Nyarlathotep

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## Nyarlathotep

### Aliases

Ipqu-Aya
Babalon
Satan
Lam
Archangel Gabriel
George Pickingill
Edward Landsdale
Rudolf von Sebottendorf
Old Dorothy
Joseph Curwen
Charles Dexter Ward
Lucy Hawthorne
Henry Akeley
Melody Cartwright
Haunter of the Dark
Abigail Gladwin

## Portrayal

### Portrayed by

Samuel Barnett (as Charles Dexter Ward)
Phoebe Fox (as Lucy Hawthorne)
David Calder (as Henry Akeley)
Karla Crome (as Melody Cartwright)

### Series

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Haunter of The Dark

### Last Appearance

"Pleasant Green"

> “*... he shall put on the semblance of man; the waxen mask and robes that hide and come down from the world of seven suns to mock.*” - **Dr. Jonathan Willett**
>
> *"I have many names. I inhabit many vessels."* - **Lucy Hawthorne**
>
>

**Nyatlathotep** is the herald and avatar of Azathoth whose main focus throughout the centuries has been to open a portal for Azathoth to travel through from the Dreamlands and visit Earth. However, because of the potentially destructive nature of such a visit, he often hides such attempts within rituals with other supposed purposes.

## Early Life

>
> “*[Nyarlathotep] needs our help… if [humans] attempt to communicate with [Azathoth], then we could hold this universe in stasis and create a portal through which he could travel.*” - **Dr. Eleanor Peck**
>
>

While Nyarlathotep’s ultimate goal is to open a portal for Azathoth, his activities indicate that he himself did not enter the world with any such innate knowledge on how to do this. As Eleanor Peck suggested, his success is actually dependent on help from humans.

In her investigations, Dr Peck posited that Nyarlathotep would use various tricks and guises to achieve his aims, including adopting the personas of the archangel Gabriel, Babylon, Lam, and even Satan. Therefore, most occult rituals that involve summoning a supernatural being will likely result in summoning Nyarlathotep or even Azathoth.

Matthew Heawood and Kennedy Fisher discovered that the Ipqu-Aya spirit that inhabited Joseph Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward amongst others, was likely another face of Nyarlathotep. The original Ninevite wizard, Ipqu-Aya (who may or may not have been Nyarlathotep from the very beginning), collected his teachings and theories around magic and reincarnation and committed them to clay tablets. His much later disciple, Abdul Alhazred, collected these teachings as well as what he learned directly from the Deep Ones and committed them to a book, the Necronomicon.

It is theorised that the Necronomicon, representing the culmination of years of magical research by Ipqu-Aya and Abdul Alhazred, provides the instructions for the ritual necessary to summon Azathoth. This being the case, it is another example of how Nyarlathotep, through the Deep Ones, could only influence Alhazred toward the discovery of his desired ritual instead of the cosmic deity being able to develop the ritual himself. Continuing this theory, Alhazred’s eventual murder at the hands of the Harlequin may well have been in retribution for Alhazred’s rejection of the ritual’s true purpose.

After losing Alhazred as a potential summoner of Azathoth, Nyarlathotep was now presented with a dilemma: only a human with an exceptional understanding of the ritual, like Alhazred, could perform it correctly. However, any human with such understanding would almost certainly reject the destruction that summoning Azathoth would bring. Azathoth can only be summoned into his own dreamt universe if the people who inhabit it attempt to communicate with him, therefore this is not something Nyarlathotep could do alone.

Nyarlathotep’s solution was to increase his level of subterfuge and to this end, he adopted a number of mystical personas through the centuries in order to develop cults and religions that he could trick into summoning Azathoth.

## Aliases

* As Ipqu-Aya
* As Babalon
* As Haunter of the Dark
* As Dagon
* As Lam

### Ipqu-Aya, late 7th century B.C.E.

The original Ninevite wizard, Ipqu-Aya, was likely an early vessel for Nyarlathotep. The Mesopotamian wizard’s magical research apparently led him to discover how his spirit could be transferred into the body of a younger, healthier, willing recipient who needed to be part of the same bloodline as Ipqu-Aya’s previous host. For this reason, before his death, Ipqu-Aya fathered a large number of children thus better ensuring a continuing line of potential hosts through the generations.

The ritual enabling this transfer of consciousness was committed to clay tablets and Ipqu-Aya was successful in transferring his spirit into a physical artefact before being executed in 612 BCE during the sacking of Nineveh. However, the destruction of the city led to the tablets and artefact being lost before Ipqu-Aya’s spirit could be placed into another body.

The ritual tablets and artefact remained lost for another two and a half millenia until Hormuzd Rassam uncovered them while excavating near the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal. These findings were sent to Britain but lost in transit and somehow came into the possession of cunning man, James Murrell, who managed to decipher the tablets, perhaps with the aid of the Necronomicon which by this point had been translated into English, and transfer the spirit of Ipqu-Aya into the body of his apprentice, George Pickingill.

### George Pickingill (1860-1909)

Nyarlathotep established the same reputation in Pickingill has he had in Ipqu-Aya - an occultist, black magician and overall a terrifying person to know. Pickingill eventually died some 49 years after becoming host to Ipqu-Aya and during that time he acquired a number of items of gold, esoteric iconography with sigils of Dagon. He bequeathed these to his follower and the person who inherited the Ipqu-Aya spirit after Pickingill’s death - Edward Landsdale.

### Edward Landsdale (1909-1914)

Using Edward Landsdale as his new vessel, Ipqu-Aya joined forces with Obed Marsh and a member of the Tillinghast family. The three men attempted to summon Azathoth in the town of Melusine during the First Battle of the Marne. There is a theory that the energy generated by conflict was seen to be a key component in ensuring the success of the ritual, and so when the First World War started this appears to have prompted an attempt to summon Azathoth from the battlefields of France. However, the ritual was a failure and everyone except Marsh, who was immortal, was killed as a result and the town of Melusine was erased from existence.

### Rudolf von Sebottendorf (1914-?)

A friend of Landsdale’s, Rudolf von Sebottendorf took on the Ipqu-Aya spirit after the death of the Landsdale vessel. It appears that one of the lessons Obed Marsh and Nyarlathotep took from the failure of the Melusine ritual was that the energy produced by World War I was not sufficient. Therefore they chose not to try the ritual again immediately and instead sought to stir up further dispute and conflict around the globe.

In 1916, von Sebottendorf helped to found the Thule Society, an esoteric occult organisation that supported the rise of the anti-Semitic far-right in Germany after the war and eventually amalgamated with other fringe organisations to form the Nazi Party. Von Sebottendorf was also involved in the even more extreme-right group known as the Vril Society, who were more openly accepting of occult beliefs such as the existence of Elder Beings and aliens.

It is unclear when or why Ipqu-Aya left von Sebottendorf but he is known to have died penniless in Turkey having been a somewhat ineffective double-agent working for the British. He committed suicide by jumping into the Bosphorus at the end of World War II.

### Old Dorothy (~1943)

In one piece of surviving correspondence from [Gerald Gardner], he referred to the leader of the New Forest Coven, Old Dorothy, as Ipqu-Aya. This is the only evidence for this connection but if it is accurate it suggests von Sebottendorf was abandoned as a vessel at least two years before he died.

Ipqu-Aya’s transference from von Sebottendorf to Old Dorothy is an indication that not all of the rules in Ipqu-Aya lore are strictly necessary. Such inconsistency is unsurprising given that Ipqu-Aya is just one of many personas used by Nyarlathotep, who appears to have much greater freedom of movement than the blood magic connected to Ipqu-Aya would suggest.

Nonetheless, it appears Ipqu-Aya’s next transference was facilitated within the New Forest Coven as the next person claiming to be his vessel was a man called Joseph Curwen.

### Joseph Curwen (~1957-1980)

Curwen became the leader of the New Forest Coven some time after Old Dorothy and during this time engaged in sex magic with a number of members of the coven including Eliza Tillinghast, Caroline Hughes, Godfrey Tillinghast and Amelia Fenner.

By 1962), control of the Ipqu-Aya bloodline was in dispute and members of the Tillinghast family, with historic connections to the Fishers and the Marshes, attempted to bring the bloodline back under the control of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. It was for this reason that Eliza and Caroline deliberately became pregnant by Curwen but soon departed the coven while Godfrey used his family influence to get the authorities to drive Curwen out of the New Forest. However, before fleeing, Curwen got another of his acolytes pregnant, Amelia Fenner, in the hope of keeping control of the Ipqu-Aya bloodline.

Curwen’s whereabouts in the years immediately after he abandoned the New Forest Coven is not clear. According to Fenner, there were rumours of Curwen being spotted in London, Paris and the Far East. What is more certain are definite sightings of Curwen placing him in America. He was recorded as associating with Charles Manson and Anton LeVey in California around 1967 and 1968, and he was also known to be in New York City in 1976 soon before the Son of Sam killings. By the late 1970s, Curwen was known to have met Barbara Sayers in Providence, Rhode Island and had established a cult in Puwtuxet called The Soldiers of Ipqu-Aya.

In 1980, Curwen’s cult opened fire on police officers visiting the cult’s property. This immediately led to a brief siege followed by law enforcement storming the cult house. Unlike some of his higher-ranking followers, Curwen did not escape via the network of old smugglers’ tunnels under the house and instead barricaded himself in a room. Joseph Curwen was killed in an exchange of gunfire with SWAT officers but, due to his connection to Ipqu-Aya, his body immediately turned to dust once abandoned by the entity.

### Charles Dexter Ward (2016-2017)

The whereabouts of Ipqu-Aya after Curwen’s death has not been established. However, some decades later, his grandson by Eliza Tillinghast, Charles Dexter Ward, took on the Ipqu-Aya mantel. Ward was groomed by Barbara Sayers from a young age to idolise Curwen and learn as much as he could about the occult.

By Ward’s early adulthood, Dr Allen picked up where Sayers and left off and guided Ward to find and take on the Ipqu-Aya spirit. Ipqu-Aya’s transference to Ward happened on January 27, 2016. However, before being possessed, Ward managed to contact his old psychiatrist, Jonathan Willett, and made him concerned enough to get Ward committed to a secure psychiatric facility.

Over the next 14 months, Willett’s observations of ‘Ward’ and his own investigations into the Ipqu-Aya cult lead him to murder Ward in his cell on March 6, 2017 in an attempt to wipe out the Ipqu-Aya spirit. Like Curwen before him, Ward’s body turned to dust and Ipqu-Aya moved on to Ward’s second cousin, Lucy Hawthorne.

### Lucy Hawthorne (2017-2018)

The switch from Charles Ward, who was confined to a secure psychiatric facility in America, to Lucy Hawthorne, who was based in London, would suggest that close physical proximity is not a requirement for the transfer of Ipqu-Aya’s consciousness. Like her cousin, Hawthorne’s time being inhabited by Ipqu-Aya was brief.

Willett traced Curwen’s bloodline and identified Hawthorne as another grandchild, this time through Caroline Hughes. In 2018, he travelled to London and forced entry into Hawthorne’s flat. Ipqu-Aya revealed himself and attempted to incapacitate Willett by giving him a small glimpse of Azathoth’s dreamlands. Just a few seconds of exposure to this had a long-lasting impact on Willett’s psychological health but he remained focused enough to stab Hawthorne to death.

Hawthorne’s body did not apparently turn to dust like Ward’s and Curwen’s had done. However, a body may have been planted by followers of Ipqu-Aya to secure Willett’s conviction and prevent him from killing any more of the Ipqu-Aya bloodline.

### Melody Cartwright (2019-2020)

As Amelia Fenner’s granddaughter, Melody Cartwright became the next person in Curwen’s bloodline but, unlike her cousins, there is no indication she was aware of this before being kidnapped in November 2018.

Cartwright’s resistance to becoming a vessel to Ipqu-Aya convinced Barbara Sayers to help her escape, as Sayers was of the opinion that only willing participants could be inhabited by Ipqu-Aya. This appears not to have been the case, but instead created a dual personality in the woman where both Melody and Ipqu-Aya inhabited Cartwright but had control at different times and were unaware of each other’s existence.

Eventually, the Ipqu-Aya personality won out and dominated Cartwright. She was soon involved along with Obed and Daisy Marsh in attempting to summon Azathoth in the village of Pleasant Green. This ritual was unsuccessful and it is assumed that, like Edward Landsdale before her, Melody Cartwright did not survive.

While Nyarlathotep’s exploits in the guise of Ipqu-Aya are relatively well understood, this was by no means the only way he interacted with the world. Through the years a number of attempts were made to summon Nyarlathotep/Azathoth without the blood magic approach used by the followers of Ipqu-Aya.

The character of Babalon was initially posited by John Dee when developing his Enochian magic. Fashioned by the misogyny of the time, Babalon was seen as an evil elemental force. This concept was adopted and adapted by Aleister Crowley in his occult system of Themela, which styled Babalon as a goddess or likewise the embodiment of ‘Mother Earth’, who could be summoned into the body of a human woman.

Crowley was never successful in summoning Babalon, but the ritual he developed, the Babalon Working, was something that Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard attempted near the end of 1945. The Babalon Working ritual was ostensibly conducted to summon an angel but actually, this was yet another ritual co-opted by Nyarlathotep with the goal of summoning Azathoth.

### The Rendlesham Forest Incident

In Christmas of 1980, Amelia Fenner’s Suffolk Coven attempted the Babalon Working. Occurring only months after Nyarlathotep had lost Joseph Curwen as an Ipqu-Aya vessel in Puwtuxet, Nyarlathotep managed to achieve partial possession of one of the summoners, Henry Akeley.

Akeley fought against such possession for years and left Rendlesham Forest soon after the failed ritual. After losing Charles Ward and Lucy Hawthorne as Ipqu-Aya vessels, and achieving only partial success with Melody Cartwright, Nyarlathotep appears to have returned his focus on Akeley. In his later life, Akeley returned to Rendlesham and this proximity may also have helped Nyarlathotep to overwhelm him and take full possession in 2019.

For reasons unknown, Nyarlathotep, while controlling Akeley, removed Akeley’s face from his head and preserved it in formaldehyde. Akeley, along with April Marston, attempted the Babalon Working again but this was foiled by agents of the Department of Works.

   In 1918, while living in New York, Aleister Crowley attempted a ritual known as the Amalantrah Working. An outcome of this ritual was the summoning of an entity called Lam, who Crowley believed represented the ultimate refinement of human evolution. Crowley later drew an image of Lam, which bears striking similarity to the classic ‘grey alien’ made so famous by the Roswell Incident decades later.
If this was Nyarlathotep in another guise, Crowley’s encounter with it in 1918 might account for why he was so opposed to Parsons and Hubbard’s attempts to summon Babalon, another guise of Nyarlathotep, 27 years later.
1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 TWiD: "Episode 6"
2. ↑ TCoCDW: "Episode 9"
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 TSoI: “Pleasant Green”
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 TCoCDW: ”Episode 7”
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 TSoI: “Saint Germain”
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 TCoCDW: ”Episode 4”
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 TCoCDW: ”Episode 10”
8. ↑ TCoCDW: ”Episode 2”
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 TCoCDW: ”Episode 3”
10. ↑ TSoI: ”Apartment 6”
11. ↑ TSoI: ”Harlequin”
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 TWiD: ”Episode 4”
13. ↑ TWiD: ”Episode 8”