Cthulhu Mythos Cosmology and Gods

The Relationship of Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth and The Supreme Archetype

It is interesting to note that The Supreme Archetype and Yog-Sothoth have very similar statements, All existence and knowledge is encompassed under Yog-Sothoth. Encompasses the other The Outer Gods within itself, and exists as a direct personification of the Ultimate Gate and that which exists beyond it while The Supreme Archetype is described as an all-encompassing oneness that exists as "All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self," itself and chief among The Archetypes who are the true selves of the entities beyond the Ultimate Gate. Are Yog and The Supreme Archetype the same being? To answer this question we must consider Yog's origin.

"Trembling in waves that golden wisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far-off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. And as that music grew, the shantak raised its ears and plunged ahead, and Carter likewise bent to catch each lovely strain. It was a song, but not the song of any voice. Night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born."

Azathoth gave birth to the Outer Gods as well as creation itself as shown in . Yog is an Outer God so he and The Supreme Archetype can't be the same. But if that's the case then what of Azathoth? If it really the created all existence does that mean he created The True Reality and it's habitants, The Archetypes? To answer this we must revisit what The True Reality is.

"Time, the waves went on, is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present, and future. Men think of time only because of what they call change, yet that too is illusion. All that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously.

These revelations came with a godlike solemnity which left Carter unable to doubt. Even though they lay almost beyond his comprehension, he felt that they must be true in the light of that final cosmic reality which belies all local perspectives and narrow partial views; and he was familiar enough with profound speculations to be free from the bondage of local and partial conceptions. Had his whole quest not been based upon a faith in the unreality of the local and partial?

After an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of few-dimensioned zones call change is merely a function of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the angles of cutting—being circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola according to that angle, yet without any change in the cone itself—so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change."

The True Reality is the changeless, static oneness devoid of any differentiations, that exists beyond all perspectives. The inhabitants of this ultimate reality, then, are the Archetypes, eternal, unchanging and uncreated entities who participate in this totality beyond all divisions, and hold all lesser entities as nothing but facets of themselves.

"All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his ancestors both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these were only phases of one ultimate, eternal "Carter" outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case.

...

The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds."

Azathoth couldn't be the creator of this world because it and it's habitants are eternal and changeless. So what do way make of this? Well we don't really get an answer on The real relationship of this three beings but we could try to make sense of it.

Given how the whole message of the story is that individuality is nothing but an illusion inherent to lower realities, as well as how Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth themselves act as complementary counterparts to one another in the context of the cosmology (Yog-Sothoth being all-encompassing and holding all of past, present and future as one within himself, while also simultaneously embodying the Ultimate Gate, and Azathoth being the nucleus who resides at the center of its infinity, governing all of existence from his throne), I believe it's reasonable to say that Yog embodies the creation Azathoth created(not The True Reality), and Azathoth is either the first thing to exist (in a lower fashion then The True Reality and The Archetypes, not being a part of it.) or is the first thing to come into existence (How is unknown and The True Reality and The Archetypes have always existed, so they don't count), with Nyarlathotep being a direct descendant. This, in turn, elaborates on Azathoth's significance to the Cthulhu Mythos: he is the Lord of All Things who rules time and space from the center of infinity, but with this in mind, he is also akin to a demiurge who gave birth to creation as well as to the manifestations of the Archetypes in the Other Gods.

The Supreme Archetype on the other hand is the all-encompassing oneness that exists as "All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self," acting as the animating essence of all existence that subsumes even the "ultimate mystery" which underlies all manifested phenomena and in which the Archetypes themselves participate in, holding even the Ultimate Abyss and its transcendent inhabitants as facets of itself, even Azathoth and Yog. Because of both Azzy's and Yog's significance to the Cthulhu Mythos, it can also be speculated that the two of them could be representation of The Supreme Archetype.