Ghatanothoa is a fictional deity in the Cthulhu Mythos. The being first appeared in the short story "Out Of The Aeons" (1935) by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald. It is a large, amorphous, exceptionally hideous being comparable to Medusa.
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Summary
Ghatanothoa is a Great Old One. It is a huge, amorphous monstrosity, so hideous that anyone who gazes upon it (or even a perfect replica) is petrified: the body taking on the consistency of leather and the brain preserved indefinitely, while fully aware. Only the destruction of the subject's brain can free it.
Ghatanothoa is currently trapped underneath Mount Yaddith-Gho in the sunken continent of Mu. He was brought to Earth from the planet Yuggoth (Pluto in Lovecraft's fiction) by an ancient, alien race. These are presumed to be the Mi-go, or Fungi from Yuggoth (Harms, The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana p. 115), but S. T. Joshi, in his essay "Lovecraft's Other Planets", argues that these beings are an older and perhaps indigenous race of Yuggoth. Citing Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931), Joshi notes that the structures on Yuggoth were "built by some elder race, extinct and forgotten" before the Mi-go arrived; wherefore, the aliens here are "the alien spawn of the dark planet Yuggoth" (as quoted from "Out of the Aeons") that brought Ghatanothoa to Earth. (Joshi, "Lovecraft's Other Planets", Selected Papers on Lovecraft, p. 39.), who built a colossal fortress atop Yaddith-Gho and sealed Ghatanothoa inside the mountain.
Many attempted in vain to defeat Ghatanothoa; most notably T'yog, the High Priest of Shub-Niggurath, whose story is recounted in Friedrich von Junzt's grimoire Unaussprechlichen Kulten or Nameless Cults (Robert E. Howard's answer to Lovecraft's Necronomicon). T'yog created a scroll that was supposed to protect him from the petrifying effect of gazing upon Ghatanothoa, but was defeated after Ghatanothoa's priests replaced it with a fake one. This occurred in the Year of the Red Moon, which is 173,148 B.C. according to von Juntz.
Other connections to the mythos
In Lin Carter's Xothic legend cycle, Ghatanothoa is said to be the firstborn of Cthulhu; his siblings, in order of birth, are Ythogtha, Zoth-Ommog, and Cthylla. Colin Wilson connected Ghatanothoa to the alien, reptilian race of energy beings—the Lloigor—as the deity's servants.