On this page you can see content of all Necromancy and Necronomicon books (21 total) in one zip archive.
Necromancy or nigromancy is a form of magic involving communication with the deceased - either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily - for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge, or to use the deceased as a weapon, as the term may sometimes be used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft.
The word 'necromancy' is adapted from Late Latin necromantia, itself borrowed from post-Classical Greek nekromanteia, a compound of Ancient Greek nekros, 'dead body', and manteia', 'prophecy or divination'; this compound form was first used by Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. The Classical Greek term was (nekyia), from the episode of the Odyssey in which Odysseus visits the realm of the dead in Hellenistic Greek, rendered as necromantia in Latin, and as necromancy in 17th-century English.
The Necronomicon originated as a fictional book in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and grew into an extended literary in-joke as other horror writers organically added to the Cthulhu mythos. According to Lovecraft, it was written by Abdul Alhazred, 'a mad Arab poet of the Yemen', in 950 A.D. in Damascus. In many of the stories written by Lovecraft and his successors, merely reading or possessing the Necronomicon leads to insanity ...or worse.
As the obsession with the Necronomicon grew over the years, a number of books emerged to fill the demand, most notably the Simon Necronomicon. This purports to be a Sumerian grimoire, translated from a Greek manuscript of shady provenance. Simon has recently published a fascinating account of the publication of his Necronomicon, Dead Names. The Chaosium Necronomicon is an anthology of fiction about the Necronomicon and several fictional Necronomicons, including a lovingly crafted pastiche by the late science fiction writer Lin Carter. A recent entry is Donald Tyson's Necronomicon, which is firmly rooted in Lovecraft's universe. Less satisfying is Al Azif, which is simply a couple of hundred pages of illegible script in an unknown language..
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