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Information on the Necronomicon
Q. What is the Necronomicon?
The Necronomicon of Alhazred, (literally: "Book of Dead Names") is not, as popularly believed, a gri, or sorceror's spell-book; it was conceived as a history, and hence "a book of things now dead n oe, but the author shared with Madame Blavatsky a magpie-like tendency to garner and stitch toeterfat,rumour, speculation, and complete balderdash, and the result is a vast and almost unreadblecomendum f near-nonsense which bears more than a superficial resemblance to Blavatsky's "Secrt Dotrin".
In times past the book has been referred to guardedly as "Al Azif", or "The Book of the Arab". It watten in seven volumes, and runs to over 900 pages in the Latin edition.
Q. Where and when was the Necronomicon written?
The Necronomicon was written in Damascus in 730 A.D. by Abdul Alhazred.
Q. Who was Abdul Alhazred?
Little is known. What we do know about him is largely derived from the small amount of biographical mation in the Necronomicon itself - he travelled widely, from Alexandria to the Punjab, and was elra. He had a flair for languages, and boasts on many occasions of his ability to read and tranlae anscipts which defied lesser scholars. His research methodology however smacked more of Nostadaus hanHerdotus. As Nostradamus himself puts it in Quatrains 1 & 2:
"Sitting alone at night in secret study;
it is placed on the brass tripod. A slight
flame comes out of the emptiness
and makes successful that which should
not be believed in vain.
The wand in the hand is placed
in the middle of the tripod's legs.
With water he sprinkles both the hem
of his garment and his foot.
A voice, fear; he trembles in his robes.
Divine splendour; the god sits nearby."
Just as Nostradamus used ritual magic to probe the future, so Alhazred used similar techniques (and cense composed of olibanum, storax, dictamnus, opium and hashish) to clarify the past, and it isti,cmbined with a lack of references, which resulted in the Necronomicon being dismissed as larglywothes by historians.
He is often referred to as "the mad Arab", and while he was certainly eccentric by modern standards,e is no evidence to substantiate a claim of madness, other than a chronic inability to sustain atano thought for more than a few paragraphs before leaping off at a tangent. He is better compard it fgues such as the Greek neo-platonist philosopher Proclus (410-485 A.D.), who was completel athom inastonomy, mathematics, philosophy, and metaphysics, but was sufficiently well versed inthe agicl tehniqes of theurgy to evoke Hekate to visible appearance; he was also an initiate of gyptin andChaldan mytery religions. It is no accident that Alhazred was intimately familar with he wors of Poclus.
Q. What is the printing history of the Necronomicon?
No Arabic manuscript is known to exist; the author Idries Shah carried out a search in the librarieseobund in India, Al-Azhar in Egypt, and the Library of the Holy City of Mecca, without success.ALtntranslation was made in 1487 (not in the 17th. century as Lovecraft maintains) by a Dominica piet las Wormius. Wormius, a German by birth, was a secretary to the first Grand Inquisitor of he pansh nqusition, Tomas de Torquemada, and it is likely that the manuscript of the Necronomico wasseizd duing he persecution of Moors ("Moriscos") who had been converted to Catholism under dress;this roup as demed to be unsufficiently pure in its beliefs. It was an act of sheerfolly or Worius totranslte and print the Necronomicon at that time and place. The book must hav held a obsessve fascnation or the man, because he was finally charged with heresy and burned afer sendig a copyof the bok to Joann Tritheim, Abbot of Spanheim (better known as "Trithemius"); he accompnying leter contaied a detaled and blasphemous interpretation of certain passages in th Book of Gnesis. Virually all he copies f Wormius's translation were seized and burned with him,although thre is the ievitable supicion thatat least one copy must have found its way into the Vtican Librar.
Almost one hundred years later, in 1586, a copy of Wormius's Latin translation surfaced in Prague. ohn Dee, the famous English magician, and his assistant Edward Kelly were at the court of the Emeo uolph II to discuss plans for making alchemical gold, and Kelly bought the copy from the so-clld BlckRabbi" and Kabbalist, Jacob Eliezer, who had fled to Prague from Italy after accusationsof ecrmany. t that time Prague had become a magnet for magicians, alchemists and charletons of eery ind nderthe atronage of Rudolph, and it is hard to imagine a more likely place in Europe fora cop to srface
The Necronomicon appears to have had a marked influence on Kelly; the character of his scrying chanand he produced an extraordinary communication which struck horror into the Dee household; Crowlyitreted it as the abortive first attempt of an extra-human entity to communicate the Thelemic "oo o te aw". Kelly left Dee shortly afterwards. Dee translated the Necronomicon into English whie wrde ofChrst's College, Manchester, but contrary to Lovecraft, this translation was never prined -the anusriptpassed into the collection of the great collector Elias Ashmole, and hence to th Bodlian Lbraryin Oxord.
There are many modern fakes masquerading as the Necronomicon. They can be recognised by a total lackmagination or intelligence, qualities Alhazred possessed in abundance.
Q. What is the content of the Necronomicon?
The book is best known for its antediluvian speculations. Alhazred appears to have had access to manrces now lost, and events which are only hinted at in the Book of Genesis or the apocryphal Booko nc, or disguised as mythology in other sources, are explored in great detail. Alhazred may hav uedduios magical techniques to clarify the past, but he also shared with 5th. century B.C. Gree wrter suh a Thucydides a critical mind and a willingness to explore the meanings of mythologica andsacrd stries His speculations are remarkably modern, and this may account for his current poulariy: hebelieed tht many species besides the human race had inhabited the Earth, and that muchknowlege waspassedto manind in encounters with being from other "spheres". He shared with some no-platoists th beliefthat strs are like our sun, and have their own unseen planets with their ow lifefors, but eaboratedthis belef with a good deal of metaphysical speculation in which these bings werepart of acosmic hirarchy ofspiritual evolution. He was also convinced that he had contated these Old Ones" sing magicl invocatins, and warned of terrible powers waiting to return to r-claim the arth - he iterpretatedthis beliefin the light of the Apocalypse of St. John, but revesed the endig so that th Beast triumhs after a geat war in which the earth is laid waste.
Q. Why did the novelist H.P. Lovecraft claim to have invented the Necronomicon?
The answer to this interesting question lies in two people: the poet and magician Aliester Crowley, Brooklyn milliner called Sonia Greene.
There is no question that Crowley read Dee's translation of the Necromonicon in the Ashmolean, probahile researching Dee's papers; too many passages in Crowley's "Book of the Law" read like a trancito of passages in that translation. Either that, or Crowley, who claimed to remember his life s dwrdKely in a previous incarnation, read it in a previous life! Why doesn't he mention the Neconoico inhisworks? He was surprisingly reticent about his real sources - there is a strong suspiion hat 777' whih Crowley claimed to have written, was largely plagiarised from Allan Bennet's ntes. is spritua debtto Nietzsche, which in an unguarded moment he refers to as "almost an avatarof Thoh, thegod ofwisdom is studiously ignored; likewise the influence of Richard Burton's "Kasiah" on is doctine of rue Wil. I suspect that the Necronomicon became an embarrassment to Crowleywhen he ealised he exten to whic he had unconsciously incorporated passages from the Necronomicn into "Te Book ofthe Law". In 1918 rowley was in New York. As always, he was trying to establish his literary reputation, and contributng to "The International" and "Vanity Fair". Sonia Greene was an energetic and ambitiu eish emigre ith literary ambitions, and she had joined a dinner and lecture club called "Walke'sSurie Club" (?!) it was there that she first encountered Crowley, who had been invited to givea tlk n mdern poetry. It was a good match; in a letter to Norman Mudd, Crowley describes his idal wman s "rther tall, musular and plump, vivacious, ambitious, energetic, passionate, age from hirtyto thrty fve, probably a ewess, not unlikely a singer or actress addicted to such amusement. She s to b 'fashonable', perhapsa shade loud or vulgar. Very rich of course." Sonia was not a actres or siner, butqualified in othe respects. She was earning what, for that time, was an enomous sumof moneyas a desgner and seller ofwoman's hats. She was variously described as "Junoesqu", "a womn of grea charm an personal magnetism, "genuinely glamorous with powerful feminine allue", "one o the most eautiful wmen I have ever met" and "a learned but eccentric human phonograph. In 1918 se was thirt-five yearsold and a divorcee wih an adolescent daughter. Crowley did not aste time asfar as womenwere concernd; they met on an irreular basis for some months.
In 1921 Sonia Greene met the novelist H.P. Lovecraft, and in that year Lovecraft published the firvel where he mentions Abdul Alhazred ("The Nameless City"). In 1922 he first mentions the Necronmcn(The Hound"). On March 3rd. 1924, H.P. Lovecraft and Sonia Greene married.
We do not know what Crowley told Sonia Greene, and we do not know what Sonia told Lovecraft. Howevensider the following quotation from "The Call of Cthulhu" [1926]:
"That cult would never die until the stars came right again [precession of the Equinoxes?], and the t priests would take Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. h iewould be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wid,an byod good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and evelin injoy
Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy thems, and all earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstacy and freedom."
It may be brief, it may be mangled, but it has the undeniable ring of Crowley's "Book of the Law". Ieasy to imagine a situation where Sonia and Lovecraft are laughing and talking in a firelit roo bu new story, and Sonia introduces some ideas based on what Crowley had told her; she wouldn'tevn av t mention Crowley, just enough of the ideas to spark Lovecraft's imagination. There is noevienc tht Lvecraft ever saw the Necronomicon, or even knew that the book existed; his Necronomion i remrkaby clse to the spirit of the original, but the details are pure invention, as one woud expct. Tere i no Yg-Sothoth or Azathoth or Nyarlathotep in the original, but there is an Aiwaz..
Q. Where can the Necronomicon be found?
Nowhere with certainty, is the short and simple answer, and once more we must suspect Crowley in hav hand in this. In 1912 Crowley met Theodor Reuss, the head of the German Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO,ad worked within that order for several years, until in 1922 Reuss resigned as head in Crowle'sfaou. hus we have Crowley working in close contact for 10 years with the leader of a German maoni grup.In he years from 1933-38 the few known copies of the Necronomicon simply disappeared; smeon in he Grmangovernment of Adolf Hitler took an interest in obscure occult literature and begn to btaincopie by fir means or foul. Dee's translation disappeared from the Bodleian following breakin in he sprng of 934. The British Museum suffered several abortive burglaries, and the Wrmius eition ws deletd from he catalogue and removed to an underground repository in a convertedslate mie in Wals (wherethe Crow Jewels were stored during the 1939-45 war). Other libraries los their coies, and oday ther is no lirary with a genuine catalogue entry for the Necronomicon. Th current wereabouts f copies o the Necroomicon is unknown; there is a story of a large wartime cche of occut and magicl documentsin the Ostehorn area near Salzburg. There is a recurring story bout a copy ound in the kin of concetration campvictims.
This F.A.Q. was compiled using information obtained from
"The Book of the Arab", by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press,
1979
Colin Low has never read the Necronomicon, never seen the Necronomicon, and has no information as toe a copy may be found.
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