Occultism & Religion - Magick - The ...

Occultism & Religion - Magick - The Necronomicon - (Complete) - H P Lovecraft, Necronomicon

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The Complete Simon
Necronomicon
INTRODUCTION
IN THE MID - 1920's, roughly two blocks from where the Warlock Shop once stood, in
Brooklyn Heights, lived a quiet, reclusive man, an author of short stories, who eventually
divorced his wife of two years and returned to his boyhood home in Rhode Island, where
he lived with his two aunts. Born on August 20, 1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft would
come to exert an impact on the literary world that dwarfs his initial successes with Weird
Tales magazine in 1923. He died, tragically, at the age of 46 on March 15, 1937, a victim
of cancer of the intestine and Bright's Disease. Though persons of such renown as
Dashiell Hammett were to become involved in his work, anthologising it for publication
both here an abroad, the reputation of a man generally conceded to be the "Father of
Gothic Horror" did not really come into its own until the past few years, with the massive
re-publication of his works by various houses, a volume of his selected letters, and his
biography. In the July, 1975, issue The Atlantic Monthly, there appeared a story entitled
"There Are More Things", written by Jorge Luis Borges, "To the memory of H.P.
Lovecraft". This gesture by a man of the literary stature of Borges is certainly an
indication that Lovecraft has finally ascended to his rightful place in the history of
American literature, nearly forty years after his death.
In the same year that Lovecraft found print in the pages of Weird Takes, another
gentleman was seeing his name in print; but in the British tabloid press.
NEW SINISTER REVELATIONS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY read the front page of
the Sunday Express. It concerned testimony by one of the notorious magician's former
followers (or, actually, the wife of one of his followers) that Crowley had been
responsible for the death of her husband, at the Abbey of Thelema, in Cefalu, Sicily. The
bad press, plus the imagined threat of secret societies, finally forced Mussolini to deport
the Great Beast from Italy. Tales of horrors filled the pages of the newspapers in England
for weeks and months to come: satanic rituals, black masses, animal sacrifice, and even
human sacrifice, were reported - or blatantly lied about. For although many of the stories
were simply not true or fanciful exaggeration, one thing was certain: Aleister Crowley
was a Magician, and one of the First Order.
Born on October 12, 1875, in England - in the same country as Shakespeare - Edward
Alexander Crowley grew up in a strict Fundamentalist religious family, members of a
sect called the "Plymouth Brethren". The first person to call him by that Name and
Number by which he would become famous (after the reference in the Book of
Revelation), "The Beast 666", was his mother, and he eventually took this appellation to
heart. He changed his name to Aleister Crowley while still at Cambridge, and by that
name , plus "666", he would never be long out of print, or out of newspapers. For he
believed himself to be the incarnation of a god, an Ancient One, the vehicle of a New
Age of Man's history, the Aeon of Horus, displacing the old Age of Osiris. In 1904, he
had received a message, from what Lovecraft might have called "out of space", that
contained the formula for a New World Order, a new system of philosophy, science, art
and religion, but this New Order had to begin with the fundamental part, and common
denominator, of all four: Magick.
In 1937, the year Lovecraft dies, the Nazis banned the occult lodges of Germany, notable
among them two organisations which Crowley had supervised: the A\ A\ and the O.T.O.,
the latter of which he was elected head in England, and the former which he founded
himself. There are those who believe that Crowley was somehow, magickally,
responsible for the Third Reich, for two reasons: one, that the emergence of New World
Orders generally seems to instigate holocausts and, two, that he is said to have influenced
the mind of Adolf Hitler. While it is almost certain that Crowley and Hitler never met, it
is known that Hitler belonged to several occult lodges in the early days after the First
War; the symbol of one of these, the Thule Gesellschaft which preached a doctrine of
Aryan racial superiority, was the infamous Swastika which Hitler was later to adopt as
the Symbol of the forms, however, is evident in many of his writings, notably the essays
written in the late 'Thirties. Crowley seemed to regard the Nazi phenomenon as a
Creature of Christianity, in it's anti-Semitism and sever moral restrictions concerning its
adherents, which lead to various types of lunacies and "hangups" that characterised many
of the Reich's leadership. Yet, there can be perhaps little doubt that the chaos which
engulfed the world in those years was prefigured, and predicted, in Crowley's Liber AL
vel Legis; the Book of the Law.
The Mythos and the Magick
We can profitably compare the essence of most of Lovecraft's short stories with the basic
themes of Crowley's unique system of ceremonial Magick. While the latter was a
sophisticated psychological structure, intended to bring the initiate into contact with his
higher Self, via a process of individuation that is active and dynamic (being brought
about by the "patient" himself) as opposed to the passive depth analysis of the Jungian
adepts, Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos was meant for entertainment. Scholars, of course, are
able to find higher, ulterior motives in Lovecraft's writings, as can be done with any
manifestation of Art.
Lovecraft depicted a kind of Christian Myth of the struggle between opposing forces of
Light and Darkness, between God and Satan, in the Cthulhu Mythos. Some critics may
complain that this smacks more of the Manichaen heresy than it does of genuine
Christian dogma; yet, as a priest and former monk, I believe it is fair to say that this
dogma is unfortunately very far removed from the majority of the Faithful to be of much
consequence. The idea of a War against Satan, and of the entities of Good and Evil
having roughly equivalent Powers, is perhaps best illustrated by the belief, common
among the Orthodox churches of the East, in a personal devil as well as a personal angel.
This concept has been amplified by the Roman Catholic Church to such an extent -
perhaps subconsciously - that a missal in the Editor's possession contains an engraving
for the Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle, for November 30, that bears the legend "Ecce Qui
Tollis Peccata Mundi" - Behold Him Who Taketh Away The Sins of the World - and the
picture above it is of the atomic bomb!
Basically, there are two "sets" of gods in the mythos : the Elder Gods, about whom not
much is revealed, save that they are a stellar Race that occasionally comes to the rescue
of man, and which corresponds to the Christian "Light"; and the Ancient Ones, about
which much is told, sometimes in great detail, who correspond to "Darkness". These
latter are the Evil Gods who wish nothing but ill for the Race of Man, and who constantly
strive to break into our world through a Gate or Door that leads from the Outside, In.
There are certain people, among us, who are devotees of the Ancient Ones, and who try
to open the Gate, so that this evidently repulsive organisation may once again rule the
Earth. Chief among these is Cthulhu, typified as a Sea Monster, dwelling in the Great
Deep, a sort of primeval Ocean; a Being that Lovecraft collaborator August Derleth
wrongly calls a "water elemental". There is also Azazoth, the blind idiot god of Chaos,
Yog Sothot, Azathoth's partner in Chaos, Shub Niggurath, the "goat with a thousand
young", and others. They appear at various times throughout the stories of the Cthulhu
Mythos in frightening forms, which test the strength and resourcefulness of the
protagonists in their attempts to put the hellish Things back to whence they came. There
is an overriding sense of primitive dear and cosmic terror in those pages, as though man
is dealing with something that threatens other than his physical safety: his very spiritual
nature. This horror-cosmology is extended by the frequent appearance of the Book,
NECRONOMICON.
The NECRONOMICON, is according to Lovecraft's tales, a volume written in Damascus
in the Eighth Century, A.D., by a person called the "Mad Arab", Abdhul Alhazred. It
must run roughly 800 pages in length, as there is a reference in one of the stories
concerning some lacunae on a page in the 700's It had been copied and reprinted in
various languages - the story goes - among them Latin, Greek and English. Doctor Dee,
the Magus of Elizabethan fame, was supposed to have possessed a copy and translated it.
This book, according to the mythos, contains the formulae for evoking incredible things
into visible appearance, beings and monsters which dwell in the Abyss, and Outer Space,
of the human psyche.
Such books have existed in fact, and do exist. Idries Shah tells us of a search he
conducted for a copy of the Book of Power by the Arab magician Abdul-Kadir (see: The
Secret Lore of Magic by Shah), of which only one copy was ever found. The Keys of
Solomon had a similar reputation, as did The Magus by Barret, until all of these works
were eventually reprinted in the last fifteen years or so. The Golden Dawn, a famous
British and American Occult lodge of the turn of the Century, was said to have possessed
a manuscript called "the Veils of Negative Existence" by another Arab.
These were the sorcerer's handbooks, and generally not meant as textbooks or
encyclopedias of ceremonial magick. In other words, the sorcerer or magician is
supposed to be in possession of the requisite knowledge and training with which to carry
out a complex magickal ritual, just as a cook is expected to be able to master the
scrambling of eggs before he conjures an "eggs Benedict"; the grimoires, or Black Books,
were simply variations on a theme, like cookbooks, different records of what previous
magicians had done, the spirits they had contacted, and the successes they had. The
magicians who now read these works are expected to be able to select the wheat from the
chaff, in much the same fashion as an alchemist discerning the deliberate errors in a
treatise on his subject.
Therefore it was (and is) insanity for the tyro to pick up a work on ceremonial Magick
like the Lesser Key of Solomon to practise conjurations. It would also be folly to pick up
Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practise with the same intention. Both books are
definitely not for beginners, a point which cannot be made too often. Unfortunately,
perhaps, the dread NECRONOMICON falls into this category.
Crowley's Magick was a testimony of what he has found in his researches into the
forbidden, and forgotten, lore of past civilisations and ancient times. His Book of the Law
was written in Cairo in the Spring of 1904, when he believed himself to be in contact
with a praeter-human intelligence called Aiwass who dictated to him the Three Chapters
that make up the Book. It had influenced him more than any other, and the remainder of
his life was spent trying to understand it fully, and to make its message known to the
world. It, too, contains the formulae necessary to summon the invisible into visibility, and
the secrets of transformations are hidden within its pages, but this is Crowley's own
NECRONOMICON, received in the Middle East in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of
Gizeh, and therein is writ not only the beauty, but the Beast that yet awaits mankind.
It would be vain to attempt to deliver a synopsis of Crowley's philosophy, save that its
'leitmotif' is the Rabelaisian
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
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