Grimoire of the Necronomicon
Llewellyn Publications
Woodbury, Minnesota
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Grimoire of the Necronomicon © 2008 by Donald Tyson.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Book of the North Gate: Knowledge
The Old Ones
The Fallen Earth
Azathoth
Nyarlathotep
Yog-Sothoth
Yig
Shub-Niggurath
Cthulhu
Dagon
The Dancing Gods
Throne of Chaos
Book of the East Gate: Foundation
Sacred Space
Stone Circle
The Altar
The Gates
The Keys
Ritual Apparel
The Marks
The Seal Disks
The Necronomicon
The Three Ranks
The Seven Ways
Book of the South Gate: Practice
The Order
of the Old Ones
Work of the
Trapezohedron
Oath of Obedience
Nightly Obeisance
Rite of Dagon
(Monday)
Rite of Cthulhu
(Tuesday)
Rite of Nyarlathotep
(Wednesday)
Rite of Yog-Sothoth
(Thursday)
Rite of Shub-Niggurath
(Friday)
Rite of Yig
(Saturday)
Rite of Azathoth
(Sunday)
Book of the West Gate: Attainment
Way of Yig
Way of
Shub-Niggurath
Way of Cthulhu
Way of Dagon
Way of Yog-Sothoth
Way of Nyarlathotep
Way of Azathoth
Opening the Gate
Approaching the Throne
Rite of the
Dancing Gods
The Long Chant
“…dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.”
-H P. Lovecraft
Introduction
The main purpose of this grimoire is to provide a practical system of ritual magic based on the mythology of the alien gods known as the Old Ones, who are described in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, and appear prominently in Lovecraft’s Necronomicon. The word “grimoire” means grammar. The ancient grimoires were copybooks in which practitioners of ritual magic preserved the mechanics of their art for the benefit of themselves and their disciples. It is in this sense that this book is a grimoire of the Old Ones. It is designed to give formal structure to what has until now been a vague collection of alien races and potent individual beings described in the writings of Lovecraft.
It may be objected that the Old Ones do not exist—that they are only fantasy beings created in the mind of a writer of horror stories. The same objection might be made about the reality of fairies, yet there are complex systems of practical rituals devoted to fairy magic and human interaction with fairies. Skeptical materialists will dismiss all forms of ceremonial magic as nonsense, but this book was not written for those who deny the reality and significance of spiritual matters. It is for those who have felt the attraction of Lovecraft’s Old Ones, and who wish to work with these potent beings on a personal level.
A Dreaming Prophet
Lovecraft was a strange, mystical man. A precocious genius who was shunned and ridiculed in childhood, he suffered a nervous breakdown that forced his removal from school, and spent a large part of his early life sleeping during the day and wandering the streets and graveyards of his native Providence at night, when he could walk unseen beneath the stars. All his life he suffered persistent recurring dreams of alien landscapes and horrifying creatures. He transcribed much of what he dreamed into his short stories. He probably began writing his fiction as a way to purge himself of his nightmares and gain a measure of control over their contents by externalizing them.
Gradually over the years, his stories assumed a kind of coherent mythology that was centered around a race of invisible aliens called the Old Ones and their lord or leader, Yog-Sothoth, who controlled the gateways between dimensions of reality. Lovecraft himself jokingly referred to this mythology as his Yog-Sothery, although after his death it came to be known as the Cthulhu Mythos. Also central to Lovecraft’s stories was a mysterious book titled the Necronomicon. Lovecraft dreamed the name of the book, as he dreamed so much of his fiction, and on numerous occasions saw the book in his dreams. It was, he asserted, a book written in the early part of the eighth century by a mad Arabian poet of Yemen named Abdul Alhazred; a book that was filled with secrets of necromancy so potent, merely to read a portion of its content was to risk insanity and death.
Lovecraft was vague about the details of his Old Ones and his Necronomicon. In part this was deliberate, a way to leave room for the readers of his stories to create their own mental pictures and form their own conclusions. Largely, however, it was due to the manner in which the mythos of his fiction grew from his unconscious mind during sleep, pieced together haphazardly from bits of his nightmares. Lovecraft himself did not have a coherent understanding of how the various beings of his mythological world interrelated. In his voluminous correspondence with other writers and fans of his work, he struggled to make sense of his own creations.
Although he toyed with the idea of writing out the Necronomicon in full, he never attempted this daunting task, but contented himself with inserting quotations from the dread book into his stories. It was left to others, myself among them, to seek to draw the Necronomicon forth from the astral plane, where Lovecraft glimpsed it in his dreams and set it down in cold print. All re-creations of the Necronomicon are only echoes of different portions of the one true book of the customs of the dead
, which exists in its entirety only in the akashic records, but not in this world.
Lords of the Old Ones
Lovecraft cross-connected many of the alien races and godlike beings in his stories, causing them to interact and interrelate with each other. He described various individual creatures possessed of great knowledge and power, who were looked upon by human beings as gods. A number of these potent creatures ruled and led various alien species. Dagon was lord of the sea-dwelling Deep Ones. Cthulhu ruled his shadowy octopus-headed spawn. Yog-Sothoth seems to have been the leader of the race of invisible creatures who are most often given the name Old Ones by those who came after Lovecraft—Lovecraft himself applied the term “old ones” to several different races of beings.
In a general sense, Old Ones refer to only those who existed before the dawn of human history. It is applicable to the antediluvian giants mentioned in Genesis, the titans of Greek mythology, and the creatures of the waters of chaos that are described in the ancient lore of Sumer and so many other human cultures. The Old Ones are those who ruled the Earth in the before times, the ages prior to the modern evolution of the human race and the rise of human civilization. It was Lovecraft’s contention that the Old Ones who had ruled before the coming of man would rule again. “The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.” So it is written in the Necronomicon.
There is nothing in Lovecraft’s fiction to indicate that Dagon and Yig are related, in any genetic sense, to Yog-Sothoth and the race of Old Ones, but there is nothing to positively show that they are unrelated, either. It is significant that Cthulhu is said in a portion of the Necronomicon quoted by Lovecraft to be the “cousin” of the Old Ones. This implies a kind of clannish bond between Cthulhu and the Old Ones, though whether it is a bond of blood or some other affiliation is not made clear by Lovecraft.
There appears to be a natural affinity between Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth. The link between Azathoth and Nyarlathotep is explicit in Lovecraft —Nyarlathotep is the “soul and messenger” of Azathoth, and of the mysterious blind idiot gods who dance around Azathoth. Yog-Sothoth is the gatekeeper of worlds, who opens the dimensional portals that permit travel between different realities. When the Old Ones are ritually summoned by wizards using ceremonial magic, it is Yog-Sothoth who opens the door through which they descend.
Cthulhu appears to be composed of a similar form of insubstantial flesh that makes up the Old Ones, who have bodies so unlike the matter we know on this planet that it defies the very laws of physics. Shub-Niggurath comes and goes through the gates of Yog-Sothoth, presiding over the sabbats of those witch cults that worship this goddess or god, for Shub-Niggurath expresses both sexes. In her masculine aspect she is the randy Black Goat of the sabbat. Lovecraft wrote very little to write about the composition of her physical body, but in a letter he described her as a “cloud-like entity,” which may refer to her true form, as opposed to the avatar she adopts in her role as the goatish androgynous deity of the sabbat. It is stated by Lovecraft that the hybrid offspring of the Old Ones vary widely in their appearance, so it is possible that various branches of the Old Ones may be quite different in appearance from one another. It may be a characteristic of species on this planet that all members look similar, but it may not be so of the various alien strains of the Old Ones, about which we know so little.
Of the seven gods or lords that I have called lords of the Old Ones, Yig and Dagon are composed of matter that behaves in a more conventional way than the bodies of Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu. It has been argued by some Lovecraft scholars that they are not alien to this planet, but evolved here. This may be so. Nothing in the stories of Lovecraft denies it. However, they are worshipped as gods by humanity in Lovecraft’s mythos, and it is quite possible that they came to this planet across the gulf of space in the dim past, even as did Cthulhu and his spawn. It is significant that Lovecraft explicitly linked the worship of Yig with the worship of Cthulhu in one of his stories. Lovecraft gave no origin for Dagon or Yig. They are “old ones” in the general sense that they existed on the Earth long before the rise of mankind, and it seems probable to me that they must have had interaction with the alien races that in the distant past held sway over portions of this world. I strongly suspect that both are aliens, but on this matter Lovecraft was silent.
The Seven Planetary Spheres
The esoteric structure presented in this grimoire of the Old Ones does not appear in the tales of Lovecraft, where the various connections and relationships between the alien gods are vague. Practical magicians need more than this to work with, if they are to achieve results. They need a clear and precise framework of symbolism. In Western magic, astrology often supplies at least a part of this underlying structure. The ancient symbol sets of astrology divide reality into recognizable, rational categories. Among the best known are the sets of the seven planets and twelve zodiac signs. I have used these symbol sets to place the lords of the Old Ones and the blind dancing gods of chaos into their own separate spheres of influence.
This division is in harmony with the contents of my own version of the Necronomicon, where I set forth seven major lords of the Old Ones and linked them to the seven planetary spheres of traditional astrology. As might be expected, their natures and symbols have been given in more detail in this grimoire, to allow them to be called forth. Nothing in this grimoire contradicts the practical material presented in my Necronomicon, or in my novel Alhazred—it expands on that material and presents it in such a way that it may be ritually applied.
Those familiar with Lovecraft’s fiction may raise the objection that he made no link between the Old Ones and the seven planetary spheres of traditional astrology. True enough. However, it has long been a common practice in the Western esoteric tradition to use the symbol sets of astrology to categorize various groups of esoteric beings or occult qualities. This is not a modern conceit, but goes back many centuries. It was done because it is useful, for purely practical reasons, to make this kind of symbolic association. When the lords of the Old Ones are placed on the spheres of the planets, all the occult correspondences for the planetary spheres become available to use in summoning them and directing them during ritual work.
It should be unnecessary for me to point out that we are not discussing the actual physical planetary bodies here, but the esoteric spheres of the planets, which are astral worlds. The planetary spheres represent separate realms of reality, each dominated and colored by the qualities of the ancient god from which the planet derives its name. The sphere of Mars, for example, is a realm dominated by all things martial in nature. The sphere of Venus is a realm devoted to all matters pertaining to various forms of love, both spiritual and carnal. So for the rest. By placing Cthulhu into the sphere of Mars, all the martial symbolism of this sphere can be applied ritually to invoke and petition Cthulhu and his various agents.
The Order of the Old Ones
My purpose in writing this practical grimoire was twofold—not only to provide a workable system of magic based on the lords of the Old Ones, but also to set forth the external framework for an esoteric society devoted to the group practice of this system of magic. I have dubbed this society the Order of the Old Ones. The magic in this grimoire may be worked by a solitary ritualist, but it may also be done in a group setting. The essential structure of a society devoted to ceremonial interaction with the Old Ones has been laid forth, with the hope that enterprising groups of readers may wish to make the OOO a reality.
In his stories, Lovecraft mentioned human religious cults that worship these various potent beings. The Old Ones and Yog-Sothoth were adored and propitiated by the early European settlers of New England, and by the native Indians who occupied the same land before them, in stone circles erected on hilltops. Cults in Greenland, in the swamps of Louisiana, and in the South Seas worshipped Cthulhu. Witches, or at least groups of ritual magicians who were labeled as witches by medieval ch
roniclers and priests, summoned and adored Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath. Nyarlathotep presided over the witch sabbats as the archetypal figure known as the Black Man, and Shub-Niggurath came in the material guise of the Black Goat—she is also known in her female form as the Goat with a Thousand Young in Lovecraft’s fiction.
In Lovecraft’s stories, the human cults of the Old Ones are devoted to the various alien gods individually. The worshippers of Cthulhu have their own cult, for example, as do the Native American worshippers of Yig. The teachings of the Order of the Old Ones depart from this model by combining the seven great lords in a single system of magic. Each of the lords receives a day of the week that is devoted to the ritual observance and petitioning of that lord. Formal observances devoted to the blind dancing gods are done on the equinoxes of the year.
Whether or not the Order of the Old Ones described in this book is embraced by readers, and in time is made to pass from the astral reality of my imagination into the physical reality of the greater world, the daily rituals in this grimoire will provide an excellent system of esoteric training for individual practitioners. They are a way to get in touch with Lovecraft’s great beings, and to draw upon their power for personal advantages both on the spiritual and material levels. For decades, attempts have been made to incorporate bits and pieces of Lovecraft’s mythos into modern Western magic. It was my conviction that it deserved its own integrated system of rituals, and was important enough to stand on its own feet. Perhaps in time it will acquire its own order of dedicated practitioners.
The Work of the Trapezohedron
Central to the life of each member of the Order of the Old Ones will be the great work of personal transformation. This is linked with the great work of the Old Ones themselves, as described by Lovecraft—the elevation of the planet Earth from its fallen material state to its former more spiritual condition. I have called it the Work of the Trapezohedron, in reference to this three-dimensional geometric structure that figures so prominently in one of Lovecraft’s short stories. Before the Earth can be elevated through the dimensional gateways of Yog-Sothoth by the Old Ones, it must be cleansed of its dross; similarly, the great work of members of the Order of the Old Ones involves refining the mind and training the body to achieve a higher state of being.