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 Necronomicon
An annotated new verse rendition with supplementary materials, regarding that
well-known fictitious tome.

Copyright ©2008 By Ambrose Bertram Hunter

Unauthorized copying or redistribution of this work is prohibited.
http://www.lulu.com/ambrosehunter
cum grano salis
Θ

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This document was adapted from compiled notes originally made in preparation
for part of an introductory lecture and book discussion at the local Crimson
Tweed Club, T-will grotto.
DISCLAIMER – This document is presented for educational purposes.
The material used for this document was gathered from various sources. It is
thought to be mostly accurate, but it is in no way explicitly guaranteed to be so.
Use of this document in rituals, incantations, and other workings is undertaken
at the users own risk, there shall be no liability assumed on the part of the
author or publisher. The user assumes the entire risk related to their use of this
document. Both the author and the publisher are providing this document “as
is,” in no event will the author or the publisher be liable to the user or to any
third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special or
exemplary damages or lost profit resulting from any use or misuse of this
document.
De omnibus dubitandum est.

About the author

Ambrose Bertram Hunter, serves as Steward over a joined lineage of European
and Appalachian mysticism, is a scholar of the dark arts, and researcher of all
things occult.

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 Dedication
To those Dreaming.

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 I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
--P. B. Shelley, “Ozymandias of Egypt”, 1818.

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 Table of Contents
About the author ___________________________________________ 5
Dedication_________________________________________________ 7
Table of Contents _____________________________________________ 9
Forward____________________________________________________ 11
Sources used ______________________________________________ 18
The poem called “Necronomicon”_______________________________ 23
Portico I _________________________________________________ 23
Portico II ________________________________________________ 25
Portico III________________________________________________ 26
Portico IV ________________________________________________ 28
Portico V_________________________________________________ 29
Portico VI ________________________________________________ 30
Portico VII _______________________________________________ 31
Portico VIII ______________________________________________ 32
Portico IX ________________________________________________ 34
THE KASÎDAH _____________________________________________ 35
I ________________________________________________________ 36
II _______________________________________________________ 39
III ______________________________________________________ 43
IV_______________________________________________________ 51
V _______________________________________________________ 57
VI_______________________________________________________ 62
VII ______________________________________________________ 65
VIII _____________________________________________________ 69
IX_______________________________________________________ 76
Notes on the KASÎDAH _______________________________________ 84
NOTE I __________________________________________________ 84

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 NOTE II _________________________________________________ 99
CONCLUSION __________________________________________ 110
THE GATE WITHIN THE GATE______________________________ 113
Moon 1__________________________________________________ 113
Moon 2__________________________________________________ 115
Moon 3__________________________________________________ 116
Moon 4__________________________________________________ 118
Moon 5__________________________________________________ 119
Moon 6__________________________________________________ 120
Moon 7__________________________________________________ 121
Moon 8__________________________________________________ 122
Moon 9__________________________________________________ 123
THE TABLETS OF ENOCH __________________________________ 125
Forward by Ambrose Bertram Hunter. _______________________ 125
Tablet I _________________________________________________ 125
Tablet II ________________________________________________ 129
Tablet III________________________________________________ 131
Tablet IV ________________________________________________ 134
The Wealth of Enoch ________________________________________ 137
Revelation of the Yellow Sign__________________________________ 145
Revelation of the Yellow Sign _______________________________ 145
End Notes _________________________________________________ 153

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Forward
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
--Napoleon Bonaparte.

To trace the modern story of the book now popularly titled “Necronomicon”,
that eldritch work of ancient occult lore that has since become so synonymous
with forbidden knowledge, obscene rituals, and madness, we must begin with
that writer of strange fiction, Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 –
March 15, 1937).
Lovecraft was an American author and a self-described avid book collector:
I couldn’t live a week without a private library -- indeed, I’d part with all my
furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I
possess.
--H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Mr. Harris, February 25 to March 1, 1929.
In his writings Lovecraft mixed fantasy, horror and science into single
narratives. Creating fantastic tales with a style that also drew upon unusual
dream inspired imagery, and the use of exotic sounding words to convey an
otherworldly mood.
It was with the love of such exotic sounding words and names that Lovecraft
claimed to have coined the Greek title “Necronomicon”, an invention of
necessity, since due to its antiquity, like so many old manuscripts of great age,
the anonymous work originally lacked an official attributed author or cover title
of its own. As Lovecraft wrote in a letter to Willis Conover:
Now about the “terrible and forbidden books” -- I am forced to say that most of
them are purely imaginary. There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon,
for I invented these names myself.
--H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Willis Conover, July 29, 1936.
Past censors generally grouped the work that came to be known as the
“Necronomicon” in with collections of other such minor unnamed openly
blasphemous, heretical and or pornographic manuscripts. Such anonymous
books with blatant self-damning obscene content did not require any official
ruling in order to consign such devilish works, when found, to the flames of the
many purges in past and recent literary history.

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Figure 1: seal from “The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice”, founded in 1873,
it was a successful book burning group located in the United States, dedicated to the
suppression of material and the elimination of elements not instep with its prescribed
social views, by its actions, it aided legal authorities in rounding up and prosecuting
individuals, and the destruction of forbidden materials. The societies founder Anthony
Comstock, boasted his actions were directly responsible for the deaths of at least 15
persons, whom by persecution he had ruined and driven to suicide. One notable among
these deaths is that of the occultist author Ida C. Craddock (Died October 16, 1902). From
the viewpoint of our own modern society, which we like to think is free to artistic
expression without primitive taboos, such violent and oppressive behavior may seem
shocking, however even today if you are unlucky to get caught in connection with the
wrong type of comical cartoon drawings that offends the wrong people, you can still be
jailed, your life ruined, or if you are really unlucky, even outright killed over such
drawings.
Needless to say, it was common for the Necronomicon to often go by alternate
names, and some editions of the book to even have occasionally been
purposefully disguised “incognito” with false misleading names and attributions,
a device that Lovcraft used in the story “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”:
Mr. Merritt turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume conspicuously
labeled as the Qanoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth the forbidden Necronomicon
of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he had heard such monstrous things
whispered some years previously
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, 1927.

Sadly, the rebirth of the tome into popular fiction generated unexpected public
curiosity and notoriety, making any historical edition of the already near extinct,
rare hard to find book, all the more so.
The varied older editions held by the more libertine libraries, slipped away one
by one, embezzled into the iron clutches of unscrupulous collectors and the

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modern religiously motivated “morality police” censors, the available collections
have long since been gone over with fine tooth combs.
For Lovecraft, what had initially started as an in-joke, a seemingly harmless
allusion only decipherable to those who had closely studied the work and could
spot the parallels in the quotations, had unexpectedly drawn a bit too much
notice, perhaps wishing to avoid scandalous public association with such
forbidden and luridly shocking books, Lovecraft would disavow knowledge, and
passed the whole affair off as nothing more then a mythical fancy which came
to him in a dream.
Lovecraft was known to lament over his own lack of originality, for example the
following correspondence:
Even when I break away, it is generally only through imitating something else!
There are my “Poe” pieces & my “Dunsany” pieces -- but alas -- where are my
Lovecraft pieces?
--H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Elizabeth Toldridge, March 8, 1929.
Lovecraft’s three adapted quotations from the Necronomicon, are as follows:
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange æons death may die.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Nameless City”, 1921.
(Later versions of this same quote always appear as “even death may die”.)

The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels
are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly
bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say,
that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night
whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought
hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till
out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to
vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s
pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Festival”, 1925.

Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or
that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the
Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between
them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth
knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the
gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old
Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows
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 where They had trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one
can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them
near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those
They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in
likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is
Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been
spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their
voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and
crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the
cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the
South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraved, but
who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed
and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä!
Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats,
yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold.
Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where
They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter,
after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”, 1928.

Lovecraft created a fictionalized history for the Necronomicon to fit his own
fictional stories, the device of attributing authorship of the original to a fake
mad Arab, was undoubtedly intended as a tip of the hat to the work done by Sir
Richard Francis Burton.

Lovecraft’s fictionalized history of the Necronomicon is as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History of the Necronomicon
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1927. Published 1938.

Original title Al Azif -- azif being the word used by Arabs to designate
that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos’d to be the howling of
daemons.

Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is

said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa
700 A.D. He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets
of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of

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Arabia -- the Roba el Khaliyeh or “Empty Space” of the ancients -- and
“Dahna” or “Crimson” desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to
be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this
desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who
pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred dwelt in
Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his
final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting
things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to
have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and
devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of
his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous
Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a
certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race
older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping
unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.

In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’

surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was
secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople
under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain
experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt
by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but
(1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle
Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice -- once in the fifteenth
century in black-letter (evidently in Germany) and once in the
seventeenth (prob. Spanish) -- both editions being without identifying
marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographical
evidence only. The work both Latin and Greek was banned by Pope
Gregory IX in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called
attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius’ time,
as indicated by his prefatory note; and no sight of the Greek copy --
which was printed in Italy between 1500 and 1550 -- has been reported
since the burning of a certain Salem man’s library in 1692. An English
translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and exists only in
fragments recovered from the original manuscript. Of the Latin texts
now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in the British Museum
under lock and key, while another (17th cent.) is in the Bibliothèque
Nationale at Paris. A seventeenth-century edition is in the Widener
Library at Harvard, and in the library of Miskatonic University at
Arkham. Also in the library of the University of Buenos Ayres.
Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century
one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a
celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumour credits the
preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek text in the Salem family of
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 Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R. U.
Pickman, who disappeared early in 1926. The book is rigidly suppressed
by the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of organised
ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from
rumours of this book (of which relatively few of the general public
know) that R. W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early
novel The King in Yellow.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From this we may deduce that Lovecraft clearly recognized a similarity between
parts of R. W. Chambers book “The King in Yellow” and the work that came
to be known today as the Necronomicon.
A few notable quotes from R. W. Chambers novel “The King in Yellow”
(published in 1895) are as follows.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;

Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
Cassilda’s Song in “The King in Yellow,” Act I, Scene 2.

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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MASK

CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.

STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let the red dawn surmise
What we shall do,
When this blue starlight dies
And all is through.
Verse at the beginning of the story “The Yellow Sign”.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is the work done by Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (March 19, 1821 --
October 20, 1890) that we have to thank for preserving and disseminating in
modern literature, a full, albeit disguised modern rendition of the
Necronomicon, from what would have otherwise been relegated to the dustbin
of historical obscurity.
His life defies a simple description. As a linguist and avid explorer, Burton was
also both a brilliant scholar and a rogue of a swordsman.
He delighted in shocking the prudish Victorian morals of his contemporaries,
his explicit translations of the Arabian Nights and various Indian and Persian
erotic literature scandalized society.
What more prudish contemporaries would have shunned and condemned,
Burton viewed with a more open mind and zeal, this led him to delve into the
lurid cults and exotic religious groups of the day, for example (described in his
book “The City of the Saints” 1861) he visited Brigham Young and examined
polygamy among the Mormons (the religious sexual rite of polygamy between
consenting adults, even today is still viewed as a sinful sex crime in most
western cultures, and is banned, outlawed, and heavily persecuted).
In 1880, forty-four years before Lovcraft coined its modern fictional name,
Burton’s own adapted embellished translation of the Necronomicon was
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published and widely circulated, concealed under the invented title of “The
Kasida Of Haji Abdu El-Yetzdi”.
After his death, to protect the reputation of her late husband, Burton’s widow
Isabel burnt many of his papers, including extensive journals and even a new
unpublished translation of “The Perfumed Garden” that was to be called “The
Scented Garden”.
Burton’s copies and notes on the Necronomicon are believed to have perished
in this rash burning, a sad fate that makes it hard to determine with precision
exactly which edition or editions he had used as inspiration for his own new
flowing rendition of the verse, though some suspect a possible rare early Greek
edition, or with his travels and connections, an Arabic copy as he claimed,
would not be unreasonable to consider. Many occultists still regard his re-
imaging of the original poem portion, into an embellished flowing English
verse, as the definitive modern English edition of the Necronomicon-incognito.

Sources used
The main sources consulted during the compiling of this presentation are as
follows.
Full manuscript editions, Listed in no specific order.
 the “Noctiluca” (incunabulum, name derived from verse in the final 9th section,
“ab luce noctiluca, veni, venias tenebrae”).
 the “Liber nocte tenebrae; ab luce noctiluca” (the “book of nights
shadow from light of shining moon” a more recent and in some ways inferior Latin
work, it draws heavily on the work of the above incunabulum “Noctiluca”).
 the “Necronomicon” (Vetus Latina edition, untitled volume of several occult
works bound into one tome, called the “Necronomicon” as it is the opening poem of
this thick collection).
 the “Liber IX Mortis” (incunabulum, “book 9 of Death”, from which the
corrupted name “Necronomicon Liber Ex Mortis” most likely was derived.
Notable in this edition is the boarder decoration around the illustration for the
compass alter chamber, which is comparable to the descriptions of the yellow
wallpaper and attic room found in the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman).
 the “Alte Könige der neun Türen.” (“old kings of the nine doors”, printed
pamphlet, appears to be a direct literal translation into German, though from what
language or edition it fails to cite, a problem common among the cult published
pamphlets).
 “De viis inferni” (“The Pathways of Shades” incunabulum, name derived from
the verse “de viis inferni, qui portas sereas confregisti”)
 the “Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi” (embellished English translation).
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  “Pale lunacy- the book of moons” (printed pamphlet).
 the “Nine gates through the valley of shadows” (printed pamphlet).
 the “novena requiem for ways long ceased” (printed pamphlet, lavishly
illustrated with pornographic erotic woodcuts of a quality that exceeds some of the
other editions).
 “The Gate within the gate” (printed pamphlet, literal translation into
English from an undetermined German edition).
 “Knocking on cyclopean doors” (printed pamphlet, poorly translated).
 “Au Clair de Lune” (“by light of the moon”, printed pamphlet, Latin
translation from unknown edition, with commentary in French, accompanied with
photographic plates that some speculate to have originally been produced by Lewis
Carroll).

Lesser Fragmentary and or unconfirmed sources of additional clues, info, and

rumor that were of exceptional value in this study. Listed in no specific order.
 “The Nameless City” (short story by Howard Phillips Lovecraft).
 “The Festival” (short story by Howard Phillips Lovecraft).
 “Fungi from Yuggoth” (sonnet sequence by Howard Phillips Lovecraft).
 “The Book” (unfinished story fragment by Howard Phillips Lovecraft).
 “The Dunwich Horror” (short story by Howard Phillips Lovecraft).
 “The infamous Potter fragments” (Copies of coded journal entries
purportedly written by Helen Beatrix Potter, the originals were supposedly expunged
with other “Lost” or edited entries, the claim is totally unsubstantiated, but I
personally find little reason to doubt it based on the content, and her known fondness
for sheep).
 “The Great God Pan” (novella by Arthur Machen).
 “The King In Yellow” (novel by Robert W. Chambers).
 “The Lychgate fragments” (incomplete incunabulum).
 “Liber Chronicarum” (incunabulum, “Book of Chronicles” better known as
“The Nuremberg Chronicle”).
 “The Yellow Wallpaper” (short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman).
 “Deciphering the mystery of the Nod stones” (a version of the “Tablets
of Enoch” with additional commentary, printed pamphlet).
 “Le città invisibili” (“Invisible cities” novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino).
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  “De Vermis Mysteriis” (“the serpents mysteries” unbound manuscript).
 “El club Dumas” (“The Club Dumas”, novel by Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-
Reverte).
 “The Art of Dreaming” (novel by Carlos Castaneda).
 “The Manuscript of necrotic fragments” (printed pamphlet, Lovecraft
supposedly coined the exotic spelling “Pnakotic” since the normal spelling did not
look alien enough).
 “The City Enoch” (Copied decoded fragments of a coded work purported to be
by John Dee).
 “The wasp in a wig” (also known as “the wasp in yellow” purported to be the
censored story fragment by Lewis Carroll).
 “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (novella by Lewis Carroll).
 “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There”
(novella by Lewis Carroll).

Sources that I specifically would like to have consulted, but have been unable to
locate or obtain access to.
 the “Delomelanicon” (the early Greek copy of an older Hebrew edition, no
recorded sight of an original Greek copy has been reported since the rumored 1662
confiscation and burning of William Potter’s collection of forbidden documents in
colonial New Haven, Lovecraft changed this date and place in his fictionalized
history to that of the better known colonial witch trials of 1692 Salem).
 the “Azif” (the Arabic copy from the Greek “Delomelanicon” edition, translated
work tentatively attributed by some scholars to Omar Khayýam).
 The edition/editions used by Sir Richard Burton, and later believed to
have been burnt by his widow.
 The multiple editions that are rumored to have been in the Vatican’s
secret archive.
 The Cyrillic version of supposedly Russian Oprichnik origin, rumored
to have had influenced some of the research Wilhelm Reich conducted
with “Orgone” energies, and to have been hidden or purposefully
destroyed before it could fall into the hands of government agents.
 The unknown edition that inspired Lewis Carroll to include in his two
most famous works, many encoded references to metaphysical
practices connected or directly derived from the mad lunacy poem (the
Necronomicon), supposedly this was done so he could convey the lore

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 in code to chosen pupils and friends, while tactfully skirting around the
suppressed openly lurid content of the original (“we’re all mad here.”).
 The unknown edition that inspired Lovecraft to adopt elements of its
lore into his works (some have speculated this as yet undetermined
edition may have been the exceedingly rare untitled edition known only
as the “1500”, the name derived from the imprinted year given upon
the front plate).

Since Burton already penned an embellished lengthy rhyming rendition, so it

was chosen rather to render this new presentation in a simplified dry English,
the sections have been purposefully shortened keeping only what could be
correlated between multiple sources, with no attempt to artificially shoehorn
lines into a flowery rhyme, stretch a section, or fill them with eldritch words in
the style of Lovecraft.
Instead, by studying the correlations between the available sources, this work by
way of a reduced plain English, endeavors to approach closer the meaning
contained in the original lost foreign verse, as best as understanding and
scholarly research could construe from the fragments currently available.
However, certain manuscripts differ so widely, that it is difficult to determine
the original state of the text with total confidence in all cases.
Sadly due to other pressing matters, the work on the first early draft of this
investigation is not as comprehensive as would otherwise have been wished, it is
hoped these preliminary pages of collected notes will suffice, till a latter
opportunity provides more leisure time and perhaps new yet undiscovered leads
and clarifications to help complete the work on this project.
Pending conclusive results from ongoing research into the applicable copyright
and obscenity laws, and also to keep this PDF file small, details from plates and
diagrams are only reproduced where absolutely necessary for sake of
educational clarity; this limited use is believed to qualify as fair use under United
States copyright law.

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22
 The poem called “Necronomicon”
An annotated new verse rendition by Ambrose Bertram Hunter.

Portico I
I suppose you know all about the fearful myths antedating the coming of man to the
earth - the Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu cycles - which are hinted at in the
Necronomicon.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Whisperer in Darkness”, 1930.

The hour is nigh in Carcosa, by waning moon and starlight, I put down in
wordsi what they have taught, so it be known truthfully that man is not the
oldest or the last of earth’s kings.

For the ordinary substance of the earthly sphere of life walks not alone in its
four elementsii; for the past, present, and future have all held court under a
fifthiii that governs the four.

Not in the spaces we know, but between, in those ephemeral spots,

like the False Dawn that now pales across eastern firmament,

between night and day, to leave dark skies where shadows play;
it is there, those of the fifth harmoniously move ancient and unseen.

But now comes rising dawn to pave horizons thin pathiv with yellowv, and they
walk masked and impurevi, atop the high lonely places where the satyr’s
dancedvii, and the laments sung over the Seasons.

While below submerged in misted shadow, the flood of night from valley ebbs,
soaked into ground and cavern drain. The breeze is stirred with their
murmuring, and the earth echoes with their clamorviii.

They uproot their forest of tent poles, folding the city of emerald green cloth
away, but who has seen the hand that labors, or such an ephemeral cityix.

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Ouroboros knows the ninth gate. Ouroboros is the ninth gate. Ouroboros is the
keyx and guardian of the ninth gate, where solar light crowns his browxi.

Past, present, future, all are one in Ouroboros, time, devourer of all thingsxii. He
knows where these ancient lords rode through of old, and where they shall ride
through again.

He knows where they had trod earth’s field of dreams, and where they tread
them still, and why no one can behold them as they treadxiii.

In passionate dreams of living or dying, can men sometimes sense them near,
but of their semblance no man suspects or thinks.

Saving only in the features of those that they have worn in guise of human kin;
and of those are many sorts, varying in likeness from truest masquerade to that
figure devoid of spectacle or substance.

Quakexiv in the cold wildernessxv hath known such ancient travelersxvi, and what
man knowsxvii Quake?xviii
The chill desertxix and the sunken isles of Ocean hold cyclopean stonesxx
whereon their deeds are engravedxxi.

But who hath seen the frosted ruinsxxii, or that water buried tower xxiii?
Adorned in seaweed and barnaclexxiv, the lord of the abyssxxv there dreams his
dreamsxxvi, yet even his melancholy age dimmed eye glimpses them but
faintlyxxvii.

In such deathly slumber eternal, what dreams may pass with time?
Perchance even dreams of deaths own demisexxviii.

Fie, fie! Mendes!xxix Rider of the shadowy bush!xxx

In conductxxxi taintedxxxii shall ye find them.
Like a yoke, their hand grips ye by scruff of neck, still ye fail to see; their
habitation is even one with your guarded thoughts.

24
For all things partake in cycles, with every eight turnings of the seasonsxxxiii is
the flaming Elder Signxxxiv shownxxxv again, Ouroboros is the key to the ninth
gate, where the two spheres meet in marriagexxxvi.

And so idle thought rules now where terrible wisdom ruled once; but terrible
wisdom soon may rule where idle thoughts now reign.
Wait patient and potent, for here by labor born shall wisdoms time come
againxxxvii.

Portico II
Later in that year I spent weeks - alone beyond the limits of previous or subsequent
exploration in the vast limestone cavern systems of western Virginia - black
labyrinths so complex that no retracing of my steps could even be considered.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Shadow Out of Time”, 1934.

In the deepest grottoxxxviii, beyond fathoming or eyes to seexxxix; there the

marvels of the earth are tremendous and strange.

It is said that cursed is such ground where slain thoughts of the past are allowed
to rise. Concealed in new forms and vile thought governed by no decency.

Yet tranquilxl is the grave where witches slumber, and tranquilxli is the night
where witches are black with charcoalxlii.

For the soul of the witch hastens not from the earth of their shallow graves, but
fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws at their spine; till out of this
blasphemy, its life rises enflamed anewxliii,

and these darkened hunters of the country grow crafty to vex it and swell
monstrous in number to plague it.

Long catacombs secretly are burrowed, and those that should otherwise crawl in
shamexliv, by this may proudly swagger flaunting their evil learning of old ways.

25
Portico III
He was looking, he had to admit, for a kind of formula or incantation containing
the frightful name Yog-Sothoth, and it puzzled him to find discrepancies,
duplications, and ambiguities which made the matter of determination far from easy.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”, 1928.

Of life what is visible? Only that between birth and tomb.

Yet in cringing dread of unseen fates or groveling hope in unknown fortunes,
shackled is common life.

Fie, fie! Mendes! Rider of the shadowy bush!

Vanity of vanities, saith the wise, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? xlv

What phantasmagoric yoke. Fool, cease thy foolish capering.

What arrogance to think the universe for such should care, to bestow a final
reward or punishment on thee.

A king arrayed in regal yellowxlvi, may as well hold a banquetxlvii for a grain of
sand, or sentence it to dungeon keep.
Such a king I would call a mad king, and such gods I would call mad gods.

Life is naught but flash of star, falling bright and brief across dark firmament,
born from sky on fleeting journey through chill air, and then to be buried in the
dust.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that
which shall be done: for there is no new thing under the sunxlviii.

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the Old
Ones abideth ceaselesslyxlix.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he
arosel.

26
The masked revelers danced, and sang, and trod on hither hills.
But transient as the night’s deep tide, now the last doth slip away, yon drearier
horizons to haunt.

While this Pilgrim lingers still on the dawns-light Carcosa shoreli.

With vanity we look on others death as but the shearing of the wheat, yet look
to our own as an ending of all the world.

Barely we grasp the foot of a mountain of learning,

to attain the sight of uncharted vistas, breath the alpine airlii,

and witness the harmony of the Spheres;

when swift stroke of harvesters blade bids us join the sheaf.

Those who strive for praise, strive In Vain, all accomplishments but specks, a
grain of wheat or grain of sand. For in hourglass, how many like thou have
passed before, just another fallen grainliii.

Do not grieve, to moan, to cry; enjoy thy short-lived moment;

If we are to dance o’er perilous abyss, to phantasmagoric music of the mad
godsliv;

then why not dance joyful? Happy in that we can at least know there is no fate,
but that which we invent.

27
Portico IV
Unseen things not of earth—or at least not of tridimensional earth—rushed foetid
and horrible through New England’s glens, and brooded obscenely on the mountain
tops. Of this he had long felt certain. Now he seemed to sense the close presence of
some terrible part of the intruding horror, and to glimpse a hellish advance in the
black dominion of the ancient and once passive nightmare.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”, 1928.

You may ask, “O sage, by moon what hath though gleaned; toiling long
consumed the nights, what experience has thou gained?”

Let the red dawn surmise what we shall do,

When the blue starlight dies and all is throughlv.

For all your gods are none but manmade,

despotic tyrants o’er conscious crafted to rule.

Surrogate parents for the adult of infantile thought, who with aging gained rank,
and in the gaining lost shepherding shelter of ones pears.

And so now calls to the heavens and to throne,

as child would look up to childhood guardians.

Fie, ‘twas lacking guardians against fear of the shadowy unknown,

that such manmade artifice fancies were first raised.

To fix Infinite spaces into a measure stick in form of manly god king,
and with this ideal ruler to judge and gauge your own worthiness.

28
Such are all your gods, measure sticks swung by filthy monkeys. Yet older things
did come before such artifice design. Primal and serene they moved
undimensioned in time.

So why should we slave to meter our depth and breadth against a phantasm,
and for its nonexistence grace to beg.
The primal Cause, the Causing Cause, nameless, perplexing, this suits me well,
vague as airy space, dark in its darkness mystical, fleeting as a tolling of the bell.

Why would one crave for more? Why make an earthly mask of your own fears
into a god? Least you mistake a mask for a true face, or a true face for a mask.

And what of your pears long gone, as you and I must also depart.
Deaths blade of time is poised over every breath. Death harvests the sheaf.
It is we who think to make winnowing of wheat and chafe.

Portico V
What I had thought morbid and shameful and ignominious is in reality awesome
and mind-expanding and even glorious-- my previous estimate being merely a phase
of man’s eternal tendency to hate and fear and shrink from the utterly different.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Whisperer in Darkness”, 1930.

There is no Good, there is no Bad; these be caprice of mans own thought:

What helps him he calls Good, what hinders him he curses Bad.

These alter with the place and society, and in course of Time, all has worn both
Virtue’s crown and devil horns.

Long before man dwelt upon this earth, life was bitter suffering, prey and
Death.
Where hideous serpentinelvi beings would tear and rend apart each other’s
corpulencelvii;

This innocent fresh Eden was only fit for spawn of frightful monster-brood;
29
Now fiery hot, now icy frost, now drowned by steamy flood, now reeking of
decay.

While o’er all this shone the distant sun in yon firmament, a grim orb of boiling
fire:
trailed by pale ruined orb of moon, a specter upon the path of night.

What would such ancient monstrous minds think of our Good, or Bad?
The voracious blood-fed Leviathan, wilder than wildest wolf or bear?

These elder of earths masters went their way,

to become memory and name;

While the frail, upstart balding ape, to Earth laid claim, where colossal beasts
once ruled,
and whom by fickle blade of Time, may yet rule again.

Portico VI
In the elder time chosen men had talked with the entombed Old Ones in dreams, but
then something had happened. The great stone city R’lyeh, with its monoliths and
sepulchres, had sunk beneath the waves; and the deep waters, full of the one primal
mystery through which not even thought can pass, had cut off the spectral intercourse.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, 1926.

Hope is as false; hope is as true: As image reflected upon water.

As mist mingled with the skies; so weaves the thoughts of mortal man,

a perceived shroud of mixed Truth and Lies, man is wrapped up in self-made

pall veillviii,
vanity feed daydream, to death by hope, deceived hope dies.

Caught up by hopeful expectations, seeing only what hopes would see,

30
amid such reflected shades must we dwell? Pale shadows ourselves to live, to
die?lix

With expectations, the surface is all we may know.

Discard wishful thinking and plumb,

Those abyss depths beneath the reflection,

bottomless depths; tis a more fitting measure stick to recognize.

Will you settle to gazelx at the mirrored firmamentlxi upon the waters surface?
A false heaven hiding that which is beneath? Or divelxii to see what truth may be
deeper, jeweled treasure of the Kraken;

where no man can tell, nor aught earth-mother ever bare,

the infinite, cold dark reaches, behind false firmament.

Come sit awhile ‘neath arbor rose, growing upon lichgate,

to contemplate what dwells within such a depth as these.

Portico VII
After all, the strangest and maddest of myths are often merely symbols or allegories
based upon truth...
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, 1931.

What is it that man feigns call his Soul? But a state of things, a sound, a word.
Is not my thinking conscious enough for me?

In what dwelling-place did the primeval savage beast, keep it’s Soul?
Is not the breath of Life sufficient to work the matter-born machine?

31
The mortal stream from dawn of Life in a steady course has run;
What men are satisfied to name their Souls was in the mud and slime begun:

Life is a ladder, with the rungs hidden from our human eyes;
its foot placed in chaos-gloom, its head set high above the skies:

For all that is, has come by either design or by progression natural;—
Why waste on flesh your hate and fear, why waste on spirit your love and awe?

Is not the highest honor theirs who from the worst has fashioned the best;
Could not mans predecessors shape the world of matter to suit their will?

Yes, the more disagreeable the stuff, the more cunning must be the laborers
hand:
To shape by craft the uneven earthlxiii into a more refined elegance.

Portico VIII
There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some
evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must
strike before reckoning the consequences.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Thing on the Doorstep”, 1933.

How must this sage of life arrange, now that this tale of years is writ,
So like the content traveler to go their way; with composure in equilibrium fit?

How when the light and glow of life wanes in thickly gathering gloom,
shall mortal scoff at sting of Death, shall scorn the victory of the Tomb?lxiv

But!—faded flower and fallen leaf no more shall deck the parent tree;
and man once dropt by Tree of Life what hope of other life has he?

32
The bowl shatter’d, shall know repair; the lute Riven, shall sound once more;
but who shall mend the clay of man, the stolen breath to man restore?

We die, and Death is one, the Doom of brutes, the Doom of men, the Doom
of both beast and best, thy toils and troubles, want and woe at length to win
none but such doomed oblivion Rest.

Learn from the lords of oldlxv, be at peace with foot in both Hell and Heaven;
In Life to find hell and heaven as thou abuse or use Life well.

Remorseless, such is death: if only Life would not in nothing end we beg;
alas, in the end even mighty struggle gains naught, a crown of nil.

For by death all are equal ended, those Kings whose crowned heads uneasy rest;
by death their cup of joy and life was drained, empty as the beggars bowl.

While hope bids us for a more lasting permanence to aspire,

heavily it is reason that rebukes such dreams and fancies.

For who or what can speak with certainty of such promises and possibilities;
what we recognize in this daily life, is barely fit for gossip idle, a baby speech.

While their tale to tell, only dusty fragments from the lords of old remain.
Those Lords, yet to return, their things of Heaven and Hell to teachlxvi.

What of ancient serpentine cannibals, that made ravening maws the grave?
What brute such filthy license gave? Like fiends they lived, like fiends they
passed, beyond good and evil.

Till decayed bones ceased to murmur; to array with flesh and blood such
colossal skeletons.
Content they rest as wretched earth; Heaven, Judgment, Hell, all to defy.

33
Portico IX
I hate the moon - I am afraid of it - for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and
loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “What the Moon Brings”, 1922.

Now it is clear, light is the milk that rears a thousand young shadows, each after
its kind, cut by luminous glow from cloth of nights black darknesslxvii.

Do not on such fleeting shadows wage useless war, leave each to its own fate;
scornlxviii all spirit idolslxix to which others would have you bow: stand in honor
to your own Ideal, garbed in none but naked truthlxx.

For such man crafted idols and gods enthroned atop their Silent Hilllxxi
hear not thy voice, nor deign reply, are silent all, are silent still.

So be thine own Deus Ex: Make self-free, liberal as the wind and rain:
With Ignorance wage eternal war, to know thyself forever strain,

Do what ambition bids you do, expectlxxii approval from none but self;
Rule thy Thought as emperor an Empirelxxiii; shed every fetter and chain:

And with this meager life strive to perfect your own thought;
that thou may learn the noblest lore, to know that all we know is nought.

All other ways of life are fated to a transient chimera life;

A Half-Life, haunted shadow and whispered echo, a fleeting toll of distant bell.

34
 THE KASÎDAH
OF
HÂJÎ ABDÛ EL-YEZDÎ
(Necronomicon-incognito)
Sir Richard Burton, translator
[1880]

Reprinted here for ease of comparison. Since many occultists still regard this re-imaging of the
original poem portion, into an embellished flowing English verse, as the definitive modern
English edition of the Necronomicon-incognito.

TO THE READER
The Translator has ventured to entitle a “Lay of the Higher Law” the following
composition, which aims at being in advance of its time; and he has not feared
the danger of collision with such unpleasant forms as the “Higher Culture.” The
principles which justify the name are as follows:—
The Author asserts that Happiness and Misery are equally divided and
distributed in the world.
He makes Self-cultivation, with due regard to others, the sole and
sufficient object of human life.
He suggests that the affections, the sympathies, and the “divine gift of
Pity” are man’s highest enjoyments.
He advocates suspension of judgment, with a proper suspicion of
“Facts, the idlest of superstitions.”
Finally, although destructive to appearance, he is essentially
reconstructive.
For other details concerning the Poem and the Poet, the curious reader
is referred to the end of the volume.
F. B.
Vienna, Nov. 1880.

35
I
The hour is nigh; the waning Queen
walks forth to rule the later night;
Crown’d with the sparkle of a Star,
and throned on orb of ashen light:

The Wolf-tail* sweeps the paling East

to leave a deeper gloom behind,
And Dawn uprears her shining head,
sighing with semblance of a wind:
* The false dawn.
The highlands catch yon Orient gleam,
while purpling still the lowlands lie;
And pearly mists, the morning-pride,
soar incense-like to greet the sky.

The horses neigh, the camels groan,

the torches gleam, the cressets flare;
The town of canvas falls, and man
with din and dint invadeth air:

The Golden Gates swing right and left;

up springs the Sun with flamy brow;
The dew-cloud melts in gush of light;
brown Earth is bathed in morning-glow.

Slowly they wind athwart the wild,

and while young Day his anthem swells,
Sad falls upon my yearning ear
the tinkling of the Camel-bells:

36
O’er fiery wastes and frozen wold,
o’er horrid hill and gloomy glen,
The home of grisly beast and Ghoul,*
the haunts of wilder, grislier men;—
* The Demon of the Desert.
With the brief gladness of the Palms,
that tower and sway o’er seething plain,
Fraught with the thoughts of rustling shade,
and welling spring, and rushing rain;

With the short solace of the ridge,

by gentle zephyrs played upon,
Whose breezy head and bosky side
front seas of cooly celadon;—

‘Tis theirs to pass with joy and hope,

whose souls shall ever thrill and fill
Dreams of the Birthplace and the Tomb,
visions of Allah’s Holy Hill.*
* Arafât, near Mecca.
But we? Another shift of scene,
another pang to rack the heart;
Why meet we on the bridge of Time
to ‘change one greeting and to part?

We meet to part; yet asks my sprite,

Part we to meet? Ah! is it so?
Man’s fancy-made Omniscience knows,
who made Omniscience nought can know.

37
Why must we meet, why must we part,
why must we bear this yoke of MUST,
Without our leave or askt or given,
by tyrant Fate on victim thrust?

That Eve so gay, so bright, so glad,

this Morn so dim, and sad, and grey;
Strange that life’s Registrar should write
this day a day, that day a day!

Mine eyes, my brain, my heart, are sad,—

sad is the very core of me;
All wearies, changes, passes, ends;
alas! the Birthday’s injury!

Friends of my youth, a last adieu!

haply some day we meet again;
Yet ne’er the self-same men shall meet;
the years shall make us other men:

The light of morn has grown to noon,

has paled with eve, and now farewell!
Go, vanish from my Life as dies
the tinkling of the Camel’s bell.

38
II
In these drear wastes of sea-born land,
these wilds where none may dwell but He,
What visionary Pasts revive,
what process of the Years we see:

Gazing beyond the thin blue line

that rims the far horizon-ring,
Our sadden’d sight why haunt these ghosts,
whence do these spectral shadows spring?

What endless questions vex the thought,

of Whence and Whither, When and How?
What fond and foolish strife to read
the Scripture writ on human brow;

As stand we percht on point of Time,

betwixt the two Eternities,
Whose awful secrets gathering round
with black profound oppress our eyes.

“This gloomy night, these grisly waves,

these winds and whirlpools loud and dread:
What reck they of our wretched plight
who Safety’s shore so lightly tread?”

Thus quoth the Bard of Love and Wine,*

whose dream of Heaven ne’er could rise
Beyond the brimming Kausar-cup
and Houris with the white-black eyes;
* Hâfiz of Shirâz.
39
Ah me! my race of threescore years
is short, but long enough to pall
My sense with joyless joys as these,
with Love and Houris, Wine and all.

Another boasts he would divorce

old barren Reason from his bed,
And wed the Vine-maid in her stead;—
fools who believe a word he said!*
* Omar-i-Kayyâm, the tent-maker poet of Persia.
And “‘Dust thou art to dust returning.’
ne’er was spoke of human soul”
The Soofi cries, ‘tis well for him
that hath such gift to ask its goal.

“And this is all, for this we’re born

to weep a little and to die!”
So sings the shallow bard whose life
still labours at the letter “I.”

“Ear never heard, Eye never saw

the bliss of those who enter in
My heavenly kingdom,” Isâ said,
who wailed our sorrows and our sin:

Too much of words or yet too few!

What to thy Godhead easier than
One little glimpse of Paradise
to ope the eyes and ears of man?

40
“I am the Truth! I am the Truth!”
we hear the God-drunk gnostic cry
“The microcosm abides in ME;
Eternal Allah’s nought but I!”

Mansûr* was wise, but wiser they

who smote him with the hurlèd stones;
And, though his blood a witness bore,
no wisdom-might could mend his bones.
* A famous Mystic stoned for blasphemy.
“Eat, drink, and sport; the rest of life’s
not worth a fillip,” quoth the King;
Methinks the saying saith too much:
the swine would say the selfsame thing!

Two-footed beasts that browse through life,

by Death to serve as soil design’d,
Bow prone to Earth whereof they be,
and there the proper pleasures find:

But you of finer, nobler, stuff,

ye, whom to Higher leads the High,
What binds your hearts in common bond
with creatures of the stall and sty?

“In certain hope of Life-to-come

I journey through this shifting scene”
The Zâhid* snarls and saunters down
his Vale of Tears with confi’dent mien.
* The “Philister” of “respectable” belief.

41
Wiser than Amrân’s Son* art thou,
who ken’st so well the world-to-be,
The Future when the Past is not,
the Present merest dreamery;
* Moses in the Koran.
What know’st thou, man, of Life? and yet,
forever twixt the womb, the grave,
Thou pratest of the Coming Life,
of Heav’n and Hell thou fain must rave.

The world is old and thou art young;

the world is large and thou art small;
Cease, atom of a moment’s span,
To hold thyself an All-in-All!

42
III
Fie, fie! you visionary things,
ye motes that dance in sunny glow,
Who base and build Eternities
on briefest moment here below;

Who pass through Life liked cagèd birds,

the captives of a despot will;
Still wond’ring How and When and Why,
and Whence and Whither, wond’ring still;

Still wond’ring how the Marvel came

because two coupling mammals chose
To slake the thirst of fleshly love,
and thus the “Immortal Being” rose;

Wond’ring the Babe with staring eyes,

perforce compel’d from night to day,
Gript in the giant grasp of Life
like gale-born dust or wind-wrung spray;

Who comes imbecile to the world

‘mid double danger, groans, and tears;
The toy, the sport, the waif and stray
of passions, error, wrath and fears;

Who knows not Whence he came nor Why,

who kens not Whither bound and When,
Yet such is Allah’s choicest gift,
the blessing dreamt by foolish men;

43
Who step by step perforce returns
to couthless youth, wan, white and cold,
Lisping again his broken words
till all the tale be fully told:

Wond’ring the Babe with quenchèd orbs,

an oldster bow’d by burthening years,
How ‘scaped the skiff an hundred storms;
how ‘scaped the thread a thousand shears;

How coming to the Feast unbid,

he found the gorgeous table spread
With the fair-seeming Sodom-fruit,
with stones that bear the shape of bread:

How Life was nought but ray of sun

that clove the darkness thick and blind,
The ravings of the reckless storm,
the shrieking of the rav’ening wind;

How lovely visions ‘guiled his sleep,

aye fading with the break of morn,
Till every sweet became a sour,
till every rose became a thorn;

Till dust and ashes met his eyes

wherever turned their saddened gaze;
The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves,
the rubbish of his wasted days;

44
How every high heroic Thought
that longed to breathe empyrean air,
Failed of its feathers, fell to earth,
and perisht of a sheer despair;

How, dower’d with heritage of brain,

whose might has split the solar ray,
His rest is grossest coarsest earth,
a crown of gold on brow of clay;

This House whose frame be flesh and bone,

mortar’d with blood and faced with skin,
The home of sickness, dolours, age;
unclean without, impure within:

Sans ray to cheer its inner gloom,

the chambers haunted by the Ghost,
Darkness his name, a cold dumb Shade
stronger than all the heav’nly host.

This tube, an enigmatic pipe,

whose end was laid before begun,
That lengthens, broadens, shrinks and breaks;
—puzzle, machine, automaton;

The first of Pots the Potter made

by Chrysorrhoas’ blue-green wave;*
Methinks I see him smile to see
what guerdon to the world he gave!
* The Abana, River of Damascus.

45
How Life is dim, unreal, vain,
like scenes that round the drunkard reel;
How “Being” meaneth not to be;
to see and hear, smell, taste and feel.

A drop in Ocean’s boundless tide,

unfathom’d waste of agony;
Where millions live their horrid lives
by making other millions die.

How with a heart that would through love

to Universal Love aspire,
Man woos infernal chance to smite,
as Min’arets draw the Thunder-fire.

How Earth on Earth builds tow’er and wall,

to crumble at a touch of Time;
How Earth on Earth from Shînar-plain
the heights of Heaven fain would climb.

How short this Life, how long withal;

how false its weal, how true its woes,
This fever-fit with paroxysms
to mark its opening and its close.

Ah! gay the day with shine of sun,

and bright the breeze, and blithe the throng
Met on the River-bank to play,
when I was young, when I was young:

46
Such general joy could never fade;
and yet the chilling whisper came
One face had paled, one form had failed;
had fled the bank, had swum the stream;

Still revellers danced, and sang, and trod

the hither bank of Time’s deep tide,
Still one by one they left and fared
to the far misty thither side;

And now the last hath slipt away

yon drear Death-desert to explore,
And now one Pilgrim worn and lorn
still lingers on the lonely shore.

Yes, Life in youth-tide standeth still;

in manhood streameth soft and slow;
See, as it nears the ‘abysmal goal
how fleet the waters flash and flow!

And Deaths are twain; the Deaths we see

drop like the leaves in windy Fall;
But ours, our own, are ruined worlds,
a globe collapst, last end of all.

We live our lives with rogues and fools,

dead and alive, alive and dead,
We die ‘twixt one who feels the pulse
and one who frets and clouds the head:

47
And,—oh, the Pity!—hardly conned
the lesson comes its fatal term;
Fate bids us bundle up our books,
and bear them bod’ily to the worm:

Hardly we learn to wield the blade

before the wrist grows stiff and old;
Hardly we learn to ply the pen
ere Thought and Fancy faint with cold.

Hardly we find the path of love,

to sink the self, forget the “I,”
When sad suspicion grips the heart,
when Man, the Man begins to die:

Hardly we scale the wisdom-heights,

and sight the Pisgah-scene around,
And breathe the breath of heav’enly air,
and hear the Spheres’ harmonious sound;

When swift the Camel-rider spans

the howling waste, by Kismet sped,
And of his Magic Wand a wave
hurries the quick to join the dead.*
* Death in Arabia rides a Camel, not a pale horse.
How sore the burden, strange the strife;
how full of splendour, wonder, fear;
Life, atom of that Infinite Space
that stretcheth ‘twixt the Here and There.

48
How Thought is imp’otent to divine
the secret which the gods defend,
The Why of birth and life and death,
that Isis-veil no hand may rend.

Eternal Morrows make our Day;

our Is is aye to be till when
Night closes in; ‘tis all a dream,
and yet we die,—and then and THEN?

And still the Weaver plies his loom,

whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th’ unpattern’d dark design,
so dark we doubt it owns a plan.

Dost not, O Maker, blush to hear,

amid the storm of tears and blood,
Man say Thy mercy made what is,
and saw the made and said ‘twas good?

The marvel is that man can smile

dreaming his ghostly ghastly dream;-
Better the heedless atomy
that buzzes in the morning beam!

O the dread pathos of our lives!

how durst thou, Allah, thus to play
With Love, Affection, Friendship, all
that shows the god in mortal clay?

49
But ah! what ‘vaileth man to mourn;
shall tears bring forth what smiles ne’er brought;
Shall brooding breed a thought of joy?
Ah hush the sigh, forget the thought!

Silence thine immemorial quest,

contain thy nature’s vain complaint
None heeds, none cares for thee or thine;—
like thee how many came and went?

Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail;

enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death’s icy brink,
but is the dance less full of fun?

50
IV
What Truths hath gleaned that Sage consumed
by many a moon that waxt and waned?
What Prophet-strain be his to sing?
What hath his old Experience gained?

There is no God, no man-made God;

a bigger, stronger, crueller man;
Black phantom of our baby-fears,
ere Thought, the life of Life, began.

Right quoth the Hindu Prince of old,*

“An Ishwara for one I nill,
Th’ almighty everlasting Good
who cannot ‘bate th’ Eternal Ill:”
* Buddha.
“Your gods may be, what shows they are?”
hear China’s Perfect Sage declare;*
“And being, what to us be they
who dwell so darkly and so far?”
* Confucius.
“All matter hath a birth and death;
‘tis made, unmade and made anew;
“We choose to call the Maker ‘God’:—
such is the Zâhid’s owly view.

“You changeful finite Creatures strain”

(rejoins the Drawer of the Wine)*
“The dizzy depths of Inf’inite Power
to fathom with your foot of twine”;
* The Soofi or Gnostic opposed to the Zâhid.
51
“Poor idols of man’s heart and head
with the Divine Idea to blend;
“To preach as ‘Nature’s Common Course’
what any hour may shift or end.”

“How shall the Shown pretend to ken

aught of the Showman or the Show?
“Why meanly bargain to believe,
which only means thou ne’er canst know?

“How may the passing Now contain

the standing Now—Eternity?—
“An endless is without a was,
the be and never the to-be?

“Who made your Maker? If Self-made,

why fare so far to fare the worse
“Sufficeth not a world of worlds,
a self-made chain of universe?

“Grant an Idea, Primal Cause,

the Causing Cause, why crave for more?
“Why strive its depth and breadth to mete,
to trace its work, its aid to ‘implore?

“Unknown, Incomprehensible,
whate’er you choose to call it, call;
“But leave it vague as airy space,
dark in its darkness mystical.

52
“Your childish fears would seek a Sire,
by the non-human God defin’d,
“What your five wits may wot ye weet;
what is you please to dub ‘design’d;’

“You bring down Heav’en to vulgar Earth;

your maker like yourselves you make,
“You quake to own a reign of Law,
you pray the Law its laws to break;

“You pray, but hath your thought e’er weighed

how empty vain the prayer must be,
“That begs a boon already giv’en,
or craves a change of law to see?

“Say, Man, deep learnèd in the Scheme

that orders mysteries sublime,
“How came it this was Jesus, that
was Judas from the birth of Time?

“How I the tiger, thou the lamb;

again the Secret, prithee, show
“Who slew the slain, bowman or bolt
or Fate that drave the man, the bow?

“Man worships self: his God is Man;

the struggling of the mortal mind
“To form its model as ‘twould be,
the perfect of itself to find.

53
“The God became sage, priest and scribe
where Nilus’ serpent made the vale;
“A gloomy Brahm in glowing Ind,
a neutral something cold and pale:

“Amid the high Chaldean hills

a moulder of the heavenly spheres;
“On Guebre steppes the Timeless-God
who governs by his dual peers:

“In Hebrew tents the Lord that led

His leprous slaves to fight and jar;
“Yahveh,* Adon or Elohîm,
the God that smites, the Man of War.
* Jehovah.
“The lovely Gods of lib’ertine Greece,
those fair and frail humanities
“Whose homes o’erlook’d the Middle Sea,
where all Earth’s beauty cradled lies,

“Ne’er left its blessèd bounds, nor sought

the barb’arous climes of barb’arous gods
“Where Odin of the dreary North
o’er hog and sickly mead-cup nods:

“And when, at length, ‘Great Pan is dead’

uprose the loud and dol’orous cry
“A glamour wither’d on the ground,
a splendour faded in the sky.

54
“Yea, Pan was dead, the Nazar’ene came
and seized his seat beneath the sun,
“The votary of the Riddle-god,
whose one is three and three is one;

“Whose sadd’ening creed of herited Sin

spilt o’er the world its cold grey spell;
“In every vista showed a grave,
and ‘neath the grave the glare of Hell;

“Till all Life’s Po’esy sinks to prose;

romance to dull Real’ity fades;
“Earth’s flush of gladness pales in gloom
and God again to man degrades.

“Then the lank Arab foul with sweat,

the drainer of the camel’s dug,
“Gorged with his leek-green lizard’s meat,
clad in his filthy rag and rug,

“Bore his fierce Allah o’er his sands

and broke, like lava-burst upon
“The realms where reigned pre-Adamite Kings,
where rose the Grand Kayânian throne.*
* Kayâni—of the race of Cyrus; old Guebre heroes.
“Who now of ancient Kayomurs,
of Zâl or Rustam cares to sing,
“Whelmed by the tempest of the tribes
that called the Camel-driver King?

55
“Where are the crown of Kay Khusraw,
the sceptre of Anûshirwân,
“The holy grail of high Jamshîd,
Afrâsiyab’s hall?—Canst tell me, man?

“Gone, gone, where I and thou must go,

borne by the winnowing wings of Death,
“The Horror brooding over life,
and nearer brought with every breath:

“Their fame hath filled the Seven Climes,

they rose and reigned, they fought and fell,
“As swells and swoons across the wold
the tinkling of the Camel’s bell.”

56
V
There is no Good, there is no Bad;
these be the whims of mortal will:
What works me weal that call I ‘good,’
what harms and hurts I hold as ‘ill:’

They change with place, they shift with race;

and, in the veriest span of Time,
Each Vice has worn a Virtue’s crown;
all Good was banned as Sin or Crime:

Like ravelled skeins they cross and twine,

while this with that connects and blends;
And only Khizr* his eye shall see
where one begins, where other ends:
* Supposed to be the Prophet Elijah.
What mortal shall consort with Khizr,
when Musâ turned in fear to flee?
What man foresees the flow’er or fruit
whom Fate compels to plant the tree?

For Man’s Free-will immortal Law,

Anagkê, Kismet, Des’tiny read
That was, that is, that aye shall be,
Star, Fortune, Fate, Urd, Norn or Need.

“Man’s nat’ural state is God’s design;”

such is the silly sage’s theme;
“Man’s primal Age was Age of Gold;”
such is the Poet’s waking dream:

57
Delusion, Ign’orance! Long ere Man
drew upon Earth his earliest breath
The world was one contin’uous scene
of anguish, torture, prey and Death;

Where hideous Theria of the wild

rended their fellows limb by limb;
Where horrid Saurians of the sea
in waves of blood were wont to swim:

The “fair young Earth” was only fit

to spawn her frightful monster-brood;
Now fiery hot, now icy frore,
now reeking wet with steamy flood.

Yon glorious Sun, the greater light,

the “Bridegroom” of the royal Lyre,
A flaming, boiling, bursting mine;
a grim black orb of whirling fire:

That gentle Moon, the lesser light,

the Lover’s lamp, the Swain’s delight,
A ruined world, a globe burnt out,
a corpse upon the road of night.

What reckt he, say, of Good or Ill

who in the hill-hole made his lair,
The blood-fed rav’ening Beast of prey,
wilder than wildest wolf or bear?

58
How long in Man’s pre-Ad’amite days
to feed and swill, to sleep and breed,
Were the Brute-biped’s only life,
a perfect life sans Code or Creed?

His choicest garb a shaggy fell,

his choicest tool a flake of stone;
His best of orn’aments tattoo’d skin
and holes to hang his bits of bone;

Who fought for female as for food

when Mays awoke to warm desire;
And such the Lust that grew to Love
when Fancy lent a purer fire.

Where then “Th’ Eternal nature-law

by God engraved on human heart?”
Behold his simiad sconce and own
the Thing could play no higher part.

Yet, as long ages rolled, he learnt

from Beaver, Ape and Ant to build
Shelter for sire and dam and brood,
from blast and blaze that hurt and killed;

And last came Fire; when scrap of stone

cast on the flame that lit his den,
Gave out the shining ore, and made
the Lord of beasts a Lord of men.

59
The “moral sense,” your Zâhid-phrase,
is but the gift of latest years;
Conscience was born when man had shed
his fur, his tail, his pointed ears.

What conscience has the murd’erous Moor,

who slays his guest with felon blow,
Save sorrow he can slay no more,
what prick of pen’itence can he know?

You cry the “Cruelty of Things”

is myst’ery to your purblind eye,
Which fixed upon a point in space
the general project passes by:

For see! the Mammoth went his ways,

became a mem’ory and a name;
While the half-reasoner with the hand*
survives his rank and place to claim.
* The Elephant.
Earthquake and plague, storm, fight and fray,
portents and curses man must deem
Since he regards his self alone,
nor cares to trace the scope, the scheme;

The Quake that comes in eyelid’s beat

to ruin, level, ‘gulf and kill,
Builds up a world for better use,
to general Good bends special Ill:

60
The dreadest sound man’s ear can hear,
the war and rush of stormy Wind
Depures the stuff of human life,
breeds health and strength for humankind:

What call ye them or Goods or Ills,

ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain,
When realms arise and falls a roof;
a world is won, a man is slain?

And thus the race of Being runs,

till haply in the time to be
Earth shifts her pole and Mushtari*-men
another falling star shall see:
* The Planet Jupiter.
Shall see it fall and fade from sight,
whence come, where gone no Thought can tell,—
Drink of yon mirage-stream and chase
the tinkling of the camel-bell!

61
VI
All Faith is false, all Faith is true:
Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes
his little bit the whole to own.

What is the Truth? was askt of yore.

Reply all object Truth is one
As twain of halves aye makes a whole;
the moral Truth for all is none.

Ye scantly-learned Zâhids learn

from Aflatûn and Aristû,*
While Truth is real like your good:
th’ Untrue, like ill, is real too;
* Plato and Aristotle.
As palace mirror’d in the stream,
as vapour mingled with the skies,
So weaves the brain of mortal man
the tangled web of Truth and Lies.

What see we here? Forms, nothing more!

Forms fill the brightest, strongest eye,
We know not substance; ‘mid the shades
shadows ourselves we live and die.

“Faith mountains move” I hear: I see

the practice of the world unheed
The foolish vaunt, the blatant boast
that serves our vanity to feed.

62
“Faith stands unmoved”; and why? Because
man’s silly fancies still remain,
And will remain till wiser man
the day-dreams of his youth disdain.

“‘Tis blessèd to believe”; you say:

The saying may be true enow
And it can add to Life a light:—
only remains to show us how.

E’en if I could I nould believe

your tales and fables stale and trite,
Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires
the dullèd ear of drowsy wight.

With God’s foreknowledge man’s free will!

what monster-growth of human brain,
What powers of light shall ever pierce
this puzzle dense with words inane?

Vainly the heart on Providence calls,

such aid to seek were hardly wise
For man must own the pitiless Law
that sways the globe and sevenfold skies.

“Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav’en,

come pay the priest that holds the key;”
So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak
the last to enter Heaven,—he.

63
Are these the words for men to hear?
yet such the Church’s general tongue,
The horseleech-cry so strong so high
her heav’enward Psalms and Hymns among.

What? Faith a merit and a claim,

when with the brain ‘tis born and bred?
Go, fool, thy foolish way and dip
in holy water burièd dead!

Yet follow not th’ unwisdom-path,

cleave not to this and that disclaim;
Believe in all that man believes;
here all and naught are both the same.

But is it so? How may we know?

Haply this Fate, this Law may be
A word, a sound, a breath; at most
the Zâhid’s moonstruck theory.

Yes Truth may be, but ‘tis not Here;

mankind must seek and find it There,
But Where nor I nor you can tell,
nor aught earth-mother ever bare.

Enough to think that Truth can be:

come sit we where the roses glow,
Indeed he knows not how to know
who knows not also how to ‘unknow.

64
VII
Man hath no Soul, a state of things,
a no-thing still, a sound, a word
Which so begets substantial thing
that eye shall see what ear hath heard.

Where was his Soul the savage beast

which in primeval forests strayed,
What shape had it, what dwelling-place,
what part in nature’s plan it played?

This Soul to ree a riddle made;

who wants the vain duality?
Is not myself enough for me?
what need of “I” within an “I”?

Words, words that gender things! The soul

is a new-comer on the scene;
Sufficeth not the breath of Life
to work the matter-born machine?

We know the Gen’esis of the Soul;

we trace the Soul to hour of birth;
We mark its growth as grew mankind
to boast himself sole Lord of Earth:

The race of Be’ing from dawn of Life

in an unbroken course was run;
What men are pleased to call their Souls
was in the hog and dog begun:

65
Life is a ladder infinite-stepped,
that hides its rungs from human eyes;
Planted its foot in chaos-gloom,
its head soars high above the skies:

No break the chain of Being bears;

all things began in unity;
And lie the links in regular line
though haply none the sequence see.

The Ghost, embodied natural Dread

of dreary death and foul decay,
Begat the Spirit, Soul and Shade
with Hades’ pale and wan array.

The Soul required a greater Soul,

a Soul of Souls, to rule the host;
Hence spirit-powers and hierarchies,
all gendered by the savage Ghost.

Not yours, ye Peoples of the Book,

these fairy visions fair and fond,
Got by the gods of Khemi-land*
and faring far the seas beyond!
* Egypt; Kam, Kem, Khem (hierogl.), in the Demotic Khemi.
“Th’ immortal mind of mortal man!”
we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry;
Whose mind but means his sum of thought,
an essence of atomic “I.”

66
Thought is the work of brain and nerve,
in small-skulled idiot poor and mean;
In sickness sick, in sleep asleep,
and dead when Death lets drop the scene.

“Tush!” quoth the Zâhid, “well we ken

the teaching of the school abhorr’d
“That maketh man automaton,
mind a secretion, soul a word.”

“Of molecules and protoplasm

you matter-mongers prompt to prate;
“Of jelly-speck development
and apes that grew to man’s estate.”

Vain cavil! all that is hath come

either by Mir’acle or by Law;—
Why waste on this your hate and fear,
why waste on that your love and awe?

Why heap such hatred on a word,

why “Prototype” to type assign,
Why upon matter spirit mass?
wants an appendix your design?

Is not the highest honour his

who from the worst hath drawn the best;
May not your Maker make the world
from matter, an it suit His hest?

67
Nay more, the sordider the stuff
the cunninger the workman’s hand:
Cease, then, your own Almighty Power
to bind, to bound, to understand.

“Reason and Instinct!” How we love

to play with words that please our pride;
Our noble race’s mean descent
by false forged titles seek to hide!

For “gift divine” I bid you read

the better work of higher brain,
From Instinct diff’ering in degree
as golden mine from leaden vein.

Reason is Life’s sole arbiter,

the magic Laby’rinth’s single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken;
what crosses it can ne’er be true.

“Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!”

Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do,
sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!

68
VIII
There is no Heav’en, there is no Hell;
these be the dreams of baby minds;
Tools of the wily Fetisheer,
to ‘fright the fools his cunning blinds.

Learn from the mighty Spi’rits of old

to set thy foot on Heav’en and Hell;
In Life to find thy hell and heav’en
as thou abuse or use it well.

So deemed the doughty Jew who dared

by studied silence low to lay
Orcus and Hades, lands of shades,
the gloomy night of human day.

Hard to the heart is final death:

fain would an Ens not end in Nil;
Love made the senti’ment kindly good:
the Priest perverted all to ill.

While Reason sternly bids us die,

Love longs for life beyond the grave:
Our hearts, affections, hopes and fears
for Life-to-be shall ever crave.

Hence came the despot’s darling dream,

a Church to rule and sway the State;
Hence sprang the train of countless griefs
in priestly sway and rule innate.

69
For future Life who dares reply?
No witness at the bar have we;
Save what the brother Potsherd tells,—
old tales and novel jugglery.

Who e’er return’d to teach the Truth,

the things of Heaven and Hell to limn?
And all we hear is only fit
for grandam-talk and nursery-hymn.

“Have mercy, man!” the Zâhid cries,

“of our best visions rob us not!
“Mankind a future life must have
to balance life’s unequal lot.”

“Nay,” quoth the Magian, “‘tis not so;

I draw my wine for one and all,
“A cup for this, a score for that,
e’en as his measure’s great or small:

“Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight;

to poorest passion he was born;
“Who drains the score must e’er expect
to rue the headache of the morn.”

Safely he jogs along the way

which ‘Golden Mean’ the sages call;
Who scales the brow of frowning Alp
must face full many a slip and fall.

70
Here èxtremes meet, anointed Kings
whose crownèd heads uneasy lie,
Whose cup of joy contains no more
than tramps that on the dunghill die.

To fate-doomed Sinner born and bred

for dangling from the gallows-tree;
To Saint who spends his holy days
in rapt’urous hope his God to see;

To all that breathe our upper air

the hands of Dest’iny ever deal,
In fixed and equal parts, their shares
of joy and sorrow, woe and weal.

“How comes it, then, our span of days

in hunting wealth and fame we spend
“Why strive we (and all humans strive)
for vain and visionary end?”

Reply: mankind obeys a law

that bids him labour, struggle, strain;
The Sage well knowing its unworth,
the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain.

And who, ‘mid e’en the Fools, but feels

that half the joy is in the race
For wealth and fame and place, nor sighs
when comes success to crown the chase?

71
Again: in Hind, Chîn, Franguestân
that accident of birth befell,
Without our choice, our will, our voice:
Faith is an accident as well.

What to the Hindu saith the Frank:

“Denier of the Laws divine!
“However godly-good thy Life,
Hell is the home for thee and thine.”

“Go strain the draught before ‘tis drunk,

and learn that breathing every breath,
“With every step, with every gest,
something of life thou do’est to death.”

Replies the Hindu: “Wend thy way

for foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit;
“Your Pariah-par’adise woo and win;
at such dog-Heav’en I laugh and spit.”

“Cannibals of the Holy Cow!

who make your rav’ening maws the grave
“Of Things with self-same right to live;—
what Fiend the filthy license gave?”

What to the Moslem cries the Frank?

“A polygamic Theist thou!
“From an imposter-Prophet turn;
Thy stubborn head to Jesus bow.”

72
Rejoins the Moslem: “Allah’s one
tho’ with four Moslemahs I wive,
“One-wife-men ye and (damnèd race!)
you split your God to Three and Five.”

The Buddhist to Confucians thus:

“Like dogs ye live, like dogs ye die;
“Content ye rest with wretched earth;
God, Judgment, Hell ye fain defy.”

Retorts the Tartar: “Shall I lend

mine only ready-money ‘now,’
“For vain usurious ‘Then’ like thine,
avaunt, a triple idiot Thou!”

“With this poor life, with this mean world

I fain complete what in me lies;
“I strive to perfect this my me;
my sole ambition’s to be wise.”

When doctors differ who decides

amid the milliard-headed throng?
Who save the madman dares to cry:
“‘Tis I am right, you all are wrong?”

“You all are right, you all are wrong,”

we hear the careless Soofi say,
“For each believes his glimm’ering lamp
to be the gorgeous light of day.”

73
“Thy faith why false, my faith why true?
‘tis all the work of Thine and Mine,
“The fond and foolish love of self
that makes the Mine excel the Thine.”

Cease then to mumble rotten bones;

and strive to clothe with flesh and blood
The skel’eton; and to shape a Form
that all shall hail as fair and good.

“For gen’erous youth,” an Arab saith,

“Jahim’s* the only genial state;
“Give us the fire but not the shame
with the sad, sorry blest to mate.”
* Jehannum, Gehenna, Hell.
And if your Heav’en and Hell be true,
and Fate that forced me to be born
Force me to Heav’en or Hell—I go,
and hold Fate’s insolence in scorn.

I want not this, I want not that,

already sick of Me and Thee;
And if we’re both transform’d and changed,
what then becomes of Thee and Me?

Enough to think such things may be:

to say they are not or they are
Were folly: leave them all to Fate,
nor wage on shadows useless war.

74
Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies
who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

All other Life is living Death,

a world where none but Phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice,
a tinkling of the camel-bell.

75
IX
How then shall man so order life
that when his tale of years is told,
Like sated guest he wend his way;
how shall his even tenour hold?

Despite the Writ that stores the skull;

despite the Table and the Pen;*
Maugre the Fate that plays us down,
her board the world, her pieces men?
* Emblems of Kismet, or Destiny.
How when the light and glow of life
wax dim in thickly gath’ering gloom,
Shall mortal scoff at sting of Death,
shall scorn the victory of the Tomb?

One way, two paths, one end the grave.

This runs athwart the flow’ery plain,
That breasts the bush, the steep, the crag,
in sun and wind and snow and rain:

Who treads the first must look adown,

must deem his life an all in all;
Must see no heights where man may rise,
must sight no depths where man may fall.

Allah in Adam form must view;

adore the Maker in the made.
Content to bask in Mâyâ’s smile,*
in joys of pain, in lights of shade.
* Illusion.
76
He breaks the Law, he burns the Book,
he sends the Moolah back to school;
Laughs at the beards of Saintly men;
and dubs the Prophet dolt and fool,

Embraces Cypress’ taper-waist;

cools feet on wavy breast of rill;
Smiles in the Nargis’ love-lorn eyes,
and ‘joys the dance of Daffodil;

Melts in the saffron light of Dawn

to hear the moaning of the Dove;
Delights in Sundown’s purpling hues
when Bulbul woos the Rose’s love.

Finds mirth and joy in Jamshid-bowl;

toys with the Daughter of the vine;
And bids the beauteous cup-boy say,
“Master I bring thee ruby wine!”*
* That all the senses, even the ear, may enjoy.
Sips from the maiden’s lips the dew;
brushes the bloom from virgin brow:—
Such is his fleshly bliss that strives
the Maker through the Made to know.

I’ve tried them all, I find them all

so same and tame, so drear, so dry;
My gorge ariseth at the thought;
I commune with myself and cry:—

Better the myriad toils and pains

that make the man to manhood true,
77
This be the rule that guideth life;
these be the laws for me and you:

With Ignor’ance wage eternal war,

to know thy self forever strain,
Thine ignorance of thine ignorance is
thy fiercest foe, thy deadliest bane;

That blunts thy sense, and dulls thy taste;

that deafs thine ears, and blinds thine eyes;
Creates the thing that never was,
the Thing that ever is defies.

The finite Atom infinite

that forms thy circle’s centre-dot,
So full-sufficient for itself,
for other selves existing not,

Finds the world mighty as ‘tis small;

yet must be fought the unequal fray;
A myriad giants here; and there
a pinch of dust, a clod of clay.

Yes! maugre all thy dreams of peace

still must the fight unfair be fought;
Where thou mayst learn the noblest lore,
to know that all we know is nought.

True to thy Nature, to Thy self,

Fame and Disfame nor hope nor fear:
Enough to thee the small still voice
aye thund’ering in thine inner ear.
78
From self-approval seek applause:
What ken not men thou kennest, thou!
Spurn ev’ry idol others raise:
Before thine own Ideal bow:

Be thine own Deus: Make self free,

liberal as the circling air:
Thy Thought to thee an Empire be;
break every prison’ing lock and bar:

Do thou the Ought to self aye owed;

here all the duties meet and blend,
In widest sense, withouten care
of what began, for what shall end.

Thus, as thou view the Phantom-forms

which in the misty Past were thine,
To be again the thing thou wast
with honest pride thou may’st decline;

And, glancing down the range of years,

fear not thy future self to see;
Resign’d to life, to death resign’d,
as though the choice were nought to thee.

On Thought itself feed not thy thought;

nor turn from Sun and Light to gaze,
At darkling cloisters paved with tombs,
where rot the bones of bygone days:

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“Eat not thy heart,” the Sages said;
“nor mourn the Past, the buried Past;”
Do what thou dost, be strong, be brave;
and, like the Star, nor rest nor haste.

Pluck the old woman from thy breast:

Be stout in woe, be stark in weal;
Do good for Good is good to do:
Spurn bribe of Heav’en and threat of Hell.

To seek the True, to glad the heart,

such is of life the HIGHER LAW,
Whose differ’ence is the Man’s degree,
the Man of gold, the Man of straw.

See not that something in Mankind

that rouses hate or scorn or strife,
Better the worm of Izrâil*
than Death that walks in form of life.
* The Angel of Death.
Survey thy kind as One whose wants
in the great Human Whole unite;*
The Homo rising high from earth
to seek the Heav’ens of Life-in-Light;
* The “Great Man” of the Enochites and the Mormons.
And hold Humanity one man,
whose universal agony
Still strains and strives to gain the goal,
where agonies shall cease to be.

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Believe in all things; none believe;
judge not nor warp by “Facts” the thought;
See clear, hear clear, tho’ life may seem
Mâyâ and Mirage, Dream and Naught.

Abjure the Why and seek the How:

the God and gods enthroned on high,
Are silent all, are silent still;
nor hear thy voice, nor deign reply.

The Now, that indivis’ible point

which studs the length of inf’inite line
Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all,
the puny all thou callest thine.

Perchance the law some Giver hath:

Let be! let be! what canst thou know?
A myriad races came and went;
this Sphinx hath seen them come and go.

Haply the Law that rules the world

allows to man the widest range;
And haply Fate’s a Theist-word,
subject to human chance and change.

This “I” may find a future Life,

a nobler copy of our own,
Where every riddle shall be ree’d,
where every knowledge shall be known;

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Where ‘twill be man’s to see the whole
of what on Earth he sees in part;
Where change shall ne’er surcharge the thought;
nor hope defer’d shall hurt the heart.

But!—faded flow’er and fallen leaf

no more shall deck the parent tree;
And man once dropt by Tree of Life
what hope of other life has he?

The shatter’d bowl shall know repair;

the riven lute shall sound once more;
But who shall mend the clay of man,
the stolen breath to man restore?

The shiver’d clock again shall strike;

the broken reed shall pipe again:
But we, we die, and Death is one,
the doom of brutes, the doom of men.

Then, if Nirwânâ* round our life

with nothingness, ‘tis haply best;
Thy toils and troubles, want and woe
at length have won their guerdon—Rest.
* Comparative annihilation.
Cease, Abdû, cease! Thy song is sung,
nor think the gain the singer’s prize;
Till men hold Ignor’ance deadly sin,
till man deserves his title “Wise:”*
* “Homo sapiens.”

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In Days to come, Days slow to dawn,
when Wisdom deigns to dwell with men,
These echoes of a voice long stilled
haply shall wake responsive strain:

Wend now thy way with brow serene,

fear not thy humble tale to tell:—
The whispers of the Desert-wind;
the tinkling of the camel’s bell.

{Hebrew: ShLM}

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Notes on the KASÎDAH

NOTE I

HÂJÎ ABDÛ, THE MAN

Hâjî Abdû has been known to me for more years than I care to record. A
native, it is believed, of Darâbghird in the Yezd Province, he always preferred to
style himself El-Hichmakâni, a facetious “lackab” or surname, meaning “Of
No-hall, Nowhere.” He had travelled far and wide with his eyes open; as
appears by his “couplets.” To a natural facility, a knack of language learning, he
added a store of desultory various reading; scraps of Chinese and old Egyptian;
of Hebrew and Syriac; of Sanskrit and Prakrit; of Slav, especially Lithuanian; of
Latin and Greek, including Romaic; of Berber, the Nubian dialect, and of Zend
and Akkadian, besides Persian, his mother-tongue, and Arabic, the classic of the
schools. Nor was he ignorant of “the -ologies” and the triumphs of modern
scientific discovery. Briefly, his memory was well-stored; and he had every talent
save that of using his talents.

But no one thought that he “woo’d the Muse,” to speak in the style of the last
century. Even his intimates were ignorant of the fact that he had a skeleton in
his cupboard, his Kasîdah or distichs. He confided to me his secret when we
last met in Western India—I am purposely vague in specifying the place. When
so doing he held in hand the long and hoary honours of his chin with the points
toward me, as if to say with the Island-King:

There is a touch of Winter in my beard,

A sign the Gods will guard me from imprudence.

And yet the piercing eye, clear as an onyx, seemed to protest against the plea of
age. The MS. was in the vilest “Shikastah” or running-hand; and, as I carried it
off, the writer declined to take the trouble of copying out his cacograph.

We, his old friends, had long addressed Hâjî Abdû by the sobriquet of Nabbianâ
(“our Prophet”); and the reader will see that the Pilgrim has, or believes he has,
a message to deliver.

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He evidently aspires to preach a faith of his own; an Eastern Version of
Humanitarianism blended with the sceptical or, as we now say, the scientific
habit of mind. The religion, of which Fetishism, Hinduism and Heathendom;
Judæism, Christianity and Islamism are mere fractions, may, methinks, be
accepted by the Philosopher: it worships with single-minded devotion the Holy
Cause of Truth, of Truth for its own sake, not for the goods it may bring; and
this belief is equally acceptable to honest ignorance, and to the highest
attainments in nature-study.

With Confucius, the Hâjî cultivates what Strauss has called the “stern common-
sense of mankind”; while the reign of order is a paragraph of his “Higher Law.”
He traces from its rudest beginnings the all but absolute universality of some
perception by man, called “Faith”; that sensus Numinis which, by inheritance or
communication, is now universal except in those who force themselves to
oppose it. And he evidently holds this general consent of mankind to be so far
divine that it primarily discovered for itself, if it did not create, a divinity. He
does not cry with the Christ of Novalis, “Children, you have no father”; and
perhaps he would join Renan in exclaiming, Un monde sans Dieu est horrible!

But he recognises the incompatibility of the Infinite with the Definite; of a

Being who loves, who thinks, who hates; of an Actus purus who is called jealous,
wrathful and revengeful, with an “Eternal that makes for righteousness.” In the
presence of the endless contradictions, which spring from the idea of a Personal
Deity, with the Synthesis, the Begriff of Providence, our Agnostic takes refuge in
the sentiment of an unknown and an
unknowable. He objects to the countless variety of forms assumed by the
perception of a Causa Causans (a misnomer), and to that intellectual adoption of
general propositions, capable of distinct statement but incapable of proofs,
which we term Belief.

He looks with impartial eye upon the endless variety of systems, maintained
with equal confidence and self-sufficiency, by men of equal ability and honesty.
He is weary of wandering over the world, and of finding every petty race
wedded to its own opinions; claiming the monopoly of Truth; holding all others
to be in error, and raising disputes whose violence, acerbity and virulence are in
inverse ratio to the importance of the disputed matter. A peculiarly active and
acute observation taught him that many of these jarring families, especially
those of the same blood, are par in the intellectual processes of perception and
reflection; that in the business of the visible working world they are confessedly
by no means superior to one another; whereas in abstruse matters of mere

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Faith, not admitting direct and sensual evidence, one in a hundred will claim to
be right, and immodestly charge the other ninety-nine with being wrong.

Thus he seeks to discover a system which will prove them all right, and all
wrong; which will reconcile their differences; will unite past creeds; will account
for the present, and will anticipate the future with a continuous and
uninterrupted development; this, too, by a process, not negative and distinctive,
but, on the contrary, intensely positive and constructive. I am not called upon to
sit in the seat of judgment; but I may say that it would be singular if the attempt
succeeded. Such a system would be all-comprehensive, because not limited by
space, time, or race; its principle would be extensive as Matter itself, and,
consequently, eternal. Meanwhile he satisfies himself,—the main point.

Students of metaphysics have of late years defined the abuse of their science as
“the morphology of common opinion.” Contemporary investigators, they say,
have been too much occupied with introspection; their labors have become
merely physiologico-biographical, and they have greatly neglected the study of
averages. For, says La Rochefoucauld, Il est plus aisé de connoître l’homme en général
que de connoître un homme en particulier; and on so wide a subject all views must be
one-sided.

But this is not the fashion of Easterns. They have still to treat great questions ex
analogiâ universi, instead of ex analogiâ hominis. They must learn the basis of
sociology, the philosophic conviction that mankind should be studied, not as a
congeries of individuals, but as an organic whole. Hence the Zeitgeist, or
historical evolution of the collective consciousness of the age,
despises the obsolete opinion that Society, the State, is bound by the same
moral duties as the simple citizen. Hence, too, it holds that the “spirit of man,
being of equal and uniform substance, doth usually suppose and feign in nature
a greater equality and uniformity than is in Truth.”

Christianity and Islamism have been on their trial for the last eighteen and
twelve centuries. They have been ardent in proselytizing, yet they embrace only
one-tenth and one-twentieth of the human race. Hâjî Abdû would account for
the tardy and unsatisfactory progress of what their votaries call “pure truths,” by
the innate imperfections of the same. Both propose a reward for mere belief,
and a penalty for simple unbelief; rewards and punishments being, by the way,
very disproportionate.
Thus they reduce everything to the scale of a somewhat unrefined egotism; and
their demoralizing effects become clearer to every progressive age.
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Hâjî Abdû seeks Truth only, truth as far as man, in the present phase of his
development, is able to comprehend it. He disdains to associate utility, like
Bacon (Nov. Org. I. Aph. 124), the High Priest of the English Creed, le gros bon
sens, with the lumen siccum ac purum notionum verarum. He seems to see the injury
inflicted upon the sum of thought by the â posteriori superstition, the worship of
“facts,” and the deification of synthesis. Lastly, came the reckless way in which
Locke “freed philosophy from the incubus of innate ideas.” Like Luther and the
leaders of the great French Revolution, he broke with the Past; and he threw
overboard the whole cargo of human tradition. The result has been an immense
movement of the mind which we love to call Progress, when it has often been
retrograde; together with a mighty development of egotism resulting from the
pampered sentiment of personality.

The Hâjî regrets the excessive importance attached to a possible future state: he
looks upon this as a psychical stimulant, a day dream, whose revulsion and
reaction disorder waking life. The condition may appear humble and prosaic to
those exalted by the fumes of Fancy, by a spiritual dram-drinking, which, like
the physical, is the pursuit of an ideal happiness. But he is too wise to affirm or
to deny the existence of another world. For life beyond the grave there is no
consensus of mankind, no Catholic opinion held semper, et ubique, et ab omnibus.
The intellectual faculties (perception and reflection) are mute upon the subject:
they bear no testimony to facts; they show no proof.
Even the instinctive sense of our kind is here dumb. We may believe what we
are taught: we can know nothing. He would, therefore, cultivate that receptive
mood which, marching under the shadow of mighty events, leads to the highest
of goals,—the development of Humanity. With him suspension of judgment is
a system.

Man has done much during the sixty-eight centuries which represent his history.
This assumes the first Egyptian Empire, following the pre-historic, to begin
with B. C. 5000, and to end with B. C. 3249. It was the Old, as opposed to the
Middle, the New, and the Low: it contained the Dynasties from I. to X., and it
was the age of the Pyramids, at once simple, solid, and grand.
When the praiser of the Past contends that modern civilization has improved in
nothing upon Homer and Herodotus, he is apt to forget that every schoolboy is
a miracle of learning compared with the Cave-man and the palæolithic race.
And, as the Past has been, so shall the Future be.

The Pilgrim’s view of life is that of the Soofi, with the usual dash of Buddhistic
pessimism. The profound sorrow of existence, so often sung by the dreamy
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Eastern poet, has now passed into the practical European mind. Even the light
Frenchman murmurs,—

Moi, moi, chaque jour courbant plus bas ma tête

Je passe—et refroidi sous ce soleil joyeux,
Je m’en irai bientôt, au milieu de la fête,
Sans que rien manque au monde immense et radieux.

But our Hâjî is not Nihilistic in the “no-nothing” sense of Hood’s poem, or, as
the American phrases it, “There is nothing new, nothing true, and it don’t
signify.” His is a healthy wail over the shortness, and the miseries of life,
because he finds all created things—

Measure the world, with “Me” immense.

He reminds us of St. Augustine (Med. c. 21). “Vita hæc, vita misera, vita caduca,
vita incerta, vita laboriosa, vita immunda, vita domina malorum, regina
superborum, plena miseriis et erroribus . . . Quam humores tumidant, escæ
inflant, jejunia macerant, joci dissolvunt, tristitiæ consumunt; sollicitudo
coarctat, securitas hebetat, divitiæ inflant et jactant.
Paupertas dejicit, juventus extollit, senectus incurvat, importunitas frangit,
mæror deprimit. Et his malis omnibus mors furibunda succedit.” But for
furibunda the Pilgrim would perhaps read benedicta.

With Cardinal Newman, one of the glories of our age, Hâjî Abdû finds “the
Light of the world nothing else than the Prophet’s scroll, full of lamentations
and mourning and woe.” I cannot refrain from quoting all this fine passage, if it
be only for the sake of its lame and shallow deduction. “To consider the world
in its length and breadth, its various history and the many races of men, their
starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts, and then their ways,
habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses,
their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of
long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design,
the blind evolution (!) of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the
progress of things as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the
greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims and short duration. The
curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good,
the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of
sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that
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condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle’s
words, ‘having no hope and without God in the world’—all this is a vision to dizzy
and appall, and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely
without human solution.” Hence that admirable writer postulates some “terrible
original calamity”; and thus the hateful doctrine,
theologically called “original sin,” becomes to him almost as certain as that “the
world exists, and as the existence of God.” Similarly the “Schedule of
Doctrines” of the most liberal Christian Church insists upon the human
depravity, and the “absolute need of the Holy Spirit’s agency in man’s
regeneration and sanctification.”

But what have we here? The “original calamity” was either caused by God or
arose without leave of God, in either case degrading God to man. It is the old
dilemma whose horns are the irreconcilable attributes of goodness and
omniscience in the supposed Creator of sin and suffering. If the one quality be
predicable, the other cannot be predicable of the same subject.
Far better and wiser is the essayist’s poetical explanation now apparently
despised because it was the fashionable doctrine of the sage bard’s day:—

All nature is but art . . .

All discord harmony not understood;
All partial evil universal good.—(Essay 289–292.)

The Pilgrim holds with St. Augustine Absolute Evil is impossible because it is
always rising up into good. He considers the theory of a beneficent or
maleficent deity a purely sentimental fancy, contradicted by human reason and
the aspect of the world. Evil is often the active form of good; as F. W. Newman
says, “so likewise is Evil the revelation of Good.” With him all existences are
equal: so long as they possess the Hindu Agasa, Life-fluid or vital force, it
matters not they be,—

Fungus or oak or worm or man.

War, he says, brings about countless individual miseries, but it forwards general
progress by raising the stronger upon the ruins of the weaker races. Earthquakes
and cyclones ravage small areas; but the former builds up earth for man’s
habitation, and the latter renders the atmosphere fit for him to breathe. Hence
he echoes:

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 —The universal Cause
Acts not by partial but by general laws.

Ancillary to the churchman’s immoral view of “original sin” is the unscientific

theory that evil came into the world with Adam and his seed. Let us ask what
was the state of our globe in the pre-Adamite days, when the tyrants of the
Earth, the huge Saurians and other monsters, lived in perpetual strife, in a
destructiveness of which we have now only the feeblest examples? What is the
actual state of the world of waters, where the only object of life is death, where
the Law of murder is the Law of Development?

Some will charge the Hâjî with irreverence, and hold him a “lieutenant of Satan
who sits in the chair of pestilence.” But he is not intentionally irreverent. Like
men of far higher strain, who deny divinely the divine, he speaks the things that
others think and hide. With the author of “Supernatural Religion,” he holds that
we “gain infinitely more than we lose in abandoning belief in the reality of
revelation”; and he looks forward to the day when “the old tyranny shall have
been broken, and when the anarchy of transition shall have passed away.” But
he is an Eastern. When he repeats the Greek’s “Remember not to believe,” he
means Strive to learn, to know, for right ideas lead to right actions. Among the
couplets not translated for this eclogue is:—

Of all the safest ways of Life

the safest way is still to doubt,
Men win the future world with Faith,
the present world they win without.

This is the Spaniard’s:—

De las cosas mas seguras, mas seguro es duvidar;

a typically modern sentiment of the Brazen Age of Science following the
Golden Age of Sentiment. But the Pilgrim continues:—

The sages say: I tell thee no!

with equal faith all Faiths receive;
None more, none less, for Doubt is Death:
they live the most who most believe.
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Here, again, is an oriental subtlety; a man who believes in everything equally and
generally may be said to believe in nothing. It is not a simple European view
which makes honest Doubt worth a dozen of the Creeds. And it is in direct
opposition to the noted writer who holds that the man of simple faith is worth
ninety-nine of those who hold only to the egotistic interests of their own
individuality. This dark saying means (if it mean anything), that the so-called
moral faculties of man, fancy and ideality, must lord it over the perceptive and
reflective powers,—a simple absurdity! It produced a Turricremata, alias
Torquemada, who, shedding floods of honest tears, caused his victims to be
burnt alive; and an Anchieta, the Thaumaturgist of Brazil, who beheaded a
converted heretic lest the latter by lapse from grace lose his immortal soul.

But this vein of speculation, which bigots brand as “Doubt, Denial, and
Destruction;” this earnest religious scepticism; this curious inquiry, “Has the
universal tradition any base of fact?”; this craving after the secrets and mysteries
of the future, the unseen, the unknown, is common to all races and to every age.
Even amongst the Romans, whose model man in Augustus’ day was Horace,
the philosophic, the epicurean, we find Propertius asking:—

An ficta in miseras descendit fabula gentes

Et timor haud ultra quam rogus esse potest?

To return: the Pilgrim’s doctrines upon the subject of conscience and

repentance will startle those who do not follow his train of thought:—

Never repent because thy will

with will of Fate be not at one:
Think, an thou please, before thou dost,
but never rue the deed when done.

This again is his modified fatalism. He would not accept the boisterous mode of
cutting the Gordian-knot proposed by the noble British Philister—”we know
we’re free and there’s an end on it!” He prefers Lamarck’s, “The will is, in truth,
never free.” He believes man to be a co-ordinate term of Nature’s great
progression; a result of the interaction of organism and environment, working
through cosmic sections of time. He views the human machine, the pipe of
flesh, as depending upon the physical theory of life. Every corporeal fact and
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phenomenon which, like the tree, grows from within or without, is a mere
product of organization; living bodies being subject to the natural law governing
the lifeless and the inorganic. Whilst the religionist assures us that man is not a
mere toy of fate, but a free agent responsible to himself, with work to do and
duties to perform, the Hâjî, with many modern schools, holds Mind to be a
word describing a special operation of matter; the faculties generally to be
manifestations of movements in the central nervous system; and every idea,
even of the Deity, to be a certain little pulsation of a certain little mass of animal
pap,—the brain. Thus he would not object to relationship with a tailless
catarrhine anthropoid ape, descended from a monad or a primal ascidian.

Hence he virtually says, “I came into the world without having applied for or
having obtained permission; nay, more, without my leave being asked or given.
Here I find myself hand-tied by conditions, and fettered by laws and
circumstances, in making which my voice had no part. While in the womb I was
an automaton; and death will find me a mere machine. Therefore not I, but the
Law, or if, you please, the Lawgiver, is answerable for all my actions.” Let me
here observe that to the Western mind “Law” postulates a Lawgiver; not so to
the Eastern, and especially to the Soofi, who holds these ideas to be human,
unjustifiably extended to interpreting the non-human, which men call the
Divine.

Further he would say, “I am an individual (qui nil habet dividui), a circle touching
and intersecting my neighbours at certain points, but nowhere corresponding,
nowhere blending.
Physically I am not identical in all points with other men.
Morally I differ from them: in nothing do the approaches of knowledge, my five
organs of sense (with their Shelleyan “interpretation”), exactly resemble those of
any other being.
Ergo, the effect of the world, of life, of natural objects, will not in my case be
the same as with the beings most resembling me. Thus I claim the right of
creating or modifying for my own and private use the system which most
imports me; and if the reasonable leave be refused to me, I take it without
leave.

“But my individuality, however all-sufficient for myself, is an infinitesimal point,

an atom subject in all things to the Law of Storms called Life. I feel, I know that
Fate is. But I cannot know what is or what is not fated to befall me. Therefore
in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only
duty, the ‘I’ being duly blended with the ‘We.’ I object to be a ‘selfless man,’
which to me denotes an inverted moral sense. I am bound to take careful
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thought concerning the consequences of every word and deed. When, however,
the Future has become the Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to grieve
or to repent over that which was decreed by universal Law.”

The usual objection is that of man’s practice. It says, “This is well in theory; but
how carry it out? For instance, why would you kill, or give over to be killed, the
man compelled by Fate to kill your father?” Hâjî Abdû replies, “I do as others
do, not because the murder was done by him, but because the murderer should
not be allowed another chance of murdering. He is a tiger who has tasted blood
and who should be shot. I am convinced that he was a tool in the hands of Fate,
but that will not prevent my taking measures, whether predestined or not, in
order to prevent his being similarly used again.”

As with repentance so with conscience. Conscience may be a “fear which is the

shadow of justice”; even as pity is the shadow of love. Though simply a
geographical and chronological accident, which changes with every age of the
world, it may deter men from seeking and securing the prize of successful
villainy. But this incentive to beneficence must be applied to actions that will be
done, not to deeds that have been done. The Hâjî, moreover, carefully
distinguishes between the working of fate under a personal God, and under the
Reign of Law. In the former case the contradiction between the foreknowledge
of a Creator, and the free-will of a Creature, is direct, palpable, absolute. We
might as well talk of black-whiteness and of white-blackness. A hundred
generations of divines have never been able to ree the riddle; a million will fail.
The difficulty is insurmountable to the Theist whose Almighty is perforce
Omniscient, and as Omniscient, Prescient. But it disappears when we convert
the Person into Law, or a settled order of events; subject, moreover, to certain
exceptions fixed and immutable, but at present unknown to man. The
difference is essential as that between the penal code with its narrow forbiddal,
and the broad commandment which is a guide rather than a task-master.

Thus, too, the belief in fixed Law, versus arbitrary will, modifies the Hâjî’s
opinions concerning the pursuit of happiness.
Mankind, das rastlose Ursachenthier, is born to be on the whole equally happy and
miserable. The highest organisms, the fine porcelain of our family, enjoy the
most and suffer the most: they have a capacity for rising to the empyrean of
pleasure and for plunging deep into the swift-flowing river of woe and pain.
Thus
Dante (Inf. vi. 106):—

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 —tua scienza
Che vuol, quanto la cosa è più perfetta
Più senta ‘l bene, e cosi la doglienza.

So Buddhism declares that existence in itself implies effort, pain and sorrow;
and, the higher the creature, the more it suffers. The common clay enjoys little
and suffers little. Sum up the whole and distribute the mass: the result will be an
average; and the beggar is, on the whole, happy as the prince. Why, then, asks
the objector, does man ever strive and struggle to change, to rise; a struggle
which involves the idea of improving his condition? The Hâjî answers, “Because
such is the Law under which man is born: it may be fierce as famine, cruel as
the grave, but man must obey it with blind obedience.” He does not enter into
the question whether life is worth living, whether man should elect to be born.
Yet his Eastern pessimism, which contrasts so sharply with the optimism of the
West, re-echoes the lines:

—a life,
With large results so little rife,
Though bearable seems hardly worth
This pomp of words, this pain of birth.

Life, whatever may be its consequence, is built upon a basis of sorrow.

Literature, the voice of humanity, and the verdict of mankind proclaim that all
existence is a state of sadness. The “physicians of the Soul” would save her
melancholy from degenerating into despair by doses of steadfast belief in the
presence of God, in the assurance of Immortality, and in visions of the final
victory of good. Were Hâjî Abdû a mere Theologist, he would add that Sin, not
the possibility of revolt, but the revolt itself against conscience, is the primary
form of evil, because it produces error, moral and intellectual. This man, who
omits to read the Conscience-law, however it may differ from the Society-law, is
guilty of negligence. That man, who obscures the light of Nature with
sophistries, becomes incapable of discerning
his own truths. In both cases error, deliberately adopted, is succeeded by
suffering which, we are told, comes in justice and benevolence as a warning, a
remedy, and a chastisement.

But the Pilgrim is dissatisfied with the idea that evil originates in the individual
actions of free agents, ourselves and others. This doctrine fails to account for its
characteristics,—essentiality and universality. That creatures endowed with the
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mere possibility of liberty should not always choose the Good appears natural.
But that of the milliards of human beings who have inhabited the Earth, not
one should have been found invariably to choose Good, proves how
insufficient is the solution. Hence no one believes in the existence of the
complete man under the present state of things. The Hâjî rejects all popular and
mythical explanation by the Fall of “Adam,” the innate depravity of human
nature, and the absolute perfection of certain Incarnations, which argues their
divinity. He can only wail over the prevalence of evil, assume its foundation to
be error, and purpose to abate it by unrooting that Ignorance which bears and
feeds it.

His “eschatology,” like that of the Soofis generally, is vague and shadowy. He
may lean towards the doctrine of Marc Aurelius, “The unripe grape, the ripe
and the dried: all things are changes not into nothing, but into that which is not
at present.” This is one of the monstruosa opinionum portenta mentioned by the
XIXth General Council, alias the First Council of the Vatican. But he only
accepts it with a limitation. He cleaves to the ethical, not to the intellectual,
worship of “Nature,” which moderns define to be an “unscientific and
imaginary synonym for the sum total of observed phenomena.” Consequently
he holds to the “dark and degrading doctrines of the Materialist,” the
“Hylotheist”; in opposition to the spiritualist, a distinction far more marked in
the West than in the East. Europe draws a hard, dry line between Spirit and
Matter: Asia does not.

Among us the Idealist objects to the Materialists that the latter cannot agree
upon fundamental points; that they cannot define what is an atom; that they
cannot account for the transformation of physical action and molecular motion
into consciousness; and vice versâ, that they cannot say what matter is; and, lastly,
that Berkeley and his school have proved the existence of spirit while denying
that of matter.

The Materialists reply that the want of agreement shows only a study
insufficiently advanced; that man cannot describe an atom, because he is still an
infant in science, yet there is no reason why his mature manhood should not
pass through error and incapacity to truth and knowledge; that consciousness
becomes a property of matter when certain conditions are present; that Hyle
({Greek: hylae}) or Matter may be provisionally defined as “phenomena with a
substructure of their own, transcendental and eternal, subject to the action,
direct or indirect, of the five senses, whilst its properties present themselves in
three states, the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous.” To casuistical Berkeley they
prefer the common sense of mankind. They ask the idealist and the spiritualist
why they cannot find names for themselves without borrowing from a “dark
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and degraded” school; why the former must call himself after his eye (idein); the
latter after his breath (spiritus)? Thus the Hâjî twits them with affixing their own
limitations to their own Almighty Power, and, as Socrates said, with bringing
down Heaven to the market-place.

Modern thought tends more and more to reject crude idealism and to support
the monistic theory, the double aspect, the transfigured realism. It discusses the
Nature of Things in Themselves. To the question, is there anything outside of
us which corresponds with our sensations? that is to say, is the whole world
simply “I,” they reply that obviously there is a something else; and that this
something else produces the brain-disturbance which is called sensation.
Instinct orders us to do something; Reason (the balance of faculties) directs; and
the strongest motive controls. Modern Science, by the discovery of Radiant
Matter, a fourth condition, seems to conciliate the two schools. “La découverte
d’un quatrième état de la matière,” says a Reviewer, “c’est la porte ouverte à
l’infini de ses transformations; c’est l’homme invisible et impalpable de meme
possible sans cesser d’être substantiel; c’est le monde des esprits entrant sans
absurdité dans la domaine des hypotheses scientifiques; c’est la possibilité pour
le matérialiste de croire à la vie d’outre tombe, sans renoncer au substratum
matériel qu’il croit nécessaire au maintien de l’individualité.”

With Hâjî Abdû the soul is not material, for that would be a contradiction of
terms. He regards it, with many moderns, as a state of things, not a thing; a
convenient word denoting the sense of personality, of individual identity. In its
ghostly signification he discovers an artificial dogma which could hardly belong
to the brutal savages of the Stone Age. He finds it in the funereal books of
ancient Egypt, whence probably it passed to the Zendavesta and the Vedas. In
the Hebrew Pentateuch, of which part is still attributed to Moses, it is unknown,
or, rather, it is deliberately ignored by the author or authors. The early
Christians could not agree upon the subject; Origen advocated the pre-existence
of men’s souls, supposing them to have been all created at one time and
successively embodied. Others make Spirit born with the hour of birth: and so
forth.

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But the brain-action or, if you so phrase it, the mind, is not confined to the
reasoning faculties; nor can we afford to ignore the sentiments, the affections
which are, perhaps, the most potent realities of life. Their loud affirmative voice
contrasts strongly with the titubant accents of the intellect. They seem to
demand a future life, even, a state of rewards and punishments from the Maker
of the world, the Ortolano Eterno,[1] the Potter of the East, the Watchmaker of
the West. They protest against the idea of annihilation. They revolt at the notion
of eternal parting from parents, kinsmen and friends. Yet the dogma of a future
life is by no means catholic and universal. The Anglo-European race apparently
cannot exist without it, and we have lately heard of the “Aryan Soul-land.”

[1] The Eternal Gardener: so the old inscription saying:—

locatus est in

Homo
{ damnatus est in
humatus est in
renatus est in
} horto

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On the other hand many of the Buddhist and even the Brahman Schools preach
Nirwâna (comparative non-existence) and Parinirwâna (absolute nothingness).
Moreover, the great Turanian family, actually occupying all Eastern Asia, has
ever ignored it; and the 200,000,000 of Chinese Confucians, the mass of the
nation, protest emphatically against the mainstay of the western creeds, because
it “unfits men for the business and duty of life by fixing their speculations on an
unknown world.” And even its votaries, in all ages, races and faiths, cannot deny
that the next world is a copy, more or less idealized, of the present; and that it
lacks a single particular savouring of originality. It is in fact a mere continuation;
and the continuation is “not proven.”

It is most hard to be a man;

and the Pilgrim’s sole consolation is in self-cultivation, and in the pleasures of

the affections. This sympathy may be an indirect self-love, a reflection of the
light of egotism: still it is so transferred as to imply a different system of
convictions. It requires a different name: to call benevolence “self-love” is to
make the fruit or flower not only depend upon a root for development (which
is true), but the very root itself (which is false). And, finally, his ideal is of the
highest: his praise is reserved for:
—Lives
Lived in obedience to the inner law
Which cannot alter.

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NOTE II

A few words concerning the Kasîdah itself. Our Hâjî begins with a mise-en-scène;
and takes leave of the Caravan setting out for Mecca. He sees the Wolf’s tail”
(Dum-i-gurg), the {Greek: lykaugés}, or wolf-gleam, the Diluculum, the Zodiacal
dawn-light, the first faint brushes of white radiating from below the Eastern
horizon. It is accompanied by the morning-breath (Dam-i-Subh), the current of
air, almost imperceptible except by the increase of cold, which Moslem
physiologists suppose to be the early prayer offered by Nature to the First
Cause. The Ghoul-i-Biyâbân (Desert-Demon) is evidently the personification of
man’s fears and of the dangers that surround travelling in the wilds. The “wold-
where-none-save-He (Allah)-can-dwell” is a great and terrible wilderness (Dasht-
i-lâ-siwâ Hu); and Allah’s Holy Hill is Arafât, near Mecca, which the Caravan
reaches after passing through Medina. The first section ends with a sore lament
that the “meetings of this world take place upon the highway of Separation”;
and the original also has:—

The chill of sorrow numbs my thought:

methinks I hear the passing knell;
As dies across yon thin blue line
the tinkling of the Camel-bell.

The next section quotes the various aspects under which Life appeared to the
wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First comes Hafiz, whose well-known
lines are quoted beginning with Shab-i-târîk o bîm-i-mauj, etc. Hûr is the plural
of Ahwar, in full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where
they should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly “Houries.” Follows
Umar-i-Khayyâm, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or Sooffeism, even as the Soofis
(Gnostics) spiritualized Moslem Puritanism. The verses alluded to are:—

You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse

I made a second marriage in my house,
Divorced old barren Reason from my bed
And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.
(St. 60, Mr. Fitzgerald’s translation.)

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Here “Wine” is used in its mystic sense of entranced Love for the Soul of Souls.
Umar was hated and feared because he spoke boldly when his brethren the
Soofis dealt in innuendoes. A third quotation has been trained into a likeness of
the “Hymn of Life,” despite the commonplace and the navrante vulgarité which
characterize the pseudo-Schiller-Anglo-American School. The same has been
done to the words of Isâ (Jesus); for the author, who is well-read in the Ingîl
(Evangel), evidently intended the allusion. Mansur el-Hallâj (the Cotton-
Cleaner) was stoned for crudely uttering the Pantheistic dogma Ana ‘l Hakk (I
am the Truth, i.e., God), wa laysa fi-jubbatî il’ Allah (and within my coat is nought
but God). His blood traced on the ground the first-quoted sentence. Lastly,
there is a quotation from “Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes,” etc.: here
{Greek: paîze} may mean sport; but the context determines the kind of sport
intended. The Zâhid is the literal believer in the letter of the Law, opposed to
the Soofi, who believes in its spirit: hence the former is called a Zâhiri
(outsider), and the latter a Bâtini, an insider. Moses is quoted because he ignored
future rewards and punishments. As regards the “two Eternities,” Persian and
Arab metaphysicians split Eternity, i.e., the negation of Time, into two halves,
Azal (beginninglessness) and Abad (endlessness); both being mere words,
gatherings of letters with a subjective significance. In English we use “Eternal”
(Æviternus, age-long, life-long) as loosely, by applying it to three distinct ideas;
(1) the habitual, in popular parlance; (2) the exempt from duration; and (3) the
everlasting, which embraces all duration. “Omniscience-Maker” is the old
Roman sceptic’s Homo fecit Deos.

The next section is one long wail over the contradictions, the mysteries, the
dark end, the infinite sorrowfulness of all existence, and the arcanum of grief
which, Luther said, underlies all life. As with Euripides “to live is to die, to die is
to live.” Hâjî Abdû borrows the Hindu idea of the human body. “It is a
mansion,” says Menu, “with bones for its beams and rafters; with nerves and
tendons for cords; with muscles and blood for cement; with skin for its outer
covering; filled with no sweet perfume, but loaded with impurities; a mansion
infested by age and sorrow; the seat of malady; harassed with pains; haunted
with the quality of darkness (Tama-guna), and incapable of standing.” The Pot
and Potter began with the ancient Egyptians. “Sitting as potter at the wheel,
Cneph (at Philæ) moulds clay, and gives the spirit of life to the nostrils of
Osiris.” Hence the Genesitic “breath.” Then we meet him in the Vedas, the
Being “by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is
fabricated.” We find him next in Jeremiah’s “Arise and go down unto the
Potter’s house,” etc. (xviii. 2), and lastly in Romans (ix. 20), “Hath not the
potter power over the clay?” No wonder that the first Hand who moulded the
man-mud is a lieu commun in Eastern thought. The “waste of agony” is

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Buddhism, or Schopenhauerism pure and simple, I have moulded “Earth on
Earth” upon “Seint Ysidre”‘s well-known rhymes (A.D. 1440):—

Erthe out of Erthe is wondirli wrouzt,

Erthe out of Erthe hath gete a dignity of nouzt,
Erthe upon Erthe hath sett all his thouzt
How that Erthe upon Erthe may be his brouzt, etc.

The “Camel-rider,” suggests Ossian, “yet a few years and the blast of the desert
comes.” The dromedary was chosen as Death’s vehicle by the Arabs, probably
because it bears the Bedouin’s corpse to the distant burial-ground, where he will
lie among his kith and kin. The end of this section reminds us of:—

How poor, how rich; how abject, how august,

How complicate, how wonderful is Man!

The Hâjî now passes to the results of his long and anxious thoughts: I have
purposely twisted his exordium into an echo of Milton:—

Till old experience doth attain

To something of prophetic strain.

He boldly declares that there is no God as man has created his Creator. Here he
is at one with modern thought:—”En général les croyants font le Dieu comme
ils sont eux-mêmes,” (says J. J. Rousseau, “Confessions,” I. 6): “les bons le font
bon: les méchants le font méchant: les dévots haineux et bilieux, ne voient que
l’enfer, parce qu’ils voudraient damner tout le monde; les âmes aimantes et
douces n’y croient guère; et l’un des étonnements dont je ne reviens pas est de
voir le bon Fénélon en parler dans son Télémaque comme s’il y croyoit tout de
bon: mais j’espère qu’il mentoit alors; car enfin quelque véridique qu’on soit, il
faut bien mentir quelquefois quand on est évêque.” “Man depicts himself in his
gods,” says Schiller. Hence the Naturgott, the deity of all ancient peoples, and
with which every system began, allowed and approved of actions distinctly
immoral, often diabolical. Belief became moralized only when the conscience of
the community, and with it of the individual items, began aspiring to its golden
age,—Perfection. “Dieu est le superlatif, dont le positif est l’homme,” says Carl
Vogt; meaning, that the popular idea of a numen is that of a magnified and non-
natural man.
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He then quotes his authorities. Buddha, whom the Catholic Church converted
to Saint Josaphat, refused to recognize Ishwara (the deity), on account of the
mystery of the “cruelty of things.” Schopenhauer, Miss Cobbe’s model
pessimist, who at the humblest distance represents Buddha in the world of
Western thought, found the vision of man’s unhappiness, irrespective of his
actions, so overpowering that he concluded the Supreme Will to be malevolent,
“heartless, cowardly, and arrogant.” Confucius, the “Throneless king, more
powerful than all kings,” denied a personal deity. The Epicurean idea rules the
China of the present day. “God is great, but he lives too far off,” say the
Turanian Santâls in Aryan India; and this is the general language of man in the
Turanian East.

Hâjî Abdû evidently holds that idolatry begins with a personal deity. And let us
note that the latter is deliberately denied by the “Thirty-nine Articles.” With
them God is “a Being without Parts (personality) or Passions.” He professes a
vague Agnosticism, and attributes popular faith to the fact that Timor fecit
Deos; “every religion being, without exception, the child of fear and ignorance”
(Carl Vogt). He now speaks as the “Drawer of the Wine,” the “Ancient
Taverner,” the “Old Magus,” the “Patron of the Mughân or Magians”; all titles
applied to the Soofi as opposed to the Zâhid. His “idols” are the eidola
(illusions) of Bacon, “having their foundations in the very constitution of man,”
and therefore appropriately called fabulæ. That “Nature’s Common Course” is
subject to various interpretation, may be easily proved. Aristotle was as great a
subverter as Alexander; but the quasi-prophetical Stagyrite of the Dark Ages,
who ruled the world till the end of the thirteenth century, became the “twice
execrable” of Martin Luther; and was finally abolished by Galileo and Newton.
Here I have excised two stanzas. The first is:—

Theories for truths, fable for fact;

system for science vex the thought
Life’s one great lesson you despise—
to know that all we know is nought.

This is in fact:—

Well didst thou say, Athena’s noblest son,

The most we know is nothing can be known.

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The next is:—

Essence and substance, sequence, cause,

beginning, ending, space and time,
These be the toys of manhood’s mind,
at once ridiculous and sublime.

He is not the only one who so regards “bothering Time and Space.” A late
definition of the “infinitely great,” viz., that the idea arises from denying form
to any figure; of the “infinitely small,” from refusing magnitude to any figure, is
a fair specimen of the “dismal science”—metaphysics.

Another omitted stanza reads:—

How canst thou, Phenomen! pretend

the Noumenon to mete and span?
Say which were easier probed and proved,
Absolute Being or mortal man?

One would think that he had read Kant on the “Knowable and the
Unknowable,” or had heard of the Yankee lady, who could “differentiate
between the Finite and the Infinite.” It is a common-place of the age, in the
West as well as the East, that Science is confined to phenomena, and cannot
reach the Noumena, the things themselves. This is the scholastic realism, the
“residuum of a bad metaphysic,” which deforms the system of Comte. With all
its pretensions, it simply means that there are, or can be conceived, things in
themselves (i.e., unrelated to thought); that we know them to exist; and, at the
same time, that we cannot know what they are. But who dares say “cannot”?
Who can measure man’s work when he shall be as superior to our present selves
as we are to the Cave-man of past time?
The “Chain of Universe” alludes to the Jain idea that the whole, consisting of
intellectual as well as of natural principles, existed from all eternity; and that it
has been subject to endless revolutions, whose causes are the inherent powers
of nature, intellectual as well as physical, without the intervention of a deity. But
the Poet ridicules the “non-human,” i.e., the not-ourselves, the negation of
ourselves and consequently a non-existence. Most Easterns confuse the
contradictories, in which one term stands for something, and the other for
nothing (e.g., ourselves and not-ourselves), with the contraries (e.g., rich and not-
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rich = poor), in which both terms express a something. So the positive-negative
“infinite” is not the complement of “finite,” but its negation. The Western man
derides the process by making “not-horse” the complementary entity of
“horse.” The Pilgrim ends with the favourite Soofi tenet that the five (six?)
senses are the doors of all human knowledge, and that no form of man,
incarnation of the deity, prophet, apostle or sage, has ever produced an idea not
conceived within his brain by the sole operation of these vulgar material agents.
Evidently he is neither spiritualist nor idealist.

He then proceeds to show that man depicts himself in his God, and that “God
is the racial expression”; a pedagogue on the Nile, an abstraction in India, and
an astrologer in Chaldæa; where Abraham, says Berosus (Josephus, Ant. I. 7, §
2, and II. 9, § 2) was “skilful in the celestial science.” He notices the Akârana-
Zamân (endless Time) of the Guebres, and the working dual, Hormuzd and
Ahriman. He brands the God of the Hebrews with pugnacity and cruelty. He
has heard of the beautiful creations of Greek fancy which, not attributing a
moral nature to the deity, included Theology in Physics; and which, like
Professor Tyndall, seemed to consider all matter everywhere alive. We have
adopted a very different Unitarianism; Theology, with its one Creator;
Pantheism with its “one Spirit’s plastic stress”; and Science with its one Energy.
He is hard upon Christianity and its “trinal God”: I have not softened his
expression ({Arabic} = a riddle), although it may offend readers. There is
nothing more enigmatical to the Moslem mind than Christian Trinitarianism: all
other objections they can get over, not this. Nor is he any lover of Islamism,
which, like Christianity, has its ascetic Hebraism and its Hellenic hedonism; with
the world of thought moving between these two extremes. The former, defined
as predominant or exclusive care for the practice of right, is represented by
Semitic and Arab influence, Korânic and Hadîsic. The latter, the religion of
humanity, a passion for life and light, for culture and intelligence; for art, poetry
and science, is represented in Islamism by the fondly and impiously-cherished
memory of the old Guebre kings and heroes, beauties, bards and sages. Hence
the mention of Zâl and his son Rostam; of Cyrus and of the Jâm-i-Jamshîd,
which may be translated either grail (cup) or mirror: it showed the whole world
within its rim; and hence it was called Jâm-i-Jehân-numâ (universe-exposing).
The contemptuous expressions about the diet of camel’s milk and the meat of
the Susmâr, or green lizard, are evidently quoted from Firdausi’s famous lines
beginning:—

Arab-râ be-jâî rasîd’est kâr.

The Hâjî is severe upon those who make of the Deity a Khwân-i-yaghmâ (or
tray of plunder) as the Persians phrase it. He looks upon the shepherds as men,
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 —Who rob the sheep themselves to clothe.

So Schopenhauer (Leben, etc., by Wilhelm Gewinner) furiously shows how the

“English nation ought to treat that set of hypocrites, imposters and money-
graspers, the clergy, that annually devours £3,500,000.”

The Hâjî broadly asserts that there is no Good and no Evil in the absolute sense
as man has made them. Here he is one with Pope:—

And spite of pride, in erring nature’s spite

One truth is clear—whatever is, is right.

Unfortunately the converse is just as true:—whatever is, is wrong. Khizr is the

Elijah who puzzled Milman. He represents the Soofi, the Bâtini, while Musâ
(Moses) is the Zâhid, the Zâhiri; and the strange adventures of the twain,
invented by the Jews, have been appropriated by the Moslems. He derides the
Freewill of man; and, like Diderot, he detects “pantaloon in a prelate, a satyr in
a president, a pig in a priest, an ostrich in a minister, and a goose in a chief
clerk.” He holds to Fortune, the{Greek: Túxae} of Alcman, which is, {Greek:
Eunomías te kaì Peithoûs adelphà kaì Promatheías thugátaer},—Chance, the
sister of Order and Trust, and the daughter of Forethought. The Scandinavian
Spinners of Fate were Urd (the Was, the Past), Verdandi (the Becoming, or
Present), and Skuld (the To-be, or Future). He alludes to Plato, who made the
Demiourgos create the worlds by the Logos (the Hebrew Dabar) or Creative
Word, through the Æons. These {Greek: Aìwnes} of the Mystics were spiritual
emanations from {Greek: Aìwn}, lit. a wave of influx, an age, period, or day;
hence the Latin ævum, and the Welsh Awen, the stream of inspiration falling
upon a bard. Basilides, the Egypto-Christian, made the Creator evolve seven
Æons or Pteromata (fulnesses); from two of whom, Wisdom and Power,
proceeded the 365 degrees of Angels. All were subject to a Prince of Heaven,
called Abraxas, who was himself under guidance of the chief Æon, Wisdom.
Others represent the first Cause to have produced an Æon or Pure Intelligence;
the first a second, and so forth till the tenth. This was material enough to affect
Hyle, which thereby assumed a spiritual form. Thus the two incompatibles
combined in the Scheme of Creation.

He denies the three ages of the Buddhists: the wholly happy; the happy mixed
with misery, and the miserable tinged with happiness,—the present. The
Zoroastrians had four, each of 3,000 years. In the first, Hormuzd, the good-god,
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ruled alone; then Ahriman, the bad-god, began to rule subserviently: in the third
both ruled equally; and in the last, now current, Ahriman has gained the day.

Against the popular idea that man has caused the misery of this world, he cites
the ages, when the Old Red Sandstone bred gigantic cannibal fishes; when the
Oolites produced the mighty reptile tyrants of air, earth, and sea; and when the
monsters of the Eocene and Miocene periods shook the ground with their
ponderous tread. And the world of waters is still a hideous scene of cruelty,
carnage, and destruction.

He declares Conscience to be a geographical and chronological accident. Thus

he answers the modern philosopher whose soul was overwhelmed by the
marvel and the awe of two things, “the starry heaven above and the moral law
within.” He makes the latter sense a development of the gregarious and social
instincts; and so travellers have observed that the moral is the last step in mental
progress. His Moors are the savage Dankali and other negroid tribes, who offer
a cup of milk with one hand and stab with the other. He translates literally the
Indian word Hâthî (an elephant), the animal with the Hâth (hand, or trunk).
Finally he alludes to the age of active volcanoes, the present, which is merely
temporary, the shifting of the Pole, and the spectacle to be seen from Mushtari,
or the planet Jupiter.

The Hâjî again asks the old, old question, What is Truth? And he answers
himself, after the fashion of the wise Emperor of China, “Truth hath not an
unchanging name.” A modern English writer says: “I have long been convinced
by the experience of my life, as a pioneer of various heterodoxies, which are
rapidly becoming orthodoxies, that nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or
given in the affections and intuitions; and that discussion and inquiry do little
more than feed temperament.” Our poet seems to mean that the Perceptions,
when they perceive truly, convey objective truth, which is universal; whereas the
Reflectives and the Sentiments, the working of the moral region, or the middle
lobe of the phrenologists, supplies only subjective truth, personal and
individual. Thus to one man the axiom, Opes irritamenta malorum, represents a
distinct fact; while another holds wealth to be an incentive for good. Evidently
both are right, according to their lights.

Hâjî Abdû cites Plato and Aristotle, as usual with Eastern songsters, who delight
in Mantik (logic). Here he appears to mean that a false proposition is as real a
proposition as one that is true. “Faith moves mountains” and “Manet immota
fides” are evidently quotations. He derides the teaching of the “First Council of
the Vatican” (cap. v.), “all the faithful are little children listening to the voice of

106
Saint Peter,” who is the “Prince of the Apostles.” He glances at the fancy of
certain modern physicists, “devotion is a definite molecular change in the
convolution of grey pulp.” He notices with contumely the riddle of which
Milton speaks so glibly, where the Dialoguists,

—reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.

In opposition to the orthodox Mohammedan tenets which make Man’s soul his
percipient Ego, an entity, a unity, the Soofi considers it a fancy, opposed to
body, which is a fact; at most a state of things, not a thing; a consensus of
faculties whereof our frames are but the phenomena. This is not contrary to
Genesitic legend.
The Hebrew Ruach and Arabic Ruh, now perverted to mean soul or spirit,
simply signify wind or breath, the outward and visible sign of life. Their later
schools are even more explicit. “For that which befalls man befalls beasts; as the
one dies, so does the other; they have all one death; all go unto one place”
(Eccles. iii. 19). But the modern soul, a nothing, a string of negations, a negative
in chief, is thus described in the Mahâbhârat: “It is indivisible, inconceivable,
inconceptible: it is eternal, universal, permanent, immovable: it is invisible and
unalterable.” Hence the modern spiritualism which, rejecting materialism, can
use only material language.

These, says the Hâjî, are mere sounds. He would not assert “Verba gignunt
verba,” but “Verba gignunt res,” a step further. The idea is Bacon’s “idola fori,
omnium molestissima,” the twofold illusions of language; either the names of
things that have no existence in fact, or the names of things whose idea is
confused and ill-defined.

He derives the Soul-idea from the “savage ghost” which Dr. Johnson defined to
be a “kind of shadowy being.” He justly remarks that it arose (perhaps) in
Egypt; and was not invented by the “People of the Book.” By this term
Moslems denote Jews and Christians who have a recognized revelation, while
their ignorance refuses it to Guebres, Hindus, and Confucians.

He evidently holds to the doctrine of progress. With him protoplasm is the

Yliastron, the Prima Materies. Our word matter is derived from the Sanskrit

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{Sanskrit} (mâtrâ), which, however, signifies properly the invisible type of
visible matter; in modern language, the substance distinct from the sum of its
physical and chemical properties. Thus, Mâtrâ exists only in thought, and is not
recognizable by the action of the five senses. His “Chain of Being” reminds us
of Prof. Huxley’s Pedigree of the Horse, Orohippus, Mesohippus, Meiohippus,
Protohippus, Pleiohippus, and Equus. He has evidently heard of modern
biology, or Hylozoism, which holds its quarter-million species of living beings,
animal and vegetable, to be progressive modifications of one great fundamental
unity, an unity of so-called “mental faculties” as well as of bodily structure. And
this is the jelly-speck. He scoffs at the popular idea that man is the great central
figure round which all things gyrate like marionettes; in fact, the
anthropocentric era of Draper, which, strange to say, lives by the side of the
telescope and the microscope. As man is of recent origin, and may end at an
early epoch of the macrocosm, so before his birth all things revolved round
nothing, and may continue to do so after his death.

The Hâjî, who elsewhere denounces “compound ignorance,” holds that all evil
comes from error; and that all knowledge has been developed by overthrowing
error, the ordinary channel of human thought. He ends this section with a great
truth. There are things which human Reason or Instinct matured, in its
undeveloped state, cannot master; but Reason is a Law to itself. Therefore we
are not bound to believe, or to attempt belief in, any thing which is contrary or
contradictory to Reason. Here he is diametrically opposed to Rome, who says,
“Do not appeal to History; that is private judgment. Do not appeal to Holy
Writ; that is heresy. Do not appeal to Reason; that is Rationalism.”

He holds with the Patriarchs of Hebrew Holy Writ, that the present life is all-
sufficient for an intellectual (not a sentimental) being; and, therefore, that there
is no want of a Heaven or a Hell. With far more contradiction the Western poet
sings:—

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self-place; but when we are in hell,
And where hell is there must we ever be,
And, to be short, when all this world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell which are not heaven.

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For what want is there of a Hell when all are pure? He enlarges upon the
ancient Buddhist theory, that Happiness and Misery are equally distributed
among men and beasts; some enjoy much and suffer much; others the reverse.
Hence Diderot declares, “Sober passions produce only the commonplace . . .
the man of moderate passion lives and dies like a brute.” And again we have the
half truth:—

That the mark of rank in nature

Is capacity for pain.

The latter implies an equal capacity for pleasure, and thus the balance is kept.

Hâjî Abdû then proceeds to show that Faith is an accident of birth. One of his
omitted distichs says:—

Race makes religion; true! but aye

upon the Maker acts the made,
A finite God, and infinite sin,
in lieu of raising man, degrade.

In a manner of dialogue he introduces the various races each fighting to

establish its own belief. The Frank (Christian) abuses the Hindu, who retorts
that he is of Mlenchha, mixed or impure, blood, a term applied to all non-
Hindus. The same is done by Nazarene and Mohammedan; by the Confucian,
who believes in nothing, and by the Soofi, who naturally has the last word. The
association of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph with the Trinity, in the Roman
and Greek Churches, makes many Moslems conclude that Christians believe
not in three but in five Persons. So an Englishman writes of the early Fathers,
“They not only said that 3 = 1, and that 1 = 3: they professed to explain how
that curious arithmetical combination had been brought about. The Indivisible
had been divided, and yet was not divided: it was divisible, and yet it was
indivisible; black was white and white was black; and yet there were not two
colours but one colour; and whoever did not believe it would be damned.” The
Arab quotation runs in the original:—

Ahsanu ‘l-Makâni l’ il-Fatâ ‘l-Jehannamu

The best of places for (the generous) youth is Gehenna.

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Gehenna, alias Jahim, being the fiery place of eternal punishment. And the
second saying, Al- nâr wa lâ ‘l-’Ar—”Fire (of Hell) rather than Shame,”—is
equally condemned by the Koranist. The Gustâkhi (insolence) of Fate is the
expression of Umar-i-Khayyam (St. xxx):—

What, without asking hither hurried whence?

And, without asking whither hurried hence!
Oh many a cup of this forbidden wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence.

Soofistically, the word means “the coquetry of the beloved one,” the divinæ
particula auræ. And the section ends with Pope’s:—

He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.

CONCLUSION

Here the Hâjî ends his practical study of mankind. The image of Destiny playing
with men as pieces is a view common amongst Easterns. His idea of wisdom is
once more Pope’s:—

And all our knowledge is ourselves to know.

(Essay IV. 398.)

Regret, i.e., repentance, was one of the forty-two deadly sins of the Ancient
Egyptians. “Thou shalt not consume thy heart,” says the Ritual of the Dead, the
negative justification of the soul or ghost (Lepsius “Alteste Texte des
Todtenbuchs”). We have borrowed competitive examination from the Chinese;
and, in these morbid days of weak introspection and retrospection, we might
learn wisdom from the sturdy old Khemites. When he sings “Abjure the Why
and seek the How,” he refers to the old Scholastic difference of the Demonstratio
propter quid (why is a thing?), as opposed to Demonstratio quia (i.e. that a thing is).
The “great Man” shall end with becoming deathless, as Shakespeare says in his
noble sonnet:—
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then!

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Like the great Pagans, the Hâjî holds that man was born good, while the
Christian, “tormented by the things divine,” cleaves to the comforting doctrine
of innate sinfulness. Hence the universal tenet, that man should do good in
order to gain by it here or hereafter; the “enlightened selfishness,” that says, Act
well and get compound interest in a future state. The allusion to the “Theist-
word” apparently means that the votaries of a personal Deity must believe in
the absolute foreknowledge of the Omniscient in particulars as in generals. The
Rule of Law emancipates man; and its exceptions are the gaps left by his
ignorance. The wail over the fallen flower, etc., reminds us of the Pulambal
(Lamentations) of the Anti-Brahminical writer, “Pathira-Giriyâr.” The allusion
to Mâyâ is from Dâs Kabîr:—

Mâyâ mare, na man mare, mar mar gayâ, sarîr.

Illusion dies, the mind dies not though dead and gone
the flesh.

Nirwâna, I have said, is partial extinction by being merged in the Supreme, not
to be confounded with Pari-nirwâna or absolute annihilation. In the former
also, dying gives birth to a new being, the embodiment of karma (deeds), good
and evil, done in the countless ages of transmigration.

Here ends my share of the work. On the whole it has been considerable. I have
omitted, as has been seen, sundry stanzas, and I have changed the order of
others. The text has nowhere been translated verbatim; in fact, a familiar
European turn has been given to many sentiments which were judged too
Oriental. As the metre adopted by Hâjî Abdû was the Bahr Tawîl (long verse), I
thought it advisable to preserve that peculiarity, and to fringe it with the rough,
unobtrusive rhyme of the original.

Vive, valeque!

111
112
 THE GATE WITHIN THE GATE
A translation of that German copy assembled from fragments of much antiquity.

Presented here is the text of the poem portion taken from the “the gate within
the gate” pamphlet edition of the Necronomicon, it is one of the shorter
versions and is somewhat typical of the smaller cult published editions intended
for distribution to their new recruits.
The spotty translation within the work reveals clearly the fragmentary or
damaged nature of the source from which it was made, most likely these
fragments were two or more surviving parts of different editions, that had been
combined and translated into a German copy, from which this English
translation was later derived.

Moon 1

Moving silent through the noiseless choir of the spheres,

Jewel bedecked the black veiled queen,
with thin alabaster smile of pale lunar glow,
begs we grace the calm hour with our story,
a pleasant diversion for a traveler.

So let my voice join in with the hairy tailed ghoul on distant hills,
as they pay respect with song to the false dawns firmament.

I state plainly here upon this bleak carcosa shore,

ours is not the first to travel this way, for others have come before,
and we journey not alone even upon the wild wastes,
for as we stand poised here betwixt night and daylights dawn,
others stand between the solid and the insubstantial.
Their unseen forms still merged into what was, what is, and what will be,
they are without division, in them time and space remains as one.

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The gate within the gate,
the key within the key,
the gatekeeper within the gatekeeper.
thus the sage spoke, all are one within oneness.
For he knows from whence they came,
and where they may yet come again.
And where they wander still unseen.

Incense is burnt to them, yet comprehending them not,

man worships only the masks bestowed upon mans slumbering intellect.

But now let dawn’s aura swiftly come upon her ruby clad feet,
she glides along horizons sunlight paved road.
The tide of night has turned and ebbed and gone.
The awakening wind murmurs its azif greetings,
and with many dint and din we answer back welcoming another day,
strike down the forest of wooden poles and fold the tents away.

Yet in such bleak expanses who watches our hands at labor now,
or beheld through the night our city of emerald cloth?

Quadath in the dreary waste holds knowledge of them, and Iram with its many-
columns tells their tales, but what living man knows now of Quadath or Iram?

Their manner is etched in stone high upon chill desert Leng,

and sunken low in gloomy cold kelp glen.

but what living man has seen the cold ruins, or the tulgey seaweed shrouded
cradle of leviathan?
Where slumbering lords of the sea, swaddled in their cold scales, with bleary eye
gaze faintly back from the murky depths. In such deathly cold slumber down

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through the ages what sights may yet be dreamed, perchance dreams of
ascending reborn to warmer airy lands of life.

Fie! Another pang upon the heart, the black veiled queen has long left, and now
the Saffron prince of morning grows into noon’s high king in ragged yellow.

For us, springs youth turns to Autumnal gold, strange how life decrees this day
a day, that day another day, and for us those two spheres shall never meet.

We meet and part; yet never the same two persons shall meet again, for times
sly trick turns us into other men.

We tread along our narrow span of time, to left and right unseen they were, are,
and will be, to them our passing is naught but the tolling of a bell.

Moon 2

In this nethermost wilderness of the earth,

here carved by slow passing of oceans worth
of water beyond fathoming,
here where none may dwell but they, what visionary pasts revive? what process
of the years shapes this earth anew? That guided intelligence of nature, which is
held by no head.

Gazing upwards to the thin blue cleft that reveals the far-off sky, whence these
spectral shadows spring to our saddened sight.
why haunt our minds with ghosts of thoughts, of Whence and Whither, When
and How?
Wisely did the sage say, joyful is the tomb where the last mourners now
slumber, and joyful is the fallen town where Death turns all to ash (whose
people are as ash).

Here we are perched on now’s point of time, between two eternities (past and
future),

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Whose dark secrets gathering round with black profound (regret of past and
fear of future) oppresses our sight.

For the sage hastens not from such cavern earth, but broods upon the serpents
wisdom, till out of these dim moldering realms burrowed through the earth, like
a seed, life’s vigor springs anew reaching up into the daylight world.

The beasts, those numerous dull scavengers of the fields, born of mortal flesh
destined only to return to dust, with vexed brow lowered to the earth whereof
they be, seek their pleasures.
But we that have learned to walk, we that otherwise did crawl like beasts in
infancy, did raise ourselves up, yet, how much does the heart still share in
common with such creatures of the fields?

Moon 3

Of this life what can we see? Only that which comes between cradle and
grave.

Yet chained by fears of what yet may be, or clinging to promises of better
fortune yet to come, we waste the hour of our life away.

Fie, fie! Up on the dark back of mountain night, the horned silver moon rides,
and for a brief moment we as shadows dance in moonbeam glow.

The vanity of vanities, said the sage, all is vanity. For what final profit has the
man of all his toil under the sun?
Why bow beneath such phantom yoke? Why allow oneself to be pulled about
like Marionette by such imaginary strings?

What conceit, to believe the universe should be bothered to impart a final

reward or punishment upon thee!

A king may as well declare a celebration in honor of a mote of dust, or

condemn it to dismal oubliette.
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Such a king is a mad king, and such a god is a mad god.

Life is naught but mote of dust caught briefly in sunray, from out of darkness
and dirt it did drift, and then back to darkness and dirt it returns.

And like so many motes of dust that came before, that which has been is what
will be, and what was done is what will be done, for under this sun cast ray
there is no new thing.

Wisely did the sage say, one generation passes away, another comes, but the Old
ones abide ceaselessly.
The sun arose and the sun goes down, and hastens back to its place where it
arose.

Like intoxicated revelers these motes of dust dance upon sunbeams,

but fleeting as daylights ebbing hour, one by one they slip away back to shadow,
while this weary pilgrim lingers upon this lonely Carcosa shore.

We think in youthful folly that we have all the time we please, but age soon with
slow progression betrays how swiftly days do flow away.

We look upon the deaths of others as but the fall of blossom petals from the
bough, yet to our own we see it as an ending of the tree.

What we know is scarcely even a mote of dust, compared to the mountain of

Knowledge still awaiting discovery.
Yet scarcely have we time to breath the alpine air of those uncharted vistas,
when times cold uncaring hands usher us away.

To strive for praise, is to strive In Vain, specks exchanging hollow flattery, for
how brief is that glowing moment played out upon the sunbeam.

Yet why lament our predicament, if we must dance upon the brink of perilous
dark abyss, while round us pipes the music of irrational gods, then dance with
joy this short-lived moment, safe in knowing there is no final fate but that
which we ourselves design.
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Moon 4

Many a moon the sage has seen, toiling long through the nights, yet what
understanding does this reach?

Let dawns light observe what we will do, for the stars now fade when night is
through.

Know that your gods be none but manmade artifice affronts, like dull black lead
weights crafted by fallible hand of man, with which we measure the self-worth
of others upon the perceived scales of life.

For there is no ape-made god; the bigger stronger brute to lead (intended pun?)
the tribe, such gods are born from our weak simian social fears, seeking safety
in servitude to stronger brutes, and when the strongest brute in the social chain
found none above them but the silent shadowy unknown of infinity, they driven
by force of habit invented another to fill the empty place, and with dull
unoriginality forged the missing link.

The ape exchanged the unknown Infinite for a measure stick, a hairy god king
as wooden ruler to gauge and judge each measure of worthiness. Another tool
clutched in rough simian hand.

Yet before such manmade affronts, older things did dwell primal and serene
undimensioned in their time.

Then why must we strive to meter our image against such phantasms of
thought, and plead for grace and forgiveness from a nonexistent figment?

The primal cause, the causing cause, unnamed perplexing riddle, this enigma
suits me well, vague as a gentle breeze, the dark unseen mystery, like fleeting toll
of distant bell.

Why should one ask for more? Would you make a mask into a god, till
confusion take and you cannot tell between a mask and a true face.
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And what of your pears long since departed along the path that you and I now
wend our way.

Deaths winnowing wings brood over life, while we feign to think we a choice in
wheat and chafe.

Moon 5

There is not a good, there is not a bad. These each be a whim of our own
personal thoughts.
For what we think helps us, we claim is good, and what we think hurts us we
claim is bad.

In time these labels change with place and society, and every act has in course
of life been praised both as holy virtue, and condemned as vilest sin.

Long before man first did stir upon the earth, this world was stage to countless
pains and deaths, where monstrous life rent and tore itself in ragged twisting
shreds, blood spilt in gushing waves to slake the thirsting maw of ponderous
beasts.

This young earth was only fit for brood of fearsome monster spawn, a land
burnt by fiery sun, or frozen under frost, or else turned to muddy quagmire
with each new downpour.

While overhead, plodding across the firmament, the fiery king in ragged robes
was trailed by ghostly orb of ruined alabaster stone.

What use are thoughts of good or evil to monstrous creatures in such a land?
Those giant blood drenched beasts wilder then wolf or bear.

These elder masters of the earth went their way, becoming memory and dust.

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Then up rose the balding ape to lay claim upon a land where once leviathans did
ruled,
and that by capricious course of time may yet rule again.

Moon 6

With warp of lies and woof of truth, mortal man weaves his thoughts;
threads that shift and dance like images upon water, or are vague and fleeting as
the mist rising into the sky.
Weaving till he cannot see beyond his own woven veil of self-deceit. And once
the curtain is finally done, now cast the shadow show of wishful shams upon
the woven screen.

Trapped behind barricade of projected expectations, seeing life as a

phantasmagoric shadow play, then must we amid such flat silhouettes die?

With our false expectations, frustrated desire is all that we can comprehend.
Such Arrogance to think the world is what our fancy would paint it.

Cast aside wishful expectations; plumb the depth beyond such mirrored
reflections of the mind.
The infinite depths beyond, such is a more fitting measure stick to revere.

Would you settle to worship the heaven mirrored upon the waters surface, that
counterfeit reflection hiding unseen depths beneath?
Or will you descend into those dark occulted baptism waters, to find a deeper
truth, the jeweled treasure of Leviathan.

Where no man can say, nor earth-mother did ever bare, among immeasurable
cold dark reaches behind the false firmament.

Come sit you here by the lichgate where the roses glow, and ponder upon those
unseen depths beyond.

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Silent sarcophagus ships sailing across the trackless wastes of cold dark night
sea.

Moon 7

What is it that makes a man a man? The infinitely insignificant spec of Soul,
that point of view fixed within the encompassing universe?

Can this be ones source, how one begins? Or is it something else, something
harder to describe?

Where was fixed the soul of the savage beast, who in primeval forests dwelt?
What shape had it? Where was its dwelling place? Was the breath of Life for
them enough to animate the earthly instrument of body?

From dawn of time the thread of life has been spun, what we call soul is of old,
from the dampness of the earth (dew and earth) begun.

The ladder of life we climb stands with either end hidden from our human eyes,
with foot shrouded below in chaos-gloom, and head obscured high beyond the
canopy of sky.

And all that has come by this design is of progression natural. Why would we
waste our life’s breath on hate and fear, or waste it upon love and awe.

Should not the honor go to that which from the worst crafts the best?
The workman’s hand that shapes rough earth to mirror the minds vision.

Indeed the more disagreeable the substance, the more skill must originate in the
workers hand: to mold with craft uneven earth into golden elegance.

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Moon 8

How should the man balance his daily affairs, so that the years may pass in
harmony and fullness?
When the twilight sparkle of evening star of this life, hangs upon the rising
shroud of that dark night, how can the mortal dismiss the stings of death? Or
disdainfully ignore the triumph of the grave?

If blossom petal fallen from the bough shall never again hang upon the tree,
then what future hope has a man when he to from the tree of life is dropt?

The broken dish may be repaired; the lute riven may sound once more;
But what can mend this clay of man? To return his stolen breath?

We die, and Death is as one doom for both men and brutes.
All life’s toils and troubles, want and woe, at length these struggles lead only to a
doomed oblivion Rest.

Can you understand those of old, who stood with foot both in hell and heaven,
to find in life your own hell or heaven, as you chose in your life to use or misuse
it?

Without remorse death comes, we pled that only life not end in nothing, alas no
mater how valiant the struggle, all crowns in death are made as nil.

Death bringer of equality to all; by death even the king’s banquet chalice is
drained, empty as the beggar’s alms plate.

Love longs for the warmth of life beyond the grave, Vain hope taunts us with
wishful fancies of more permanent abodes to come, yet grounded reason
admonishes such black lotus dreams.

For what is yet to come, who can speak with firsthand conviction; only the
hollow echo reply of our own promises come to haunt that silent night.

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What we perceive in our daily toils is scarcely worth idle banter, an infantile
burbling.

Their tales told, in dusty fragments the old ones now rest. Those Lords long
passed, our questions of heaven and hell yet unanswered.

In bygone days, what of those towering monstrous beasts that arched overhead
against the sky, whose blood drenched cannibalistic jaws served for grave.

Who gave such unwholesome permission to such brutes? As beasts they dwelt,
and as beasts they died, beyond the grasp of any decency.

Their rotting bones no longer murmur with breath of life, or array with skin and
blood their skeletal remains. Wrapped within earth they now rest; our modern
moral judgments unheeded.

Moon 9

The moon shines clearly, white as spilt milk at which a thousand young
shadows sip. Silhouettes cut from the cloth of night by luminous lantern orb.

On fleeting shadows do not squander your hard work, leave each to their own
ends.
Refrain from servitude to others edifice structures, stand apart and with bare
truth give honor to your own ideal.

For enthroned upon their cold mountain, the gods do sit def and silent.
To us mortals, the gods unhearing and unspeaking, sleep away the days.

So be thy own deliverance, unbound as gusting breeze that heralds a storm:

Against Ignorance rise up in arms, and fight to know thy true self.

Seek only what your own aspirations hold; seek no approval from others.
Unbound from lock and chain, as king of your own mind govern your thoughts.

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So in this brief life you may strive to perfect your mind. To learn the noblest
lore, that all we know is a meager mote of dust.

All other ways in life are like a circling carousel, to muddle the thought and
dazzle the eye with each passing phantom mount.
Till life slips away unnoticed in the sigh of breath, an echoed whisper, the toll of
distant bell.

124
 THE TABLETS OF ENOCH
Olaf Vermius, translator
Being a recounting of all that was before and in the time of Enoch son of Cain. Here
translated from the Greek inscriptions, after manner and in comparison of learned scholarship
first established by the high and mighty Prince James, King of Great Britain, France, and
Ireland, Defender of the faith, &c.

Forward by Ambrose Bertram Hunter.

The translation by Olaf Vermiuslxxiv printed here in modernized form is from
the Greek “Nod stones”, also better known as the “tablets of Enoch”,
inscriptions purported by fringe occultists to have been an early-unedited
version of the same mythic tales from which the biblical book of Genesis was
derived. If such claims surrounding the suppressed heretical Greek work were
true, it could go a long way in explaining some of the oddities found in more
modern renditions of the book of Genesis.
However here we are mostly concerned with only how these quaint fairytales
are connected with and what light they can shed on the Necronomicon and
those themes depicted in the varied illustrated editions.
In compilations of occult lore that contain the Necronomicon poem, it is
common to also find included a rendition of these “tablets of Enoch”
sometimes elaborated upon with commentary or brief footnotes.
Aside from covering an ancient creation myth, the tablets of Enoch also
mention a calling voice rendered here as “Azif” and the “nine lunacy psalms”, it
is these psalms that are sighted by fringe occultists as an origin of the
Necronomicon poem, here with a history traced back to the first city built by
humankind, a rather daring yet intriguing leap in speculative theory.

Tablet I
In the beginning was created the heaven and the earthlxxv.

And the earth was without form, and voidlxxvi; and darkness was upon the face
of the deep. And Spiritslxxvii moved upon the face of this floating realm.

And there light arose from the depths.

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And the Spirits saw the light, that it was good: and so was divided the light from
the darkness.

And the Spirits called the light Day, and the darkness they called Night. And the
evening and the morning were the first daylxxviii.

And the Spirits said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the floating realm,
and let it divide the outer space from the inner spacelxxix.

And the Spirits made the firmament, and divided the floating realm which were
under the firmament from the floating realm which were above the firmament:
and it was so.

And the Spirits called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning
were the second day.

And the Spirits said, Let the inner floating realm under the heaven be gathered
together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

And the Spirits called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the
floating realm they called Seas: and the Spirits saw that it was goodlxxx.

And the Spirits said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and
the fruit tree yielding fruit each after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the
earth: and it was so.

And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the
tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and the Spirits saw
that it was goodlxxxi.

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And the Spirits said, Let there be lights in the misted firmament of the heaven
to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and
for days, and years:

126
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the
earth: and it was so.

And the Spirits made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the
lesser light to rule the night: they made the stars also.

And the Spirits set them in the thinning firmament mists of the heaven to give
light upon the earth,

And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the
darkness: and they saw that it was goodlxxxii.

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

And the Spirits said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature
that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of
heavenlxxxiii.

And the Spirits created great whales, and every living creature that moveth,
which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged
fowl after his kind: and the Spirits saw that it was good.

And the Spirits blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters
in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

And the Spirits said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind,
cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

And the Spirits made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their
kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and the Spirits
saw that it was goodlxxxiv.

And the Spirits said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
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over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earthlxxxv.

So the Spirits created man in their own image, in the image of the Spirits created
they him; male and female, strong Adamlxxxvi and stainless Lilith created they
them.

And the Spirits blessed them, and the Spirits said unto them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that
moveth upon the earth.

And the Spirits said, Behold, we have given you every herb bearing seed, which
is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree
yielding seed; to you it shall be for meatlxxxvii.

And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing
that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, we have given every green
herb for meat: and it was so.

And the Spirits saw every thing that they had made, and, behold, it was very
good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day the Spirits ended their work, which they had made; and
they rested on the seventh day from all the work, which they had made.

And the Spirits blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it they
had rested from all the work which they created and made.

Of these Spirits was one of angry and jealous nature, whose name is forbidden,
stricken from record after the offence that he did to the other Spirits.

And so he is called Yahweh, The unnamed banished one, the bloodthirsty

destroyer, despoiler of Eden, and protector of his seed Cain.

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For in temperament like that of his chosen son Cain, it was prophesized the
estranged Yahweh would return to overthrow and seize power from his brother
Spirits, in a doom that would bring death to the very earth.

Tablet II
These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were
created, in the day that the earth and the heavens were made,

and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field
before it grew: for the Spirits had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there
was not a man to till the ground.

But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the
ground.

And the Spirits formed man of the dust of the ground for flesh, the dew water
for blood, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living soul.

And Yahweh jealously planted a garden secretly eastward in Eden away from his
brother Sprits command; and there while his brother Spirits were resting, he put
the man whom they had formed.

And out of the ground Yahweh made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the
sight, and good for food; Yahweh did embezzle and place the tree of life also in
the midst of the garden, and likewise the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was
parted, and became into four heads.

The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of
Havilah, where there is gold;

And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

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And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the
whole land of Ethiopia.

And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the
east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

And Yahweh took the man as slave, and put him into the garden of Eden to
dress it and to keep it.

And Yahweh commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou
mayest freely eat:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in
the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely dielxxxviii.

And Yahweh said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him
an help mate for him.

And out of the ground Yahweh formed every beast of the field, and every fowl
of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them when
he knew them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the
name thereof.

And Adam knew and gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to
every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found any helpmate fully
pleasing to all his desireslxxxix.

And Yahweh caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and Yahweh
took one of the ribs of Adam, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

And the rib, which Yahweh had taken from man, made he a lady, and brought
her unto the man.

And Adam said, This is now sister bone of my bones, and sister flesh of my
flesh: and she was called Womanxc, because she was taken out of Manxci.

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And they were both naked toiling as slaves, the man and the woman, and were
not ashamed for they knew not.

Tablet III
Now Yahweh and his coveting ways had vexed the other Spirits so, that the
Spirit Samael more subtle and cunning than any ordinary beast of the field was
sent to follow in form of a serpent and learn of Yahweh and his doings.

And in following he found Lilith busy alone and asked, why do you sport with
yourself alonexcii, where is Adam thy mate?

And he went in unto Lilith, and she conceived, and she bare a daughter who
was called Awan, and Lilith now satisfied did tell Samael of Adam leaving with
Yahweh.

So the serpent followed Yahweh into the secret garden, and watched Yahweh
finish the garden and the creation of the new woman to help Man toil.

And the cunning serpent said, we shall teach Yahweh the folly of his way, his
theft and enslavement of what was made in image of free Spirits is at an end!
And unto the new woman the serpent said, Yea, hath Yahweh said, Ye shall not
eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of
the garden:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, Yahweh hath
said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

For Yahweh doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be
opened, and ye shall be as wise as the Spirits, knowing good and evil.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was
pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the
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fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did
eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked as
slaves toiling; and they sewed the large leaves together, and made themselves
garments of concealmentxciii.

And they heard the voice of Yahweh walking in the garden in the cool of the
day: and Adam and his wife clothed in leaves hid themselves from the presence
of Yahweh amongst the trees of the garden.

And Yahweh called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?xciv

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because thou
made me toil naked as a slave; and so I hide myself.

And Yahweh said, Who told thee that thou wast a naked slave? Hast thou eaten
of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me
of the tree, and I did eat.

And Yahweh said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the
woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

And Yahweh said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed
above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; no longer shall you fly, upon
thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and
her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heelxcv.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception;
in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee.

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And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy
wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt
not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all
the days of thy life;

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb
of the field;

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground;
for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Unto Adam also and to his wife did Yahweh now make piebald coats of skins,
and clothed themxcvi.

And Yahweh said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and
evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and
eat, and live for ever:

Therefore Yahweh sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground
from whence he was taken.

So he drove out the man, and kept the woman closexcvii; and taking up the tree
of life, Yahweh smote the garden with a flaming sword so others might not
partake there ofxcviii.

And he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and there also the
flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of lifexcix.

And Yahweh came in unto the wife of Adam, and she conceived, and bare Cain,
and said, I have gotten a man from Yahweh.

And it came to pass that Adam and his wife took off their garments of piebald
colors, and left the coats apart to deceive Yahweh, so Adam knew his wifec, and
she again bare a son, Cain’s brother Abel. And Adam called his wife’s name
Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
And for this transgression Yahweh did wound Adam upon the thigh and sent
him to tend the flocksci.
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And Able went with Adam to tend the flockscii, but Cain stayed with Yahweh to
till the groundciii.

Tablet IV
Now Yahweh was angry that the free man Adam was fruitful and did multiply
with Eve, and Yahweh said, man now to has become a creator, we shall set our
seed against his that ours may rise up and slay this son of Adam.

And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the
ground an offering unto Yahweh.

And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.
And Yahweh had respect unto Abel and to his offering:

But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth,
and his countenance fell.

And Yahweh said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance
fallen?

If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin
lieth at the doorciv. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over
him. And so Cain sought to rule sin, and bring a respectable blood sacrifice as
was done by his brother Abel

And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in
the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

And Yahweh said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I care
not: I am not my brother’s guardian, for behold I am become his slayer!

And Yahweh said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth
unto me from the ground. And seeing, Yahweh had respect for Cain and this
new blood offering.

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Then Yahweh said to Cain, now you will estrange yourself from the earth,
which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand

Like a restless wanderer now go, leave the toiling of your land, Gather Abel’s
flock and bear my work into the wild abandoned lands east beyond Eden, for
you have done right in my eyes and shall do much more in my name.

And Cain said unto Yahweh, this command is greater than I can bear.

Behold, thou doth drive me out this day from the face of this earth; and from
thy face to shall I depart; and I shall be like a fugitive and a vagabond in the
earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall seek to slay
me.

And Yahweh said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall
be taken on him sevenfold. And Yahweh set his mark upon Cain, lest any
finding him should kill himcv.

And Cain went out from the presence of Yahweh, and dwelt in the land of
Nod, on the east of Eden.

And Cain took as wife Awan, the daughter of Lilith and the Serpent. And Cain
knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch:

and Cain builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his
son, Enoch. And Cain minted there coins in celebration of his new heir, with
family seals Yahshuah and Leviathan upon the facescvi.

And under moonlight Enoch heard the Elder onescvii calling azif, and then was
composed the nine lunacy psalmscviii.

And Yahweh came in unto Eve again; and she bare a son, and called his name
Seth: For Yahweh, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel,
whom Cain slew.

And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos:
then began men to call upon the name of Yahwehcix.
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And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, the
Spirits seeing the tree of knowledge was with the garden burnt, that man could
no longer eat of its fruit for wisdom; the Spirits all said, what shall now become
of man?

And looking east beyond the burnt garden ruins from where they watched, did
see the daughters of men; and the Spirits said, as the serpent instructed Eve we
will go amongst them and teach.

For to teach a man, is to educate an individual, but with each daughter of man
we teach, a family is educated.

And the Spirits together did banish Yahweh, and forbade his name, taking all
his horded acquisitions, and they took them his wives of all which they chose.

Departing, Yahweh said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, I shall send
them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle: for length
of days shall they not have.

And as I smote with hot fire the garden, I shall soon return and smite all the
earth with cold water, that by this all shall be made anew for myself.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the Spirits
came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same
became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

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The Wealth of Enoch
A brief overview of the Finance, salary, economics, numerals and
alphabet in fabled Nod.
In the ancient world salt determined the fate of empires, the wealth and
influence of a kingdom hinged upon the supply of salt. Salt was a difficult to
obtain resource, and formed one of the prime movers of both national
economies and wars.
One of the very few essentials to life, it was the ability of this desirable food
seasoning to preserve food, that reduced mankind’s early limitations caused by
their dependence upon the seasonal availability of food.
Compact preserved foods that were easy to transport made for faster long-
distance travel, and also opened up areas where food would otherwise have
been too scarce.
Needing an organized infrastructure to support and protect production, salt
could be thought of as a foundation of early civilization, a foundation that
spread and grew along the trade routes of the early salt merchants.
This is why it is said the oldest substance of commerce in Nod was common
salt (NaCl, sodium chloride), a commodity whose quantity and quality were
easily standardized and thus a convenient article of trade or barter. This use as
common base barter item lead to the creation of small salt cakes, cookie sized
lumps of salt with hallmark stamps impressed on their tops to show the weight
of the individual salt cakes.
These stamp markings removed the trouble of having to check weighing the salt
cakes for every small transaction, and made a standardized system by which
more rare luxuries and resources could be easily priced, their worth measured in
an amount of common salt cakes. This exchange rate was the “salt standard”.
An item or service of exceptional quality was described as “worth its salt”.
Tradition says the oldest and most common standardized metal coins to have
been used in mythical Nod were the “Melach” (meh’-lakh), a name derived
from the old biblical word for common salt. These early metallic coins acted as
alternate replacement tokens for the larger and more cumbersome Salt cakes. A
large sum of coins was measured in stacks, each full stack of coins was called a
“pillar”, or “ntsiyb” (nets-eeb’) a name derived from the old biblical word for a
pillar.
For example, an aging wife that was having second thoughts about going with
her daughters and husband to breed like rabbits in the mountains (away from
the closed-minded city folk that would frown on such acts), could be sold into
slavery for a “ntsiyb” of “Melach” coins, money to purchase drinks for the

137
mountain orgy (supposedly this is the fabled basis behind the mythic fate of
Lot’s wifecx).

The drunken orgy -- Hendrik Goltzius, “Lot and his Daughters”, c.1616.

Melach coins are said in the myths to have been first minted in the city-state of
Enoch, made in celebration of the birth of the first heir to the throne, who was
also called Enoch.
The faces of the coin, each stamped with a royal family clan seal of the king and
queen, Cain and Awan, one to each side.
A loophole by the outer boarder provided an easy means for threading upon a
lanyard to carry, or for sewing onto garments.

138
 Figure 2: rendition of the ancient clan seals from an Enoch “Melach” coin. Top
“Thummim” Truth (emet) face, bottom “Arrim” Falshood (sheqer) face.
The letter Šin is placed over the head of the man, forming part of the
Pentagrammaton. The Pentagrammaton is the five-letter name made from the
four letters of the Tetragrammaton, with the added letter of Yahweh’s
protection, the solar letter Šin placed in the center.
This is the marked name Yahshuah, the family name of Yahweh’s chosen son
Cain, when he took the letter Šin mark and went east to Nod.

139
Figure 3: Evolution of Enoch numerals from inscribed letters, to final written numbers.
According to the tradition surrounding the Enoch city myth, above at top are
shown the letters from the Enoch alphabet that doubled as numbers within
their antediluvian system of sacred mathematics, descending below each is a
column showing how each number over time was supposedly adapted and
evolved from the inscribed script, for faster use in drawn calligraphy of the
Enoch numerology.
The letters are obviously a variation upon the ancient Phoenician style of
alphabet, one might at first scoff at the apparent cherry picking of the letters,
thinking they were modern choices, chosen for shapes most easily adapted to
match our modern Hindu-Arabic derived numerals.
However this secret order of letter selection can also be found preserved
elsewhere hidden in the apocrypha “The Book of Enoch” were it tells of the
descent of angelic spirits to earth.

And they were in all two hundred; who descended [in the days] of Jared on the
summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had
sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.
And these are the names of their leaders: Sêmîazâz, their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl,
Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl, Armârôs, Batârêl,
Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl. These are their chiefs of
tens.
--translation by R.H. Charles, “The Book of Enoch”, 1917.

140
You will note that 19 chiefs of ten are listed, yet the text claims “in all two
hundred” descended, the math here is purposefully confused in order to draw
attention to a hidden importance.
If each of the angel leaders has ten other angles following him, that makes 190
followers (19 x 10 = 190) under the command of the 19 leaders, when counted
altogether, this makes for two hundred and nine (190 followers + 19 leaders =
209 angels), that is nine more then what was said to have descended. This is the
clue that nine (9) out of this group of nineteen (19) named leaders are
somehow special and should stand apart from the rest.

What is not mentioned is that these 19 angel “leaders” are actually letters, letters
from the early Phoenician derived Hebrew alphabet, the Paleo-Hebrew script.
To better conceal this point, only the letters up to the last important letter/angel
needs listed.
This proposed code scheme is revealed clearly when out of the first list of
spirits, only nine are given detailed attributes that set them aside from the
others.
And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates,
and made known to them the metals <of the earth> and the art of working them,
and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the
eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all coloring tinctures.
And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led
astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and
root-cuttings, Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl (taught) astrology,
Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, <Araqiêl the signs
of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun>, and Sariêl the course of the moon.
--translation by R.H. Charles, “The Book of Enoch”, 1917.

Hidden in the opening of the book of Enoch is a code that provides nine spirit
names, with a letter, and a number, intended to correspond with the Nine Gates
found in demonology and the Necronomicon.
This story of the angels descent and teaching is really just an encoded vehicle
for transmitting a predecessor of our modern numeric system, for use in
complex mathematics, what we take for granted in modern education was in the
past, part of the valued occult mysteries transmitted to the select chosen few.

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A full list of the letters and their attributed significances.
Spirit name Letter Shape Letter Name Hidden numeral
Sêmîazâz Aleph 1

Arâkîba/Araqiêl Beth 2

Râmêêl/Azâzêl Gimel 3

Kôkabîêl Dalet 4

Tâmîêl He -

Râmîêl vav -

Dânêl Zayin -

Êzêqêêl Heth 5

Barâqîjâl Teth 6

Asâêl Yodh -

Armârôs Kaph 7

Batârêl Lamedh -

Anânêl Mem -

Zaqîêl Nun -

Samsâpêêl Samekh 8

Satarêl Ayin -

Tûrêl Pe -

Jômjâêl Tsade -

Sariêl Qoph 9

Bezalîêl Resh -

Yahweh Šin 0 “crown of Cain”

Messiah Tav Cross mark

The banished forbidden Yahweh provides the numeral of the non-present, the
signifier of nothing, the empty place number “Zero”, and the crown of kingship
bestowed upon Cain, a “king nothing”, the Fool card from the Tarot.

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While on the subject of the letter Sin and numerals, it should be noted that the
mathematician Lewis Carroll in his suppressed episode which was removed
from ‘Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There’ (1817), Carroll makes
a daring allusion to the King in Yellow theme, using a clever word puzzle to
hide with a touch of humor the true occult identity of his disheveled character
“the Wasp in a wig”.
Like his riddle poem about apples on a wall, the answer to Carroll’s puzzle can
be unraveled by simply splitting the word Wasp into parts, separating the first
letter from the rest, much in the way a Jabberwocky would be taken care of.
And thus with the head or wig letter W in hand the rest is beamishly clear.
The Wasp is a golden Egyptian “asp” serpent, described with anthropomorphic
lizard like limbs and reptilian claws, crowned with the W shaped Hebrew letter
Sin, making “W-asp”, the pointy letter Sin shape here plays as both poison teeth
(snake fangs) and Egyptian wig with Uraeus cobra crown.
The flat-headed “W-asp” serpent remarks upon Alice’s round head as better
suited for a wig, and his better suited for biting things, when it says.
“your wig fits very well,” the Wasp murmured, looking at her with an expression of
admiration: “it’s the shape of your head as does it. Your jaws aint well shaped,
though—I should think you couldn’t bite well?”
This “W-asp” figure is related to both the biblical brazen serpent of Moses, and
the Ouroboros dragon, and is an occult sign of the guardian atop the cross of
the letter Tav at the threshold of sovereignty (Golgotha).
And explains why this old serpent with a golden wig/crown resting uneasily
upon his head, waits upon the threshold of the last hurdle of Alice’s journey
from beginning to end (from Aleph to Tav), a threshold which Alice must cross
before she may gain her own crown as a proper queen, the gold crown “one
eye” of zero that according to a personal remark of the “W-asp”, would suit
Alice well.

143
144
 Revelation of the Yellow Sign
Reprinted here in modernized form is a work of as yet undetermined
providence, which appears unaccredited at the end of both the “novena
requiem for ways long ceased” and “Pale lunacy- the book of moons” pamphlet
editions of the Necronomicon.

MYSTERY+BABYLON

NOW
I
SEE
A
SON

Revelation of the Yellow Sign

And in the clear morning air I looked, and yet, beheld, the horned door was
opened high on the firmament:

And a startling voice as if of a shepherd’s horn proclaimed,

“King Ix, where is your crown of Null oblivion, your Rod and Orbs of state, to
govern over your subjects six?
Gather up your ragged golden robes, majesty come arise, ascend the rungs, for
great is the lesson I shall show”.
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And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne;
was there set in the firmament, and one sat on the throne.

And it that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone:
and there was a rainbow arrayed round about the throne, in sight like unto an
emerald.

And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I
saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on
their heads crowns of gold.

And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices:
and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne,

And before the throne there was a sea like of glass or like unto crystal: and in
the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of
eyes before and behind.

And the first beast had the semblance of a lion, and the second beast like a calf,
and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying
eagle.

And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him;
and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying,

“thrice, sanctified, sanctified, sanctified, Ouroboros Almighty, which was, and

is, and is yet to come, knowing where the ancient lords rode through of old, and
where they shall ride through again.”

And when those beasts give glory and honor and thanks,
The four and twenty elders fall down before that which sat on the throne,

and worship that which dwells for ever and ever,

146
and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

Thou art worthy, O Almighty, to receive glory and honor and power:
for thou hast brought all these things to be, and for thy pleasure they are and
were created.

And I saw in the right hand of that which sat on the throne;
a tome covered with glyphs, sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a mighty spirit proclaiming with a loud voice;

“Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?”

And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth,

was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.

And my heart was much grieved, because no man was found worthy, to open
the book, or to look thereon.

And one of the elders saith unto me, “lament not:

be watchful, and behold the accuser doth return risen reborn,

the young horned beast approaches like a roaring lion,

with gapping red wound like mouth, hanging open in search of food,

for the devourer shall succeed to overcome and loose the seven seals thereof.”

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts,
and in the midst of the elders, stood a thing which had the semblance of a
Lamb,

drenched in blood of much slaughter, having seven horns and seven eyescxi.
And he came and took the book out of the right hand of it that sat upon the
throne.

147
And when it had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell
down before the Lamb,
having every one of them harps, and golden chalices full of sweetly perfumed
red blood, sweet as the prayers of saints.

And they sung a new song, saying,

“Thou art worthy to obtain the book, and to open the seals thereof:

for thou long dead, yet thou hast redeemed us the seed of thy blood,
out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;

And hast made us unto our way sovereign and minister:

and as we bow now, by this shall we yet reign on the earth.”

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many spirits round about the throne and
the beasts and the elders:
and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands
of thousands;

Saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was departed, to receive
power,
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and renown, and glory, and blessing .”

And every creature, which is in heaven, and on the earth,

and under the earth, and such as are in the sea,

and all that are in them, heard I saying,

“Blessing, and renown, and glory, and power,

be unto that which sitteth upon the throne,

and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.”

148
And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down
and worshipped Tempus which is for ever and ever.

And it was that when the Lamb opened the first of the seven great seals, the
rumble of tempest thunder boomed forth, while the first beast did call out in
clear voice, “Come and see”.

And I saw, the semblance of a white horse: and the lord that sat on him held a
bow;
and there was given unto him a great crown: and he went forth conquering, and
to conquer.

And when the Lamb opened the second seal,

I heard the second beast call out in clear voice, “Come and see”.

And lo, I beheld the semblance of another horse that was red:
and power was given to the lord that sat thereon to take peace from the earth,

and that they should kill one another:

and there was given unto him a great sword.

And when the Lamb had opened the third seal,

I heard the third beast call out in clear voice, “Come and see”.

And lo, I beheld, the semblance of a black horse;

and the lord that sat there upon had a pair of balances in his hand.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for
a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil
and the wine.

And when the Lamb had opened the fourth seal,

I heard the fourth beast call out in clear voice, “Come and see”.

149
And I looked, and behold a pale horse:
and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

And authority over the four corners of the earth was granted unto these four
lords, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts
of the earth.

And when the Lamb had opened the fifth seal, I saw rise up;
those who had lain as dead, hidden low even in holy ashes,

black as soot, them that retained their teaching hidden,

and the evidence which they held safe from destruction:

And they called out in clear voice, saying, “How long, O Lamb, sanctified and
true,
dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that wronged us so?”

And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them,
that they could now rest for a little time , and see all that was yet to pass and be
fulfilled.

And lo, when the Lamb had opened the sixth seal,
I beheld a luminous star fall from the heavens, down unto the earth:

It having the semblance of a Lady sitting upon a scarlet dragon;

A beast of blasphemous names, with seven heads and ten horns.

And on the Lady’s forehead, her tiara bore the inscription,

“MYSTERY+BABYLON”, for she was the mistress of the Lamb, a Great
Queen Mother of a thousand young, and gateway of divinity.

The Lady was dressed in a purple cope over scarlet gown, clasped at her bosom
with morse of gold and precious stones and pearls;

150
having in her hand a golden chalice full of sweetly perfumed red blood, potent
as the lasciviousness of earthly beasts.

I saw the Lady drunken with the sweetly perfumed red blood, sweet as the
prayers of saints. And every toast she made, the chalice rang like a tolling bell.

And the Lamb came in unto the Lady, and to her grace was given a key in shape
of a burning sword, to strike the ground to unlock the way of the seven walled
Garden long buried.

Bright like a candle shone the sword, and with it the Lady smote the ground,
and did unlocked the pit of the abyss, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the
smoke from a burning furnace.

Blazing with the power of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew
tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath the name Apollyon .

Then in the greatness of the Quake ruins; the sun and the air upon the plane
darkened with the smoke of the pit,
and the moon became as blood, and there followed hail stones and blood red
coals of fire,

and these were cast upon the earth: And the sky folded upon itself;
and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

And the mighty of earth sought to hide themselves in dens under the
mountains,
and they said;

“let the red dawn surmise what we shall do,

When the blue starlight dies and all is through.
For the great day of wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”

And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal,

Silence covered the heavens.
151
And the Lady raised her chalice bell, and her sword bright as a candle flame;
and taking up the book which the Lamb had laid open, she uttered what was
written there in.

With a loud voice like seven thunders, she did utter the seven forbidden
mysteries; an anathema song fearful and terrible to proclaim upon the darkling
plane.
And thus shone the Yellow sign.

152
End Notes

iIt should be noted that in most editions the verse is traditionally divided into nine sections,
stanzas, or chapters, among the assorted editions various terms have been used to title these
section headings, including “verse”, “moons”, “Luna”, “gates”, “porticos”, or “doors”, and even
the names of nine fallen angles as found in the book of Enoch.
Often in the illustrated editions, each chapter plate is accompanied with an encoded magical ritual
or formula for practical workings intended to unlock or reveal hidden meanings to the initiate.
In the fragment of an unfinished story, Lovecraft appears to make the following reference to the
nine sections.
Then came the first scratching and fumbling at the dormer window that looked out high above the other
roofs of the city. It came as I droned aloud the ninth verse of that primal lay, and I knew amidst my
shudders what it meant. For he who passes the gateways always wins a shadow, and never again can he
be alone. I had evoked—and the book was indeed all I had suspected.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Book” story fragment, 1933.
In Latin the use of “Luna” can mean the moon, night, or a month. This perhaps could be viewed
as a symbolic gestation of nine months, the length of the work, leading to a metaphorical birth of
occult insight.
iiIn the illustrated editions this mention of four elements is usually accompanied with four
characters or signs, as the examples show below, these vary in appearance depending upon the
illustration style and quality, but all share in common a numeric sequence of 2, 1, 4, 3 (“Voor”,
“Kish”, “Koth”, and “Elder”).

153
on the surface this code sequence and associated ritual instructions would appear as just a lot of
mumbo-jumbo, however with the help of a little insight it is said to point out to an initiate, and
unlock the fifth hidden sign that rules over the elements of the material world, if an initiate
starting out upon the first step of their journey (standing at the place of 1), should reach forth to
place the point of a curved blade (sickle, scythe, or scimitar) upon the numbers and then does
trace out the sequence upon the tablet of demonology, the sign of the desired destination goal will
be revealed there unto them.

With curved scimitar, and traced lines, the encoded sign of Capricorn is revealed.
You may have noticed at the top the use of four of the five Appalachian Cipher twig Runes.

Appalachian Cipher Twig Runes (or “ACT Runes”), their number, and the Necronomicon
attributed names are as follows, 0 “Yhe” or “Yahweh”, 1 “Kish”, 2 “Voor”, 3 “Elder”, and 4
“Koth”.
In regular use as a method of code writing, the Cipher twig Runes are placed in pairs, each pair
representing a single encoded letter, the first rune in each pair gives the chosen Att (letter group),
the second rune in each pair gives the number of the encoded letter in that Att (letter group).
Below is an example guide as used with the Latin alphabet, Note that the letter V is used here to
represent both V and U in writing.
1st Cipher twig Rune gives the
0 1 2 3 4
Att group.
Latin Alphabet. ABCDE FGHIJ KLMNO PQRST VWXYZ
2nd Cipher twig Rune gives the
01234 01234 01234 01234 01234
place in the group.

iii “Kingly element”, “Quintessence”.

iv “Trail”, “line”, “road”.
v Compare this talk of a mysterious tenuous fifth dimension with the following sonnet.
XXXVI. Continuity
There is in certain ancient things a trace
154
 Of some dim essence - more than form or weight;
A tenuous aether, indeterminate,
Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.
A faint, veiled sign of continuities
That outward eyes can never quite descry;
Of locked dimensions harbouring years gone by,
And out of reach except for hidden keys.

It moves me most when slanting sunbeams glow

On old farm buildings set against a hill,
And paint with life the shapes which linger still
From centuries less a dream than this we know.
In that strange light I feel I am not far
From the fixt mass whose sides the ages are.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “Fungi from Yuggoth”, 1929-30.
vi “Adulterated”, “poisoned”, “tainted”, “corrupted” or “darkened”.
viiSatyr - hairy one. Mentioned in Greek mythology as a creature composed of a man and a goat, supposed to
inhabit wild and desolate regions. The Hebrew word is rendered also “goat” (Lev. 4:24) and “devil”, i.e., an idol
in the form of a goat (17:7; 2 Chr. 11:15). When it is said (Isa. 13:21; comp. 34:14) “the satyrs shall dance
there,” the meaning is that the place referred to shall become a desolate waste. Some render the Hebrew word
“baboon,” a species of which is found in Babylonia.
--Easton’s 1897 Bible Dictionary.
Lovecraft writes this as “The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their
viii

consciousness.” --H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”, 1928.

ixLovecraft writes this as “They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand
that smites.” --H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”, 1928.
x This cryptic statement of a key may be the same key and hidden way to which H.P. Lovecraft
alludes in the following sonnet.
III. The Key
I do not know what windings in the waste
Of those strange sea-lanes brought me home once more,
But on my porch I trembled, white with haste
To get inside and bolt the heavy door.
I had the book that told the hidden way
Across the void and through the space-hung screens
That hold the undimensioned worlds at bay,
And keep lost aeons to their own demesnes.

155
 At last the key was mine to those vague visions
Of sunset spires and twilight woods that brood
Dim in the gulfs beyond this earth’s precisions,
Lurking as memories of infinitude.
The key was mine, but as I sat there mumbling,
The attic window shook with a faint fumbling.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “Fungi from Yuggoth”, 1929-30.
xi In both the “Alte Könige der neun Türen.” And the “Nine gates through the valley of
shadows” editions, the opening title engravings include the motif of a serpent crowned by fifteen
solar rays, and flanked by moon and star. Both are similar to, or perhaps are copies of an
illustration of a carving from a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon’s “L’antiquité expliquée et
représentée en figures” pictured below.

This trinity made by crescent moon, morning star, and rising beast serpent (Moon, Venus, Sun)
when added to the fifteen emanating sunrays, makes eighteen notable features (3 + 15 = 18).
The numeral shapes of 18 also may be seen in the pose of the serpent. The upright neck and lion
head making the shape of the one, and the double loop below as the shape of a sideways figure
eight, cock and balls, the newly awoken mind has “morning wood” (a slang expression), cock
crowing at dawn, libido raised, the potent creative energy of soul and spirit elevated. In “Nine
gates through the valley of shadows” edition, around the serpent is written, “let the radiance of a
pure heart burst forth to consume the wicked” (which brings to mind the notable “chestburster”
of modern science fiction fame).
This title of “time, devourer of all things” occurs in the “Liber IX Mortis” edition as “tempus
xii

edax rerum”. Which brings to mind the following poem by Edgar Allen Poe.
Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

156
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama- oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out- out are the lights- out all!

And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
--Edgar Allan Poe, “The Conqueror Worm”, 1843.
157
 On the subject of strange unseen men in the wind, or dream forces riding by, gusting and
xiii

eddying the air.

XIV. Star-Winds
It is a certain hour of twilight glooms,
Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours
Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,
But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.
The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,
And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,
Heeding geometries of outer space,
While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.

This is the hour when moonstruck poets know

What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents
And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents,
Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.
Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,
A dozen more of ours they sweep away!
--H.P. Lovecraft, “Fungi from Yuggoth”, 1929-30.
“shaken ground”, “place of downfall ruin”, “haunted land”, “gulf rend in matter”, “torn gulf”,
xiv

“shimmering gate”, “quivering gate”, “vibrating gate”, “dark city of gates”, “twilight Inquanok”,
“onyx dim ruins”, “onyx dim Kadath”, “wizards black ring”, “Qadath Arcanus”, “Enoch”.
Among the varied editions, this part here appears to be indicating a shimmering desert mirage of
an ancient city ruins.
It is important to note here, that the etymology of the word “onyx” is thought by some scholars
to have been borrowed into Greek from the Assyrian word “unku”, where it simply meant a ring,
so the phrase “Onyx dim” may not in fact be referring exclusively to a type of dark gem stone,
but rather could be the result of poor translation choice, a better translation may perhaps be “ring
in dim ruins” or “round portal shadowed/shrouded in fallen ruins”, or maybe even “the heavens
reflected by shimmering water in deep crumbling well”.
xv“Thule”, “barren region”, “desert”, “desolate tract”, “waste”, “wasteland”, or “Xul” (from
Latin “Lux” written backwards, pronounced “zool”, rhymes with cool, a title given to mean that
which hides away, guards or keeps the “gate” or “bringing forth” generative power of the gods).
xvi “in Quake, the cold wilderness of twilight has known such caravans”.
xviiLovecraft describes a vision of such a gulf rend portal upon a frozen desolation, in the
following quote from his short story “Nyarlathotep”.
for as we stalked out on the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows.
Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where lay a gulf all the blacker for
its glittering walls. The column seemed very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the gulf. I lingered
behind, for the black rift in the green-litten snow was frightful, and I thought I had heard the
reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished; but my power to linger was slight. As

158
 if beckoned by those who had gone before, I half-floated between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and
afraid, into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “Nyarlathotep”, 1920.
Compare this talk of a shimmering gateway and city, followed closely afterwards by the
xviii

mention of a “flaming Elder Sign”, with the following sonnet.

XXXV. Evening Star
I saw it from that hidden, silent place
Where the old wood half shuts the meadow in.
It shone through all the sunset’s glories - thin
At first, but with a slowly brightening face.
Night came, and that lone beacon, amber-hued,
Beat on my sight as never it did of old;
The evening star - but grown a thousandfold
More haunting in this hush and solitude.

It traced strange pictures on the quivering air -

Half-memories that had always filled my eyes -
Vast towers and gardens; curious seas and skies
Of some dim life - I never could tell where.
But now I knew that through the cosmic dome
Those rays were calling from my far, lost home.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “Fungi from Yuggoth”, 1929-30.
xix “Thule”, “barren region”, “desert”, “desolate tract”, “waste”, “wasteland”, “plateau of Leng”.
xx “spires”, “pinnacles”, “monoliths”, “tall rocks”.
“imprinted”, “marked”, “stamped”, Lovecraft writes this as “Kadath in the cold waste hath known
xxi

Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones
whereon Their seal is engraved” --H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror” 1928.
xxii“dead city”, “necropolis”, “sepulture city”. Compare this talk here and above of ruins and dead
cities, with the embellished rendition by Burton and his own use of a capitalized spelling for the
word quake.
The Quake that comes in eyelid’s beat
to ruin, level, ‘gulf and kill,
This would appear to point to Burton knowing at least one of the versions where the fallen city
“Kadath” or “twilight Inquanok” goes by the plain name of its fate “Quake”, though in his own
rendition he places this in chapter five.
can also be translated as “or that water Entombed tower”, “or that sepulture tower beneath in
xxiii

the abysmal sea”.

Lovecraft describes the discovery of such a long sunken prehistoric city, recently raised from
xxiv

the depths of the ocean, in his short story “the Call of Cthulhu”.

159
 driven ahead by curiosity in their captured yacht under Johansen’s command, the men sight a great stone
pillar sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47°9’, W. Longitude l23°43’, come upon a coastline
of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible
substance of earth’s supreme terror - the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless
aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay
great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles
incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the
faithfull to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. All this Johansen did not suspect, but
God knows he soon saw enough!
I suppose that only a single mountain-top, the hideous monolith-crowned citadel whereon great Cthulhu
was buried, actually emerged from the waters. When I think of the extent of all that may be brooding
down there I almost wish to kill myself forthwith. Johansen and his men were awed by the cosmic
majesty of this dripping Babylon of elder daemons, and must have guessed without guidance that it was
nothing of this or of any sane planet.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, 1928.
xxv“Cthulhu”, “Lord Leviathan”, “Kraken”, “Ka-Thule-Hu”, “Klaatulu”, “Tulu”, “Capricornus”,
“Lusca”, “Jörmungandr”. This talk of a lord of the abyss brings to mind the following poem by
Alfred Tennyson
Below the giant thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the lumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
-- Alfred Tennyson, “The Kraken”, 1830.
“there dreams his dreams” could be translated alternately as “Lays in likeness of sleep”. In the
xxvi

“Liber IX Mortis” edition this part is rendered as “Klaatvlv barada nicto” a quotation of
supposedly ancient pre-Sumerian Mummu ritual language, which accordingly translates as, Klaa
(“divine”, “celestial”, or “majestic”), tv-lv (“fallen-one”, “sunken-one”, or “one who descended”),
barada (“may yet”, or “with time”), nicto (“arise”, “be revived”, or “be risen”).
Lovecraft writes this as “Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly” --H.P.
xxvii

Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”, 1928.

160
 Lovecraft writes this as “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange æons death may die. --
xxviii

H.P. Lovecraft, “The Nameless City”, 1921.

Later versions by Lovecraft of this quote always read, “even death may die”.
While studying this section, one cannot help but note a strikingly similar tone and themes to that
of the opening verse of the poem by Dylan Thomas “And death shall have no dominion”.
Some of the themes the poem by Dylan Thomas shares in common with the Necronomicon
include, madness as sanity, a man or voices in the wind connected with a moon, deaths own
demise, and a perseverance and an aquatic resurrection from sunken depths, when the stars are
right.
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
--Dylan Thomas, poem excerpt quoted from “And death shall have no dominion”, 1933.
xxixIn the printed pamphlet “novena requiem for ways long ceased”, the name “Baphomet” is
used instead of “Mendes”. In the printed pamphlet “Nine gates through the valley of shadows”
instead of a name it makes do with a plain “You Goat rider!”
xxxThe connotations among the varied editions for this line seem to suggest a “coitus more
ferarum” theme used as an indecent expletive exclamation, Lovecraft writes this line as “Iä! Shub-
Niggurath!” --H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”, 1928.
In his stories, Shub-Niggurath was a beastly fertility deity connected with the image of a “black
goat of the woods”.
xxxi “Conduct”, “manner”, “thought”, “reflection”, “rites”.
xxxii “Tainted”, “impure”, “darkened”, “shadowed”.
xxxiii Eight years.
Some have speculated that this mention of a strange sign was the inspiration for R. W.
xxxiv

Chambers special “Yellow Sign”.

xxxv “drawn”, “engraved”, “written”.
xxxviThis mention of a sign is most often connected with the “Elder seal star” of ritual magic, also
called the “flaming eye”, “cat eye star”, “pussy star”, or a “Dina” blossom (Dina from the Sanskrit
word meaning “day”, used as a Tantric Maithuna sign). When used as a talisman it is most
commonly inlaid in bright “flashing” yellow or gold upon a black background. Note that some
have pointed out that if the middle eye is “Dina” then the two crescents could be called
“snowdrop” and “kitty” (Solve et Coagula, a keymaster and a gatekeeper).

161
 “Elder seal star” symbol of ritual magic.
While on the subject of time, it should be noted that the obscure code word LCF is often to
xxxvii

be found depicted in the varied illustrated editions.

The key to this code word is found in the basic cabala method of assigning each alphabet letter a
numeric value, each according to its place within the alphabet.
L = twelfth letter, C = third letter, and F = sixth letter of the Roman alphabet, these three letters
are each then intended to be placed on one of the four cardinal points round a clock face, with
letters matched to their number value upon the clock face, leaving the fourth left-hand (sinister)
place of nine o’clock empty, the occupant of this place is the hidden answer to this occult riddle.
If we follow the number code sequence above, the hidden occupant of the empty nine o’clock
place would be the letter I, the ninth letter of the Roman alphabet, a letter of a dawning self-
realization, receptor of Illumination, it is the “tower of ascent to the sun” or fourth seal “Koth”,
and the central flaming eye gateway in the Elder seal star, a “Babel” tower gateway of the gods.
This clock face letter arrangement is most clearly shown hinted at in the “De viis inferni” edition.

162
 Detail of plate from the “De viis inferni” edition, showing the LCF Letters in the background.
xxxviii “Fissure”, “chasm”, “Vaults of Zin”.
xxxix Deep and very ancient caves or caverns.
xl “Quiet”, “silent”, “still”, “dead”, “deathly still”.
xli “Quiet”, “silent”, “still”, “dead”, “deathly still”.
This appears to be a direct reference to the act of using a covering of fresh charcoal to mask
xlii

the person’s scent and to camouflage the form at night, or it may be a more abstract reference to
the servants or “Dark young” of Shub-Niggurath.
This sounds reminiscent of the energetic phenomena of the psychic or paranormal energy
xliii

“serpent” found in Kundalini yoga meditation, and New Age practices.

This “crawl in shame” appears to be indicating not so much a lacking of spiritual
xliv

righteousness, but rather actual physical disabilities or abnormalities, that by use of craft are
overcome, much as legends of old hags and cripples acquiring exceptional strength, mobility, or
even the power of flight through use of black magic.
Several verses here bear a striking similarity to ones from the Bible “Ecclesiastes”, such as this
xlv

one which is the twin verse to Ecclesiastes 1:2.

Another similarity is also to be found in the theme of an insight into madness, for the King James
Bible translation of Ecclesiastes 1:17 reads “And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness
and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.”
The Webster’s Bible translation of Ecclesiastes 1:17 reads “I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to
know madness and folly. I perceived that this also was a chasing after wind.”
Some have speculated that it is this mention of a king dressed in yellow that may have inspired
xlvi

R. W. Chambers mysterious “King in Yellow”.

xlvii “Celebration”, “party”, “ball”.

163
xlviii Twin verse to Ecclesiastes 1:9.
xlix Twin verse to Ecclesiastes 1:4.
l Twin verse to Ecclesiastes 1:5.
li “On the dawns-light shore”, “on dawns shore”.
In the pamphlet edition “Knocking on cyclopean doors”, this appears as “Like barley corn
lii

growing up the mountain slope, reaching towards far off thin alpine air”.
liii “Speck”, “star”, “meteor”, “shooting star”.
liv Compare this talk of “music of the mad gods” with the following sonnet.
XXII. Azathoth
Out in the mindless void the daemon bore me,
Past the bright clusters of dimensioned space,
Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,
But only Chaos, without form or place.
Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered
Things he had dreamed but could not understand,
While near him shapeless bat-things flopped and fluttered
In idiot vortices that ray-streams fanned.

They danced insanely to the high, thin whining

Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,
Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining
Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law.
“I am His Messenger,” the daemon said,
As in contempt he struck his Master’s head.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “Fungi from Yuggoth”, 1929-30.
lvIn R. W. Chambers novel “The King in Yellow” (published in 1895), This same verse appears at
the beginning of the story “The Yellow Sign”, I have chosen here to use his rendition of the
verse. This same verse also appears in the undated anonymous work “Revalation of the Yellow
Sign”.
Rendered as “krake” in “Alte Könige der neun Türen”. Krake is a Scandinavian word designating an
lvi

unhealthy animal, or something twisted. In modern German, Krake (plural: Kraken) means
octopus, but can also refer to the legendary Kraken of Norse myth.
While modern fancy would want to interpret this “serpentine beings” as indicating Dinosaurs,
lvii

it must be remembered this comes from a source written before the notion of Dinosaurs entered
popular scientific understanding, alternate yet equally viable translation of this expression would
be “curving” or “bending” and “entities” or “monstrosities”, or more technically “entities of non-
Euclidean geometry”.
lviii “Cocoon shroud of mixed Truth and Lies, cloth mans naked form, a self-made pall veil.”
lix Compare with the following

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 So instead of the poems I had hoped for, there came only a shuddering blackness and ineffable
loneliness; and I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had ever dared to breathe before - the
unwhisperable secret of secrets - the fact that this city of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation
of Old New York as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite
dead, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have
nothing to do with it as it was in life.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “He”, 1925.
lx “Honor”, “worship”, or “give reverence” would also work here.
lxi “Heaven”, “celestial abode”.
lxii “Sink”, “submerge”, “descend”.
lxiii “Clay”, “stony ground”, “flint”.
lxivIn the pamphlet “Knocking on cyclopean doors” this part appears as “What hand harvests the
soul at death? What dwells within the tomb after the spirit has departed? What locks the Gate beneath the
serpent’s eye?”
In the pamphlet “Au Clair de Lune” this section also contains the following “in lingua mortua,
lxv

mortui vivos docent; per coitum cum mortuis, finis vitae sed non amoris.”
lxvi Lovecraft wrote of one such return of ancient Lords.
That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great
Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to
know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good
and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy.
Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy
themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.
--H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, 1928.
lxvii In the book “Noctiluca” this is rendered “ab luce noctiluca, veni, venias tenebrae”.
In the pamphlet edition “Knocking on cyclopean doors” the following is used instead “Peaceful is
the sunny world, the horrors secreted away: but by moons lantern glow, out from every direction swarms a
masquerade of demonic forms: like wind they are heard, chanting low, or wailing high like flutes, and dash like
cymbals the waters edge upon seashore.”
In the “Liber IX Mortis” edition the following similar passage appears “Silet per diem universus, nec
sine horrore secretus est; lucet nocturnis ignibus, chorus Aegipanum undique personatur: audiuntur et cantus
tibiarum, et tinnitus cymbalorum per oram maritimam.” This Latin excerpt also appears in chapter 24 of
Gaius Julius Solinus book “De mirabilibus mundi” (The wonders of the world) 3rd century A.D.
and also is quoted by Arthur Machen in his novella “The Great God Pan”.
Villiers turned to the first page, it was blank; the second bore a brief inscription, which he read:
Silet per diem universus, nec sine horrore secretus est; lucet nocturnis ignibus, chorus Aegipanum
undique personatur: audiuntur et cantus tibiarum, et tinnitus cymbalorum per oram maritimam.
On the third page was a design which made Villiers start and look up at Austin; he was gazing
abstractedly out of the window. Villiers turned page after page, absorbed, in spite of himself, in the
frightful Walpurgis Night of evil, strange monstrous evil, that the dead artist had set forth in hard
black and white. The figures of Fauns and Satyrs and Aegipans danced before his eyes, the darkness of
the thicket, the dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards, by rocks and
desert places, passed before him: a world before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and
shudder.
-- Arthur Machen, “The Great God Pan”, 1890.
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According to Gaius Julius Hyginus, in his collection of fables (Fabulae), fable 155 lists Aegipan as
an offspring of Jove (Zeus) and the she-goat Boetis.
lxviii “Cast off”, “strip away”, “discard”.
lxix “Embellishments”, “pretensions”, “ornamentation”, “adornment”, “gilding”.
lxxIt is interesting to compare this talk of nocturnal battles, and keeping to the spirit of ones own
ideal, free of falsehoods and pretensions, with the old folksong “Tom-a-Bedlam”.
From the hag and hungry goblin
that into rags would rend ye,
and the spirit that stands by the naked man
in the book of moons, defend ye,
that of your five sound senses
ye never be forsaken,
nor wander from yourselves with Tom
abroad to beg your bacon.
And
With an host of furious fancies
whereof I am commander,
with a burning spear and a horse of air
to the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wild world’s end,
methinks it is no journey.
Some occultists propose one possible interpretation of the symbolism of the three characters as,
the “hag” (a primal feminine archetype), the “goblin” (as a fairy tale “changeling”, a type of
supernatural infant always crying for food), and the spirit that stands by the naked man (as the
grim reaper, death harvesting the naked soul).
In the pamphlet edition “Knocking on cyclopean doors”, it uses the word “Ziggurats” here in
lxxi

place of “Hill”. Note that in the fantasy dream story by H.P. Lovecraft “The Dream-Quest of
Unknown Kadath” the hero goes in search of this silent hill of the gods.
lxxii “Anticipate”, “desire”, “wish”.
lxxiii “Rule thy Thought as the King in Yellow”.
It is conjectured that when creating his own history for the Necronomicon, that Lovcraft may
lxxiv

have mistakenly thought this name to be a misspelling of Olaus Wormius.

lxxvHere the word “Heaven” is used to express the concept of “Time” since celestial bodies of the
firmament were first used to track the passing of time. The word “Earth” is used to indicate the
concept of “Space” since matter of the world is defined by the space it takes up.
This is interpreted as the split, when the concept “heaven and earth” Time and Space
differentiated into two separate concepts.

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 A more modern scientific way to express the opening lines of the Tablets of Enoch would
lxxvi

be…
In the beginning was created the heaven and the earth.
At the start of this cycle of the Time Space continuum

And the earth was without form, and void

Space was all swirling gas clouds without solid form
These Spirits are what have come to be known as the Grigori (also known as “Watchers”,
lxxvii

from the Greek egrēgoroi) said to be divine angelic Spirits, that emerged after the dawn of Time
and Space, some speculate they were born as the result or side effect of the split of Time and
Space (Heaven and Earth), and watched all that transpired since then, when matter was without
form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep interstellar reaches (light had yet to
even travel the distances between the new stars).
The Stars (ignited balls of gas) give off light, light which eventually begins reaching other far-
lxxviii

flung solar systems, Since proper planets are yet to have formed from the gas clouds, This use and
following use of “Day” would perhaps be better translated as “passage of a length of time”,
perhaps determined by light speed and distance between new stars.
lxxix Proper planets and atmospheres begin to form in the solar systems.
lxxxThe crust of the planet cools and hardens, allowing water gases to condense and pool as
liquids, forming seas.
lxxxi Early plant life emerges.
The thick cloud cover around the planet thins out reveling clearly the celestial bodies of sun,
lxxxii

moon, planets and other farther astronomical sights.

lxxxiii Advanced forms of multi-celled life emerge evolving from the oceans.
Higher forms of large land dwelling vertebrates evolve. The planet has a thriving fully
lxxxiv

established ecosystem.
The Spirits bioengineer a form of vertebrate adapted to best exploit the established
lxxxv

ecosystem.
Here, “In the image of the spirits” is important, according to the tradition these active life
lxxxvi

seeding “Spirits” are in function predominantly male, this concept of ghostly studs also shows up
in the biblical tradition of the New Testament, where the “Holy Spirit” is depicted as the active
member of god, an inseminator, a sacred winged phallus or in both symbolic and slang terms, the
“bird” of god.
When the spirits shape man, Adam created as male, will take on a form closest to that of the male
spirits, however this is not mundanely referring to a physical form of manly body shape, it is
representative of the roll of Adam as an impregnator, a stud to the female Lilith, it is in his name
that Adam receives the image title or label of the male spirits. This should not be misconstrued as
indicating a superiority of the male sex, for the text clearly states both the male and the female are
given equal dominion over the earth by the Spirits.
In the old Paleo Hebrew used to write the name of Adam, Adam is spelled with the letters Aleph,
Dalet, and Mem.
Aleph, the letter is said to have derived from the West Semitic word for an “ox” a large horned
beast, the letter shape derived from the Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on a hieroglyph of a horned
head of an ox.
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Dalet, the letter in original Proto-Canaanite script is said to have been called “dig” meaning a
“fish”, this name later was changed in Phoenician script to “dalet” meaning a “door” and is the
same in Paleo Hebrew, so the letter carries connections to the image of both that of a fish and a
door.
Mem, the letter is said to have derived from a simplified Phoenician form of the wavy Egyptian
hieroglyph for water, and named after the Phoenician word “mem” meaning “water”.
These three letters in the name are arranged to form pictorially an image of a horned beast headed
fish swimming upon water, a beast of the floating realm, that deep-sea of outer space.
In astrology, the zodiac sign of Capricorn is connected with the same symbolism; to occultists this
constellation of the horned beast “sea goat” is called the gateway or “dalet” door of the gods.
For the letters Aleph, Dalet, and Mem, are the triple jewels in the crown of Capricorn, they are
the zodiac signs of, horned beast head Aries, fish Pisces, and water Aquarius that together crown
the constellation of Capricorn.
The word “Adam” is a portrait picture image of the spirits, made with letters; it is the title of
authority that is made in the image of all the spirits, including the spirit Yahwhe. A picture and
title or name of the gods, a name traditionally not to be misused lightly, to exclaim “ah-dam!”
could be viewed in such light as highly sacrilegious.
So following this train of mythological interpretation, the male Spirits that swam down from
space in the myth should be considered to resemble in appearance at least symbolically, what we
think of today as the sea-goat Capricorn.
It must be emphasized that here the Spirits do explicitly give man permission to eat fruit
lxxxvii

from “every tree” without any exceptions.

Adam having already been given by the spirits a total freedom and power to govern the
lxxxviii

world as a king, Yahweh imprisons Adam within a walled prison compound, and forces Adam to
work and live by decreed rules, justified with lies and enforced with false threats of death.
Lacking the combined power and skill of all the spirits, Yahweh alone is unable to create a
lxxxix

new replacement female human from the dew and dust of the earth, so Yahweh arranges a type of
bestiality dating game for Adam, when Adam knew, or “to know” another, is polite biblical
innuendo for sexual intercourse (for example see later on where “And Cain knew his wife; and
she conceived, and bare Enoch”). Also it should be noted that Eve will not get her proper first
name from Adam till much later, when Adam and Eve successfully copulate producing Abel,
Adam successfully knew the woman and so the name thereof is given to her “Eve”.
When the plan of an animal spouse fails to bear fruit, Yahweh makes a female clone of Adam
from Adams own flesh and bone. However this bioengineered cloned twin will prove imperfect,
since while altering the gender of the clone, Yahweh performs a shoddy job that introduced the
menstrual bleeding cycle into the human genetic sequence, according to this myth, Lilith the first
human female made with the combined knowledge of all the spirits was “stainless”, she did not
suffer from such inconvenient menstrual bleeding, it is said this is the main reason Lilith has
come to be so slandered in popular lore, for the unblemished perfection of Lilith betrays the
imperfection in Yahweh’s botched work on Eve.
xcSome occultists have suggested significance here to the word Woman as a shortened “Wound
of Man”, or “Woe of man”, a bleeding cut.
xciThe voyeuristic antics of Yahweh not content to stop with bestiality, Yahweh clones a female
twin with cells taken from Adam, which makes this clone technically a twin sister to Adam, a fact
recognized in the text. No mater how one chooses to split hairs, theirs is an incest union of blood
relatives, plain and simple.

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 The Spirit Samael finds the abandoned Lilith sexually aroused masturbating, one thing naturally
xcii

leads to another, and they engage in sexual intercourse.

Painting of Lilith and the serpent, by John Collier.

From this encounter Lilith becomes pregnant and ultimately gives birth to their daughter Awan.
The biblical name “Awan” is commonly regarded as meaning a “helper” or “assistant”, some also
point to the similarity with the name “Awen” derived from the Welsh word for poetic inspiration.
In Sanskrit the term “Awan” means a “defender” or “protector”. In Balinese mythology, a group
of mythical heavenly snakes known as the “Awan” are pictured as falling stars.
These three characters of Samael, Awan, and Lilith together are sometimes referred to with the
shortened Latin code acronym of “SAL” (Samael, Awan, Lilith).
xciiiAdam and the woman are not struck dead by the tree, as Yahweh had lied “Ye shall not eat of
it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Instead they rightfully gain what the other spirits had

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originally intended for them. And Adam and the woman don’t stop at just the fruit, for the leaves
they gird or hang about them as a covering camouflage (Ghilli suits) are the special leaves from
the tree of Knowledge, an armor or shield, proof against others sight. With the leaves in contact
with their bodies, all over their bodies, there could be little doubt the tree was not at all deadly to
the touch.
These “large leaves” are rendered in common Judeo-Christian versions of the myth as leaves from
a fig tree, since fig leaves were the largest leaves found on trees in Canaan.
Camouflaged covered over with the special leaves from the tree of Knowledge, Adam and the
xciv

woman are hidden invisible to the sight of the spirit Yahweh (clearly showing Yahweh is not the
omnipotent know it all his PR representatives would have you believe).
xcvTaunting the serpent, Yahweh declares his intended revenge with an ominous foretelling that
will only be understood after the foretold events transpire.
Yahweh has decided to impregnate the woman with a son, a son that Yahweh will arrange to
marry Awan, the daughter of the serpent and Lilith. By this action Yahweh plans to gain control
over both Awan and all human descendants by declaring married human females must now be
subservient to their husband, and thus through a first human son, born of virgin female, Yahweh
can stake his claim as head of the human clan, supplanting Adam the rightful ruler created by the
Spirits.
Later it will be seen that Cain in following the instructions of Yahweh, will mint the first human
made coins, these coins are the answer to the riddle of injured head and heel.
Upon one side of the coin was stamped the Sin letter crowned image of Cain, and upon the other
side the image of the horned beast seal Leviathan, the “family seals Yahshuah and Leviathan upon
the faces”.
These coins according to the tradition of the myth had a hole punched through them, so the
coins could be carried strung like beads or sewn upon garments for ease of carry. This hole is
placed towards the edge of the coin, just over the first letter of the signature written around each
seal upon both faces, this placement puts the hole on the mans ankle, and on the other flip side it
goes through the beasts horn, making an injured mans ankle, and injured beasts head, the enmity
between these two faces is the separation between the two opposing sides of the coin, faces that
will always have their backs turned to the other.
To prevent Adam and his wife from slipping out of sight again, Yahweh takes away the
xcvi

camouflaged suits made from the special leaves of the tree of knowledge, and dresses Adam and
the woman in animal furs of contrasting colors so they stand out and are easy to find.
xcvii Yahweh demands strict segregation between human males and females.
Yahweh burns the garden and the tree of Knowledge, leaving a harsh haunted wasteland of
xcviii

ash, Yahweh places the tree of Life back in this blasted wasteland, with the fierce guardian
creatures called Cherubim and the flaming sword to guard over it.
Some occultists have speculated this myth of burning the walled garden may have been derived
from a once fertile and lush volcanic crater that erupted driving out the settlers inhabiting it, and
burying the garden under lava and ash. While others have speculated the wasteland was an
intentionally obscure reference to an unspecified desert region.
While some cite the “fall of man” from the garden as the figurative “death” of which Yahweh
xcix

had warned, this shallow interpretation fails on inspection to stand up to basic logic.
Yahweh had warned of an immediate instantaneous death upon even the touching of the tree,
however from the time the fruit is first touched, Adam and the woman talk things over and even

170
make themselves garments, it is only later in the cool of the day that Yahweh shows up to dish
out uncomfortable yet nonfatal punishments.
Yahweh had already been withholding the tree of life along with the tree of knowledge from man;
the continuation of withholding the tree of life after the fall did not change the situation for
human mortality. Man had not received immortality before they had the falling out with Yahweh,
so remaining as mortals was not any drastic change to their life expectancy one way or the other.
cThis deception is pointed to by some as the origin of how Yahweh developed a deep hatred and
fear of natural human nudity.
ciSome interpret this wounding as the first act of circumcision, Adam had removed his covering
coat of piebald skins, and so in vengeance Yahweh painfully removes the foreskin of Adam.
Others interpret this wounding as a more drastic castration or full emasculation, turning Adam
into a eunuch, while regarding circumcision and other acts of male and female genital mutilation
later promoted by priests, as an act of symbolic reparation for the first lusty transgression of
Adam and Eve removing their cloths to seek sexual pleasure.
cii Sheep and goats.
Able tends the flocks with his father Adam, while Cain stays with Yahweh to practice gardening
ciii

agriculture.
Here this talk of “sin lieth at the door” is interpreted esoterically as the letter “Šin”, to
civ

occultists it is a symbol of the powers commanded by the “kingship” of an enlightened mind.

cvThis mark according to the tradition surrounding the tablets of Enoch, is that of the letter
“Šin”, a letter that looks like a capital W, and is the middle letter of the Pentagrammaton.
Cain bares the mark of “Šin”, not as a crime displeasing to Yahweh, but as a crowning letter
emblem of the power commanded by the chosen king, a solar halo, the power entrusted by
Yahweh, given after the pleasing blood sacrifice of Abel, the first and only son of Adam.
cviThese “family seals Yahshuah and Leviathan upon the faces” are according to tradition, the
two pentagrams of, the human male figure, and the goat head, with the names of the parents of
Cain and Awan written above and below the stars. Around the circumference edge of each seal
are written each clan name.
It is not specific if this is intended as the entire city “Enoch”, or only the son “Enoch” hearing
cvii

the calls. According to the legends, these “Elder ones” were departed primordial beings made of
elemental chaos, born before forms of mater were fixed and the angles of space were measured
into “heaven and earth”. So the Elder ones are considered the children of the chaos marriage
before Time and Space split (measured). They are from before the concept “heaven and earth”
Time and Space differentiated into two separate concepts.
It was the Elder ones who left Nod “abandoned”, and thus the “Azif” calls of the Elder ones are
still heard in Nod when the celestial bodies are in proper arrangement.
This according to some, appears to point to one possible legendary origin for what has
cviii

become known today as the “Necronomicon”.

cixMuch like in primitive feudal cultures, Cain the first noble son was expected to inherit and
protect the Fathers estate, lacking such a worldly inheritance the second noble son Seth is left
with only two options, fall into poverty, or take up a religious life, Seth lacking a kingdom for his
own invents the priesthood, a church to operate within the state. And thus are founded the City
state “Enoch”, and then the Church “Enos”.
cxThe story of Lot is worthy of further inspection, for it is a good example of how due to a
changing political agenda, the mundane can become of necessity recast as the miraculous, for
when it comes to the Old Testament, tradition decreed all included content was the irrevocable
171
true word of god. So a story that originated as a slanderous smear attack against a rival tribes
origin, could not be simply tossed out when it fell out of political fashion, the compromise was a
reinterpretation of the stated facts to soften the harsh picture it had originally painted.
The mundane events of the smear required a reinterpretation as fantastical magical miraculous
events by the spin-doctors, to paint the story in a new light, reworking it into an anti homosexual
morality lesson ending with the cliché of evil female deceitfulness which knows no bounds.
If we read through the spin we find a tale solely of a biased character assassination against Lot.
Reading it as such, we see Lot is painted as what could be called a very “possessive” dad.
To keep his two daughters from the attention of any other men, Lot disguises each daughter in
men’s garments. This plan works for a while, however as the daughters mature, their budding
feminine features become harder to hide.
Eventually the more perceptive men of the city catch on to what the old man is up to, enraged by
their suspicions they follow Lot and his disguised daughters back to Lot’s house, seeking to
apprehend and discover the truth behind who really are the two strange fair young angelic “men”.
The men of the city surround the house so anyone trying to escape on foot would be seen, then
the mob demands the appearance of the two strange fair young “men”, so that they may be
inspected in the most intimate manner.
Lot fearing that if the deception was proven publicly, Lot and daughters would be terribly
brutalized and then stoned to death, so Lot offers in desperation to forfeit what he had once
horded, saying he will send out his daughters to freely entertain the randy ringleaders of the mob
(Lot’s daughters having discarded their disguises and changed into feminine dress while Lot
stalled for time).
Suspecting the strangers are still hiding inside lot’s house and unsatisfied by the daughter’s claims
of virginity, the mob, with suspicions now confirmed that something really is up, refuses saying
their passions would only be sated with the appearance of the strange fair young “men”.
Lot refuses; the mob in a blind rage make a hasty impromptu and disorderly search that fails to
revel any trace of the vanished young men. When pressed for answers, Lot suggests that maybe
the men were angels and flew off.
The game is up; Lot knows he can no longer disguise the daughters to keep them away from the
other men.
So Lot tells his relatives he is fleeing the city. Dawn the next day finds them hightailing it to the
next town in Zoar (Perhaps arranging acts of arson to distract pursuit).
In Zoar, Lot’s aging wife is unhappy and she begins to question his real motives, why not just
marry off the now mature daughters? Why must they leave their house and the easy city life?
What is Lot really planning to do? Is this really god’s will or just Lot’s selfish indulgence?
Mysteriously, by the grace of the Lord, or perhaps the more mundane slave market, Lot’s wife is
exchanged for a stack of salt cakes. Then with this newfound wealth, Lot purchases as much wine
as he and his daughters can carry, and they go deep into the remote hills, to live away from other
people.
In a secluded cave they set up home hillbilly style. Then unsurprisingly the premeditated drunken
incest orgy commences.
The horns protect and the eyes watch to the North (1st), South (2nd), East (3rd), West (4th),
cxi

Above (“Zenith” 5th), Below (“Nadir” 6th), and the often overlooked heart, the Center in the
midst of all (7th). These same directions are used in ritual magic.

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