If you prefer to believe in vague rumors, have fun. Scithers, editor emeritus of WEIRD TALES.Īnyway, these are the facts, and you can confirm them if you wish. I know some of the guys who contributed, among whom is George H. Lovecraft was an atheist, by the way, and would be contemptuous of this undying rumor that, ".it's REAL." No, it's not.Īnd sure, there are grimoires and books of shadow from way back, any one of which might strike one as a candidate for the original Necronomicon, but there is no evidence Lovecraft intended this, and all manner of evidence that he made it up in a moment of caprice.Īs for the book they sell by the name Necronomicon, it was cobbled up by a few science fiction and horror writers, as a joke and as a means to exploit the gullible. Myth and ethnology explain the Lovecraft canon and reveal it to be a very humorous and witty concoction. He was a dedicated and very informed science oriented atheist his enitre life. The big lie that HPL was secretly an adept is pulp thinking of the worst kind.
In fact, he held things occult in contempt, and those who delve into them were time-wasting fools in his eyes. He certainly took none of this seriously. Specific examples of lesser entities and their derivations include Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat in the Woods with a Thousand Young, was but the wolf bitch who suckled Romulus and Remus Azathoth, the Crawlling Chaos, is a combination of the Egyptian god Thoth, patron of writing, and an Arabic-like prefix, to echo Shazzam and so on and Clar-Kash Ton, a "god" Lovecraft cobbled out of the name of one of his correspondent frieds, fellow writer of the weird Clark Ashton Smith. He was playing with a reference to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, just as his Great Old Ones were based on the Titans of Greek myth, each being attached to one of the four ancient elementals, Earth, (Cthulhu, named for Cthonic, a word meaning of the deep earth), Air, (Hastur), Fire and Water. Now what book do we know that is made up of symbols dealing with dead names? Book of Dead Names? Book of Dead Name Images? Lovecraft as a MacGuffin for his Cthulhu Mythos stories in the pulp era. and if you have a thorough knowledge of the Cthulhu mythos, then so much the better for the game If you enjoy the whole genre of Lovecraftian fiction (and have a few friends who'd enjoy the idea), I suggest you take a look into playing CoC (the sourcebook can be found here ). The whole Cthulhoid mythos has taken on a life of its own, and you can find resources out there on just about ANYTHING to do with it. Any mention of the book apparently does not occur before Lovecraft's stories, which is kind of proof that it IS Lovecraft's invention. I think that Lovecraft himself was a brilliant author, and after I was introduced to his writings, I did some research on the necronomicon (supposedly written by the mad arab Abdul Al-Azrad). Do I speak to any Call of Cthulhu players here? If you're a fan of Lovecraftian fiction, and a fan of the whole role-playing genre and enjoy creating stories based upon the entire mythos, it makes for a very entertaining game, and occasionally, some very scary nights!! Hehehe.
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