크툴루 신화 그 놀라운 우주의 비밀

현재 크툴루 신화의 알려진 우주론은 무한한 차원의 계층과 그 너머 비공간적인 영역의 계층, 그리고 궁극의 문을 넘어서 도달할 수 있는 최후의 공허라는 삼단 구조였었음.

차원과 외부 공허 사이에 비공간적인 영역의 계층이 있었다는 대표적인 근거들은 다음과 같음.

Memory and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines amidst the seething chaos, but Carter knew that they were of memory and imagination only. Yet he felt that it was not chance which built these things in his consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable and undimensioned, which surrounded him and strove to translate itself into the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind of earth may grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulfs outside time and the dimensions we know.

-THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

>>형언할 수 없고 비차원적인 영역, 우리가 아는 시간과 차원의 바깥.

He was in many places at the same time.

On earth, on October 7, 1883, a little boy named Randolph Carter was leaving the Snake-Den in the hushed evening light and running down the rocky slope and through the twisted-boughed orchard toward his Uncle Christopher's house in the hills beyond Arkham-yet at that same moment, which was also somehow in the earthly year of 1928, a vague shadow not less Randolph Carter was sitting on a pedestal among the Ancient Ones in earth's trans- dimensional extension. Here, too, was a third Randolph Carter in the unknown and formless cosmic abyss beyond the Ultimate Gate. And elsewhere, in a chaos of scenes whose infinite multiplicity and monstrous diversity brought him close to the brink of madness, were a limitless confusion of beings which he knew were as much himself as the local manifestation now beyond theUltimate Gate.

-THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

>>(제1관문으로 도달했던) 지구의 초차원적인 확장.

Then the waves increased in strength, and sought to improve his understanding, reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an infinitesimal part. They told him that every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some corresponding figure of one more dimension—as a square is cut from a cube or a circle from a sphere. The cube and sphere, of three dimensions, are thus cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions that men know only through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five dimensions, and so on up to the dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity. The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness reached by the First Gate, where ’Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient Ones. Though men hail it as reality and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.

-THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

>>인간과 신들의 세계는 무한히 작은 것의 무한히 낮은 단계이며, 제1관문으로 도달한 작은 전체성의 3차원적 단계.

It was also possible that the inhabitants of a given dimensional realm could survive entry to many unknown and incomprehensible realms of additional or indefinitely multiplied dimensions-be they within or outside the given space-time continuum-and that the converse would be likewise true. This was a matter for speculation, though one could be fairly certain that the type of mutation involved in a passage from any given dimensional plane to the next higher plane would not be destructive of biological integrity as we understand it. Gilman could not be very clear about his reasons for this last assumption, but his haziness here was more than overbalanced by his clearness on other complex points. Professor Upham especially liked his demonstration of the kinship of higher mathematics to certain phases of magical lore transmitted down the ages from an ineffable antiquity-human or pre-human-whose knowledge of the cosmos and its laws was greater than ours.

-THE DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE

>>무한히 곱해진 차원 영역이 있을 수 있다.

정리하자면 비차원, 초차원, 시간과 차원 바깥, 인간의 세계는 작은 전체성의 3차원적 단계, 차원이 무한히 곱해진 영역 등등의 묘사들 때문에, 제1관문 너머 카터가 직면한 이상한 영역들은 무한 차원의 계층을 넘어선 초월적인 영역이라고 간주되었음.

하지만 문제는 제1관문 너머의 영역에 차원이 있다고 언급하거나 암시되는 장면들이 보인다는 거임.

While most of the impressions translated themselves to Carter as words, there were others to which other senses gave interpretation. Perhaps with eyes and perhaps with imagination he perceived that he was in a region of dimensions beyond those conceivable to the eye and brain of man.

-THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

>>눈이나 뇌로 이해할 수 없는 "차원"의 영역에 있었다.

(당시 카터는 제1관문을 넘어선 상태)

He saw now, in the brooding shadows of that which had been first a vortex of power and then an illimitable void, a sweep of creation that dizzied his senses. From some inconceivable vantage-point he looked upon prodigious forms whose multiple extensions transcended any conception of being, size, and boundaries which his mind had hitherto been able to hold, despite a lifetime of cryptical study. He began to understand dimly why there could exist at the same time the little boy Randolph Carter in the Arkham farmhouse in 1883, the misty form on the vaguely hexagonal pillar beyond the First Gate, the fragment now facing the PRESENCE in the limitless abyss, and all the other “Carters” his fancy or perception envisaged.

-THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

이전 본문에서 이어지는 장면

>>제1관문 너머, 흐릿하게 "육각형에 가까운 기둥" 위에 있는 안개 같은 형상(이질적이지만 형태가 존재할 수 있는 공간적이고 차원적임을 암시.)

By the time the rite was over Carter knew that he was in no region whose place could be told by earth’s geographers, and in no age whose date history could fix. For the nature of what was happening was not wholly unfamiliar to him. There were hints of it in the cryptical Pnakotic fragments, and a whole chapter in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred had taken on significance when he had deciphered the designs graven on the Silver Key. A gate had been unlocked—not indeed the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from earth and time to that extension of earth which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.

-THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

>>지구와 시간에서, 시간을 초월한 지구의 확장으로 이어지는 하나의 문이 있었고, 그곳에서 다시 궁극의 문은 무섭고 위험하게 "모든 지구와 모든 우주, 모든 물질" 너머에 있는 "최후의 공허"로 이어진다.

제1관문이 초월하는 시간과 공간은 시간과 공간의 모든 범위를 포함하는 게 아니라, 인간이 사는 제한적인 우주의 범위임을 알 수 있음.

모든 우주와 "모든 물질"너머에 있는 건 최후의 공허임.

게다가 가장 강한 근거는 이거임.

작가 피셜 등장ㄷㄷ

My idea is to have the First Gate (accessible with Silver Key alone) open on an extension of the earth only in all dimensions, while the Ultimate Gate (accessible only through the Ancient Ones plus the Silver Key) brings one to a sort of space-focus where everything in infinity converges to oneness

"only"라는 한정부사까지 넣어가며 제1관문의 확장이 오직 차원적 영역임을 확실시함.

그 최후의 공허에 대한 또 다른 묘사는 다음과 같음.

He seemed to know what was coming—the monstrous burst of Walpurgis-rhythm in whose cosmic timbre would be concentrated all the primal, ultimate space-time seethings which lie behind the massed spheres of matter and sometimes break forth in measured reverberations that penetrate faintly to every layer of entity and give hideous significance throughout the worlds to certain dreaded periods.

-The Dreams In The Witch House

>>우주적 음색 속에 모든 원시적이고 궁극적인 시공의 격동이 집중되는, 발푸르기스 리듬의 거대한 폭발이 그것이었다.

최후의 공허는 원시적이고 궁극적인 "시공"의 격동임.

게다가 원형과 원형이 아닌 존재들의 관계를 보면

Then the waves increased in strength, and sought to improve his understanding, reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an infinitesimal part. They told him that every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some corresponding figure of one more dimension—as a square is cut from a cube or a circle from a sphere. The cube and sphere, of three dimensions, are thus cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions that men know only through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five dimensions, and so on up to the dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity.

-THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

>>세 차원의 입방체와 구는, 인간이 오직 추측과 꿈을 통해서만 아는 네 차원의 대응 형상에서 잘려 나온 것이며, 이 형상들 또한 다섯 차원의 형상에서 잘려 나온 것이고, 그렇게 계속 올라가면서 원형적 무한의 아찔하고 도달할 수 없는 고지에 이른다.

이 말은 원형적 무한(아우터 갓)에서 여러 단계를 거쳐 3차원 현실이 형성되었다는 거임.

그 단계는 고차원적 구조를 단면으로 잘라 저차원적 구조를 산출하는 것으로 이루어짐.

원형->N차원->...->3차원의 방식으로 인류가 탄생함.

그렇다면 외신은 차원이 없는 존재가 아니라 차원이 많은 존재라는 거임. 차원이 없는데 단면을 자를 수 없음.

All descended lines of beings of the finite dimensions, continued the waves, and all stages of growth in each one of these beings, are merely manifestations of one archetypal and eternal being in the space outside dimensions. Each local being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, young man, old man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of the consciousness-plane which cuts it.

****

The archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the ultimate abyss—formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing BEING itself . . . which indeed was Carter’s own archetype. The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT.

-THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

또한 원형이 아닌 존재들을 묘사할 때, 유한한 차원의 존재라고 일관적으로 묘사하는 것은 주목할 만함.

제한된 차원의 개체들은 영원한 원형적 존재의 무한한 위상의 일부라는데 이것은 원형과 3차원의 존재가 부분-전체 관계를 맺고 있다는 것을 의미함.

한마디로 아우터 갓의 부분은 3차원임.

즉, 아우터 갓은 차원과 질적으로 다른 존재가 아니라 유한한 차원 존재의 부정, 무한 차원의 존재라는 거임.

After an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of few-dimensioned zones call change is merely a function of their consciousness, which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the shapes produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the angles of cutting—being circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola according to that angle, yet without any change in the cone itself—so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. To this variety of angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since with rare exceptions they cannot learn to control them. Only a few students of forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby conquered time and change. But the entities outside the Gates command all angles, and view the myriad parts of the cosmos in terms of fragmentary, change-involving perspective, or of the changeless totality beyond perspective, in accordance with their will.

-THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

변화는 환상이고 "제한된 차원"의 존재는 그것에 얽메여 있으나 각도의 지배자인 아우터 갓은 그렇지 않음.

만약 원형 무한에서부터 잘려져 내려가는 것들 중 무한한 차원, 차원을 초월하는 영역이 있다면 위 묘사는 매우 어색해짐.

원형과 그렇지 않은 것들의 차이는 제한된 차원의 관점에 얽메여있냐 아니냐의 차이 때문임.

추가로 요그소토스와 아자토스가 무엇인지에 대해 알아보자면

He knew that there had been a Randolph Carter of Boston, yet could not be sure whether he—the fragment or facet of an earthly entity beyond the Ultimate Gate—had been that one or some other. His self had been annihilated; and yet he—if indeed there could, in view of that utter nullity of individual existence, be such a thing as he—was equally aware of being in some inconceivable way a legion of selves. It was as though his body had been suddenly transformed into one of those many-limbed and many-headed effigies sculptured in Indian temples, and he contemplated the aggregation in a bewildered attempt to discern which was the original and which the additions—if indeed (supremely monstrous thought) there were any original as distinguished from other embodiments.

****

Almost stunned with awe, and with a kind of terrifying delight, Randolph Carter’s consciousness did homage to that transcendent ENTITY from which it was derived. As the waves paused again he pondered in the mighty silence, thinking of strange tributes, stranger questions, and still stranger requests. Curious concepts flowed conflictingly through a brain dazed with unaccustomed vistas and unforeseen disclosures. It occurred to him that, if those disclosures were literally true, he might bodily visit all those infinitely distant ages and parts of the universe which he had hitherto known only in dreams, could he but command the magic to change the angle of his consciousness-plane. And did not the Silver Key supply that magic? Had it not first changed him from a man in 1928 to a boy in 1883, and then to something quite outside time? Oddly, despite his present apparent absence of body, he knew that the Key was still with him.

최후의 공허, 시간의 외부에 있던 카터는 힌두교의 신과 같은 형상으로 변하게 됨.

he sent out waves of thought, asking more of the exact relationship between his various facets—the fragment now beyond the Ultimate Gate, the fragment still on the quasi-hexagonal pedestal beyond the First Gate, the boy of 1883, the man of 1928, the various ancestral beings who had formed his heritage and the bulwark of his ego, and the nameless denizens of the other aeons and other worlds which that first hideous flash of ultimate perception had identified with him. Slowly the waves of the BEING surged out in reply, trying to make plain what was almost beyond the reach of an earthly mind.

****

The glutless zeal of Carter and all his forbears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of derivation from the SUPREME ARCHETYPE. On every world all great wizards, all great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of IT.

제한된 차원을 벗어난 카터조차도 최고 원형(요그소토스)에서 파생된 조각임.

**침묵이 계속되는 동안, 랜돌프 카터는 떠오르는 생각과 질문을 전했다. 그 절대의 심연에서 그는 자신의 원형에서 나온 모든 분신들과 똑같은 거리에 있음을 알았다. 즉, 인간 혹은 비인간, 지구 혹은 지구 외부의 존재, 은하 혹은 은하 외부의 존재, 특히 가장 호기심이 느껴지는 가장 먼 곳의 존재까지 그 거리는 똑같았다.

제한된 차원을 벗어난 카터조차 제한된 차원에 갖힌 다른 카터들과 똑같은 거리만큼 요그소토스와 떨어져 있음.

**충격 때문에 카터의 분신은 개성을 말살당했다는 공포마저 잊었다. 무수한 존재와 자아가 '하나 속의 전체'이자 '전체 속의 하나'였다.하나의 시공간에 있는 사물뿐 아니라, 완벽하게 진화된 어느 존재의 본질과도 결합된 느낌이었다. 그 완벽한 존재는 상상과 수학적 계산을 초월했기에 그 정체를 알 수 없었다. 그것은 지구의 일부 비밀 의식에서 조심스럽게 전해지고, 여러가지 신의 이름으로 불리었다는 요그-소토스 일지도 몰랐다. 유고스라는 곳의 갑각류 종족이 요그-소토스를 초월자로 숭배했다. 두뇌가 나선형의 수증기 형태로 이루어진 그 갑각류들은 해독할수 없는 표식을 통해서 요그-소토스를 알아본다고 했다. 그러나 카터는 그 같은 생각들이 얼마나 하찮고 단편적인 것인지 깨달았다.

(중략)

카터의 채워지지 않는 욕망과 우주의 비밀에 대한 선조들의 금기는 최고 원형에서 파생된 자연스러운 결과였다. 모든 세계의 위대한 마법사, 위대한 사상가, 위대한 예술가는 모두 '그것'의 일부분이다.

무수한 존재가 전체 속의 하나이자 하나 속의 전체임.

근데 그 범위에는 최후의 공허에 도달한 카터마저 포함하고 있음.

내 생각엔 요그소토스가 원형들 중 하나가 아니라 다른 원형들까디 포함하여 모든 것 그 자체(아마도 최후의 공허)인 것 같음.

아자토스의 경우

> I say "new" but it is just incredibly obscure and comes from a letter to Clark Ashton Smith on the 17th October, 1930, and can be found in the book "Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill" by Hippocampus press. The context is of a sculpture CAS sent HPL and becomes a frequented in-joke amongst them as "the Nameless Eikon". I will post below the relevant information. Bold text is my own emphasis

Dear Klarkash-Ton:--

You have by now, I trust, received evidence of the safe arrival of the unnameable eidolon at the Temple of Azathoth, & of the ecstatic gratitude felt by all the priests therein. That it is a relique of aeons older than Cthulhu none would for a moment deny; & the general disposition is to account it none other than Tsathoggua. One very aged pontiff, upon whose forehead is branded a sign which no living man can interpret, & whose statements about his own length of years are wholly incredible, goes so far as to link the image with primal Azathoth, the mindless Lord of Nighted Chaos who is the father of all other horrors & is coeval with the Ultimate Abyss itself; but so audacious a guess is looked upon with fear by most of the priests, to whom even a faint thought of Azathoth is menacing & disquieting........

-러브크래프트의 편지

아자토스는 모든 공포와 악몽의 아버지이자 궁극의 심연(최후의 공허의 동의어)과 동시기에 존재한 것으로 나와있음.

이걸로 요그소토스가 모든 것의 근원이라는 설은 사장된 듯함.

요그소토스가 최후의 공허 자체라고 해도 아자토스는 처ㅣ후의 공허와 동시기에 존재했으니.(또한 아자토스는 직접적으로 모든 공포들의 아버지라 불림)

물론 여전히 둘의 우열은 여전히 불분명하긴 함.

정리하자면

초우주의 계층=유한한 차원적 계층

원형 무한=무한차원 존재

요그소토스=최후의 공허, 궁극적인 시공간

아자토스=모든 악몽들의 아버지

현 브게 기준으로는 누구도 1-C를 넘어서지 못함.

최후의 공허는 인간과 부분-전체 관계를 가지는 아우터 갓들이 거주하는 영역이기 때문에 물리적 실체와 근본적인 단절성이 없기 때문.