Al Azif: Is The Necronomicon Real?

Originally posted by phroziac
So its not real.

I'll have to say, I like you man. You just look like "Big Bang Theory Type"....and I am more of a jock type but with YOUR principles...it is indeed real. To dabble in this is to betray the rest of your life. It is one of those instances where you have to make a decision,...to do or ...not to do....and the rest of your life will be a testament to your decision. I tell you this is real and I have not doctorate in HG wells or Levante or whoever the hell wrote or pitched this book or title, but I have been haunted for 22 years for reading off just one of these passages.

There are a lot of people like Phenomium who have had their lives changed by "spirit stuff", whether they wanted the changes or not.

Necromancy has been practiced for thousands of years on this planet in a very large number of forms. This is a huge subject. Paradoxically one could almost say that it is a subject the less said about the better.

There are too many egotistical dabblers (speaking from first hand experience now) who blunder into more than they can handle in this area. I could talk a lot about this but discretion is the wiser course. I know what suffering can be experienced as a result of mistakes made in this area of inquiry.

I've been to the Magickal Childe back in the late 80's when I was into the occult and Paganism, used to buy all my incense there. Cool store.

reply to post by Xoanon


This response is from a literary standpoint only. I'm not debating whether the book is fiction or not. It is. And it's a very good piece of fiction as well. The problem is, IMO, it's too good.

Even while he was alive, people would ask Lovecraft where they could get their hands on the original. That's the mark of a good fiction writer; leaving people wondering. One way fiction writers do that is to pepper their stories with real names, places, dates, etc.....All of these historical facts though are not presented in an accurate timeline. For instance, he can drop the name of a monk and say that monk did something in 500 AD when in fact that monk didn't do anything until 1,200 AD. The monk existed, there's proof of it, just not in the time frame that Lovecraft suggested. So if you don't know your history, it's going to come across as real.

This book is reality based fiction. There were too many real occultists, like Waite, involved with it for it not to be. Besides, all you have to do is look at the history of certain points in that book to see that certain places and people actually did exist and you'll see that. Maybe that was Simon's doing. Fiction writers for years have done this. Rice does it, King, Koontz and every other fiction writer worth their salt does it. But the most important aspect of that book is fact that Necromancy does exist. It existed back before religion was even thought of. Back then, this practice wasn't seen as either good or evil. It simply was what it is. Religion is what put those labels on it.

www.newadvent.org...

Let me put this in a different perspective. You have a fiction writer like King and then a science fiction writer like Asimov. King will make the fiction look realistic because everything written is placed on earth and, roughly, in this day and age. Asimov couldn't do that with a book about, say, populating Saturn. Kings premise was realistic to begin with while Asimov's was not.

Therein lies the uniqueness of The Necronomican. The premise is somewhere between realistic and not. Lovecraft however was somehow able to bridge that gap and turn that gray area into a very believable work of fiction. Now, let me backtrack a little. Necromancy is real. Has been for a very long time now and everyone knows it. Who are you, or anyone else for that matter, to say that the sigils and incantations are not real? This is where this book gets real sticky and I for one don't recommend it for that reason alone.

I'm not saying that the sigils and incantations are real and I'm not saying they're not. I'm not qualified to make that call. But the fact that this is a reality based piece of fiction makes it to where I'm not about to go taking the directions of the book and finding out for myself. And that's another thing you have to keep in mind here OP. This book is not your typical piece of fiction. And being a Lovecraft fan, I think you know it. If anything, it reads like a how-to manual with a history of the ingredients. How many fiction books do you know of that are written in that format? Of those, how many are questioned as being real or not?

The fact is, I don't think Lovecraft realized just how good that book was going to be when he wrote it. (On top of everything else I mentioned, people say that book was written in the vein of The Book Of Shadows. Even a literary novice will tell you there is no "one" Book Of Shadows. If you don't know what it is, look this one up yourself, this post is getting long winded as it is.) He took a style of writing with a subject matter that is controversial to begin with, and put it in a format to make it look even more realistic. Sometimes I think that "book" was the ultimate inside joke between him and a buddy The only one's, by the way, who will ever know just how real that book actually is.

Lovecraft went on record as saying the book was a figment of his imagination. ( Maybe what Simon did was take Lovecraft's' collection of writings and correspondences and put them in a book format?) Fair enough, but what he didn't say was that no book of fiction is ever 100% fake. At least not the type of fiction we're talking about here. Even Asimov can put in one of his books the density of gravity on Saturn and have it factual. The question is, which parts of The Necronomican are real and which aren't.

Again, it was the ultimate inside joke I think. On one hand you want to get to the bottom of it all, but on the other hand................you don't.

lovecraftbookclub.wordpress.com...

Through nameless aeons and inconceivable dimensions I used to own the Simon one.
Think one of my younger friends swiped it though hoping to become some uber leet necromancer or something.
He's now a security guard.

As for the Evil dead one, yes you can get some fabulous replicas, and yes I want one.

reply to post by Xoanon


Great thread.As a teenager I was into alot of wierd,dark stuff.I borrowed a few books from an acquaintance and one of them was the "Necronomicon".Don't know which one.I can't remember.Probably the Simon one.I,personally,could not make any sense of it.

Hello everyone,

I am scouring the web at the moment, looking for personal anecdotes of the Simon Necronomicon for our entertainment.

But I want to take a moment to share something with you all.

You will remember that I mentioned British occultist Kenneth Grant and his mighty contributions to the lore and madness surrounding the Simon Necronomicon.

Essentially, it was Kenneth Grant's story of the Astral Necronomicon, and the magickal connection between Lovecraft and Crowley, that gave Simon/Peter levenda the literary traction that he needed for his tremendous spoof.

I would like to copy the obituary from Starfire Publications linked by Dan Harms, foremost researcher in to the Necronomicon to our thread here...

Kenneth Grant died on 15th January 2011 after a period of illness. Our condolences go first and foremost to his family, whose privacy is something which we all wish to respect at this difficult time.

Kenneth Grant is best knownto Papers readers for his influential role in bringing together occult practice with the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, thus inspiring the Simon Necronomicon (yes, yes, two monks and so on) and a great deal of modern magical practice. Kenneth Grant, in our few interactions, was always a gentleman, even when I was being youthful and brash. He will be missed.

danharms.wordpress.com...

And I would like to dedicate this song to all three of them, H.P. Lovecraft, Aleister Crowley, Kenneth Grant...

and yes, I believe that Peter Levenda should be included with them from here on out and forever more.

I am very grateful to all of these writers for making life here in our temporary home tolerable and for pointing the way to being eaten first when our Cosmic Overlords return.

I am especially thankful to Mr. Levenda for working so hard to keep it all alive. Sorry I had to smash up your literary hoax. But that has to be done to make room for mine, and all those to come. Let's get writing.



Iaaaa!

X.

So, does anybody who is familiar with authentic grimoires and occult practices have a copy of the Necronomicon? I'm now curious as to whether they copied any real sigils from other grimoires to make it seem authentic. I would, if i was planning on writing a fake grimoire and claiming it to be real....

reply to post by Maroboduus


This little site might help you along on your quest.
warlockasylum.wordpress.com...

reply to post by Maroboduus


Heya,

The text itself was Levenda's creation, a synthesis of Sumerian and later Babylonian myths and texts peppered with names of entities from H.P. Lovecraft's notorious and enormously popular Cthulhu stories.

Levenda seems to have drawn heavily on the works of Samuel Noah Kramer for the Sumerian, and almost certainly spent a great deal of time at the University of Pennsylvania library researching the thing. Structurally, the text was modeled on the wiccan Book of Shadows and the Goetia,

-Alan Cabal. The Doom That Came to Chelsea

www.scribd.com...

Now, without consulting Levenda it is anyones best guess. But Levenda is no slouch, in fact he is as meticulous as a man can be while hoaxing a volume that is supposed to reside on the Astral

No, seriously, the man is a machine, just read Unhloy Alliances (Nazi Occultism) and you will see what I mean. he makes Jimm Marrs look like .59 cent pulp fiction (writing-wise).

So yeah, there is likely a smorgasbord of all kind of 'real' stuff in there that he carefully cobbled together from other places.

But I would like to also take the opportunity to address something that Taupin Disciple has brought up. You will notice that Cabal claims that the Wiccan Book of Shadows was used as structural inspiration for Simon's Necronomicon.

Listen guys, follow me now, this is how thick the literary/occult hoaxes get with these guys...

There is no Wiccan Book of Shadows before or beyond Gerald Gardner, the 'father' of modern wicca. Gardner started publishing books in about 1954 and this Book of Shadows is a feature and device of the movement that he created, not an historical book with any lineage.

And it is widely believed that Gardner at least had help from Crowley. After Crowley 'restored' magick, his next project was witchcraft but he never got it off the ground. It is believed that Gardner was in correspondence with Crowley before Gardner moved back to Britain in 1945.

All one has to do is read Gardner and do the hermeneutics, I know that it only stands as my opinion, (which is shared by others that, of course, cannot be present on this thread) but all of the structure that Gardner uses for his 'Wiccan' covens was lifted from the writings of A. Crowley and have been modified.

So when Cabal says Book of Shadows? He is guessing or drawing from his own limited experience with these 'special' types of books.

Levenda was and is way too slick to have fallen for that, he would not have used such an obvious hoax as a template, he probably just went right for the Crowley, and crowley based much on the Greek Magical Papyri.. In fact I would not be surprised if he just went straight for the papyri.

Hope that made sense.

X.

reply to post by Suspiria

“The Underworld in ancient Sumer was known by many names, among them ABSU or “Abyss”, sometimes as Nar Mattaru, the great Underworld Ocean, and also as Cutha or KUTU as it is called in the Enuma Elish (the Creation Epic of the Sumerians).

The phonetic similarity between Cutha and KUTU and Chthonic, as well as Cthulhu, is striking. Judging by a Sumerian grammar at hand, the word KUTULU or Cuthalu (Lovecraft’s's Cthulhu Sumerianised) would mean “The Man of KUTU (Cutha); the Man of the Underworld; Satan or Shaitan, as he is known to the Yezidis (whom Crowley considered to be the remnants of the Sumerian Tradition).

The list of similarities, both between Lovecraft’s creations and the Sumerian gods, as well as between Lovecraft’s mythos and Crowley’s magick, can go on nearly indefinitely, and in depth, for which there is no space here at present.”

warlockasylum.wordpress.com...

That is an awesome link, Suspiria, but you are undoing all of my hard work.

...Yezidis (whom Crowley considered to be the remnants of the Sumerian Tradition).

warlockasylum.wordpress.com...

Oh boy, I am going to let this slide but not without making the error very apparent to all of you that have been following along.

Crowley never spoke of the Yezidi, ever.

The Yezidi thing was introduced by Kenneth Grant, whom I mentioned earlier.

Do you see how folks get confused? Fortunately I have been riding herd on this whole publishing circus from my late teens, so it is really hard to pull one over on me. Yes, I was once interested in the subject matter, but now I am mostly interested in the writing and the personalities.

Anyhow, I thought that you would all find that little discrepancy interesting.

X.

reply to post by Xoanon


Hehe I'm sorry it's not my intention. I use it purely to show just how clever and "deep" this whole thing has become.
If it's helpful to future writers then more power to their elbow. I just hope I'm hovering at the bookshelf in Another World when the baby bat spotty chaos lords and ladies got nuts over it.

reply to post by Xoanon


I love Lovecraft. One of the most interesting things about him is that his ideas and the motifs and style he used went on to inspire so much of our modern horror, sci-fi and fantasy today. I can hardly see a horror movie without interjecting Lovecraft somewhere or other. ALIEN is a great example, as is the movie The Thing (which was based on a short story called Who Goes There that has Lovecraft's stink all over it). The theme of human curiosity leading to calamity and the rising of some dark unknown truth is a fantastic theme and one that Lovecraft used very effectively.

As for the Necronomicon it's one of those great devices that can be anything the author or writer needs at the time. In the Evil Dead films it raises demons and spirits while in Lovecraft's own works it seems to relate more to the "Old Ones" of the Cthulhu mythos (decidedly aliens, not demons).

The book doesn't really exist though many books by the name Necronomicon have been written since Lovecraft invented it.

Originally posted by Suspiria
reply to post by Maroboduus

 

This little site might help you along on your quest.
warlockasylum.wordpress.com...

They use the fact that the Simon Necronomicon has a resemblance to Lovecraft, which in turn resembles Sumerian mythology, as proof that the Simon Necronomicon has actual links to Sumeria. That is beyond stupid. The obvious conclusion (and truth of the matter) would be that it resembles Lovecraft because it was copied from his writings, and Lovecraft's fiction resembles mythology because it was directly influenced by it.

But i do find it amusing that one of the sources they are using to attempt to prove the validity of the Simon Necronomicon is....the Simon Necronomicon....

Also, it keeps talking about Kutulu being a real ancient Sumerian god. There is no Sumerian god named Kutulu, outside of the author's imagination. Kutulu is not a Sumerian word at all. Mayhaps they should actually bother reading Sumerian mythology instead of taking the author's word for it, and using his own book to prove itself as being real. Or something like that.

(No offense, Suspiria. Not criticizing you for posting it.)

reply to post by Phenomium


phroziac

I'll have to say, I like you man. You just look like "Big Bang Theory Type"....and I am more of a jock type but with YOUR principles...it is indeed real.

To dabble in this is to betray the rest of your life. It is one of those instances where you have to make a decision,...to do or ...not to do....and the rest of your life will be a testament to your decision.

Phenomium, I agree with you; he can write too. I am also a 'jock' type outwardly, but inside, I am a boiling, gurgling mass of extreme geekiness. There is something Irresistible about phroziac.

I say we start a cult and call ourselves 'Phrozians' for a while, at least till we get board, then maybe we can turn on him and eat him.

Just a suggestion.



X.

Welllllll,

That was fun.

Thank you all for coming by and contributing, it is always nice to meet, in some small way , the others that will be around us when we are all eaten reasonably firstish this December

So I wanted to conclude by re-posting the Peter Levenda quote that EarthCitizen23 shared with us.

The people we trust are those who can measure the measurable. The people we distrust are those who point to the invisible and shout to get our attention.

Our world is marching calmly to an obscure and unknowable end because we, the people, hear the drum, feel the beat, know our place in line. That’s better, somehow, than jumping off the path into the dark forest where God dwells like a hungry tiger.

There is too much personal responsibility in jumping out of line, and if you then try to jump back in, you will find you have lost your place and your fellow marchers no longer want you to join them. You are dirty; you are crazed; you have seen what they are afraid to see.

-Peter Levenda. Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

sinisterforces.info...

Can I hear an , Amen?!

aw man, are you done with the thread?
I was enjoying it, despite my earlier negativity....

Oh wait...



There we go.



x.

this site claims the necronomicon is real and was "incorporated" by Crowley's "The Book of the Law" which was in turn "incorporated" by Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu."