Book of the Dead "Al Azif" - "Necronomicon. Book of the Dead "Necronomicon Who wrote the Necronomicon

Necronomicon

Colin Wilson, George Hay, Robert Turner, and David Langford have translated Dr. John Dee's ciphered manuscript, Liber Logaeth, part of a larger manuscript of unknown provenance. Based on the history of this manuscript and the similarity of its content with the Cthulhu myths, researchers present it as a document or part of a document that formed the basis of H.F. Lovecraft's Necronomicon.

THE BOOK OF THE ARAB ABDOUL ALHAZRED, DAMASCUS, 730

About the Ancients and their offspring.

The ancients were, are and will be. Before the birth of man they came with dark stars, invisible and disgusting, they descended to the primordial earth.

For many centuries They bred at the bottom of the oceans, but then the seas receded before the dry land, and Their hordes crawled ashore, and darkness reigned over the Earth.

At the icy Poles They erected cities and fortresses, and on the heights They erected temples to Those over whom nature has no power, To Those over whom the curse of the Gods weighs. And the offspring of the Ancients flooded the Earth, and Their children lived for many centuries. The monstrous birds of Lang, the creations of Their hands, and the Pale Ghosts that lived in the primeval crypts of Zin, revered Them as their Lords. They gave birth to the Na-Hag and the skinny Riders of the Night; Great Cthulhu is Their brother and driver of Their slaves. The Wild Dogs swear allegiance to them in the gloomy valley of Pnoth, and the Wolves sing their praises in the foothills of ancient Throk.

They traveled between the stars and roamed the earth. The city of Irem in the great wilderness knew Them; Lang, lying in the middle of the Icefields, saw Them pass by; Their sign remained on the walls of the eternal citadel, hidden in the sky-high heights of the mysterious Kadaf.

The Ancients wandered aimlessly along the paths of darkness, Their wicked power over the Earth was great: all creations bowed before Their might and knew the power of Their malice.

And then the Senior Lords opened their eyes and saw all the abomination of Those who raged on Earth. In Their anger, the Elder Masters seized the Ancients in the midst of Their excesses and threw Them from the Earth into the Void beyond the worlds, where chaos and variability of forms reign. And the Senior Lords placed their seal on the Gates, the strength of which will not yield to the onslaught of the Ancients. Then the monstrous Cthulhu rose from the depths and unleashed his fury on the Guardians of the Earth. They also bound his poisonous jaws with powerful spells and imprisoned him in the underwater City of R "lieh, where he will sleep in a dead sleep until the end of the Eon.

From now on, the Ancients dwell on the other side of the Gate, in the nooks and crannies between the worlds, known to man. They wander outside the sphere of the Earth in eternal expectation of the hour when They can return to the Earth again: for the Earth has known them and will know them from now on at the appointed hour.

The vile formless Azathoth commands the Ancients, and They live with Him in a black cave in the center of infinity, where He greedily bites into the bottomless chaos under the maddening roar of invisible drums, the discordant screech of piercing flutes and the incessant roar of the blind, mindless gods, which relentlessly tottering aimlessly and waving their arms.

The soul of Azathoth dwells in Yog-sothoth, and He will give a sign to the Old Ones when the stars indicate the time of Their coming; for Yog-sothoth is that Gate through which the Nether Dwellers will return. Yog-sothothu knows the labyrinths of time, for all time is one for Him. He knows where in time the Old Ones appeared in the distant past, and where They will reappear when the wheel is completed.

Day turns to night; the day of man will pass, and they will reign again in their former dominions. You will know their filth and abomination, and their curse will fall upon the Earth.

About the observation of times and seasons.

Whenever you call Them from the Outside World, you must follow the seasons and times when the spheres cross and the currents from the Void open. You must watch the cycle of the Moon, the movements of the planets, the path of the Sun through the Zodiac, and the rising of the constellations.

The Last Rites should be performed only at their proper time, namely: on the Feast of Candles (the second day of the second month), on the Feast of the Bonfires of Beltane (May Eve), on the Feast of the Harvest (the first day of the eighth month), on the Day of the Cross (the fourteenth day of the ninth month) and Halloween, All Saints' Eve (November Eve).

This book is legendary. She was always shrouded in an aura of sinister mystery. The terrible legends associated with the book of the dead "Necronomicon" ("Necronomicon") have been familiar to mankind for a long time. AT different times the book was called differently - "The Key to the Gates of Hell", "Book of Evil", "Book of the Dead", but today it is most often called the "Book of the Dead Necronomicon".

Some consider the Necronomicon to be an invention of the famous writer Howard Lovecraft, but most still believe that the book is real. Today, there are a huge number of sites on the Internet where anyone is offered to familiarize themselves with the contents of the legendary tome. However, with all the power of the worldwide network, there are things that are beyond its control, and the Necronomicon is one of them. This book will always be kept secret from the uninitiated, and it is in our own interests that this order should not be violated for as long as possible.

According to legend, the book contains the history and magical rituals of the great ancients - a race that lived on Earth before the advent of mankind. To the one who knew the secrets of the Necronomicon, not only the wisdom of the ages was revealed, but also the power over otherworldly forces. However, the book does not reveal its secrets to everyone, and the retribution for idle curiosity and ignorance can be mental health or even death.

It is believed that these manuscripts are capable of opening gates to parallel worlds. The gates open in both directions, and in exchange for strength and power, the magician risks letting spirits of great destructive power into our reality. Perhaps that is why, the book of the dead "Necronomicon" has always been tried to hide from the eyes of the inhabitants, so that no one could read it. We cannot play with what we cannot understand and realize. However, the "Necronomicon" can not only destroy, it opens up great opportunities for comprehending other worlds, and hence the expansion of consciousness. But in order for this to become possible, humanity needs to “grow up” a little more.

Origin of the book

The original Necronomicon was written in Arabic and at the time of its creation was called "Al Azif". Such an unusual name arose as an imitation of the ominous night sounds that the Arabs mistook for a demonic howl. The book was created by the mad poet Abdul Alhazred around the 8th century. A native of Sanaa, one of the provinces of Yemen, as a young man he left his home and went to wander around the Middle East. He lived at the ruins for two years, learned the wisdom of the Egyptian priests in Memphis for several years, and then spent a whole decade in the Arabian desert, which then bore the name of Rub al Khaliy (means "empty quarter"), and today is called Dahna ("Dark red desert ").

This place has long been considered unclean and the inhabitants of nearby lands are still trying to bypass it, so as not to inadvertently incur the wrath of the owners of the desert - evil spirits, servants of the devil and the angel of death. Legend has it that this desert is inhabited by demons and terrible monsters, and the survivor in it has always been considered a hero. The poet was lucky - he returned alive and spent the rest of his life in the Syrian city of Damascus. There he created his mysterious book.

According to an ancient Arab belief, it is in Dakhna that the entrance to the mysterious city of Irem is hidden. Arab mystics and magicians (maghribs) considered Irem a very important and sacred place. Its full name is Irem zat al Imad. According to old legends, this city was built by a genie at the behest of Shah Shaddad. The Maghrribs believed that Irem was located on a different level of reality, and not in a physical place, such as, for example, Damascus, New York or Riga. They were convinced that the columns are a symbol of the creatures of the former race and called Irem the "City of Columns", that is, the city of the Ancients. By the will of Allah himself, this beautiful city was destroyed. Now only sand-covered ruins remain of it, under which the great knowledge of an ancient powerful civilization is buried.

At all times, the magicians of the East sought to find a way to the hidden city, but this was not at all easy to do. Some tried to penetrate beyond reality with the help of lucid dreams, others - through meditation. There were also those who wanted to step into the unknown with the help of hard drugs. It doesn't matter how, but it was necessary for a person to achieve fana - a state when the fetters of the flesh fall off, and the spirit unites with the great emptiness. Those who managed to gain power over this sacred emptiness and go beyond it, opened great power and unlimited power over the inhabitants of both worlds - over people and jinn.

In the 8th century, those people who had contact with jinn were called "majnun" - possessed by power. All Sufi heroes were majnun. However, in our time, this word is translated as "mad man." That is why Alhazred was considered a mad poet. In the old days, all Arabic books were written in verse, including even such orthodox works as the Koran. Arab culture claimed that genies inspired poets to create. That is why the Prophet Muhammad insistently denied that he was a poet. He wanted to show all people that he was inspired by Allah, and not by some genie.

According to Arabic mythology, genies are powerful creatures that lived in the world before the appearance of people. Some unknown circumstance forced them one day to leave our world for another reality, where they are now in a sleeping or frozen state. The magician who conquered the void gained the power to wake up the genies and revive them in our reality.

It is not clear how the Yemeni wanderer managed to find the way to the forbidden city, but it was there that he found a repository of precious manuscripts that contain the knowledge of a great race that lived on Earth long before the advent of our civilization. In the culture of the East, this race is usually called the Ancients. Everything that Abdul Alhazred learned from the manuscripts of Iram, he described in his book. True, the disclosure of secret knowledge did not bring him either fame or recognition.

According to legend, Abdul Alhazred suddenly disappeared from Damascus, where he lived in the last years of his life, and no one has ever seen him again. However, popular rumor claims that the poet was torn to pieces right on the street by some terrible invisible monster.

The further fate of the tome

Whatever the fate of the author, his work has been preserved. Approximately in the 10th century, the Al Azif manuscript was translated into Greek and received the name Necronomicon familiar to the world (“necro” in Greek means “dead”, and “nomos” - “experience”, “customs”, “rules ”, “postulate”).

In 1230, the book was also translated into Latin, in this translation it retained the Greek name, and only later, in the 16th century, the manuscript fell into the hands of Dr. John Dee, who translated it into English. John Dee is a legendary man, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth of England, one of the greatest scientists of the 16th century, an alchemist, magician and sorcerer. The most brilliant courts of Europe disputed the honor of hosting him. Once, at the invitation of Emperor Rudolph, he arrived in Prague and there, according to historical chronicles, in the highest presence, he turned pieces of lead into high-grade gold. If you wish, you can refer to the wonderful book by Gustav Meyrink "The Angel of the West Window" and get acquainted with the biography of this amazing person - John Dee, the chosen one of the Ancients, one of the three translators of the book "Necronomicon".

For many centuries, representatives of various religions and cults have hunted for every copy of the Necronomicon in the hope of destroying such a dangerous tome forever. But, as the legends say, there are 96 copies of the book in the world, and no matter how hard the followers of traditional religious organizations try to destroy the Necronomicon, the number of books always remains the same. However, only seven of them have real value, that is, they can serve as gates to other dimensions - three in Arabic, one in Greek, two in Latin and one in English (the one that came out from the pen of John Dee). The rest of the copies have some defects. However, these books are endowed with great power, which distinguishes the Necronomicon from all others.

Rulers and dictators such as Napoleon, Bismarck and Hitler sought to possess a true copy of the Necronomicon. There is evidence that after the end of World War II, special groups were created in the USA and the USSR to search for this unexplored relic. Apparently, their efforts were not crowned with success.

Myth or reality

The Book of the Dead owes its current popularity to the father of the literary horror genre, Howard Lovecraft. She is mentioned in almost a dozen of his works. According to legend, the writer managed to take one of the copies of the Book of the Dead from the followers of the Crows of Death sect. In order to save the Necronomicon, with the help of his friend, archaeologist Andrew Scott, Lovecraft chose to hide it in a safe place somewhere in the middle of the Sahara sands. The fate of the two friends after that was tragic: Lovecraft soon died, and his archaeologist friend disappeared without a trace.

Howard Lovecraft wrote in the genres of fantasy, horror and mysticism. He successfully combined these three directions, which gave rise to many rumors. Lovecraft created a unique world of Cthulhu myths. During his lifetime, as often happens, his work was not particularly popular. After the death of the author, it began to have an increasing influence on modern literature. To emphasize the uniqueness of the writer's talent, his works were singled out in a separate subgenre - Lovecraftian horrors.

At the end of his life, in his letters to friends, Howard Lovecraft admitted that the Necronomicon was a figment of his imagination.

Ancient legends say that the first copy of this book was written on the skin of virgins, with their blood, but these are most likely only legends. because of a large number those who wanted to appropriate the authorship of this book, the real Necronomicon was lost in a huge number of manuscripts that were passed off as the original, but were just a distorted likeness.

Some researchers have tried to connect the Necronomicon with the famous Egyptian Book of the Dead or Bardo Thodol, a similar treatise written by the sages of Tibet. However, these books were intended to facilitate the dead's transition to the other world, and do not contain recipes for how to use their power for earthly needs. There were versions that the medieval Picatrix or the strangest manuscript in history, the so-called .

Throughout the 20th century, works appeared claiming to be the true "Necronomicon". It is often confused with such works as Grimoirium Imperium (published in the late 1970s), Simon's Necronomicon (published in 1977 by Schlangekraft Inc., is the most popular version of the book) and Liber Logaeth (published by the writer and paranormal researcher Colin Wilson). There are also a number of lesser-known likenesses of such authors as Ripel, DeCamp, Queen, R'leich, and others. With such an abundance of texts, artistically designed editions and even gift versions of books appeared.

The appearance of so many versions of the book can serve as another proof of the mystery and inaccessibility of the true Necronomicon. Of particular interest in the book were spurred by such feature films as "The Unnamable" ("The Unnamable", 1988), "Nameless 2" ("The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter", 1993), "The Book of the Dead" ("Necronomicon" , 1993), "Dreams in the House of the Witches" ("H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House", 2005), "The Amazing Wanderings of Hercules" (Season 6, episode "City of the Dead"), "Valdemar's Legacy" (2010- 2011). The plot of the most famous and popular film "Evil Dead" ("Evil Dead"), parts 1 and 2, is based on the fact that terrible demonic events begin precisely after reading spells from the pages of the Necronomicon.

Despite numerous forgeries and speculations, not only the location, but also the true content of the Necronomicon is still a mystery. According to Lovecraft, in addition to their own history and descriptions of the most complex magical rituals, the ancients reveal the secrets of the structure of the Earth and outer space. Many postulates of the book contain information discovered by modern mathematicians and physicists only in the last century.

Mysterious content

“So what is written there?” - you ask. About the dark secrets of the nature of the Earth and the universe. The book lists some of the deities worshiped by the Ancients. Yog-Sothoth and Azatoth were considered especially important. Yog-Sothoth is past, present and future. This is the extent of infinity. It is an omnipresent and all-encompassing being. In the center of it lives a twin brother - Azatoth. This little dwarf is the support of the entire universe and the ruler of the worlds. Azatoth radiates waves of probability into infinity, from which sets of possibilities are created for every cosmos and every being in the universe. Scientists say Azathoth's idea is closely related to the latest models quantum physics. It is hard to imagine that at the beginning of the centuries the inhabitants of the Arabian deserts understood the mathematics of chaos, the laws of parallel spaces and similar topics, about which our modern science just starting to figure it out.

Deity Yog-Sothoth

Yog-Sothoth and Azatoth are infinite expansion and infinite contraction. By the way, "Azatoth" is translated from Egyptian as "the mind of Thoth", and Yog-Sothoth can be considered a derivative of Yak Set Thoht ("Set and Thoth are one"). According to Egyptian mythology, Set and Thoth are the dark and light aspects of the world. Researchers of the Necronomicon believe that the Greek translator Al Azif replaced the names of Arab deities with Egyptian ones, since at that time Egypt was considered the cradle of human civilization.

Further, the Necronomicon reports on the mysterious power inherent in the Earth. She is personified by the dragon Cthulhu - a deity whose round face was depicted with a dozen prominences or tentacles. Some orientalists rank Cthulhu among the Ancients. They believe that he was their high priest. And there is such a legend that if a magician or wizard calls him at the wrong time, Cthulhu will rise from the abyss of the Pacific Ocean and strike humanity with an unprecedented disease - bouts of insanity, from which neither old nor young will be saved. The legend says that people's dreams are Cthulhu's thoughts, and our life is his dream. When the deity wakes up, we will disappear. So, better not wake up Cthulhu.

Other gods are also noted in the book. It is they who attract people who crave exorbitant power to the Necronomicon. All of them were united by a single goal - to find the City of the Ancients and enlist the support of terrible, but powerful forces.

The soul and mediator of the Others was Nyarlathotep - the Mighty Herald. Through him, the Magrribian wizards came into contact with Azathoth. Nyarlathotep was often referred to as the Creeping Chaos. It could take any form, but knowledgeable people always recognized by its smell. The Necronomicon contains symbols and spells for calling Other Gods. One of them - Shub-Niggurath appeared in the form of a black goat. By the way, not only Arabs, Greeks and Egyptians worshiped him, but also the Sumerians - the most ancient civilization humanity.

Many magicians were interested in other creatures described in the Necronomicon. About a third of the book is devoted to controlling shoggoths - shapeless "eels" from bubbles of protoplasm.

Another interesting race are the "deep". They live in the depths of waters, caves and underground cavities. Their appearance resembles a cross between a fish, a frog and a man, and they are controlled by the deity Dagon, an ally of Cthulhu. Dagon was mentioned in the Philistine tradition, he later became the Babylonian Oannes, and then turned into the Greek Poseidon and the Roman Neptune. The "deep" are easily controlled, but the power over them fascinates the magician so much that he gradually becomes their slave himself.

Perhaps the most disgusting creatures described in the Necronomicon are ghouls or ghouls. They resemble humans in many ways, but their breed is usually given away by fangs and monstrous features. Ghouls can engage in sexual intercourse with humans. In addition, under certain circumstances, a person easily turns into a ghoul. However, the reverse transformation is no longer possible.

Necronomicon Fragment — Pinterest Occult

In modern popular culture, ghouls are classified as vampires, but this is not entirely true. The current vampires are representatives of the spiritual Order of the Trapeze. These are the magicians of the so-called Left Hand Path. Ghouls are their divine leaders (or rather, energy templates). Mages of the Order of the Trapeze are obsessed with the idea of immortality. Their experiences and deeds inspire disgust and fear. The power of the vampires modern world amazingly big. But no matter how they praised the ghouls, they were and remain mindless corpse eaters who have one thing in mind - to bite and drink human blood.

The magical symbols and spells of the Necronomicon allow people to transcend physical reality. But the trouble is that not the best representatives of mankind usually use the book.

In addition, on the pages of the manuscript one can find detailed description the process of enslavement human souls and instructions for creating psychotronic weapons. The magic formulas from the "Necronomicon" are able to teach a person to go beyond the brink of our reality. The strength of the "Necronomicon" is focused on ensuring that the book falls into the hands of only self-centered and power-hungry people. Of all the dark mysteries of the universe, they usually choose the worst, and the fruits of their labors fall heavily on humanity.

On the other hand, the Necronomicon is great spring wisdom of the spirit, calling on the dedicated reader to gradually ascend to the heights of the knowledge of being. Anyone who is able to penetrate the information structure of the ciphertext will be able to gain a colossal amount of knowledge.

If we discard all supernatural premises, then no one will be able to say what the Necronomicon actually gives, and whether a person is able to know all its power. Perhaps someday there will be someone who will be able to absorb the wisdom hidden in the book. One can only hope that if one day the book itself finds its chosen one, then it will be a sage, not a dictator.

Modern translations of the books "Al Azif" and "Necronomicon" are in the public domain on the Internet and anyone can get acquainted with them. But before you start reading, you should remember that it may not be safe for the reader.

The article is based on the material of the publication "Secrets of the XX century".

Probably everyone who is interested in the occult and secret sciences has heard of the "Necronomicon" - one of the most ancient, powerful and mysterious witchcraft books. For more than 12 centuries, the secret of the Necronomicon and the exorbitant power that this book gives to its owner excites the minds of magicians, historians and statesmen who are hungry for unlimited power. Most legends and historical evidence attribute the authorship of the Necronomicon to Abdullah Alhazred, an Arab poet and magician who created his work in 730 in Damascus at the end of a life that he devoted entirely to mastering secret knowledge forbidden to most mortals. The Arabic name of the "Necronomicon" sounds like "Al Azif", which, according to some researchers, can be translated as "Howl of the night demons". For many decades, Alhazred wandered the deserts in search of hidden knowledge and, in his own words, found the holy city of Irem in the Rub al Khali desert. The legends about the mysterious Irem are an integral part of the Arab epic and have much in common with Indian legends about Shambhala or ancient Russian epics about Belovodye. The ancient Arabs believed that Irem, or the City of Columns, was built on the orders of Shah Shaddat by powerful genies, and the city itself was not in our world, but in one of the parallel dimensions of reality, so only a magician who perfectly mastered his art could get there, or saint. Legends say that Allah destroyed all the subjects of Shaddat - Nephilim giants - for their pride. But the secret knowledge that they possessed was preserved in manuscripts and books in the libraries of the ghostly Irem.

In addition, the Arab magicians - the Maghrebs - believed that the City of Columns was the door to the Great Void - the abode of jinn and ifrits. Arab legends claim that the genies existed long before the appearance of man and possessed exorbitant power and strength, but were subsequently forced out of our world, where they remain in a state of sleep and stupor to this day, waiting for the opportunity to regain their former power. The Maghribs, entering an altered state of consciousness with the help of special psychotechnics or narcotic drugs, opened the way for some jinn to our world, binding them with unbreakable oaths of obedience, receiving magical abilities and hidden knowledge in return. In ancient times, such magicians who entered into an alliance with the jinn were called "majnun" - "possessed by power." Subsequently, they began to call all the insane and obsessed without exception, and, probably, Alhazred owes his nickname to this word - the Mad Arab or the Mad Poet. In the 10th century, the work of the Mad Arab was translated into Greek, and at the same time the original name "Al Azif" was changed to "Necronomicon" (from Greek words"nekros" - dead and "nomos" - rules, customs). In 1487, the Dominican monk Olaus Wormius, personal secretary of the famous Spanish inquisitor Thomas Torquemada, translated the Necronomicon into Latin.

Presumably, the "Necronomicon" fell into the hands of the inquisitors from the Moors, with whom at that time there was a war. Apparently, this book had such a strong influence on the consciousness and ideological convictions of Olaus Wormius that a few years later he was accused of heresy and burned at the stake. Chroniclers claim that the manuscripts with the Latin translation of the Necronomicon were burned along with the translator, but many facts cast doubt on this. Too many people had the opportunity to make a copy of the manuscript, in addition, several copies of the translation are, as some researchers believe, in secret archives Vatican. One hundred years later, in 1586, the Latin translation of the Necronomicon was bought in Prague by Edward Kelly, an assistant to the famous medium, magician, astrologer John Dee. An interesting page in the history of the occult sciences is connected with the name of the English scientist and magician John Dee. One of the most talented and educated people of his time, John Dee earned himself the fame of an alchemist, magician and prominent statesman, and many monarchs of Europe considered it an honor to receive him at their court. John Dee translated the Necronomicon into English; until recently, this manuscript was kept in the library of Oxford University and was available for review to everyone. A new surge of interest in the "Necronomicon" came at the beginning of the 20th century and was associated with the name of one of the most mysterious and scandalous personalities of the past century - the English magician and writer Aleister Crowley. No doubt he read the English translation of the Necronomicon in the Oxford Library, and Crowley's teachings are clearly influenced by this ancient witchcraft book. It is possible that the inexplicable and mysterious abductions of many the rarest books and manuscripts of mystical content from the libraries of Europe. Among them were English translations"Necronomicon", published by John Dee.

Involuntarily, one gets the impression that Crowley and his inner circle sought to protect the uninitiated from getting to know the secret knowledge, making the latter the lot of a narrow circle of the elite. What is this mythical "Necronomicon", around which passions, disputes and dark adventurous stories have not ceased for more than a thousand years? Contrary to popular belief, the true "Necronomicon" is not only a collection of spells and witchcraft recipes, but also a voluminous historical and philosophical work that tells about a powerful civilization that owned the Earth many thousands of years before man and is now beyond the limits of our reality. The greatest attention in the "Necronomicon" is paid to the religious, mystical and cosmogonic ideas of the Ancients - the hierarchy of deities and demonic beings who once ruled our planet and were subsequently expelled beyond reality. At the same time, several times in the text of the Necronomicon slips a mention that this exile is only temporary and that the hour is approaching when "the day of man will pass, and the Ancients will again reign in their former possessions." Separate images and themes of the Necronomicon, as well as the prophetic, apocalyptic nature of some of its chapters, make it possible to draw clear parallels between the work of the Mad Arab, the Revelation of St. The Ancients themselves are very similar to the "saints of Satan", the mention of which can be found in Islamic theological works, or to the servants of the Antichrist in the Christian tradition. True, unlike Christian and Islamic authors, Alhazred believes that the battle between the forces of light and darkness will end with the final victory of the latter and their reign in the universe. The pantheon of demonic gods worshiped by the Ancients is led by Yog-Sothoth - the personification of boundless chaos and expansion, and his brother Azathoth, symbolizing endless contraction and concentration.

Among other gods, one can name Nyarlathotep, an intermediary between the Ancients and the world of people, Shubb-Niggurath, the lord of the dungeons, who has the appearance of a huge black goat, the spirit of fire and space Gastur and Cthulhu, who has a special place in the hierarchy of the gods of chaos. The terrible dragon Cthulhu, the priest of Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth, rests in a dead sleep at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, in the underwater city of R'lyeh. He is the lord of human dreams and hidden desires, and human life itself is a dream of Cthulhu. Calling on him was allowed only once a year, on Halloween night. "Necronomicon" contains a warning that Cthulhu, awakened before the appointed hour from his dead sleep, will amaze humanity with madness and nightmarish fantasies, completely depriving people of their mind and ability logical thinking. The study and interpretation of the "Necronomicon" for many years was considered the exclusive prerogative of magicians, historians and philologists. Only recent achievements in the field of quantum physics, as well as psychoanalysis, forced specialists in these fields to change their hitherto dismissive attitude towards mystical literature and seriously engage in a comparative analysis of ancient legends and the latest achievements and discoveries. The greatest interest of scientists was caused by a pair of supreme deities of the pantheon of the Ancients - Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth. The first of them is the embodiment of endless chaos and expansion, the irrational extension of space and time. He is a single and inseparable link between the past, present and future. The second is, on the contrary, the personification of absolute compression, the concentration of time, space and matter at one point. Surprisingly, these images of the "Necronomicon" turned out to be consonant the latest discoveries in the field of quantum physics and field theory, attempts by scientists to model the processes that control the state of matter, as well as changes in space and time.

In the light of modern concepts of physics, one more function of Azathoth becomes clear, which is encrypted in the text of the Necronomicon in the form of allegories and symbols. Azathoth, being the center of the universe, radiates waves of probabilities into space, creating an infinite number of future options for both entire worlds and galaxies, and for an individual. It is thus a kind of symbol of the theory of probability and the possibility of manipulating the future. It is hard not to be shocked by the results of these studies: it turns out that the ancient Arab magicians were well versed in what modern scientists are just beginning to comprehend. And not only understood, but were able to apply this knowledge in practice. Now it becomes clear why politicians with dictatorial habits sought to possess the Necronomicon for so many centuries: the witchcraft practices and recommendations contained in this book endowed its owner with a weapon more powerful than anything available in the modern world. atomic weapon. By calling on Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth, the magician gained control over the state of matter and matter, moreover, at the atomic-molecular level. In addition, he could control the passage of time and change the past and future at will. The theoretical possibility of such changes, as well as the possibility of time travel, has been proven by modern physics, although the level of technical development does not yet allow these theories to be put into practice. "Necronomicon" also contains specific recommendations for the control and management of the two forces that determine the change in all processes in the universe: endless expansion and endless compression, repulsion and attraction. Psychoanalysts have made no less contribution to the disclosure of the secrets of the Necronomicon than physicists.

According to the theories of Z. Freud and K.-G. Jung, human mental activity manifests itself in two forms - in the form of rational, rational thinking, characteristic of a waking person, and in an unconscious, irrational form, most clearly manifested in dreams, emotional experiences, and also in mental illness. But, as psychologists have established, unconscious, irrational thinking also obeys its own laws and rules that do not fit into the canons of traditional logic and analytical perception. Of course, researchers of the unconscious could not help but be interested in the image of Cthulhu from the Necronomicon, which controls human dreams and dreams. According to psychoanalysts, Cthulhu symbolizes the entire sphere of subconscious, irrational, twilight thinking, and his monstrous retinue, consisting of half-humans, half-amphibians, are separate images and manifestations of the unconscious. Akin to those that are sometimes in nightmares and during hallucinations. According to psychologists, comprehension of the laws and internal logic of irrational thinking can have a beneficial effect on a person’s consciousness, his emotions and attitude, help overcome hidden complexes, phobias and unresolved psychological problems. That is why, since the time of Freud, so much importance has been attached to the interpretation of dreams and random, involuntary associative connections that sometimes arise in the waking state. But there is another side of the coin. The area of the unconscious has traditionally been considered a receptacle for dark, demonic desires and passions, a kind of small hell that accompanies a person throughout his life.

For most people, this area of the psyche is reliably isolated from rational, logical thinking and makes itself felt only in moments of extreme stress or after drinking alcohol and drugs. By the way, some researchers believe that the notorious pact with the devil is just the removal of protective barriers and barriers that protect the human psyche from contact with the images and ideas of the subconscious. Another important feature of irrational thinking, which has become recent times the object of the most thorough research is the possibility of controlling the behavior of emotions and thinking of a person, as well as imposing any ideas and views on him from the outside by referring to his subconscious. Cthulhu provides the magician with another weapon: absolute power over human consciousness and the possibility of total control in this area. One legend says that there are always exactly 96 copies of the Necronomicon in the world, of which only 7 are fully consistent with the original. Who will get them?" End of citation. Other information somewhat supplements the previous one. Beginning of citation: I. History The Necronomicon (literally, "The Book of Dead Names") is, contrary to popular belief, not a collection of sorcery spells at all. It was conceived as a historical narrative, "a book about what is dead and gone." The Necronomicon was written in Damascus in 730 by Abdul Alhazred. Little is known about his life. All known biographical information is mainly drawn from the Necronomicon itself. He traveled widely, going around the lands from Alexandria to Punjab, and was well educated. He easily acquired foreign languages and used every opportunity to boast of his ability to read and translate manuscripts, which were beyond the power of less learned people. However, his research methods are more reminiscent of Nostradamus than Herodotus.

Just as Nostradamus used ritual magic to see into the future, so Alhazred used similar tricks to find out the past. For this reason, and also because of the lack of references, historians have dismissed the Necronomicon as lacking scientific merit. Alhazred is often referred to as the "mad Arab", but while he did act somewhat eccentric by today's standards, we have no evidence to support his true insanity (except for his chronic inability to sustain the thread of a story for several paragraphs without getting off track). other topics). He can be compared with such a historical figure as the Greek Neoplatonist Proclus (410-485), who was well versed in astronomy, mathematics, philosophy and metaphysics, but was also sufficiently skilled in the magic techniques of theurgy to cause the visible appearance of the goddess Hekate; in addition, he was initiated into the Egyptian and Chaldean mysteries. Not surprisingly, Alhazred was well acquainted with the works of Proclus. He also used many now lost sources and was able to study in detail the events that are only hinted at in the Book of Genesis, the apocryphal Book of Enoch and other traditions. It can be said that Alhazred used dubious magical methods to clarify the details of prehistoric events, but his critical mind and desire to explore the hidden meaning of mythological and sacred stories make him related to the Greek writers of the 5th century. BC. (such as Thucydides). His reasoning looks surprisingly modern, and this, in particular, may explain his current popularity. He believed that before the human race appeared, the Earth was inhabited by other types of living beings, and that humanity acquired a lot of knowledge through encounters with beings from other "realms". He shared with some Neoplatonists the belief that the stars are like our Sun and that planets invisible from Earth revolve around them, on which special forms of life exist. But Alhazred greatly complicated these beliefs and expanded them with metaphysical speculations that represent these life forms as parts of the cosmic hierarchy of spiritual evolution. He was convinced that he communicated with these beings - the "Ancients" - with the help of magical spells, and warns that these monstrous forces are waiting for the hour to return and reclaim their rights to Earth. Alhazred interprets this belief in the light of the Apocalypse of John, but with a different outcome: the Beast will be victorious in the great war that will bring devastation to the Earth. As far as is known, the Arabic manuscript of the Necronomicon has not survived.

Researcher Idries Shah unsuccessfully tried to find it in the libraries of Deobund in India, Al-Azhar in Egypt, and in the library of the holy city of Mecca. The Latin translation was made in 1487 (and not at all in the 17th century, as Lovecraft claims) by the Dominican monk Olaus Wormius. Wormius, a German by birth, was the secretary of the first Grand Inquisitor of Spain, Thomas de Torquemada, and it is likely that the manuscript of the Necronomicon was discovered during the persecution of the Moors, forced under pressure from the authorities to convert to Catholicism; however, the faith of these converts naturally proved to be weak. It was very unwise on the part of Wormius to translate and publish the Necronomicon at that time and in those parts. This book must have made a strong impression on the translator, for he was finally burnt on charges of heresy, after having sent a copy of the Necronomicon to Johann Tritheim, abbot of Spanheim (better known as "Tritemius"); the accompanying letter contained a detailed and highly blasphemous interpretation of several passages in Genesis. Virtually all copies of Wormius's translation were burned with him, although we cannot rid ourselves of the suspicion that at least one copy must have been preserved in the Vatican library. Nearly a hundred years later, in 1586, a copy of Wormius's Latin translation suddenly turned up in Prague. Dr. John Dee, the famous English alchemist, was at that time with his assistant Edward Kelly at the court of Emperor Rudolph II, discussing with him plans for the extraction of alchemical gold. Kelly bought this copy from the so-called "Black Rabbi" - the cabalist Jacob Eliezer, who fled to Prague from Italy after he was accused of practicing necromancy. In those days, many magicians, alchemists and charlatans of all kinds flocked to Prague, since Rudolf patronized the adherents of the secret sciences. One can hardly imagine another place in Europe more suitable for the next appearance of the text of the Necronomicon. The Necronomicon had a noticeable effect on Kelly: the nature of his visions in the magic crystal changed and led to unusual phenomena, due to which horror reigned in Dee's house; Crowley interprets this as the first failed attempt by a select community of people to make contact with the entities of The Book of the Law. Shortly thereafter, Kelly broke up with Dee. Dee translated the Necronomicon into English, but contrary to Lovecraft's claims, this translation was never published: the manuscript ended up in the collection of Elias Ashmole, and then to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Current page: 1 (the book has 28 pages in total)

N. Bavina
Face to face before the dark abyss

Taking a cosmic point of view, we can say that there is an infinite number of worlds, an infinite number of series of both bodily and spiritual adaptations, an infinite number of subjective worlds, i.e. representations of the world, an infinite number of series of experience and response.

Carl du Prel. "Philosophy of Mysticism"

... the fear of his soul before everything wonderful and catastrophic ...

N. Berdyaev

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born August 20, 1890 in American city Providence, Rhode Island. The precocious boy mastered the alphabet when he was two years old, and at four he was already reading fluently. He developed an early interest in the sciences, and at the age of only sixteen he began to write regularly in the Providence Tribune with articles on astronomy. Due to poor health, which caused his early death in 1937, painful shyness and unsociableness, he rarely left his native city, to which he felt the strongest affection and where he lived all his life.

His literary career began in 1923 with the appearance of the short story "Dagon" in a well-known magazine. During the remaining fourteen years of his life, his stories of the mysterious and terrible went on in an unbroken succession; among them are the classics of the genre "Rats in the Walls", "Outsider", "Pickman's Sitter", "Paints from Space", "Call of Cthulhu", "Nightmare of Dunwich", "Whisperer in the Dark", "Invading Darkness" and others. Despite a rather successful literary career, Lovecraft was often tormented by doubts about the true value of many of his short stories, about their ability to influence the reader, and he was so successful in infecting others with his doubts that some of his works, and some of the best (for example, "The Ridges of Madness ”), were published only after his death. The reason for this lurked, mainly, in the peculiarities of his nature as a visionary and recluse, who felt painfully isolated from people, in communication he preferred correspondence to a living word. Many of the motifs found in his work go back to exceptionally vivid dreams - obviously it would not be a stretch to call them visions - which visited him all his life. This explains the peculiarity of his style, on the one hand, and the feeling of authenticity of a certain reality that he describes, on the other. This reality, not comprehended by the usual set of feelings, “invisible to a simple eye from behind,” dictates that special manner of writing, more indirectly hinting than directly showing, striving, according to another visionary, to make one feel “through unusual combinations of words, through these images, almost devoid of outline, the presence of such a reality.

“This inner space,” according to the definition of James Bollard, an American science fiction writer who also explores human nature through symbol and myth, “is the territory where the outer world of reality and the inner world of the soul converge and merge,” or, in the words of C. G. Jung, "those border areas psyche that unfold into mysterious cosmic matter." Interest in the borderline states of consciousness is, obviously, a recognition that "unexpired and unknown cosmic energies attack a person from all sides and require sighted, wise activity from his side." For ordinary scientific and philosophical consciousness, this cosmic plan of life remains closed. By the way, Kingsley Amis in his book New Maps of Hell (1960) - a guide to the "unbelievable" world of science fiction - mentioning Lovecraft, finds it necessary to say only that he is more than ripe for a course in psychoanalysis. One can also try to look at the works of Lovecraft from the point of view of depth psychology, which offers a very constructive approach to the analysis of creativity that addresses the unconscious and often directly operates with its symbols.

The transpersonal experience gained from deep exploration of the psyche shows that the boundaries between man and the rest of the universe are not immutable; in deep self-exploration of the individual unconscious, something happens that in its effect resembles a Möbius strip. The individual deployment of the psyche turns into a process of events taking place on the scale of the whole cosmos, the connections between the cosmos and individuality are revealed. For Lovecraft's characters, the Möbius leaf turns, if I may say so, in the opposite direction: turning to the cosmos, attempts to master its secrets and wisdom plunge them into the depths of their own unconscious. In this sense, the image of the starry heavens, a certain area of cosmic wisdom, is Lovecraft's visualization of the special nature of the unconscious. This nature of his, practically in the same images, is captured by introspective intuition, consciousness directed at itself, for example, in the psycho-myth of Ursula K. Le Guin “Stars below”: “Stars reflected in deep water ... golden sand scattered in the blackness of the earth” . Although Le Guin's psychomyths no longer seem to be literature proper, since they are not intended to solve a purely aesthetic problem, nevertheless, in this case, we are still talking about artistic intuition. But what is here a metaphor is given as an actual reality in an experience of a different order: “... in the depths of his being, the boy knew that he already had the freedom he was looking for. It opened one night when he was barely nine years old. That night, the sky with all its stars entered him, throwing him dead to the ground,” we read in the biography of one of the modern Indian Teachers. The heights turn into depths, and Lovecraft’s heroes get stuck in the “mud of the depths” (“I am mired in a deep swamp” - Ps. 68: 3), in the dirty slurry of sinful thoughts generated by the mind, in the darkness of their unconscious. And they strive, as a rule, into ever greater darkness and depth, apparently unable to resist the temptation of gaping heights, paradoxes of the psyche. One by one, they begin to be drawn back to the past, to the bosom of their ancestors, to the original undisclosedness, "on the other side." By the will of circumstances or of their own free will, they find themselves in the only place where their fate can be decided: either in a town by the sea, as in the story "Celebration" and "Shadow over Innsmouth", or under the canopy of ancient forests, as in "Nightmare Dunwich", in the story "Hiding at the Threshold" and in the story "Silver Key". The sea in Lovecraft, as if constantly present on the periphery of vision, is mare nostrum with its "mud of the depths", the element of chaos and destruction is the abyss of the unconscious. Following the age-old covenant of the ancestors, the hero of the “Feast” goes underground corridors into the abyss of the sea, and, having become a witness of terrible miracles that are not comprehended by bodily vision, faced with a consciousness not constrained by the skeleton of the head, and having met a gnawing worm, he almost loses his mind, because the daytime , a more inert mind, filled with objects, has no way into those "untrodden, impassable places."

Randolph Carter ("Silver Key"), who differs from other Lovecraft characters in his greater internal integrity (he represents not only the "conscious self", other components of the psyche seem to be integrated in it) and can be called, with some justification, alter ego author, and not just one of his masks - this Carter, having lost faith in culture and rational thinking, "stating reality in precise terms", quite deliberately turns back, "to the original undisclosed, unrevealed, simplicity and elementary nature of spiritual life." Leaving the urban mechanized civilization, where the inner life of nature is “locked”, he goes deep into the mystical landscape of his childhood, descending to a common source. And here - "admission fee: your sanity." It is necessary to break the familiar perspective of perception by the “conscious self”, a disorientation of the world must occur: “forget everything, lose everything, so that all sides mix, lose their absolute character, become relative, so that the direction ... of movement is the only coordinate of the world, and then it fluctuates all the time” . In search of "inner space" one of the characters of J. Bollard does the same: turning several times at random, he simply gets lost among the huge concrete "cubes" arranged in regular rows. The experience, in fact, is not new - in order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself. When Randolph Carter in the forest, "straying too far, wandered too far", he returned to his childhood home and to himself - a boy who, in his tenth year, through a deep underground grotto (with the significant name "Aspid's Hole", referring him to the area chthonic and supporting the motif of the tree - the world axis, in whose roots the chthonic serpent lurks) managed to leave, again bogged down in the liquid mud of the "mud of the depths" covering the bottom of the grotto - to go where the dragon of the unconscious, "choosing caves and dark places" not yet sacrificed.

P. Florensky's remark that "symbols do not fit on the plane of reason, their structure is antinomic through and through", describes the opposition of "this" and "other" world, built vertically by Lovecraft, in the best possible way. That closed, windowless space on the bell tower, where Robert Blake finds the Radiant Trapezohedron (“Invading Darkness”), takes him not only into the depths of space, but also into the abysses of his own psyche; the same function is performed by another closed space in the story "Tiny Dreams", where the hero is obsessed with the desire to get into the attic with rats, located directly above his head. The internal correlation of these closed, cramped spaces, which, however, give access to the infinity of space, with a cramped skull and the abyss of spirit gaping in it, is hinted at by two metaphors, voluntarily or involuntarily realized in the text. it rats in the attic(rats in the attic) and bats in the belfries(bats on the bell tower), similar to the Russian "the attic is not in order." In the story "Invading Darkness", the image of the bell-head is further enhanced by the image of the "huge body" of the church. In both stories, the hero with interests and inclinations of a strange nature and, most importantly, constantly thinking in one direction and thereby, as it were, setting up different orders of being into resonance, having penetrated into this closed space, experiences a paradoxical state of their synharmonicity - interconnectedness and interdependence, - separate-merged existence of "this" and "other" worlds. The concept of miasma that invariably accompanies such breakthroughs, the poisonous breath of the underworld, gives information about exactly what areas of the spirit Lovecraft’s hero penetrates, that we are again talking about the “mud of the depths”. In the short story “Music of Erich Zann”, remarkable for its poetic expressiveness, where the violinist with his playing generates vibrations that stably maintain the resonance of two orders of being (a kind of black version of the obsession with the muses - after all, “the artist remains open to the spirit, from whatever side it influences him” ), the whole street on which the action takes place is permeated with malice.

Another way of entering another being for many of Lovecraft's characters is sleep and dreams ("Beyond Sleep"). The mystical experience of the ancient Indian Teachers, who said that in deep sleep a person is equal to the Universe, echoes modern transpersonal experience, which testifies that “under certain conditions, spatial identification with any object of the universe, including the entire cosmos, is possible.” Lovecraft's visionaries sooner or later encounter transpersonal dimensions of the psyche and, whether they like it or not, go on a "journey beyond the brain." The experience of experiencing a double reality is painful for them: the daytime, object-based mind rejects nighttime revelations, even when there is supposedly evidence - burns of an unearthly sun on the face and hands, an inexplicable stench exhaled by clothes and hair; but this mental tension itself generates stress, which acts as a trigger. To accept these visions as real by reason is not tantamount to admitting that “nightmares are the cracks of hell? And terrible dreams take us to hell in the literal sense of the word? When talking about dreams visiting Lovecraft's characters, it is implied that they are "tiny"; when it comes to breakthroughs into another existence, it is understood that this is not a divine cosmos, but infernal chaos (the divine light, having undergone inversion, turns into a foul-smelling hellish flame). What makes the experience of another reality unequivocally a nightmare, even to the point of the presence of a demon that causes a nightmare? The assimilation of another reality is going on at the level of the entire universe, which is signaled by geometric symbols, "a class of mythopoetic signs that embody the model of the world." Amazing curvilinear hieroglyphs, once captured, do not let go of the attention of Professor Peasley, setting off into the darkness of time ("Shadow of the Darkness of Time"). Even greater geometrism is inherent in Gilman's visions: "...sometimes Gilman likened inorganic matter to prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes"; with each immersion in the "twilight abyss" around him "swarmed geometric bodies”(as specific visual hallucinations, often encountered during the transformation of consciousness, “colored geometric bodies”, they were called in 1928 by Heinrich Klüver “constant forms”), until finally the geometric apogee is reached in the vision of “the boundless jungle of outlandish, incredible spiers , balancing planes, domes, minarets, disks, horizontally balanced on the points of peaks, and countless objects of an even wilder configuration that shone with a richness of colors in a mixed, almost burning glow of a multi-colored sky ”(probably, that same“ sky in diamonds ”, which showed "Lucy": Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, LSD) and a flash of "unprecedented, unearthly light, in which ocher, carmine and indigo are breathtakingly and inseparably mixed." Intense color experience is also one of the components of transpersonal experience: "kaleidoscopic swirling of colors", "intricate patterns of peacock plumage", or cauda pavonis. The fluorescent, iridescent tints of the stone from which the whole city was built in the darkness of the past, Professor Peasley also notes. Gilman, on the other hand, is still experiencing not only the refinement of hearing “to an unbearably unnatural degree”, but also “noticeable changes in perspective”: “... he could not judge his own appearance, since his arms, legs and torso did not fall into his field of vision due to a strange perspective disturbances; but he felt that physical structure and abilities were somehow surprisingly translated into a displaced projection, but not without some grotesque connection with his normal constitution and properties", that is, when traveling outside the brain, he experiences "neither confusion nor disorientation in relation to personality identification." Another component of transpersonal experience, called presque vu(almost seen; a term also put into circulation by H. Kluver), is meaningfully connected with the mythologeme, on the basis of which Lovecraft builds his world. This is a component that characterizes the cognitive side of transpersonal experience: the feeling of being on the verge of a great insight, apocalyptic revelation or irrefutable truth. Gilman has this feeling about his mathematical calculations; but at a deeper level, this sense of the possibility of omniscience is what draws Gilman and other Lovecraft characters, including the basest half-degenerates who pay for the service of the dark gods of their ancestors, to the dream of these Eternal gods. At the center of the universe is a kind of gnostic deity that has no attributes, res simplex(“a simple thing” of alchemy), “unconscious”: “That from which creatures acquire their createdness is the invisible and immovable God, by whose will understanding is born.”

For Lovecraft, this is the mythology of Absolute Chaos, “in the heart of which lies the sightless, senseless god Azafoth, the Lord of All Creatures, surrounded by a shuffling swarm of his thoughtless and shapeless dancers, lulled by the piercing monotonous whistle of a demonic flute in his nameless paws” 1
Here we can recall the idea, widespread in antiquity, that blindness and darkness or invisibility, like sight and light, are in a certain sense identical. And "blind" blind) can be translated by the old Russian word “nevishnoy”, semantically almost interlocking with “invisible”; and a number of synonyms for the word "blind" - clouded, dark, like another meaning blind- "meaningless", supports the idea of the collapse of light and order as the onset of darkness and chaos.

The complex phonetics of the name Azafot, apparently, is not only intended to contribute to the creation of an image "almost devoid of outlines", functioning as "the phonetics of incomprehensible words, which is free from concepts imposed from outside - it leads to the formation of the most unexpected visual representations." His name as the almighty of knowledge can, it seems, be traced back to the term Azoth, which in "Aurelia occulta" Mercury is named and which is explained there as follows: “For he is Α and Ω, existing everywhere. It is adorned with the name of philosophers Azoth, which is composed of the A and Z of the Latins, the alpha and omega of the Greeks, and the aleph and tau of the Hebrews. The passage refers to Mercury, Hermes Trismegistus, which is a chthonic triad (“for in a stone are the body, soul and spirit, and yet this is a single stone”), correlated with the Trinity, “the system higher powers in the lower"; although he represents the dark half, he is not evil per se, he is called "good and evil." From the name Azafoth, one can isolate the name of the Egyptian god Thoth ( Toth), the messenger of the gods, the hermeneutus (interpreter), who points the way in a mystical journey: "He will make you a witness to the mysteries of the deity and the secrets of nature." In Lovecraft, this aspect of the supreme deity becomes a separate hypostasis: “the representative, or messenger of the dark and terrible forces of the “Black Man” of witchcraft and Nyarlathotep of the Necronomicon. Meetings with him, with the messenger of the senseless demon Sultan Azafot, are so terribly afraid of Gilman, who is well-read in the Necronomicon, a book of terrifying secrets of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. The semantics of this name is clarified by its correlation with the sphere necronomic phenomena of telepathy, or events-signs of the future; in one of the old lexicons it is defined as "signs falling from heaven to earth." The insane Arab warlock himself, prophesying about the abysses of the cosmos and the spirit, seems to be the dark hypostasis of the writer, trembling recoiling from the edge of these abysses.

What Gilman read in reality materializes in his dreams, he struggles with all his might to distinguish the reality of reality from the reality of a dream: did he aspire to? The fear familiar to dreamers, for example, in Borges, is to wake up “not to wakefulness, but to the previous sleep. And this dream, in turn, is enclosed in another. It is terrible because foreknowledge is rooted in this:

We are made of matter
The same as our dreams.
And surrounded by sleep
All our little lives

So, the walls that the ego builds up, protecting the “I-concept” from “spraying cosmic winds” - “because it is dangerous to know some cosmic forces and secrets”, “it is dangerous to see and hear too much, so as not to be blinded and deafened” , are not fixed and not absolute. "Consciousness ... can go beyond the usual boundaries and include those elements of the deep unconscious that no one under normal circumstances suspects." Fear is caused by the shadow that always looms behind the back of the “conscious self”, threatening the “conscious self” with obsession. In a vain attempt to get rid of, the "ego" rejects the Shadow in the form of a projection - the Black Man, the messenger of the black throne of Absolute Chaos, the interpreter and guide in the mystical journey. Antinomic in its structure, it comes to life in Gilman's subconscious, performing its function of a guide: "... he felt that in the subconscious there are those corners(geometric. - N. B.) who will guide him, for the first time alone and without anyone's help, on the road to the normal world. Hamlet seems to say the same thing:

…us recklessness
sometimes helps out there,
where deep thought perishes;
then the deity of our intentions
completes, at least the mind
planned and not so ...

But Gilman's mental skill is too developed for his relationship with the Shadow to be anything other than an obsession. The flooding of the conscious sphere with unconscious contents leads to the experience of "ego death" - the ruthless destruction of all ties in a person's life.

But even if consciousness could, to some extent, integrate the “psychic” part of the projection, the “cosmic” part would also integrate with it, since what stands between light and darkness, uniting opposite poles, is involved in each of the parties. And since the cosmos is infinitely larger than us, then, rather, we will be absorbed by its "impersonal, inhuman spirit, one." “In these projections, we meet with manifestations of the “objective” spirit, the true source and beginning ( matrix) mental experience, the most suitable symbol for which is matter ... this objective spirit, which today we call "unconscious": unyielding, like matter, mysterious and elusive, it obeys laws so inhuman or superhuman that for us they seem to be the gravest crime against man” (K. G. Jung). This is exactly the experience of “cosmic absorption” for Lovecraft’s heroes: Randolph Carter, having gone beyond the Gate of the Silver Key, experiences total annihilation of “falling to the bottom of space”, when, having passed the worlds of the gods, he enters the empty Absolute. His movement towards the transcendent (“beyond the Gates”) Primordial Principle was retrogressive, reversible – archaization, striving “for the original undisclosedness and ... simplicity”, for the disorientation of the world; it proceeded as the destruction of his highly organized human personality; the end of such a path can only be complete annihilation, dispersion by cosmic whirlwinds.

In the works of Lovecraft, which were mainly discussed, the stages of the "mystical journey" are indicated, perhaps, most fully. However, in his other works, and in "small forms", and even in unfinished passages, certain vicissitudes of deep self-exploration are reflected ( self-discovery). In the brilliant short story "Outsider" one can single out, as it were, two messages - mythological, about the separate-merged existence of "this" and "other" worlds; and psychological, about the breakthrough into consciousness of unconscious contents. The hero, living in the absolute seclusion of a certain castle and unable to endure loneliness any longer, decides to climb the tower, which rises above the tallest trees surrounding the castle, in the hope of seeing a way out of the forest from above. Having reached the upper platform of the tower, he comes out of the ground ... to the surface. According to the fact that the world of the hero turns out to be the underworld, he himself - to his greatest horror - turns out to be a native of the other world. The feeling of dizzying horror is achieved primarily by this unexpected switching of the “up” and “down” positions, causing a feeling that the ground is moving out from under the feet. In addition, in typical Lovecraft fashion, the narrative ends at the very moment of the catastrophe - the hero, stricken with horror, is left face to face with his dark half.

In the story “Paints from Space”, the medieval idea of a potion descending from the sky and, therefore, contributing to “sublimation” (sublimation, purification) is realized in its own way. This is "a ray or radiation from a certain star, or its waste, excesses dumped on the earth" (they are also called "star jelly" and "witch's oil"; these are gelatinous algae that appear after prolonged rains). It is adjacent to another cleansing drug - honeydew, which contains ergot alkaloids and acts, including as a psychedelic. Combining the gelatinity and the ability to generate an iridescent play of colors, the substance brought from space, however, produces an effect that is directly opposite to the cleansing one.

In Lovecraft, it must be said, the “average person”, one who only accidentally finds himself drawn into the “tornado-like seething” of the objective spirit, is more than happy to return to the comfort of the garden strip, but from now on, his dreams continue to disturb him - these cracks of hell. In hell, moreover, Lovecraft not only opens new sites that have become frequently visited after him, he calls into the daylight some unknown inhabitants of the underworld before him - at a banquet about the Last Battle of Good and Evil on the eve of the new millennium (not necessarily the third) when Dr. Austin read his paper on Lovecraft, the Nameless Horror, fragrant with the musk of the gluteal, walks hand in hand with Pickman's sitter, surrounded by Asmodeus, the Mask of the Red Death, Hekate, and other canonical figures. (“Bring me the head of the Prince Charming” (1991), the novel was written by canonical figures in turn: R. Zelazny, new wave, and Robert Sheckley, mainstream).

Franz Westen, the hero of F. Leiber's story Madonna of Darkness, becomes involved in the experience of Robert Blake ("Invading Darkness"); and he is fascinated by the hill, visible from the window in the distance, in the city pillowcase. A writer himself, and even the author of macabre stories about the supernatural, he quickly grasps the literary allusions that are woven into his experience of another reality. Watching through binoculars the mysterious figure that appears and disappears at the top of the hill, he calls it "Hiding at the top", making an unconscious inversion of the Lovecraftian name "lurking at the threshold" ("up" and "down" in " inner space» are easily swapped). Unconscious - because he draws a conscious parallel with the story "Invading Darkness".

We can continue to multiply examples of the fact that behind the most extravagant fantasies of Lovecraft there is a "separate reality"; one can speak of the archaism of his style (even in letters he prefers ancient grammatical forms), which in its structure sometimes resembles the structure of biblical texts, requiring a certain repetition (if we consider his style a tribute to Lord Dunsany, whom Lovecraft admired, it must still be said that he began to write "fantasies in the manner of Dunsany" before he discovered the work of the Irish master). But reasoning does not reach any point, pointing to which, one can say - this is what fright seizes the soul. Here you need experience of a different order.

D. Andreev, A. Remizov, N. Berdyaev, D. Zhukovsky, F. Sologub, Timothy Leary, St. Grof, J. Cortazar, C. Castaneda, W. Shakespeare.

Nina Bavina

Necronomicon

THE BOOK OF THE ARAB ABDOUL ALHAZRED, DAMASCUS, 730

About the Ancients and their offspring.

The ancients were, are and will be. Before the birth of man, They came from the dark stars, invisible and disgusting, They descended to the primeval earth.

For many centuries They bred at the bottom of the oceans, but then the seas receded before the dry land, and Their hordes crawled ashore, and darkness reigned over the Earth.

The Ancients wandered aimlessly along the paths of darkness, Their wicked power over the Earth was great: all creations bowed before Their might and knew the power of Their malice.

From now on, the Ancients live on the other side of the Gate, in the nooks and crannies between the worlds known to man. They wander outside the sphere of the Earth in eternal expectation of the hour when They can return to the Earth again: for the Earth has known them and will know them from now on at the appointed hour.

Day turns to night; the day of man will pass, and they will reign again in their former dominions. You will know their filth and abomination, and their curse will fall upon the Earth.

About the observation of times and seasons.

Call upon the terrible Azathoth when the Sun is in the sign of Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius; when the moon wanes and mars conjuncts saturn. The mighty Yog-Sothoth will answer your call when the Sun resides in the fiery dwelling of the Lion for the harvest festival. Call the monstrous Gastur on the Night of Candles, when the Sun is in Aquarius, and Mercury is strengthened by the favorable aspect of the trine.

Great Cthulhu is allowed to be disturbed only on Halloween night, when the Sun is in the dwelling of Scorpio and Orion rises. When Halloween coincides with the new moon, your spells will be at their most powerful.

Conjure Shab-Niggurath on that night when the fires of Beltane are burning on the hills, and the Sun is in the second sign. Repeat the rites of the Day of the Cross, and the Black One will appear before you.

About raising stones.

In order to arrange a Gate through which They can appear to you from the Outer Void, eleven stones must be placed in a special order.

First, four main stones should be placed, which will indicate the directions of the four winds, each of which blows at its own time. In the North, erect a stone of Great Cold, which will become the Gate for the winter wind, and carve on it the sign of the Earth Bull:.

In the South (at a distance of five steps from the stone of the North), set up a stone of heat, through which the summer winds blow, and draw on it the mark of Leo-serpent:.

The whirlwind stone is to be placed in the East, where the first equinox occurs. Carve on it the sign of the one who supports the waters:

The Gate of Hurricanes should mark the point of the extreme West (five paces from the stone of the East) where the Sun dies in the evening and the night is reborn. Decorate this stone with the emblem of the Scorpion, whose tail reaches the stars:.

Then set up the seven stones of Those who wander in heaven, placing them around the four inner Gates in such a way that their conflicting influences are concentrated in a point of power.

In the North, behind the stone of the Great Cold, at a distance of three steps, place the first stone, the stone of Saturn. Further, at equal distances, place the stones of Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, the Sun and the Moon in a circle clockwise, marking each with a corresponding sign.

In the center of this structure, the Altar of the Great Old Ones is to be installed, sealed with the symbol of Yog-Sothoth and the mighty Names of Azathoth, Cthulhu, Gastur, Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep. And these stones will become the Gates through which you will call them from the Void that lies beyond time and space.

Turn to these stones at night when the Moon is waning, turning your face in the direction from which They will come. Speak words and make gestures that will call the Ancients and help them to set foot on Earth again.

Origin of the book

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Myth or reality

Mysterious content

N. Bavina Face to face before the dark abyss

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N. Bavina
Face to face before the dark abyss