Nyarlathotep: Master of the Sabbat?
Fra. Abbadon 1
from The Pylon No.1, 1990

The very amorphous intangibility of the Great Old Ones makes them difficult to work with magically. While they are, as encapsulations of vast, primal energies, images of much power, it is difficult to fit them into the standard techniques of ritual magic. Attempts to place them in symbolic metastructures such as the Qabalah, using elemental, zodiac, and other correspondences only serve, in my view, to limit their power. As the Great Old Ones have no magical 'personas' in the same sense that other deities do, there seems to be little point in attempting rites of invocation, at least in the way that invocation is generally constructed. They can be approached however, using dream-exploration, inner- world mindscaping and scrying. These tend to be very much solo techniques, and there has been comparatively little attention focused on group work within the Cthulhu Mythos current, at least as articulated by the Esoteric Order of Dagon in its present form.

One of the Great Old Ones who, at least some of the time is clothed in human form is the Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep. Although, as with the others of his kin, Nyarlathotep has an infinite number of forms, his most important appearances in the Lovecraft mythos cycle are as the 'Black Man' of the Witch-Sabbath. As the Crawling Chaos he mediates between the truly alien and cosmic Old Ones, and those humans who aspire to worship them, or as in the case of Randolph Carter, seek forbidden knowledge from them. Nyarlathotep has been identified with Satan and also Aiwass. One of his zoomorphic forms is that of a black, faceless sphinx - a magical beast whose powers, according to Levi, are the basis of all magic - to Know, to Dare, to Will and to Keep Silent. The sphinx form of Nyarlathotep also recalls the sometime necessity of assuming monstrous forms in order to approach the Great Old Ones.

Nyarlathotep can also be understood as an initiator-figure; one whose actions are more conscious and intentional than the 'idiot' Old Ones or the dream-stirrings of their priest, Cthulhu. Nyarlathotep may appear within many different magical worlds - the Egyptian tradition, Witchcraft, Satanism, Thelema, the Ma'at Current and even in the chaos-clashing ecstasies of Acid House! He holds the keys to knowledge of the past, and as his 'avatar' Doctor Dexter demonstrates (in Robert Bloch's The Shadow from the Steeple) the knowledge of a terrible future.1

In this regard there is an interesting book - Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed by E.J. Jones and Doreen Valiente (published by Robert Hale). This text outlines a darker, more 'sinister' approach to Witchcraft which has been previously expounded upon by the modern revivalists. In the system presented here, the 'Man in Black' appears as a coven officer, whose role it is to mediate between covens. In some witchcraft groups, the Man in Black is a male magician who acts very much as an independent adviser.

There is much that could be gained from creating a Cult of Nyarlathotep, using techniques culled from Witchcraft, Shamanism and perhaps Voudou. In dream-work, for example, participants could focus on meeting Nyarlathotep as the Man in Black in dream, and leading them to attend an astral sabbat. It may even be desirable to create an outer cultus which borrows one of the above magical systems, and in which contact with Nyarlathotep only occurs progressively, the entity perhaps taking on the character of a 'Secret Chief' or 'inner-plane adept'. Initial contacts on the astral could later be followed up by invocation by possession - the ritual design based on (to use Lovecraft's term) 'frenzied rites' such as those alluded to in The Call of Cthulhu or The Horror at Red Hook.

Note

The 'Doctor Dexter' avatar makes another connection with Thelema - his atomic power research can be linked to the "War Engine" mentioned in Liber AL, and the development of Nuclear Power Stations - the modern 'temples' of the Old Ones.