzt is not mentioned in this story,
his book is referred to in "Children", where he is said to have written of
the same god. Commenting on Von Junzt, one character says, "Well . . .
suppose we admit the former existence of cults revolving about such nameless and
ghastly gods and entities as Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Tsathoggua, Gol-Goroth, and
the like, I can not find it in my mind to believe that survivals of such cults
lurk in the dark corners of the world today." This quote, incidentally,
ties Gol-Goroth explicitly into the Cthulhu Mythos pantheon.
So we know Von Junzt did mention a god
named Gol-Goroth, and from "Gods" we have information about Gol-Goroth
that matches up closely with what we read in "Roof" of a god described
but not named by Von Jtinzt. There would seem to be but one final obstacle in
the way of our identifying all these slimy apparitions as the Old One Gol-Goroth.
That is the varied descriptions of the appearance and fate of the monsters in
each story. In "Roof" the god is tentacled and hooved, while in
"Stone" it is "toad-like". In "People" a devolved human
guarding the black obelisk is said to be more reptilian than toad-like (though
it is also not said to be the object of anyone's worship). In "Gods",
Gol-Goroth does not actually appear, but its idol is described as "a mighty
form, sinister and abhorrent". There is no description at all in "Children".
In all the stories in which the monster appears, it is clearly a material
creature, and this is implied in "Gods", where another member of Bal-Sagoth's
pantheon, "Groth-golka the bird-god", is presented as a gigantic
prehistoric bird. Gol-Goroth is presumably just as material. The creatures
associated with the obelisk in both "Stone" and "People" are
killed by humans. Can all these monsters be the same god, Gol-Goroth?
Yes, in a manner of speaking. The case is
similar to that of totemism as described by Emil Durkheim. Members of a clan for
whom, e.g., the bear is the totem, venerate individual bears, it is true, but
they do not confuse the bear per se with the divine magical force (mana)
which they worship. Instead, they believe that the bear per se, as well
as individual bears (Smokey, Teddy, Yogi, etc.), embody or incarnate the mana
which is logically prior to them. The same would be true of the frenzied
worshippers of Gol-Goroth, whether in Bal-Sagoth, Xuthltan, or ancient Honduras.
We may note a parallel instance in Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", where
the Cthulhu-cultists in the Louisiana bayou worship a "polypous thing with
luminous eyes", which they keep in a pond. Presumably they do not identify it
with Great Cthulhu himself, whom they know to be located "in his house at
R'lyeh". So we might call the various monsters encountered in Howard's stories
"avatars of Gol-Goroth", just as the winged behemoth with "the
three-lobed burning eye" in "The Haunter of the Dark" was called
"an avatar of Nyarlathotep", whom, as we know, appears in several other
forms, sometimes hurnanoid. Of course, recalling the toad-imagery associated
with Gol-Goroth in two of the stories, we might even wonder if Gol-Goroth is not
to be considered an avatar of "toad-like" Tsathoggua. But it is
unlikely that Howard intended this, since he has both names mentioned side by
side in the listing referred to above.
Well, then, let us hope that the forgotten
Old One Gol-Goroth will suffer from neglect no more, now that we have dusted off
the facts concerning him. As any reader of "The Thing on the Roof"
knows well, this is no deity to lightly run afoul of.
|