THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations (2 page)

In the labyrinths beneath another wasteland ruin, which is known only as the Nameless City, he is said to have discovered the secret of the
Sheshek’ul’thrai: the
thu-baan’i
, or “serpent-walkers.”  The
thu-baan’i
, he insisted, were a race of “viper-striders,” who descended from an age of “dragons in the flesh” (dinosaurs?) and whose origins predated humanity itself.  There too, in the mazes of the Nameless, Al-Azrad is said to have deciphered unrecoverable petroglyphs which revealed the terrible secrets of the sinister elder Dragon Age.

His ramblings were seen by many as sacred, despite his own irreligious nature.  As a Yemeni free spirit, Al-Azrad was not regarded as either a
Sufi
or a holy man who held rigidly to any of the known world’s religions.  Rather, he confessed (in his
Al Azif
) to worshipping two great entities, or gods, one of which he called
‘Umr at-Tawil
, or Yog-Sothoth.  The other he called the Great
Cthulhu
.  Translation of the full
Al Azif
also reveals that for a time he served the Lord in Ebon, Nyarlathotep.  His worship of these entwined and timeless powers, he insisted, was a fatal sacrifice which he made willingly in the name of Man.  It appears (and this is highly arguable due to his ranting, conflicting accounts and refutations at various times in his life) that Al-Azrad believed that by worshipping these “un-gods,” he was silencing them in his mind, and thereby prolonging the time in which he was still in control of his own flesh and capable of writing down the secrets of the elder age, so that “the Men of tomorrow might avert the Great Dying for a moon, if not for an aeon.”  Whatever the truth of this matter, it seems that he did not worship (or pretend to worship) either Yog-Sothoth or Cthulhu until late in his life.

Due to the man’s infamy, his constantly-proven predictions coming to pass, and the grisly tales told of his death, Al-Azrad’s writings were still well known among the scholars and mystics of later centuries.  Versions of
Al Azif
therefore passed into the Byzantine Empire, and even to Constantinople itself (and perhaps so far as the Scholomance of Transylvania).  By 920 A.D., his work was well-enough known in Occidental, alchemical circles that it came to be regarded as “an unholy blasphemy, awash with the blackest of lies” by the Holy Church (specifically, by Johannes, Pope John X of Romagna).   We are left to wonder if any of the heretical scrolls which named Al-Azrad as a second “Lazarus” or “Jesual” were in the possession of the Church of Constantinople at that time as well.

In 950 A.D., a monk of the Eastern Orthodox Church—Theodorus Philetas, whose name means “beloved gift of God”—dared to translate
Al Azif
into Greek, re-titling it as the
Nekronomikon
.  Despite violent suppression of the work (and the rumored torture and slow Mithraditic poisoning of Philetas himself), the
Nekronomikon
was further copied and found in the libraries of several European alchemists during the 10th and 11th centuries.  This clandestine dissemination came to an abrupt end in 1050 A.D., when the Patriarch Michael Keroularious (I) of Constantinople issued a decree for the work’s “universal and manifest collection, with all immediacy.”  In other words, he demanded that all copies of the work be seized.

Records are fragmentary, but it is said that several dozen copies of the work (most of them hand-copied) were unearthed by Michael’s inquisitors, then summarily taken and burned.  There is reason to believe that the original Arabic manuscript of Al-Azrad, the singular scroll-bundle entitled
Al Azif
, perished in these flames as well; but the author of this work has reason to doubt and refute this assertation.

Surely, some few copies of the tome did survive the purge, but this ominous declaration of Christian hatred for the work and its ideas sent a grim and certain message to the remaining holders of the
Nekronomikon
in 1050 and beyond.  Until the 13th century, whispers of its existence (and oblique quotations from its rituals) were fragmentary and so cryptic as to be unrecognizable by any but the most obsessive of knowing scholars.  It can be argued that much of the art-veiled cryptology which was developed by alchemists and artists in the 11th through 16th
centuries was a reaction not only to the Inquisition, but also as a means of coding the
Nekronomikon
’s survival into other works.

It is only in 1228 A.D. that the writings of Al-Azrad bloomed and scattered into Europe’s philosophical
esoterica
once again.  An obscure antiquarian (Dominican monk?) by the name of Olaus Wormius—not to be confused with the famous Danish physician Wormius of the later 1600s—dared to produce a new translation, the
Necronomicon
, in Latin.  Wormius is said to have been strappadoed to death for this blasphemy.  His single hand-scribed
Necronomicon
was not discovered by the Church (and he died in torture while refusing to betray its location), yet scribal copies of his edition were coming to light in Mainz and Iberia as early as 1231.

(
Note bene:
  It should be understood that in a prefatory passage of his own Al-Azrad translation, Wormius implied that he was working from the Philetas
Nekronomikon
, and that the Yemenese
Al Azif
had
already
been entirely lost.  If this
is
true—and this author contests this account—it therefore stands to reason that the earliest and most authentic surviving tomes are written in Byzantine Greek.  Whatever the truth of
Al Azif
’s survival may be, the last known extant original Greek copy was burned in Salem, Massachusetts during the witch hysteria of 1692.)

The Wormius edition (along with any surviving Greek editions, should they someday be found) was declared heretical by Ugolino di Conti—known to history as Pope Gregory IX—in 1232, prior to his fearful refuge at Anagni.  Indeed, it is very likely that his founding of the Papal Inquisition in 1231 was a direct yet secret response to the
Necronomicon
’s (re)discovery.  An unknown number of copies were burned, as were many heretics; and references to the whispers of Al-Azrad are almost entirely absent from even the most secret and encrypted European histories of the years 1233 to 1450.  This is the first age of “encrypted artwork,” which would later bloom into a wave of widespread occult symbolism, with secret messages embedded in many of the artistic works created during the Renaissance.

But the work
Necronomicon
itself lived on.  Following that pre-industrial miracle, the invention of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, certain “black letter” German editions of the Wormius
Necronomicon
began to appear in Mainz and then throughout continental Europe in the 15th century.  (This author has reason to believe that this “black” edition of Al-Azrad’s words was prepared circa 1451 A.D.  However, the quizzical line of inquiry which led me to this hypothesis is tenuous, and beyond the scope of the current work.)  At some point in the 17th century, another even more haphazard copy of this edition was released in an “anonymous squall” somewhere in Spain.

“Black”
Necronomicon
s from these two printings are entirely uncredited, for the publishers certainly knew quite well the ends to which the unfortunate Philetas and Wormius had come.  Typographical evidence points unreliably toward either a Madrid or Lisbon release for the 17th century edition, and a once-tentative Mainz sourcing for the earlier German “black” is now a matter of certainty.

As a curiosity, it should also be noted that a far less-known printing of the Greek Philetas
Nekronomikon
was published in either Florence or Milan circa 1525 A.D.  This “Italian” edition is partial, shoddy and improperly collated, yet still priceless due to its partial preservation of the first direct translation.

Unsurprisingly considering the Church’s violent reaction to
all
editions of the
Necronomicon
, the work was never translated into English until the late 1500s by the Doctor John Dee.  Dee’s unique work in this regard was certainly further copied by several learned gentlemen (including my own ancestor, Sir Edward Kell(e)y), but the Dee
Necronomicon
, or
Sibilance
, was never officially published.  A uniquely transcribed derivative of Dee’s work surfaced much later in the Whateley family of Dunwich.

Dee’s own original text was believed to have been lost (save for in quoted fragments), but the existence of this electronic edition of his work shall constitute sufficient evidence that the Dee manuscript did indeed survive in its damaged entirety.  The majority of the encoded Dee manuscript is currently in the possession of this author.  Originally, this manuscript was owned by one Clarice Whateley of Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Sourcing the document to earlier owners has proven to be problematic.

The challenges we face now are in deciphering the
Necronomicon
’s encrypted passages; in organizing the “scrolls,” or originally-directed chapters; and in finding, purchasing, curating and decrypting those Apocryphal sections which have sadly gone missing in recent years.

Other confirmed copies of the
Necronomicon
are exceedingly difficult to access.  One damaged German “black” exists in the special Culpeper Collection, locked away in the inaccessible sub-archives beneath the British Museum.  Another near-pristine, but wildly annotated, Iberian “black” is said to lie in a bulletproof glass case among the Strozier-derivative special collection of the
Bibliotheque Nationale
in Paris.  One more (Iberian?) copy is certainly located in the secure memorial collection of the Widener Library at Harvard, and the legendary (English?) nonesuch copy still resides in the Miskatonic University at Arkham.  Another, perhaps Italian, example is said to be held by the University of Buenos Aires.  Other reports of the book in private collections are rampant, but in the end amount more to rumor, lie and speculation than actual fact.  The number of accessible copies of this work—for 99.999% of humanity, at least—has remained at zero, until now.

The last “public” person who is known to have read and used the
Necronomicon
is Robert W. Chambers, who alluded to several of its otherwise unpublished passages in his “fictional” work
The King in Yellow
in 1895.  He is believed to have somehow stumbled across a fragmentary “black” in the antiquarian side-shops of Soho in the early 1890s.  Of course, textual evidence points firmly at another owner of the
Necronomicon
being Howard Philips Lovecraft of Providence, Rhode Island.  He built his decades-long writing career upon the tome’s many revelations.  What may have happened to his (father’s) copy of the book following his death in 1937, however, will likely never be known.

Despite all of these losses, resurgences and suppressions over 1,300 years, the
Necronomicon
lives on.

And so has the mad voice of Al-Azrad—defying all attempts at annihilation—paradoxically ensured both his obscurity and his immortality.  The tale of the
Necronomicon
’s creation, publication and survival is one of the most convoluted in lexicographical history, yet this fractional sketch should suffice to “lay the dark land” for the curious reader to explore.

This ends my cursory history of the
Necronomicon
.  Further evidentiary details in this author’s possession, of course—concerning my own possession of the Dee
Necronomicon
, and its former acquisition by one Clarice Whateley—must remain secret at this time in the name of my
own
survival.  Forgive.

May the sibilance speak to you.

~

Kent David Kelly

Samhain, 2011.

INTROITUS

(The inner cover of the John Dee
Necronomicon
reads thusly:)

~

Kitab Al Azif

The Codex of the Sibilance,

The Howlings of the Jinn

Being Known to Olaus Wormius

As the NECRONOMICON,

(Or, Rather)

The Paths and Images of Death,

In Dreaming

Being a Second Translation

Of the Remnants Most Fragmentary

Of the Death-Scroll Confessions of One

Abd Al-Azrad

Ex Libris

Dr. John Dee, Translator Secundus

Ever the Servant to Her Majesty

Queen Elizabeth,

Anno MDLXXXVI

A CURIOUS INSCRIPTION

(The following inscription was discovered between the two glued-together parchments at the beginning of Dr. John Dee’s
Necronomicon
, scrawled in cipher and in his own faded hand.  This sealed work was discovered and read with a backlit camera flash; the pages themselves remain sealed, for any attempt to physically split the pages would surely cause them to crumble into dust.)

~

Be it known, this sole tome is mine elemental translation of that black
grimoire
of Sana’a, which I did find beneath the undercrofts of the great cathedral library of Prague.  In serendipity, turned by the immortal hand of Fate, this black book I did descry and so unearth only through the spiritual guidance of mine own seer and speaker unto the Fallen and the Glorious Angels, Edward Kelley, a labor we did begin in the cold of the year MDLXXXVI.

By the guidance of Kelley and the tongue of the guardian spirit, despite my own seer’s betrayal in years hence; in all my years’ bitter fadings, I alone have toiled under this, the ever-recursive translation of the Blood-Song of the Mad One.  From not only the Latin of Wormius but too, from the tongues of Araby, the Aklo and the Naacal, verily have I rendered every scroll’s own riddling passage to the utmost of my prowess—feeble though it has proven—and into the Queen’s Own Language.