The night opens on the hem of the abyss. The doors of hell are closed: To your risk it tries to them. To your callback something for answer to you will be aroused. This gift i leave the humanty: Here is the keys. It tries the lock; be satisfied. But listen to what Abdul Alhazred says: For first I have tried to them: and I am mad. (from the preface to the Necronomicon)
A such rich material of mystic suggestions and pseudoerudite references, could inflame the fantasy (well predisposed to the combustion) of the fans of fantastic literature: who not only were to the game, but shifted his ground inventing again false references, ulterior particulars, new versions and embellishments for the newborn legend. All this often unknown to Lovecraft himself who, for examle, in 1936 was astonished when his correspondent Willis Conover sent him the issue of an amateurial review containing a «mock review» written down by the fan Donald Wollheim (who then would have become one eminent personality in the world of the science fiction), regarding of one «version in modern English» of the ill-famed text. Here is the text:
The Necronomicon, in accordance with the Translation and compendium from the original in Arabic language by Abdul Alhazred, by W.T. Faraday. Privately printed from the author.
In the first years of the Middle Ages, a little before
the advent of Maometto, a thought mad Arab, named Abdul Alhazred,
compiled this mysterious book. According to the preface, this is the first
modern tranlsation in English language; the only existing translation beyond
this, destined to publication, is the rarest work in Latin of a wizard
Olaus Wormius, who was burnt on the stake various hundred of years ago
for heresy. The present version is a reduction from the original.
This book is not intened for a public audience. It is
printed mainly for being put to disposition of those students of the Hidden
who estimate necessary the consultation of it for their searches. It is
supposed that it is a traty on the Spheres of the Hidden and their interaction
with the unamnity from the dawn of history. Through the text appears with
much clarity the unbalanced minf of the author, who was convinced to have
learned these facts from supernatural forces. Curious, moreover, the book
seems to inspire to the present reviewer a certain air of truth.
How it is written in the preface, this edition is extremily
reduced. The original covers in fact nine hundred manuscript pages, while
the present edition contains only three hundred of them. Doctor Faraday
admits to have omitted entire chapters for «emergency reasons ...».
In whole, this publication will remain an essential contribution for science
of the Hidden.
Is also an introduction to the cosmogonia of the Ancient
Gods which, in accordance to the opinion of mystics, came before the birth
of the modern Demons. One thinks that Robert W. Chambers and Ambrose
Bierce had consulted this work to get cue from it in writing some
of thier more fantastic juvenile writings.
This is surely a volume that for such people it will
be demonstrated of inestimable value.
About the cited one, that is probably the fisrt one calenbour about his book, Lovecraft «was» to the game. In answering to Conover, he enphasized the errors, for example, made by Wollheim (amphasizing that Alhazred is posterior and not before Maometto, that Olaus Wormius was not died on the stacke, and other inaccurancies), and asserted to attend with anxiety of being able to consult «the translation of this Faraday». He concluded: «If the legend of the Necronomicon keeps on growing in this way, finally people will believe it, and willaccuse me of false in order to have asserted of having invented I!».
In this he was prophet. Very soon, more authoritative voices began to be added to the jokes among the fans of fantastic literature. Philip Duchęsnes, holder of an antiquarianism bookcase in New York, was probably the firts one, in 1941, to insert in his catalogue the Necronomicon (playfully, but with all chrims of the authentic insertion). He gave a precise description of volume and fixed the price of 900 dollars, a hugeness for that age. However, he received nomerous demands. he answered to all of being already in negotiations for the sale of the volume with «one foreign University».
With passing of the time the legend, far from extinguishing, increased enriching itself of new particulars. In 1953, a journalist specialized in outrč arguments, Arthur Scott, wrote for the American monthly Sir! an article entitled: «Curious uses of the human skin», that was concluded with those words:
How it concerns to me, I'd like to see the work that the tradition would want to give as one of the rarest books in the world. It is a question of a copy of the famous Necronomicon - a collection of magical formulas in order to evoke the Demons and other diabolic forces - that it is said to be written around the seventh century by the «Mad Arab», the Wizard Abdul Alhazred. Among the rare exemplary, all written by hand, existing in private colletions, this is the only one whose pages and binding are - it is said - in human skin. Moreover, the used skin has been taken from bodies of murdered persons through Witchcraft; this is, at least what is told.
After that, the presence of the Necronomicon began to increase on bulletins of the bibliophils, on wich fans inserted numerous announcements which they demanded the exemplary to whichever price with. At a certain point, the reputation of this cursed book crossed the ocean: for years, for example, the nonexistent volume remained in the top of the titles more demanded in the Parisian bookcase La Mandragore.
This insertion (work of the fan Marcel Bčalu), primed the «game» also in France, where the designer Philippe Druillet announced to have found - and copied accurately - some pages of the Necronomicon, and began to let appear some extracts in many reviews.
Jacques Bergier - who was correspondent of Lovecraft - added the dose diffusing, both in France and in America, the following «news» (that he attributed to the american fan Paul J. Willis, director of the amateurial reviews Anubis and of the small publishing house Golden Goblin Press):
The paternity of the document found by Druillet has not been still recognized, for how much some references make to presume that it can have been prepared, probably like facsimile of a previous manuscript, or by doctor Dee, or by one of his colleagues, or by his students.
The publication of these pages is thought now to be allowed, 'cause the reproduced pages would mean very little for those who are not begun. The integral publication of the manuscript will happen instead in the Editions du Terrain Vague, Paris. One hopes that soon it appears an American edition under the auspices of the Golden Goblin Press.
Jacques Bergier, of the Editions Pančte e Terrain Vorgue, makes me understand that «the French edition will appear in the Terrain Vogue, if will not be forbidden. This publishing house has been blown up various time ago by one plastic bomb, after the visit of some Arabs with a sinister aspect. The police said that the attack has to be attributed to the Algerian Fascists, but some persons - between which the Councilman of the prefect of the police, the knight G. Auguste Dupin - they surely know something more».
Lately other edition of the Necronomicon have made news. In the Pio XII Library of the University of St. Luis, a microfilm of the copy of the Vatican Library of the Necronomicon is held in one cell whose access is strictly controlled, con accesso controllato. But, in the last months, two famous students have gradually lost their reason after having find some amazing relations between the pages of the text. It is inquired on the matter with great secrecy.
A little time ago, then, a correspondent from Argentine has made me to know that a scientist come in visit, who was consulting the copy of the Necronomicon in possession of the library of the University of Buenos Aires, forgetting every caution, read aloud some steps of the Seventh Chapter. After having read it, followed a series of too much hideous incident to be reported. The surveillance to the volume has been doubled, and some parts of the building have demanded the fumigation.
In the United States, in the same time, the tests of the exsistence of the ill-famed text were multiplied until becoming difficulty contutable. In 1962, the Antiquarian Bookman (the most American authoritative review for bibliopihles), published in its list of selling books, written up by Walker Baylor:
Alhazred, Abdul. The Necronomicon. Spain 1647. Binding a little worn out in leather and with some spot, even if in prefect state. Numerous xylographies and iniziatic signs. It seems to be a treaty of Ritual Magic in Latin. The Ex Libris in the margin of the page indicates that this book comes from the library of the Miskatonic University. To the best offerer.
A true «academic seal» came finally from the discovery, in the catalogue of the Central Library of California University, of this card:
BL430 A 47 Alhazred, Abdul
ca. X. 738 Shelf B
Necronomicon (Al Azif), by Abdul Alhazred.
Translated from Greek by Olaus Wormius (Olao Worm)
XIII, 760p., recordings on wood, tables
sm. fol. (62cm)
Toledo 1647
With passing of the time and the growth of the Lovecraft's notoriety, in an alarming measure, the undue tendency of the Necronomicon to materialize itself developed in one alarming measure, involving the most unexpected persons. In 1968, coming back from a travel in the Far East, the writer L. Sprague de Camp (who some year after would have given to the press the more important biography written about Lovecraft) met two students of the book and, pulled outside from the large bag an exercise book written in parchment in a unintelligible language like Arab. He acquired it in Baghdad, he explained, attracted from the title, which it had been translated by the civil employer of the General directorate office of the Iraqui Antiquities, who had offered for sale to him. The title was The howl of the demons.
«Al Azif», exactly.
Naturally, de Camp did not believe that the manuscript (whose containment regarded a series of necromantic formulas) regarded to the Lovecraft's book, but it made him curious the singular chain of coincidences after wich he had come in possession. Examined by American experts, the text turned out in a dark dialect Kurdish, spoken by few people in a village of the southern Irak. Nobody (how we know) has still translated it. De Camp published it in a facsmile edition and, showing it, he carried another grain to the flour mill of legend asserting that three Arabic philologists, after having begun to study the text, they disappeared, probably because they murmured in a undertone the words while transcribing them.
An another famous writer entered heavily in the game is the English man Colin Wilson, essavist, novelist and great studious of Lovecraft. Wilson asserted that, after a series of fortuiros events, moreover enchained by a sort of junghian «sincronism» , he knew that Lovecraft's father was a member of an American filation of the Egyptian Masonry founded by Cagliostro, through wich he entered in possession of one copy of the Al Azif made by the elisabettianan wizard John Dee. The book - he added - was exactly what Lovecraft had described: an ancient treaty of Goethic Magic in which it was taught how to enter in contact with disembodied evil entities. Evidently - Wilson supported - the young Lovecraft must have found the ill-famed text between the papers of his father, and later he had made of it the fulcrum of his horrorific novellistic, pretending of having invented by himself in order to not discredit the memory of his father. From all that Wilson wrote a book, entitled Necronomicon, in which he supported to have identified the original text of John Dee: a coded manuscript entitled Liber Logaeth, treasured in the British Museum. Deciphered with the use of a computer, the text would have revealed later the English version of the text of Abdul Alhazred. In his book, Wilson reports all the extracts form the Necronomicon inserted by Lovecraft in his novels, setting this material in a context forming a treaty of Evocatorial Magic, modeled on the Ancient grimoires structure, the formulas with which the wizards of a time evoked spirits and demons of every kind.
The joke (because of this - in effect - it regards) perpetrared by Wilson, was successful, and affected deeply on credulity of the fans of the Fantastic and, above all, that one of the initiates of «Hidden Sciences». Since this book was published in an Italian series library no more existing now, an incalculable numbere of «esoterists» has tried to obtain ulterior information on the mysterious text. More: several hidden associations have said to have put in pratical the rituals described in the book, obtaining spectacular success. Indeed, as it supported Paracelso, the fantasy is the main ingredient of whichever magical operation.
In conclusion, currently the Necronomicon - although not existing - is more alive than ever. With the same title were published, in various languages, numerous books in necromantic character, while several esoteric shools evoke (or would be better to say «construct»?) Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth Shub-Niggurath and companions, emplying every kind of rituals. In various treaties of occultism parallels between the Lovecraftian's Pantheon and the demons of the several magical tradition are traced.
Lovecraft therefore had indeed foreseen the future: by now, his fantastic creatures live of their own life, and the debated matter in not more the mysterious existence of the Necronomicon, given for sure, but the mysterious ways through which the sinister manuscript has survived 'til him.
