The legend about the existence of some ancient manuscript on necromancy, magic symbols and spells of which contain the method of summoning the dead, begins with a "conversation of demons". In Arabic tales, this phrase means the sounds made by cicadas. This is exactly how the original title of the book "Kitab al-Azif" is translated.
Its author - Abdullah al-Khazred - a mad poet from Sana'a (Yemen), who lived around the beginning of the 8th century, was well educated, knew foreign languages, traveled a lot and lived for ten years in the great Arabian desert Rub al-Khali, according to legend, inhabited by monsters and evil spirits. Here the demons entrusted al-Hazred with the secrets of the ancients and taught them satanic rituals. Al-Khazred spent the last years of his life in Damascus, where he wrote the ominous book Kitab al-Azif.
Two hundred years later, the Byzantine scholar Theodore Philetus translated "al-Azif" into Greek, giving it the name "Necronomicon" - "Law of the Dead". By order of the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael, persecutions began against Theodore, and the manuscripts with translations were burned. However, several copies have survived and spread around the world. Now the book has become known under a new, Greek title, which is used much more often than the original Arabic.
The Arabic original has long been lost. But the translations made from it at the beginning of the 20th century were kept in the British Museum, the National Library of France, the Harvard University Library, the Vatican Library and the University of Buenos Aires, from where, on the eve of World War II, they were taken out and hidden in different places of the world.
According to another legend, there is actually only one genuine Necronomicon, written in ink made from human blood. In an incomprehensible way, he suddenly appears in different places, chooses for himself masters who are ready to cooperate with hell, and opens the gates to the otherworldly worlds for them.
Grandpa Theobald's dreams
In fact, neither the Necronomicon nor the mad Arab al-Khazred ever existed. Like all publicly available literature of this kind, it was a common fake, and the first mention of the book "Kitab al-Azif" first appeared only in 1923 in science fiction stories by the American writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
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In letters to friends, which Lovecraft, who introduced himself as an old man, often signed as "Grandpa Theobald", the writer stated this more than once. Here are just two of these statements: "There is never and never was any Abdullah al-Hazred and the Necronomicon, since I invented these names myself"; "I have been referencing certain passages from the Necronomicon for a long time, really finding it good fun to make this artificial mythology believable by extensive citation."
In one of the letters written in the last year of his life, Lovecraft explains in even more detail: “The name“Abdullah al-Khazred”was invented for me by an adult (I cannot remember who exactly) when I was 5 years old, and after reading Arabian Nights, I longed to become an Arab. Years later, it occurred to me that it would be fun to use it as the name of the author of a forbidden book. The name Necronomicon … came to me in a dream."
Nightmares, inhabited by ugly monsters, tormented Lovecraft throughout his short and amazingly unhappy life - forty-seven years of his earthly existence, fate stubbornly stood with his back to him. A childhood clouded by poverty and disease, parental madness (his father Wilfrid Scott Lovecraft and mother Sarah ended their days in a mental institution), a short unhappy marriage with a tyrannical woman who did not understand him, sporadic, poorly paid literary work, and in the end - premature painful death from intestinal cancer resulting from chronic malnutrition.
Despite his bad heredity and the inability to attend school for health reasons, Lovecraft began reading early, when he was not yet four, and at the age of seven he already wrote poetry and short stories in the spirit of his beloved writer Edgar Poe.
From his parents he got a full "bouquet" of neuroses and mental problems, which, probably, were the cause of nightmares filled with terrible monsters. Lovecraft would later take them to the pages of his fantasy stories, for the first time "crossing" two previously independent genres - science fiction and horror. And when one of them - "Dagon" - published in 1923 the American magazine "Mysterious stories", the future path of the writer will be finally determined.
On March 17, 1937, Lovecraft was buried in the family grave in the cemetery of Providence (Providence), Rhode Island, where he lived his entire adult life except for a few years when he and his wife left for New York. Literary fame, as is most often the case, will find him posthumously. And even then not immediately.
Ingenious prank
For the first time "the book of the mad Arab" appears in the story "The Dog", written in 1923. Actually, the fact that Lovecraft mentioned a certain fictional book was not even a hoax. This technique is now quite common among science fiction writers. He did not set himself the goal of collecting the Necronomicon into something more or less integral - the quotes from it remained scattered throughout the pages of various Lovecraft books. Actually, no books existed during the life of the writer, except for a small collection of stories "A Darkness over Innsmouth", published in 1936. But the terminally ill Lovecraft did not even have time to hold it in his hands.
Most likely, the strange stories of an amateur writer, monsters invented by him and an ancient book that summons the dead, would have been lost in the filing of newspapers at the beginning of the last century, adding to the list of similar essays published for royalties, if not for fantasy lovers August Derleth and Donald Vandrey. After the death of the writer, they created first "Lovecraft Circle", and then the publishing company Arkham House, especially in order to print the books of their idol and his followers.
This saved Lovecraft from oblivion - after the collections of Lovecraft's stories were published in Arkham House, other publishers became interested in the writer's work - first in the United States, and then in Europe.
Derleth had the idea to "pull" references to the Necronomicon from Lovecraft's stories, put them together and publish in the first person - Abdullah al-Khazred. He rewrote the Necronomicon several times anew, composing it from various parts, rearranging different parts, shortening or, conversely, expanding the text. The work was exciting, but fruitless - the book never reached the printing house. The thing, apparently, turned out to be boring, even if the members of the "Lovecraft Circle" who saw it in handwritten form did not show interest in it at first.
But the idea of Lovecraft liked it and even found a continuation in the samizdat Necronomicon, issued for the translation of the famous John Dee, allegedly accidentally discovered in the repository of one of the European libraries. In the first half of the 20th century, when the fascination with the occult and mysticism acquired an unprecedented scale, the figure of the British alchemist and astrologer sanctified such a publication with his own name. To make the book more believable, the book was also stylized as a reprint edition, with the flyleaf and illustrations done as they might have looked in a medieval edition.
This is how the myth of the "book of the mad Arab" began. The legend received a new round in 1977, when the first printed Necronomicon was released in the USA on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the writer's death, which marked the beginning of a stream of publications claiming to be the true creation of the ancient magician.
Cthulhu woke up
There were many who wanted to come to the edge of the abyss and enter the world of death in all ages. Some were guided by despair or curiosity, others - by the thirst for knowledge, but the majority - by the vain desire to rule the world of the living through the world of the dead.
The historical "Books of the Dead" - ancient Egyptian or Tibetan - were not suitable in such a quality, because they were intended to help the dead in the afterlife, and not so that the living would disturb the dead for their needs. Therefore, a certain manuscript (necessarily sanctified by antiquity!), With the help of which you can call various evil spirits from other worlds, sooner or later had to appear.
Describing the book, Lovecraft says that all libraries keep the Necronomicon behind seven locks, as the book is dangerous to read and can damage the reader's physical and mental health. But this, and the fact that all the characters in his works, who read the "book of the mad Arab", come to a terrible end, is just a creative trick used by the writer to whip up the atmosphere. Many writers resort to this.
But the legend turned out to be stronger: Lovecraft was refused to be believed. Even a version was born that the Arab invented by him had a historical prototype, and his book is real, but the writer, who became an involuntary medium and a channel for transmitting ancient occult knowledge, denied its existence for only one reason: he understood the danger.
Tell someone to the writer of fantasy stories from a small American town that so many authoritative "researchers" in the occult circles would someday seriously argue whether the original "Kitab al-Azif" was written in Arabic or Sumerian, he would surely laugh. With a sense of humor, Lovecraft, as you know, was all right, it is no coincidence that he is considered not only the father of horror, but the master of beautiful parodies. And he treated the monsters he invented with a fair amount of irony, considering his creations solely as a means of earning.
A hundred years later, it turns out: alas, there is nothing to laugh about … And it no longer takes a shock why, with such a simple and obvious picture, the myth of the Necronomicon is so tenacious. Those who believe in the existence of a terrible book that holds the keys to the power of the dark forces are not at all insane and probably understand what an intolerable blow to the fragile psyche of a person can be inflicted by a paranoid, neurotic fear of life.
Various black cults have come into fashion, in which the images of vampires, evil spirits and demons are surrounded by a romantic flair, and Satan is represented as a symbol of power and freedom. The Internet is literally replete not only with descriptions of rituals and magic formulas for spells of the forces of darkness, but also with announcements: “I will sell my soul to the devil”, “I want to sell my soul to the devil for money”, “I will sell my soul dearly” and others like that. And there is no doubt - these souls are young and, most likely, alone.
How not to recall Lovecraft's fantasies about the evil deity Cthulhu: “This cult will not die until the stars again come to the right position and the secret priests will not call Cthulhu from his grave so that he breathes life into his subjects and reigns on earth again. This time will be easy to recognize, for then humanity will become like the Great Old Ones: free and wild, not knowing the difference between good and evil, not recognizing laws and morality; and all people will start screaming, killing and having fun. The liberated Ancients will teach them new ways to shout, kill and have fun, and the whole earth will burn in the fire of ecstasy and freedom."
In one of the "Necronomicons" posted on the Internet, there is a spell addressed to Cthulhu, ending with the following words: "In his dwelling in R'lieh, the dead Cthulhu awaits in a dream, but he will rise, and his kingdom will come again on Earth."
So Cthulhu has already been awakened?
Tatiana Solovyova