H.P. Lovecraft - The Complete Necronomicon.pdf - H.P Lovecraft - Necronomicon - R3flux

The Complete Simon

Necronomicon

INTRODUCTION

IN THE MID - 1920's, roughly two blocks from where the Warlock Shop once stood, in

Brooklyn Heights, lived a quiet, reclusive man, an author of short stories, who eventually

divorced his wife of two years and returned to his boyhood home in Rhode Island, where

he lived with his two aunts. Born on August 20, 1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft would

come to exert an impact on the literary world that dwarfs his initial successes with Weird

Tales magazine in 1923. He died, tragically, at the age of 46 on March 15, 1937, a victim

of cancer of the intestine and Bright's Disease. Though persons of such renown as

Dashiell Hammett were to become involved in his work, anthologising it for publication

both here an abroad, the reputation of a man generally conceded to be the "Father of

Gothic Horror" did not really come into its own until the past few years, with the massive

re-publication of his works by various houses, a volume of his selected letters, and his

biography. In the July, 1975, issue The Atlantic Monthly, there appeared a story entitled

"There Are More Things", written by Jorge Luis Borges, "To the memory of H.P.

Lovecraft". This gesture by a man of the literary stature of Borges is certainly an

indication that Lovecraft has finally ascended to his rightful place in the history of

American literature, nearly forty years after his death.

In the same year that Lovecraft found print in the pages of Weird Takes, another

gentleman was seeing his name in print; but in the British tabloid press.

NEW SINISTER REVELATIONS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY read the front page of

the Sunday Express. It concerned testimony by one of the notorious magician's former

followers (or, actually, the wife of one of his followers) that Crowley had been

responsible for the death of her husband, at the Abbey of Thelema, in Cefalu, Sicily. The

bad press, plus the imagined threat of secret societies, finally forced Mussolini to deport

the Great Beast from Italy. Tales of horrors filled the pages of the newspapers in England

for weeks and months to come: satanic rituals, black masses, animal sacrifice, and even

human sacrifice, were reported - or blatantly lied about. For although many of the stories

were simply not true or fanciful exaggeration, one thing was certain: Aleister Crowley

was a Magician, and one of the First Order.

Born on October 12, 1875, in England - in the same country as Shakespeare - Edward

Alexander Crowley grew up in a strict Fundamentalist religious family, members of a

sect called the "Plymouth Brethren". The first person to call him by that Name and

Number by which he would become famous (after the reference in the Book of

Revelation), "The Beast 666", was his mother, and he eventually took this appellation to

heart. He changed his name to Aleister Crowley while still at Cambridge, and by that

name , plus "666", he would never be long out of print, or out of newspapers. For he

believed himself to be the incarnation of a god, an Ancient One, the vehicle of a New

Age of Man's history, the Aeon of Horus, displacing the old Age of Osiris. In 1904, he

had received a message, from what Lovecraft might have called "out of space", that

contained the formula for a New World Order, a new system of philosophy, science, art

and religion, but this New Order had to begin with the fundamental part, and common

denominator, of all four: Magick.

In 1937, the year Lovecraft dies, the Nazis banned the occult lodges of Germany, notable

among them two organisations which Crowley had supervised: the A\ A\ and the O.T.O.,

the latter of which he was elected head in England, and the former which he founded

himself. There are those who believe that Crowley was somehow, magickally,

responsible for the Third Reich, for two reasons: one, that the emergence of New World

Orders generally seems to instigate holocausts and, two, that he is said to have influenced

the mind of Adolf Hitler. While it is almost certain that Crowley and Hitler never met, it

is known that Hitler belonged to several occult lodges in the early days after the First

War; the symbol of one of these, the Thule Gesellschaft which preached a doctrine of

Aryan racial superiority, was the infamous Swastika which Hitler was later to adopt as

the Symbol of the forms, however, is evident in many of his writings, notably the essays

written in the late 'Thirties. Crowley seemed to regard the Nazi phenomenon as a

Creature of Christianity, in it's anti-Semitism and sever moral restrictions concerning its

adherents, which lead to various types of lunacies and "hangups" that characterised many

of the Reich's leadership. Yet, there can be perhaps little doubt that the chaos which

engulfed the world in those years was prefigured, and predicted, in Crowley's Liber AL

vel Legis; the Book of the Law.

The Mythos and the Magick

We can profitably compare the essence of most of Lovecraft's short stories with the basic

themes of Crowley's unique system of ceremonial Magick. While the latter was a

sophisticated psychological structure, intended to bring the initiate into contact with his

higher Self, via a process of individuation that is active and dynamic (being brought

about by the "patient" himself) as opposed to the passive depth analysis of the Jungian

adepts, Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos was meant for entertainment. Scholars, of course, are

able to find higher, ulterior motives in Lovecraft's writings, as can be done with any

manifestation of Art.

Lovecraft depicted a kind of Christian Myth of the struggle between opposing forces of

Light and Darkness, between God and Satan, in the Cthulhu Mythos. Some critics may

complain that this smacks more of the Manichaen heresy than it does of genuine

Christian dogma; yet, as a priest and former monk, I believe it is fair to say that this

dogma is unfortunately very far removed from the majority of the Faithful to be of much

consequence. The idea of a War against Satan, and of the entities of Good and Evil

having roughly equivalent Powers, is perhaps best illustrated by the belief, common

among the Orthodox churches of the East, in a personal devil as well as a personal angel.

This concept has been amplified by the Roman Catholic Church to such an extent -

perhaps subconsciously - that a missal in the Editor's possession contains an engraving

for the Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle, for November 30, that bears the legend "Ecce Qui

Tollis Peccata Mundi" - Behold Him Who Taketh Away The Sins of the World - and the

picture above it is of the atomic bomb!

Basically, there are two "sets" of gods in the mythos : the Elder Gods, about whom not

much is revealed, save that they are a stellar Race that occasionally comes to the rescue

of man, and which corresponds to the Christian "Light"; and the Ancient Ones, about

which much is told, sometimes in great detail, who correspond to "Darkness". These

latter are the Evil Gods who wish nothing but ill for the Race of Man, and who constantly

strive to break into our world through a Gate or Door that leads from the Outside, In.

There are certain people, among us, who are devotees of the Ancient Ones, and who try

to open the Gate, so that this evidently repulsive organisation may once again rule the

Earth. Chief among these is Cthulhu, typified as a Sea Monster, dwelling in the Great

Deep, a sort of primeval Ocean; a Being that Lovecraft collaborator August Derleth

wrongly calls a "water elemental". There is also Azazoth, the blind idiot god of Chaos,

Yog Sothot, Azathoth's partner in Chaos, Shub Niggurath, the "goat with a thousand

young", and others. They appear at various times throughout the stories of the Cthulhu

Mythos in frightening forms, which test the strength and resourcefulness of the

protagonists in their attempts to put the hellish Things back to whence they came. There

is an overriding sense of primitive dear and cosmic terror in those pages, as though man

is dealing with something that threatens other than his physical safety: his very spiritual

nature. This horror-cosmology is extended by the frequent appearance of the Book,

NECRONOMICON.

The NECRONOMICON, is according to Lovecraft's tales, a volume written in Damascus

in the Eighth Century, A.D., by a person called the "Mad Arab", Abdhul Alhazred. It

must run roughly 800 pages in length, as there is a reference in one of the stories

concerning some lacunae on a page in the 700's It had been copied and reprinted in

various languages - the story goes - among them Latin, Greek and English. Doctor Dee,

the Magus of Elizabethan fame, was supposed to have possessed a copy and translated it.

This book, according to the mythos, contains the formulae for evoking incredible things

into visible appearance, beings and monsters which dwell in the Abyss, and Outer Space,

of the human psyche.

Such books have existed in fact, and do exist. Idries Shah tells us of a search he

conducted for a copy of the Book of Power by the Arab magician Abdul-Kadir (see: The

Secret Lore of Magic by Shah), of which only one copy was ever found. The Keys of

Solomon had a similar reputation, as did The Magus by Barret, until all of these works

were eventually reprinted in the last fifteen years or so. The Golden Dawn, a famous

British and American Occult lodge of the turn of the Century, was said to have possessed

a manuscript called "the Veils of Negative Existence" by another Arab.

These were the sorcerer's handbooks, and generally not meant as textbooks or

encyclopedias of ceremonial magick. In other words, the sorcerer or magician is

supposed to be in possession of the requisite knowledge and training with which to carry

out a complex magickal ritual, just as a cook is expected to be able to master the

scrambling of eggs before he conjures an "eggs Benedict"; the grimoires, or Black Books,

were simply variations on a theme, like cookbooks, different records of what previous

magicians had done, the spirits they had contacted, and the successes they had. The

magicians who now read these works are expected to be able to select the wheat from the

chaff, in much the same fashion as an alchemist discerning the deliberate errors in a

treatise on his subject.

Therefore it was (and is) insanity for the tyro to pick up a work on ceremonial Magick

like the Lesser Key of Solomon to practise conjurations. It would also be folly to pick up

Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practise with the same intention. Both books are

definitely not for beginners, a point which cannot be made too often. Unfortunately,

perhaps, the dread NECRONOMICON falls into this category.

Crowley's Magick was a testimony of what he has found in his researches into the

forbidden, and forgotten, lore of past civilisations and ancient times. His Book of the Law

was written in Cairo in the Spring of 1904, when he believed himself to be in contact

with a praeter-human intelligence called Aiwass who dictated to him the Three Chapters

that make up the Book. It had influenced him more than any other, and the remainder of

his life was spent trying to understand it fully, and to make its message known to the

world. It, too, contains the formulae necessary to summon the invisible into visibility, and

the secrets of transformations are hidden within its pages, but this is Crowley's own

NECRONOMICON, received in the Middle East in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of

Gizeh, and therein is writ not only the beauty, but the Beast that yet awaits mankind.

It would be vain to attempt to deliver a synopsis of Crowley's philosophy, save that its

'leitmotif' is the Rabelaisian

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

H.P. Lovecraft - The Complete Necronomicon.pdf

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