Hastur

Hastur (The Unspeakable One, The King in Yellow, Him Who Is

Not to be Named, Assatur, Xastur, H'aaztre, or Kaiwan) is an
Hastur
entity of the Cthulhu Mythos.[1][2][3][4][5]

Hastur first appeared in Ambrose Bierce's short story "Haïta the

Shepherd" (1893) as a benign god of shepherds. Hastur is briefly
mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft's The Whisperer in Darkness;
previously, Robert W. Chambers had used the name in his own
stories to represent both a person and a place associated with the
names of several stars, including Aldebaran.[6]

Contents
Hastur in the mythos Hastur the Unspeakable as he
See also appears in August Derleth's short
story "The Gable Window".
References
Illustration by Robert M. Price
External links published in Crypt of Cthulhu #6
"August Derleth Issue", St. John's
Eve 1982
Hastur in the mythos
First "Haïta the
In Bierce's "Haïta the Shepherd", which appeared in the collection appearance Shepherd"
Can Such Things Be?, Hastur is more benevolent than he would later Created by Ambrose Bierce
appear in August Derleth's mythos stories. Another story in the same
collection ("An Inhabitant of Carcosa") referred to the place "Carcosa" and a person "Hali", names which
later authors were to associate with Hastur.

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[7] and was so enchanted by it that he added elements of it
to his own creations.[8] 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"

It is unclear from this quote if Lovecraft's Hastur is a person, a place, an object (such as the Yellow Sign), or
a deity. This ambiguity is recurrent in Lovecraft's descriptions of mythic entities.

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 who 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"

In "Supernatural Horror In Literature" (written 1926–27, revised 1933, published in The

Recluse in 1927), when telling about "The Yellow Sign" by Chambers, H. P. Lovecraft wrote:

...after stumbling queerly upon the hellish and forbidden book of horrors the two learn, among
other hideous things which no sane mortal should know, that this talisman is indeed the
nameless Yellow Sign handed down from the accursed cult of Hastur—from primordial
Carcosa, whereof the volume treats...

In Chambers' "The Yellow Sign" the only mentioning of Hastur is:

"...We spoke of Hastur and of Cassilda..."

So, judging from these two quotes, it is quite possible that H. P. Lovecraft not only recognized Hastur as one
of the mythos gods, but even made him so recalling Chambers' book.

Derleth also developed Hastur into a Great Old One,[9] 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[10]
The King in Yellow.

Anders Fager's "Collected Swedish Cults" features a Stockholm-based coterie known as "The Carcosa
Foundation" that worships Hastur.[11]

Hastur is amorphous, but he is said to appear as a vast, vaguely octopoid being, similar to his half-niece
Cthylla.

See also
Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture
References
1. Gaiman, Neil; Terry Pratchett (1996). Good Omens. p. 213. ISBN 978-0-441-00325-9.
2. Harms, Daniel (1998). "Hastur". The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (https://archive.org/details/encyc
lopediacthu00dani/page/136) (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. pp. 136–7 (https://archive.or
g/details/encyclopediacthu00dani/page/136). ISBN 1-56882-119-0.
3. Joshi, S. T.; David E. Schultz (2001). An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-31578-7.
4. Pearsall, Anthony B. (2005). The Lovecraft Lexicon (1st ed.). Tempe, AZ: New Falcon. ISBN 1-
56184-129-3.
5. Price, Robert M., ed. (1997). The Hastur Cycle (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. ISBN 1-
56882-094-1.
6. Harms, The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, p. 136.
7. Joshi & Schultz, "Chambers, Robert William", An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, p. 38
8. Pearsall, "Yellow Sign", The Lovecraft Lexicon, p. 436.
9. Derleth once entertained the notion of calling Lovecraft's mythos the Mythology of Hastur—an
idea that Lovecraft summarily rejected when he heard it. (Robert M. Price, "The Mythology of
Hastur", The Hastur Cycle, p. i.)
10. Joseph Payne Brennan (1976), "The Feaster from Afar", The Hastur Cycle (2nd ed.), pp. 272–
82.
11. Fager, Anders, "Samlade Svenska Kulter"

External links
Haïta the Shepherd (https://web.archive.org/web/20070219163328/http://www.classicreader.co
m/read.php/sid.6/bookid.1937/)
Can Such Things Be? (https://librivox.org/search?title=Can+Such+Things+Be?&author=BIE
RCE&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=
&sort_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&search_form=advanced) public domain audiobook
at LibriVox
The King in Yellow (https://librivox.org/search?title=The+King+in+Yellow&author=CHAMBE
RS&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&s
ort_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&search_form=advanced) public domain audiobook at
LibriVox

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