kaos

Ones”, pp 107–122, is one of the better essays written on the subject, conveying well
the essence of personal evocatory experience irrespective of whether one is evoking
figments of the imagination or actual entities (some may rightly wonder: what’s the
difference?).
As an aside, given the use of Maqlû text fragments in the Simon Necronomicon, and
whether that may have had some magical effect, it is interesting to consider the extent
to which the 1973 film The Exorcist might be regarded as an evocation of the demon
Pazuzu, who was not a fictional creation but an Assyrian pestilential wind demon, who
according to some brings disease but others regard as protecting against disease
(ironically, given the depiction in The Exorcist, he is a protective spirit for children since
he is the enemy of the Babylonian female child-killing demon Lamastu, who appears
to be similar to Lilith). The demon is particularly associated with the south-east storm
wind. Pazuzu has four feathered wings, sometimes with feathered legs, the talons of an
eagle, a man-like body sometimes showing the ribs, a scorpion tail, possibly lion’s paws
for hands, and ghoulish head, also said by some to resemble a lion. According to Jeremy
Black and Anthony Green, in Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, Pazuzu
has a snake-headed penis. In all the amulets I have seen Pazuzu has his right arm
raised, elbow bent, and the left arm lowered, elbow bent or fully stretched out (contrast
with the famous terracotta relief image supposedly of Lilith, flanked by two owls and
standing on two lions, with both arms raised bent at the elbows). Possibly Pazuzu is
synonymous with the earlier Zu bird (aka Anzu), the half-bird half-man (originally a
lion-headed eagle) who nested in Inanna’s Huluppu Tree with Lilith before being scared
away by Gilgamesh.
According to Thorkild Jacobsen, Anzu “represented the numinous power of
thunderstorms”. Anzu is the Akkadian name of the Sumerian Imdugud, the lion-headed
eagle who embodied the power of dense storm clouds and whose name is also used to
write a word meaning “fog” or “mist”. Imdugud was gigantic and could cause whirlwinds
and sandstorms by the flapping of his wings, which links in with Pazuzu as a wind
demon. Satyr pointed out to me that Job 38:1 is interesting in this regard, in that the
Lord answers Job out of a whirlwind. Looking further into this theme, I notice that in
Job 37:9, Isaiah 21:1, and Zechariah 9:14 the whirlwind comes from the south, and in
2 Kings 2:1 Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. In Jeremiah 23:19 and 30:23
the Lord goes forth in a whirlwind to manifest his judgement.
It is intriguing, actually, that I should get onto Pazuzu as a result of making a few
notes about Simon’s Necronomicon, because just earlier this evening I decided I wanted
to paint a picture of the Zu bird, an entity that has been on my mind for several weeks
now. I planned to make up some imaginary bird because the only image I had come
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