Path: typhoon.sonic.net!pants.skycache.com!newsfeed.skycache.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-feed.fnsi.net!nntp.msen.com!206.132.58.120.MISMATCH!gw22.nn.bcandid.com!hub12.nn.bcandid.com!tw12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Dominion Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.mythology,alt.necronomicon,alt.horror.cthulhu,sci.skeptic,alt.paranet.skeptic Subject: Re: The Book of Power: Evaluating the Necronomicon (was ...) Organization: Xenu's Party Supplies. Fried Clams our specialty Reply-To: dominion@take_this_out.pdq.com Message-ID: References: <89hbe4$hg3@bolt.sonic.net> <570v4.2765$4c1.128866@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net> <89klgl$8dg@bolt.sonic.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.7/32.534 trialware MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lines: 95 NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.118.46.245 X-Trace: tw12.nn.bcandid.com 952024352 216.118.46.245 (Thu, 02 Mar 2000 12:12:32 MST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 12:12:32 MST Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 19:12:32 GMT Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.magick.tyagi:21720 alt.mythology:57566 alt.necronomicon:10301 alt.horror.cthulhu:53727 sci.skeptic:397254 alt.paranet.skeptic:21041 On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 04:26:07 -0500, "Chainsaw" wrote: > >n'yrl'thot'p wrote in message <89klgl$8dg@bolt.sonic.net>... > >>it is one thing to support a contention that a book is real. I do not do >this, >>because I have not yet perused a version of a book called "Necronomicon" >that >>seemed to faithfully contain what Lovecraft described it as containing >(with >>all the page numbers matching up, the copy bound in human skin, etc > >*blink* Funny, I don't seem to recall Lovecraft ever describing the book as >being bound in human skin (though I may be wrong)... I thought that was just >a concept added by the EVIL DEAD movies... > >input anyone? I think you have the meat of it. From the mouth of the Master himself. "Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa 700 A. D. He visited the ruins of Babylon & the subterranean secret of Memphis & spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia - the Roba El Khaliyeh or "Empty Space" of the ancients - & "Dahna" or "Crimson" desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits & monsters of death. Of this desert many strange & 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, & of his final death or disappearance (738 A. D.) Many terrible & conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight & devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have been the fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, & to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals & secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth & Cthulhu. In A. D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho' surreptitious circulation among the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. 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 Latin text was printed twice - one in the 15th century in black-letter (evidently in Germany) & once in the 17th - (prob. Spanish) both editions being without identifying marks, & located as to time & place by internal typographical evidence only. The work (both Latin & Gk.) was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius' time as indicated by his prefatory note & no sight of the Greek copy (which was printed in Italy bet. 1500 & 1550) has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man's library in 1692. A translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, & exists only in fragments recovered from the original MS. Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in the British Museum under lock & key, while another (17th cent.) is in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. A 17th cent. edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, & in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham. Also in the library of the Univ. of Buenos Ayres. Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, & a 15th century one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumour credits the preservation of a 16th cent. 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 rapidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries, & by all the branches of organized ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from rumours 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 novel "The King in Yellow"." H. P. Lovecraft Whereas I remember in the tape recording in "The Evil Dead" as discribing a book "bound in human skin and inked in human blood". Hope this helps Dominion =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "He turned out to be so many different characters he could have populated all of War and Peace and still had a few people left over." - - - Herbert Mitgang (about Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1980) ***Signature created with unregistered ESig97*** *** Get a copy at http://www.dbytes.com/ ***