Daniel Harms - The Necronomicon Files: The Truth Behind Lovecrafts Legend

First published in 2003 by

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

York Beach, ME

With offices at:

368 Congress Street

Boston, MA 02210

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 1998, 2003 Daniel Harms and John Wisdom Gonce III

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages. Originally published in 1998 by Night Shade Books, ISBN 1-892389-00-2.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Harms, Daniel.

The Necronomicon files : the truth behind Lovecraft's legend / Daniel Harms and John Wisdom Gonce III.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-57863-269-2 (alk. paper)

1. Occultism. 2. Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips), 1890-1937. I. Gonce, John Wisdom. II. Title.

BF1999.H37515 2003

133dc21

2003008089

Every effort has been made to contact permission holders of any copyrighted material in this book. If any required acknowledgments have been omitted, it is unintentional. If notified, the publishers will be pleased to rectify any omission in future editions.

This book is sold as is, without warranty of any kind either expressed or implied. The authors and Red Wheel/Weiser assume no liability for damages resulting from the use of information or instructions contained herein.

Typeset in Minion and Univers Condensed

Printed in Canada

TCP

10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

www.redwheelweiser.com

www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

DEDICATED TO

Lord Ganesa, Protector of Books,
Inanna/Ishtar, Queen of Heaven

*

To our families and
The Gentleman of Providence Plantations, late of Earth

Preface: The NecronomiconShadow in the Mind
(Donald Tyson)

Acknowledgments
(Daniel Harms and John Wisdom Gonce III)

Chapter 1: H. P. Lovecraft and the Necronomicon
(Daniel Harms)

Chapter 2: Many a Quaint and Curious Volume...:
The Necronomicon Made Flesh (Daniel Harms)

Chapter 3: Evaluating Necronomicon Rumors
(Daniel Harms)

Chapter 4: The Evolution of Sorcery: A Brief History
of Modern Magick (John Wisdom Gonce III)

Chapter 5: Lovecraftian MagickSources and Heirs
(John Wisdom Gonce III)

Chapter 6: A Plague of Necronomicons (John
Wisdon Gonce III)

Chapter 7: Simon, Slater, and the Gang: True Origins
of the Necronomicon (John Wisdom Gonce III)

Chapter 9: The Necronomicon and Psychic Attack
(John Wisdom Gonce III)

Chapter 10: Unspeakable Cuts: The Necronomicon on Film
(John Wisdom Gonce III)

Chapter 11: Call of the Cathode Ray Tube: The Necronomicon
on Television (John Wisdom Gonce III)

The Necronomicon: Shadow in the Mind

DONALD TYSON

E veryone involved with the occult for any length of time hears rumors about lost keys that unlock the ancient mysteries of ceremonial magic. Usually the key takes the form of a book. Such books are legend in the history of the occult. When Adam emerged from the Garden of Eden, he is fabled to have carried a book of angelic wisdom. A similar book is said to have been given to the patriarch Enoch after he was drawn up, still living, into heaven. Moses supposedly recorded the mystery teachings of Egypt that he acquired from the magicians of Pharaoh. King Solomon was reputed to have set down the angel-inspired method by which he commanded and restrained the seventy-two demons that constructed the First Temple at Jerusalem. Christ spoke in private to his disciples and conveyed to them a hidden teaching that was too sacred and too dangerous for ordinary menwho is to say that it was never written down?

Even if all these tales are untrue and such primordial books of wisdom never existed, it was inevitable that men would write books and apply these and other great names to them to lend them authority. Sometimes the writers claimed a direct link to God or the angels, or presented their works as the inspired teachings of the spirits of Enoch or Moses. There was always a market for wisdom books. No matter how incredible their claims or how vague their teachings, many were eager to pay large sums to acquire copies and to sing their praises.

When the alchemist Edward Kelley sought out the Elizabethan mage John Dee, he carried under his arm the Book of Dunstan, an ancient manuscript reputed to contain the veritable secret of transmuting base metals into gold. Years prior to the meeting, Dee had written a work called the Hieroglyphic Monad during a thirteen-day frenzy of inspiration. This book, he had confidently assured everyone who would listen, including Queen Elizabeth herself, contained the key to every occult and religious mystery. When Dee and Kelley became partners and talked to a hierarchy of spirits representing themselves as the same angels that had instructed Enoch, the angels dictated to the two men a new book of angelic magic, which they asserted to be the true magic of Enoch lost to humanity after the Flood.

Whisperings about forbidden books of occult power did not stop with the dawning Age of Enlightenment. The mysterious Comte de St. Germain had his Holy Trinosophia, Eliphas Levi his Nuctemeron of Apollonius, Madam Helena Blavatsky her akashic Book of Dzyan. The primary leader of the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Samuel MacGregor Mathers, revealed in a letter to members of the Order that his occult teachings had in part been copied from books brought before me, I know not how, and which disappeared from my vision when the transcription was finished. Mathers's most infamous student, Aleister Crowley, received the text of his Book of the Law directly from his holy guardian angel, Aiwass.

These books of power usually share certain traits. Either they are very difficult to obtain or, when examined, extremely hard to understand. Often, as in the case of Dee's Hieroglyphic Monad and Crowley's Book of the Law, books that are purported to act as keys to occult wisdom themselves require a key before they can be used. In the absence of this key, they appear little more than nonsense riddles for children. It is claimed, however, that when the key is applied, they open like an intellectual Chinese box to reveal their secrets. Those who acquire such books without knowing how to open them remain frustrated, or consider them of little worth and discard them.

Some books, however, have a more sinister reputation. They are believed to be evil talismans that carry with them a dark energy that infects anyone who handles or possesses them. This is said of the Goetia, a grimoire that catalogs the appearance, nature, and use of the seventy-two demons of hell, bound and sealed by Solomon beneath the sea in a vessel of brass. A similar hellish contagion is reputed to accompany copies of the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, a French grimoire that claims on its title page to have been a gift from God to Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, and other Saints, Patriarchs and Prophets. The book was translated into English by MacGregor Mathers in 1898. Even to possess one of its magic squares without understanding its meaning is rumored to carry the most dire consequences.

Into this fertile mythic field of fact and fancy that extends to the horizon of the dim past, the writer of supernatural fiction Howard Phillips Lovecraft planted the black seed of his Necronomicon. Speak the name Necronomiconthe very music of the word sends a chill of dread anticipation down the spinethe Book of Dead Names, as it is often called, penned by a mad poet. It is whispered that no one can read it and remain wholesome. The very words blight the mind and leave it twisted and deformed, praying for a release from horror that may not even come after death. Of all the keys of magic remembered in the modern age, none is more Stygian than the