Editing Shub-Niggurath (section)

==Robert M. Price's interpretation==
[[Robert M. Price]] points to a passage from "[[Idle Days on the Yann]]", by [[Lord Dunsany]], one of Lovecraft's favorite writers, as the source for the name Shub-Niggurath:

{{blockquote|And I too felt that I would pray. Yet I liked not to pray to a jealous God there where the frail affectionate gods whom the heathen love were being humbly invoked; so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol Nugganoth, whom the men of the jungle have long since deserted, who is now unworshipped and alone; and to him I prayed.<ref>Lord Dunsany, [http://www.litrix.com/dtales/dtale006.htm "Idle Days on the Yann"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060829163820/http://www.litrix.com/dtales/dtale006.htm |date=August 29, 2006 }}, ''A Dreamer's Tales''.</ref>}}

Notes Price: "The name already carried a whiff of sulfur: [[Sheol]] was the name for the Netherworld mentioned in the [[Bible]] and the [[Gilgamesh Epic]]."<ref>Robert M. Price, ''Shub-Niggurath Cycle'', p. xii.</ref>

As for Shub-Niggurath's association with the symbol of the goat, Price writes,

{{blockquote|we may believe that here Lovecraft was inspired by the traditional [[Christianity|Christian]] depiction of the [[Baphomet|Baphomet Goat]], an image of [[Satan]] harking back to the pre-Christian woodland deity [[Pan (mythology)|Pan]], he of the goatish horns and shanks. The Satanic goat is a device of much spectral fiction, as when  in [[Dennis Wheatley]]'s ''[[The Devil Rides Out]]'' the Archfiend's epiphany takes goat-headed form.<ref>Price, p. x.</ref>}}