Hastur

Hastur (known by the epithets The Unspeakable One, The King in Yellow, Him Who Is Not to be Named, Assatur, Xastur, H'aaztre, Fenric, or Kaiwan) is an entity of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Hastur first appeared in Ambrose Bierce's short story "Haïta the Shepherd" (1891) as a benign god of shepherds. Subsequently Robert W. Chambers used the name in his late 1800s stories to represent both a person and a place associated with several stars, including Aldebaran. H. P. Lovecraft was inspired by Chambers's stories and briefly mentioned Hastur in ''The Whisperer in Darkness'' (1930). Later writers have also adapted Hastur in a variety of tales.

Appearances

In Chambers' '' The King in Yellow'' (1895), a collection of horror stories, Hastur is the name of a potentially supernatural character (in "The Demoiselle D'Ys"), a place (in "The Repairer of Reputations"), and mentioned without explanation in "The Yellow Sign". The latter two stories also mention Carcosa, Hali, Aldebaran, and the Hyades, along with a " Yellow Sign" and a play called ''The King in Yellow''.

H. P. Lovecraft read Chambers' book in early 1927. Lovecraft was so enchanted by the book that he added elements of it to his own creations. There are two places in Lovecraft's own writings in which Hastur is mentioned:

I found myself faced by names and terms that I had heard elsewhere in the most hideous of connections—Yuggoth, Great Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, R'lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Hastur, Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, Bethmoora, the Yellow Sign, L’mur-Kathulos, Bran, and the Magnum Innominandum—and was drawn back through nameless aeons and inconceivable dimensions to worlds of elder, outer entity at which the crazed author of the ''Necronomicon'' had only guessed in the vaguest way.

:— H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness"

Later in the same story, it is described that the Mi-Go have been attacked by followers of Hastur, and Hastur is an enemy of the Outer Ones whom the Mi-Go serve:

Actually, they have never knowingly harmed men, but have often been cruelly wronged and spied upon by our species. There is a whole secret cult of evil men (a man of your mystical erudition will understand me when I link them with Hastur and the Yellow Sign) devoted to the purpose of tracking them down and injuring them on behalf of monstrous powers from other dimensions. It is against these aggressors—not against normal humanity—that the drastic precautions of the Outer Ones are directed.

:— H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness"

Derleth also developed Hastur into a Great Old One, spawn of Yog-Sothoth, the half-brother of Cthulhu, and possibly the Magnum Innominandum. In this incarnation, Hastur has several Avatars:

* The Feaster from Afar: A black, shriveled, flying monstrosity with tentacles tipped with razor-sharp talons that can pierce a victim's skull and siphon out the brain.
* The King in Yellow

Anders Fager's "Collected Swedish Cults" features a Stockholm-based coterie known as "The Carcosa Foundation" that worships Hastur.

Hastur is amorphous, but he is described as a vast, vaguely octopoid being. In the mythos, Hastur is presented as having "a strange effect on artists and playwrights".

Hastur/The King in Yellow, appears as one of two main antagonists in the book The Aeons War by Mark R Woodhall. He is locked in an endless ideological war against the Blood Prince.

See also

* Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture

References

External links

the Shepherd
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{{Robert W. Chambers

Cthulhu Mythos deities
Fictional amorphous creatures
Fictional monsters
Fictional demons
Literary characters introduced in 1891
Male literary villains
Ambrose Bierce
Robert W. Chambers