A Note About the Necronomicon

Written by Old Theobald

Friday, 27 June 2008

In recent days, we at Mythos Tomes have received a number of inquiries regarding the dreaded Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred. We felt we should make our position on this matter clear.

The Necronomicon was originally an imaginary book. It was created as a plot device by the writer HP Lovecraft in 1923, for a short story titled "The Hound." Abdul Alhazred, mentioned in "The Hound" as the Necronomicon's author, was first mentioned two years earlier, in Lovecraft's "The Nameless City." Lovecraft details the fictional history of the Necronomicon in his 1927 essay, "History of the Necronomicon." This piece helped him, and the other writers in the rapidly evolving "Lovecraft circle," to stay consistent regarding the details of the Necronomicon.

Since that time, many published books, manuscripts, and props, all bearing the title "Necronomicon," have been created. There are those that believe that one or more of the published hoaxes are in fact actually the work of Lovecraft's creation, Abdul Alhazred. Some controversy has developed even among those who realize that these books are modern fabrications, as there are claims that the rituals and spells described in these books produce actual results.

Why would anyone believe that a fictional book is real? Why does the Necronomicon have its followers and believers, while, say, Tobin's Spirit Guide from the movie Ghostbusters does not? Part of the reason is the way Lovecraft wrote about the Necronomicon. As Lovecraft himself put it:

"My own rule is that no weird story can truly produce terror unless it is devised with all the care & verisimilitude of an actual hoax. The author must forget all about 'short story technique,' & build up a stark, simple account, full of homely corroborative details, just as if he were actually trying to 'put across' a deception in real life — a deception clever enough to make adults believe it."

Nor is it to be thought that the Necronomicon was the only aspect of his fiction that Lovecraft gave this sort of attention. A glance at S. T. Joshi's The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft will reveal the tremendous attention to detail that Lovecraft incorporated into his writing.

That the Necronomicon does not exist seems well established. Those interested in the details should read The Necronomicon Files, by Daniel Harms and John Wisdom Gonce III. Harms is a fairly well-known Mythos scholar, and Gonce is a practicing Occultist. Between the two of them they cover the Necronomicon legend in detail.

The staff at Mythos Tomes does not include anyone who has studied the occult, and we are not qualified to evaluate claims regarding occult traditions or occultists. This is not the case of all of our contributing writers, as we accept article submissions from our online community. (255 members and counting!) Some of the articles submitted to Mythos Tomes, particularly those dealing with the Necronomicon, do contain occult speculation, and we publish these if they seem well written, well thought out, and well argued. This has generated some controversy in the past, and we try to navigate these uncertain waters as fairly and reasonably as possible.

Thank you for taking the time to read the position of the Mythos Tomes staff. Please do contact us if you have questions, comments, or concerns.

Discuss (8 posts)

WarlockAsylum

A Note About the Necronomicon
May 20 2009 19:01:43

This thread discusses the Content article: A Note About the Necronomicon

I often wonder why this word "fiction" is often applied to the field of Necronomicon studies, especially when it comes to the Simon Necronomicon of all. It's like someone is trying to clear up a mess of rumors that I fell people have to investigate themselves. I am often wonder why haven't anyone asked themselves the question as to what grimoire ISN"T fictional?

Be Well

#335

jlv61560

Re:A Note About the Necronomicon
Mar 11 2010 06:04:18

To some degree, some of the foolishness over the Necronomicon is due to Chaosium's publishing of the "Call of Cthulhu" roleplaying game back in 1981.

Among the many things they did as part of the ever-growing list of supplements they published to support their game, they created a series of "scholarly articles" that purported to discuss the linguistic roots of things supposedly in the Necronomicon, even to the point of explaining how the entirely bogus Arabic name of Abdul Alhazred was clearly a corruption of the "correct" form of Abd al-Azred perpetrated by poor western scholarship and poor translations across several languages over the centuries. Other such bogus articles debated the commonality of the Great Old Ones in civilizations around the globe, again frequently through study of obscure forms of Chinese pictographs and so on.

To me, the amazing part is that these speculative fiction articles held up so well and were so easily supported by actual facts and clever data manipulation. Clearly Lovecraft did a wonderful job of following his own dictum about creating a short story as if it were a hoax and providing amazing verisimilitude as part of the hoax creation. As a result of all of this, we saw a book first purporting to be the Necronomicon published in paperback in the early 1980's. Filled with nonsense and drivel, it was both boring and obtuse, but it helped perpetuate the hoax by contributing to it and claiming to be an unabridged translation of an earlier work, etc, etc, etc.... And so a steady stream of what purport to be "genuine" copies of a fictional book have streamed out over the years. I wonder why no one has bothered to publish a "genuine" copy of Cultes des Ghoules?

#393

Alhazret

Re:A Note About the Necronomicon
Mar 26 2010 19:06:18

QUOTE:
I wonder why no one has bothered to publish a "genuine" copy of Cultes des Ghoules?

If I were going to tackle a mythos-tome -other- than the Necronomicon, it would certainly be a heavily expurgated English translation of Prinn's _Saracenic Rituals_. Of all the tomes, that is (to me) the most interesting and the most easily supported by a huge wealth of convincing supporting data. It would be easy enough to make it appear that Daraul, Shah, and others were drawing on the Prinn's text as a source for there work...

Could be great fun for the whole family.

#397

Alhazret

Re:A Note About the Necronomicon
Mar 26 2010 19:41:21

WarlockAsylum wrote:

QUOTE:
This thread discusses the Content article: A Note About the Necronomicon I am often wonder why haven't anyone asked themselves the question as to what grimoire ISN"T fictional?

Owen Davies made precisely that point in his recently published _Grimoires - A History of Magic Books_ saying that:

QUOTE:
"But as a piece of magical literature it, and other Necronomicons, are no less 'worthy' than their predecessors. Like other famous grimoires explored in this book, it is their falsity that makes them genuine."

Very few of the grimoires were written by their supposed authors and almost none of them existed in the time period they were supposedly written.

Typically these books start out as nothing more than entertaining stories, legends, and rumor. It is only much later that somebody gets around to actually writing them.

Likewise it was not uncommon for there to be many books claiming to be the same work (Such as Solomon's legendary text on magic).

The so-called "fake" Necronomicons are in fact highly -typical- of the grimoire tradition.

#398

jlv61560

Re:A Note About the Necronomicon
Mar 27 2010 07:50:45

Alas, the "so-called 'fake' Necronomicons" are fake precisely because they fail to provide any of the verisimilitude HPL discusses. Were they to provide mysterious quatrains and that sort of thing instead of regurgitated pastiches of warmed over "sorcery" hokum (all from a western tradition instead of an Arabic one), they might be more enjoyable!

#399

Alhazret

Re:A Note About the Necronomicon
Mar 30 2010 16:00:19

QUOTE:
"Were they to provide mysterious quatrains and that sort of thing instead of regurgitated pastiches of warmed over "sorcery" hokum (all from a western tradition instead of an Arabic one), they might be more enjoyable!"

Quite so. My inability to write "mysterious quatrains" will undoubtedly keep me from trying my hand at writing such a text.

However, that won't stop me from exploring (in some detail) the meaningful parallels between the mythos and 8th century Arab materials. HPL picked about the perfect time for Alhazred. The older Arab shamanism (cf the kahin and sha'ir) was still alive and kicking and about 40-50 years before Alhazred's death the banu Umayya had initiated a massive effort to translate non-Arab materials on alchemy, astrology and other occult "sciences". The 9th century crackdown on all things interpretable as shirk wouldn't have occurred in his life time so he would have had carte-blanche. The importation of all sorts of weird barbarous names was occurring and many of these were from Greco-Egyptian sources (so names containing "thoth" and "hotep", and references to figures like Nephre(n)ka etc would be expected).

Really it is the perfect period for a figure like Alhazred to have lived.

Seventy years earlier and he wouldn't have had plausible access to important source material. Seventy years later and he likely would have shared the fate of Hallaj and others of his ilk. There was a small window for a man like Alhazred to have flourished unimpeded in Yemen and Damascus and HPL zeroed in on it with remarkable precision. I doubt that was an accident, as he owned a book on Harun al-Rashid (which discusses the Umayyads at some length). So I suspect he had enough interest in such matters to make an educated guess as to what a likely period would have been for someone like Alhazred.

And as it happens, he nailed it.

Best Regards,
Ryan Parker

#400

Alhazret

Re:A Note About the Necronomicon
Mar 30 2010 18:02:26

QUOTE:
they created a series of "scholarly articles" that purported to discuss the linguistic roots of things supposedly in the Necronomicon,

I'd like to point out the William J. Hamblin isn't the only one to produce some high quality material of that sort. _A Critical Commentary on the Necronomicon_ by Robert M. Price is a brilliant example of what can be done if you have the ability to do a little research and too few hobbies. Others have done worthwhile work in this area (but they tend to be much shorter than Price's 80 page article). Pierre Crapon de Caprona has written some stuff that (if you explore it a little) turns out to have some remarkable leads in it. One such lead is mentioned below.

QUOTE:
Other such bogus articles debated the commonality of the Great Old Ones in civilizations around the globe

An Arabic word meaning both "Great" and "Old" is kabiir. So, the word Kabiirin can literally mean "the Great Old Ones". Although Caprona mentioned this in an article he wrote, he scarcely scratched the surface in terms of exploring the term's significance in a mythos context. Apropos the pre-Adamite Jinn, its use is quite interesting. The group of shadowy Chthonic deities called the Kaberoi in Greek mythology are quite clearly related (as are the Latin Cabiri). The use of the term "gibborim" with reference to the Nephilim is fascinating. This last use is most probably derivative of the Syrian and Phoenician "Great Gods" who were also called "kabiri".

These deities appear to have been important figures throughout the Near East, and yet the subject must have been surrounded by secrecy as (in nearly every case) they are quite mysterious and little can be said about them beyond that they are equivalent to the archaic titan / Gods-before-the-Gods motif.

Anyway, I'd suggest that Kabiirin was the term used by Alhazred in his Al 'Azif for "Great Old Ones" and that a more detailed exploration of the term could produce some interesting material in terms of seeming to illustrate an awareness of the Great Old Ones cross-culturally (as the kabiri myth seems to have spread quite widely and they are reasonable approximations of the Old Ones)

Warmly yours
Ryan Parker

#401

jlv61560

Re:A Note About the Necronomicon
Mar 31 2010 02:17:10

You've got that exactly right...speaking of "nailing it!"

#402

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