Yuggothic

A working corpus and lexicon for the invented ritual language Michael Aquino built for The Satanic Rituals in 1972, which later hands have continued.

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Yuggothic

What this is for

To find out how much of a language is actually there, by aligning every attested Yuggothic line against the English printed beside it, and recording what the alignment yields.

Yuggothic is not claimed here as a real language, nor as anything Lovecraft intended. It is treated as what it is: a constructed ritual vocabulary with a documented author, used in a living practice that reads these rites psychologically.

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Yuggothic

The hands

Lovecraft

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

→

Michael Aquino, 1972

The Ceremony of the Nine Angles, The Call to Cthulhu

→

Michael Aquino, 1977

“Lovecraftian Ritual”, the glossary and decoding

→

Toby Chappell, 2019

new rites in chapters 7 and 8

Timothy McGranahan, 1992

“Ye Yuggothic Lexicon”, Runes 10.1; the R'lyehian alphabet

John J. Coughlin, 2004

Rite of Yog-Sothoth

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Yuggothic

Lovecraft

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Lovecraftian names, chants, and prose establish the primary canon and sound world: they govern flavor and admissible strangeness, but rarely provide grammar by themselves.

Lovecraft glossed whole sentences and never a word, and said his names were human approximations of inhuman sound.

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Yuggothic

Michael Aquino, 1977

Aquino's own account of the terms he coined, restructured from the running prose of “Lovecraftian Ritual” into one block per term.

Fhagn	Root for concepts of night and dreaming, taken directly from the HPL incantation.	AG-05
F’ung	Root for “speak/speech,” being a new translation of the title Fungi from Yuggoth.	AG-14
Zhri	“Cry,” taken from zhro of the Descending Node incantation in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.	AG-12
Hu-ehn	“Name” from “hue” (color) from “The Color Out of Space.”	AG-20
Y’goth-e	From “Yuggoth,” here identified with the Left-Hand Path of Black Magic.	AG-21
Cylth	“Deep Ones,” a racial name derived from “Cthulhu.”	AG-28
Zaan	“Plane,” a tribute to HPL’s magical violinist.	AG-25

Michael Aquino in 1973, wearing an inverted pentagram

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Yuggothic

Michael Aquino, 1972

The Ceremony of the Nine Angles

CNA-01Michael Aquino, 1972

N’kgnath ki’q Az-Athoth r’jyarh wh’fagh zhasa phr-tga nyena phragn’glu.

Let us do honor to Azathoth, without whose laughter this world should not be.

CNA-02Michael Aquino, 1972

Ki’q Az-Athoth r’jyarh wh’fagh zhasa phr-tga nyena phragn’glu.

Honor to Azathoth, without whose laughter this world should not be.

The Seal is again the pentagram, intrinsically defining the Φ- trapezoid.

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Yuggothic

Michael Aquino, 1972

The Call to Cthulhu

ACC-01Michael Aquino, 1972

I'a k'nark Cthulhu kyr'w qu'ra cylth drehm'n El-ak. U'gnyal kraayn:

Hail, great Cthulhu, who art known to all races of the deep ones who walk upon and beneath the earth. Hear thy honored names:

The theme of The Call to Cthulhu is that of a “casting back” through collective, “racial” memory to the rupture of mankind from the beasts of nature.

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Yuggothic

The hands

fhtagn

Lovecraft

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

ACC-07Michael Aquino, 1972

M'khagn w'ragnhzy dys-n'gha k'dys-n'ghals k'fungn-akel zaht'h k'halrn ghr-kha n'fhtagn-gha.

Hear me, for I cry the end of the god of death, and of the god of dying, and I speak of the laws of life that you may reject the curse of the death without sleep.

TC-11Toby Chappell, 2019

Z’j-m’h kh’rn Z’j-m’h kh’r Z’j-m’h kh’rmnu. V’k’naa v’ty’h nhi cvy, nhi v’quy’h nhi nyr K’ghr-kha n’fhtagn-gha. Krell v’fnaghn’k’ krell d’yn’khe cyvaalic h’y-cvy-rohz.

The Daemons are, the Daemons were, and the Daemons shall be again. By the gate of One and Five, and of Two and Eight, I reject the curse of the death without sleep. The key is known to me, that key whose seal is at once four and five and nine.

A Lovecraft word becomes usable as a Yuggothic element only where Aquino took it in: fhtagn is Aquino's root for night, sleep and dreaming (AG-05, attested in his own compounds n'fhtagn-gha, fhtagn-w'gah, fhtagni-kar'n, fhtag's), and in composition it carries that sense and no other.

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Yuggothic

Toby Chappell, 2019

Chappell's rites mix verbatim Aquino with his own composition, sometimes in the same rite.

CNA-02Michael Aquino, 1972

Ki’q Az-Athoth r’jyarh wh’fagh zhasa phr-tga nyena phragn’glu.

Honor to Azathoth, without whose laughter this world should not be.

TC-03Toby Chappell, 2019

Ki’q Az-Athoth r’jyarh wh’fagh zhasa phr-tga nyena phrag-n’glu.

Honor to Azathoth, without whose laughter this world should not be.

Aquino, CNA-02 / CNA-04, verbatim except phrag-n’glu for Aquino's phragn’glu.

TC-01Toby Chappell, 2019

M’khagn urz’vuy-kin!

Hear me, Lord of the Angles!

New. Built from Aquino roots (urz- prince/lord, vuy-kin angle) but the phrase is not in the Ceremony.

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Yuggothic

What the corpus yields

The possessive V- prefix is the strongest: Aquino states the rule, the Bond uses it nine times on the angle names, and Chappell inflects on it himself.

Vuy-kin’eh

“V” prefix denotes possessive case in Yuggothic, “Kin” (angle) from the Greek root for “kinetic” (contained) energy.

AG-07

TC-07Toby Chappell, 2019

V’rohz vuy-kn i’inkh-v zy-d’syn.

From the Ninth Angle is the flame of the beginning and ending of dimensions.

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Yuggothic

John J. Coughlin, 2004

Rite of Yog-Sothoth

JC-01John J. Coughlin, 2004

K’aem’nhi kh’rn K’aem’nhi kh’r K’aem’nhi kh’rmnu.

The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be again.

Coughlin (JC-01, JC-09) glosses his own use “were, are, shall be”, which is the Call's reading, and is the only independent witness: Chappell's TC-08 and TC-11 requote CNA-09 with its English and add no evidence of their own.

aem'nh “father” reaches six further forms including Coughlin's K'aem'nhi, which is the only place a second hand inflects on a term from the glossary.

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Yuggothic

Timothy McGranahan, 1992

lexicon not held. Internal to the Order of the Trapezoid. Alphabet held, as Appendix F of Chappell

A published lexicon already exists and is out of reach. What is built here is built from the printed rites, and where it gets stuck, it says so.

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Yuggothic

What the corpus yields

380

380 distinct Yuggothic forms are attested.

307

307 of them appear in exactly one utterance, which is the single most important fact about this language and the reason the lexicon is tiered rather than alphabetical.

Alignment needs two contexts to intersect; with one there is nothing to work on and any gloss is a guess.

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Yuggothic

What the corpus yields

Tiering

What is left is a recoverable core of 73 forms in two or more distinct contexts, 41 of them used by more than one writer, plus four patterns that behave like grammar.

Tier	Meaning	Entries
A	Corroborated: two or more contexts and either two hands or Aquino's own gloss	48
B	One hand, several contexts	25
C	Glossed by Aquino, not confirmable from the texts	9

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Yuggothic

What the corpus yields

Roots Aquino names as roots

In his 1977 article Aquino names six roots outright rather than glossing words, and takes several phrases apart into pieces he explains.

Root	Gloss	Forms	Hands
f'ung-	speak / speech (AG-14)	11	Aquino, Chappell
kin	angle (AG-07)	6	Aquino, Chappell
fha'gn-	night / dreaming (AG-05)	5	Aquino, Chappell, Coughlin
naagh-	Abyss (AG-13)	5	Aquino, Chappell
phragn	being / existing (AG-04)	4	Aquino, Chappell
quz	death (AG-09)	4	Aquino
kh'reng	blackness / darkness (AG-10)	2	Aquino, Chappell

59 of the 307 once-attested forms carry a root he names.

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Yuggothic

What the corpus yields

The honest summary is that a small centre is genuinely there and the long tail is not, and the lexicon says which is which on every entry.

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Yuggothic

The two directions

Yuggothic to English is evidence.

Nothing enters this direction except through a cited utterance.

English to Yuggothic is construction.

Writing new ritual text needs words the corpus never printed.

Status	Meaning
Productive	an attested rule applied to attested material
Reconstructed	built from attested lexical material, though the form itself is unprinted
Coined	no attested material underneath; a sound-shape from the phonotactic rules
Enochian	a real Dee and Kelley word, confirmed in Laycock's dictionary, respelled

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Yuggothic

Translating with the corpus

Key One

The nineteen Dee and Kelley Enochian Keys have been translated this way in full, as a test of the grammar at length.

Move, therefore, and show yourselves; open the mysteries of time and space; be a teacher unto me, for I am the blood-kin of the same, the Great Old Ones, a true caller to the centre of Chaos.

Lyrath fha'gnu; fha'gnu kin-phragn v'drethain K'aem'nhi, saelithain khresh'tan v'velthara v'naagh.

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Yuggothic

Rules

Attestation count on every entry. A form seen once cannot be told from a typo.

No paradigm from a single attestation. The same word family can carry several printed forms before a pattern is secure.

Hand and document on every citation. Never a merged gloss. Distinguishing inheritance from drift is the whole point, and a merged entry destroys it.

Loose about meaning, strict about attribution. Semantics here are provisional and are allowed to be. Provenance is not.

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