Elder Gods

An Elder God is a fictional deity in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft.

Summary

In post-Lovecraft stories, the Elder Gods oppose the Outer Gods and the Great Old Ones. Some consider them to be non-Lovecraftian because they employ a good versus evil dichotomy which is contrary to the cosmic indifference of Lovecraft's fiction. However, these deities are no more concerned for human notions of "good" and "evil" than the beings they oppose and consider humans to be less than fleas although they can be sympathetic to humanity on occasion and their interests usually coincide with our own.

The main "Elder God" used by Lovecraft is Nodens, who acts as deus ex machina for the protagonists in both The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926) and "The Strange High House in the Mist" (1931). In this regard, he functions like Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep, although Nodens is obviously less malicious. Another entity mentioned as an Elder God is Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. He appears in the story fragment "Hypnos" which is about a mediocre poet who is suddenly granted the power to usher in a new Golden Age. It is also speculated that Bast, the Egyptian goddess of cats, qualifies as an Elder God due to Lovecraft's feline obsession and because of hints given in Lovecraft's "The Cats of Ulthar" (1920).