Shub-Niggurath

Shub-Niggurath, called The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, is an Outer God in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The being is first mentioned in Lovecraft's revision story "The Last Test" (1928); in Lovecraft's fiction, she is never actually described, but is frequently mentioned or called upon in incantations. Shub-Niggurath is also referenced in the works of other Mythos authors, including Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Ramsey Campbell, Lin Carter, and Brian Lumley.
==Background==
Shub-Niggurath is an Outer God (or Outer Goddess) in the pantheon. She is a perverse fertility deity, said to appear as an "hellish cloud-like entity". (: "Selected Letters 5.875")
She has been described as an enormous mass which extrudes black tentacles, slime-dripping mouths, and short, writhing goat legs (: S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters). Small creatures are continually spat forth by the monstrosity, which are either consumed into the miasmatic form or escape to some monstrous life elsewhere. (source?)
Shub-Niggurath is the wife of the Not-to-Be-Named One (: The Mound) and of Yog-Sothoth which birthed the twins Nug and Yeb. (: Selected Letters 4.617, 5.875)
T'yog of K'naa, the High-Priest of Shub-Niggurath in ancient Mu, believed this entity to be benevolent, or at the very least willing to side with humanity against the tyranny of Ghatanothoa. (: "Out of the Aeons")
In the works of August Derleth, Shub-Niggurath is one of the Great Old Ones classified as an earth elemental, along with Yog-Sothoth, Tsathoggua, and Nyarlathotep. Derleth portrays them as inimical towards the fire elementals such as Cthugha and his flame creatures.
===Cult===
Of all the Mythos deities, Shub-Niggurath is probably the most extensively worshipped. Her worshippers include the Hyperboreans, the Muvians, and the people of Sarnath, as well as any number of druidic and barbaric cults. She is also worshipped by the non-human species of the Mythos, such as the "Fungi from Yuggoth", a.k.a. Mi-Go (: The Whisperer in Darkness), the K'n-yanians (: The Mound), and the Dholes and Nug-Soth of Yaddith (: "Dreams in the House of Weir").
Zamacona y Nuñez likened Shub-Niggurath to "a kind of sophisticated Astarte" (i.e. the ancient goddess Ishtar), and found the practices of her cultists to be objectionable. (: The Mound)
With the proper occult paraphernalia, Shub-Niggurath can be summoned to any woodlands at the time of the new moon. However, the place from whence she comes is not known. One possibility is that she dwells at the court of Azathoth at the center of the universe. She may also live beneath the planet Yaddith, where she is served by the Dholes. It is also possible that she lives in another dimension altogether. (: The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana)
===Progeny===
According to Lovecraft, Shub-Niggurath is the wife of Yog-Sothoth, with whom she sired the twins Nug and Yeb (: Selected Letters 4.617, 5.875). In his fiction, however, he only referred to her as the wife of "the Not-to-Be-Named One" (: The Mound). It's not known whether Lovecraft intended the "Not-to-Be-Named One" to be Yog-Sothoth, but since August Derleth later used "Him Who is not to be Named" as the sobriquet of Hastur (: "The Return of Hastur"), later works have come to portray Shub-Niggurath as the wife of Hastur (: "Professor Peabody's Last Lecture", "The Horror in the Gallery").
Shub-Niggurath is believed to have mated with Hastur to produce the beings Ithaqua, Zhar and Lloigor. (: "The Horror in the Gallery") Hastur may also be the father of her "Thousand Young" or "Dark Young", though there is a good chance that they were spawned by fission, or by mating with Yog-Sothoth. She may possibly have mated with Yig to produce Byatis, which is debatable since some believe her to be Yig's mother, though he may be the offspring of Mappo no Ryûjin, or possibly Ubbo-Sathla (who reproduces asexually).
In "Out of the Aeons", T'yog mentions having "the power of Shub-Niggurath and her sons on his side". Since he earlier mentioned Nug, Yeb, and Yig as Shub-Niggurath's potential allies, and Nug and Yeb are identified elsewhere as Shub-Niggurath's sons, it's possibly that Yig might be her son as well.
===Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath===
The Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath are horrifying, pitch-black monstrosities, seemingly made of ropy tentacles. They stand as tall as a tree (perhaps between twelve and twenty feet tall) on several pairs of stumpy, hoofed legs. A mass of tentacles protrudes from their trunks where a head would normally be, and puckered maws, dripping green goo, cover their flanks. The monsters roughly resemble trees in silhouette — the trunks being the short legs and the tops of the trees represented by the ropy, branching bodies. A congregation of these abominations smells like an open grave. They usually dwell in woodlands wherever Shub-Niggurath's cult is active. They're sometimes mistaken for Shoggoths. (: "Notebook Found in a Deserted House")
The Dark Young are usually called upon to preside over cult ceremonies. One means for summoning them is found in the Book of Eibon and requires a blood offering. The ritual may only be performed in the deep of the woodlands at the darkest of the moon, and the victim must be sacrificed over a stone altar. Dark young act as proxies for Shub-Niggurath in the accepting of sacrifices and the worship of cultists, in the devouring of non-cultists, and in the spreading of their mother's faith across the world.
===Milk of Shub-Niggurath===
Shub-Niggurath's milk has many properties, mutating those who drink it into fierce creatures. (: At Your Door, RPG)
===Gof'nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath===
The Blessed of Shub-Niggurath, or gof'nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath, is the name given to the favored, once-human worshipers of Shub-Niggurath. When the deity deems a worshiper to be most worthy, a special ceremony is held in which the Black Goat of the Woods swallows the initiate through her womb and then rebirths the cultist as a transformed satyr-like being. A changed worshiper is also endowed with immortal life. (: "The Moon-Lens", Ramsey Campbell)
===The Black Goat===
Although Shub-Niggurath is often associated with the epithet The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young (: The Whisperer in Darkness), it is possible that the 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 which a distinction is made between Shub-Niggurath and the Black Goat — the goat is the figurehead through which Shub-Niggurath is worshipped. The most persuasive distinction, however, is the depiction of the Black Goat 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". In the early stories of August Derleth, Shub-Niggurath was sometimes referred to with male pronouns, though later stories rectify this and refer to her by the neutral "it".
The Black Goat may be the personification of Pan, since Lovecraft was influenced by Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan (1890), a story that probably inspired Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" (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. (: "The Question of Shub-Niggurath", Crypt of Cthulhu #35, [Ferraresi])
The Great God Pan is an avatar of Shub-Niggurath. (: Malleus Monstrorum, RPG)
===Magna Mater===
The Magna Mater, or the Great Mother, is a goddess worshipped since before Roman times. She is associated with Cybele and Atys (: "The Rats in the Walls"), as well as with Ishtar / Astarte (: "The Were-Snake"). Among the cults surrounding Lilith under Red Hook, headless lambs worshipped the Magna Mater. (: "The Horror at Red Hook")
This is an avatar of Shub-Niggurath. (: Delta Green: Countdown, RPG)
===Location===
The current residence of Shub-Niggurath remains a mystery. A popular hypothesis is the planet Yaddith, beneath the surface of which it resides with its Dhole servitors. However, it is postulated in Richard L. Tierney's "The Lords of Pain" that the Black Goat of the Woods came to Earth, building the city of Harag-Kolath in a cavern beneath southern Arabia, though it's possible the cavern and Harag-Kolath exist conterminously with Yaddith or are linked to it. In "The Horror in the Gallery", by Lin Carter, it is claimed that Shub-Niggurath came to Earth from Yaddith in prehistoric times, but was sent back to Yaddith by the Elder Gods. It is also possible that Shub-Niggurath remains at the court of Azathoth, or even in another dimension entirely.
===Servitor races===
In the writings of August Derleth, it is claimed that Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep have "hideous offspring" that dwell within the Earth and serve them. A passage from the Necronomicon claims that "Shub-Niggurath shall spawn its thousand young, and they shall spawn in turn and shall take dominion over all wood nymphs, satyrs, leprechauns, and the Little People" (: "The House on Curwen Street", "The Keeper of the Key"). In the Mythos, the Little People are a species of subterranean beings, sometimes called "fairies", and the titular creatures from Robert E. Howard's "Worms of the Earth".
Lin Carter portrays the Dholes and the Little People as being the servitor races of Shub-Niggurath. (: "The Madness Out of Time")
The Tcho-Tcho people are also servants of Shub-Niggurath. (: The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana)
==In Other Media==
===Doctor Who===
Some of the Doctor Who spin-off novels have identified the Nestene Consciousness (the being which animates the Autons) as one of the offspring of Shub-Niggurath. The connection was first drawn in Millennial Rites by Craig Hinton, and has been followed up in other appearances of the Consciousness in the novels.
===The Elder Sister-like One===
Shub-Niggurath appears as one of the two main characters in the manga series The Elder Sister-like One, under the name Chiyo.
In the series, a young orphan boy by the name of Yuu is staying at the house of his uncle who is currently hospitalized. While cleaning a storeroom, he finds a hidden basement underneath it, and upon opening it he is faced with the figure of a beautiful woman of approximately 20 years who offers to grant him a wish in exchange for something precious to him upon fulfillment of the contract. Yuu wishes for a sister, having gone without family for most of his life. Shub-Niggurath (the human form of the Ancient Elder One) takes on the name Chiyo and begins to live as Yuu's sister. The series mainly focuses on the daily life of Chiyo and Yuu and their struggles with Chiyo attempting to become more human-like while Yuu struggles with adapting to having a family after not having one for so long. The series is overshadowed by the dubious nature of the contract between Yuu and Chiyo in which the exact nature of the payment at the end has not been revealed.
==In Popular Culture==
==Gallery==
==External Links==
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Category:Outer Gods
Category:Characters Originating From Lovecraft Circle Works