Is Set REALLY Nyarlathotep?

[cultistofvertigo]

There are some posts i've read here that blow my mind, to wit, the ones that ask what the heck Robert E. Howard or Frank Belknap Long have to do with the mythos. To those people who may be confused as I state my case, let me assure you the "Cthulhu" Mythos are vastly larger than one writer from 80 years ago.

Set, as i'm hoping some of you know, was fictionalized by Robert E. Howard as the god his serpent people worshipped. Hyborian cultists of Set also worshipped giant snakes as emmisaries of the god. To a Derleth or Carter, this is clearly synomous with Yig, as one would get the impression from reading HPL's mentions of the serpent men. In fact, in "The Shadow Kingom," finished 1929 (after Curse of Yig, and as close as the two were it would be goofy to assume Howard had not read it), refers to their god only as "the Great Serpent." The intention, it seems, is that Set is either another name for or an avatar of Yig.

Flash forward to the 70's. As i've only recently started to uncover (as the only comics i was into back in the day were the DARK HORSE Godzilla's), the Marvel Conan acted much in the same way as August Derleth's Cthulhu. Marvel did things that are so familiar to readers of post-Lovecraft mythos works, they went back into the text and purposefully tried to find obscure names to eloborate on. While Derleth was recreating Hastur and "Ossadoggua," Dr. Strange was battling Shuma-Gorath, a fully fleshed out Great Old One pulled from a single curse in a Kull story "The Curse of the Golden Skull." Basically, what we have happening is a simultaneous development of two universes which the original authors of tried exhaustively to reconcile with other and create a comprehensive background setting.

One of the elaborated Howard gods that shows up in the Marvel Conan Comics is, unsurprisingly, Set. And, as he was so associated with snake cults and snake men, it is hardly curious that he is always portrayed as some variation of a giant snake. No conflicts there. But what ends up happening, because I guess "lovecraft scholars" are too damn good to bother reading the conan comics (unlike Ramsey Campbell, who adopted M'Nagalah and kin to the pantheon), is hungry authors eating up everything they can touch and call it an "avatar" or "obscure great old one."

Richard L. Tierney, who I dig because, even though he can clearly tell the difference between the "Derleth" and "Lovecraft" mythos, he doesn't scold anyone for it. He tried (and with perhaps more success than Lin Carter) to make sure both fit into what Robert M. Price has called the "Wierd Tales Cosmology") Now, I haven't read a whole bunch of Tierney, and I wouldn't dare call myself a scholar on the subject of prissy-pants writers who think Lovecraft is the gospel, but the problem is that recently, and I don't know how recently, Set has been identified with Nyarlathotep.

It's real subliminable (just like everyything else in the mythos), but the first time i ever read it in stone was in Chaosium's Latin-word-for-mean Latin-word-for-monster book, being a whole shitload of CoC RPG monster stats. In the 20 pages of Nyarlathotep avatars, there lies Set, in three forms: Human (with the Typhonian Beast Head), Giant Pig (???), and Giant Snake (that sounds better). The qoute for the entry comes from a Richard L. Tierney story, "The Worm of Urakhu," which I haven't read. The qoute doesn't address Set directly, but rather lists a group of dieties worshipped in Stygia, which also includes "Nyarlat!"

This is all I know about this issue. Choasium doesn't exactly have a good track-record, these are the same guys who said Xiurhn and Fthaggua were "unique entities" and confused the Jinnee with the Fire Vampires. It might also serve you to know that the section of Nyarlathotep avatars also includes traditional gods never mentioned in any mythos story, like Baron Semedi or the Green Man, along with qoutes from, and this is not a joke, THE GOLDEN BOUGH! The book is litered with errors, but the fact that they have a qoute from an actual mythos story by an established mythos writer means something. But how can Tierney have developed Set to be so insanely different from what Howard, Lovecraft, Derleth, and even Carter assumed? This is HOWARD's Set we're talking about.

Yes, very long post, but I wanted to put all the info on this out there as I can give, for those who don't follow the mythos as closely as i do, and for the ones that follow it closer, so they can hopefully correct me and straighten this thing out.

SO WHO THE HELL IS SET SUPPOSED TO BE?

[miz redavni]

me O.O