Quoth Cthulhu: The Black Litany of Nug and Yeb...

Welcome to a special edition of Quoth Cthulhu, featuring Robert M. Price reading Joe Pulver's The Black Litany of Nug and Yeb, complete with introductions by Robert and Joe...

Lovecraft coins the throw-away term "The Black Litany of Nug and Yeb" in one of his letter closings. I thought it too good to discard, so in planning the Chaosium Book of Eibon, I used Will Murray's list of Mythos bits Lovecraft peppered his letters with and decided to have them written up in very truth! I asked long-suffering Joe Pulver to supply these liturgical texts so we could include them in Eibon, as ancient liturgies for the cult of the Old Ones. Others included The Grey Rite of Azathoth and The Kynothrabian Dirge. Joe produced a set of creepily authentic sounding texts. The Black Litany of Nug and Yeb was always my favorite, and I have led the congregation in the responsive reading of it at a NecronomiCon prayer breakfast, at a memorial service for Anton LaVey, on a CD, and at the recent MythosCon. Sometimes you can tell some in the crowd are too scared to join in!

– Robert M. Price

Bob asked me to do these texts and I jumped at the chance to play Dr. Strange for the mythos. His reading of "Nug & Yeb" still blows me away. I liked the text when I penned it, but his reading, well, even scares me to hear when he summons up the earth-clearers. Without Bob and Will Murray's BRILLIANT "To Clear the Earth" this text would never have happened.

– Joe Pulver

'Nug and Yeb' read by Robert M. Price and written by Joseph S. Pulver Sr. From the H.P. Lovecraft tribute album 'Strange Aeons'! Available from Rainfall Records here. Photographs taken in Joe's Nightmarium...

(Thanks to Robert M. Price and Joe Pulver)