Cthulhu Mythos Cosmology and Gods

Hierarchy of Gates or "Vacua"

Now, to showcase that this is fact a proper hierarchy of levels of existence, we then take a step aside and look at another important story that explains a great deal about the cosmology: Hypnos. In it, the narrator and the title character use special drugs to project their astral forms into a universe of dreams, described as deeper and of a more fundamental level than the world of time, space and matter, which is described as being birthed out of it, in the same way a bubble of smoke emanates out of the pipe of a jester.

"Of our studies it is impossible to speak, since they held so slight a connexion with anything of the world as living men conceive it. They were of that vaster and more appalling universe of dim entity and consciousness which lies deeper than matter, time, and space, and whose existence we suspect only in certain forms of sleep—those rare dreams beyond dreams which come never to common men, and but once or twice in the lifetime of imaginative men. The cosmos of our waking knowledge, born from such an universe as a bubble is born from the pipe of a jester, touches it only as such a bubble may touch its sardonic source when sucked back by the jester's whim. Men of learning suspect it little, and ignore it mostly. Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed. One man with Oriental eyes has said that all time and space are relative, and men have laughed. But even that man with Oriental eyes has done no more than suspect. I had wished and tried to do more than suspect, and my friend had tried and partly succeeded. Then we both tried together, and with exotic drugs courted terrible and forbidden dreams in the tower studio chamber of the old manor-house in hoary Kent."

And within this universe, Hypnos and the unnamed narrator then begin to ascend into increasingly more primal levels of reality, becoming less and less restricted by the limitations of the material world as they plunge into more remote regions. The breaking of these limitations is represented in this world by a series of cloudy "obstacles" which the two occasionally tear through during their travels.

"Among the agonies of these after days is that chief of torments—inarticulateness. What I learned and saw in those hours of impious exploration can never be told—for want of symbols or suggestions in any language. I say this because from first to last our discoveries partook only of the nature of sensations; sensations correlated with no impression which the nervous system of normal humanity is capable of receiving. They were sensations, yet within them lay unbelievable elements of time and space—things which at bottom possess no distinct and definite existence. Human utterance can best convey the general character of our experiences by calling them plungings or soarings; for in every period of revelation some part of our minds broke boldly away from all that is real and present, rushing aërially along shocking, unlighted, and fear-haunted abysses, and occasionally tearing through certain well-marked and typical obstacles describable only as viscous, uncouth clouds or vapours."

Then, they eventually come across remote areas that the narrator describes as "limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity" that unfold entirely new perceptions of infinity upon the two, with the narrator himself eventually reaching a final obstacle, incalculably denser than the last, which he is unable to penetrate, but which Hypnos passes through without much difficulty.

"There was a night when winds from unknown spaces whirled us irresistibly into limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity. Perceptions of the most maddeningly untransmissible sort thronged upon us; perceptions of infinity which at the time convulsed us with joy, yet which are now partly lost to my memory and partly incapable of presentation to others. Viscous obstacles were clawed through in rapid succession, and at length I felt that we had been borne to realms of greater remoteness than any we had previously known. My friend was vastly in advance as we plunged into this awesome ocean of virgin aether, and I could see the sinister exultation on his floating, luminous, too youthful memory-face. Suddenly that face became dim and quickly disappeared, and in a brief space I found myself projected against an obstacle which I could not penetrate. It was like the others, yet incalculably denser; a sticky, clammy mass, if such terms can be applied to analogous qualities in a non-material sphere."

As the narrator abandons the world of dreams and his perception shifts back to that of the material world, he also describes his sense of infinity itself as reverting to the local scale, indicating that these "vacua" indeed marked higher levels of infinity, which he and Hypnos ascended through to eventually reach the void outside of all existence, inhabited by the Ultimate Gods.