'UMR AT-TAWIL (YOG-SOTHOTH)
"There was another Shape, too, which occupied no pedestal, but which seemed
to glide or float over the cloudy, floor-like lower level. It was not exactly permanent in outline,
but held transient suggestions of something remotely preceding or paralleling the human form,
though half as large again as an ordinary man. It seemed to be heavily cloaked, like the Shapes
on the pedestals, with some neutral-coloured fabric; and Carter could not detect any eye-holes
through which it might gaze. Probably it did not need to gaze, for it seemed to belong to an
order of being far outside the merely physical in organisation and faculties."
"For
this Shape was nothing less than that which all the world has feared since Lomar rose out of
the sea and the Winged Ones came to earth to teach the Elder Lore to man. It was indeed the
frightful Guide and Guardian of the Gate—’Umr at-Tawil, the ancient one, which the
scribe rendereth the Prolonged of Life."
"At this reply the Guide seemed to make a sign by certain motions of his robe
which may or may not have involved the lifting of an arm or some homologous member."
"Gradually and mistily it became apparent that the Most Ancient One was holding something—some object clutched in the outflung folds of his robe as if for the sight, or what answered for sight, of the cloaked Companions. It was a large sphere or apparent sphere of some obscurely iridescent metal, and as the Guide put it forward a low, pervasive half-impression of sound began to rise and fall in intervals which seemed to be rhythmic even though they followed no rhythm of earth."
"Gradually and mistily it became apparent that the Most Ancient One was holding something—some object clutched in the outflung folds of his robe as if for the sight, or what answered for sight, of the cloaked Companions. It was a large sphere or apparent sphere of some obscurely iridescent metal, and as the Guide put it forward a low, pervasive half-impression of sound began to rise and fall in intervals which seemed to be rhythmic even though they followed no rhythm of earth."
"It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely
a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s
whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches
fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered
of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans
of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know
by an untranslatable Sign—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realised how slight and fractional
all these conceptions are."
H.P. Lovecraft & E.Hoffman Price, Through the Gates Of the Silver Key
