What are people saying about the Necronomicon? Sounds cheesy, but let's look at amazon.com; al least these people are genuine folks^^
summer, 2006
It's really amazing to me how so many people love to get on their high horse and declare that the Necronomicon is "obviously a work of fiction" while actual practicing occultists have derived incredible experiences and knowledge from this so-called "fake" book. So here it is-IT'S NOT FAKE-and neither is the famous Simon edition, becaue it ACTUALLY WORKS IN MAGIC. If you really think that this particular book is also "fake", then here's an experiment for you. Light a single black candle in a safe spot in your bedroom, meditate on the candle for a while, then place the Al-Azif under your pillow and go to sleep. After you have a wild night of incredible dreams, let me know how "fake" this edition is also of the Necronomicon.
I have little to add to the generally well formed arguments showing the Necronomicon to be a fiction, save to say that Abdul Alhazred is not even a proper arabic name, just something arabic-sounding invented by Lovecraft.
People like to slander the various editions of the Necronomicon as vicious hoaxes and money making schemes at the expense of a gullible populace. I admit, after first reading Lovecraft's short essay on the history of the Necronomicon, I was a believer. He had me, hook line & sinker... for about half an hour, until I did some rudimentary research. I think it should be obvious to people that the Necronomicon was the product of a very gifted author, and nothing more. In my mind, though, all subsequent editions are not equal. The English "translations" may be entertaining fictions, but they are somewhat dangerous in that they actually do convince people that they are reading thousand-year-old necromantic truths, truths many people in fact swear by.
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First mentioned by H.P. Lovecraft in the 1920s and referred to throughout his fiction, the Necronomicon?a spurious book of occult knowledge?is so infamous that horror cognoscenti playfully speculate it might exist. Tyson (The Power of the Word) isn't the first writer to attempt a full "translation" of the forbidden text, but his may be the most comprehensive. After a brief history of the book's penning in the eighth century by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred (eaten by an invisible nasty for his efforts), the text unfolds as a series of interrelated chapters that anatomize Lovecraft's monstrous entities (Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, etc.) in archaically musty prose, leavened with paraphrases of familiar passages from HPL's stories. Tyson embellishes this core material with the sort of astrologic and mystical content that Lovecraft himself considered nonsense. Readers who know Lovecraft's book from its evocative fragments won't be dissuaded from their belief that there are some things they are not meant to know.
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