If you are dealing with alot of paranoia i would recommend resolving the root of that first or your own unresolved issue may drive you a bit batty. Work with cthulhu tends to drag those to the surface in my experiences with um.
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Perhaps I am mislead.
John Dee translated the original manuscript(1527-1609)
Hp lovecraft was born in the 1800s.
Why do people attribute the book to lovecraft and why do people use this attribution to discredit the book.
The necronomicon is largely allegorical. It manifests the same process, in a different form, as other paths, its simply a way of approaching and working with the subtle energies.
Obviously the symbolism is different, so how your brain translates this text into meaningful experience will differ.
The occult is like a many sided coin. Tails is very different from heads. But the coin is used to meet the same goal, regardless of whether it is on heads or tails.
The occult is very similar.
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No, he didnāt. That is made up (in fact, that little tidbit was included as part of Lovecraftās fiction regarding his various āevil tomes.ā He was well known for mixing the names of real people in with his fictional ones, and the science of his day with his science fiction. He felt it gave his stories more realism).
John Dee is such a fascinating character (and is well known to have been a magician) and he had such a vast library of books (3000) and manuscripts (1000), that it is quite easy to attribute almost anything to him. However, just like the fabled Library of Alexandria, Deeās house burned down, and almost all of his library went up in smoke. What survived is mainly those books that were stolen and sold by his brother in law while Dee was out of the country, and which Dee was unable to recover. Among those survivals, we have his library catalogue, where he recorded everything contained in his collection (this catalogue was published in 1990 by the British Bibliographical Society). Iām sure if there was a āNecronomiconā listed, it would have been big news.
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Aw I see where this idea comes from then. Thank you for your response.
Not quite ready to let go of the necronomicon; if the catalogue was taken by a British library, it is also feesible to believe that it may have been kept under wraps, no?
There is a motive for keeping occult knowledge secret. And Britain is no novice to the destruction of knowledge.
I for one see the necronomicon strictly from an allegorical standpoint. I believe the entities to be personified Archetypes. Like any other path, personification serves as a guide to achieve inner balance. In the necronomicon, through the various seals, which I assume to be in reference to the chakras.
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Anybody wanna get this thread back going because its such a great sunject thats so much more deeper than the few that was said?a
I used it in 2018 with mixed results. In that the person who screwed me over it did not destroy. However, I got them to cave and give me my fair share. On the flip side the caving was partly induced due to legal action and wait for itā¦the legal fees charged to be was the exact sum the person was trying to screw me over for. A win nonetheless though.
If in 2018 I was this knowledgeable etc. I would not have even touched that book. There was also a bit of spookiness in general I experienced when using the book. I have yet to feel that spookiness with any other demonic book.
Did something happen? Or itās just the bad vibes you get from it?
To anyone who doubts the necronomicon I recommend evoking ctulhu or nyarlathotep. Perhaps yog-sothoth if you think you could be described as a āseekerā.
āFictionā tends to be one of the easiest ways for something from outside to begin manifesting and appearing in our world. Dont forget lovecraft said he got his inspiration from his dreams.
Is it chaos magick? Quite frankly idk and idc. I know you can get results and the things it talks about are very real. Judge for yourself I guess.
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Sorry for reviving this topic after almost 4 years but this seemed to be the most obvious thread title likely to be searched. I just finished a book - H.P. Lovecraft & The Black Magickal Tradition by John L. Steadman. It was an interesting read and deep dive into the different versions of the Necronomicon.
My takeaway was that in all probability the Necronomicon is āhistorical fictionā (basically fiction based in real mythology and occult practices). With that being said, I will attest first hand that the rituals/spells within the text DO WORK if performed correctly. However, with the right intention and focus you could make spells work based on any fiction, so it isnāt like the Necronomicon is āspecialā in that regard.
I may be wrong, but from my experience that is the deal with the Necronomicon. I will continue to use it because, well, itās fucking cool, but I make no illusion that it comes from some ancient manuscript handed to a dude named Simon who translated it (although there is some pretty hard evidence that Simon was a real person).
Hopefully this may spur some further discussion.
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What you have to keep in mind is that Lovecraft called the book al-azif and translated it as āthe howlingā. The Goetia literally means āthe howlingā. When he was writing Crowley was big in the newspapers etc. I think Lovecraft had read something or heard something about the Goetia and used it in his stories.
I think that may be a bit of a stretch. āal-azifā translates to āthat nocturnal sound insects make that sounds like the howling of demonsā whereas Goetia derives directly from Greek goÄteia, which comes from goÄs, goÄtos: āsorcerer, enchanter; charlatan,ā which is probably connected to goaÅ āto groan, weep.ā So thereās a vague connection, but very vague at best.
It is also widely believed by Lovecraft historians that Lovecraft knew of Crowley but have no reason to believe there was any influence. Lovecraft was a materialist and didnāt believe in the occult. There is , however, quite a few similarities between Great Old Ones and certain Sumerian gods, so it would not surprise me if Lovecraft got his hands on a text referencing Sumerian mythology and tweaked them for his fiction.
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I was recently gifted a copy of the Necronomicon from someone who knows I love the Sumerian deities and demons. A long-term Lovercraft fan I am not, though I did read his complete works earlier this year.
The rituals might be made up, but most of the information on the Sumerian deities is indeed reputable sourced. If there are any errors, it seems to be mostly due to gaps being filled at the time paired with new information which has been found since its publication. If not that, as a fictional grimoire, some things changed were obviously done with creative intent. For example, the fifty names of Marduk are correct, but some of the associations with the names differ for the sake of evoking a narrative better fitting for what this work is trying to be.
(In the bibliography of the Necronomicon, thereās are quite a few reputable books on Sumerian myth and religion. If someone wants a deeper understanding on the differences, look to those.)
That aside, Iāve yet to perform any of the spells or rituals from it. Making the seals of the seven planetary deities is something Iād very much like to do though. Thereās something uniquely appealing about evoking these particular deities utilizing newer occult methods ā perpetually improving the old, rebuilding on top of the past, such things were intrinsic to Mesopotamian culture. Itās no wonder that some seem to have success with the spells in this book; even beyond mere intent, this book evokes the very spirit of the region where these deities came from. I love that so much.
Both related and unrelated, about a week ago I picked up the new Necronomicon tarot deck. Thereās a few decks by this name but itās the newest one, with the Bousema illustrations. Though it has nothing to do with Sumerian deities at all, it became something special pretty quickly. I adore working with dark imagery and the theme centered around fears (or aversions as I sometimes look at them) has been wonderful for readings. Part of the enjoyment Iām sure also comes from working with dream magic, and well, nightmares too.
Anyway, despite this deck being rooted in fiction, the symbolism still very much speaks and the art is great. Itās become one of my favourites to use for legitimate readings, even if they arenāt centered around the concepts of fears or nightmares. Above all itās changed my perception on the effectiveness of other fiction-rooted decks Iād bought in the past for the art alone, ex: Wonderland Tarot which Iād have for at least 15 years and had not ever done a reading with until yesterday. For a silly query it was the most appropriate.
If something is rooted in fiction and it works, so what?
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Great post. You articulated my thoughts much better than I could have. Cheers!
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I see that, but I believe the word Goetia in etymonline.com is incorrect, according to esoteric research scholar ESOTERICA who has a youtube video discussing it.
I seems more plausible to me that it comes from an old word for mage, āGoesā meaning sorcerer. Not from āgoaÅā meaning to weep or howl.
There were an actual group of occultists called āGoesā, who became marginalised and started to avoid using that term for themselves similar to the later use of sorcerer for the same reason.
Hereās another ref: GoĆŖteia | Chthonic Sorcery
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Thank you for the kind words in your other post.
As for Lovecraft , I have a theory about him. He says he didnāt believe in the occult and I think thatās true. However, he was deeply invested in a good number of fantastical and mythological works in his youth and throughout a good portion of his adulthood. His stories certainly show a fascination with the occult as well, and I think he had a rather strong interest in it, even if he didnāt follow or practice any of it. Genuine interest and a genuine disbelief donāt have to be exclusive from one another, especially if he was the sort who wanted to believe in the existence of it, but in the end did not when it didnāt meet his expectations (expectations deeply rooted in his imagination).
If I remember, heād gotten disillusioned with the idea of magick, spirituality, religion, etc at a fairly young age. It seems that magick wasnāt was he thought it should be and thus he seems to have decided that it didnāt exist at all.
This is despite his obvious raw talent with dream magick. He was never able to see his capabilities for what they were. Thereās even a linear decline of his life in between the lines of his work too. He eventually distanced himself from most of the dream magick (even if he didnāt recognize it as magick) and the more he distanced himself from it, the more his issues worsened. As he became more he became enveloped in nightmare (and probably parasitic entities as well), the less he wrote too.
And yet most of those historians will applaud his later works for being better. To me his dream stories were the best, at least in the sense that one can glean he was in a far better mental state. Heād had a better grasp on his dreamwork abilities and in merging them with storytelling. Thereās far more life and spirit in them. This changes significantly as he writes less of the dreams. The vast differences in tone in Kadath versus Mountains of Madness ā were it not for some of his writing quirks ā make it hard to believe that both were authored by the same individual without them experiencing a serious mental decline.
Digressing, he was too knowledgeable about myths and the occult for me to believe that he didnāt have a significant interest in either, despite whatever his actual beliefs (or lack thereof) may have been. This went way deeper than Iād intended to, all to say that Lovecraft was probably very well aware of Crowley and the Goetia.
I just meant that Lovecraft had heard of it and used it in his writing as a forbidden book. All of the books and Goetia writings that were around 50+ years ago called the Goetia the howling. I have no idea about any new scholarship on the name. Lovecraftās Old Ones have absolutely nothing to do with the Sumerian Mythos. The only tenuous connection is that Tiamat and her brood are called the Old Ones and that they were banished beyond space. So, again it is possible he read a tiny bit of something and then ran with it.
Iām not familiar with this book, but the tarot cards seem to be good for readings.
I started with the occult 50+ years ago and all of the books and information at the time said it was translated it as the howling. Remember this was a time where Mathers translated the Abramelin and it was not a good translation from what I read now. It is quite possible that the Golden Dawn got that and many other things wrong.