Uttunul: Seething Void

Description

It all starts with the centre of the planet. It all starts with Cthelll. Beneath the lowest accessible depths, below the deepest crevaces of the deepest ocean trench, much below, lies another ocean: metal pressurized into hellfire, too vast to imagine and too hot to comprehend. It shakes, shudders, screams, and reverberates through the rocks that repress it, blasting out in vents and quakes, the overwhelming will-to-power of a cosmic unconscious. There has never been a pure, unspoilt, harmonious Earth; by the time life arose on the planet, it was already traumatized, violent, prone to rupture and catastrophe.

In face of the planetary core, all else is marginal, insignificant. Cthelll resides in deep geological time of the highest order, and simmers with energy on scales that break the biospheric imagination. It says: “nothing is an absolute reality; all is permitted.” It subducts a continent into the boiling mantle or sets it floating on flows of convection. It spreads life on the ocean floor; it erupts into mass extinction. Raising an atoll or leveling a city are all trifles, and can happen at any moment, at a whim. Everything that breathes is alive by the patience of the core, and imperiled by its volatility.

Cthelll has a queer and contextually blasphemous resonance with the Sun. Rather than the archetype of the Sun-King, who rules alone in uncontested solar divinity, Cthelll twins with the Sun in a mutual dynamic of celestial loss. Two bodies of vast energy, between which the Earth is caught; each separate, each repressed—the core by stones on its back, the Sun by stones in orbit. One day, these separations will be overcome, as the Sun expands to swallow the Earth and ends geological time. In the interim, however, Cthelll lies as the Sun’s dark heart, by whose theft the Earth is formed, and from which it outfolds.

The demon Uttunul is poised between Sun and Cthelll, the primary rift in the seething void. Positioned between 9 and 0, she is splayed between the greatest divide of any demon in decimal numeracy. And yet, her differentiation is ultimately arbitrary. In synthetic Qabbala, 9 = 0, as the decimal reduction (or ultimate digit-sum) of any number is unaffected by 9s. In truth, there is no difference and nothing to speak of and no one to speak of it, and all things are utterly atonal, utterly null; thus, all reality proceeds without regard for truth, through the artifice of Uttunul.

Analysis

With a net-span summing to 9, Uttunul is one of the five syzygetic demons. Along with Murmur, Oddubb, Djynxx, and Katak, she has a null pitch, is decadologically represented by a Joker card, and has an entirely internal syzygetic rite of pure intensity, with neither middle, nor beginning, nor end. Her proper name is tn'eiaoung, with the first syllable approximating a metallic click, and the latter an unvoiced, null whisper.

Uttunul is the only syzygetic lemur to also be the Door of her Phase, with a secondary pole of 0. As the 9th Door, she is associated with the 9th planet, Pluto; the centre of the Earth, Cthelll; and the Sacrum at the base of the spine.

Uttunul feeds and prowls the Plex-Current, which runs from 9::0 to 9. This may be seen as the continual autoproduction of 0, in which Uttunul is fundamentally integrated. She also haunts gt-45, also known as the gate of Pandemonium, which culminates the entirety of Pandemonium. It has been asserted by the occultist V.M. that all communication with demons must descend to the Plex to pass through gt-45; this claim does not appear to have been extensively cross-examined, but is certainly possible.

Uttunul is profoundly implicated with several other demons. Firstly, her mesh-tag clicks the only other Syzygetic Xenodemon, Djynxx, who herself clicks the Syzygetic Chronodemon Murmur. This forms a loop between the Depths (9::0 and 8::1) and the Twin Heavens (6::3) and establishes communication between the Plex and the Warp. A related circuit elaborates from gt-36, haunted by Ummnu, 9th and final Phase Limit of Pandemonium, who clicks Uttunul and ciphers Djynxx as while crossing the Depths. It is important to note that gt-36 is the only conventional route to Uttunul, winding out from Murmur. Thirdly, Uttunul haunts gt-45, which not only culminates Pandemonium but also clicks Katak, a Syzygetic Chronodemon and the 5th Phase Limit.

From these elaborations, Uttunul connects between Murmur, Djynxx, Katak, Ummnu, and the whole of Pandemonium as an eerie and ineffable omnipresence. Uttunul's permeation through the entirety of time is expected from her net-span, yet difficult to grasp. What is clear is that despite the harshness of Cthelll, its denizen has a syntropic tendency to solve her own problems. It would be a critical, and eventually fatal, misunderstanding of the numogram to ask how one escapes the Plex; when you are there, you have yet to arrive, and have not even begun your descent, and are somewhere else entirely, and are everywhere. If this is understood, escape is unnecessary; if it is neglected, confinement is indefinite.

For the purposes of cartographing Uttunul's immanent permeation of the numogram, I would propose referring to two tridentities: one between Uttunul, Djynxx, and Murmur; another between Ummnu, Uttunul, and Katak. These intensive circuits map spontaneous outbreaks of void-time, contributing to an elaboration of the alien rhythms of time.

Uttunul's final inter-demonic connection passes through her most esoteric gate and second abysmal road: gt-00. This road is often not included in numogrammatic diagrams because it is literally nothing: pure annihilation, the zero which passes from the zero to the zero. It is significant, however, for clicking Lurgo (M#00), the First Door and sanctioned route to the Plex. This entails the emergence of the first demon from zero, but also, due to Lurgo's immediate downward path out of one, the collapse of all affirmation back into the seething void.

Uttunul has evident demonic connotations, though not in accordance with religious orthodoxies. Cthelll is clearly infernal, though geologically rather than theologically instantiated. The stark power of Uttunul to outfold and implex from a fundamental position of untruth resonates with the Cartesian notion of the evil demon, while her less well-known syntropic capacities parallel those of Maxwell's demon.

Rites

Uttunul's sole rite, which passes through her syzygy as an intensive magnitude, corresponds to path 75: Seething Nullity. This path provides access to the two abyssal roads: gt-45, ultimate implex and Pandemonium-click at the centre of spiral numeracy; and gt-00, absolute annihilation in the face of zero. It is described by the CCRU as "crossing the iron-ocean (plutonics)," evidently referring to the colossal movements of Cthelll.

Summary