Share what knowledge of the necronomicon, xul, ancient ones, etc.

Permalink Reply by Kristopher on December 23, 2008 at 10:42

Lovecraft was merely a storywriter that claimed to have a part in the book. Also, if you read about sumarian cultural belief, it ties almost exactly with that of the necronomicon. wheter its wields power itself, im not sure. but, i do know its nothing to be taken lightly if fucked with! fictional writngs, i rule out. lovecraft writing it, bull-shit. Though i do like the stories he provides! Would make great horror films. Yet, the Sumarians disappearing without trace, and little evidence of the necronomicon does leave room for wonder. As with many other super-advanced peoples of our past..

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Permalink Reply by Kristopher on December 25, 2008 at 6:24

So it is thought by those who have researched, dug, and blah blah blah. Still doesn't explain anything. A lot of HIGHLY ADVANCED CULTURES disappeared. maybe conqured, maybe "blinked" out of existence, or whatever. It's still unknown. I DON'T FUCKING KNOW! And i wont act like I do know. Ancient past just happens to fascinate me, and Sumeria is one of my favorites because its the earliest ADVANCED civilization known. Would be awesome to find out about EARLIER advanced civilizations. The ancient Egyptians also fascinate me. HOW THE FUCK!, DID THEY BUILD SUCH MASSIVE, DIFFICULT STRUCTURES? And I wanna know what is underneath the Sphinx! It's known that there is a cavity below it's paws. The sphinx is "the protector of knowledge". When the Romans found some inscriptions, papyruses(mispelled?), etc., it changed the whole Roman empire! The current Egyptian Gov't. will not allow ANYONE to dig there either. WHAT IS IT DAMNIT! LOL

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Permalink Reply by Caliban Darklock on December 26, 2008 at 18:00

Kristopher said:

Yet, the Sumarians disappearing without trace, and little evidence of the necronomicon does leave room for wonder. As with many other super-advanced peoples of our past..

I researched the Necronomicon extensively, and it actually turns out to have some small basis in fact. There was, in Mesopotamian occult literature, a book called the Kitab Al-Azif ("book of the howlings of desert spirits") - Lovecraft himself called the original mad Arab's manuscript Al Azif - which is said to have been written by one Abd Al-Azrad ("servant of the great devourer"); one could easily corrupt that into "Abdul Alhazred", which to anyone who knows much about Arabic names is obviously gibberish.

The Kitab Al-Azif has never been found in its entirety, but a fragmentary page turned up in an Egyptian bazaar in the 1980s, containing a verse which could be roughly translated into the infamous couplet "that thing is not dead which can eternal lie/and with strange eons even death may die". The literal translation was "it is not dead when it can wait eternally/and when the strange ones are coming, death may cease to be".

Of particular interest is "the strange ones are coming", which in the Arabic original was rendered as (roughly transliterated) "yaji ash-shuthath". In spoken Arabic, final soft consonants may be pronounced as hard ones; initial vowels may be dropped; and consecutive matching sounds may be combined - so a valid colloquial pronunciation of this phrase is "yag shuthath", which could be easily corrupted into "yog sothoth".

Lovecraft's provenance of the Necronomicon - translated to the Greek by Theodorus Philetas, then to the Latin by Olaus Wormius, then to English by John Dee - is clearly fictional. In fact, Olaus Wormius (a Danish scholar) was said by Lovecraft to have translated the Necronomicon some three centuries before his birth, and would in any case need to have translated it before the age of 21 for John Dee (a 16th century magician) to have seen the Latin translation at all. If you're really committed to the idea that John Dee translated the Necronomicon, he would have had to work from the Greek, not the Latin.

I have personally hypothesised that the Kitab Al-Azif was never translated into a discrete work by anyone into any language, but fragments had survived and were passed around in certain circles; Lovecraft, in his studies and research, probably studied some portions of that manuscript and incorporated elements of it into his fiction. I believe Lovecraft synthesised a new religion and cosmology out of fragments from the Kitab Al-Azif, some Sumerian folklore, and occult trends among the Elizabethan idle rich (he was quite the Anglophile). Because there were some parts of his fictional accounts that were real, coming from actual occult texts, this "lost" knowledge was naturally confirmed over time - notably when certain statues, bearing close resemblance to Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep as described by Lovecraft, turned up at Mesoamerican archaeological sites.

This satisfies my curiosity on the matter, but I have known some obsessive people who were searching in earnest for fragments of the Necronomicon in Latin and Greek because Lovecraft could not possibly have made it all up. Which is true, he couldn't, and he didn't; he pulled just enough reality into his fiction to give it long-lasting credibility. But that doesn't make the rest of it any less fictional.