kaos

It was written in a New York apartment above a now defunct landmark occult shop
known as the Magickal Childe. It was authored by Herman Slater (Simon) and Larry
Barnes. The idea to write it came after a night of particularly heavy boozing (El Presidente
brandy). Barnes was in possession of Lovecraft’s manuscripts and the two would drunkenly
research them on a near daily basis so the idea to write the book was inevitable. They
researched Sumerian/Babylonian religion and creation myths at the ny city library for
less than a week. The story line and everything else in the book was written over peals of
drunken laughter. The manuscript’s final draft was presented less than two months after
the idea drifted in through the drunken fog. This was one of Horrible Herman Slater’s
favorite stories right up to the day he died. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded me sharing
it. [Comment dated 26/07/01 posted on alt.magick and alt.necronomicon]
Simon’s Necronomicon lists as one of its sources: Tallqvist, Knut L. Die Assyrische
Beschwörungsserie Maqlû: Nach den Originalen im British Museum Herausgegeben.
Helsingfors, 1895. The Maqlû text is a collection of spells, in cuneiform characters
impressed on clay tablets, found in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at
Nineveh. The supposed origin of the Simon Necronomicon is that an Eastern Orthodox
bishop named Simon walked into the Magickal Childe one day claiming to have in his
possession a 9 th century Greek manuscript stolen from a private collection. Much to
everyone’s surprise the manuscript turned out to be the Necronomicon written about in
H P Lovecraft’s stories. Even William S Burroughs caught wind of it and turned up to
check out the manuscript, as recollected by the illustrator Khem Caigan: “After going
through the pages and a few lines of powder, he offered the comment that it was ‘good
shit’. He might have meant the manuscript, too—check out the ‘Invocation’ on page
xvii of his Cities of the Red Night.”
The “George Hay” Necronomicon was faked by Colin Wilson and a few friends, which
he admitted in an article—“The Necronomicon: The Origin of a Spoof ”—in issue 23 of
Crypt of Cthulhu magazine, published in 1984. Even though H P Lovecraft stated on
many occasions that he invented the Necronomicon for use in his stories, and no pre-
Lovecraft Necronomicon has ever been found, this was not enough to prevent Kenneth
Grant and his Typhonians from insisting that he had been “trafficking” (I don’t know
why they always use that word) with “trans-mundane” (or that one) entities. Perhaps
the epitome of what can be achieved with the Necronomicon was reached in Starfire Vol.
II, No. 2, in the article by Nicholaj Frisvold: “Into the Depths of Severity and All
Beauty: Some Remarks on the Necronomicon Gnosis”, pp 73–95. Were it not for the
fact that I think Frisvold is serious, I would have no hesitation in highly recommending
this article as a brilliant parody on Lovecraft mythos occultism. On the other hand, the
article in the same issue by Stephen Dziklewicz, “A Mantra for Evoking the Great Old
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