Not In Spaces But Between Them: The Geometry of Yog-Sothoth
on March 15, 2006 at 12:00 amThe American horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft is a favorite of tdaxp. His writings has been used humorously to illustrate Chinese and American censorship, while his work is an anchor of “Dreaming 5th Generation War.” So I was delighted when Catholicgauze snet me “From Beyond: H.P. Lovecraft and the Place of Horror” by Dr. James Kneale of University College London.
The article is quite good and worth reading, but makes Catholicgauze ask: “But where exactly is the between space?“
Good question!
Continue reading for a discussion on charts and hyperspace…
First, three descriptions of Yog-Sothoth from HP Lovecraft.
Nor is it to be thought (ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it) that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They had trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.
In Through the Gates of the Silver Key
In the face of that awful wonder, the quasi-Carter forgot the horror of destroyed individuality. It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self – not merely a thing of one space-time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep – the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of Earth had whispered of as Yog-Sothoth, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable sign – yet in a flash the Carter-facet realized how slight and fractional all these conceptions are.
Imagination called up the shocking form of fabulous Yog-Sothoth – only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in its malign suggestiveness.
The answer is that space is not a thing, but the qualities of things. Yog-Sothoth lives not in things but in their natures.
For instance, imagine two pointsin space. Simplistically:
But such a representation is semantically meaningless. No relationship between two points are given — we don’t even know if they are in the same universe, if one exists and the other is imaginary, or anything! So let’s define a relationship between the two points: one is immediately after the other.
To get a fuller picture, let’s also illustrate the point immediately before it. This gives us a basic one-dimensional, linear universe.
Now add the points above and below it. Because we now have two dimensions, points will not be identified by two numbers (“co-ordinates”) to identify the spaces.
We humans, who live in spaces, exist in the blue points. And Yog-Sothoth exists between spaces.
In a simple two-dimensional world, Yog-Sothoth lives the circles between spaces. Add another dimension of existence (say, depth), and Yog-Sothoths abodes would be spherical. Add a fourth (say, time) and Yog-Sothoth’s palaces would be hyperspherical, only visable to us as a series of spheres. Which is exactly how HP Lovecraft describes them.
A Visualization of a Hypersphere
The Appearance of Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth is Quality, he is Friction, he is the Sea of Friction.
Of course, Yogsothothism is not the only hyperdimensional faith.
