[ Post a Response | Celeste's Magickal Witches Cottage ]
Posted by Spirit Dancer
on October 20, 2009, 5:30 pm, in reply to "necronomicon"
24.119.47.171
This book has got to me known as the Gag Read Around the World. There are copies of it everywhere. And, you can’t dabble in the “dark arts” without running across it in some way.
The first mention of the Necronomicon is in an H.P. Lovecraft story called The Hound. Occultists all over the world inquired as to how he came up with the book. Lovecraft (not regularly associated with the non-fictional occult) always said that he made it up.
“Now about the “terrible and forbidden books” — I am forced to say that most of them are purely imaginary. There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon, for I invented these names myself. Robert Bloch devised the idea of Ludvig Prinn and his De Vermis Mysteriis, while the Book of Eibon is an invention of Clark Ashton Smith's. Robert E. Howard is responsible for Friedrich von Junzt and his Unaussprechlichen Kulten.... As for seriously-written books on dark, occult, and supernatural themes — in all truth they don’t amount to much. That is why it’s more fun to invent mythical works like the Necronomicon and Book of Eibon.”
It’s no real surprise that it has taken on the life that it has. In Lovecraft’s time, the main form of communication was word of mouth. You tell me about a story that scared you. I tell Celeste about the scary thing in the story that scared you. Celeste tells Crystal about the scary thing that I told her that you told me scared you. And, somewhere along the way, the story part gets left out of the telling. It’s the Telephone Game.
Also, it must be considered that we are talking about a time period when the occult was something that most people were too frightened to even think about for fear of nightmares. Writing about it undoubtedly made Lovecraft an authority on the subject. If he said there was a Necronomicon (even in his fictional tales), there must’ve been one.
Now, here is the mystical rub to the purely fictional theory.
Lovecraft didn’t claim to have thought up the dark book. He claimed that it came to him in a dream. It was after the dream that he constructed the title (a combination of Greek words) and the contents (derived from various mythologies).
As I am prone to have visions while dreaming, I have to accept the possibility that perhaps Lovecraft only thought that he made the book up. It also stands to reason (among us who have some experience in these things) that some entity either informed him of the text or planted the seed for the text that he was to build.
Over the years, several Alester Crowley followers have been more inclined to believe Lovecraft received knowledge of the Necronomicon from the same entity(s) that regularly conversed with Crowley. A few of them (including H.R. Giger) also claim to have this connection, and have written their own versions of the Necronomicon.
The version that is most commonly sold today was written by Peter Levenda and published in 1977. This is also listed as a work of fiction. It’s more widely accepted because of its attention to detail concerning the language and myths that were derived from actual Sumerian and Mesopotamian mythology. According to Google and Wikipedia, over 800,000 copies were printed and sold between 1977 and 2006.
My roommate, a woman who loves dark fiction, once had a copy of this book. She’s read it several times (as she is prone to do when she is bored). To the best of anyone’s knowledge, she hasn’t sold her soul or conjured the dead. Though, she did say that she nearly got suspended for reading it out loud in a highly Christian influenced school.
Hoax or no hoax, the power of the book is (as always) in the reader. It is no more powerful than the Bible, the Koran, or a Harry Dresden novel (from which I have gotten some of my best potions and spell work). It’s the belief that gives the words life.
Of course, books have other uses that can make them dangerous. Just the other day, one of my roommates chucked a hardcover at the other one (not me). And, a few years ago, I encountered a dark practitioner who was using a book as a vessel to drain energy from those who handled it.
If your daughter believes the book to be dangerous, then perhaps it is. But, if this is the case, she shouldn’t be looking for someone to pass it off to. She should be looking for a way to get rid of it (I suggest burning).
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