THE SIMON NECRONOMICON PART 2: THE COSMOLOGIES OF DERLETH AND THE ARAB

The Simon Necronomicon (Schlangekraft, 1977) purports to be the survival of an ancient Mesopotamian magical tradition that subsequently influenced both the weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) and the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).  None of this is exactly true.  This  Necronomicon is not exactly Lovecraftian, it's not exactly Sumerian, and it's not exactly Crowley...rather it combines the ideas and writings of Lovecraft's and Crowley's proteges, August Derleth and Kenneth Grant respectively, in an attempt to materialise the "astral Necronomicon" Grant so often wrote about.  The result is an intriguing, workable grimoire that puts many of Grant's theories into practice.

in keeping Lovecraft's work alive, Derleth--a devout Catholic--also added to and tinkered with the mythos, turning it into a radically different vision than that of Lovecraft.

The Mad Arab and August Derleth   

In his Introduction, editor Simon makes some comments about Lovecraft;

Lovecraft depicted a kind of Christian Myth of the struggle between opposing forces of Light and Darkness, between God and Satan, in the Cthulhu Mythos...(b)asically, there are two "sets" of gods in the mythos : the Elder Gods, about whom not much is revealed, save that they are a stellar Race that occasionally comes to the rescue of man, and which corresponds to the Christian "Light"; and the Ancient Ones, about which much is told, sometimes in great detail, who correspond to "Darkness".

This is, of course, absolutely not the case.  What Simon is describing is the work of August Derleth (1909-1971), a Lovecraft fan and imitator who played a vital role in keeping Lovecraft's tales and letters in print.  But in keeping Lovecraft's work alive, Derleth--a devout Catholic--also added to and tinkered with the mythos, turning it into a radically different vision than that of Lovecraft.  Pre-eminent Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi states the case nicely, and I will quote him at length;

The essence of the Derleth Mythos is as follows:

- There is a moral conflict between the Elder Gods (benevolent cosmic deities who battle on behalf of the human race) against the “evil” Old Ones (Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, etc.), who are intent on subjugating the human race. [In Lovecraft’s stories, there are no benign deities, and the Old Ones are for the most part not gods at all but morally neutral space aliens who have come to earth and encountered human beings and other earthly entities at random points in history.]

- As a result of this cosmic struggle, the Elder Gods have “imprisoned” the Old Ones in various obscure corners of the world or the universe. [In Lovecraft’s stories, none of the “gods” or space aliens are imprisoned with the exception of Cthulhu, and there is no evidence that his imprisoning was at the hands of any benevolent deity.]

- Accordingly, the Cthulhu Mythos is analogous to the Christian mythos, especially in regard to the expulsion of Satan and his minions from heaven. [Lovecraft, an avowed atheist, portrayed a bleakly amoral and atheistic vision of an insignificant humanity lost in the temporal and spatial depths of the cosmos.]

- The Old Ones are “elementals”—that is, they represent the four “elements” (earth, air, fire, and water) of ancient and mediaeval philosophy. [Lovecraft’s “gods” do not bear the slightest resemblance to elementals, especially as they have come from the depths of space where earthly elements may not exist.]

If you were a reader discovering Lovecraft in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, it is likely you did so via Arkham House, the publishing company created by Derleth in 1939 to keep Lovecraft's writings and letters in print.  This would have meant, however, that you were being exposed to Lovecraft's Mythos through a "Derlethian" lens.  It wasn't really until the 1980s that scholars and critics (in America...Lovecraft had been the subject of serious study in European scholarship for decades) took Lovecraft seriously enough to begin to distinguish his vision from his protégé's.  S.T. Joshi, quoted above, was one of those scholars critical to this process.  Simon, writing his Introduction in the mid-Seventies, was simply repeating what was thought about Lovecraft at the time.  Indeed, by his own admission in the book Dead Names: The Dark History of the Necronomicon, when he discovered the Necronomicon manuscript Simon claims he knew nothing about Lovecraft. Whether you believe that Simon edited the Necronomicon or authored it, it's easy to understand how someone writing about the Cthulhu Mythos in the 70s would mistake  Derleth's version for than Lovecraft's.  

The better question then, is why "the Mad Arab" makes the same mistake.

Describing a cosmology that marries Derleth to the Enuma Elish, the author of this Necronomicon writes of two warring pantheons of deities, the primordial Ancient Ones and the younger Elder Gods who defeated and imprisoned them.  The Ancient Ones are led by Tiamat, the ancient Sumerian goddess of chaos and the seas, and her mate Absu (lord of subterranean waters).  These are, of course, authentic Mesopotamian deities, but to their number the text adds a host of clearly Lovecraft-inspired horrors; Iak Sakkak (Yog Sothoth), Azag-Thoth (Azathoth), Ishniggarab (Shub Niggurath), and of course Kutulu (Cthulhu).  These ancient beings are convincingly Lovecraftian.  They are alien, inhuman, immense, and possessing monstrous power.  But against them are the Elder Gods, led by the Babylonian god Marduk.  He and his fellow "Zonei" are each associated with one of the Hermetic planets (Nanna with the Moon, Nebo with Mercury, Inanna with Venus, Shammash with the Sun, Nergal with Mars, Marduk with Jupiter, and Ninib with Saturn).  They defeat the Ancient Ones, steal their power, and imprison them.  Then their father Enki fashions Man (a point we will get to shortly).  

Now, these Elder Gods have very human attributes and concerns.  Nebo is patron of the sciences, for example, while Inanna oversees love and war.  All of this completely flies in the face of Lovecraft's mythology, where the "gods" are utterly alien and man is entirely insignificant to them.  This is the whole point of Lovecraft's horror; it rejects the traditional notion of cosmic powers at war over Man's soul.  For Lovecraft, the universe neither notices us nor cares.  Humanity simple doesn't matter.  And this, more than anything, is where the Necronomicon betrays itself as "Derlethian" rather than "Lovecraftian," because in its pages Man is a the very centre of the cosmic struggle;

And was not Man created from the blood of KINGU
Commander of the hordes of the Ancient Ones?
Does not man possess in his spirit
The seed of rebellion against the Elder Gods?

...Created by the Elder Gods
From the Blood of the Ancient Ones
Man is the Key by which
The Gate of IAK SAKKAK may be flung wide  

Far from being insignificant, Man is the centrepiece of the entire system, born of the Ancient One's blood and the breath of the Elder Gods he is the key that can release the Ancient Ones from their prison.  While Lovecraft struggled to create a mythology completely divorced from humanity, this Necronomicon returns to the very path he was departing from.  If we are to believe this is the "real" Necronomicon, the one that inspired Lovecraft's work, it is very difficult to explain why it more closely resembles the bastardised version created by August Derleth.

Simon Dissents

As we touched on briefly in Part One, one of the interesting features of the Necronomicon is that it speaks with two contrasting voices.  One the one hand we have it's author, the Mad Arab, who represents a very traditional viewpoint (from the Western esoteric viewpoint, that is).  For the Mad Arab there is a human race created by the gods and playing a central role in the cosmos, seven hermetic planets associated with fairly traditional correspondences that enclose and protect the world, and forces of Light and Darkness at war with one another.  Humanity is, naturally, urged to side with the Light in this struggle.  These are the same sorts of things we might find in Agrippa, Levi, or any of the medieval grimoires.

The Ancient Ones are not unspeakable horrors that must be kept imprisoned, but a Power, a force venerated in the East but demonised in the West.

Against this we have the voice of the editor, Simon, who speaks from a very nontraditional viewpoint.  He espouses views that started with Aleister Crowley and flowered through modern occultists like Austin Spare, Anton LaVey, Peter Carroll, and (most specifically) Kenneth Grant.  This is a view that transcends notions of Light and Dark and Good and Evil.  Where the Mad Arab has a very dualistic 'us against them' mentality (the 'Christian Myth' Simon mistakenly ascribes to Lovecraft), Simon seems to see the Elder Gods and Ancient Ones as part of a single continuum. When discussing the traditional viewpoint of the Mad Arab, for example, Simon calls everything into question.  Note the use of quotation marks and the statements made in the follow section;

There was a battle between the forces of "light" and "darkness" (so-called) that took place long before man was created, before even the cosmos as we know it existed.  It is described fully in the Enuma Elish and in the bastardised version found in the NECRONOMICON, and involved the Ancient Ones, led by the Serpent MUMMU-TIAMAT and her male counterpart ABSU, against the ELDER GODS (called such in the N.) led by the warrior MARDUK, son of the Sea God ENKI, Lord of the Magicians of this side, or what would be called "White Magicians"--although close examination of the myths of ancient times makes one pause before attempting to judge which of the two warring factions was "good" or "evil"...

"Light," "Darkness," "so-called," "White Magicians," "good," "evil..." Simon is clearly skeptical of the Mad Arab's traditional assumptions.  He is consistent in this.  When writing of Enki's opposite, the Ancient One AZAGTHOTH, he calls him the Lord of Magicians, but of the "Black" magicians, or the sorcerers of the "Other Side."  Again, "Black" and "Other Side" are enclosed in quotation marks.  And shortly after these comments, Simon sets aside a chapter of his Introduction to discuss the worship of the Ancient Ones in which it sounds suspiciously like he is defending the idea;

S.H. Hooke, in his excellent Middle Eastern Mythology, tells us that the Leviathan mentioned in JOB, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, is the Hebrew name given to the Serpent TIAMAT, and reveals that there was in existence either a cult, or scattered individuals, who worshipped or called up the Serpent of the Sea, or Abyss.

Bear in mind Simon's counterpart, the Mad Arab, speaks of these worshippers too, but always with absolute horror.  They are the "wreakers of havoc," "the ensnarers, the piers-in-wait, the blind fiends of Chaos," "secret priests initiated into the Black Rites, whose names are writ forever in the Book of Chaos."  Simon begs to differ;

It is this TIAMAT or Leviathan that is identified closely with KUTULU or Cthulhu in the pages of the NECRONOMICON...(t)his monster is well know to cult worship all over the world...the Dragon or Serpent is said to reside somewhere "below the earth;" it is a powerful force, a magickal force, which is identified with mastery over the created world; it is also a power that can be summoned by the few and not the many. However, in China, there did not seem to be a backlash of fear or resentment against this force as was known in Europe and Palestine...In the West, the conjuration, cultivation, or worship of this Power was strenuously opposed with the advent of Solar, Monotheistic religions...

These "Solar, Monotheistic religions" are what Simon meant with the phrase a "Christian Myth of the struggle between opposing forces of Light and Darkness."  It is a dualistic struggle Crowley would have called Osirian and which Simon enthusiastically dismisses;

The wholesale slaughter of those called "Witches" during the Inquisition is an example of this, as well as the solemn and twisted--that is to say purposeless and unenlightened--celibacy the Church espoused.  For the orgone of Wilhelm Reich is just as much Leviathan as the Kundalini of the Tantrick adepts, and the Power raised by Witches.  It has always, at least in the past two thousand years, been associated with occultism and essentially with Rites of Evil Magick, or the Forbidden Magick, of the Enemy, and of Satan...

Instead of a cosmic struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, Simon sees in the Necronomicon something completely different.  The Ancient Ones are not unspeakable horrors that must be kept imprisoned, but a Power, a force venerated in the East but demonised in the West.   The perception of them as Evil is one fostered by two thousand years of priestly propaganda.  

In Part Three, we will be taking a closer look at this idea, tracing it through Crowley, Spare, and Grant.

      

 

  

  

THE SIMON NECRONOMICON PART 1: THE IMAGINARY GRIMOIRE

By the way—there is no “Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.” That hellish & forbidden volume is an imaginative conception of mine, which others of the W.T. group have also used as a background of allusion.

Lovecraft, Letter to Robert Bloch, May 9, 1933

A Book That Never Was

The Necronomicon is one of those literary inventions--like Atlantis or Noah's Ark--that certain circles of people desperately want to believe really existed.  The invention of American master of weird fiction Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), the Necronomicon makes it's first appearance in the short story "The Hound" (1922), but is probably best remembered from "The Dunwich Horror" (1929), where it is a vital part of the plot and quoted extensively.  Composed around 700 AD by the "half-crazed" Yemeni Abdul Alhazred, the sprawling 800+ page volume describes the cosmic deities, alien races, and occult forces of the "Cthulhu Mythos," a term coined by Lovecraft protege August Dereleth.  The Necronomicon is just one of many fictional tomes invented by Lovecraft, and because it--like all elements of the Cthulhu Mythos--was something he freely shared with his literary circle and allowed other authors to borrow for their own tales, the Necronomicon began to enjoy an existence independent of its creator.  As more authors started writing about the Necronomicon, more readers started assuming it actually existed, forcing Lovecraft to set the record straight on several occasions;

Regarding the Necronomicon—I must confess that this monstrous & abhorred volume is merely a figment of my own imagination!

Letter to Margaret Sylvester, 1933

Regarding the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred—I must confess that both the evil volume & the accursed author are fictitious creatures of my own—as are the malign entities of Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, &c.

Letter to William Anger, 1934

Now about the “terrible and forbidden books”—I am forced to say that most of them are purely imaginary. There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon, for I invented these names myself.

Letter to Willis Conover, 1936

Upon learning the Black Book never existed, some urged Lovecraft to attempt writing it.  To "Conan" creator Robert E. Howard he wrote in 1932;

As for writing the Necronomicon—I wish I had the energy and ingenuity to do it! I fear it would be quite a job in view of the very diverse passages and intimations which I have in the course of time attributed to it! I might, though, issue an abridged Necronomicon—containing such parts as are considered at least reasonably safe for the perusal of mankind! When von Juntz’s Black Book and the poems of Justin Geoffrey are on the market, I shall certainly have to think about the immortalisation of old Abdul!

Lovecraft never did get around to his abridged version of the sprawling volume, but by the 1970s, several others decided to try.  The climate, after all, was right for a Necronomicon.  The 50s and 60s had seen an occult revival, which by the 70s was drifting from Age of Aquarius white Magic towards something darker.  The Church of Satan was grabbing headlines and spawning imitators, Kenneth Grant was exploring the nightside of Eden, and Chaos Magic was coalescing.  And Lovecraft, who for decades had been banished to quiet semi-obscurity, was making a comeback. H.R. Giger published a collection of horrific art in 1977 under the title Necronomicon, and it helped land him the job of creating the terrifying xenomorph in Alien.  A bit earlier, von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods reawakened Lovecraft's themes of ultrarerrestrial deities and unearthly visitations.  Rod Serling's Night Gallery brought a few of Lovecraft's stories to the small screen, and the decade had kicked off with a film version of The Dunwich Horror. In short, there was a new interest in the Cthulhu Mythos, and coupled with the shadowy direction the occult scene had taken a Necronomicon was nearly inevitable.

Of the three major attempts the Seventies made at manifesting a Necronomicon, only one was viable.  1973 saw Owlswick Press publish a Necronomicon in the fictional, indecipherable language of "Duriac."  It consisted of about twenty pages repeated over and over again to make it look like a real book, and had little value as anything but a prop.  In 1978, the Hay Necronomicon appeared, "prepared from" encoded sections of John Dee's Liber Logaeth.   It's claim to fame was a long-winded ramble by Colin Wilson that the Necronomicon "had to be real" because Lovecraft was too much of a hack to have ever made it up, and went to great pains to show how this weird fiction writer would have come across it.  Vastly superior to the Owlswick attempt, it nevertheless rapidly faded back into obscurity.  But in 1977, a Necronomicon rose from the vortex of New York's occult scene that thirty-seven years and four editions later would still be in print, a little black book that televangelists would wave around alongside The Satanic Bible throughout the Eighties to scare the rubes.  Bearing very little in common with Lovecraft's accursed book, this Necronomicon nevertheless seized the title and made it its own.

It would come to be known as the Simon Necronomicon.

The Simon Necronomicon succeeded for several reasons.  For starters, it tapped perfectly into the zeitgeist of the 1970s. In addition to the trends of darker magic and H.P. Lovecraft mentioned above, the Simon Necronomicon added two other key elements.  The first was Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), who in the Seventies was making a comeback much as Lovecraft was.  The second was Sumer, which thanks to Zacariah Sitchin had replaced Egypt as the new epicenter of the "ancient astronauts" craze.  As we shall see, Sumer, Crowley, and Lovecraft are the three corners the Simon Necronomicon is written around, and all three were hot topics in the Seventies underground.  Bringing the Annunaki, the Cthulhu Mythos, and Crowley's Magick together was a stroke of genius.

A second factor had to be the book's graphic design.  The distinctive Gates and Seals throughout the Simon Necronomicon are nothing short of striking. Indeed, the "Arra-Agga-Bandar" Sigil adorning the front cover on the book rapidly became--alongside the Church of Satan's Baphomet--a universal logo of dark magic, recognizable on heavy metal album covers and back alley walls throughout the Eighties.  This is a real testament to the book's ability to grab the eye.  Being as much about aesthetics as anything else, the look of a magic system's occult mandalas is crucial to a grimoire's success.  The Necronomicon's sigils are far more convincing than any of the text itself.

...there is hardly a grimoire out there (or holy text for that matter) that doesn't make absurd claims about its origin.  The Key of Solomon was not written by Solomon.  The Corpus Hermeticum was not composed by Thrice Great Hermes.  The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses weren't written by Moses, and the five books of the Pentateuch weren't either.  So the point is never what the text claims about its origination, but the fruit it bears...

The key element in the book's success, however, is that it is an actual grimoire.  It is a "fake" Necronomicon but a "real" book of magic.  There is a complete system of magic in the Necronomicon's pages, as unique and self contained as, say, the Enochian system.  Whether the claims it makes about this system are true or not (that it predates all modern magic systems and is an ancient tradition) doesn't change the fact you can pick up the book and work with it.  This, of course, is the only criteria that really matters with a grimoire; does it work.  Because there is hardly a grimoire out there (or holy text for that matter) that doesn't make absurd claims about its origin.  The Key of Solomon was not written by Solomon.  The Corpus Hermeticum was not composed by Thrice Great Hermes.  The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses weren't written by Moses, and the five books of the Pentateuch weren't either.  So the point is never what the text claims about its origination, but the fruit it bears.

With this in mind, for the rest of our discussion we are going to lay aside questions of the book's authenticity and concentrate on it as a piece of occult technology.  To do this, we need to look at the volume's two parts; the text proper, and Simon's long Introductions and explanatory front matter.

Simon Says

"Simon" is both the man of mystery who brought this Necronomicon to press, and the Editor whose voice provides a modern counterpoint to the "Mad Arab" who is said to have written the text.  His Introductions (as of the 2008 edition there are four) and commentary take up nearly a quarter of the book.

Simon's presence in the Necronomicon is interesting, because the ideas he expresses so often run completely counter to what the Mad Arab is telling us.  For example, the Mad Arab's motivation in writing the book is to protect us from the very dark powers the Necronomicon discusses; "Seek ever to keep the Outside Gate closed and sealed, by the instructions I have given thee, by the Seals and the Names herein."  Simon, however, blithely dismisses these warnings;

After the long and poetic MAGAN text, comes the URILLIA text which might be Lovecraft's R'lyeh Text, and is subtitled "Abominations". It has more specifically to do with the worship of the Serpent, and the nature of the cults that participate in the Concelebration of Sin. Again, more conjurations and seals are given, even though the reader is charged not to use them; an inconsistency that is to be found in many grimoires of any period and perhaps reveals a little of the magicians's mentality; for there is very little that is evil to the advanced magus, who cares not if he deals with angelic or demonic forces, save that he gets the job done!

This seems to be the first of the roles Simon plays in the book...to urge us to look past the lurid horrors and dire warnings of the Mad Arab towards a deeper meaning in the text.  The Mad Arab reads like A. E. Waite, while Simon sounds like Aleister Crowley ("Ah! Mr. Waite, the world of Magic is a mirror, wherein who sees muck is muck..." Crowley famously wrote, chiding Waite for his pious fear of Goetia).  More to the point, given the nature of this Necronomicon, the Mad Arab reads like August Derleth and Simon like Kenneth Grant.

I mention these names because Simon's second role seems to be connecting the dots for us, bringing together Lovecraft, Crowley, and ancient Mesopotamia for us in the pages of the book;

That a reclusive author of short stories who lived in a quiet neighbourhood in New England, and the manic, infamous Master Magician who called the world his home, should have somehow met in the sandy wastes of some forgotten civilisation seems incredible. That they should both have become Prophets and Forerunners of a New Aeon of Man's history is equally, if not more, unbelievable. Yet, with H.P. Lovecraft and Aleister Crowley, the unbelievable was a commonplace of life. These two men, both acclaimed as geniuses by their followers and admirers, and who never actually met, stretched their legs across the world, and in the Seven League Boots of the mind they did meet, and on common soil . . . . Sumeria.

The gist of the initial 1975 Introduction is that the Necronomicon, as an ancient magical tradition, is the common source of both Crowley's Magick and Lovecraft's fiction (as well as the cult of Wicca and much of modern Satanism).  The problem with this is that both Simon's Introduction and the text itself are clearly derivative not of Lovecraft and Crowley, but their proteges...August Derleth and Kenneth Grant.  This is a matter we will be exploring in Part Two.   

THE AZOETIA, PART 1; Thoughts on the Grimoire

The Modern Necronomicon

If you are a serious occultist, you’ve probably heard of the Azoetia already. For the more casual reader, let me give you some background. In May, 1992, British “cunning man” Andrew Chumbley self-published a new occult work in limited edition. By 2002, Azoetia: A Grimoire of the Sabbatic Craft, was ready for re-release in another, slightly more deluxe edition (the Sethos edition, named for the book’s “guardian daemon”). It was already by that time a sensation. In today’s esoteric market, everyone seems to want to imitate the late Anton LaVey, whose 1969 Satanic Bible was a mass market grimoire written for the Everyman.  Aleister Crowley had attempted such a thing decades earlier, but his work proved too dense for the non-specialist. The Satanic Bible, by contrast, was a little paperback anyone could purchase, read, and then completely apprehend all the “secrets” of magic with. When LaVey published this book, it was a landmark. Since then, however, everyone under the sun has tried to do the same thing, flooding the world with mass market self-help mumbo jumbo. Most of these modern New Age books are to the medieval grimoires, or Crowley’s Equinox, what the Big Mac is to filet mignon; cheap, filling, but utterly lacking in substance.

Most of these modern New Age books are to the medieval grimoires, or Crowley’s Equinox, what the Big Mac is to filet mignon; cheap, filling, but utterly lacking in substance.

Chumbley decided to go against the current.  It is the oldest magical formula in the book: do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Thus, the Azoetia was neither mass market nor for the Everyman. Chumbley’s esoteric group, the Cultus Sabbati, released the volume in a very limited number through a publisher (“Xoanon,” from a Greek word meaning a wooden fetish or icon) specifically created for the purpose. The book was exceedingly rare, and possession of it suddenly put you in an elite club.

By 2004, it seemed as if everyone in the occult community had heard of the book, but few had every actually seen it. Like Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, it seemed quasi-legendary, an urban legend for modern Magicians. And then, the unthinkable happened. On his 37th birthday, Andrew Chumbley died of a sudden, severe asthma attack.

Another thing Magicians share in common with Artists is that death makes their work even more valuable. In Chumbley’s case, this was triply so. Not only had he died young, suddenly, and unexpectedly, the very date of his death had eerie occult significance. There is something weird—in the classic sense of the word—about dying on your birthday, particularly given Chumbley’s profession. Add to this the fact that the number 37 has tremendous qabbalistic significance; 37 is the number of the “Perfected Man,” the three divine Sephiroth of the Tree of Life balanced above the 7 manifest Sephiroth below the Abyss. In addition, 37 is the seed of all triple numbers. 37 x 3 = 111, 37 x 6 = 222, 37 x 9 = 333, and 37 x 18 = 666. These coincidences all coalesced, turning tragedy into a kind of frenzy. On the internet, people started to compare Chumbley to Lovecraft’s Abdul Alhazred, who penned the infamous Necronomicon before himself dying a mysterious death. The Azoetia was lifted from legend to myth. The result was a kind or viral marketing campaign. Copies of the Azoetia couldn’t be obtained for love or money.

Well…not exactly. People were willing to part with their precious Azoetias for absurd amounts of money…usually in the range of $1500 to $2500 US. Worse still, one was expected to shell out the cash sight unseen. If you went on Amazon to read “reviews” of the book, for example, no one seemed willing to talk about what it actually said. All you got was a bunch of scary hoodoo about the book being a “True Grimoire,” “not for the weak-hearted,” “a text only for the most serious student,” etc, etc. As I started to research the book, it became clear to me that most owners weren’t willing to divulge its contents mainly because it’s very mystery ensured its value.  I began to wonder if anyone actually used it.

More fuel was added to the fire by the Cultus Sabbati themselves. In an age where every “secret,” “occult” order has a website and runs around constantly blabbing about it’s teachings and trying to recruit new members, the Cultus was truly closed. Few knew what they stood for, what they did, or how to get in. Possession of the Azoetia seemed to be the only glimpse inside a secret order that really was secret.

I had gotten my hands on Qutub, Chumbley's second work, some time before and found it astounding.  This made me only more determined to read the Azoetia.  Reasoning there is no point calling yourself a magician if you can't even conjure up a book, I sent out a sigil for it, Austin Spare style, and went about my business.  About three months later a friend put me in touch with a young woman who had found religion and wanted to get rid of her "devil books" as quickly as possible.  It turned out she had an Azoetia, and I picked it up for little over it's original price.  That was back in 2007.  I have had to re-read and digest this extraordinary book for five years before feeling like I could start to discuss it.

But not all in one post.  So here is the first of an eventual series of essays on the work.   

A Book By Its Cover

The Sethos edition is indeed a handsome book. Hardbound with the very highest quality binding, the spine is stamped with the title, the publisher’s imprint, and a sigil that resembled the god Set crossed with a Spare-type sigil. This would be the mark of Sethos, no doubt. The cover bears a mandala-like magic circle, an eight-spoked wheel bearing 22 mystical letters, around the circumference of which are words of power in the same characters.

The title Azoetia is suggestive of both the original essence of creation and the calling up of spirits. One might wish to translate it as “the calling of daemons from primal quintessence,” which given the contents of the book is not so radical an interpretation.

The title is itself provocative. “Azoth” was the Universal Solvent or Medicine of alchemy, the “quintessence” from which everything else was made. Lovecraft might have been inspired by this term when he created “Azathoth,” the mindless, nuclear chaos from which the universe emerged. In any case, Azoth plays a key role in the book, as we shall later see. “Goetia” (perhaps the source of the second half of the title) is the fabled medieval Lesser Key of Solomon, the grimoire of grimoires concerned with the evocation of fallen angels. The title Azoetia is suggestive of both the original essence of creation and the calling up of spirits. One might wish to translate it as “the calling of daemons from primal quintessence,” which given the contents of the book is not so radical an interpretation.

Tradition

The first thing readers will wish to know is to what tradition does the Azoetia belong. Is it Wiccan? Satanic? Hermetic? Thelemic? Voodoo? Sufi? Chaotic? The answer, it seems, is “all of the above.”

For Chumbley, the dogmatic differences of occult traditions are veils, masks concealing a single, hidden source. The Azoetia is an attempt to tap directly into that source.

“…it has been my endeavor,” the author writes in his introduction to the first edition, “to define those Principles underlying the many different paths of Magick and to unify them within the single body of a working grimoire…” It would seem, therefore, that the author is working from a Perennialist viewpoint, the assumption that there exists a universal truth or set of truths in all schools of magic and philosophy. He confirms this a few paragraphs later; “…all currents of Magick flow from a single fountain, and I, in drawing this Grimoire from my dreams, have hopefully filled a cup from a pure source…” For Chumbley, the dogmatic differences of occult traditions are veils, masks concealing a single, hidden source. The Azoetia is an attempt to tap directly into that source.

The skeptic might say that Chumbley is not so much as tapping into the primordial source of occult traditions as synthesizing a new one from diverse schools of thought. Either viewpoint is valid with regards to this text. The final point is that virtually any Magician, working from any tradition, could find in the pages of Azoetia some portion of teachings or practices mirroring his own.

For example, despite consciously distancing himself from the modern schools of Wicca, Chumbley’s “Sabbatic Craft” shares a great deal in common with them (at least on the surface). This text is very much concerned with a God and a Goddess (the former embodying Death and the latter coming in triple forms). The working tools mirror those of Gardenarian or Alexandrian Wicca; the wand, a black handled Arthame (Athame), a white handled working knife, a Pentacle, a Cup, a Cord, a Circle, an Altar, etc. The opening ritual closely resembles Wiccan Circle Casting, and there is even a wheel of the year. However, elements from other traditions are clearly woven in here. A magical quill is included, which recalls the Peacock Angel Melek Taus (a key figure in Qutub). The altar is a double cube (more Hermetic than Wiccan). The temple includes a central pole, or “fetish-tree” which is nearly identical in function to those in voodoo honfours.

Chumbley earnestly wants us to understand that the grimoire, and all the tools, are physical representations of something else, something without form. For him, Magick is tool of working backwards from the trappings towards that inner source. 

But all of this, the author asserts, is just set dressing, with little bearing on the truth of the text. A constant theme throughout the Azoetia is the reminder that all the tools, rituals, incantations, and even the text itself are just outward expressions of inner truths. Without getting too far ahead of myself, the last page of the Azoetia reads; HERE ENDETH THE GRIMOIRE AZOETIA…MISTAKE NOT THIS BOOK FOR THE WORDS ON ITS PAGES. Chumbley earnestly wants us to understand that the grimoire, and all the tools, are physical representations of something else, something without form. For him, Magick is tool of working backwards from the trappings towards that inner source. Again, back to the introduction; “…the Quintessence of Magick is not to be found by the combination of externals, but solely by the direct realisation of innate source. It is not to be discovered by system with system, belief with belief, or practice with practice; it is not found by uniting the “elements” in their temporally manifest forms. For beyond the Outer, beyond the dualistic and substantive manifestations of element with element, the Quintessence is already attained…when this Mystery is understood, the secret of the Azoth is revealed in truth…”

Like the Chaos Magicians, or to an extent Anton LaVey, Chumbley is telling us that the dogmatic elements of Magick are all mechanisms to tap into its noumenal source. Writing from this standpoint allows Chumbley to imbue his grimoire with a quality which transcends divisions of tradition. A Hermetic is going to read the Azoetia and say “Chumbley was really one of us.” But the Wiccan, the Satanist, and the Thelemite might all come to the same conclusion. Whether you feel that this is evidence of Chumbley’s “Quintessence,” or just a skilled job at integrating diverse forms and practices, is up to you.

Sethos

The second edition of the Azoetia bears the name of the entity watching over it, and opens with a dedication to him. Chumbley explains “Sethos” as… “the Daimon of the Grimoire Azoetia; a noetic emanation of the Magical Quintessence; a mediator between Abel, Cain, and Seth, that is, between the Sacrificed Man of Clay (the Uninitiate Self), the Transformative Man of Fire (the Initiating and Becoming Self), and the Self-Transformed Man of Light (the Initiatic Self-existent One)…” p. 361

Chumbley is drawing on a bit of Gnosticism here. For the Gnostics, ideological rivals of the early Christian Church, the Hebrew God described in the Old Testament wasn’t the Good Guy at all, but rather the Villain. He and his angels were merely lesser emanations of the True Deity. The Gnostics called the false god Ialdabaoth, and explained that he had fashioned the world of matter as a prison to hold captive human souls (which were, in fact, tiny sparks of the True God). Ineffable, invisible, and intangible, the True Deity was far removed from the material world. He did not act directly, but only sent forth emanations. For some Gnostics, Jesus was just such an emanation, sent by the True God to liberate people from the captivity of false one.

If you reread the Bible with Gnosticism in mind, several things change. For example, in Eden, Ialbadaoth and his angelic cronies suddenly appear to be keeping Adam and Eve naked and stupid, like apes. Then along comes the serpent, who actually helps the couple by persuading them to rebel. He talks them into eating the fruit of knowledge and becoming self-aware. They stop being animals and start being human. 

While this may seem odd to the modern reader, it does explain a great deal of the Bible’s inconsistencies. Any objective reading of the text leads the reader to wonder how the jealous, vindictive, and murderous God of the Old Testament could possibly be the beneficent and compassionate one spoken of by Jesus. In addition, it explains the problem of suffering and evil a lot more efficiently than the more standard “blame-it-on-Lucifer” line. Regardless, this is what various Gnostic groups believed and taught down through the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries, until the Christian Church got organized and started putting them out of business.

Now, if you reread the Bible with Gnosticism in mind, several things change. For example, in Eden, Ialbadaoth and his angelic cronies suddenly appear to be keeping Adam and Eve naked and stupid, like apes. Then along comes the serpent, who actually helps the couple by persuading them to rebel. He talks them into eating the fruit of knowledge and becoming self-aware. They stop being animals and start being human. For this reason, there was an entire Gnostic sect known as the Ophites (snake-worshippers).

But there was another Gnostic sect known as the Cainites.  To understand why, we must consider the next biblical drama; Cain and Abel. Cain, the eldest son of Adam and Eve, is the first farmer and blacksmith. Abel is a herdsman. God (ie Ialbadoath) commands the two to make a sacrifice to Him. Cain sacrifices the finest fruits of the harvest. Abel slaughters an animal. As a result, God favors Abel’s sacrifice and scorns Cain’s. Message? This God wants blood. As a result, Cain murders his brother and as a result undergoes a mysterious transformation.  Though sent into exile, he is somehow “marked” with a sign of God’s protection.  If anyone tries to punish or murder Cain for his crime, they themselves will be punished by God.  This is completely bizarre, given Yahweh’s “eye for an eye” mentality.  Even more odd, in the wake of losing two sons, Eve conceives a new son, Seth.

For Gnostics, Seth’s incarnation was made possible by Cain’s sacrifice.  Abel was the first human being to die, and by killing him Cain had opened a path into the otherworld, a path along which the True God could send part of Itself into Ialbadaoth’s creation. 

Seth is a very curious figure in both Gnosticism and mystical Judaism. Many sects regarded Seth as an emanation of the True God.  The line of Seth was called the “sons of God,” and believed to be holy.  Adam is said to have given them the secrets of the Kabbalah, and many Gnostics belived that Seth—not Jesus—was the savior who would return at the end of time.  

For Gnostics, Seth’s incarnation was made possible by Cain’s sacrifice.  Abel was the first human being to die, and by killing him Cain had opened a path into the otherworld, a path along which the True God could send part of Itself into Ialbadaoth’s creation. Perhaps Yahweh couldn’t punish Cain because he somehow enjoyed the protection of the higher, true God.  

With all this in mind, we are ready to tackle the dedication opening the Sethos edition of the Azoetia;

O Sethos! Rise up and remember!

Recall the Promise once stain’d in red upon the primal dust of the earth!

By baying dog and moon-beam, by lantern, stave, and upright stone,

Come fathom the starlit heights of Heaven in the Old Dew-pool of Cain.

Come ring the blood round with the Serpent, Come turn the skin of time,

Come pace about the corpse of Abel, here break the Fate of Mortal Man!

Here cast forth the Visions from Yesterday, from Tomorrow, unto Today.

Here open the way for the Crooked Path, for the Pathway forever to be!

O Sethos! Rise up and remember,

‘Til thy Namesake, the Man of Light, is born!

The Crooked Path is the one opened by the sacrifice of Abel, and it leads directly to the Azoth. And Cain—the first Magician—is held as the psychopomp, the opener of the way.

Now on one level, Abel is the Uninitiated Self, the normal, everyday mortal held captive by the system, subject to all the laws of nature and time. Cain is the Initiate who rebels against this, sacrificing his old life up in an effort to tear free from the bounds of time and space. And Seth is the Divine Self, the perfected being born from Cain’s sacrifice, the magician who completes his quest. We are seeing the old alchemical formula, solve et coagula, again.

In purely psychological terms, this myth reflects the fact that our lives and identities are hollow constructs, forced upon us by heredity, society, and experience. It urges us to murder these identities and to replace them with entirely self-created ones, to transform ourselves into who we want to be rather than who we’ve been told to be.

But on another level, Abel represents what Chumbley calls Zoa—the life force present in all human beings, analogous to the alchemical mercury. Cain is his darker twin, Azoa, the force of death equally present within us, analogous to salt. And Seth/os would be Azothos, the magical force that unites and transcends both, the divine fire analogous to sulfur. The work of the magician is to liberate himself from both the forces of life (with its pains, cravings, and instability) and death (with its limitation and finality). He must murder Abel and exile Cain, so that Seth (transcendence) might be born.

Aleister Crowley touched on all of this in his Book of Thoth, particularly with regards to the Trumps “Lovers” and “Art.” Another excellent source for further reading would be the writings of Julius Evola (the best being The Hermetic Tradtion).

THE LURKER ON THE THRESHOLD, "And Other Unspeakable Rites"

THE NECRONOMICON CYCLE

In his Techgnosis essay, Calling Cthulhu, author Erik Davis asks why it should be that so many modern Magicians have embraced the Cthulhu Mythos as a magical model. From Anton LaVey's Cthulhu-inspired rites in The Satanic Rituals, to Phil Hine's Pseudonomicon and now, even, a group calling itself the “Cult of Cthulhu,” Lovecraft's hideous brood keep popping up in the workings of real-life sorcerers...almost as if trying to “break through” into our reality. To my mind, the answer to Davis' question is simple. H.P. Lovecraft gave the world a genuinely post-modern mythology without any real magical praxis. On the other hand, Austin Osman Spare, Peter Carroll, Ray Sherwin, and other Chaos Magicians gave us a genuinely post-modern magical praxis without a mythology. It was a match made, if not in Heaven, then in the black gulfs of the unfathomable void.

But what do we mean by “post-modern?” Simply put, “Traditional” thought embraced an anthropomorphic universe, ruled by a Deity and a hierarchy of intelligences, with Man created in the image of that God. In that model, Man could transcend the natural world through obedience and devotion to God. “Modern” thought, by contrast, saw the universe as a machine composed of forces and forms, governed by immutable laws. Man could eventually transcend the natural world by understanding how the cosmos functioned. Both of these models, despite several metaphysical differences, share the idea that man is significant, that he is somehow distinct from and superior to the rest of nature; in the first model by virtue of divine favor, and in the second by his intellect.

The “Post Modern” viewpoint, fueled by both modern sciences and the weight of the 20^th century, rejects both previous positions as absurd. Biology has shown that species come and go, that where dinosaurs once ruled man now holds dominion, indicating some other species will eventually replace us. Physics reveals a cosmos of unimaginable vastness and complexity, ruled not by laws but by probabilities. The old addage, “what goes up must come down” must be readjusted to “what goes up has a tendancy to come down,” and you can never predict with 100% certainty what it will actually do. As Peter Carroll pointed out, if you roll a single die you could get any number from one to six. Roll six million dice and you will tend to get around a million ones. But you could just as easily get six million sixes.

In this light, the evolution of man is the result of blind chance; like a cloud which takes the shape on an animal on a summer afternoon. And in both cases, the form is only temporary. There is no intrinsic meaning, no truth, no logic, no destiny. The universe is essentially chaos, utterly beyond man's capacity to comprehend.

Lovecraft captured the essence of this by creating what many of his critics have called an “anti-mythology.” Unlike traditional mythologies, with basically human deities organized into human social groups (families, tribes, clans, etc), Lovecraft's “gods” are utterly inhuman; blind, titanic forces lacking sentience, organization, or purpose. With the possible exception of Nyarlathotep, they even lack individual identities (and indeed, even Nyarlathotep is so mercurial he defies easy description). Chaos reigns in his anti-mythos, and those who cling to reason in the face of it are broken and driven mad. To gain power from these beings, one must become like them, “free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws thrown aside.” Individual identity and dualistic reasoning must be lost, and thus Lovecraft depicts his dark deities worshipped by orgiastic rites. Indeed, his tales often focus on atavistic regression, on humans gaining power by descending rather than ascending, taking on primitive forms which for Lovecraft are in fact our true selves. “...civilisation,” he wrote, “is but a slight coverlet beneath which the dominant beast sleeps lightly and ever ready to awake...”

All this has much in common with the magic of Austin Spare, grandfather of the Chaos Tradition. For Spare, the “magickal energy of the universe, the force that interpenetrates all phenomena is non-human...(and) the magician, in order to avail himself of this force, (must) renounce his human belief systems, his dualistic mind, to achieve a state of consciousness that, as much as possible, mimicked the primordial.” He called this power Kia, and it was the core of his “Zos Kia Cultus.” Spare advocated atavistic regression into primitive modes of consciousness, de-evolution, if you will. This was possible, as the subconscious regions of the brain were in fact “the epitome of all experience and wisdom, past incarnations as men, animals, birds, vegetable life, etc, etc, etc,” and contained “everything that exists has and ever will exist.” In short, we all carry Innsmouth blood, and can become Deep Ones at any time.

This Dionysian mindlessness, which Peter Carroll calls gnosis, is both the goal of the Chaos Magician and the byproduct of contact with Lovecraft's Old Ones. It is a state where the ego is disintegrated, where all our false conceptions of “reality” and “self” are lost. Both Chaos Magick and Lovecraft's Mythos denounce religious and humanistic paradigms as artificial, comfortable illusions in which we attempt to escape from a universe vast, chaotic, and uncaring. Thus it was inevitable that the two should partner up.

The following rituals, then, are my own pages from the Necronomicon. They are rites of Chaos Magick clothed in the trappings of H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic creations. Of course, numerous other magicians have taken their own crack at realizing Lovecraft’s fictional grimoire, but none of them ever seemed quite right to me. The (in)famous Simon Necronomicon, though an intriguing system of chakra/kundalini work, has very little to do with Lovecraft. Tyson’s recent Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred was inspired, but his follow-up, The Grimoire of the Necronomicon, was too steeped in traditional hermetic cosmology and Gnosticism to approach the sense of cosmic awe that Lovecraft imbued the Mythos with. While these works deserve their place on a magician’s self, they weren’t genuinely “Lovecraft” for me. So I set out to write my own.

The rituals herein fall into two kinds, “sorcerous” and “cultic.” The former address the supreme triad of the Mythos—Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and Nyarlathotep—and reflect the civilized and decadent sorcery of characters like Old Man Whately and Joseph Curwen. They are written for solo work, and lack any sort of religious quality. They focus on crossing the threshold of reality into the sphere of the Outer Gods, for the purpose of gnosis and channeling the power of Chaos back into the world. These rites are the ancient Ars Magia, the art of becoming a god to do your will in the world.

The second category of rites are theurgic in character. They worship alien beings and call upon them to grant favors. The sorcerer does not “become” the god, but rather a channel for its power.

ARS MAGIA: THE RITES OF THE OUTER GODS

At the highest levels of existence dwell the Outer Gods; Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth. These incomprehensible entities exist beyond the limits of human perception and understanding, beyond that place the Qabalists call the Abyss. Unlike the Great Old Ones—Cthulhu, Dagon, Yig, Y’gonolac, etc—the Outer Gods are truly cosmic beings, beyond time and space. They are omnipotent and omnipresent, responsible for the whole of creation, and while we address them as separate entities, they are in reality three aspects of the same thing. They are the Chaos at the heart of existence.

Azathoth can be glimpsed as the universe shorn of all notions of duality. If you strip away all human definitions, the blind, titanic, seething mass that is left is Azathoth. He is unconditioned reality. Azathoth is the universe as a swirling cloud of energy, a single raging storm, a “big bang” that never really ended. He is the Sulfur of the alchemical Tria Prima, the root of all matter and energy.

Yog-Sothoth is the entire sweep of time, space, and dimension. He is the illusion of form, the One that becomes the Many. All that he represents—aeons of time, the great black gulfs of space, the multiple realities all clustered together—do not and cannot truly exist, save as temporary shapes seen in the clouds. But because human beings perceive a linear universe of moments, and distances, and things, Yog-Sothoth is the very edge of our perception, the threshold of the universe as it really is. He is the alchemical Salt, the giver of boundaries, durations, and forms.

Between these two dances Nyarlathotep. Of all the Outer Gods, he alone seems self-conscious, and he alone interacts purposefully with humanity. He is the notion of duality, of individuality, of separateness from the whole, and yet at the same time he is its emissary. He is the darkness that defines light, the cold that defines heat, the madness that defines sanity. Quicksilver and mercurial—like the alchemical element linked to him—he flows between Azathoth the One and Yog-Sothoth the Many, mediating between them. He is the consciousness of existence, the universe that awakens and thinks it is an “I.” He alone is the Outer God likely to communicate in any way with the individual, working as a trickster to destroy common perceptions of “self” and as a guide or initiator leading the seeker into unconditioned reality.

Yog-Sothoth

Imagination called up the shocking form of fabulous Yog-Sothoth—only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in malign suggestiveness…

- Lovecraft, “The Horror in the Museum”

The Mythos describes Yog-Sothoth as the “All-in-One” and the “One-in-All.” Other titles include “the Lurker at the Threshold,” “the Beyond One,” “the Key and the Gate,” and “the Opener of the Way.” We are told this entity is coterminous with all of time and space, “…not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep…” (Lovecraft, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key). If the Old Ones exist outside of Space-Time, Yog-Sothoth is the portal through which they enter our reality, and through which the sorcerer may enter Theirs.

The description of Yog-Sothoth as an endless mass of spheres recalls the 6^th Chapter of Crowley’s Book of Lies;

The Word was uttered: the One exploded into one thousand million worlds.

Each world contained a thousand million spheres.

Each sphere contained a thousand million planes.

Each plane contained a thousand million stars.

Crowley notes the title of the chapter, “Caviar,” was chosen as it is a substance made of many spheres. This image, and the repeated use of the phrase “the One and the All,” is suggestive of Yog-Sothoth, or at least that which this entity represents; namely the creation of the many from the one (or at least the illusion of such creation). Passing through Yog-Sothoth into our Space-Time, the Old Ones seem to become distinct individuals. Passing through Yog-Sothoth into Theirs, the sorcerer ceases to be one, merging with the whole of existence. In this way, Yog-Sothoth had been linked to Crowley’s Chronozon, the Guardian of the Abyss. Passing beyond Him means destroying the individual ego and experiencing the All, the “Night of Pan.”

The Lurker of the Threshold is thus an Opening and Closing rite. At the start of a ritual, it opens the way for the sorcerer to enter into the consciousness of the Old Ones. At the finish, it closes the gate after his return. In it, the sorcerer will identify himself with the All-in-One, becoming himself the “Hierophant,” the bridge and portal between worlds.

The Lurker on the Threshold

I

Let the Operant touch his brow, saying; Alpha kai ho omega

Let him touch the groin, saying; Protos kai ho eschatos

Let him touch the breast saying; Arche kai ho telos (1)

Let him throw out his arms like the sign of the cross, saying; IAO(2)

II

Let him go to the East and make the Spiral Star (3). Then shall he make the Sign of the Enterer and vibrate; Aforgomon! Let him close with the Sign of Silence.

Let him do the same in the North, vibrating; ‘Umr at-Tawil! Let him close with the Sign of Silence.

Let him do the same in the West, vibrating; Choronozon! Let him close with the Sign of Silence.

Let him do the same in the South, vibrating; Yog-Sothoth! Let him close with the Sign of Silence. (4)

III

Let him return to the center. “The All-in-One and the One-in-All. Yog-Sothoth knows the Gate. Yog-Sothoth is the Gate. Yog-Sothoth is the Key and the Guardian of the Gate. Past, present, and future are all one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the threshold was crossed and where it may be crossed again.” (5)

IV

Repeat Step One.

Nyarlathotep

And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a pharaoh.

- Lovecraft, “Nyarlathotep”

Described as a “tall, swarthy, man” resembling an Egyptian pharaoh (a description not unlike Aleister Crowley’s descriptions of Aiwass), Nyarlathotep is the only Outer God who assumes human form or who communicates with mortals in any meaningful way. Of course, this is not his only guise. Other tales would see him as a faceless, howling sphinx and a bat-winged, tentacled monstrousity. Indeed, it is said he has a thousand forms, a thousand faces, none of which are his true appearance (assuming he had one at all). Lovecraft, who first encountered Nyarlathotep in a dream, described him as “…horrible beyond anything you can imagine—but wonderful. He haunts one for hours afterward. I am still shuddering at what he showed.”

He was and is the messenger and emissary of the Outer Gods, said to be their heart and their soul. Lovecraft described him as the Black Man of the Witches’ Sabbat, leading mortals before the throne of Azathoth. He would also appear to be the central figure in the worship of the Mi-Go. It is fairly clear that Nyarlathotep is the link between sentient beings and the Outer Gods, the Face of God. Below the Abyss he is the Initiator, the Angel, and the Guide. To those unable to let go of their misconceptions, however, he brings only madness and ruin.

Having opened the Way, the sorcerer must next invoke the Crawling Chaos as his Guide. As the sorcerer made himself the bridge between the Outer Gods and the realm of men, he now identifies himself with Nyarlathotep as Their Messenger, Prometheus bringing fire to Earth. In the ancient tradition of hermetic magia, the sorcerer invokes Nyarlathotep and becomes His Son, embodying the god on Earth.

The Crawling Chaos

I

Let the sorcerer stand in the Center, facing the altar. Let him say; And it has come to pass that the Lord of the Word down the Onyx Steps shall descend. To Nyarlathotep, Mighty Messenger, must all things be told. And He shall put on the semblance of men, the Waxen Mask and the Robe that Hides, to go out among them to teach Marvels, and that He in the Gulf may be Known. (6)

II

Let the Sorcerer go to the East and make in the air the Eight-Rayed Star of Chaos. Let him thrust his dagger through the center and say; En arche ane ho logos. Then shall he behold in the East Nyarlathotep, the Heart and Soul and Word of Him that is in the Gulf, and do obeisance unto him.

Let the Sorcerer go the South and do the same, saying; Kai ho logos ane pros ho theos. Then shall he behold in the South Nyarlathotep, and do obeisance unto him.

Let the Sorcerer go the West and do the same, saying; Kai theos ane ho logos. Then shall he behold in the West Nyarlathotep, and do obeisance unto him.

Let the Sorcerer go to the North and do the same, saying; Pas dia autos ginomai. Then shall he behold in the North Nyarlathotep, and do obeisance unto him. (7)

III

Let him go to the Center. With Wand and Dagger, let him cross his arms over his breast in the manner of the ancient Pharaohs. Let him say; Kai ho logos sarx ginomai kai skenoo en hemin. Then shall Nyarlathotep also be in the Center with him, and he shall truly be the Anointed Son of a God. (8)

Azathoth

That last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion that blasphemes and bubbles and the centre of all infinity…the boundless Daemon Sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud…

- Lovecraft, “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”

Azathoth is “the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space.” He is the Lord of the Outer Gods, the origin of the universe, and in all probability, its ultimate fate. Described as both a blind and idiot god, he is the monad, the undivided godhead unable to see or to know because there is nothing outside of Him to be seen or known. He exists eternally in the moment of first creation, before becoming aware of Himself (that self-awareness is embodied in Nyarlathotep) and before the first laws of the universe (embodied by Yog-Sothoth) took shape. His screams, and the daemonic piping of his courtiers, are the music of the Big Bang.

Simply put, Azathoth is Chaos; raw, undifferentiated, unconditioned. He is the blank sheet of paper that might become anything, the die that might roll any random result. From the human perspective, a perspective conditioned by “this” and “that,” Azathoth is pure madness. But He is also pure power, the potential for anything to be, anything to happen. He is thus the Supreme Lord of Magick.

To invoke Azathoth is to achieve gnosis, a blank or empty state where the ego is shattered, the mind ceases to function, and consciousness expands to the breaking point. Here where the borders between conscious and subconscious are obliterated, acts of Magick are possible.

The Daemon Sultan

I

Let the sorcerer prepare the sacrament. Then with the Voice of Nyarlathotep shall he speak; OL SONF VORS G GOHO VOVIN VABZIR DE TEHOM QADOM ZIRDO L IAIADA DS PRAF A LIL ZIRDO CIAOFI CAOSAGO MOSPLEH TELOCH PANPIR MALPIRGI CAOSG ZAZAS ZAZAS NASATANATA ZAZAS AZATHOTH ZAZAS! (9)

II

Now shall the sorcerer make the offering and the sacrifice. (10)

III

The Lurker on the Threshold may be called upon again to close this rite, or some other manner may be employed.

Endnotes

1. Greek “Alpha and the Omega, beginning and the end, first and the last.” See. Revelation 22:13. This part of the ritual establishes the sorcerer as the center of the universe, the axis mundi, and begins his identification with Yog-Sothoth as the face of Chaos which generates order and kosmos.

2. IAO is a Greek vocalization of the ancient Hebrew YHVH. The three letters here may be taken to represent the three faces of the Outer Gods; “I” being the conscious “I” of these deities, Nyarlathotep; “A” being Azathoth, the first and the source; “O” being all encircling Yog-Sothoth, lord of the spheres.

3. The Spiral Star, as a congruence of spheres, better suits the nature of Yog-Sothoth than the traditional pentagram. See the picture at the lead of the article.

4. These names are forms of Yog-Sothoth. As Aforgomon he appears in the tales of Clark Ashton Smith, the god of time and space. As ‘Umr at-Tawil he is “the prolonged of life,” a Dreamlands version that may represent Yog-Sothoth in his capacity to return the dead to life. As Choronzon he is the Enochian devil, a being named by Crowley as the Lord of the Abyss, standing between the sorcerer and passage into the highest levels of being.

5. The sorcerer should see himself as enclosed in his own sphere, surrounded by many hundreds of millions of others. These all should collapse and condense into his single sphere as he moves into the final stage.

6. Of course, the “Waxen Mask and the Robe that Hides” refers to the sorcerer’s own flesh. This is a very ancient rite, the rite of invoking and becoming a god. As the face of the Outer Gods aware of being a “self,” Nyarlathotep is “Kia,” the unconditioned “I” which wills and experiences, but lacks external attributes. Once one strips away the “am this” and the “have this” from the “I,” he discovers his own Kia and finds it is indistinguishable from any other. He becomes in sense Nyarlathotep, who has a thousand masks.

7. Greek “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word, and from this all was made.” Nyarlathotep is the “messenger” of the Outer Gods, Their Voice and Their Word. He is the Logos, the Word that creates and shapes both consciousness and the experience of reality.

8. Greek “And the Word became flesh and dwelled amongst men.” The Word has been “heard” by the sorcerer, who now becomes that Word. It has been given flesh. The sorcerer is now a Mask of Nyarlathotep, a Son of God.

9. Enochian “I reigneth over you sayeth the Dragon Eagle of Primal Chaos. I am the First, the Highest, that dwell in the First Aether. I am the Horns of Death, pouring down the Fires of Life upon the Earth.” Having become Nyarlathotep, the language of the ritual changes from earthly and human Greek to Enochian, the cosmic tongue invented/discovered by Messers. Dee and Kelley. Nyarlathotep speaks on behalf of Azathoth here.

10. The nature of the offering and sacrifice has been left intentionally vague. The Magus—for he is no longer a sorcerer having become a Son of God—may wish to perform Sigil Magick here, consume some sort of Eucharist, or perform some other act of Magick. The sacrifice may consist of blood or sexual fluids, and should be accompanied by entering gnosis.