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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.mythology,alt.necronomicon,alt.horror.cthulhu,sci.skeptic,alt.paranet.skeptic
From: Dominion 
Subject: Re: The Book of Power: Evaluating the Necronomicon (was ...)
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 19:12:32 GMT

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 04:26:07 -0500, "Chainsaw" 
wrote:

>n'yrl'thot'p wrote in message <89klgl$8dg@bolt.sonic.net>...
>
>>it is one thing to support a contention that a book is real. I do not do
>this,
>>because I have not yet perused a version of a book called "Necronomicon"
>that
>>seemed to faithfully contain what Lovecraft described it as containing
>(with
>>all the page numbers matching up, the copy bound in human skin, etc
>
>*blink* Funny, I don't seem to recall Lovecraft ever describing the book as
>being bound in human skin (though I may be wrong)... I thought that was just
>a concept added by the EVIL DEAD movies...
>
>input anyone?

I think you have the meat of it. From the mouth of the Master himself.

"Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is
said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs,
circa 700 A. D. He visited the ruins of Babylon & the subterranean
secret of Memphis & spent ten years alone in the great southern desert
of Arabia - the Roba El Khaliyeh or "Empty Space" of the ancients - &
"Dahna" or "Crimson" desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be
inhabited by protective evil spirits & monsters of death. Of this
desert many strange & unbelievable marvels are told by those who
pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred dwelt in
Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, & of his final
death or disappearance (738 A. D.) Many terrible & conflicting things
are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have
been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight & devoured
horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his
madness many things are told. He claimed to have been the fabulous
Irem, or City of Pillars, & to have found beneath the ruins of a
certain nameless desert town the shocking annals & secrets of a race
older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping
unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth & Cthulhu.

In A. D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho'
surreptitious circulation among the philosophers of the age, was
secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople
under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain
experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt
by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively,
but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle
Ages, & the Latin text was printed twice - one in the 15th century in
black-letter (evidently in Germany) & once in the 17th - (prob.
Spanish) both editions being without identifying marks, & located as
to time & place by internal typographical evidence only. The work
(both Latin & Gk.) was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly
after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic
original was lost as early as Wormius' time as indicated by his
prefatory note & no sight of the Greek copy (which was printed in
Italy bet. 1500 & 1550) has been reported since the burning of a
certain Salem man's library in 1692. A translation made by Dr. Dee was
never printed, & exists only in fragments recovered from the original
MS. Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in
the British Museum under lock & key, while another (17th cent.) is in
the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. A 17th cent. edition is in the
Widener Library at Harvard, & in the library of Miskatonic University
at Arkham. Also in the library of the Univ. of Buenos Ayres. Numerous
other copies probably exist in secret, & a 15th century one is
persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated
American millionaire. A still vaguer rumour credits the preservation
of a 16th cent. Greek text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it
was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R. U. Pickman, who
disappeared early in 1926. The book is rapidly suppressed by the
authorities of most countries, & by all the branches of organized
ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from
rumours of this book (of which relatively few of the general public
know) that R. W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his
early novel "The King in Yellow"."

H. P. Lovecraft

Whereas I remember in the tape recording in "The Evil Dead" as
discribing a book "bound in human skin and inked in human blood". 

Hope this helps



Dominion
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