The Necronomicon is the mysterious creation of Howard Lovecraft. Book of the Dead Necronomicon

Taking a cosmic point of view, we can say that there is an infinite number of worlds, an infinite number of series of both bodily and spiritual adaptations, an infinite number of subjective worlds, i.e. world representations, an infinite number of series of experience and response.

Carl du Prel. "Philosophy of Mysticism"

... the fear of his soul before everything wonderful and catastrophic ...

N. Berdyaev

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. The precocious boy mastered the alphabet when he was two years old, and at four he was already reading fluently. He developed an early interest in the sciences, and at the age of only sixteen he began to write regularly in the Providence Tribune with articles on astronomy. Due to poor health, which caused him early death in 1937, morbidly shy and unsociable, he rarely left hometown, to which he felt the strongest attachment and where he lived all his life.

His literary career began in 1923 with the appearance of the short story "Dagon" in a well-known magazine. During the remaining fourteen years of his life, his stories of the mysterious and terrible went on in an unbroken succession; among them are the classics of the genre "Rats in the Walls", "Outsider", "Pickman's Sitter", "Paints from Space", "Call of Cthulhu", "Nightmare of Dunwich", "Whisperer in the Dark", "Invading Darkness" and others. Despite the rather favorable course literary career, Lovecraft was often tormented by doubts about true value many of his short stories, in their ability to influence the reader, and he was so successful in infecting others with his doubts that some of his works, and some of his best (for example, "The Ridges of Madness"), were not published until after his death. The reason for this lurked, mainly, in the peculiarities of his nature as a visionary and recluse, who felt painfully isolated from people, in communication he preferred correspondence to a living word. Many of the motifs found in his work go back to exceptionally vivid dreams - obviously, it would not be a stretch to call them visions - which visited him all his life. This explains the peculiarity of his style, on the one hand, and the feeling of authenticity of a certain reality that he describes, on the other. This reality, not comprehended by the usual set of feelings, “invisible to a simple eye from the back”, and dictates that special manner of writing, more indirectly hinting than directly showing, striving, according to another visionary, to make one feel “through unusual combinations of words, through these images, almost devoid of outline, the presence of such a reality.

“This inner space, according to the definition of James Bollard, an American science fiction writer who also explores human nature through symbol and myth, is the territory where the outer world of reality and inner world souls converge and merge", or, in the words of C. G. Jung, "those border areas psyche that unfold into mysterious cosmic matter." Interest in the borderline states of consciousness is, obviously, a recognition that "unexpired and unknown cosmic energies attack a person from all sides and require sighted, wise activity from his side." For ordinary scientific and philosophical consciousness this cosmic plane of life remains closed. By the way, Kingsley Amis in his book "New Maps of Hell" (1960) - a guide to the "unreal" world of science fiction - mentioning Lovecraft, finds it necessary to say only that he is more than ripe for a course in psychoanalysis. One can try to look at the works of Lovecraft from the point of view of depth psychology, which offers a very constructive approach to the analysis of creativity that addresses the unconscious and often directly operates with its symbols.

The transpersonal experience gained through deep exploration of the psyche shows that the boundaries between man and the rest of the universe are not immutable; in deep self-exploration of the individual unconscious, something happens that in its effect resembles a Möbius strip. The individual deployment of the psyche turns into a process of events taking place on the scale of the whole cosmos, the connections between the cosmos and individuality are revealed. For Lovecraft's characters, the Möbius strip unfolds, so to speak, in reverse side: appeal to the cosmos, attempts to master its secrets and wisdom plunge them into the depths of their own unconscious. In this sense, the image starry skies, a certain area of cosmic wisdom, and is Lovecraft's visualization of the special nature of the unconscious. This nature of his, practically in the same images, is captured by introspective intuition, consciousness directed at itself, for example, in the psycho-myth of Ursula K. Le Guin “Stars below”: “Stars reflected in deep water ... golden sand scattered in the blackness of the earth” . Although Le Guin's psychomyths no longer seem to be literature proper, since they are not called upon to solve a purely aesthetic problem, nevertheless, in this case, we are still talking about artistic intuition. But here what is a metaphor here is given as an actual reality in an experience of a different order: “... in the depths of his being, the boy knew that he already had the freedom he was looking for. It opened one night when he was barely nine years old. That night, the sky with all its stars entered him, throwing him dead to the ground,” we read in the biography of one of the modern Indian Teachers. Heights turn into depths, and Lovecraft’s heroes get stuck in the “mud of the depths” (“I am mired in a deep swamp” - Ps. 68: 3), in the dirty slurry of sinful thoughts generated by the mind, in the darkness of their unconscious. And they strive, as a rule, into ever greater darkness and depth, obviously unable to resist the temptation of gaping heights, paradoxes of the psyche. One by one, they begin to be drawn back to the past, to the bosom of their ancestors, to the original undisclosedness, "on the other side." By the will of circumstances or of their own free will, they find themselves in the only place where their fate can be decided: either in a town by the sea, as in the story "Celebration" and "Shadow over Innsmouth", or under the canopy of ancient forests, as in "Nightmare Dunwich", in the story "Hiding at the Threshold" and in the story "Silver Key". The sea in Lovecraft, as if constantly present on the periphery of vision, is mare nostrum with its "mud of the depths", the element of chaos and destruction is the abyss of the unconscious. Following the age-old covenant of the ancestors, the hero of the “Celebration” goes underground corridors into the abyss of the sea, and, having witnessed terrible miracles that are not comprehended by bodily vision, faced with a consciousness not constrained by the skeleton of the head, and having met a gnawing worm, he almost loses his mind, because the daytime , a more inert mind, filled with objects, has no way into those "untrodden, impassable places."

Randolph Carter (“Silver Key”), who differs from other Lovecraft characters in his greater internal integrity (he is not only a “conscious self”, other components of the psyche seem to be integrated in it) and can be called, with some justification, alter ego author, and not just one of his masks - this Carter, having lost faith in culture and rational thinking, "stating reality in precise terms", quite deliberately turns back, "to the original undisclosed, unrevealed, simplicity and elementary nature of spiritual life." Leaving the urban mechanized civilization where inner life nature is "locked", he delves into the mystical landscape of his childhood, descending to a common source. And here - "admission fee: your sanity." It is necessary to break the familiar perspective of perception by the “conscious self”, a disorientation of the world must occur: “forget everything, lose everything, so that all sides mix, lose their absolute character, become relative, so that the direction ... of movement is the only coordinate of the world, and then it fluctuates all the time” . In search of "inner space" one of the characters of J. Bollard does the same: turning several times at random, he simply gets lost among the huge concrete "cubes" arranged in regular rows. Experience, in essence, is not new - to find yourself, you have to lose yourself. When Randolph Carter in the forest, "straying, wandered too far," he returned to his childhood home and to himself - a boy who, in his tenth year, through a deep underground grotto (with the significant name "Aspid's Hole", referring him to the region chthonic and supporting the motif of the tree - the world axis, in whose roots the chthonic serpent lurks) managed to escape, again getting bogged down in the liquid mud of the "mud of the depths" covering the bottom of the grotto - to go where the dragon of the unconscious, "choosing caves and dark places" not yet sacrificed.

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Necronomicon: The Crazy Book of a Crazy Arab

NEKRONOMIKON - BOOK OF THE DEAD

Subtitles

Book

One of the variations of the Necronomicon, called Liber Logaeth, was released by author and paranormal researcher Colin Wilson, who claimed it was a computer transcript of a ciphertext he had found. It is closer to Lovecraftian mythology and even includes quotes from his works, but at the same time it is full of anachronisms. In addition, the original text Liber Logaeth, actually written by John Dee in the Enochian language, is not related to the Necronomicon either in volume or in content.

The third book, very closely related to the Necronomicon series, is De vermis mysteriis (English) Russian - "Secrets of the Worm". The origins of the first edition are rather obscure. It is attributed to the Roman legionary Tertius Sivelius, who served for a long time as part of the legions stationed in Egypt and Arabia, where he met an Aksumite magician named Talim, whose views allegedly compiled the manuscript. According to a legend from Rome, where Sivelius lived after his retirement, his notes were transported to Britain, where they were lost in the library of some castle. Already in the 17th century, a monk discovered the Sivelius manuscript, who took it to Rome around 1680. The first widely known edition appeared in 1932. The text of the Book of Dagon, allegedly written by the priests of Ancient Assyria in the 15th century BC, is also adjacent to the mythology of this book. e.

The Giger Necronomicon edition () is little known - a collection of paintings painted by the Swiss artist Hans Giger (the creator of the monster prototype for the Alien movie). There are a number of other Necronomicons (de Camp, Quina, Ripel, etc., as well as the so-called "R'lyeh text"). Many of these and other texts formed the basis of The Necronomicon, created in 2009 by a translator working under the pseudonym Anna Nancy Owen.

Historical prototypes of the Necronomicon

Historical "Books of the Dead" such as the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Tibetan Bardo Thodol have sometimes been described as the "real" Necronomicon. They should by no means be confused with Lovecraft's Necronomicon, as they are intended to help the dead in their afterlife, and not for the living to call on the dead for their needs, although Lovecraft may have come up with his "Necronomicon" under their influence.

Another possible source of the Necronomicon could be the book Picatrix (Latin Picatrix), attributed to Maslama ibn Ahma al-Majriti (of Madrid). This book on magic was written in Arabic around the year 1000 and translated into Latin for the Castilian king Alfonso the Wise in 1256. The book consists of four chapters and contains extensive information on astral and talismanic magic. Curiously, it contains a message about a certain mysterious city Adocentine, supposedly founded in Egypt by Hermes Trismegistus. In the Middle Ages, the book was highly valued, but was considered "black magic". For example, the French king Henry III, allowing Agrippa d'Aubigne to get acquainted with it, took a solemn oath from him not to make copies of the book.

Colin Wilson, the author of one of the Necronomicons, indicates the Voynich Manuscript as a possible prototype, however, apart from the encryption of both books and the general magical orientation, there are apparently no other parallels between these texts. Wilson also calls his version of the Necronomicon Liber Logaeth, however Wilson's Necronomicon differs from historical document with such a name, written by John Dee in the Enochian language and has not yet been fully deciphered, both in terms of volume and illustrative material.

Mention of the book in Lovecraft's letters

There was a time when I amassed a small collection of Oriental pottery and art, proclaiming myself a devout Mohammedan, and identified myself as "Abdul Alhazred" - a name that, as you can see, I use as the author of the mythical work "Necronomicon", mentioned in many my stories...

Regarding the solemnly cited myth cycles of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, R'lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Nag, Yiba, Shub-Niggurath, etc. etc. - I confess that this is entirely my invention, like the densely populated and diverse pantheon of Pegana Lord Dunsany. The reason they are reflected in Dr. de Castro's work is that the above gentleman is a client of mine - I'm looking at his work - and I put these references in them for fun. If any of my other clients submit their work to W.T. , you may find even more rampant cults of Azathoth, Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones! The Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred is also something that still has to be written in order to become a reality. Abdul is my favorite fantasy character; in fact, that's what I called myself at the age of five, being a big fan of the Arabian Nights translated by Andrew Lang. A few years ago I made a pseudo-historical description of the life of Abdul, and those who befell his disgusting and unimaginable manuscript of Al Azif and its translations of the vicissitudes after his death ... - a description that I will follow in my subsequent references to this dark and cursed book. I have been referencing certain excerpts from the Necronomicon for a long time - indeed, I consider it quite good fun to lend credibility to this artificial mythology through extensive quoting. Nevertheless, perhaps it is worth writing to Mr. O'Neill and disillusioning him about the white spot in his mythological erudition!

… I read Arabian Nights at the age of five. In those days I often put on a turban, painted my beard with a burnt cork, and called myself by the name (God only knows where I dug it up!) Abdul Alhazred - which I later used, in memory of bygone days, as the name of the hypothetical author of the hypothetical Necronomicon!

As for writing the Necronomicon - I wish I had enough energy and ingenuity to create it! I'm afraid this will be a difficult task, given the variety of references and hints I've made over the years! I could, of course, issue an abridged Necronomicon - containing passages that would be considered at least reasonably safe for human reading! Because Black book von Yountz and the poems of Justin Jeffrey are already on sale, I should probably consider immortalizing old Abdul!

By the way, there is no "Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred". This hellish and forbidden volume is the figurative essence of my concept, which others from the W.T. also used for background in artworks.

As for the "Necronomicon" - used three times for last month allusions to it caused an incredible amount of inquiries regarding the truth and possibility of obtaining the works of Alhazred, Eibon and von Juntz. In each case, I sincerely confessed to the forgery.

Regarding the Necronomicon - I must confess that this monstrous tome is simply a figment of my own imagination! Inventing horror books is a favorite pastime of the supernatural, and… many of W.T. can boast of such - although it may be that there is nothing to brag about. The use of mutually created demons and imaginary books in his stories rather amuses various authors - so Clark Ashton Smith often talks about my Necronomicon while I refer to his Book of Eibon... and so on. This pooling of resources allows for a pseudo-convincing backdrop of dark mythology, lore, and bibliography - although, of course, none of us has the desire to actually mislead readers.

Regarding the terrible Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred - I confess that both the ominous volume and its cursed author are nothing more than the fruits of my imagination - as well as evil entities: Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Shab-Niggurath. Tsatoggua and the Book of Eibon are the inventions of Clark Ashton Smith, while Friedrich von Juntz and his monstrous Unaussprechlichen Kulten are the fruitful imagination of Robert E. Howard. While having fun creating a convincing cycle of fictional folklore, our entire gang often refers to demons created by other members that have acquired the status of pets; so for example Smith uses my Yog-Sothoth and I use his Tsatoggua. I also occasionally insert a couple of my own demons into stories I view or co-write with other professional clients. In this way, our black pantheon acquires extensive publicity and pseudo-authority, which otherwise would not be obtained. However, we never try to reduce everything to a factual deception and always diligently explain to the questioner that this is 100% fantasy. To avoid ambiguity in my references to the Necronomicon, I have compiled a brief history his "creation"... It gives him a sort of spirit of believability.

Now let's touch on the "terrible and forbidden books" - I have to say that most of them are absolutely fictional. There is not, and never has been, any Abdul Alhazred and the Necronomicon, as I came up with those names myself. Robert Bloch was inspired by the idea of Ludwig Prinn and his De Vermis Mysteriis, and the Book of Eibon was the invention of Clark Ashton Smith. The late Robert I. Howard is responsible for Friedrich von Juntz and his Unaussprechlichen Kulten…
As far as real-life books on dark, occult, and supernatural subjects, the truth is, there aren't a lot of them. For this reason, it is much more fun to invent mythical works such as the Necronomicon and the Book of Eibon.

The name "Abdul Alhazred" was coined for me by an adult (I can't remember who) when I was 5 years old, and after reading the Arabian Nights, I longed to become an Arab. Years later, it occurred to me that it would be funny to use it as the name of the author of a forbidden book. The name "Necronomicon"... came to me in a dream.

To Harry O. Fisher (late February 1937)

The legend about the existence of some ancient manuscript on necromancy, the magic symbols and spells of which contain the method of summoning the dead, begins with the "conversation of demons". In Arabic tales, this phrase means the sounds made by cicadas. That's how it translates original name books "Kitab al-Azif".

Its author, Abdullah al-Hazred, a mad poet from Sanaa (Yemen), who lived around the beginning of the 8th century, was well educated, knew foreign languages, traveled a lot and lived for ten years in the great Arabian desert of Rub al-Khali, according to legend, inhabited by monsters and evil spirits. Here the demons entrusted al-Hazred with the secrets of the ancients and taught him the rituals of Satan. Al-Hazred spent the last years of his life in Damascus, where he wrote sinister book Kitab al-Azif.

Two hundred years later, the Byzantine scholar Theodore Philetus translated "al-Azif" into Greek, giving it the name "Necronomicon" - "Law of the Dead". By order of Patriarch Michael of Constantinople, persecution began against Theodore, and manuscripts with translations were burned. However, a few copies survived and spread around the world. Now the book has become known under a new, Greek title, which is used much more often than the original Arabic.

The Arabic original has long been lost. But the translations made from it at the beginning of the 20th century were kept in the British Museum, the National Library of France, the library Harvard University, the Vatican Library and the University of Buenos Aires, from where, on the eve of the Second World War, they were taken out and hidden in different places of the world.

According to another tradition, there is actually only one authentic Necronomicon written in ink made from human blood. In an incomprehensible way, he suddenly appears in different places, chooses his own hosts, ready to cooperate with hell, and opens the gates to other worlds for them.

Dreams of Grandpa Theobald

In fact, neither the Necronomicon nor the crazy Arab al-Hazred ever existed. Like all public literature of this kind, it was a common fake, and the first mention of the book "Kitab al-Azif" first appeared only in 1923 in the fantastic stories of an American writer. Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

In letters to friends, which Lovecraft, who presented himself as an old man, often signed as "grandfather Theobald", the writer stated this more than once. Here are just two of these statements: "There is not and never was any Abdullah al-Hazred and the Necronomicon, since I came up with these names myself"; "I have referred for a long time to certain excerpts from the Necronomicon, indeed considering it quite a bit of fun to lend credibility to this artificial mythology through extensive quoting."

In one of the letters written in Last year life, Lovecraft explains in more detail: “The name “Abdullah al-Hazred” was invented for me by one of the adults (I can’t remember who) when I was 5 years old, and after reading the Arabian Nights, I passionately desired to become Arab. Years later, it occurred to me that it would be funny to use it as the name of the author of a forbidden book. The name "Necronomicon"... came to me in a dream."

Nightmares, inhabited by ugly monsters, tormented Lovecraft throughout his short and amazing unhappy life For forty-seven years of his earthly existence, fate stubbornly stood with its back to him. Childhood marred by poverty and disease, parental madness (his father Wilfrid Scott Lovecraft and mother Sarah ended up in a mental institution), short unhappy marriage to a domineering woman who didn't understand him, sporadic, poorly paid literary work, and in the end - an untimely painful death from bowel cancer, resulting from chronic malnutrition.

Despite poor heredity and the inability to attend school for health reasons, Lovecraft began to read early, when he was not yet four, and at the age of seven he was already writing poetry and short stories in the spirit of his favorite writer Edgar Allan Poe.

From his parents, he got a full "bouquet" of neuroses and mental problems, which, probably, were the cause of nightmares filled with creepy monsters. Lovecraft would later transfer them to the pages of his fantasy stories, for the first time "crossing" two previously independent genres - science fiction and horror. And when one of them - "Dagon" - will publish in 1923 the American magazine " Mysterious stories”, the future path of the writer will be finally determined.

On March 17, 1937, Lovecraft was buried in a family grave in the cemetery of the town of Providence (Providence), Rhode Island, where he lived his entire adult life, with the exception of a few years when he and his wife left for New York. Literary fame, as is often the case, will find him posthumously. And even then, not right away.

Genius draw

For the first time, the "book of the mad Arab" appears in the story "The Dog", written in 1923. Actually, the fact that Lovecraft mentioned a certain fictional book was not even a hoax. This technique is still quite common among science fiction writers. He did not set as his goal and collect the "Necronomicon" into something more or less integral - quotes from it remained scattered across the pages of various Lovecraft books. Actually, there were no books during the life of the writer, except for a small collection of short stories "Hazor over Innsmouth", published in 1936. But the mortally ill Lovecraft did not even have time to hold it in his hands.

Most likely, the strange stories of an amateur writer, monsters invented by him and ancient book, calling the dead, would have been lost in the newspaper files of the beginning of the last century, adding to the list of similar works published for royalties, if not for science fiction lovers August Derleth and Donald Vandrei. After the death of the writer, they created first the Lovecraft Circle, and then the publishing company Arkham House, specifically to print books of their idol and his followers.

This saved Lovecraft from oblivion - after collections of Lovecraft stories were released at Arkham House, other publishers were also interested in the writer's work - first in the United States, and then in Europe.

It occurred to Derleth to “pull out” references to the Necronomicon from Lovecraft’s stories, collect them together and publish them in the first person, Abdullah al-Hazred. He rewrote the Necronomicon several times anew, arranging it from various parts, rearranging different pieces, shortening or, conversely, expanding the text. The work was fascinating, but ineffectual - the book never reached the printing house. The thing, apparently, turned out to be boring, even if the members of the Lovecraft Circle, who saw it in handwritten form, did not show interest in it at first.

But the Lovecraftians liked the idea and even found a continuation in the samizdat Necronomicon, issued as a translation of the famous John Dee, allegedly accidentally discovered in the vault of one of the European libraries. In the first half of the 20th century, when the fascination with occultism and mysticism acquired an unprecedented scale, the figure of the British alchemist and astrologer consecrated such a publication by his very name. For greater credibility, the book was also stylized as a reprint edition, making the flyleaf and illustrations as they might look in a medieval edition.

Thus began the myth of the "book of the mad Arab." New turn the legend received in 1977, when, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the death of the writer, the first printed "Necronomicon" was published in the United States, which marked the beginning of a whole stream of publications that claimed to be the true creation of the ancient magician.

Cthulhu woke up

There have been many in all ages wishing to approach the edge of the abyss and enter the world of death. Some were driven by despair or curiosity, others by a thirst for knowledge, but most by a vain desire to command the world of the living through the world of the dead.

The historical "Books of the Dead" - ancient Egyptian or Tibetan - were not suitable in this capacity, because they were intended to help the dead in the afterlife, and not for the living to disturb the dead for their needs. Therefore, a certain manuscript (necessarily consecrated by antiquity!), With the help of which you can call various evil spirits from other worlds, sooner or later had to appear.

Describing the book, Lovecraft says that in all libraries, the Necronomicon is kept behind seven locks, since the book is dangerous to read and can damage the physical and mental health reading. But this, and the fact that all the characters of his works, who read the "book of the mad Arab", come to a terrible end, is just a creative technique used by the writer to increase the atmosphere. Many writers do this.

But the legend turned out to be stronger: they refuse to believe Lovecraft. There was even a version that the Arab he had invented had a historical prototype, and his book was real, but the writer, who became an involuntary medium and a channel for the transmission of ancient occult knowledge, denied its existence for only one reason: he understood the danger.

If someone told a writer of fantastic stories from a small American town that so many "researchers" of authority in occult circles would someday seriously argue whether the original Kitab al-Azif was written in Arabic or Sumerian, he would surely laugh. With Lovecraft's sense of humor, as you know, everything was in order, it is no coincidence that he is considered not only the father of horror, but the master of beautiful parodies. And he treated the monsters he invented with a fair amount of irony, considering his creations solely as a means of earning money.

A hundred years later, it turns out: alas, there is nothing to laugh about ... And it no longer takes aback why, with such a simple and obvious picture, the myth of the Necronomicon is so tenacious. Those who believe in the existence of a terrible book that holds the keys to power dark forces, are not insane at all and certainly understand what an unbearable blow to the fragile psyche of a person can be inflicted by a paranoid, neurotic fear of life.

Various black cults have come into fashion, in which the images of vampires, evil spirits and demons are surrounded by a romantic veil, and Satan is represented as a symbol of power and freedom. The Internet is literally replete not only with descriptions of rituals and magic formulas for spells of the forces of darkness, but also with announcements: “I will sell my soul to the devil”, “I want to sell my soul to the devil for money”, “I will sell my soul dearly” and other similar ones. And there is no doubt - these souls are young and, most likely, lonely.

How not to recall Lovecraft's fantasies about the evil deity Cthulhu: "This cult will not die until the stars again come to correct position and secret priests will not call Cthulhu from his grave, so that he breathes life into his subjects and reigns on earth again. This time will be easy to recognize, because then humanity will become like the Great Old Ones: free and wild, not knowing the difference between good and evil, not recognizing laws and morality; and all the people will scream and kill and make merry. The liberated Ancients will teach them new ways to scream, kill and rejoice, and the whole earth will burn in the fire of ecstasy and freedom.

In one of the "Necronomicons" posted on the Internet, there is a spell addressed to Cthulhu, ending with the following words: "In his dwelling in R" lieh, the dead Cthulhu awaits in a dream, but he will rise, and his kingdom will again come to Earth.

So Cthulhu is already woken up?

Tatyana Solovyova

Some believe in the existence of a real ancient manuscript called Al Azif or Necronomicon and more or less satisfying the description of Lovecraft, as well as the fact that the author invented by Lovecraft had a historical prototype. This view is often held by conspiracy theorists, such as Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea in their Illuminatus! trilogy. The well-known mystic writer Kenneth Grant, as well as some modern journalists, took the Necronomicon seriously.

Book

Lovecraft often referred to fictional books in their works, which later became a common practice among science fiction writers such as, for example, Jorge Luis Borges and William Goldman. The Necronomicon was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1923 story The Hound, and the first hint of it (or a similar book) appeared already in The Testimony of Randolph Carter (). The description of the "Necronomicon" says that the book is dangerous to read, because it can damage the physical and mental health of the reader. Therefore, in all libraries it is kept behind seven locks.

History and origins

How Lovecraft came up with this name is unclear. Perhaps it was inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe "The Fall of the House of Usher", as well as the unfinished astronomical poem of the ancient Roman poet Mark Manil "Astronomicon". It is believed that Lovecraft read this book only in 1928.

The original title of the book, coined by Lovecraft, is Al-Azif ( Al Azif) (in Arabic, this phrase means the sounds made by cicadas and other nocturnal insects, which are often referred to in folklore as the conversation of demons, which connects this book with the history of satanic verses), and its creation is attributed to the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred ( Abdul Alhazred). Among other things, the book contains the names of the Ancients and their history, as well as the method of invoking them.

According to Lovecraft, the Necronomicon was written by Alhazred in Damascus around 720, and several translations into various languages have since been made. The Greek translation from which the most famous name book, was carried out by the fictional Orthodox scholar Theodore Philetus in Constantinople around 950. Ole Worm (Danish philologist, real historical figure, erroneously placed by Lovecraft in the 13th century), translated the Necronomicon into Latin and noted in the preface that the Arabic original had been lost. This translation was published twice, the first time in the 15th century in Gothic, apparently in Germany, the second time in the 17th century, probably in Spain.

Latin translation attracted attention to the Necronomicon, and in 1232 it was banned by Pope Gregory IX. A Greek translation printed in Italy in the first half of the 16th century probably perished in the fire that destroyed Pickman's library in Salem. The English scientist and magician John Dee allegedly had his own copy, and it is believed that he also made an English translation, which has survived to this day only in fragments.

Criticism

Critics often reproach Lovecraft for using the Necronomicon as a deus ex machina in his writings, mentioning it wherever the narrator starts talking about the occult, no matter how much the narrator understands the occult. With the exception of the protagonists in The Dunwich Horror, all the characters in Lovecraft's works who read the book of the Mad Arab come to a terrible end.

Historical prototypes of the Necronomicon

Historical "Books of the Dead", such as the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Tibetan Bardo Thodol, have sometimes been described as the "real" Necronomicon. They should by no means be confused with Lovecraft's Necronomicon, as they are intended to help the dead in their afterlife, not for the living to call the dead for their needs, although Lovecraft may have designed his Necronomicon to fit their needs. influence.

Another possible source of the Necronomicon could be the book Picatrix (Arabic Gayat al-Hakim), attributed to Maslama ibn Ahma al-Magritit. This book on magic was written in Arabic around the year 1000 and translated into Latin for the Castilian king Alfonso the Wise in 1256. The book consists of four chapters and contains extensive information on astral and talismanic magic. It is curious that it contains a message about a certain mysterious city Adocentin, allegedly founded in Egypt by Hermes Trismegistus. In the Middle Ages, the book was highly valued, but was considered "black magic". For example, the French king Henry III (XVI century), allowing Agrippa d'Aubigne to get acquainted with it, took a solemn oath from him not to make copies of the book.

Regarding the solemnly cited myth cycles of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, R'lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Nag, Yiba, Shub-Niggurath, etc. etc. - I confess that this is entirely my invention, like the densely populated and diverse pantheon of Pegana Lord Dunsany. The reason they are reflected in Dr. de Castro's work is that the above gentleman is a client of mine - I'm looking at his work - and I put these references in them for fun. If any of my other clients submit their work to W.T. , you may find even more rampant cults of Azathoth, Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones! The Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred is also something that still has to be written in order to become a reality. Abdul is my favorite fantasy character; in fact, that's what I called myself at the age of five, being a big fan of the Arabian Nights translated by Andrew Lang. A few years ago I made a pseudo-historical description of the life of Abdul, and those who befell his disgusting and unimaginable manuscript of Al Azif and its translations of the vicissitudes after his death ... - a description that I will follow in my subsequent references to this dark and cursed book. I have been referencing certain excerpts from the Necronomicon for a long time - indeed, I consider it quite good fun to lend credibility to this artificial mythology through extensive quoting. Nevertheless, perhaps it is worth writing to Mr. O'Neill and disillusioning him about the white spot in his mythological erudition!

… I read Arabian Nights at the age of five. In those days I often put on a turban, painted my beard with a burnt cork, and called myself by the name (God only knows where I dug it up!) Abdul Alhazred - which I later used, in memory of bygone days, as the name of the hypothetical author of the hypothetical Necronomicon!

As for writing the Necronomicon - I wish I had enough energy and ingenuity to create it! I'm afraid this will be a difficult task, given the variety of references and hints I've made over the years! I could, of course, issue an abridged Necronomicon - containing passages that would be considered at least reasonably safe for human reading! Since the Black Book of Von Yountz and the poems of Justin Jeffery are already on sale, I should probably consider immortalizing old Abdul!

By the way, there is no "Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred". This hellish and forbidden volume is the figurative essence of my concept, which others from the W.T. also used for background in artworks.

As for the Necronomicon, the allusions to it three times over the past month have caused an incredible amount of inquiries regarding the truth and the possibility of obtaining the works of Alhazred, Eibon and von Juntz. In each case, I sincerely confessed to the forgery.

Regarding the Necronomicon - I must confess that this monstrous tome is simply a figment of my own imagination! Inventing horror books is a favorite pastime of the supernatural, and… many of W.T. can boast of such - although it may be that there is nothing to brag about. The use of mutually created demons and imaginary books in his stories rather amuses various authors - so Clark Ashton Smith often talks about my Necronomicon while I refer to his Book of Eibon... and so on. This pooling of resources allows for a pseudo-convincing backdrop of dark mythology, lore, and bibliography - although, of course, none of us has the desire to actually mislead readers.

Regarding the terrible Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred - I confess that both the ominous volume and its cursed author are nothing more than the fruits of my imagination - as well as evil entities: Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Shab-Niggurath. Tsatoggua and the Book of Eibon are the inventions of Clark Ashton Smith, while Friedrich von Juntz and his monstrous Unaussprechlichen Kulten are the fruitful imagination of Robert E. Howard. While having fun creating a convincing cycle of fictional folklore, our entire gang often refers to demons created by other members that have acquired the status of pets; so for example Smith uses my Yog-Sothoth and I use his Tsatoggua. I also occasionally insert a couple of my own demons into stories I view or co-write with other professional clients. In this way, our black pantheon acquires extensive publicity and pseudo-authority, which otherwise would not be obtained. However, we never try to reduce everything to a factual deception and always diligently explain to the questioner that this is 100% fantasy. To avoid ambiguity in my references to the Necronomicon, I have compiled a brief history of its "creation"... This gives it a sort of air of believability.

Now let's touch on the "terrible and forbidden books" - I have to say that most of them are absolutely fictional. There is not, and never has been, any Abdul Alhazred and the Necronomicon, as I came up with those names myself. Robert Bloch was inspired by the idea of Ludwig Prinn and his De Vermis Mysteriis, and the Book of Eibon was the invention of Clark Ashton Smith. The late Robert I. Howard is responsible for Friedrich von Juntz and his Unaussprechlichen Kulten…

As far as real-life books on dark, occult, and supernatural subjects, the truth is, there aren't a lot of them. For this reason, it is much more fun to invent mythical works such as the Necronomicon and the Book of Eibon.

The name "Abdul Alhazred" was coined for me by an adult (I can't remember who) when I was 5 years old, and after reading the Arabian Nights, I longed to become an Arab. Years later, it occurred to me that it would be funny to use it as the name of the author of a forbidden book. The name "Necronomicon"... came to me in a dream.

To Harry O. Fisher (late February)

Notes

Magic of the Necronomicon

Around the 10th century AD, the Al Azif manuscript was translated into Greek language and received the name Necronomicon familiar to the world (“Necro” in Greek means “dead”, and “nomos” - “experience”, “customs”, “rules”, “postulate”).

In 1230, the book was also translated into Latin, where it did not lose its Greek name, and later in the 16th century the manuscript fell into the hands of Dr. John Dee, who translated it into English.

There is a statement that since the 17th century, no matter how much adherents of various religious cults tried to destroy this book, the number of its copies in the world is always 96. However, only seven of them are of real value, that is, according to legend, they can serve as gates to other dimensions. Three such books are in Arabic, one in Greek, two in Latin, and one in English (the one from John Dee).

The remaining copies have text distortions, but despite this, they are endowed with great power, which distinguishes the Necronomicon from all other ordinary books.

The book indicates some of the deities of the previous race - they personify the principles of time, space and infinity, the dark and light aspects of the world, eternal chaos and the forces of nature. According to Arabic manuscripts, it is said that there you can find the secrets of the human mind and easily master the ability to influence the human psyche.

According to the Necronomicon, our Earth has a mysterious power, which is personified in the image of the Supreme Deity - Cthulhu. It also speaks of the arrival of the race of the "Ancients" and the fall of mankind, as soon as Cthulhu is awakened. The legend says that people's dreams are Cthulhu's thoughts, and our life is his dream. When the deity wakes up, we will disappear. So better not wake up Cthulhu.

Same there in question and about other ancient deities such as: Nyarlathotep - Mighty messenger; Shub-Niggurath; Nyarlathotep - Creeping chaos; Azatoth; Dagon; etc. All these powerful gods, as well as various evil spirits from other worlds, can be called up with the help of a book. That is why many rulers and dictators such as Napoleon, Richard Francis Burton, Gurdjieff, Bismarck, Hitler sought to possess it. After the Second World War, special groups were created in the USA and the USSR, which were engaged in the search for this unexplored relic.

The Necronomicon appears before us as a great source of the Wisdom of the Spirit and what we used to call magic. Its author encourages each reader to gradually ascend to the heights of the knowledge of being. Everyone can penetrate into consciousness information structure encrypted text and get the amount of knowledge for which he is ready. The Necronomicon is multi-layered, and gives personal revelation to every person who reads it.

If we discard all supernatural prerequisites, then no one will be able to tell you what the Necronomicon actually gives, and whether a person is able to know all its power. Perhaps someday there will be someone who can absorb the wisdom hidden in the book, only with each century the chance that this will happen inexorably decreases.

The Necronomicon is the mysterious creation of Howard Lovecraft. Book of the Dead Necronomicon

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Historical prototypes of the Necronomicon

Mention of the book in Lovecraft's letters

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Historical prototypes of the Necronomicon

Notes

see also

Eastern practices

Necronomicon of Alhazred

Magic of the Necronomicon