| “ | Ever their praises, and abundance to the Black Goat of the Woods. Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young! Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young! | „ |
| ~ Excerpt from a Mi-go ritual. |
Shub-Niggurath, commonly called The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, is a major antagonist in the Cthulu Mythos by the late H. P. Lovecraft. She is an Outer Goddess and a perverse fertility deity, being the spouse of Yog-Sothoth, and is known to have spawned several of the Great Old Ones.
Overview[]
Shub-Niggurath is the offspring of the "Darkness", who in turn was spawned by Azathoth. She became the spouse of Yog-Sothoth, with whom she spawned many beings, among them Nug and Yeb, who in turned spawned Cthulhu and Tsathoggua.
It is also believed that she mated with Hastur and spawned Ithaqua, Zhar, and J'Zahar with him.
She is one of the most worshipped Outer Gods, including the Hyperboreans, the Muvians, T'yog of K'naa, Mi-go, Nug-Soth and the people of Sarnath, usually in the context of harvest and lifestock. She could be summoned at the time of the new moon.
Appearance[]
Shub-Niggurath is often described as a massive mass of tentacles and mouths, that stands on black goat-like legs.
The young of Shub-Niggurath are constantly falling of the goddess, and while many separate from their mother to some "unholy existence", other re-attach themselves to back to her.
In Popular Culture[]
Like many deities in from H.P. Lovecraft, Shub-Niggurath has appeared/been referenced in countless forms of Media. Some notable are:
Shub-Niggurath in South Park: The Fractured But Whole.
- The game South Park: The Fractured but Whole, in which Shub-Niggurath rests under the police station, and the South Park Police Department has been sacrificing African-Americans for her.
- The Nestene Consciousness from Doctor Who is one of the "Thousand Young" of Shub-Niggurath.
- Shub-Niggurath, who serves as the final boss of the video game Quake.
- Lovataar from the universe of the SCP Foundation. She is one of the Klavigar of Sarkicism, perverse saints under Grand Karcist Ion, who represents sex, love, eroticism, pleasure, motherhood, disease, and unrestrained reproduction.
- Shub-Niggurath is implied to be the overarching antagonist of Stephen King's short story Crouch End.
- In the anime Overlord, Ainz Ooal Gown summons Shub-Niggurath's dark young to destroy the enemy army.
- Shub-Niggurath is the main antagonist and final boss in the 2024 survival horror video game Alone in the Dark.
Trivia[]
- Due to the well-known racial prejudice the late author H.P. Lovecraft had, there has been some controversy, especially in recent memory, surrounding Shub-Niggurath’s name, mainly due to readers linking the second half of the Great Old One’s name to that of a racial slur directed at African-Americans.
