This book is legendary. It was always enveloped in a halo of sinister secrets. The eerie legends associated with the book of the dead “Necronomicon” have been familiar to mankind for a long time.
At different times, the book was called differently – “The Key to the Gate of Hell”, “The Book of Evil”, “The Book of the Dead”, but today it is most often called “The Book of the Dead Necronomicon”. Someone thinks “Necronomicon” is a fiction of the famous writer Howard Lovecraft, but most are still convinced that the book is real.
Today on the Internet, there are a huge number of sites where anyone is offered to familiarize themselves with the contents of the legendary tome. However, with all the power of the worldwide network, there are things that are beyond its control, and the Necronomicon is one of them. This book will always be kept secret from the uninitiated, and it is in our best interest that this order is not disturbed for as long as possible.
According to legend, the book contains the history and magical rituals of the great ancients – the race that lived on Earth before the appearance of mankind. To those who knew the secrets of the Necronomicon, not only the wisdom of the ages was revealed, but also the power over otherworldly forces. However, the book does not reveal its secrets to everyone, and mental health or even death can pay for idle curiosity and ignorance.
It is believed that these manuscripts are capable of opening the gates to parallel worlds. The gates open in both directions, and in exchange for strength and power, the magician runs the risk of letting spirits of enormous destructive power into our reality. Perhaps that is why they always tried to hide the book of the dead “Necronomicon” from the eyes of the inhabitants so that no one could read it.
We cannot play with what we are unable to understand and realize. However, the “Necronomicon” can not only destroy, it opens up tremendous opportunities for comprehending other worlds, and therefore expanding consciousness. But in order for this to become possible, humanity needs to “mature” a little more.
Origin of the book
The original Necronomicon was written in Arabic and, at the time of its creation, was called Al Azif. Such an unusual name arose as an imitation of the ominous night sounds, which the Arabs mistook for demonic howls. The book was created by the mad poet Abdul Alhazred around the 8th century. A native of Sanaa, one of the provinces of Yemen, as a young man, he left his home and went to wander around the Middle East.
For two years, he lived by the ruins of Babylon, for several years, he learned the wisdom of the Egyptian priests in Memphis and then spent a whole decade in the Arabian desert, which then bore the name Rub al Khaliy (meaning “empty quarter”), and today is called Dakhna (“Dark red desert”).
This place has long been considered unclean, and the inhabitants of nearby lands are still trying to bypass it, so as not to inadvertently incur the wrath of the owners of the desert – evil spirits, servants of the shaitan, and the angel of death.
Legends say that this desert is inhabited by demons and terrible monsters, and the survivor in it has always been considered a hero. The poet was lucky – he returned alive and spent the rest of his life in the Syrian city of Damascus. There he created his mysterious book.
According to the ancient Arab belief, it is in Dakhna that the entrance to the mysterious city of Iram is hidden. Arab mystics and magicians (Magrribs) considered Irem a very important and sacred place. Its full name is Iram dhat al-Imad. According to old legends, this city was built by a genie at the behest of Shah Shaddad.
The Magrrib believed that Irem was located on a different level of reality, and not in a physical place, such as, for example, Damascus, New York, or Riga. They were convinced that the pillars are a symbol of the creatures of the previous race and called Irem the “City of Pillars”, that is, the city of the Ancients. By the will of Allah himself, this beautiful city was destroyed. Now only sand-covered ruins remain of it, under which the great knowledge of a powerful ancient civilization is buried.
At all times, the magicians of the East tried to find a way to the hidden city, but it was not easy at all to do this. Some tried to penetrate the edge of reality with the help of lucid dreams, others through meditation. There were also those who wanted to step into the unknown with the help of powerful drugs.
It does not matter how, but a person needed to reach fans – a state when the fetters of the flesh fall off, and the spirit unites with the great emptiness. For those who managed to gain power over this sacred emptiness and go beyond it, great energy and unlimited power over the inhabitants of both worlds – over people and jinn were revealed.
In the 8th century, those people who had contact with the jinn were called “majnun” – possessed by power. All Sufi heroes were majnun. However, in our time, this word is translated as “mad man”.
This is why Alhazred was considered an insane poet. In the old days, all Arabic books were written in verse, including even such orthodox works as the Koran. Arab culture claimed that genies inspired poets to create. That is why the Prophet Muhammad emphatically denied that he was a poet. He wanted to show all people that he was inspired by Allah and not some kind of genie.
According to Arab mythology, jinn is powerful creatures that lived in the world before the appearance of humans. Some unknown circumstance forced them one day to leave our world into another reality, where they are now in a dormant or frozen state. The magician who conquered the void gained the power to awaken the genies and revive them in our reality.
It is unclear how the Yemeni wanderer managed to find the way to the forbidden city, but it was there that he found a repository of precious manuscripts that contain the knowledge of a great race that lived on Earth long before the emergence of our civilization. In the culture of the East, this race is usually called the Ancients.
Everything that Abdul Alhazred learned from the Iram manuscripts, he described in his book. True, the disclosure of secret knowledge did not bring him either glory or recognition.
According to legend, Abdul Alhazred suddenly disappeared from Damascus, where he lived in the last years of his life, and no one ever saw him again. However, popular rumor claims that the poet was torn to pieces right on the street by some terrible invisible monster.
The further fate of the tome
Whatever the fate of the author, his work has survived. Around the 10th century, the manuscript “Al Azif” was translated into Greek and received the name, familiar to the world, “Necronomicon” (“necro” translated from Greek means “dead”, and “nomos” means “experience”, “customs”, “rules “,” Postulate”).
In 1230, the book was translated into Latin, in this translation, it retained its Greek name, and only later, in the 16th century, did the manuscript fall into the hands of Dr. John Dee, who translated it into English. John Dee is a man of legend, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth of England, one of the greatest scientists of the 16th century, an alchemist, magician, and sorcerer. The most splendid courts of Europe challenged the honor of hosting him.
Once, at the invitation of Emperor Rudolph, he arrived in Prague, and there, according to historical chronicles, in the highest presence, he turned pieces of lead into high-grade gold.
If you wish, you can refer to the wonderful book by Gustav Meyrink “The Angel of the West Window” and familiarize yourself with the biography of this amazing man – John Dee, the chosen one of the Ancients, one of the three translators of the book “Necronomicon”.
For centuries, representatives of various religions and cults have hunted every copy of the Necronomicon in the hope of destroying such a dangerous tome forever. But, as the legends say, there are 96 copies of the book in the world, and no matter how hard the followers of traditional religious organizations try to destroy the Necronomicon, the number of books always remains unchanged.
However, only seven of them have real value, that is, they can serve as gates to other dimensions – three in Arabic, one in Greek, two in Latin, and one in English (the one that came from the pen of John Dee). The rest of the copies have some kind of defects. However, these books are endowed with an immense power that sets the Necronomicon apart from all others.
Rulers and dictators such as Napoleon, Bismarck, and Hitler strove to possess a true copy of the Necronomicon. There is evidence that after the end of World War II, special groups were created in the USA and the USSR to search for this unexplored relic. Apparently, their labors were not crowned with success.
Myth or reality
The Book of the Dead owes its current popularity to the father of the literary horror genre, Howard Lovecraft. He is mentioned in almost a dozen of his works. According to legend, the writer managed to take one of the copies of the Book of the Dead from the followers of the “Death Ravens” sect.
To preserve the Necronomicon, with the help of his friend, the archaeologist Andrew Scott, Lovecraft chose to hide it in a safe place somewhere in the middle of the Sahara sands. After that, the fate of the two friends was tragic: Lovecraft soon died, and his friend, an archaeologist, disappeared without a trace.
Howard Lovecraft wrote in the genres of fantasy, horror, and mystery. He successfully combined these three directions, which gave rise to many rumors. Lovecraft created a unique world of Cthulhu myths. As is often the case, his work was not very popular during his lifetime. After the author’s death, it began to exert an increasing influence on modern literature. To emphasize the uniqueness of the writer’s talent, his works were singled out into a separate subgenre – Lovecraft’s horrors.
In his letters to friends, Howard Lovecraft confessed that the Necronomicon was a figment of his imagination at the end of his life. Ancient legends say that the first copy of this book was written on the skin of virgins, with their blood, but these are most likely only legends.
Due to the large number of those who wanted to appropriate the authorship of this book, the real “Necronomicon” was lost in a huge number of manuscripts passed off as the original, but which are just a distorted likeness.
Some researchers have tried to link the Necronomicon with the famous Egyptian Book of the Dead or Bardo Thodol, a similar treatise written by the sages of Tibet. However, these books were intended to facilitate the transition to another world for the dead, and do not contain recipes for how to use their power for earthly needs.
There were versions that the prototype of the “Necronomicon” could be the medieval “Picatrix” or the strangest manuscript in history – the so-called Voynich manuscript. Works appeared throughout the 20th century, claiming to be the true Necronomicon.
It is often confused with such works as the Grimoirium Imperium (published in the late 1970s), Simon’s Necronomicon (published in 1977 by Schlangekraft Inc., the most popular version of the book), and Liber Logaeth (published by the writer and by paranormal researcher Colin Wilson). There are also a number of lesser-known likenesses of authors such as Ripel, DeKamp, Queen, R’leich, and others.
With such an abundance of texts, artistically designed editions and even gift versions of books appeared. The appearance of so many versions of the book can serve as yet another proof of the mystery and inaccessibility of the true Necronomicon. Feature films such as The Unnamable (1988), The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter, 1993, The Book of the Dead (Necronomicon, 1993), “Dreams in the House of Witches” (“HP Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch-House”, 2005), “The Amazing Journeys of Hercules” (season 6, series “City of the Dead”), “Legacy of Valdemar” (2010- 2011).
The plot of the most famous and popular film “Evil Dead”, parts 1 and 2, is based on the fact that terrible demonic events begin precisely after reading spells from the pages of the Necronomicon. Despite numerous forgeries and speculation, the location and the true content of the Necronomicon are still a mystery.
According to Lovecraft, in addition to their own history and descriptions of the most complex magical rituals, the ancients reveal the secrets of the structure of the Earth and outer space. Many postulates of the book contain information discovered by modern mathematicians and physicists only in the last century.
Mysterious content
“So what is it written about?” – you ask! It’s about the dark secrets of the nature of the Earth and the universe. The book lists some of the deities worshiped by the Ancients. Yog-Sototh and Azatoth were considered especially important. Yog-Sototh is the past, present, and future. This is the extent of infinity, and it is an omnipresent and all-encompassing being.
In the center of it lives a twin brother – Azatoth. This little dwarf is the support of the entire universe and the lord of the worlds. Azatoth radiates waves of probability into infinity, from which sets of possibilities are created for every cosmos and every creature in the universe.
Scientists argue that Azatoth’s idea is closely related to the most recent models of quantum physics. It is hard to imagine that at the beginning of the centuries, the inhabitants of the Arabian deserts understood the mathematics of chaos, the laws of parallel spaces, and similar topics, which our modern science is just beginning to guess.
Deity Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sototh and Azatoth are endless expansion and endless contraction. By the way, “Azathoth” is translated from Egyptian as “mind of Thoth”, and Yog-Sothoth can be considered a derivative of Yak Set Thoth (“Set and Thoth are one whole”).
According to Egyptian mythology, Set and Thoth are the dark and light aspects of the world. Researchers at the Necronomicon believe that the Greek translator Al Azif replaced the names of Arab deities with Egyptian ones, since at that time, Egypt was considered the cradle of human civilization.
Deity of Cthulhu
Further, “Necronomicon” reports on the mysterious power inherent in the Earth. It is personified by the dragon Cthulhu, a deity whose round face was depicted with a dozen prominences or tentacles. Some orientalists classify Cthulhu as the Ancients. They believe that he was their high priest.
And there is such a story that if a magician or wizard calls him at the wrong time, Cthulhu will rise from the abyss of the Pacific Ocean and strike humanity with an unprecedented disease – bouts of madness, from which neither old nor young will be saved. Legend says that people’s dreams are the thoughts of Cthulhu, and our life is his dream. When the deity wakes up, we will disappear. So, you better not wake up Cthulhu.
Other gods are also noted in the book. It is they who attract people who are hungry for excessive power to the Necronomicon. All of them were united by a single goal – to find the City of the Ancients and enlist the support of terrible but powerful forces.
The soul and mediator of Others were Nyarlathotep – the Mighty Messenger. Through him, Maghrrib wizards entered into contact with Azatoth. Nyarlathotep was often called the Creeping Chaos. He could take any form, but knowledgeable people always recognized him by smell.
The Necronomicon contains symbols and spells for invocations of other gods. One of them – Shub-Niggurath, appeared in the form of a black goat. By the way, he was worshiped not only by the Arabs, Greeks, and Egyptians but also by the Sumerians – the most ancient civilization of mankind.
Many magicians were interested in other creatures described in the Necronomicon. About a third of the book is devoted to the management of Shoggoths – formless “eels” made of bubbles of protoplasm.
Another interesting race is the Deep. They live in the depths of waters, caves, and underground cavities. Their appearance resembles a cross between a fish, a frog, and a man, and they are ruled by the deity Dagon, an ally of Cthulhu. Dagon was mentioned in the Philistine tradition, later he became the Babylonian Oannes, and then turned into the Greek Poseidon and Roman Neptune. The “deep ones” are easy to control, but the magician is so fascinated by the power over them that he gradually becomes their slave himself.
Perhaps the most disgusting creatures described in the Necronomicon are ghouls. They look a lot like humans, but their breed is usually marked by fangs and monstrous facial features. Ghouls can have sexual intercourse with humans. In addition, under certain circumstances, a person easily turns into a ghoul. However, the reverse transformation is no longer possible.
Ghouls are considered vampires in modern popular culture, but this is not entirely true. The current vampires are representatives of the spiritual Order of the Trapezium. These are the magicians of the so-called Left Hand Path. The ghouls are their divine leaders (or rather, energy templates). The mages of the Order of the Trapezium are obsessed with the idea of immortality. Their experiences and deeds inspire disgust and fear.
The power of vampires in the modern world is amazingly great. But no matter how they extolled the ghouls, they were and remain mindless corpse eaters, who have only one thing in mind – to bite and drink human blood.
The magical symbols and spells of the Necronomicon allow people to transcend physical reality. But the trouble is that the book is usually not used by the best representatives of humanity. In addition, on the pages of the manuscript, you can find a detailed description of the process of enslaving human souls and instructions for creating psychotronic weapons.
Magic formulas from the “Necronomicon” are able to teach a person to go beyond our reality. The power of the Necronomicon is focused on ensuring that the book falls into the hands of only self-centered and power-hungry people. Of all the dark mysteries of the universe, they usually choose the worst, and the fruits of their labors weigh heavily upon humanity.
On the other hand, the Necronomicon is a great source of the wisdom of the spirit, calling on the dedicated reader to gradually ascend to the heights of the knowledge of being. Anyone who is able to penetrate the information structure of the cipher text will be able to obtain a colossal amount of knowledge.
If we discard all supernatural premises, then no one can say what the Necronomicon actually gives, and whether a person is capable of knowing all its power. Perhaps someday, there will be someone who will be able to absorb the wisdom hidden in the book. We can only hope that if one day the book itself finds its chosen one, then it will be a sage, not a dictator.
Modern translations of the books “Al Azif” and “Necronomicon” are in the public domain on the Internet, and anyone can get acquainted with them. But before you start reading, you should remember that it may not be safe for the reader.
