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The Old OnesThe Necronomicon tells of the Old Ones, who arrived on the primal earth from "dark stars". When land appeared they swarmed from the oceans to build cities at the poles and raise temples to Those cursed by the Gods. Their ghoulish spawn ruled the earth until the Elder Lords, appalled at their abominations, acted:
"In all probability Cthulhu is based on the Norwegian myth of the Kraken, a legendary monster thought to live under the waves of the northern seas." -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion
In exile with their Master Azathoth, "Lord of All", in the chaotic Void, the Old Ones bide the day until they return to rule earth once again. "Azathoth is the 'ultimate nuclear chaos', at 'the center of infinity'. It is from the Throne of Azathoth that the aimless waves, 'whose chance combining gives each frail cosmos its eternal law', originate from." - Parker Ryan "Necronomicon Info Source" "However, before the complete influx of these elder forces into our present space-time continuum can be facillated, the secret and primal gateways must be located, and opened, to allow access from 'outside the circles of time'. This gateway has been glyphed by Lovecraft as one of the Great Old Ones themselves - 'the noxious Yog-Sothoth who froths as primal slime in nuclear chaos beyond the nethermost outpost of space and time'. - Tenebrous, "The Aeon of Cthulhu Rising" "Yog-Sothoth is coterminous with ALL time and space. In Through the Gates of
the Silver Key Lovecraft describes Yog-Sothoth thus:'an All in One and One in All of
limitless being and self-the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches
fancy and mathematics alike. ' Past, present, future all are one in Yog-Sothoth." "As Guardian of the Gate, he [Yog-Sothoth] is synonymous with Choronzon. The 'nethermost outpost', itself an opening or window to the dimensionality of the Great Old Ones (Universe B), is the star Sothis, or Sirius." - Tenebrous, "The Aeon of Cthulhu Rising" "It is now possible to see the continous flow and evolution of Aeons occuring simultaenously and passing over into the world of anti-matter. The Yog (or Yug .. an aeon or age ..) of Sothoth is the counterpoint - as the Aeon of Set- Thoth, or DA'ATH - of its Twin, the Yug-Hoor, or Aeon of Horus. Yog-Sothoth is the Gate through the aeons to the Star-Source beyond Yuggoth, the Yug or Aeon of Goth." - Kenneth Grant, Outside the Circles of Time, p. 214 "The knowledge and formula by which this gateway can be reopened can therefore be only apprehended through the negative vortex of DA'ATH. In the case of Lovecraft himself, who in waking life vehemently denied the verdical nature of the material with which he was dealing, the process of appropriation was almost completely subconscious, occuring through the medium of dream-experiences. As would be expected, the visitation of such unhuman and ultracosmic revelations took the form of the most hideous nightmares." - Tenebrous, "The Aeon of Cthulhu Rising"
The Occult Secrets of Alhazred(1) "The Mad Arab" According to the NecronomiconAlhazred "travelled widely, from Alexandria to
the Punjab, and was well read. He had a flair for languages, and boasts on many occasions
of his ability to read and translate manuscripts which defied lesser scholars.Just as
Nostradamus used ritual magic to probe the future, so Alhazred used similar techniques
(and an incense composed of olibanum, storax, dictamnus, opium and hashish) to clarify the
past, and it is this, combined with a lack of references, which resulted in the
Necronomicon being dismissed as largely worthless by historians." "HPL wrote that Alhazred's title was 'Mad Poet'. 'Mad' is usually written majnun in Arabic. Majnun means 'mad' today. However, in the eighth century (Alhazred's time) it meant 'Possessed by Jinn' [the Old Ones]." - Parker Ryan "Necronomicon Info Source" "Alhazred appears to have had access to many sources now lost, and events which are only hinted at in the Book of Genesis or the apocryphal Book of Enoch, or disguised as mythology in other sources, are explored in great detail." - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979)
"Alhazred may have used dubious magical techniques to clarify the past, but he also shared with 5th. century B.C. Greek writers such as Thucydides a critical mind and a willingness to explore the meanings of mythological and sacred stories. His speculations are remarkably modern, and this may account for his current popularity: he believed that many species besides the human race had inhabited the Earth, and that much knowledge was passed to mankind in encounters with being from other 'spheres'. He shared with some neo-platonists the belief that stars are like our sun, and have their own unseen planets with their own lifeforms, but elaborated this belief with a good deal of metaphysical speculation in which these beings were part of a cosmic hierarchy of spiritual evolution. He was also convinced that he had contacted these 'Old Ones' using magical invocations, and warned of terrible powers waiting to return to re-claim the Earth - he interpretated this belief in the light of the Apocalypse of St. John, but reversed the ending so that the Beast triumphs after a great war in which the earth is laid waste." - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979) "He [Alhazred] visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia-the Roba el Khaliye or 'Empty Space' of the ancients and 'Dahna' or 'Crimson Desert' of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this desert many strange and 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 and of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th century biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen the fabulous Irem or city of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown deities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu." - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the Necronomicon"
(2) Barbarous Names "Alhazred is said (by HPL) to have journeyed to Egypt in search of occult secrets.
This is consistent with the time frame that it was supposed to have ocured in. Between the
fourth century and the tenth century Near Eastern scholars interested in magickal matters
viewed Egypt as an invaluable source of information. During this time many corrupt
Egyptian words and phrases entered magical writings. Gnostic, Coptic, and Greco-Egyptian
word formulas were incorporated in great number into existing Arab magickal systems.....It
has been suggested that some of the Barbarous names used in Lovecraft's fiction might
indeed be corrupt Egyptian word formulas. Particularly Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, and
Nyarlathotep are said to have an Egyptian origin. (Note the obviously Egyptian endings
'hotep' and 'thoth'.)" "Cthulhu is very close to the Arabic word Khadhulu (also spelled al qhadhulu). Khadhulu (al qhadhulu) is translated as 'Forsaker' or 'Abandoner'. Many Sufis and Muqarribun writings make use of this term (Abandoner). In Sufi and Muqarribun writings 'abandoner' refers to the power that fuels the practices of Tajrid 'outward detachment' and Tafrid 'interior solitude'." - Parker Ryan, "Necronomicon Info Source"
"By the time Mohammad was writing Shaitan was being called 'the Old Serpent (dragon)' and 'the Lord of the Abyss'. The Old Serpent or Old Dragon is, according to experts such as E.A. Budge and S.N. Kramer, Leviathan [Hebrew]. Leviathan is Lotan [Canaanite]. Lotan traces to Tietan. Tietan, we are told by the authorities on Near Easern mythology is a later form of Tiamat. According to the experts the Dragon of the Abyss called Shaitan is the same Dragon of the Agyss named Tiamat." - Parker Ryan , "Necronomicon Info Source"
One of the titles of the Dragon is Lord of the Abyss. "The title Lord of the Abyss translated into Sumerian is 'Kutulu'. Kutu means 'Underworld' or 'Abyss' and Lu is Sumerian for 'Lord' or 'Person of importance'.... Indeed the ruler of the Abyss (kutu) in Sumeria was the Old Dragon Mumu-Tiamat." - Parker Ryan "Necronomicon Info Source" "Some...link Kingu (Qingu) with the Ancient Ones by assigning him the status of
general for the Ancient Ones in their war against the Elder Gods (which this myth
supposedly represents.) Though these groups claim to be servants of the Elder gods, they
worship Tiamat as a benevolent creatrix, ignoring the fact that it was Tiamat who
appointed Kingu HER general in the Enuma Elis [the Babylonian Epic of Creation],
leading to the conclusion that Tiamat was an Ancient One and therefore that this group
worshipped the Ancient Ones while claiming to serve the Elder Gods." - Adapa,
"The Necronomicon and Ancient Sumer: Dubunking the Myth" "Another race is
the Deep Ones who are a type of amphibious creature resembling a mixture of a fish, a frog
and man. The Deep Ones worship a god called Dagon. Dagon is a deity resembling a giant
Deep One. Dagon and the Deep Ones seem to be Allied in some way with Cthulhu." Oannes were repulsive amphibius beings who came from space in an egg shaped vehicle. The fragments of text that survive are a Babylonian retelling of a much more ancient Sumerian tale. Six thousand years ago or so, the Vela supernova was an awe inspiring sight from the earth. It was then, according to legend, that powerful beings or "Watchers" came from the sky, taught humans the arts of civilization, then made them their slaves. According to Robert Temple in his Sirius Mystery, astronomical knowledge imparted by the Oannes is preserved by the tribal Dogon people today.
"The Greek and Latin Translations""In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable though surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon." - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the Necronomicon" "This title [Necronomicon] is translated as 'the Book (or image) of the Practices of the Dead'; Necro being Greek for 'Dead' and Nomos meaning 'practices', 'customs' or 'rules' (as in astronomy) ." - Parker Ryan, "The Necronomicon and Ancient Arab Magick" "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." "A Latin translation was made in 1487 by a Dominican priest Olaus Wormius.
Wormius, a German by birth, was a secretary to the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish
Inquisition, Tomas de Torquemada, and it is likely that the manuscript of the Necronomicon
was seized during the persecution of Moors ("Moriscos") who had been converted
to Catholism under duress; this group was deemed to be unsufficiently pure in its beliefs.
. "...The Latin text was printed twice - once in the 15th century in block letter (evidently in German) and once in the 17th (probably Spanish); both editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographic evidence only. - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the Necronomicon" "It was written in seven volumes, and runs to over 900 pages in the Latin edition." - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979) "Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th century) is known to be
in the British Museum under lock and key, which another (17th century) is in the
Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. A 17th century edition is in the Widener Library at
Harvard, and in the Library of Miskatonic University at Arkham; also in the library of the
University of Buenos Aires.
Dee's Liber Logaeth
"The Latin text came into the possession of Dr. John Dee in the sixteenth century. Dr. Dee made the only English translation of the Necronomicon known." - Parker Ryan, "The Necronomicon and Ancient Arab Magick" "Dr. John Dee, the famous English magician, and his assistant Edward Kelly were at the court of the Emperor Rudolph II to discuss plans for making alchemical gold, and Kelly bought the copy from the so-called 'Black Rabbi' and Kabbalist, Jacob Eliezer, who had fled to Prague from Italy after accusations of necromancy. At that time Prague had become a magnet for magicians, alchemists and charletons of every kind under the patronage of Rudolph, and it is hard to imagine a more likely place in Europe for a copy to surface." - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979) Dee and Kelly's "Enochian system has many parallels with HPL. Schueler asserts that the Enochian tradition proposes the existence of a God or Force which is the manifestation of Infinite Space similar to Crowley's Nuit and HPL's Yog-Sototh. Schueler also contends that The Divine manifestation of the nuclear point at the center of infinity (equivalent to Hadit or Azathoth) is also important to Enochian magick. The Enochian Keys state that the wold is nearing an eon spanning Cycle in which Ancient Gods will return to there throne and the world will be forever changed. These keys also mention an imprisoned dragon (Cthulhu?)" - Parker Ryan , "Necronomicon Info Source" "The Necronomicon appears to have had a marked influence on Kelly; the character of his scrying changed, and he produced an extraordinary communication which struck horror into the Dee household...Kelly left Dee shortly afterwards. Dee translated the Necronomicon into English while warden of Christ's College, Manchester..." - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979) "An English translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original MS." - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the Necronomicon" "...The manuscript passed into the collection of the great collector Elias Ashmole, and hence to the Bodleian Library in Oxford." - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979) "Dee's cipher manuscript was called Liber Logaeth, and was evidently "a portion of a larger manuscript, the origin and nature of which is not known. Due to its history and the similarity in content to the Cthulhu Mythos, this document has been presented...as being, at least a portion of, the document which was the inspiration for HPL's Necronomicon." - Ken Ottinger
The quotes from Lovecraft were taken from his short story "The
Dunwich Horror" ( 1928). Lovecraft attributes the source of his material to Olaus
Wormius' Latin version of Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon, as printed in Spain in the
17th century. Note how Dee's Liber Logaeth places the return of the Old Ones at
some indeterminate future while in Lovecraft's version, They are coming soon (and in his
stories have already arrived.) For the text of Olaus Wormius' version click here. The Missing Texts"No Arabic manuscript is known to exist; the author Idries Shah carried out a search in the libraries of Deobund in India, Al-Azhar in Egypt, and the Library of the Holy City of Mecca, without success." - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979) "The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius' time, as indicated by his prefatory note (there is, however, a vague account of a secret copy appearing in San Francisco during the present century but later perishing by fire); and no sight of the Greek copy - which was printed in Italy between 1500 and 1550 - has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man's library in 1692." - H. P. Lovecraft, "The History and Chronology of the Necronomicon" "Nathan of Gaza precipitated one of the most profound events in the history of
Judaism. In 1665, while only 21 or 22 years old, he proclaimed that Sabbatai Tzevi was the
Messiah." "In the years from 1933-38 the few known copies of the Necronomicon simply disappeared; someone in the German government of Adolph Hitler took an interest in obscure occult literature and began to obtain copies by fair means or foul. Dee's translation disappeared from the Bodleian following a break-in in the spring of 1934. The British Museum suffered several abortive burglaries, and the Wormius edition was deleted from the catalogue and removed to an underground repository in a converted slate mine in Wales (where the Crown Jewels were stored during the 1939-45 war). Other libraries lost their copies, and today there is no library with a genuine catalogue entry for the Necronomicon. The current whereabouts of copies of the Necronomicon is unknown; there is a story of a large wartime cache of occult and magical documents in the Osterhorn area near Salzburg. - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ." (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979) "Lovecraft denied that the book existed, and wrote as a joke a paper titled 'A History of the Necronomicon', giving a chronology of the book, names, and places. Supposedly, the book was written around A.D. 700 by an Arab by the name of Abdul Al-Hazred, and the original title was Al Azif, which is Arabic for the sound made by nocturnal insects. Al-Hazred was supposedly better known as 'the Mad Arab', and the name of the book is supposedly bastardized Greek and Latin, which roughly translates into 'The Book of Dead Names' (i.e., ikon = book, necro = die or dead, and nom = name). Lovecraft told his colleagues that he stole the name 'Al Azif' from another author as a joke, and that the name 'Al-Hazred' was a pun on his mother's maiden name, Hazard." - Kendrick Kerwin Chua, "The Necronomicon - FAQ Version 2.0" The books of the The Order of the Golden Dawn, "The Equinox and The Golden Dawn, are important to a study of H. P. Lovecraft for several reasons. First, they are the closest thing to Lovecraft's Necronomicon to be produced in this century. second, in his study of occult material, it is not impossible that Lovecraft may have come into contact with The Equinox.. In fact, the Widener Library at Harvard owns Volume 1, Number 5 (March 1911), of The Equinox, which was received at the library on December 31, 1917, placing it easily within Lovecraft's reach. And third, there is a kind of peripheral connection between Lovecraft and the Golden Dawn in that several of his favorite weird fiction writers belonged to it. Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, both of whom Lovecraft praised (albeit to different degrees) in 'Supernatural Horror in Literature', were prominent members of the order, as were Sax Rohmer, Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson." -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion "When we then turn to the text referred to as the Necronomicon by H.P. Lovecraft, we are hard-pressed to render a 'verdict' as to its legitimacy. If indeed the text preceded Lovecraft, then this does not guarantee that it has come down to us unedited. If the idea and title were used by Lovecraft as a result of suggestions from others without an extant text, then perhaps its 'source consciousness' hid the text until a later time. If Lovecraft fabricated even the IDEA of the tome along with its title, then perhaps he was simply a 'third party' to a state of consciousness which we may never assess." - Kendrick Kerwin Chua, "The Necronomicon - FAQ Version 2.0" "Since the publication in 1938 of H. P. Lovecraft's essay on the Necronomicon, at least one more copy of this obviously rare book has surfaced and is now in the collection of the [John Hay] Library at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Printed by the Owl's Wick Press at Philadelphia in 1973, this modern edition of the Necronomicon appears to be a facsimile of the original Arabic text that Lovecraft presumed lost by the year A. D. 1050. A problematical aspect of the Brown University copy, however, is that the text, though appearing to the untrained eye to be in Arabic, is actually in a language known to Semitic scholars as Duraic. Unfortunately, there has, to date, been no successful completion of a translation." -Philip A. Shreffer, The H.P. Lovecraft Companion The "Great Beast" Aleister Crowley
interpreted the horrifying communication by Kelly (under the influence of the Necronomicon
four centuries earlier) "as the abortive first attempt of an extra-human entity to
communicate thelemic Book of the Law."
"The Coroner presents the Necronomicron" "Succinctly stated: there are no 'Ancient One' in Sumerian Religion or mythology.
Similarly, there are no 'Elder Gods'. Additionally, there exists no written record of any
god, demon, or lesser figure whose names resemble those of the Chthonic pantheon. Some
have advanced the proposition that Cthulhu is taken from the eponym Kutu-lu, a
mangled rendering of 'man of Kutha'. This would suggest that Cthulhu is supposedly a title
of Nergal, the patron deity of the city of Kutha in ancient Mesopotamia. Yet nowhere in
any extant text is this title referred to. In fact, nowhere in any tablet is any god of
the Mesopotamian pantheon referred to under the title 'man of...' Such a base descriptive
was unheard of as a divine appellation." "Just as his observation about the physical origin of his country
guided the ancient Mesopotamian in his speculations about the origins of the Universe, so
do his memory and his experience of its political organization seem to have governed his
thinking about the origins of order in that universe. Politics in Mesopotamia in the Old
Babylonian Period, various and unstable, abounded in tribal and urban political forms. It
ranged from near anarchy to democratic or semidemocratic forms based on general assemblies
to monarchies. Its continually shifting power combinations and frequent attempts at
achieving supremacy now by one, now by another, undoubtedly afforded many an object lesson
in how to win power when common danger imposed unity and in how to preserve such power by
wise and benevolent rule after the immediate danger was past. In the [Enuma Elis]
epic, world order is seen as the outcome of just such a successful drive towards
supremacy." - T. Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness
Hyperlinks
Questions: questions@cezwright.com.
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Great Cthulhu 
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