RKNet Blog... Thing

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Something I have learned over the past decade is that every investigative hero requires the correct and proper equipment. One thing they require is a sensible bag to store manuscripts and treasures in. Indiana Jones had his modified gas mask bag. Dean Corso from “The Ninth Gate” had his canvas satchel. Spider Jerusalem had his leather book bag. Currently I use a Megatokyo bag shoulder bag or a Burton snowboarding rucksack depending on what I’m doing. Both have served me well and see many wonderful sights. When I was first exposed to the Mythos I don’t know what my bag was. I would have been at school and just started doing my GCSEs. I believe that I used a cheap nasty messenger bag at the time.

My first exposure to the Cthulhu Mythos was rather appropriately took place outside of a library. Somehow talk drifted to the Necronomicon. A goth kid from the sixth form had bought a copy of it into school. “This is a famous book of occult bad ass,” was how it was described to me. No word or mention of Mr Lovecraft or of the books fictional origins. Sadly for my fifteen year old self a little research soon uncovered the books falseness.

Many people though still think that the Necronomicon is a real book. The copy that the acquaintance in the sixth form had was undoubtedly now a copy of the Simon Necronomicon. But first the fictional history of the book.

First mention of the book appears in the 1921 story “The Hound” (published 1924) as a book written by the “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred who was mentioned in a story written one year earlier called “The Nameless City”. The Necronomicon itself is mentioned in no less then five of Lovecraft’s Mythos stories. With references made to the tome in “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” among other stories.

In the 1921 story “The Nameless City” the rhyming couplet by Abdul Alhazred is given at two points in the text. This couplet appears in “The Call of Cthulhu” from 1928, it is identified as a quotation from the Necronomicon. The couplet is the one at the top of the essay. Some description of the text is given in “The Dunwich Horror” with the book being often described as bound in leather and having metal clasps to keep the large book’s pages safe from damage.

The authenticity of the Necronomicon has been in question since the time of Lovecraft with the author often being asked about the book. His answer was always that it was an invention of his own. In a letter to letter to Robert Bloch in July 1933 he clearly writes: “As for the “Necronomicon”—this month’s triple use of such allusions is bringing me in an unusual number of inquiries concerning the real nature & obtainability of Alhazred’s, Eibon’s, & von Junzt’s works. In each case I am frankly confessing the fakery involved.”

But still rumors of the books authenticity persist. These rumors helped by various differing editions of the Necronomicon being published in the years since Lovecrafts death. One of these the Simon Necronomicon mentioned above was released in 1977 by Schlangekraft, Inc. in a limited edition of 666. The book was later released in paperback and has never been out of print since. Unfortunately I’ve never read the Simon Necronomicon. So I can only give a quick digest of the information on Wikipedia. But it might be of interest if anyone wants to read further into the subject after.

The book claims in it’s introduction that it is a translation of the Greek Necronomicon. The content of the book is mostly based on Sumerian mythology with attempts to tie various entities in Mesopotamian mythology to correspondent entities in Lovecraft’s Mythos. Eh, what else is there to say? It’s black magic bullshit with curses and summons written in a mix of English and ancient Sumerian. With warnings all over the book claiming it’s danger. The back cover saying that this book is “the most potent and potentially, the most dangerous Black Book know to the Western world.”

Whatever the truth is and I suspect that the truth is fictional. The Necronomicon has a place in pop culture like no other book. With references to the book appearing in the Evil Dead film series, web comic Megatokyo and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld book “Moving Pictures”.

Will.

Next a journey into the occult underground of The Invisibles and Chaos Magic.

Pages of obvious interest:

The H.P. Lovecraft.com page about the Necronomicon, contains further information about the Necronomicon.

Fake Stephen Colbert, a twitter user posting under @stephentcolbert, has been unmasked. Luckily, the psuedostephen opted to share the reasoning behind this Twitter-Digg deception.

It’s really fun to see someone take a silly experiment and launch it to the next level, a silly experiment with wide recognition. Of course, with Stephen Colbert’s huge popularity these days, is it really any wonder that a Twitter account that was updated with some regularity would get noticed?

As noted in the Fake Stephen’s article, there was already an @stephencolbert when Fake Stephen went to register. However, that person had updated very infrequently, and had stopped updating a very long time ago overall. Even though @stephencolbert had 10,000, without updates it was just another idle account. When I checked earlier tonight, Fake Stephen’s account, @stephentcolbert only had 5,000 followers. Yet it was this account that hit the front page of Digg and got called out by Comedy Central themselves. Proof that one of the keys to recognition within a social environment is to be social! (Duh.)

I kind of hope that Fake Stephen carries on in some way, shape or form. It might be a nice addition to the pantheon of other Fakes out there. Like Fake Steve Jobs.