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Subject: Cthulu
                                   
   Great Cthulhu
   
Lovecraft's Necronomicon

  The Old Ones
  
     "That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange
     aeons even death may die."
     - Abdul Alhazred, Necronomicon
     (from H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu", 1926)
     
   The Necronomicon tells of the Old Ones, who arrived on the primal
   earth from "dark stars". When land appeared they swarmed from the
   oceans to build cities at the poles and raise temples to Those
   cursed by the Gods. Their ghoulish spawn ruled the earth until
   the Elder Lords, appalled at their abominations, acted:
   
     "...casting Them forth from the Earth to the Void beyond the
     planes where chaos reigns and form abideth not. And the Elder
     Lords set Their seal upon the Gateway and the power of the Old
     Ones prevailest not against its might.
     Loathsome Cthulhu rose then from the deeps and raged with
     exceeding great fury against the Earth Guardians. And They
     bound his venomous claws with potent spells and sealed him up
     within the City of R'lyeh wherein beneath the waves he shall
     sleep death's dream until the end of the Aeon."
     - Liber Logaeth (translated by Dr. John Dee)
     
   "In all probability Cthulhu is based on the Norwegian myth of the
   Kraken, a legendary monster thought to live under the waves of
   the northern seas."
   -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion
   
     "Below the thunders of the upper deep;
     Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
     His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
     The Kraken sleepeth; faintest sunlights fell
     About his shadowy sides: above him swell
     Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
     And far away into the sickly light,
     From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
     Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
     Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
     There hath he lain for ages and will lie
     Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
     Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
     Then once by man and angels to be seen,
     In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die."
     - Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Kraken"
     
   In exile with their Master Azathoth, "Lord of All", in the
   chaotic Void, the Old Ones bide the day until they return to rule
   earth once again.
   
   "Azathoth is the 'ultimate nuclear chaos', at 'the center of
   infinity'. It is from the Throne of Azathoth that the aimless
   waves, 'whose chance combining gives each frail cosmos its
   eternal law', originate from."
   - Parker Ryan "Necronomicon Info Source"
   
   "However, before the complete influx of these elder forces into
   our present space-time continuum can be facillated, the secret
   and primal gateways must be located, and opened, to allow access
   from 'outside the circles of time'. This gateway has been glyphed
   by Lovecraft as one of the Great Old Ones themselves - 'the
   noxious Yog-Sothoth who froths as primal slime in nuclear chaos
   beyond the nethermost outpost of space and time'.
   - Tenebrous, "The Aeon of Cthulhu Rising"
   
   "Yog-Sothoth is coterminous with ALL time and space. In Through
   the Gates of the Silver Key Lovecraft describes Yog-Sothoth
   thus:'an All in One and One in All of limitless being and
   self-the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which
   outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. ' Past, present, future
   all are one in Yog-Sothoth."
   "HPL researcher Philip A. Shreffler states in The H.P. Lovecraft
   Companion that the acting principles of Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth
   are 'infinite expansion and infinite contraction' respectively"
   - Parker Ryan "Necronomicon Info Source"
   
   "As Guardian of the Gate, he [Yog-Sothoth] is synonymous with
   Choronzon. The 'nethermost outpost', itself an opening or window
   to the dimensionality of the Great Old Ones (Universe B), is the
   star Sothis, or Sirius."
   - Tenebrous, "The Aeon of Cthulhu Rising"
   
   "It is now possible to see the continous flow and evolution of
   Aeons occuring simultaenously and passing over into the world of
   anti-matter. The Yog (or Yug .. an aeon or age ..) of Sothoth is
   the counterpoint - as the Aeon of Set- Thoth, or DA'ATH - of its
   Twin, the Yug-Hoor, or Aeon of Horus. Yog-Sothoth is the Gate
   through the aeons to the Star-Source beyond Yuggoth, the Yug or
   Aeon of Goth."
   - Kenneth Grant, Outside the Circles of Time, p. 214
   
   "The knowledge and formula by which this gateway can be reopened
   can therefore be only apprehended through the negative vortex of
   DA'ATH. In the case of Lovecraft himself, who in waking life
   vehemently denied the verdical nature of the material with which
   he was dealing, the process of appropriation was almost
   completely subconscious, occuring through the medium of
   dream-experiences. As would be expected, the visitation of such
   unhuman and ultracosmic revelations took the form of the most
   hideous nightmares."
   - Tenebrous, "The Aeon of Cthulhu Rising"
   
     "That cult would never die until the stars came right again,
     and the secret priests would take Cthulhu from His tomb to
     revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time
     would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as
     the Great Old Ones; free and wild, and beyond good and evil,
     with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and
     killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would
     teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy
     themselves, and all earth would flame with a holocaust of
     ecstasy and freedom."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu", (1926)
     
                               [INLINE]
                                   
                    The Occult Secrets of Alhazred
                                   
   (1) "The Mad Arab"
   
     Necronomicon: "Original title Al Azif being the word used by
     the Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects)
     supposed to be the howling of demons."
     "Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaa, in Yemen,
     who is said to have flourished in the time of the Ommiade
     Caliphs, circa A.D. 700."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the
     Necronomicon"
     
   According to Lovecraft's history, Abdul Alhazred "travelled
   widely, from Alexandria to the Punjab, and was well read. He had
   a flair for languages, and boasts on many occasions of his
   ability to read and translate manuscripts which defied lesser
   scholars.Just as Nostradamus used ritual magic to probe the
   future, so Alhazred used similar techniques (and an incense
   composed of olibanum, storax, dictamnus, opium and hashish) to
   clarify the past, and it is this, combined with a lack of
   references, which resulted in the Necronomicon being dismissed as
   largely worthless by historians."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
   "Lovecraft told his colleagues that he stole the name 'Al Azif'
   from another author as a joke, and that the name 'Al-Hazred' was
   a pun on his mother's maiden name, Hazard."
   - Kendrick Kerwin Chua, "The Necronomicon - FAQ Version 2.0"
   
     "Abdul is a favourite dream-character of mine--indeed that is
     what I used to call myself when I was five years old and a
     transported devotee of Andrew Lang's version of the Arabian
     Nights. A few years ago I prepared a mock-erudite synopsis of
     Abdul's life, and of the posthumous vicissitudes and
     translations of his hideous and unmentionable work Al Azif
     ...--a synopsis which I shall follow in future references to
     the dark and accursed thing."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard (August 14,
     1930)
     
     "The name 'Abdul Alhazred' is one which some adult (I can't
     recall who) devised for me when I was 5 years old & eager to
     be an Arab after reading the Arabian Nights. Years later I
     thought it would be fun to use it as the name of a
     forbidden-book author."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Harry O. Fischer (late February,
     1937)
     
   Alhazred "is often referred to as 'the mad Arab', and while he
   was certainly eccentric by modern standards, there is no evidence
   to substantiate a claim of madness, (other than a chronic
   inability to sustain a train of thought for more than a few
   paragraphs before leaping off at a tangent)."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
   "HPL wrote that Alhazred's title was 'Mad Poet'. 'Mad' is usually
   written majnun in Arabic. Majnun means 'mad' today. However, in
   the eighth century (Alhazred's time) it meant 'Possessed by Jinn'
   [the Old Ones]."
   - Parker Ryan "Necronomicon Info Source"
   
   "Alhazred appears to have had access to many sources now lost,
   and events which are only hinted at in the Book of Genesis or the
   apocryphal Book of Enoch, or disguised as mythology in other
   sources, are explored in great detail."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
     "And I proceeded to where things were chaotic. And I saw there
     something horrible: I saw neither a heaven above nor a firmly
     founded earth, but a place chaotic and horrible. And there I
     saw seven stars of the heaven bound together in it, like great
     mountains and burning with fire. Then I said: 'For what sin
     are they bound, and on what account have they been cast in
     hither?' Then said Uriel, one of the holy angels, who was with
     me, and was chief over them, and said: 'Enoch, why dost thou
     ask, and why art thou eager for the truth? These are of the
     number of the stars of heaven, which have transgressed the
     commandment of the Lord, and are bound here till ten thousand
     years, the time entailed by their sins, are consummated."
     Book of Enoch 21:1-7a
     
   "Alhazred may have used dubious magical techniques to clarify the
   past, but he also shared with 5th. century B.C. Greek writers
   such as Thucydides a critical mind and a willingness to explore
   the meanings of mythological and sacred stories. His speculations
   are remarkably modern, and this may account for his current
   popularity: he believed that many species besides the human race
   had inhabited the Earth, and that much knowledge was passed to
   mankind in encounters with being from other 'spheres'. He shared
   with some neo-platonists the belief that stars are like our sun,
   and have their own unseen planets with their own lifeforms, but
   elaborated this belief with a good deal of metaphysical
   speculation in which these beings were part of a cosmic hierarchy
   of spiritual evolution. He was also convinced that he had
   contacted these 'Old Ones' using magical invocations, and warned
   of terrible powers waiting to return to re-claim the Earth - he
   interpretated this belief in the light of the Apocalypse of St.
   John, but reversed the ending so that the Beast triumphs after a
   great war in which the earth is laid waste."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
     "He [Alhazred] visited the ruins of Babylon and the
     subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in
     the great southern desert of Arabia-the Roba el Khaliye or
     'Empty Space' of the ancients and 'Dahna' or 'Crimson Desert'
     of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by
     protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this desert
     many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who
     pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred
     dwelt in Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was
     written and of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.)
     many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by
     Ebn Khallikan (12th century biographer) to have been seized by
     an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly
     before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his
     madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen the
     fabulous Irem or city of Pillars, and to have found beneath
     the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking
     annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only
     an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown deities whom he
     called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the
     Necronomicon"
     ____________________________________________________________
   
   (2) Barbarous Names
   
   "Alhazred is said (by HPL) to have journeyed to Egypt in search
   of occult secrets. This is consistent with the time frame that it
   was supposed to have ocured in. Between the fourth century and
   the tenth century Near Eastern scholars interested in magickal
   matters viewed Egypt as an invaluable source of information.
   During this time many corrupt Egyptian words and phrases entered
   magical writings. Gnostic, Coptic, and Greco-Egyptian word
   formulas were incorporated in great number into existing Arab
   magickal systems.....It has been suggested that some of the
   Barbarous names used in Lovecraft's fiction might indeed be
   corrupt Egyptian word formulas. Particularly Yog-Sothoth,
   Azathoth, and Nyarlathotep are said to have an Egyptian origin.
   (Note the obviously Egyptian endings 'hotep' and 'thoth'.)"
   "Azathoth is said to be derived from Asa-thoth. The Rites of the
   Gods states that Asa translates as 'source' from ancient Egyptian
   and Thoth (Tehut) is of course the popular god name. Asa is an
   alternate name of Thoth....(He is considered the "source" because
   of his association with the beginning of time). Ausaa-Thoth or
   Aasaa-Thoth is translated as the intelligence of Thoth."
   
   "Cthulhu is very close to the Arabic word Khadhulu (also spelled
   al qhadhulu). Khadhulu (al qhadhulu) is translated as 'Forsaker'
   or 'Abandoner'. Many Sufis and Muqarribun writings make use of
   this term (Abandoner). In Sufi and Muqarribun writings
   'abandoner' refers to the power that fuels the practices of
   Tajrid 'outward detachment' and Tafrid 'interior solitude'."
   - Parker Ryan, "Necronomicon Info Source"
   
     "Mankind, Shaitan is Khadhulu."
     - Quran 25:29
     
   "By the time Mohammad was writing Shaitan was being called 'the
   Old Serpent (dragon)' and 'the Lord of the Abyss'. The Old
   Serpent or Old Dragon is, according to experts such as E.A. Budge
   and S.N. Kramer, Leviathan [Hebrew]. Leviathan is Lotan
   [Canaanite]. Lotan traces to Tietan. Tietan, we are told by the
   authorities on Near Easern mythology is a later form of Tiamat.
   According to the experts the Dragon of the Abyss called Shaitan
   is the same Dragon of the Agyss named Tiamat."
   - Parker Ryan , "Necronomicon Info Source"
   
     "The dragon is an abandoner for he leaves all that is sacred.
     The dragon goes here and there without pause."
     - The Book of Annihilation (an Arabic text on magick)
     
   One of the titles of the Dragon is Lord of the Abyss. "The title
   Lord of the Abyss translated into Sumerian is 'Kutulu'. Kutu
   means 'Underworld' or 'Abyss' and Lu is Sumerian for 'Lord' or
   'Person of importance'.... Indeed the ruler of the Abyss (kutu)
   in Sumeria was the Old Dragon Mumu-Tiamat."
   - Parker Ryan "Necronomicon Info Source"
   
   "Some...link Kingu (Qingu) with the Ancient Ones by assigning him
   the status of general for the Ancient Ones in their war against
   the Elder Gods (which this myth supposedly represents.) Though
   these groups claim to be servants of the Elder gods, they worship
   Tiamat as a benevolent creatrix, ignoring the fact that it was
   Tiamat who appointed Kingu HER general in the Enuma Elis [the
   Babylonian Epic of Creation], leading to the conclusion that
   Tiamat was an Ancient One and therefore that this group
   worshipped the Ancient Ones while claiming to serve the Elder
   Gods."
   - Adapa, "The Necronomicon and Ancient Sumer: Dubunking the Myth"
   
   "Another race is the Deep Ones who are a type of amphibious
   creature resembling a mixture of a fish, a frog and man. The Deep
   Ones worship a god called Dagon. Dagon is a deity resembling a
   giant Deep One. Dagon and the Deep Ones seem to be Allied in some
   way with Cthulhu."
   "Arab myth mentions mysterious fish-men from the sea of Karkar.
   These fish-men are probably derivative of the myths related to
   the actual Near Eastern god Dagon. Dagon is a Philistine deity
   that appears as a giant fish-man. Dagon is a later version of the
   Babylonian Oannes."
   - Parker Ryan "Necronomicon Info Source"
   
   Oannes was a repulsive amphibius being who came from space in an
   egg shaped vehicle. The fragments of text that survive are a
   Babylonian retelling of a much more ancient Sumerian tale. Six
   thousand years ago or so, the Vela supernova was an awe inspiring
   sight from the earth. It was then, according to legend, that
   powerful beings or "Watchers" came from the sky, taught humans
   the arts of civilization, then made them their slaves.
   According to Robert Temple in his Sirius Mystery, astronomical
   knowledge imparted by the Oannes is preserved by the tribal Dogon
   people today.
   
                               [INLINE]
                                   
                  "The Greek and Latin Translations"
                                   
     "In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable though
     surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age,
     was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of
     Constantinople under the title Necronomicon."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the
     Necronomicon"
     
     "The name Necronomicon ...occurred to me in the course of a
     dream."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Harry O. Fischer (late February,
     1937)
     
   "This title [Necronomicon] is translated as 'the Book (or image)
   of the Practices of the Dead'; Necro being Greek for 'Dead' and
   Nomos meaning 'practices', 'customs' or 'rules' (as in astronomy)
   ."
   - Parker Ryan, "The Necronomicon and Ancient Arab Magick"
   
     "For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible
     attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch
     Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228)
     Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle
     Ages."
     "The work, both Latin and Greek, was banned by Pope Gregory IX
     in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called
     attention to it."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the
     Necronomicon"
     
   "A Latin translation was made in 1487 by a Dominican priest Olaus
   Wormius. Wormius, a German by birth, was a secretary to the first
   Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, Tomas de Torquemada,
   and it is likely that the manuscript of the Necronomicon was
   seized during the persecution of Moors ('Moriscos') who had been
   converted to Catholism under duress; this group was deemed to be
   unsufficiently pure in its beliefs. .
   "It was an act of sheer folly for Wormius to translate and print
   the Necronomicon at that time and place. The book must have held
   an obsessive fascination for the man, because he was finally
   charged with heresy and burned after sending a copy of the book
   to Johann Tritheim, Abbot of Spanheim (better known as
   'Trithemius'); the accompanying letter contained a detailed and
   blasphemous interpretation of certain passages in the Book of
   Genesis. Virtually all the copies of Wormius's translation were
   seized and burned with him, although there is the inevitable
   suspicion that at least one copy must have found its way into the
   Vatican Library."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
     "...The Latin text was printed twice - once in the 15th
     century in block letter (evidently in German) and once in the
     17th (probably Spanish); both editions being without
     identifying marks, and located as to time and place by
     internal typographic evidence only.
     - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the
     Necronomicon"
     
   "It was written in seven volumes, and runs to over 900 pages in
   the Latin edition."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
     "Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th century) is known
     to be in the British Museum under lock and key, which another
     (17th century) is in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. A
     17th century edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and
     in the Library of Miskatonic University at Arkham; also in the
     library of the University of Buenos Aires.
     "Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a 15th
     century one is persistently rumored to form part of the
     collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still
     vaguer rumor credits the preservation of a 16th century Greek
     text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so
     preserved, it vanished with the artist R. U. Pickman , who
     disappeared early in 1926. The book is rigidly suppressed by
     the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of
     organized ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible
     consequences. It was from rumors of this book (of which
     relatively few of the general public know) that R. W. Chambers
     is said to have derived the idea of his early novelThe King in
     Yellow."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the
     Necronomicon"
     
                               [INLINE]
                                   
                          Dee's Liber Logaeth
                                   
     "They have walked amidst the stars and They have walked the
     Earth. The City of Irem in the great desert has known Them;
     Leng in the Cold Waste has seen Their passing, the timeless
     citadel upon the cloud-veiled heights of unknown Kadath
     beareth Their mark. Wantonly the Old Ones trod the ways of
     darkness and Their blasphemies were great upon the Earth; all
     creation bowed beneath Their might and knew Them for Their
     wickedness."
     - Liber Logaeth (translated by Dr. John Dee)
     
   "The Latin text came into the possession of Dr. John Dee in the
   sixteenth century. Dr. Dee made the only English translation of
   the Necronomicon known."
   - Parker Ryan, "The Necronomicon and Ancient Arab Magick"
   
   "Dr. John Dee, the famous English magician, and his assistant
   Edward Kelly were at the court of the Emperor Rudolph II to
   discuss plans for making alchemical gold, and Kelly bought the
   copy from the so-called 'Black Rabbi' and Kabbalist, Jacob
   Eliezer, who had fled to Prague from Italy after accusations of
   necromancy. At that time Prague had become a magnet for
   magicians, alchemists and charletons of every kind under the
   patronage of Rudolph, and it is hard to imagine a more likely
   place in Europe for a copy to surface."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
   Dee and Kelly's "Enochian system has many parallels with HPL.
   Schueler asserts that the Enochian tradition proposes the
   existence of a God or Force which is the manifestation of
   Infinite Space similar to Crowley's Nuit and HPL's Yog-Sototh.
   Schueler also contends that The Divine manifestation of the
   nuclear point at the center of infinity (equivalent to Hadit or
   Azathoth) is also important to Enochian magick. The Enochian Keys
   state that the wold is nearing an eon spanning Cycle in which
   Ancient Gods will return to there throne and the world will be
   forever changed. These keys also mention an imprisoned dragon
   (Cthulhu?)"
   - Parker Ryan , "Necronomicon Info Source"
   
   "The Necronomicon appears to have had a marked influence on
   Kelly; the character of his scrying changed, and he produced an
   extraordinary communication which struck horror into the Dee
   household...Kelly left Dee shortly afterwards. Dee translated the
   Necronomicon into English while warden of Christ's College,
   Manchester..."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
     "An English translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and
     exists only in fragments recovered from the original MS."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the
     Necronomicon"
     
   "...The manuscript passed into the collection of the great
   collector Elias Ashmole, and hence to the Bodleian Library in
   Oxford."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
   "Dee's cipher manuscript was called Liber Logaeth, and was
   evidently "a portion of a larger manuscript, the origin and
   nature of which is not known. Due to its history and the
   similarity in content to the Cthulhu Mythos, this document has
   been presented...as being, at least a portion of, the document
   which was the inspiration for HPL's Necronomicon."
   - Ken Ottinger
   
                          COMPARISON OF TEXTS
                Dee's Liber Logaeth HPL's Necronomicon
                    Of Ye Old Ones and their Spawn
    The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are and the Old Ones shall be.
      From the dark stars They came ere man was born, unseen and
   loathsome They descended to primal earth. Nor is it to be thought
   that man is either the oldest or the last of Earth's masters, or
    that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old
        Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.
    Beneath the oceans They brooded while ages past, till seas gave
   up the land, whereupon They swarmed forth in Their multitudes and
   darkness ruled the Earth. At the frozen Poles They raised mighty
    cities, and upon high places the temples of Those whome nature
    owns not and the Gods have cursed. The ice desert of the South
    and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is
    engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed
           tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles?
    Great Cthulhuis Their brother, the shaggoths Their slaves. The
   Dholes do homage unto Them in the nighted vale of Pnoth and Gugs
     sing Their praises beneath the peaks of ancient Throk. Great
      Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. l!
                            Shub-Niggurath!
    Beyond the Gate dwell now the Old Ones; not in the spaces known
    unto men but in the angles betwixt them. Outside Earth's plane
     They linger and ever awaite the time of Their return; for the
   Earth has known Them and shall know Them in time yet to come. Not
     in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and
                primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.
   And the Old Ones hold foul and formless Azathoth for Their Master
      and Abide with Him in the black cavern at the centre of all
    infinity, where he gnaws ravenously in ultimate chaos amid the
      mad beating of hidden drums, the tuneless piping of hideous
      flutes and the ceaseless bellowing of blind idiot gods that
   shamble and gesture aimlessly for ever. They walk unseen and foul
    in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites
     howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their
   voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend
   the forest and crush the city, yet may; not forest or city behold
                         the hand that smites.
   The soul of Azathoth dwelleth in Yog-sothoth and He shall beckon
    unto the Old Ones when the stars mark the time of Their coming;
   for Yog-sothoth is the Gate through which Those of the Void will
   re-enter. Yog-sothoth knowest the mazes of of time, for all time
   is one unto Him. He knowest where the Old Ones came forth in time
    along long past and where They shall come forth again when the
    cycle returneth. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the
     gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past,
    present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the
   Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through
                                again.
   After day cometh night; man's day shall pass, and They shall rule
   where They once ruled. As foulness you shall know them and Their
     accursedness shall stain the Earth. Man rules now where They
      ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After
   summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and
               potent, for here shall They reign again.
                                   
   The quotes from Lovecraft were taken from his short story "The
   Dunwich Horror" ( 1928). Lovecraft attributes the source of his
   material to Olaus Wormius' Latin version of Abdul Alhazred's
   Necronomicon, as printed in Spain in the 17th century. Note how
   Dee's Liber Logaeth places the return of the Old Ones at some
   indeterminate future while in Lovecraft's version, They are
   coming soon (and in his stories have already arrived.) For the
   text of Olaus Wormius' version click here.
   
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                           The Missing Texts
                                   
   "No Arabic manuscript is known to exist; the author Idries Shah
   carried out a search in the libraries of Deobund in India,
   Al-Azhar in Egypt, and the Library of the Holy City of Mecca,
   without success."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
     "The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius' time, as
     indicated by his prefatory note (there is, however, a vague
     account of a secret copy appearing in San Francisco during the
     present century but later perishing by fire); and no sight of
     the Greek copy - which was printed in Italy between 1500 and
     1550 - has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem
     man's library in 1692."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the
     Necronomicon"
     
   "Nathan of Gaza precipitated one of the most profound events in
   the history of Judaism. In 1665, while only 21 or 22 years old,
   he proclaimed that Sabbatai Tzevi was the Messiah."
   Nathan also wrote the Sepher ha-Sha'are ha-Daath, a commentary on
   the Book of the Alhazred. "Nathan's purpose appears to have been
   to develop a methodology for a systematic exploration of the
   realms of the Klippoth [husks or shells of materiality which
   ensnare the spirit], as part of his mission to redeem the sparks
   [concentrated shards of the original creation], using some of
   Alhazred's techniques. It is an extraordinary development of
   Alhazred's work, identifying the Klippoth with the primordial Old
   Ones."
   "Nathan developed a huge following and for many years Judaism was
   riven with charges of heresy. Many prominent Rabbis and community
   leaders sided with Nathan, and it took most of a century for the
   drama to unwind. Eventually the Sabbatean movement went
   underground, and while it is a certainty that a copy of the
   Sepher ha-Sha'are ha-Daath exists in a private library somewhere,
   no one is admitting that they have it."
   
   "In the years from 1933-38 the few known copies of the
   Necronomicon simply disappeared; someone in the German government
   of Adolph Hitler took an interest in obscure occult literature
   and began to obtain copies by fair means or foul. Dee's
   translation disappeared from the Bodleian following a break-in in
   the spring of 1934. The British Museum suffered several abortive
   burglaries, and the Wormius edition was deleted from the
   catalogue and removed to an underground repository in a converted
   slate mine in Wales (where the Crown Jewels were stored during
   the 1939-45 war). Other libraries lost their copies, and today
   there is no library with a genuine catalogue entry for the
   Necronomicon. The current whereabouts of copies of the
   Necronomicon is unknown; there is a story of a large wartime
   cache of occult and magical documents in the Osterhorn area near
   Salzburg.
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ."
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
   "Lovecraft denied that the book existed, and wrote as a joke a
   paper titled 'A History of the Necronomicon', giving a chronology
   of the book, names, and places. The name of the book is
   supposedly bastardized Greek and Latin, which roughly translates
   into 'The Book of Dead Names' (i.e., ikon = book, necro = die or
   dead, and nom = name)."
   - Kendrick Kerwin Chua, "The Necronomicon - FAQ Version 2.0"
   
     "Regarding the solemnly cited myth-cycle of Cthulhu,
     Yog-Sothoth, R'lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Nug, Yeb, Shub-Niggurath,
     etc., etc.- let me confess that this is all a synthetic
     concotion of my own, like the populous and varied pantheon of
     Lord Dunsany's Pegana . The reason for its echoes in Dr. de
     Castro's work is that the latter gentleman is a
     revision-client of mine--into whose tales I have stuck these
     glancing references for sheer fun. If any other clients of
     mine get work placed in W.T., you will perhaps find a
     still-wider spread of the cult of Azathoth, Cthulhu, and the
     Great Old Ones! The Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul
     Alhazred is likewise something which must yet be written in
     order to possess objective reality."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard (August 14,
     1930)
     
     "Regarding the Necronomicon--I must confess that this
     monstrous & abhorred volume is merely a figment of my own
     imagination! Inventing horrible books is quite a pastime among
     devotees of the weird, & . . . . . many of the regular W.T.
     contributors have such things to their credit--or discredit.
     It rather amuses the different writers to use one another's
     synthetic demons & imaginary books in their stories--so that
     Clark Ashton Smith often speaks of my Necronomicon while I
     refer to his Book of Eibon . . & so on. This pooling of
     resources tends to build up quite a pseudo-convincing
     background of dark mythology, legendry, & bibliography--though
     of course none of us has the least wish actually to mislead
     readers."
     - H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Miss Margaret Sylvester (January
     13, 1934)
     
   "When we then turn to the text referred to as the Necronomicon by
   H.P. Lovecraft, we are hard-pressed to render a 'verdict' as to
   its legitimacy. If indeed the text preceded Lovecraft, then this
   does not guarantee that it has come down to us unedited. If the
   idea and title were used by Lovecraft as a result of suggestions
   from others without an extant text, then perhaps its 'source
   consciousness' hid the text until a later time. If Lovecraft
   fabricated even the IDEA of the tome along with its title, then
   perhaps he was simply a 'third party' to a state of consciousness
   which we may never assess."
   - Kendrick Kerwin Chua, "The Necronomicon - FAQ Version 2.0"
   
   It is possible that Lovecraft was concealing an occult source of
   information for his writings.
   
   "The books of the The Order of the Golden Dawn, "The Equinox and
   The Golden Dawn, are important to a study of H. P. Lovecraft for
   several reasons. First, they are the closest thing to Lovecraft's
   Necronomicon to be produced in this century. second, in his study
   of occult material, it is not impossible that Lovecraft may have
   come into contact with The Equinox.. In fact, the Widener Library
   at Harvard owns Volume 1, Number 5 (March 1911), of The Equinox,
   which was received at the library on December 31, 1917, placing
   it easily within Lovecraft's reach. And third, there is a kind of
   peripheral connection between Lovecraft and the Golden Dawn in
   that several of his favorite weird fiction writers belonged to
   it. Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, both of whom Lovecraft
   praised (albeit to different degrees) in 'Supernatural Horror in
   Literature', were prominent members of the order, as were Sax
   Rohmer, Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and Robert Louis
   Stevenson."
   -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion
   
   "Since the publication in 1938 of H. P. Lovecraft's essay on the
   Necronomicon, at least one more copy of this obviously rare book
   has surfaced and is now in the collection of the [John Hay]
   Library at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Printed by
   the Owl's Wick Press at Philadelphia in 1973, this modern edition
   of the Necronomicon appears to be a facsimile of the original
   Arabic text that Lovecraft presumed lost by the year A. D. 1050.
   A problematical aspect of the Brown University copy, however, is
   that the text, though appearing to the untrained eye to be in
   Arabic, is actually in a language known to Semitic scholars as
   Duraic. Unfortunately, there has, to date, been no successful
   completion of a translation."
   -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion
   
   The "Great Beast" Aleister Crowley interpreted the horrifying
   communication by Kelly (under the influence of the Necronomicon
   four centuries earlier) "as the abortive first attempt of an
   extra-human entity to communicate thelemic Book of the Law."
   "There is no question that Crowley read Dee's translation of the
   Necronomicon in the Ashmolean, probably while researching Dee's
   papers; too many passages in Crowley's Book of the Law read like
   a transcription of passages in that translation."
   - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ
   (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry
   Wisdom Press, 1979)
   
                       COMPARISON OF TERMINOLOGY
             H.P. Lovecraft Aleister Crowley Ancient Sumer
    Cthulhu The Great Beast Ctha-lu, Kutulu represented in "CTH/\H
                                 666"
                 The Ancient Ones Satan; Teitan Tiamat
                    Azathoth Aiwass (?) Azag-thoth
                 The Dunwitch Horror Choronzon Pazuzu
                Shub Niggurath Pan Shub Ishniggarab (?)
               Out Of Space The Abyss Absu; Nar Mattaru
               IA! IO! IAO! IA (Jah; Ea; Lord of Waters)
   The Five-pointed star cavern The Pentagram The AR, or UB (Plough
     Sign: the original gray pentagram and sign of the Aryan Race)
     Vermis Mysteriis The Serpent Erim (the enemy; and the sea as
                                Chaos;
                      Gothic: Orim, or Worm Great
                                   
   "The Coroner presents the Necronomicron"
   
   "Succinctly stated: there are no 'Ancient One' in Sumerian
   Religion or mythology. Similarly, there are no 'Elder Gods'.
   Additionally, there exists no written record of any god, demon,
   or lesser figure whose names resemble those of the Chthonic
   pantheon. Some have advanced the proposition that Cthulhu is
   taken from the eponym Kutu-lu, a mangled rendering of 'man of
   Kutha'. This would suggest that Cthulhu is supposedly a title of
   Nergal, the patron deity of the city of Kutha in ancient
   Mesopotamia. Yet nowhere in any extant text is this title
   referred to. In fact, nowhere in any tablet is any god of the
   Mesopotamian pantheon referred to under the title 'man of...'
   Such a base descriptive was unheard of as a divine appellation."
   - Adapa, "The Necronomicon and Ancient Sumer: Dubunking the Myth"
   
   There is disagreement whether "Kutulu" should be translated as
   "man of Kutha" or "Lord of the Abyss" as Parker Ryan maintains.
   
   "The Enuma Elis, the Babylonian Epic of Creation...attributed to
   the mid second millennium in the Old Babylonian period, stands
   not for the struggle between the forces of Darkness and Light,
   but rather serves to exemplify the movement from chaos to order
   in the political arena of this ancient land:"
   - Adapa, "The Necronomicon and Ancient Sumer: Dubunking the Myth"
   
   "Just as his observation about the physical origin of his country
   guided the ancient Mesopotamian in his speculations about the
   origins of the Universe, so do his memory and his experience of
   its political organization seem to have governed his thinking
   about the origins of order in that universe. Politics in
   Mesopotamia in the Old Babylonian Period, various and unstable,
   abounded in tribal and urban political forms. It ranged from near
   anarchy to democratic or semidemocratic forms based on general
   assemblies to monarchies. Its continually shifting power
   combinations and frequent attempts at achieving supremacy now by
   one, now by another, undoubtedly afforded many an object lesson
   in how to win power when common danger imposed unity and in how
   to preserve such power by wise and benevolent rule after the
   immediate danger was past. In the [Enuma Elis] epic, world order
   is seen as the outcome of just such a successful drive towards
   supremacy."
   - T. Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness
   
   "In Lovecraft's panthaeon, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth,
   Shub-Niggurath, and so forth...represent chaos and
   oblivion....Later on, when the war with the Elders vs. the Others
   became apperant, Nodens, Bast, and the Elders became represented
   as deities of order and structure."
   - Edmund Wilfong
   
   It should also be pointed out that Zoroasterism, the religion of
   the ancient Persians who conquered Babylon, does teach about a
   cosmic struggle between the forces of Darkness and Light.
   
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                       Other Necronomicon Sites
                                   
     Al Azif: The Manuscript Liber Logaeth
   Illustrated hypertext version of quotes from the original
   document
   
     Desert Land
   Articles on Bedouin myths and links to Middle East mystical sites
   - excellent photos
   
     De Web Mysteriis
   Extensive list of links plus project to construct a version of
   the Necronomicron
   
     The Necronomicon Anti-FAQ
   The definitive source on the history and origins of the
   Necronomicon!
   
     R'lyeh2: Cthulhu's 2nd Home in theCountry
   Call of Cthulhu resources, Mythos Information, Library of
   Forbidden Lore and more!
     ____________________________________________________________

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