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The Necronomicon

If I have written this already earlier, could you please let me know and I'll take it out. I am rushed and at work so have no time to check...

I own a copy of the Necronomicon, bought from the internet in 2001. At that time I was in a really shitty job. At lunch I used to drive to a park nearby, park and read it.
The day was in April and the first really nice spring day of the year. You know, so nice that you just want to be outside.
With the Necronomicon on my knees I inhaled the fresh but warm air and wished with all my heart I could be at home instead of going back to that horrible workplace.
Then I thought: "Well there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it" [no way could I just skive -again or think of anything in order to go home]. I felt like a caged animal...Most of you will understand ;)

So after my break I drove back and made a cup of tea and sat back down ready for "action". When I got called into the boss' office and got the sack for something I didn't even do [it was a set-up].
Ha, I thought, left the tea, told everybody to be happy in their shitty job and I was off, beeping happily when driving of their premises...

Guess what I did that afternoon - Yup, I sat in the garden with the old book!

Now did the "N" have anything to do with it?

Nahhh - no way!
But when I tell the story I always make people think it did - just for the sake of it! :twisted:
 
a little ot but has anybody read the necronauts? it is a graphic novel, rather short, but it features literary characters, real and fictional, fighting evil creatures who are said to be the influence for lovecrafts work. it has charles fort and arthur conan doyle along with houdini. very strange but worth the read. i suppose my point is that it is gratifying to see classic literature in the pop culture scene. ramble over :)
 
Yep I was lucky enough to pick up Necronauts when I seen it as I've never seen it o n sale again. Well worth a read :)
 
Hi all, this is my first post on the forums here, what a great subject for discussion. As a long time lovecrsft fan, i was quite amazed at all the background that has been invented for this most famous grimoire, all the later editions etc. in fact it wasnt until recently, when i purchased a book titled 'the necronomicon' by chaosium i found out it was all made up!! :oops: I read somewhere, that someone photocopied a page of arabic script 500 times, bound it all together and sold it as 'the necronomicon'!!
cheers for lookin at my rather pointless post.
More rlevant ones comin soon!! :lol:
 
Necronomicon

I've been fascinated by this subject ever since first discovering two Lovecraft stories in my high school library 48 years ago.

The NECRONOMICON is indeed a FICTIONAL title, created by H. P. Lovecraft. All that actually exists of it is a handful of quotations Lovecraft made up for his pulp magazine stories.

There have of course been several cobbled-together, pastiche-versions of the NECRONOMICON in more-or-less recent years.

Lovecraft seems to have based this fantasy work on various mediaeval grimoires he either read about or actually examined. (Several of these had been reprinted by Lovecraft's day and he had easy access to the Brown University library.)

However there seems to have been yet one more inspiration, another famous but "missing" magical manuscript which may also have never actually existed in the first place - the legendary ancient Egyptian BOOK OF THOTH.

But THAT'S been patched together and stitched-up and "re-created," too.
 
Honey, the Old Gentleman would spin in his grave, then climb out of it if he knew people wanted to read his stuff online!

Your library will have it. Ideally, look for a hardback Arkham edition; but paperback is okay too. Chaosium produces themed trade paperback anthologies with the original HPL stories bundled with deriviative mythos tales from both his friends and later writers. If that's what you can find, I recommend getting a couple, just to increase coverage.

Prepare yourself for the most mindboggling prose of your life. Lovecraft is either the worst good writer or the best bad writer you will ever encounter, bar none.
 
Of course horror, if they subdivide it that much.

If they have a further subsection for cyclopean eldritch horror beyond mortal ken, go there.

(sings)
Join me in devout prayer at midnight so deep,
'Cause once you know what's out there then you'll never sleep.
 
They are also not online although they once were. This could be for one of two reasons:

1. Although published before the usual cut off for making books available online the copyright was renewed. This led to a mix up - someone put them online and his estate had it stopped (I have this vision of the actual grounds of his house coming alive).

2. The server they were placed on went offline one dark night and no one has been able to surf into that part of cyberspace since.

You make up your mind which is closer to the truth. ;)
 
Subterranean Press have announced Dead Names, a sequel of sorts, to Simon's Necronomicon.
 
Re: Hardy Individualism

FraterLibre said:
I loved Hardy first time I found his pristine, controlled prose and his vivid people and land. I'm among the few who simply doesn't understand why Jude, the Obscure is considered such a downer. Oh, sure, Jude's misused, abused, and kicked when down throughout, but the book is really about the woman who does this to him, and the type of dolt he is for allowing it. In the end he even becomes something ennobled, almost a saint, by his beatific acceptance of such unrelenting abuse. Which was the point, I think, not to depress an audience of semi-literate egotists. lol

Which is why Hardy switched to poetry and never wrote another novel again, tant pis.

Someone, maybe me, should write a Lovecraftian tale involving Hardy and how he brought doom to himself by meddling in eldritch horrors meant to be kept from our mortal ken... Strangely, it'd fit. lol

Return of the Ichor? Far From the Madding Chaos?
Click to expand...

And right there, back in 2002, is the germ of the idea that would eventually go and give us Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, just not as good as the Hardy mash-up :(
 
What is known about the author these days? I know that with Dead Names, he's told more of the story of the creation of his book, and I saw a book catalog that indicated there was a more complete Necronomicon put out in the last few years (though I can't find evidence of this, only a new book called the Gates of the Necronomicon).
 
Jason Colavito on the origins of the Necronium.

Uncovering the "Real" Necronomicon
6/6/2018

I have been waiting a very long time to report a fun and fascinating story of the “true” origins of the Necronomicon, and now I finally can! Several years ago, Jeb J. Card shared with me some of his intriguing research into the influence of the so-called “Curse of King Tut” on H. P. Lovecraft’s work as well as some conclusions he drew about the parallels between a particular episode in the history of the curse and Lovecraft’s fictitious history of the Necronomicon. I haven’t said anything about it because I have been waiting for Card to publish his findings, which are now in print in the compelling new volume Spooky Archaeology, published this month by the University of New Mexico Press. With the material in print, I can share with you how I accidentally translated the “real” Necronomicon and lived to tell the tale.

As most of you know, Lovecraft invented a dark grimoire for his story The Hound, which he called “the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.” It was a book covering the dark history of the world and its magic. “We read much in Alhazred’s Necronomicon about its properties, and about the relation of ghouls’ souls to the objects it symbolised; and were disturbed by what we read.” Over time, Lovecraft developed an elaborate history of his fictitious tome, from its origins as an Arabic volume called the Al Azif in the eighth century, to its translation into Greek and Latin, the loss of the original Arabic, and an English version composed by the occultist John Dee at the court of Elizabeth I. “Reading leads to terrible consequences,” Lovecraft wrote. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/uncovering-the-real-necronomicon
 
ramonmercado said:
Jason Colavito on the origins of the Necronium.

Uncovering the "Real" Necronomicon
6/6/2018
I have been waiting a very long time to report a fun and fascinating story of the “true” origins of the Necronomicon, and now I finally can! Several years ago, Jeb J. Card shared with me some of his intriguing research into the influence of the so-called “Curse of King Tut” on H. P. Lovecraft’s work as well as some conclusions he drew about the parallels between a particular episode in the history of the curse and Lovecraft’s fictitious history of the Necronomicon. I haven’t said anything about it because I have been waiting for Card to publish his findings, which are now in print in the compelling new volume Spooky Archaeology, published this month by the University of New Mexico Press. With the material in print, I can share with you how I accidentally translated the “real” Necronomicon and lived to tell the tale.
As most of you know, Lovecraft invented a dark grimoire for his story The Hound, which he called “the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.” It was a book covering the dark history of the world and its magic. “We read much in Alhazred’s Necronomicon about its properties, and about the relation of ghouls’ souls to the objects it symbolised; and were disturbed by what we read.” Over time, Lovecraft developed an elaborate history of his fictitious tome, from its origins as an Arabic volume called the Al Azif in the eighth century, to its translation into Greek and Latin, the loss of the original Arabic, and an English version composed by the occultist John Dee at the court of Elizabeth I. “Reading leads to terrible consequences,” Lovecraft wrote. ...
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/uncovering-the-real-necronomicon
Click to expand...

I am surprised that the Egyptian "Book of the Dead" (funerary texts) weren't given more consideration. They had been popularized since the 1840s and in color print since the 1870s in various forms. I had always thought it was pretty logical that the Necronomicon was merely an extension of the Bardo Thodol and the EBotD given an Arabian Nights makeover? Also, what about the Picatrix? It is a pretty famous grimoire originally of Arabic origins?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picatrix
 
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This is how I understand things:

The Necronomicon is, indisputably, a fictional grimoire created by Lovecraft in his writing and embellished on by other writers in the 'Lovecraft circle'

It is highly unlikely that there ever was a 'real' Necronomicon as portrayed by Lovecraft: written or channeled by Abdul Alhazred prior to his being eaten by a shoggoth in broad daylight in a market square. (Not impossible, just very, very unlikely).

There are a few 'real' grimoires that take the name Necronomicon, most notably that by 'Simon' (Peter Levenda) as well as others that, to varying degrees, portray themselves as the 'real' Necronomicon (Necronomicon, book of Dead Names by George Hay, Necronomicon Gnosis by Asenath Mason, The Necronomicon by Karl Stone). Kenneth Grant also made use of Lovecraftian entities in his Typhonian system which sprang from Thelema but which evolved considerably.
 
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Think you've nailed it there.

I've read quite a bit of the occulty nonsense that claims the Lovecraft Mythos/necronomicon is real recently, and it's actually convinced me to go back and reread Lovecraft's own work. The original stories are far far creepier than any of the garbage that has been based on them.
 
Dr. Porhoët said:
Think you've nailed it there. I've read quite a bit of the occulty nonsense that claims the Lovecraft Mythos/necronomicon is real recently, and it's actually convinced me to go back and reread Lovecraft's own work. The original stories are far far creepier than any of the garbage that has been based on them.
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Agreed. Lovecraft is a surprisingly original writer. In an age when audiences were utterly terrified of the rehashing of Vampire/Werewolf/Frankenstein's monster stories, in Lovecraft's own words he wanted to "write stories that would scare an atheist". His work "At the Mountains of Madness" is the first literary work to ever include a detailed use of notions of geological time, for example, and he is considered the creator of the philosophy of Cosmicism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism, which is no small feat.

While many people are utterly critical of his racism (as a student of history I have encountered far worse), my own impression that it is integral to Lovecraft's sense of what creates fear. The destruction of purity, the encroachment of the "other", the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" seen not as human but as a shoggoth i.e. an agglomeration of violent protoplasmic monstrosity that seeks liberation at the expense of your existence, and gods of totally alien conception that know no human pity and are at best utterly indifferent to humanity.

H.P.L. has an interesting legacy, and one that apparently doesn't translate well into film.
 
AlchoPwn said:
Agreed. Lovecraft is a surprisingly original writer. In an age when audiences were utterly terrified of the rehashing of Vampire/Werewolf/Frankenstein's monster stories, in Lovecraft's own words he wanted to "write stories that would scare an atheist". His work "At the Mountains of Madness" is the first literary work to ever include a detailed use of notions of geological time, for example, and he is considered the creator of the philosophy of Cosmicism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism, which is no small feat.

While many people are utterly critical of his racism (as a student of history I have encountered far worse), my own impression that it is integral to Lovecraft's sense of what creates fear. The destruction of purity, the encroachment of the "other", the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" seen not as human but as a shoggoth i.e. an agglomeration of violent protoplasmic monstrosity that seeks liberation at the expense of your existence, and gods of totally alien conception that know no human pity and are at best utterly indifferent to humanity.

H.P.L. has an interesting legacy, and one that apparently doesn't translate well into film.
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Well said, I couldn't agree more.
 
This is not the Necronomicon but it comes close :)

The Wisdom of the Ages and the Secrets of the Sages: A Medieval Arabic Grimoire, translated by Darius Klein. Perhaps one of the most disturbing volumes of medieval Islamic sorcery, Three Hands Press is pleased to announce the first English translation of this (in)famous work. At 350 pages, a great many magical operations are featured, spanning spirit-conjuration, djinn evocation, poisons and alchemical experiments. The book will be of interest to scholars of ceremonial magic, alchemy, herbalism, and the Islamic Golden Age, as well as those attenuated to the currents of antinomian sorcery.

https://danharms.wordpress.com/2019/02/02/forthcoming-from-three-hands-press/
 
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