The Necronomicon

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhthaghn...

(In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming...)”¹

There are books rare and wondrous, sought far and wide by collectors and antiquarians; there are books proscribed, banned and destroyed for the knowledge which they contain; and there are books often spoken about which, in fact, do not exist at all. No single book embodies these states more often or so completely than Lovecraft’s Necronomicon. It is so notorious that it crosses all boundaries of awareness and fashion: academics and anti-intellectuals alike know about it and it has become a kind of pop-cultural symbol of the ultimate ‘evil tome’. Sam Raimi was able to pay it homage in his Evil Dead film series by presenting it as the flesh-bound “Necronomicon Ex Mortis” and Terry Pratchett was able to incorporate it spoofily into his Discworld books, as the “Necrotelecomnicon”.

Within the ranks of Mythos aficionados, the Necronomicon has a rigorously-compiled history, derived from the writings of Lovecraft and those who came after him, their correspondence, notes and musings. Other bibliographers have amassed this information, shoe-horning any discrepancies and inconsistencies into an elegant legend of the world’s most notorious grimoire. The following is a rendering of that history into as complete a form as I can muster:

*****

Kitab al-Azif; 730 AD – Abdul Alhazred

“That is not dead which can Eternal lie

And with strange eons, even Death may die.²

The dreamer, dying, faces death with scorn,

And in his seed will rise again reborn!”³

According to the most commonly accepted histories, the work which would become known to us as the Necronomicon was first written in Arabic by its purported author, Abdul Alhazred, in the year 730. It was originally entitled Kitab al-Azif, this title translating as the ‘Book of the Utterances of Desert Demons’; ‘al-Azif’ was apparently an attempt to replicate the sound of night-time insects whose voices, tradition stated, were the sounds of invisible horrors speaking in the darkness. Alhazred may have been influenced in his writing by one ibn Schacabao - an earlier wizard and writer, who may have instructed Alhazred - and he may have cribbed some parts of the Kitab al-Azif from Schacabao’s Reflections. As well, there are points of similarity between this work and Alkindi’s Book of the Essence of the Soul (see below), which implies that either author may have been borrowing heavily from the other.

Little is known of the life of Abdul Alhazred and what is known is due to the efforts of his 12^th Century biographer, ibn Khallikan. He was born around 655 AD at Sanna in Yemen and became a well-known and comfortably well-off poet and mystic from an early age. It is said that he travelled to Egypt where he studied under a wizard named ‘Yakthoob’ and later, after his master’s death, led his fellow disciples to Memphis and from there to Irem, where a freak accident killed many of them. He travelled widely and is on record as having attempted to rid the Black Mosque in Alexandria of an evil presence: his failure to do so saw him make a rapid exit from that city. He made the Black Pilgrimage to Chorazin during which he fell into a trance for eight years and from which he awoke to write the Kitab al-Azif, published in Damascus in 730. A year later, he was torn to pieces by an invisible beast in broad daylight in the main bazaar of Damascus.

Arabic; Abdul Alhazred; Damascus, 730 AD; 1d10/2d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +18 percentiles; 68 weeks to study and comprehend

Kitab al-Azif - Duriac translation; c. 760 AD - unknown translator

“‘Tis a veritable & attestable Fact, that between certain related Persons there exists a Bond more powerful than the strongest ties of Flesh & Family, whereby one such Person may be aware of all the Trials & Pleasures of the other, yea, even to experiencing the Pains or Passions of one far distant; & further, there are those whose Skills in such Matters are aided by forbidden Knowledge or Intercourse through dark Magic with Spirits & Beings of outside Spheres. Of the latter, I have sought them out, both Men & Women, & upon Examination have in all Cases discovered them to be Users of Divination, Observers of Times, Enchanters, Witches, Charmers or Necromancers. All claimed to work their Wonders through Intercourse with dead & departed Spirits, but I fear that often such Spirits were evil Angels, the Messengers of the Dark One & yet more ancient Evils. Indeed, among them were some whose Powers were prodigious, who might at will inhabit the Body of another, even at a great Distance & against the Will & often unbeknown to the Sufferer of such Outrage.

Moreover, I have dreamed it that of the aforementioned most ancient of Evils, there is One which slumbers in the Deeps unsounded so nearly Immortal that Life & Death are one to Him. Being ultimately corrupt, He fears Death’s Corruption not, but when true Death draws nigh will prepare Himself until, fleeing, His ancient Flesh, His Spirit will plumb Times-to-come & there cleave unto Flesh of His Flesh, & all the Sins of this Great Father shall be visited upon His Child’s Child. I have dreamed it, & my Dreams have been His Dreams who is the greatest Dreamer of all...”⁴

This translation is from the standard Arabic used by Alhazred and altered into the more obscure Duriac idiom. Each copy was laboriously hand-written and circulated secretly, with the result that there were very few copies produced and even fewer remain to this day ... if at all.

Arabic (Duriac); unknown translator; Duria, 760 AD; 1d10/2d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +17 percentiles; 68 weeks to study and comprehend

‘Book of the Essence of the Soul’, 850 AD – Alkindi

The ‘Book of the Essence of the Soul’ is a work of supernatural lore written by the sage Alkindi and compiled over his lifetime. It was published after his death in 850 AD. Some researchers have detected enough points of similarity between this work and the Kitab al-Azif to believe that one of the texts is largely plagiarised from the other; there is no sure way to put this speculation to rest, however.

NEXPONOMIXON; 950 AD - Theodorus Philetas

“As a tribute to my Lord, I offer this book to true seekers after wisdom who remain steadfast of mind and courageous of heart. Here are found keys to power beyond reckoning and knowledge yet unspoken by human lips. The wise will use it with circumspection and fools will be consumed.”

-Theodorus Philetas, 950 AD,

“Concerning the Life of Abdul al-Hazred”⁵

A scholar in the Great Library of Constantinople, Theodorus Philetas unearthed a copy of the original Kitab al-Azif and translated it into Greek, publishing in the year 950 AD. It was he who renamed the work ‘Necronomicon’, translating alternately as the ‘Book of Dead Names’, or the ‘Book of the Black Earth’. Researchers have tried to make a case that ‘philetas’ is a corruption of the Greek word for ‘heretic’ and that this could explain his fascination for the book and also his aborted attempt, subsequently, to translate the Book of Eibon into Greek.

Greek; Theodorus Philetas; Constantinople, 950 AD; 1d10/2d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +17 percentiles; 68 weeks to study and comprehend

Dreamlands Necronomicon; date & translator unknown

“...from the space which is not space, into any time when the Words are spoken, can the holder of the Knowledge summon The Black, blood of YibbTstll, that which liveth apart from him and eateth souls, that which smothers and is called Drowner. Only in water can one escape the drowning; that which is in water drowneth not...”⁶

The origin of this version of the blasted tome of the Mad Arab is uncertain. It may be that consensual Dreaming has caused it to manifest beyond the Veil of Sleep; alternatively, Abdul Alhazred himself may have been potent enough a Dreamer that he compiled a Dreamlands version of his dread grimoire whilst travelling there.

Whatever the answer to this mystery, the book remains a deadly work indeed and, as always, must be approached carefully.

Dreamlands Glyphs; Abdul Alhazred; unknown; 1D10/2D10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +18 percentiles; Dream Lore +15 percentiles; 68 weeks to study and comprehend

[Necronomicon] – Bulgarian translation; c. 1100 - translator unknown

“Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.”⁷

The discovery of a copy of the Kitab al-Azif in Jerusalem – possibly the actual manuscript written by Abdul Alhazred - led to the establishment of the Holy Order known as the Knights Templar, established by the Comte de Champagne, in order to guard its secrets. It is likely that, foreseeing the destruction of the book at a future time, the Knights saw fit to have it translated and relocated it temporarily along the pilgrim trails to a remote monastery in Bulgaria where an unknown scribe re-wrote the text in his native tongue. Presumably the original was returned to Jerusalem but this is unknown.

Le Livre de la Terre Noire - French translation; 13th Century - various translators

“Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.

As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold.”⁸

The influx of scholars into and out of Southern Europe during the Middle Ages saw a great exchange of ideas and the translation of many books heretofore unknown in the West. Among these was the Necronomicon which was translated from the Arabic or Greek into French. The majority of these copies wound up in various monasteries; however, some became the possessions of various Court Nobles.

De Nomine Necium, Greek to Latin translation; 1228 AD – Olaus Wormius

“Keep you all copies made of this Latin text chained and locked. Let no man who reads it speak of its contents, and let no man who knows of it reveal its existence to the ignorant, who are unfit to carry so grave a burden. Before God and His angels, may the soul be damned of him who seeks to practise what is written in these leaves, for he has damned himself by the mere temptation to so horrible an act of defilement. Better his eyes were put out with glowing coals from the fire and his lips sewn tight with flaxen thread than he should read aloud the words in this book written in the forgotten tongue that was never meant to be spoken by the sons of Adam, but only by others who have no mouths, and who dwell in the shadows between stars.”

-Olaus Wormius⁹

Olaus Wormius was born in Jutland and created several translations of the Necronomicon into Latin and Greek during his life. This translation, which uses the Greek version of Theodorus Philetas as its foundation, was his first attempt. It is important not to confuse this Olaus Wormius with the famous Seventeenth Century Danish physician of the same name, although the later Wormius had a hand in translating the text also.

Wormius states in his preface to his work that all of the copies of Kitab al-Azif had been purged by this time, although the likelihood of this statement being correct is quite low: it’s possible that he was shown a copy and was told that it was the last one, before witnessing its destruction. His efforts at translating must have been very successful, however: four years later, Pope Gregory IX directed the Inquisition to destroy all Greek and Latin copies of the book. Despite this edict, Leonardo da Vinci received a copy of this edition in 1515 after the sacking of Milan by Francois I. After his death in 1519, da Vinci’s library was scattered and the whereabouts of his copy remain unknown.

The existence of another version of this work has been noted: it is entitled Necronomicon with the sub-title, De Nomine Necorum; it is most likely a fake, engineered in the 19^th Century.

Latin; Olaus Wormius; 1228 AD; 1d10/2d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +16 percentiles; 66 weeks to study and comprehend

Das Buch der Toten Namen – German (?) black-letter version from the Latin; c. 1400 AD – translator unknown

“Men know him as the Dweller in Darkness, that brother of the Old Ones called Nyogtha, the Thing that should not be. He can be summoned to Earth’s surface through certain secret caverns and fissures, and sorcerers have seen him in Syria and below the Black Tower of Leng; from the Thrang Grotto in Tartary he has come ravening to bring terror and destruction among the pavilions of the great Khan. Only by the Looped Cross, by the Vach-Viraj Incantation and by the Tikkoun Elixir may he be driven back to the nighted caverns of hidden foulness where he dwelleth”¹⁰

‘Black-letter’ is a writing style which developed in the book-manufacturing trade and which overtook the earlier Carolingian writing style in popularity. While it was mainly used to write the German language, it was prevalent throughout Europe during the Dark Ages and Medieval periods. It was known to the Renaissance readers as the ‘Gothic Style’; ‘gothic’ in this sense meaning ‘barbaric’, as the Renaissance taste found the font difficult to read and aesthetically inferior to the earlier Carolingian. The style is sometimes called ‘Old English’, as several fonts were developed from it with this name. The black-letter style was used by German printers right up until the 20^th Century and should not be confused with the Gothic idiom, which is a dialectic language, not a writing style.

Very few copies of this version were printed, using the Latin text provided by Wormius, and thus a question remains as to whether this work was translated into German or left in the Latin. The German texts of the time were the main employers of the black-letter style and the implication of the language’s presence is based on the script form. Some researchers claim that the book had to have been printed at a much later stage, positing 1490 as a more likely date; the black-letter copy in the Library of Miskatonic University, for example, dates from Wurttemberg in 1500.

Latin; Translator unknown; 1400 AD; 1d10/2d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +16 percentiles; 66 weeks to study and comprehend

Das Buch des Wütenden Arabers - German translation of Wormius’ Latin; 1472 AD – translator unknown

“Ia, naflghn Cthulhu R’lyeh mglw’nafh,

Eha’ungl wglw hflghglui ngah’glw,

Engl Eha gh’eehf gnhugl.

Nhflgmg uh’eha wgah’nagl hfgluhf –

U’ng Eha’ghglui Aeeh ehn’hflgh...¹¹

(“O großes Cthulhu, träumend in R' lyeh

Ihr Priester bietet oben dieses Opfer an,

Dass Ihr Kommen bald ist

Und der Ihrer verwandten Träumer.

Ich bin Ihr Priester und verehre Sie...”)

Although written in German, this edition is said to have been printed in Lyons. There is a contentious issue surrounding this release: many scholars believe that this printing and the previous one reflect a single issue, printed sometime between 1400 and 1472, most likely the latter date. The main reason for this theory is that, in the first half of the 15^th Century, the only books to be printed, especially in German, were religious texts and it would have been very unlikely that a press would have been turned over to this particular enterprise at that time. Thus, it is likely that the previous edition would have been a Latin reprint of the Wormius translation, if indeed it ever took place.

El Libro Malvado (?) – Spanish (?) manuscript to Latin (?); 1487 AD – Olaus Wormius (?)

“Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.”¹²

In a classic instance of wayward scholarship and imperfect record-keeping, a Latin version of the Necronomicon has been noted but its existence is highly suspect. It is said that a clerk working for the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada, discovered a manuscript version of the book in a dialect of Spain and undertook to have it translated into Latin and then printed in a limited run; there is also the remote possibility that it was encoded in the Inquisitorial script which was used to veil such blasphemous tomes from unschooled eyes. He then sent a copy to the abbot and occult scholar, Trithemius who, when confronted by the text, called in the Church officials and had the clerk burned at the stake, along with all copies of the book.

The main problem with this scenario is that the clerk in question was said to bear the name ‘Olaus Wormius’. It is a fair coincidence to say that two individuals of the same name may have played important parts in the history of the Necronomicon, but three? Surely not. What is more likely, is that the name of this book’s author has replaced the name of the clerk who translated it and poor scholarship has perpetuated the myth.

That is, of course, if this book exists at all!

Книга мертвых имен (“Book of the Dead Names”) - Russian translation in Cyrillic characters; 1550 AD – translator unknown

“The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of the earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl...”¹³

The expansion of the Russian Empire through conquest, political treaties and strategic marriages, inevitably unearthed the Bulgarian copy of the Necronomicon. In time it was translated into the Russian tongue and printed, naturally enough, in the Cyrillic script. The presence of this work in Russia has led many to believe that it gave rise to the Skoptsy sect of castrators which rose to prominence in Russia in the 17^th Century.

Il Libro della Terra Nera – Philetas’ Greek version into Italian; 1567 AD – translator unknown

“They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath?”¹⁴

Although the date of the edition is well-known, the publisher of this effort is open to debate. Some attribute the translation and printing to Aldus Manutius of the Aldine Press, who (they say) did so anonymously to distance himself from the work; others say that the printing was done through a consortium of printers in Mannheim, Germany; still others argue that the printing was done through an unidentified publishing house in Urbino, Italy. Whichever is the correct origin of the work, many scores of copies were printed and – while the majority were torched through zealous Church efforts – disappeared into the libraries of Italian, French and German nobility.

El Libro de los Normos de los Perdidos; 1575-9 AD – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, better known as simply Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, was not only a novelist of great reputation and influence, but also a soldier of relentless courage and nobility. It is strange indeed to find him listed in the history of such a work as the Necronomicon.

During his military career, Cervantes was wounded while fighting a vanguard action aboard ship, despite the debilitating fever with which he was afflicted. He was shot three times before retiring from the fray, the third shot costing him the use of his left hand. He remarked ever afterwards that he had sacrificed his left hand for the benefit of his right. So great was his reputation as a noble warrior, that he was entrusted with the delivery of letters of commendation to the Spanish king from the Duke de Sessa which saw him board the galley ‘Sol’ on the 6^th or 7^th of September in 1575 to travel from Naples to Barcelona. As the galley approached the Catalan coast on the 26^th of September they were attacked by Algerian corsairs under the leadership of the nefarious Arnaut Mami, an Albanian renegade. A fierce fight ensued during which the captain of the Sol and many of his crew perished; the remaining crew and passengers were taken by the pirates and sold into slavery in Algiers.

Cervantes spent five years in Algiers awaiting the ransom that would see him regain his liberty. During this time he was put to work translating various works, including the Kitab al-Azif, rendering them into his native Spanish. Despite this onerous task, he attempted escape from captivity on four separate occasions before being liberated by his parents and the ransom funds raised by the Trinitarians, a sect of the Catholic Church. He was returned to Madrid, leaving behind his translation which he entitled, El Libro de los Normos de los Perdidos.

Dee’s Necronomicon – Wormius’ Latin into English; 1586 AD – John Dee

“...the librarian came, bearing an ancient tome, and brought it around to a table within his range of vision. The book’s title was in [Greek] – Necronomicon – though its author was evidently an Arabian, Abdul Alhazred, and its text was in somewhat archaic English.

I began to read with interest which soon turned to complete bewilderment ... It was a book filled with cabalistic lore, incantations, and what purported to be an account of a great interplanetary battle between the Elder Gods and the Ancient Ones and of the survival of cults and servitors in isolated and remote places on our planet as well as on sister planets...”¹⁵

Notoriously, John Dee’s movements are cryptic as far as his travels abroad are concerned, but then again, such is the life of an international spy. His relationship with the Necronomicon is shrouded with supposition and hypothesis, with the ultimate possibility that he did not make a translation of the work at all. There are three main theories in this Gordian Knot:

The first is that the book was dictated to him whilst in a trance by his angelic contacts. A mainstay of this theory supposes that the Kitab al-Azif was a simple list of demons arranged by Abdul Alhazred and was known to Dee, who used it as a foundation upon which to build his own work of blasphemous evil. Working against this theory is the notion that Dee, whatever else he was, was a man of high moral integrity and there seems little in his nature that would have induced him to wallow in such crapulence; as well, general knowledge of the contents of the Kitab al-Azif suggests it is more than a simple ‘laundry-list’ of demons, a la Collin de Plancy;

The second theory states that Dee actually found a copy of Alkindi’s Book of the Essence of the Soul whilst at the court of King Rudolph II in Prague and translated that, supposedly under the title of the Liber Logaeth, a manuscript currently held in the British Museum. Some scholars claim that Dee’s Necronomicon is actually encoded within this work, discernible only after the unravelling of a mathematical cipher. Since this hidden work was only imperfectly revealed with the assistance of complex computer dissection late last century, it seems unlikely to have been generated ‘on the fly’ by Dee during his stay in King Rudolph’s court;

A third theory says that the manuscript of the work was purchased by Edward Kelley, Dee’s shifty accomplice, from an unscrupulous cabbalist named Jacob Eliezer and that it was left in Dee’s care after they parted company in 1589. The manuscript was then translated by Dee after his appointment as Warden of Christ’s College in Manchester. Unfortunately this story falls apart on the simple fact of dates and places, as Dee was still in Prague while this supposed translation was being undertaken.

"Eternal is the Pow'r of Evil, and Infinite in its contagion! The Great Cthulhu yet hath sway o'er the minds and spirits of Men, yea, even tho' He lieth chained and ensorcelled, bound in the fetters of The Elder Sign, His malignant and loathly Mind spreadeth the dark seeds of Madness and Corruption into the dreams and Nightmares of sleeping men..."¹⁶

-Chapter III, Verse 17

So what is most likely? In general, scholars are unified in their belief that 1586 is the year that Dee began his translation; it is likely that the text upon which he worked was the Wormius Latin text, but that it may have included part of the Greek text by Philetas; that he chanced upon this text at the court of King Rudolph II; and that Dee’s translation into English is peppered with his own observations and comments. It is known definitively that the manuscript was never published in Dee’s lifetime. We are left with the possibility that the book which is held to be ‘Dee’s Necronomicon’ may not be his at all; this possibility becomes even clearer when the facts concerning the Voynich Manuscript (see below) are taken into account...

As an interesting postscript to all this, at the time of noted author Lin Carter’s death in 1988, amongst his papers was found a partially complete manuscript which purported to be a copy of John Dee’s translation into English of the Necronomicon and which included many archaic rituals and cautionary tales against the use of magic. The source of this unfinished text was not included with the manuscript, so whether this is the true translation or not will likely never be known.

English; John Dee; 1586 AD; 1d10/2d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +15 percentiles; 50 weeks to study and comprehend

Cultus Maleficarum (‘The Sussex Manuscript’); 1598 AD – Baron Frederick I of Sussex

Baron Frederick I of Sussex attempted his own translation into English of Wormius’ De Nomine Necium but met with considerable difficulty in the process, ultimately leaving only a partial interpretation which trails off rather unsettlingly. Regardless, the sizable fragment was published as an illustrated manuscript in an octavo format of limited numbers. Given the partial success which he brought to the project, many have found the work to be somewhat reduced in its effectiveness.

The Reverend Winters-Hall attempted a consolidation of the text in later years, an effort which is referred to somewhat inaccurately as a ‘translation’, according to the index at the Miskatonic University Library. This attempt tries to smooth over the halting, peripatetic nature of Baron Frederick’s efforts with limited success.

In recent times a supposedly fraudulent copy of this work has been noted with information which is clearly at variance to the accepted canon of the Mythos. Attention was drawn to this version by one Fred L. Pelton who claimed to have found it in the attic of a condemned building in the 1940s. As interest grew and suspicions about the work intensified, Pelton and his find faded into the woodwork; it is generally believed that Pelton may have created the book himself but, until he and the work surfaces again, no-one can be certain.

English; Baron Frederick I of Sussex; 1598 AD; 1d3/1d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +7 percentiles; 36 weeks to study and comprehend

De Nomine Necium (reprint); 1623 AD - Olaus Wormius

“Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but we recognised it as the thing hinted of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred ... All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described the old Arab demonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the dead.”¹⁷

It is due mainly to the hurried nature of the publishing of this book, that information as to its printing and its various editions is often lost or inaccurately recorded. This reprint, conducted in Madrid, is variously listed as having been printed in 1622, 1624, or 1647; 1623 is, however, the more likely date.

A point of interest for this edition, is that the Latin was tidied up and corrected by Olaus Wormius, the famous 17^th Century Danish physician, probably in homage to his namesake. That he prepared the text for re-publication was no doubt the reason for its appearance at this time but sinister connexions can be drawn due to the fact that pamphlet versions of various chapters from this edition appeared throughout France from the 1630s onwards, in tandem with an increase of Black Mass celebrations in that country.

Latin; Olaus Wormius; Madrid, 1623 AD; 1d10/2d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +16 percentiles; 66 weeks to study and comprehend

My Understanding of the Great Booke; 1641 AD – Joachim Kindler

“[The Great Booke] offers proofs logickal and glorious ... stellar numbers potentiated objecks, signs and passes, probatories, phylacteries, and craftsmanly artes.”

In 1641, Kindler produced this book asserting that it was an overview of a copy of the Necronomicon (although he didn’t call it by that name, using instead the Latin term “Codex Nigrae” or “black book”) written in the Gothic language of the ancient Germanic tribes. Although never mentioning the circumstances by which he came to examine the original text, his excerpts and quotations hint at a potentially more devastating incarnation of the Necronomicon than has ever been encountered previously.

Rambling, abstruse and filled with frankly insane speculations upon the nature of reality, Kindler’s work was written and published in Buda, the Western half of the city of Budapest in Hungary. It met with a somewhat cool reception: the lack of the original text and the subject matter generally led many to think that Kindler had made the entire thing up. Later discoveries in 1944 have caused many to re-evaluate this opinion, however.

Sepher ha-Sha’are ha-Daath; 1664 AD - Nathan of Gaza

This work, whose title translates as the ‘Book of the Gates of Knowledge’, contains a commentary on two chapters of what the author – the cabbalist, Nathan of Gaza – refers to as the Book of the Alhazred. He discusses the notion that Abdul Alhazred travelled on a quest to the ‘land of the Qlipoth’, the shards of a former reality, in order to redeem them, and that this was his greatest accomplishment. It is said that this commentary is the closest thing to a Hebrew version of the Necronomicon.

Nathan of Gaza later supported Shabbetai Tsevi in his attempt to be identified as the Messiah; the subsequent conversion of Tsevi to Islam in 1666, dramatically ended his claim and brought Nathan of Gaza into general disrepute.

Necronomicon, das Verichteraraberbuch; 1848 AD – Friedrich Wilheim von Junzt

It seems only too reasonable to assume that someone who spent so much of their time shining bright lights into the darkest corners of religious belief would encounter the Necronomicon at some stage or other. Von Junzt, much like George Angell and Francis Wayland Thurston in the decades after him, discerned a unity of cultish devotion connecting many disparate and unevolved communities worldwide and drew the inference that a global fraternity was at work.

Unlike Angell and Thurston, von Junzt stumbled early onto the Necronomicom and, rather than trying to connect confused and wide-ranging phenomena back to a nebulous source, determined that the Necronomicom was the source and then used it to track its various dark expressions out across the face of the planet. In this sense, the Necronomicon was a major tool in the construction of his own sanity-wrenching work Die Unaussprechlichen Kulten.

The original manuscript having been destroyed, the certainty of von Junzt’s authorship is open to debate. Many sensational and lurid works have appeared across the globe since von Junzt’s death, spuriously attributed to him with an eye to garnering sales, and not all of them published by Bridewall, or Ultimate Press. In favour of the attribution is the fact that much of the material presented in this volume is cross-referenced with Unaussprechlichen Kulten, demonstrating the validity of von Junzt’s thesis: in biological terms, he seems to argue that the Necronomicon is the genotype, or code, for cult activity across the planet, while Unaussprechlichen Kulten is its phenotype, or expression.

There are no spells presented in this work, although von Junzt (if he is the author) lists what magical procedures occur and also their expected effects. The rest of the material lines up fairly accurately with what is known of the Necronomicon’s dark contents.

Original Notes on the Necronomicon; 1901 AD – Joachim Feery

“Many & multiform are ye dim horrors of Earth, infesting her ways from ye very prime. They sleep beneath ye unturned stone; they rise with ye tree from its root; they move beneath ye sea, & in subterranean places they dwell in ye inmost adyta. Some there are long known to man, & others as yet unknown, abiding ye terrible latter days of their revealing. Those which are ye most dreadful & ye loathliest of all are haply still to be declared.”

-Joachim Feery, 1901¹⁹

Feery was the son of the German Baron Ernst Kant and, like his father, a dedicated researcher of the supernatural. Feery had a more theoretical approach to his studies however, unlike his father who died in a Westphalian asylum, claiming that a demonic entity named Yibb-Tstll had taken control of his mind.

Feery is mainly known for the series of limited edition books which he printed, each an extended commentary on a particularly notorious book of forbidden lore with annotations and quotations. These works include The Book of Dzyan, the Cthaat Aquadingen, De Vermis Mysteriis and, most infamously, the Necronomicon. These publications have expanded the range of these hard-to-access tomes and are often utilised by hard metaphysicians where the original texts are unavailable.

A word of caution, however: while generally well-received, Feery’s books were examined by other authorities on these works and his quotations and supplementary material were found to be somewhat at odds with the original matter, if not entirely unsupported by the text. His response was that his researches had been supplemented by material which had come to him in dreams. As a result, the reception of his publishing efforts has been universally cool.

Voynich Manuscript; discovered 1912 AD – author unknown

Wilfred Voynich, an American antiquarian book-dealer, discovered this manuscript whilst hunting for saleable items in a castle in Italy. The manuscript is an encoded work profusely illustrated and remains undeciphered – as far as the general academic world is aware – to this day. The work has been tentatively attributed to Roger Bacon but this connexion is not certain.

In 1921, Professor W. Romaine Newbold revealed that his own research on the manuscript had borne fruit: he claimed that the work proved that Roger Bacon had developed the microscope centuries prior to Leeuwenhoek, and that the illustrations were his attempts to depict what he had discovered through its use. Sadly, Newbold died in 1926 before he was able to complete and publish his findings. It was later revealed that the ‘letters’ which Newbold had been interpreting were actually created by the offsetting of ink between the pages and so his whole body of work in terms of the Manuscript has had to be rejected.

Of interest to those who trace the involvement of John Dee with the Necronomicon, it has been theorised that the Voynich Manuscript is a commentary upon the hated tome, or else is the Necronomicon itself. If it is, then Dee’s Necronomicon may have been written using this work and it may well have been the ‘mysterious manuscript’ that he discovered in the court of Rudolph II. Lending credence to this theory is the fact that the Manuscript was in Dee’s possession for a period of time and that the work has been paginated in his hand.

The Necronomicon, English ‘translation’ from the Greek; 1916 AD – Aleister Crowley

Crowley was notorious for obtaining, translating and subsequently denigrating every mystic source that he could lay his hands on. For the most part he would attempt to reinvent these other occult texts, rewriting them closer to his own theories of ‘magick’ in order to prove the superiority of his beliefs and to show that these earlier works were sophomoric efforts along the road to his own, great revelations. The Necronomicon was not alone in being part of this process.

As evidenced by his early efforts to translate the I Ching for example, his work fell down when he began to lose interest, wandered off from the work’s main themes and began to introduce his own ideas. This was the case with his Necronomicon which, as well, loses focus at many points along the way and dwells overlong on the more lurid and sensational aspects. For this reason the work is not well-considered outside of Thelemic circles and was only published – by subscription – in a limited quantity.

Книга черной земли (“Book of the Black Earth”), Russian translation of Philetas’ Greek translation; 1928 AD – translator unknown

Renovation of the Kremlin in the late 1920s unearthed a hidden cache of books from the library of Ivan the Terrible; within the stash was a copy of Theodorus Philetas’ Greek translation of the Necronomicon. When Stalin heard of the presence of the text, he ordered a translation into Russian be made for his personal library. It is noteworthy for the fact that, although translated into Russian, the text is produced in Cyrillic characters on the facing pages with the same text in Roman characters opposite; its whereabouts is currently unknown.

The Oldest History of the World; 1929 AD – Benjamino Evangelista

A telephone summons to the police upon the outbreak of a loud domestic dispute in Detroit brought them to a scene of horrific violence: Benjamino Evangelista and his family were discovered brutally murdered – decapitated and torn to pieces - by persons unknown. The ensuing investigation revealed that Evangelista was a faith healer, a cult leader who had written a kind of divinely-inspired bible for his faith – The Oldest History of the World. In this work he makes repeated reference to a book of magic called the ‘Necremicon’, the ‘Necromicon’, or the ‘Necronemicon’; he makes repeated reference to the fact that the book was originally called ‘Al-Azif’¹⁸. Widely referred to as a fine work of ‘Outsider Art’, the book was reprinted in 2006.

[Necronomicon], Gothic language version; discovered 1944 AD – translator unknown

The Nazis discovered a Gothic language version of the Necronomicon and the work was despatched to the Ahnenerbe to be quickly translated. The translation into German was completed shortly before the Allies occupied Berlin and forced the German capitulation; both the original text and the translation vanished from sight.

Fifty years later in 1994, a Gothic version of the Necronomicon was said to have been discovered during an inspection of the former KGB Headquarters: before it could be identified as the missing edition discovered by the Nazi occultists, it was stolen by a neo-Nazi organisation and its whereabouts are currently unknown.

Necronomicon, Wormius’ Latin translation into English; 1956 AD – Henrietta Montague

“Oh, Great Cthulhu, dreaming in R’lyeh,

Thy priest offers up this sacrifice,

That thy coming be soon

And that of thy kindred dreamers.

I am thy priest and adore thee...”²⁰

Under the supervision of British occultist Titus Crow, Henrietta Montague translated Wormius’ Latin version of the Necronomicon from the copy held in the British Museum. As Montague moved toward the completion of this task, she slowly succumbed to an unidentified wasting disease. Officially, her translation was taken by the Museum Directors, severely expurgated and lodged in the Restricted Books section for academic use only. It is theorised that Crow may have obtained a copy of the text before it was edited and locked away but, if so, it was probably lost when his house was destroyed by a freak windstorm.

The Annotated Necronomicon, Latin/English text; 1965 AD – A. Philip Highgas

In an effort to distance itself from the whispers and rumours of occult misconduct, the Miskatonic University Press began to issue versions of those various tomes held in the Restricted Section of the Miskatonic University Library which gave rise to the stories in the first place. Ryan Milbue published his translation of The Annotated G’Harne Fragments while Philip Highgas released this translation of The Necronomicon. The text – which omits the more outrageous passages from the original - is largely in English, except when the subject matter wanders into lurid or specific ritualistic details: at this point it lapses into dense, abstruse Latin of a high technical specifity.

Due to the omissions and the attempted obfuscation with the bilingual gameplay, the reception of this translation was cool to say the least and its usefulness to hard metaphysicians is slight at best.

Al Azif, Arabic (Duriac dialect) translation; 1973 AD – L. Sprague de Camp (Ed.)

While travelling in Baghdad in 1967, noted author de Camp found and purchased a copy of the Duriac dialect translation of the Kitab al-Azif from an aide of the Directorate of Antiquities. It was later determined that looters had unearthed the text in ruins near Duria. Once lodged with the Directorate, three different Iraqi scholars began working upon a translation but each, in turn, vanished in unexplained circumstances. De Camp had the text printed by The Owlswick Press in Philadelphia in 1973 and a copy of this edition was lodged with the Brown University Library.

Attempts to relocate the original manuscript after de Camp’s death discovered only a badly mistreated copy consisting of several introductory and concluding pages and the same eight leaves reprinted over and over to form the body of the text. Re-examination of the work has led to a conclusion that the text is actually a Nineteenth Century fraud, although others believe that the real text was switched before going to press and may still be out there somewhere, waiting to be found.

Necronomicon, Philetas’ Greek translation into English; 1977 AD – ‘Simon’

“We are told how MARDUK slays TIAMAT – after much the same fashion that the Chief of Police of Amity slays the great white shark in Benchley’s novel JAWS, blowing an evil wind (the oxygen tank) into Her mouth and sending in an arrow (bullet) in after it to explode her [sic.]. Surely, the two or three most box-office successful films of the past few years, JAWS, THE EXORCIST and, perhaps, THE GODFATHER, are an indication that the essence of Sumerian mythology is making itself felt in a very real way in this, the latter half of the Twentieth Century?”

-‘Simon’²¹

Heavily influenced by Aleister Crowley’s teachings and bogged down in Sumerian mythology, this version of the Necronomicon is undoubtedly the most dubious production to bear the hated title. Claiming to have been translated by a defrocked New York priest identified only as ‘Simon’ from a 9^th Century Greek source stolen in 1972 by two Eastern Orthodox monks, the text reproduces very little of its original Greek and is mainly composed of spells and prayers in a phonetic variant of Sumerian. Mashed in amongst the unpronounceable gibberish are a multitude of 1970s pop-cultural references which ought to make the most green occult novice gaze upon it with a wary eye. References in the introduction to vanishing nameless monks and strange-skinned figures bearing manuscripts in cases made of metals not found on Earth do nothing to convince the reader that this is anything other than a drug-and-disco-addled prank.

The Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names; 1978 AD – Neville Spearman & Colin Wilson

This is a text which purports to be John Dee’s translation of the Necronomicon as encoded within his transliteration of Alkindi’s Book of the Essence of the Soul, entitled the Liber Logaeth and held in the British Museum; after an involved computer decryption process, the work was revealed and printed by the authors in this edition. The result is a work completely at variance with what research understands to be included in the Necronomicon, with missing quotes that ought to be present and other information known to be erroneous. The likelihood is that, like the initial attempts to translate the Voynich Manuscript, the researchers have been led along a spurious trail of breadcrumbs and have deluded themselves as to the value (and validity) of their discoveries.

Regardless, those who have an interest in Alkindi’s work could do worse than start here.

Notes on a Fragment of the Necronomicon; 1979 AD – Dr Phileus P. Sadowsky, PhD., DLitt., FRCS, etc.

This is a short article, published in a number of philological journals, which relates Bulgarian academic Sadowsky’s encounter with a piece of parchment which, he believed, was a fragment from the original al Azif. Encountering the fragment in a Cairene bazaar, he translated the infamous couplet and determined the source of the piece. Later, deciding to spirit the page out of the country, it was located within his luggage and he was forced to surrender it to the authorities or face a charge of smuggling. When he returned to Cairo on a subsequent visit, he discovered that the page had not been deposited with the local university, as had been indicated, but had been sold on by the customs agents on the black market.

As a researcher into the nature of language Sadowsky was able to make several critical deductions as to the source and meaning of many phrases and terms common to Mythos writings based upon this encounter with the original work. He postulated the real name of the author (“abd al’Azred” rather than “Abdul Alhazred”) and also the original derivation of the term “Yog Sothoth”, which he states is an invocation to an unspecified supreme deity rather than the name of a discrete entity.

Further Notes on the Necronomicon; 1980 AD – Dr Phileus P. Sadowsky, PhD., DLitt., FRCS, etc.

Subsequent to his encounter with the fragment of the Necronomicon in Cairo, Sadowsky arranged to spend time with a rare copy of the entire work which was lent to him to peruse. Again, his linguistic background allowed him to make many insightful comments as to the origins and true meanings of the material, backtracking through the layers of recension which had distorted the text.

His comments were translated into English and published by William Hamblin after Sadowsky’s mysterious death in a house fire, which consumed most of his revelations, along with the copy of the Necronomicon upon which he was working.

Necronomicon - Chaosium edition; 1996 AD – various authors

The occult publishing house released their own copy of the ‘dread book’ in this year by splicing together some interesting elements from works which had gone before. These included prefatory notes from the Owlswick Al-Azif printing by L. Sprague de Camp; the Dee Necronomicon material discovered in Lin Carter’s papers; elements of Pelton’s Sussex Manuscript, derived from his correspondence with various academic authorities; along with various works of fiction which included the Necronomicon in their narratives.

Necronomicon: the Wanderings of Alhazred; 2006 AD – Donald Tyson

“You who read this book first will bless the name Alhazred; yet when you read it for the second time will you curse his name bitterly and lament with tears that you ever held it; yet there are a few who will read it a third time and give blessing once again, and to those few all doors lie open.”

-Abdul Alhazred²²

This is an interesting presentation of the material within the Necronomicon, focussing upon those sections which outline the journeys undertaken by the ‘Mad Arab’ in his ongoing quest for knowledge. Tyson begins by presenting Theodorus Philetas’ introduction to his Greek translation entitled “Concerning the Life of Abdul al-Hazred”, along with the prefatory notes provided by Olaus Wormius in his De Nomine Necium of 1228. The rest is the voice of Alhazred himself, describing all of the horrors and wonders to which he submitted himself during his travels, much of which is not for the squeamish.

*****

 “Alhazred’s image of the Sleeping God leads one almost to the interpretation of Cthulhu as one of the dream-gods such as Hypnos; he is set forth as a god who infects the minds of those asleep with dark and terrifying dreams, nightmares, visions – spreading the germs of his own evil through the world through the medium of his own dreams.”²³

-“Cthulhu in the Necronomicon”, Laban Shrewsbury, Ph.D., LL.D., etc.; from an unpublished, fragmentary manuscript written c. 1938-9.

Notes:

1 - H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

2 - IBID., “The Nameless City”

3 - Brian Lumley, “The Transition of Titus Crow”

4 - Brian Lumley, “The Transition of Titus Crow”

5 - Donald Tyson, Necronomicon – The Wanderings of Alhazred

6 - Brian Lumley, “The Caller of The Black”

7 - H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”

8 - IBID.

9 - Donald Tyson, Necronomicon - The Wanderings of Alhazred

10 - Brian Lumley, “The Burrowers Beneath VI: That Is Not Dead”

11 - Brian Lumley, “The Fairground Horror”

12 - H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”

13 - Brian Lumley, “The Burrowers Beneath”

14 - IBID.

15 - August Derleth, “Witches’ Hollow”

16 – Lin Carter, “Dreams From R’lyeh”

17 - H.P. Lovecraft, “The Hound”

18 - According to Colin Wilson, anyway. Actually, the book makes no reference to Mythos phenomena at all.

19 - Brian Lumley, “The Burrowers Beneath XI: Horrors of Earth”

20 - Brian Lumley, “The Fairground Horror”

21 - ‘Simon’, Necronomicon; the capitals are, unfortunately, his own.

22 - Donald Tyson, Necronomicon – The Wanderings of Alhazred

23 – Lin Carter, “Dreams from R’lyeh”