The Necronomicon

In today's episode we are taking a different approach. We are starting off in the realm of fiction and learning about the Necronomicon, a fictitious book made up by a man we've discussed in the past. Then we switch gears and head into the real world, the land of the living, as some say, except we are looking at the land of the dead. We will be discussing a few true life Necronomicon books, or books of the dead. We have some examples of true to life books discussing preparation of the dead, helping them cross over, even what to do and expect when you get to the other side. Without further ado, let's get into this by visiting a previous subject, the one and only magnificently weird… H.P. Lovecraft!

 

     Since we've discussed ol H.P. in a separate episode we are not going to get into the man himself really. If you want to hear our take on Lovecraft, make sure to check out episode 37 from way back in January of 2020. What we are going to look at, however, is the book that he references in 10 separate stories. Those stories include: The Call of The Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, The Haunter of The Dark, The Thing On The Doorstep, and several others. The book we are talking about is, of course, the mother fuckin’ necronomicon. That's right… The Necronomicon as most of you know it, was made up by Lovecraft himself.  The book became such a part of his stories that Lovecraft wrote a short history of the book itself. That being said, let's see what the history of the book is as written by the creepy genius, himself: 

 

Original title Al Azif—azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos’d to be the howling of daemons.

     Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa 700 A.D. He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia—the Roba el Khaliyeh or “Empty Space” of the ancients—and “Dahna” or “Crimson” desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred dwelt in Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.

     In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’ surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice—once in the fifteenth century in black-letter (evidently in Germany) and once in the seventeenth (prob. Spanish)—both editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographical evidence only. The work both Latin and Greek was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius’ time, as indicated by his prefatory note; and no sight of the Greek copy—which was printed in Italy between 1500 and 1550—has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man’s library in 1692. An English translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscript. Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key, while another (17th cent.) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. A seventeenth-century edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham. Also in the library of the University of Buenos Ayres. Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumour credits the preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R.U. Pickman, who disappeared early in 1926. The book is rigidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of organised ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from rumours of this book (of which relatively few of the general public know) that R.W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early novel The King in Yellow.

 

That was the history of the necronomicon as written by Lovecraft. Lovecraft stated that the name of the book came to him in a dream. Some claim however that Lovecraft was inspired by Robert W. Chambers' collection of stories titled The King In Yellow even though he isn't thought to have read the book until the late 1920s. Another person theorized that the book was derived from Nathanial Hawthorne. When asked about the Necronomicon, Lovecraft always maintained that it was wholly his invention even though The History Of The Necronomicon played as an historical text. 

 

Despite the book showing up in several stories the details of the book were pretty sparse. There were a few passages and words that were attributed to the necronomicon. The book's physical properties are not really talked about but generally it's described as being bound in some sort of leather and with metal clasps. As for the passages attributed to the book, there is a fairly long one that is described in the Dunwich Horror. The passage reads as follows:

 

           Nor is it to be thought...that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. 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 had trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. 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? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! 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. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.

 

Another is a considerably smaller snippet that is actually found in 2 stories, call of the Cthulhu and the nameless city, which goes as follows :

         That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.

 

It is in Call of the Cthulhu that this small couplet is said to be from the Necronomicon.

 

In at least one story, the book was discovered to be disguised as another book. 

 

When asked about the contents Lovecraft once wrote:

 

       "if anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon, it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it."

 

According to Lovecraft's "History of the Necronomicon", copies of the original Necronomicon were held by only five institutions worldwide:

 

The British Museum

The Bibliothèque nationale de France

Widener Library of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts

The University of Buenos Aires

The library of the fictional Miskatonic University in the also fictitious Arkham, Massachusetts

The Miskatonic University also holds the Latin translation by Olaus Wormius, printed in Spain in the 17th century.

 

Other copies, Lovecraft wrote, were kept by private individuals. Joseph Curwen, as noted, had a copy in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1941). A version is held in Kingsport in "The Festival" (1925). The provenance of the copy read by the narrator of "The Nameless City" is unknown; a version is read by the protagonist in "The Hound" (1924).

 

Although Lovecraft always maintained he created the book, there have always been plenty of people who believed the book to be real. There have been several books published that are supposedly translations of the actual Necronomicon. Interestingly enough the Vatican received calls every year from people that believe the real Necronomicon resides there. There have been hoaxes and others who have added their cards into library files to make it appear as if they have a copy but it is checked out. In Norway, the library of Tromso lists that they have a translated version but it is listed as unavailable. 

 

In 1978 a version of the necronomicon popped up that had been edited by George Hay. Hay was a writer and the founder of the science fiction foundation. The version included an introduction by the paranormal researcher and writer Colin Wilson. Wilson also wrote a story, "The Return of the Lloigor", in which the Voynich manuscript turns out to be a copy of the Necronomicon. Which is a pretty cool idea. The Voynich manuscript will be a bonus we’re going to tackle so make sure you become a Patreon Poopr to get access to that and all of the other amazing bonuses. 

 

Kenneth Grant, the British occultist, disciple of Aleister Crowley, (another future bonus episode topic) and head of the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis, suggested in his 1972 book The Magical Revival that there was an unconscious connection between Crowley and Lovecraft. Grant claimed that the Necronomicon existed as an astral book as part of the Akashic records and could be accessed through ritual magic or in dreams.  The Akashic records are a pretty crazy topic which we will definitely cover one day. In theosophy and anthroposophy, the Akashic records are a compendium of all universal events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present, or future in terms of all entities and life forms, not just human. They are believed by theosophists to be encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the mental plane. There are anecdotal accounts but there is no scientific evidence for the existence of the Akashic records.

 

In 2004, Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred, by Canadian occultist Donald Tyson, was published by Llewellyn Worldwide. The Tyson Necronomicon is generally thought to be closer to Lovecraft's vision than other published versions.[citation needed] Donald Tyson has clearly stated that the Necronomicon is fictional, but that has not prevented his book from being the center of some controversy. Tyson has since published Alhazred, a novelization of the life of the Necronomicon's author. Tyson had also been known to back Grant's thoughts about Crowley, Lovecraft and the Akashic records.

 

l The most famous of these versions of the book is the  “Simon Necronomicon,” named for its pseudo mononymous compiler (widely believed to be occultist Peter Levenda). The book is cobbled together from a mishmash of recontextualized Sumerian and Babylonian texts peppered with added references to fictional deities created by Lovecraft and the orientalist magical system of Aleister Crowley. Simon’s text basically steals the work of pioneering Assyriologists like R.C. Thompson, from whose Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia many of the translations are lifted. In their original context, these texts were incantations against evil spirits and the various ills they caused, not spells for conjuring them. (“Simon” has a tendency to present descriptions of demons’ evil natures in English, but slips back into transliterated Akkadian when the texts begin to call for the spirits to be cast out, leading to an implication that the demons are being invoked rather than exorcised.) These ancient Mesopotamian incantations have come to be considered “satanic” through a centuries-long process of reinterpretation. The Simon Necronomicon reads its ancient sources through a combination of medieval demonology, 19th-century Theosophy, and 20th-century pulp fiction.

 

But despite its clear origins as a hoax, the Simon Necronomicon has been used as evidence in murder trials like that of Rod Ferrell and his so-called “Vampire Clan.” In 1996, Ferrell murdered the parents of one of his friends in a brutal but mundane home invasion. But numerous factors that emerged in media coverage of the crime-- including Ferrell’s self-identification as a vampire and the discovery of a copy of the Simon Necronomicon in his car--led to the murders being reframed as a satanic ritual killing. This information on the Simon Necronomicon comes from an article written by Gabriel McKee for The Institute For The Study of The Ancient World.

 

So that's a basic history of the Lovecraft Necronomicon. Versions of this book have been in storytelling through the ages. Including Moody's favorite movies like… The evil dead series. It also makes an appearance in Jason goes to hell to build the narrative that the Necronomicon was used in some capacity to bring Jason Vohees back. The Necronomicon was again shown in Pumpkinhead 2: Electric Boogaloo. Oh wait… Make that “Blood Wings”, wrong sequel. This version of the necronomicon was shown to be written in sumerian instead of Arabic. 

So what about real life books of the dead? Well, there are some out there. The Egyptian book of the dead is probably the most famous. 

 

The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a collection of spells which enable the soul of the deceased to navigate the afterlife. The famous title was given the work by western scholars; the actual title would translate as The Book of Coming Forth by Day or Spells for Going Forth by Day and a more apt translation to English would be The Egyptian Book of Life. Although the work is often referred to as "the Ancient Egyptian Bible" there is no such thing although the two works share the similarity of being ancient compilations of texts written at different times eventually gathered together in book form. The Book of the Dead was never codified and no two copies of the work are exactly the same. They were created specifically for each individual who could afford to purchase one as a kind of manual to help them after death. The afterlife was considered to be a continuation of life on earth and, after one had passed through various difficulties and judgment in the Hall of Truth, a paradise which was a perfect reflection of one's life on earth. After the soul had been justified in the Hall of Truth it passed on to cross over Lily Lake to rest in the Field of Reeds where one would find everything that one had lost in life and could enjoy it eternally. In order to reach that paradise, however, one needed to know where to go, how to address certain gods, what to say at certain times, and how to comfort oneself in the land of the dead; which is why one would find an afterlife manual extremely useful. 

 

The Book of the Dead originated from concepts depicted in tomb paintings and inscriptions from as early as the Third Dynasty of Egypt (c. 2670 - 2613 BCE). By the 12th Dynasty (1991 - 1802 BCE) these spells, with accompanying illustrations, were written on papyrus and placed in tombs and graves with the dead. Their purpose, as historian Margaret Bunson explains, "was to instruct the deceased on how to overcome the dangers of the afterlife by enabling them to assume the form of several mythical creatures and to give them the passwords necessary for admittance to certain stages of the underworld". They also served, however, to provide the soul with fore-knowledge of what would be expected at every stage. Having a Book of the Dead in one's tomb would be the equivalent of a student in the modern day getting their hands on all the test answers they would ever need in every grade of school. At some point prior to 1600 BCE the different spells had been divided in chapters and, by the time of the New Kingdom (1570 - 1069 BCE), the book was extremely popular. Bunson notes, "These spells and passwords were not part of a ritual but were fashioned for the deceased, to be recited in the afterlife". If someone were sick, and feared they might die, they would go to a scribe and have them write up a book of spells for the afterlife. The scribe would need to know what kind of life the person had lived in order to surmise the type of journey they could expect after death. Prior to the New Kingdom, The Book of the Dead was only available to the royalty and the elite. The popularity of the Osiris Myth in the period of the New Kingdom made people believe the spells were indispensible because Osiris featured so prominently in the soul's judgment in the afterlife.  As more and more people desired their own Book of the Dead, scribes obliged them and the book became just another commodity produced for sale. Bunson writes, "The individual could decide the number of chapters to be included, the types of illustrations, and the quality of the papyrus used. The individual was limited only by his or her financial resources" 

 

   It continued to vary in form and size until c. 650 BCE when it was fixed at 190 uniform spells but, still, people could add or subtract what they wanted to from the text. Other copies of the book continued to be produced with more or less spells depending on what the buyer could afford. The one spell which every copy seems to have had, however, was Spell 125. so what was spell 125 you ask, well we'll tell you. 

 

   Spell 125 is actually pretty cool and it's a story that spans other religious texts in different forms. It is essentially the judging of a person at the gates of the afterlife. In this case it is the judging of the heart of the deceased by the god Osiris in the Hall of Truth. As it was vital that the soul pass the test of the weighing of the heart in order to gain paradise, knowing what to say and how to act before Osiris, Thoth, Anubis, and the Forty-Two Judges was considered the most important information the deceased could arrive with. When a person died, Anubis would guide that person to the Hall of Truth so that they could make the Negative Confession. This was a list of 42 sins the person could honestly say they had never indulged in. Once the Negative Confession was made, Osiris, Thoth, Anubis, and the Forty-Two Judges would confer and, if the confession was accepted, the heart of the deceased was then weighed in the balance against the white feather of Ma'at, the feather of truth. If the heart was found to be lighter than the feather, the soul passed on toward paradise; if the heart was heavier, it was thrown onto the floor where it was devoured by the monster goddess Ammut and the soul would cease to exist. wow… Crazy! The reason that this spell is included in every book is fairly obvious. One needed to know the different gods' names and what they were responsible for but one also needed to know such details as the names of the doors in the room and the floor one needed to walk across; one even needed to know the names of one's own feet. As the soul answered each deity and object with the correct response, they would hear the reply, "You know us; pass by us" and could continue. The spell finished up with a summary of what to wear and even what to offer. It read as follows: "The correct procedure in this Hall of Justice: One shall utter this spell pure and clean and clad in white garments and sandals, painted with black eye-paint and anointed with myrrh. There shall be offered to him meat and poultry, incense, bread, beer, and herbs when you have put this written procedure on a clean floor of ochre overlaid with earth upon which no swine or small cattle have trodden."

 

There were quite a number of slips the soul might make, however, between arrival at the Hall of Truth and the boat ride to paradise. The Book of the Dead includes spells for any kind of circumstance but it does not seem one was guaranteed to survive these twists and turns. Not every detail described above was included in the vision of every era of Egyptian history. In some periods the modifications are minor while, in others, the afterlife is seen as a perilous journey toward a paradise that is only temporary. At some points in the culture the way to paradise was very straightforward after the soul was justified by Osiris while, in others, crocodiles might thwart the soul or bends in the road may prove dangerous or demons might appear to trick or even attack. In these cases, the soul needed spells to survive and reach paradise. Spells included in the book include titles such as "For Repelling A Crocodile Which Comes To Take Away", "For Driving Off A Snake", "For Not Being Eaten By A Snake In The Realm Of The Dead", "For Not Dying Again In The Realm Of The Dead", "For Being Transformed Into A Divine Falcon", "For Being Transformed Into A Lotus""For Being Transformed Into A Phoenix", “For being transformed into more than meets the eye” and so on. The Book of the Dead, as noted, was never used for magical transformations on earth; the spells only worked in the afterlife. The claim that The Book of the Dead was some kind of sorcerer's text is as wrong and unfounded as the comparison with the Bible. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is also nothing like The Tibetan Book of the Dead, although these two works are often equated as well. 

 

The information about the Egyptian book of the dead was taken from a great article on worldhistory.org It's a great resource for anything historical!

 

And speaking of the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, let's see what that's all about! Although in Tibet there is no single text directly referred to as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, this English work is the primary source for Western understandings of Tibetan Buddhist conceptions of death. These understandings have been highly influenced by Western spiritualist movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, resulting in efforts to adapt and synthesize various frameworks of “other” religious traditions, particularly those from Asian societies that are viewed as esoteric or mystical, including tantric or Tibetan Buddhism. Isn’t Tantric sex about having an intense orgasm without having intercourse? It’s also a great band. This has resulted in creative forms of appropriation, reinterpretation, and misrepresentation of Tibetan views and rituals surrounding death, which often neglect the historical and religious realities of the tradition itself. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a prime example of such a process. Despite the lack of a truly existing “book of the dead,” numerous translations, commentaries, and comparative studies on this “book” continue to be produced by both scholars and adherents of the tradition, making it a focal point for the dissemination and transference of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.

 

The set of Tibetan block prints that was the basis for the original publication of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in 1927 by Walter Y. Evans-Wentz (1878–1968) consisted of portions of the collection known in Tibetan as The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State or Bardo Thödol (Bar do thos grol chen mo). This work is said to have been authored by Padmasambhava in the 8th century CE, who subsequently had the work buried; it was rediscovered in the 14th century by the treasure revealer (gter ston) Karma Lingpa (Kar ma gling pa; b. c. 1350). However, as a subject for literary and historical inquiry, it is nearly impossible to determine what Tibetan texts should be classified under the Western conceptual rubric of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This is due partly to the Tibetan tendency to transmit textual traditions through various redactions, which inevitably change the content and order of collected works. Despite this challenge, the few systematic efforts made by scholars of Tibetan and Buddhist studies to investigate Bardo Thödol literature and its associated funerary tradition have been thorough, and the works produced by Bryan Cuevas and Donald Lopez Jr. are particularly noteworthy.

 

The Bardo Thödol is essentially a funerary manual designed to guide an individual toward recognizing the signs of impending death and traversing the intermediate state (bar do) between death and rebirth, and to guide one’s consciousness to a favorable next life. These instructions provide detailed descriptions of visions and other sensory experiences that one encounters when dying and during the post-mortem state. The texts are meant to be read aloud to the deceased by the living to encourage the consciousness to realize the illusory or dreamlike nature of these experiences and thus to attain liberation through this recognition. This presentation is indicative of a complex and intricate conceptual framework built around notions of death, impermanence, and their soteriological propensities within a tantric Buddhist program developed in Tibet over a millennium, particularly within the context of the Nyingma (rNying ma) esoteric tradition known as Dzogchen (rDzogs chen). Tibet and other tantric Buddhist societies throughout the Himalaya have developed a variety of technologies for practically applying Buddhist understandings of death, and so this particular “book” is by no means the only manual utilized during the dying and post-mortem states, nor is it even necessarily included in all Tibetan or Himalayan funerary traditions. Nevertheless, this work has captured the interests of Western societies for the past century and has unofficially become the principal introduction not only to Tibetan death rites but also to Tibetan Buddhism in general for the West. Information in this summary was taken from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia website.  

 

To go along with these, there is also the lesser known Texan book of the dead. This one is followed by a certain group of people in the Americas. There are some interesting passages in it and they read as follows: 

 

you say you want to go to heaven?

Well, I got the plans

Kinda walks like Sasquatch

But it breeds like kubla khan

In original dialect, it's really quite cryptical

 

Following this it says:

 

It's given me powers but kept me low

Many have scorned this

Modern day pharisees fat with espressos

 

Interesting… It continues:

 

you want to know paradise

Do you want to know hell?

Want to drink that cool clear liquor?

Better dig a little deeper in the well 

It goes on to reveal the mantra you need to recite to move on in the afterlife:

 

        Do you want that mantra?

Well, here you go

 

One for the money, two for the show

And a knick knack paddy whack

Give the lord a handicap

Ooh ee ooh ah ah

Twing twang walla walla bing bang

Oh ee ooh ah ah

Twing twang walla walla bing bang, oh yeah

Ooh eee ooh ah ah

B-I-N-G-O

Ooh eee ooh ah ah

E-I-E-I-O

 

It finishes with an emphatic phrase to remind you that on the afterlife, you're not running shots anymore, it reads:

 

"It is written, I have spoken

So put this in your pipe and smoke it"

 

Ok so if you made it through that with us you probably surmised that it was a bunch of hogwash. Texan book of the dead is actually a song by the band clutch but we figured we'd have some fun.  Some think the song has a deeper meaning referring to the ridiculousness of trendy ideas about spirituality and the process of life and death. 

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/necromicon-movies-book-of-the-dead/

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