Necronomicon

The Necronomicon was attributed by H.P. Lovevecraft, the writer of horror stories, (1890-1937), to Abdul Alhazred, a mad Arab poet of the Yemen; he was supposed to have written the work in the year 950 at Damascus. The original Arabic text went through several translations, according to Lovecraft, the most recent being in 17th century Spanish, a translation into English having been made by John Dee.

During the forty-odd years following Lovecraft's death in 1937, a variety of interested parties inquired whether he had had access to a genuine manuscript or whether it had been solely the product of his invention. The English "King of the witches", Alex Sanders at one time claimed to have a copy, but all that interviewers were allowed to see was a document clearly written and decorated by Sanders himself.

In 1978 a volume was published under the title of the Necronomicon, "The lost masterpiece of occult literature and a disturbing account of the dark side of creation." With a long introduction by Colin Wilson, it included essays by several writers on aspects of Lovecraft's works. But the central part of the book comprised some pages reproduced from an anonymous manuscript in the British Museum; "The Necronomic a Commentary" by Robert Turner; an erudite article on a computer analysis of the Enochian language in Dee's Liber Logaeth - and "Fragments from the Necronomicon deciphered from a unique Elizabethan cryptogram". It is to be hoped that all those who came across this volume were not persuaded to believe that it was anything other than a clever and elaborate spoof.

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