Members Online: 361

Howard Phillips Lovecraft - History Of The Necronomicon (17.0 Kb)

Cover of Howard Phillips Lovecraft's Book History Of The Necronomicon

Book downloads: 210

Share darkbooks.org Activity On Facebook


Editors Rating		Continue Browsing Books Howard Lovecraft's Books List Howard Lovecraft Biography Howard Lovecraft Images
Community Rating

Category1:		Horror Tales
Category2:		Necromancy and Necronomicon
Category3:
Format:		eBook

Share/Bookmark Magic Books Library


	All Howard Lovecraft eBooks Images Gallery Magic And Wicca Articles Videos On Magic And Wicca Order all books on CD

In 1927, Lovecraft wrote a brief pseudo-history of the Necronomicon that was published in 1938, after his death, as A History of The Necronomicon. This work allowed subsequent fiction writers to remain consistent with Lovecraft's treatment of the Necronomicon. According to this account, the book was originally called Al Azif, an Arabic word that Lovecraft defined as "that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons" (one Arabic/English dictionary translates `Azif as "whistling (of the wind) weird sound or noise".)

In the History, Alhazred is said to have been a "half-crazed Arab" who worshipped the Lovecraftian entities Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu. He is described as being from Sanaa in Yemen, and as visiting the ruins of Babylon, the "subterranean secrets" of Memphis and the Empty Quarter of Arabia (where he discovered the "nameless city" below Irem). In his last years, he lived in Damascus, where he wrote Al Azif before his sudden and mysterious death in 738.

In subsequent years, Lovecraft wrote, the Azif "gained considerable, though surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age." In 950, it was translated into Greek and given the title Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas, a fictional scholar from Constantinople. This version "impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts" before being "suppressed and burnt" in 1050 by Patriarch Michael (an historical figure who died in 1059).

After this attempted suppression, the work was "only heard of furtively" until it was translated from Greek into Latin by Olaus Wormius. (Lovecraft gives the date of this edition as 1228, though the real-life Danish scholar Olaus Wormius lived from 1588 to 1624.) Both the Latin and Greek text, the History relates, were banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, though Latin editions were apparently published in 15th century Germany and 17th century Spain. A Greek edition was printed in Italy in the first half of the 16th century.

The Elizabethan magician John Dee (1527-c. 1609) allegedly translated the book presumably into English but Lovecraft wrote that this version was never printed and only fragments survive. (The connection between Dee and the Necronomicon was suggested by Lovecraft's friend Frank Belknap Long.)

According to Lovecraft, the Arabic version of Al Azif had already disappeared by the time the Greek version was banned in 1050, though he cites "a vague account of a secret copy appearing in San Francisco during the current [20th] century" that "later perished in fire". The Greek version, he writes, has not been reported "since the burning of a certain Salem man's library in 1692" (an apparent reference to the Salem witch trials). (In the story The Diary of Alonzo Typer, the character Alonzo Typer finds a Greek copy.)