The Necronomicon - All You Need to Know About the Worlds Most Dangerous Book

the work of HP Lovecraft has influenced countless individuals and we still see this influence today not only in the cosmic horror genre but in horror itself as well as in all kinds of strange fiction one of his most universal ideas was the Necronomicon a fictional grimoire that features all sorts of dark rituals magic and strange sciences now there is the belief that a Necronomicon may have once existed and it was merely translated and published by Lovecraft although this may not be true and lot of it comes down to Lovecraft himself and how alluring the idea was to others there was a lot of history and lore surrounding this particular grimoire more so than some of Lovecraft's other work he was also a fairly big proponent to a shared universe and encouraging other authors to expand upon his work if they saw potential so when you have this many authors mentioning a very specific idea in this case the Necronomicon you almost get the feeling that this idea must have been real or at least rooted in some kind of truth and I guess that level of mystery and uncertainty is why the Necronomicon was used by so many even in modern day work that doesn't necessarily tie into Lovecraft mythos the owner of the book is a character named abdullah al has read whom Lovecraft refers to as the crazed Arab al has read his first mentioned several years prior to the Hound in the story the nameless city but his association to the Necronomicon is something we only discover later when he was asked where he drew his inspiration from Lovecraft gave pretty much the most Lovecraft answer possible he said it came to him in one of his dreams and by now we know pretty well that his dreams and nightmares were quite weird to say the very least he states that the name Necronomicon was translated from the Greek to mean an image of the law of the Dead authors are then subsequently followed have translated it to mean a variety of different things from book of laws of the Dead to book of names of the dead and even book of dead names so what we can surmise from this at a very basic level is that the neck nomicon was designed to contain information about the dead and the laws that surrounded them which is quite similar to the magical practice of necromancy not only in premise but also in name with how mysterious the Necronomicon was in 1927 Lovecraft wrote a short piece titled the history of the Necronomicon which wasn't published until after his death but this piece gives us some additional history and context we find out that the book was originally called owl as if referring to its Arabic origin the term Allah zeef is what Lovecraft defined as that nocturnal sound supposed to be the howling of demons so we certainly get the idea that this book isn't a beacon of happiness and rainbows it's much darker and nefarious the book was written by abdullah al has read whom we mentioned earlier but what we didn't mention was that he worshiped yog-sothoth and Cthulhu al hazzard himself was originally from Yemen but it wasn't until he visited Memphis Egypt that the idea for the book began in Memphis he came across the ruins of Babylon and the underground secrets of the city where he would discover the nameless city he then spent the rest of his life living in Damascus but we would recognize as modern-day Syria shortly before his mysterious disappearance in the year 738 he wrote al Aziz the Necronomicon the book then began to circulate amongst philosophers for the next 200 or so years and in the year 950 it was translated by the Greek philosopher Theodorus Finnerty's and given the name the Necronomicon this version of the Necronomicon was said to influence many individuals into committing acts that were so terrible they could barely be mentioned and that is why the book was burnt in the Year 1058 react of Constantinople after this the book wasn't really mentioned much and when it was it was done so in secret to avoid any unwanted attention from those responsible for trying to erase it from existence the book would then be translated from Greek to Latin by a Danish scholar in 1228 this edition would be bound by the Pope but it continued to resurface in other European countries all the way up until the 17th century Lovecraft states that there are only five copies of the original translated Necronomicon held in five institutions worldwide and these are as follows the British History Museum in London the bibliothèque nationale de France the widen a library of Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina the last being in love crafts fictional town of Arco Massachusetts in the Miskatonic University which is also in possession of the Latin translation now there are of course other copies of the book in circulation but these copies were pretty much just copies of copies so how authentic the contents are we don't really know these copies were mostly in the hands of private individuals so they weren't easy nor cheap to get a hold of so back story aside I'm sure the question that most of you want answered is what is in the book to make it so taboo so dark that everyone who reads it suffers a horrendous end we know the book was written by someone who worship the Elder Gods so as you can imagine they make up quite a large part of what's inside of the Necronomicon it's full of strange symbols and arcane knowledge that we can't really understand and its content ranges from stories to rituals and all kinds of weird science in the story the thing on the doorstep the book contains a formula for one to transfer their conscious yes the Dunwich horror contains a chant that can summon york's are Thoth and there are more than a few rituals that can summon deities and all sorts of creatures from love cross universe inside as the name may suggest there is also a chapter devoted to resurrect in the dead one of the easiest ways to describe the Necronomicon is as an encyclopedia to all things Lovecraft granted it's a very weird encyclopedia that has a habit of killing anyone who reads it but an encyclopedia nonetheless it's also a detailed history of what Earth may have been like aliens ago when it was ruled and inhabited by creatures and entities that we cannot even begin to imagine I think what I like most is despite the numerous times Lovecraft mentions the book in his stories he doesn't really describe the contents or the appearance in great detail so it does remain fairly mysterious which is something that we don't really see too much nowadays with everything being spoon-fed to us the only thing we really know is that it's a leather book bound by metal and even then it's intentionally missed titled sometimes to keep it hidden in plain sight this idea of being able to read the Necronomicon without even knowing creates a whole new horror concept in itself the obsession of the Necronomicon outside of fiction that i mentioned that this start is no exaggeration there have been and still are those who believe it to be real and a number of hoaxes and strange stories over the years is quite astounding Lovecraft often received letters from fans asking about the authenticity of the book to which he assured them it was purely fictional this didn't stop some individuals from listing the Necronomicon for sale in local bookstores as well as creating entries for the book in library catalogues even going as far to say the Vatican Library had a copy themselves but most of this we can put down to light-hearted pranksters and some crazy people as the obsession continued to grow in 1970 a book by the name of Necronomicon was published by an author under the pseudonym of Simon it would later be dubbed Simon economic the book itself doesn't really linked to Lovecraft's work but instead claims that it was influenced and based on Sumerian mythology this certainly blurred the lines between fiction and reality with a book selling over 800,000 copies as of 2006 so it appears many of Love Cross fans were intrigued enough by the premise to read further it could also be because the marketing for this book made some pretty outrageous claims such as this book may be the most dangerous black book of the Western world regardless its success meant that there were three additional volumes published and I guess why not if people wanted the major success of Simon's Necronomicon led to the publishing of the Necronomicon files in 1998 which aimed to finally prove that the book was in fact a work of fiction examining not only just Simon's version of the Necronomicon but the many obscure versions that followed in its success whether or not you believe the Necronomicon is real why certainly understand the appeal of the book in a fictional setting and why it would attract so many different types of people feel free to share your questions and thoughts with me in the comments below as always I've been your host mythology and fiction explained [Music]

Channel: Mythology & Fiction Explained

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Keywords: The Necronomicon, Necronomicon, mythology and fictioned explained, Magic, Monsters and the Search for the Real Necronomicon, Exploring the Cthulhu Mythos: The Necronomicon, What is the Necronomicon?, cthluhu, lovecraft, cthulhu mythos

Id: Ll67gXlC6qE

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2019