The Church of Starry Wisdom (and the Black Goat)

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

The Church of Starry Wisdom worships the Black Planet Yuggoth, aka the Black Goat, the Stranger, the god of death. 

 

In ASoIaF the Church of Starry Wisdom was created by the Bloodstone Emperor who forsook the gods of YiTi (~sounds like "E.T."  extraterrestrial) to worship a black stone that fell from the sky.  I have theorized that he caused the Long Night by moving the Lion of Night / black planet into eclipse.

 

The Church of Starry Wisdom is a cult from Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark, the cult worshiped Nyarlathotep who is called "the Haunter of the Dark"--who in this story appears as a vampiric smoke monster that dwells in absolute darkness and was summoned out of interstellar space.  But in The Whisperer in Darkness he is the leader of the fungus crabs from the black planet Yuggoth.  And in The Rats in the Walls he is a mad, faceless god that dwells in a cavern that is the antechamber to hell.

I figured out that Nyarlathotep's name means "black stone" in Greek.  neyros means "black" and leethos means "stone"

And the first High Priest of the Church of Starry Wisdom was Nephren Ka  and in Welsh nwyfreant means "empyreal sphere" --that is, a sphere in outer space--

and nwyfrel means "gaseous" and in Greek nefos means "cloud" [and Nyarlathotep is a smoke monster] 

nephron means "kidney" in Greek, and in Gaelic, the word "kidney" also means "moon" and "lunacy" and "wanderer".  [ luain ]

 

So Nyarlathotep and Nephren Ka are both references to the Black Planet Yuggoth.  And I just learned that gwth means "goat" and is associated with the Stranger and rolling.   The Stranger from the Faith of the Seven is the Black Goat Yuggoth.  The word gwth comes from the Greek word otho, which written in Greek looks like

ωθώ

the Theta in the middle looks like a goat's eye, and the two omegas look like the cloven hooves of a goat.  And the Theta signifies "death" in Greek and omega signifies "the end"

Speaking of the Goat's Eye, in Welsh, gafr gem means "goat's eye" and in the Tree on the Hill, there is a magic amber gem that controls the Black Goat, and you look through it to see the true form of the Black Goat tree.  And seeing it makes you go insane and/or die from fright.

You look through the goat's eye to control the Black Goat, and in Haunter, you summon the Haunter/Yuggoth by gazing into the Shining Trapezohedron.

 

The Black Stone controls Yuggoth.  Which is also implied in The Whisperer in Darkness that the Black Stone was made on Yuggoth and is very important for some reason.  And the Black Stone is very similar to a glass candle.

 

 

The Haunter of the Dark

The story opens with a line about black planets, Yuggoth is mentioned twice, and in the story there are scattered references to alien worlds, and I figured out that the Church of Starry Wisdom itself on Federal Hill is described as being an alien world because it is a stand-in for Yuggoth.  It is a (yug)Gothic black stone church:

Now and then he would train his field-glasses on that spectral, unreachable world beyond the curling smoke; picking out individual roofs and chimneys and steeples, and speculating upon the bizarre and curious mysteries they might house. Even with optical aid Federal Hill seemed somehow alien, half fabulous, and linked to the unreal, intangible marvels of Blake’s own tales and pictures.. . .
Of all the distant objects on Federal Hill, a certain huge, dark church most fascinated Blake. It stood out with especial distinctness at certain hours of the day, and at sunset the great tower and tapering steeple loomed blackly against the flaming sky. . . .Nowhere could he find any of the objects he had seen from afar; so that once more he half fancied that the Federal Hill of that distant view was a dream-world never to be trod by living human feet.

 

The Church of Starry Wisdom houses the magic black and red stone (like the Bloodstone) called the Shining Trapezohedron, which was made on Yuggoth, and summons the Haunter.  And when Blake looks into it he sees Yuggoth: 

He could scarcely tear his eyes from it, and as he looked at its glistening surfaces he almost fancied it was transparent, with half-formed worlds of wonder within. Into his mind floated pictures of alien orbs with great stone towers, and other orbs with titan mountains and no mark of life, and still remoter spaces where only a stirring in vague blacknesses told of the presence of consciousness and will.

 

The protaganist's name is Robert Blake (rob means "shaggy" and blake  ~ black--another reference to the Black Goat), he accidentally summons Nyarlathotep out of interstellar space, and it takes over his mind and drives him insane.  And in the end he dies of absolute fright when a flash of lightning briefly reveals the true form of the Black Goat Nyarlathotep, before sending it back to the abyss.  And the appearance of Nyarlathotep is accompanied by a sidhe gaoithe  [ shuggoth ], a strong blast of wind. 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I think Lovecraft got the idea of an invisible planet close to ours being the realm of the Black Goat comes from Arthur Machen's the Great God Pan.  In the first chapter he says there is an invisible world parallel to ours, and catching a glimpse of it is called "seeing the Great God Pan", and a mad scientist figures out a method of brain surgery that allows a woman to see the invisible world and the Great God Pan, and seeing it drives her immediately insane.

Brain surgery allows you to see the Great God Pan, and in The Whisperer in Darkness, the crabs perform brain surgery and remove your brain and put it is a jar so that you can see Yuggoth.  And seeing Yuggoth / the Black Goat drives people insane.

There is also a plot of a woman seducing the Great God Pan and having a child with it, and the child is a demonic shapeshifter.  Which is the plot of Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

In Robert E. Howards' work Stygia is Egypt, and in ASoIaF, Stygia is in Asshai, so Bloodstone Emperor = the Black Pharaoh Nephren Ka

 

And in Robert Bloch's The Fane of the Black Pharaoh,  Nephren Ka

-usurped the previous pharaoh

-abandoned the gods of his people and began worshiping a black stone (that is, Nyarlathotep) that fell out of the sky (and is a fragment of the Black Planet Yuggoth / the Black Goat / the Stranger)

-committed mass human sacrifice

-worshiped the Black Stone in a temple of total darkness

-did such horrible deeds that his name was stricken from all records

-gods with gemstone eyes are mentioned

-when he was dethroned, was said to have tried to flee to Britain

-entombed himself in a cave where his followers still worship him

-he predicted the future from his tomb

-predicted the Black Pharaoh would return in 7,000 years

 

 

This is the most important part, in Welsh nyf / nef means "snow" and is on the same page as the "Nefren" words in Pughe's Welsh Dictionary.

and fferu means "to freeze"

Jon took the black, and fferu means "snow" = Jon Snow = Black Pharaoh.

Jon Snow = Jack Frost, the embodiment of Winter.

Jon Snow is Nephren Ka, aka, the Night King.

 

And the Long Night is caused by the Black Planet very near to Earth eclipsing the sun for years, causing a night that never ends.  In Lovecraft's the Tree on the Hill, the Black Goat causes an endless night on Earth.

 

Others have noticed the parallels between the 13th Lord Commander and the Bloodstone Emperor.  And Old Nan suggested that his name was Stark, and he slept in Bran's room.  And Ygritte says that Jon Snow is an evil name.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Was just going over the Haunter in Darkness  again and noticed that the skeleton of the reporter who summoned the Haunter that Blake finds in the steeple was named Edwin Lillibridge

edwin  means "decay" in Welsh

llill  means "goat" in Welsh  and brido means "to break out" and brig means "head, tuft" in Welsh

 

Lillibridge summoned the goat--the goat broke out, and it sucked his brains out through a hole in the top of his head.

And there is probably a Shaggy Goat reference there too, goat + tuft.  In Haunter he says that there are two black planets in our solar system, Yuggoth and Shaggai, --> Shaggy and Goat, as Baphomet is the shaggy goat. 

 

 

So I have noted previously that Bran and Hodor have a bunch of black goat symbolism around them, as haedus / hoedus means "kid" and "goat" in Latin and Hodor is shaggy. 

But check this out, Baphomet (or the Great God Pan) has a human torso and goat legs.  Hoedus means "goat" and Bran uses him as his legs.   Bran has goat legs. 

caper means "goat" in Latin, and to caper means to dance, and Bran's horse was Dancer.

Bran was in love with Meera Reed, and the goat god Pan chased a wood nymph and she ran away to the river and was turned into a Reed.  [And me'arah means "cave" in Hebrew.]

 

I have been reading about Pan and Satyrs and realized that Tyrion is pretty much a Satyr, he is a heavy drinker, a very lustful appetite, and he chases women, but women run from him.  He "has horns" because he was cuckolded.  And like Baphomet he was said a hermaphrodite.

Was just looking up "goat" words in Harper's Latin, and check this out Chimera  literally means "goat" and it is a monster with the front of a lion, the hind quarters of a dragon, and the middle of a goat.

I think Tyrion has actual Chimerism, where the sperm of two separate men (Tywin and Aerys) fertilized two separate eggs, but then they merge into one fetus.  That is why he is half lion, and half dragon, and half goat, because Chimera means "Goat". 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I just found out that hircinus  means "goat" in Latin.  [~Hyrkoon the Hero]

 

So the fungoid crabs from The Whisperer in Darkness, like almost all Lovecraft's monsters are depictions of Baphoment, their star-shaped heads correspond to the pentagram shape of Baphomet's goat head, and Baphomet has an actual five-pointed star on his head.  The crabs have cloven hooves, and wings, and they are shape-shifters, and they came from a Black Planet, and Baphomet is depicted with a black moon. 

Nyarlathotep, when he is pretending to be Akeley by wearing his face and hands, is pretty much a direct depiction of the classic Baphomet with a blanket across his lap.  Baphomet looks like a human wearing a goat mask, and Nyarlathotep is a goat wearing a human skin mask.  His hooves are bandaged up "like a gouty old beefeater" is a wordplay on gout ~ goat

Baphomet has a caduceus in his lap, and in Welsh cidws means "goat" in Welsh and the caduceus is the sigil of the medical sciences, and the crabs from Yuggoth are expert surgeons.

 

Baphomet has a black/white theme, black moon/white moon, male/female genitalia, and the words liquid/solid are tattooed on his forearms. 

The fungous crabs can't stand light, so they can only come out in darkest night, when everything is black and white.  They are from a black moon, they are fungi and reproduce by spores and have no genitals, and they are solid matter but when they die they evaporate and leave no trace.

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Recall that nef = "snow" in Welsh

Supporting the idea that Jon Snow is Nephren-Ka reborn, in Robert E. Howard's The Hoofed Thing (also called Usurp the Night) and it is about a guy named John Stark who is a lame cripple, who summons the black goat from "another universe" / "out of the void" / "dark Outer chasms" / "from the Abyss".  The "goat" requires human sacrifice, and it is first described as "a vast anthropomorphic shadow cast upon the wall" and it is a "cloud of terror over the city" and a "horror that hovered over the city and the countryside"

 

And nef = "snow" is where the idea that Jon is Ned's nephew came from.   nef ~ nephew

 

---------------

 

More "Hodor = black goat" stuff. 

 

In Welsh:

hud / hudor means "magic, tricks, illusion"

hudwr / hwdiw / hudo means "enticer, deceiver"  [the devil]

hudwy means "phantom, delusive vision"  [the Black Goat, Great God Pan is usually invisible]

hudd- means "dark, gloomy" and "to cover over, to shade, to darken"  [the Black Goat eclipses the sun]

hwd means "hood, cover"   [Hooded man is one of the names of the Stranger]

huawdr / huawdl  means "well-spoken, eloquent"

 

and Hodor is almost mute, and can only say "Hodor"

Seeing the Black Goat / Great God Pan scrambles your brain.  Hodor's brain was scrambled, and hoedus means "goat"

What if Hodor has been trying to tell us what happened to him?  He saw the Black Goat, the Devil, and it fried his brain?  / and or it took over his body.