I’ve been away for a little longer than usual. The last post drew a quiet line underneath a lot of the work I had been processing through this blog; it felt like a point of inflection that redirected my intellectual and spiritual trajectory. I can point out others like it but this pass through the Necronomicon seems more profound.
Tag: Necronomicon
Necronomicon as Occult Object
With the discussion of fate and destiny out of the way, let’s get back to the topic at hand. The way in which Lovecraft attempts to delimit the Necronomicon’s destiny to the literary sphere suggests a general discomfort with that destiny but an inability to sever himself from it. Not only did he make use of the text throughout his work, but he proceeded to expand its scope, putting it into communication with the literary occultism of his fellow writers, both explicitly and implicitly. Its literary fate becomes a root system, through which its destiny survives and along which it is able to flare up.
Necronomicon as Fictional Object
Before springing too quickly into an occult consideration of the Necronomicon, I want to take some time to discuss its fictional and literary context. This won’t be anything fancy (though it will be long), just some descriptive account of how it tends to appear, the way those uses change over time, and some biographical / historical context for those changes.
[NB] Lovecraft’s Quotations of the Necronomicon
Below I have gathered together the few snippets of the Necronomicon that Lovecraft wrote and wove into his stories. Where interjections like “he read” divided an excerpt from the Necronomicon, I deleted the interjection without placing an ellipsis in the quotation to mark its absence.
Continue reading “[NB] Lovecraft’s Quotations of the Necronomicon”
[NB] Lovecraft’s Mentions of the Necronomicon
This is the first of two notebook posts containing Lovecraft’s mentions of the Necronomicon. While a few very minor mentions were excluded, most all of them should be included here. This is all quotation, no commentary; I’m saving that up for some lengthier posts.
Continue reading “[NB] Lovecraft’s Mentions of the Necronomicon”
