Editing Shub-Niggurath

{{short description|Fictional deity in the Cthulhu Mythos}}
{{about|the fictional deity|the French band|Shub-Niggurath (band)}}
{{Infobox character
| name = Shub-Niggurath
| series = [[Cthulhu Mythos]]
| image = Shub-Niggurath.jpg
| caption = Artistic portrayal of Shub-Niggurath, along with her "Thousand Young"
| first = "[[The Last Test]]"
| last = 
| creator = [[H. P. Lovecraft]]
| portrayer = 
| voice = 
| nickname = "The All Mother"
| alias = The Black Goat with thousand young
| species = Other God/Outer God
| gender = Female
| occupation = One of the Outer gods and a member of the Court of [[Azathoth]]
| spouse = [[Hastur]] (in the present) and Yog-sothoth (in the past)
| children = Ithaqua, Zhar, Lloigor and the Dark Youngs of Shub-Niggurath (with Hastur) and Nug and Yeb (with Yog-sothoth)
| home = Yaddith
| title = Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young
}}

'''Shub-Niggurath''' is a [[deity]] created by [[H. P. Lovecraft]]. She is often associated with the phrase "The Black [[Goat]] of the Woods with a Thousand Young". The only other name by which Lovecraft referred to her was "Lord of the Wood" in his story ''[[The Whisperer in Darkness]]''.<ref name=Joshi>{{cite book |last1=Joshi |first1=S.T. |last2=Schultz |first2=David E. |title=An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia |date=2004 |publisher=Hippocampus Press |isbn=978-0974878911 |pages=296–298}}</ref>

Shub-Niggurath is first mentioned in Lovecraft's revision story "[[The Last Test]]" ([[1928 in literature|1928]]); she is not described by Lovecraft, but is frequently mentioned or called upon in incantations. Most of her development as a literary figure was carried out by other Mythos authors, including [[August Derleth]], [[Robert Bloch]], and [[Ramsey Campbell]].

Lovecraft explicitly defined Shub-Niggurath as a [[mother goddess]] in ''[[The Mound (novella)|The Mound]]'', where he calls her "Shub-Niggurath, the All-Mother".<ref name="auto">H. P. Lovecraft writing as Zealia Bishop, "The Mound", ''The Horror in the Museum'', pp. 144–145.</ref> He describes her as a kind of [[Astarte]] in the same story.<ref name="auto"/> In ''Out of the Aeons'', she is one of the deities siding with humanity against "hostile gods".<ref name="auto1">H. P. Lovecraft writing as Hazel Heald, "Out of the Aeons", ''The Horror in the Museum'', pp. 273–274; Price, p. xiii.</ref>

August Derleth classified Shub-Niggurath as a [[Great Old One]], but the ''[[Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)|Call of Cthulhu]]'' role-playing game classifies her as an [[Outer God]]. The ''[[CthulhuTech]]'' role-playing game, in turn, returns to Derleth's classification of Shub-Niggurath as a Great Old One. Shub Niggurath also had children with Hastur in present as she is the mate of Hastur, and in the past she had offsprings with Yog-sothoth too.

== Development ==
Shub-Niggurath's appearances in Lovecraft's main body of fiction do not provide much detail about his conception of the entity. Her first mention under Lovecraft's byline was in "[[The Dunwich Horror]]" (1928), where a quote from the ''[[Necronomicon]]'' discussing the Old Ones breaks into an exclamation of "Iä! Shub-Niggurath!"<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", ''The Dunwich Horror and Others'', p. 170.</ref> The story provides no further information about this peculiar expression.

The next Lovecraft story to mention Shub-Niggurath is scarcely more informative. In ''[[The Whisperer in Darkness]]'' (1930), a recording of a ceremony involving human and nonhuman worshippers includes the following exchange:

{{blockquote|Ever Their praises, and abundance to the Black Goat of the Woods. Iä! Shub-Niggurath!<br/>
''Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!''<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness", ''The Dunwich Horror and Others'', p. 226.</ref>}}

Similarly unexplained exclamations occur in "[[The Dreams in the Witch House]]" (1932) <ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House", ''At the Mountains of Madness'', p. 293.</ref> and "[[The Thing on the Doorstep]]" (1933).<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "The Thing on the Doorstep", ''The Dunwich Horror and Others'', pp. 287, 296.</ref>

== Revision tales ==
[[File:H. P. Lovecraft Portrait, June 1934.png|thumb|alt=H. P. Lovecraft in June 1934, facing left|H. P. Lovecraft, Shub-Niggurath's creator]]
Lovecraft only provided specific information about Shub-Niggurath in his "revision tales", stories published under the names of clients for whom he ghost-wrote. As Price points out, "For these clients he constructed a parallel myth-cycle to his own, a separate group of Great Old Ones", including [[Yig]], [[Ghatanothoa]], [[Rhan-Tegoth]], "the evil twins [[Nug and Yeb]]"—and Shub-Niggurath.

While some of these revision stories just repeat the familiar exclamations,<ref>H. P. Lovecraft writing as Zealia Bishop, "Medusa's Coil", ''The Horror in the Museum'', pp. 189–190; H. P. Lovecraft writing as Hazel Heald, "The Man of Stone", ''The Horror in the Museum'', pp. 225, 232; H. P. Lovecraft writing as Hazel Heald, "The Horror in the Museum", ''The Horror in the Museum'', pp. 225, 232; H. P. Lovecraft writing as William Lumley, "The Diary of Alonzo Typer", ''The Horror in the Museum'', p. 321.</ref> others provide new elements of lore. In "The Last Test" (1927), the first mention of Shub-Niggurath seems to connect her to Nug and Yeb: "I talked in [[Yemen]] with an old man who had come back from the Crimson Desert—he had seen [[Iram of the Pillars|Irem]], the City of Pillars, and had worshipped at the underground shrines of Nug and Yeb—Iä! Shub-Niggurath!"<ref>H. P. Lovecraft writing as Adolphe de Castro, "The Last Test", ''The Horror in the Museum'', p. 47.</ref>

The revision story ''[[The Mound (novella)|The Mound]]'', which describes the discovery of an underground realm called [[K'n-yan]] by a Spanish [[conquistador]], reports that a temple of [[Tsathoggua]] there "had been turned into a shrine of Shub-Niggurath, the All-Mother and wife of the Not-to-Be-Named-One. This deity was a kind of sophisticated [[Astarte]], and her worship struck the pious Catholic as supremely obnoxious."<ref name="auto"/>

The reference to "Astarte", the consort of Baal in [[Semitic mythology]], ties Shub-Niggurath to the related fertility goddess [[Cybele]], the Magna Mater mentioned in Lovecraft's "[[The Rats in the Walls]]", and implies that the "great mother worshipped by the hereditary cult of Exham Priory" in that story "had to be none other than Shub-Niggurath".<ref>Price, ''Shub-Niggurath Cycle'', p. xiv.</ref>

The Not-to-Be-Named-One, not being named, is difficult to identify; a similar phrase, translated into Latin as the ''Magnum Innominandum'', appears in a list in ''The Whisperer in Darkness''<ref>Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness", p. 223.</ref> and was included in a scrap of incantation that Lovecraft wrote for [[Robert Bloch]]'s "The Shambler from the Stars".<ref>Robert Bloch, "The Shambler from the Stars", ''Mysteries of the Worm'', p. 31.</ref> [[August Derleth]] identifies this mysterious entity with [[Hastur]]<ref>August Derleth, "The Return of Hastur", ''The Hastur Cycle'', pp. 255–256.</ref> (though Hastur appears in the same ''Whisperer in Darkness'' list with the ''Magnum Innominandum''), while Robert M. Price equates him with [[Yog-Sothoth]]—though he also suggests that Shub-Niggurath's mate is implicitly the snake god Yig.<ref>Price, p. xiii.</ref>

Finally, in "[[Out of the Aeons]]", a revision tale set in part on the lost continent of [[Mu (lost continent)|Mu]], Lovecraft describes the character T'yog as the "High Priest of Shub-Niggurath and guardian of the copper temple of the Goat with a Thousand Young". In the story, T'yog surprisingly maintains that "the gods friendly to man could be arrayed against the hostile gods, and&nbsp;... that Shub-Niggurath, Nug, and Yeb, as well as Yig the Serpent-god, were ready to take sides with man" against the more malevolent Ghatanothoa. Shub-Niggurath is called "the Mother Goddess", and reference is made to "her sons", presumably Nug and Yeb.<ref name="auto1"/>

=== Other references ===
Other evidence of Lovecraft's conception of Shub-Niggurath can be found in his letters. For example, in a letter to Willis Conover, Lovecraft described her as an "evil cloud-like entity".<ref>Cited in Price, p. xv.</ref> "Yog-Sothoth's wife is the hellish cloud-like entity Shub-Niggurath, in whose honor nameless cults hold the rite of the Goat with a Thousand Young. By her he has two monstrous offspring—the evil twins Nug and Yeb. He has also begotten hellish hybrids upon the females of various organic species throughout the universes of space-time."

==The Black Goat==
Although Shub-Niggurath is often associated with the epithet "The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young", it is possible that this Black [[Goat]] is a separate entity. Rodolfo Ferraresi, in his essay "The Question of Shub-Niggurath", says that Lovecraft himself separated the two in his writings, such as in "Out of the Aeons" ([[1935 in literature|1935]]) in which a distinction is made between Shub-Niggurath and the Black Goat—the goat is the figurehead through which Shub-Niggurath is worshipped. In apparent contrast to Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat is sometimes depicted as a male, most notably in the rite performed in ''[[The Whisperer in Darkness]]'' (1931) in which the Black Goat is called the "Lord of the Woods".  However, Lovecraft clearly associates Shub-Niggurath with The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young in two of his stories—"The Dreams in the Witch House" and "The Thing on the Doorstep".

It is possible that The Black Goat is actually Ny-Rakath, Shub-Niggurath's brother. The Black Goat may also be the personification of [[Pan (mythology)|Pan]], since Lovecraft was influenced by [[Arthur Machen]]'s ''[[The Great God Pan]]'' ([[1890 in literature|1890]]), a story that inspired Lovecraft's "[[The Dunwich Horror]]" ([[1929 in literature|1929]]). In this incarnation, the Black Goat may represent [[Satan]] in the form of the [[satyr]], a half-man, half-goat. In folklore, the satyr symbolized a man with excessive sexual appetites. The Black Goat may otherwise be a male, earthly form of Shub-Niggurath—an incarnation she assumes to copulate with her worshipers.<ref>Ferraresi, "The Question of Shub-Niggurath", ''Crypt of Cthulhu #35'', pp. 17&ndash;8, 22.</ref><!--NOTE: FOOTNOTE COVERS ENTIRE 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>}}

== See also ==
* [[Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture]]
* [[Pan (god)|Pan]] and [[Echidna (mythology)|Echidna]], similar [[deities]] in [[Ancient Greece]].
* [[Akerbeltz]]
* [[Shuma-Gorath]], a cosmic antagonist mentioned in [[Conan the Barbarian]] and [[Marvel Comics]] stories
* ''[[Night in the Woods]]'', an [[adventure game]] where a "Black Goat" is said to torment the main character
* ''[[Quake (video game)|Quake]]'', a [[first-person shooter]] where Shub-Niggurath serves as the main antagonist
* Shub-Niggurath is present in the video game [[South Park: The Fractured but Whole|South Park: The Fractured But Whole]]
* She is one of the antagonists in [[Alone in the Dark (2024 video game)|Alone in the Dark (2024)]]

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

== References ==
* {{Cite book |last=Campbell |first=Ramsey |chapter=The Moon-Lens |orig-year=1964 |title=Cold Print |edition=1st |year=1987 |publisher=Tom Doherty Associates|location=New York |isbn=0-8125-1660-5}}
* {{Cite book |last=Harms |first=Daniel |chapter=Byatis |title=The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana |pages=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediacthu00dani/page/42 42–43] |edition=2nd |year=1998 |publisher=Chaosium |location=Oakland, CA |isbn=1-56882-119-0 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediacthu00dani/page/42 }} [Suggests Byatis is the son of Yig]
** "Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath", pp.&nbsp;75, ibid.
** "gof'nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath", pp.&nbsp;124, ibid.
** "Shub-Niggurath", pp.&nbsp;275–7, ibid.
* {{Cite journal|last=Ferraresi|first=Rodolfo A. |title=The Question of Shub-Niggurath |journal=Crypt of Cthulhu|volume= 5|issue= 1|date=1985|editor= Robert M. Price}}, Mount Olive, NC: Cryptic Publications.
* {{Cite book |last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|chapter=The Dreams in the Witch House|orig-year=1933|title=At the Mountains of Madness, and Other Novels|edition=7th corrected printing|editor=S. T. Joshi|year=1985|publisher=Arkham House|location=Sauk City, WI|isbn=0-87054-038-6}} Definitive version.
* {{Cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|chapter=The Whisperer in Darkness|orig-year=1931|title=The Dunwich Horror and Others|edition=9th corrected printing|editor=S. T. Joshi|year=1984|publisher=Arkham House|location=Sauk City, WI|isbn=0-87054-037-8|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/dunwichhorroroth0000love}} Definitive version.
* {{Cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|author2=Zealia Bishop|chapter=The Mound|orig-year=1940|title=The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions|editor=S. T. Joshi|year=1989|publisher=Arkham House|location=Sauk City, WI|isbn=0-87054-040-8|url=https://archive.org/details/horrorinmuseum00love}}
** and Adolphe de Castro (1928). "The Last Test", ibid.
** and [[Hazel Heald]] (1932). "The Man of Stone", ibid.
* {{Cite book | last=Myers | first=Gary | title=Dark Wisdom | location=Poplar Bluff, MO | publisher=Mythos Books | year=2007 | isbn=978-0-9789911-3-5}}
* {{Cite book|last=Pratchett|first=Terry|title=Moving Pictures|orig-year=1990|year=2002|publisher=HarperTorch|location=New York |isbn=0-06-102063-X}}

==External links==
{{Wikisource|The Whisperer in Darkness}}
* [http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/dreamswitchhouse.htm "The Dreams in the Witch House" by H. P. Lovecraft]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110112235053/http://www.psy-q.ch/lovecraft/html/stone.htm "The Man of Stone" by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald]
* [http://www.sockpuppet.org/~tyme/lovecraft/works/rev/mound.htm "The Mound" by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop]{{Dead link|date=December 2009}}
* [http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thewhispererindarkness.htm "The Whisperer in Darkness" by H. P. Lovecraft]
* {{librivox book | title=The Dunwich Horror | author=H. P. LOVECRAFT}}

{{Cthulhu Mythos}}
{{H. P. Lovecraft}}

[[Category:Cthulhu Mythos deities]]
[[Category:Female characters in literature]]
[[Category:Fictional amorphous creatures]]
[[Category:Fictional extraterrestrial characters]]
[[Category:Fictional goddesses]]
[[Category:Fictional monsters]]
[[Category:Literary characters introduced in 1928]]
[[Category:Mother goddesses]]
[[Category:Astarte]]
[[Category:Cybele]]
[[Category:Baphomet]]
[[Category:H. P. Lovecraft characters]]

[[de:Shub-Niggurath]]