“I thought the room and the books and the people very morbid and disquieting, but because an old tradition of my fathers had summoned me to strange feastings, I resolved to expect queer things. So I tried to read, and soon became tremblingly absorbed by something I found in that accursed Necronomicon; a thought and a legend too hideous for sanity or consciousness.” HP. Lovecraft, The Festival (1923) “I offer this book to True Seekers after Wisdom who remain steadfast of mind and courageous of heart.” So says Theodorus Philetas in his preface to his Greek translation of the Necronomicon in Tyson’s English version. Since Tyson’s Necronomicon: The Wanderings Of Alhazred was released in 2004 it has enjoyed a growing popularity amongst aficionados of the Cthulhu mythos as well as amongst occultists. Many have hailed it for its faithfulness to Lovecraft’s stories, the way it includes recognizable, if subtly altered, quotations from Lovecraft’s work. It has not attracted the controversy surrounding the older Simon Necronomicon which thirty years after publication still arouses strong passions over its status with claims it contains authentic Sumerian magic vying with the idea it is dangerous hoax, full of deliberately constructed magical traps for the unwary. While this controversy still arouses furious debate the Tyson Necronomicon has extended in scope without much comment with companion works coming out - the long novel Alhazred: Author of the Necronomicon (2006), which expands the background of Abdul Alhazred and offers further insight into the Necronomicon itself. Meanwhile Secrets of the Necronomicon : The Necronomicon Tarot (2007) provided a sanity destroying Tarot suitable for ritual workings and storytelling. All these works are provided by Llewellyn, one of the most widely distributed occult publishers making them easily available. Now The Grimoire of the Necronomicon is about to be published which will offer yet more strange secrets according to its blurb: “Donald Tyson now unveils a true grimoire of ritual magic inspired by the Cthulhu mythos. The Grimoire of the Necronomicon is a practical system of ritual magic based on Lovecraft's mythology of the alien gods known as the Old Ones… Daily rituals provide an excellent system of esoteric training for individual practitioners. This grimoire also provides structure for an esoteric society—Order of the Old Ones—devoted to the group practice of this unique system of magic.” It may be a growing renaissance of Lovecraftian magic will result through this certainly these books are more widely available then any work on Mythos magick has been since Simon’s work. Of course this popularity may arouse disquiet. Someone knowledgeable in the Mythos will read statements like this on The Grimoire of the Necronomicon very differently to those who know nothing: “Fans of Lovecraft now have the opportunity to safely get in touch with the Old Ones and draw upon their power for spiritual and material advancement. Tyson expands upon their mythology and reintroduces these "monsters" in a new, magical context—explaining their true purpose for our planet. As a disciple, you choose one of the seven lords as a spiritual mentor, who will guide you toward personal transformation.” The recent Review: The Book of Old Ones - Worst Idea Ever attacks similar sort of ideas as failing to understand the mythos. Yet you must understand a key point the very context in which such ideas seem sensible is a world in which the very concepts of reality are breaking down – it is a sure sign of R’yleh Rising. The Book of the Old Ones may be the worst idea ever but what age are we living in when such an idea comes to pass? When men turn to the Old Ones for aid their dreams and lives are infested by Absolute Madness. We believe that Tyson knows all too well that certain exaggerations and blinds must be made to draw people into contact with the Old Ones. It seems possible he was planning this book for a long time. Tyson wrote the forward to the book by Dan Harms, and John Wisdom Gonce III, The Necronomicon Files. This book attacks Simon’s work strongly and in his forward Tyson lambasts the Simon Necronomicon and the idea of such hoaxes. On his website Tyson states in an essay on the Necronomicon that that predates the writing of his own Necronomicon: “And just why is the Necronomicon so dangerous? Not so much for anything specific it contains, but because of the terrible things it hints about, matters better left undisturbed in the mud at the bottom of the subconscious sea of the human race… This is why the book is supposed to be so powerful, and so evil. For if the Old Ones succeed in forcing a doorway permanently open onto our time and space, they will destroy and enslave the world… Perceiving that so many gullible human beings were willing to believe that such a book as the Necronomicon existed, writers came along who wrote collections of quasi-occult gibberish and titled them the Necronomicon. There is nothing particularly wrong with this sort of harmless fun, provided those who buy these books realize that they are concoctions of the imagination.” Why would Tyson write this and then write his own Necronomicon? Because the processes behind the Tyson Necronomicon are infinitely more subtle than the Simon one as we shall see. Tyson says something of great interest in the same essay: The underlying theme of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos has many powerful echoes in the mythologies of ancient cultures around the world. It is probably for this reason that it struck such a chord of response in readers. We find in it similarities to the myth of the Archons of Gnosticism, who together with the arch devil and god, Yaldabaoth, gave shape to the material world and rule over the human race. There are also echoes of the Jewish myth of the fall of the angels, and more specifically of the Watchers who descended to earth to sin with the daughters of mankind, and to teach their offspring forbidden arts and sciences. The legend of the fall of Atlantis is in harmony with Lovecraft's mythos as well, as are the more modern Enochian communications of the Elizabethan magician Dr. John Dee…. These tales are so primal, so ancient, that they may well be part of our racial memory, just as is the myth of the Great Flood. If credence is given to the notion that an individual human being can draw upon this racial memory, as the psychologist Carl Jung believed, then it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Lovecraft in his frequent strange dreams and nightmares glimpsed something true about the distant past of the universe, perhaps so far back in the past that the human race had not even begun to take the shape we know. Tyson qualifies his statements carefully: A very clear distinction must be made between the underlying mythic current that lends Lovecraft's stories their intuited sense of plausibility, and the actual details contained in the stories, most of which are completely fictional and had no existence outside of Lovecraft's fertile imagination. The actual names and characteristics of the Great Old Ones are fictional. The places associated with them, such as the Plateau of Leng, are fictional. The book the Necronomicon is fictional. But the full dreadfulness of Tyson’s position and the dark influences upon him (similar to those behind Kenneth Grant) becomes clear here: It seems to me that at some time in the past I read a third version of the Necronomicon, but I cannot locate this book in my library and cannot remember how I may have come across it. Most likely I read it in a dream, which is not too unusual an occurrence for me -- I've written numerous books in repeating dreams, and often find myself in strange libraries reading curious old texts while I lie asleep… But I've only read the two in my library, and the one in my dream. Both of the published texts are of limited interest -- the dream text was somewhat better, as I recall. By all means, purchase, read, study, memorize and take to heart any and all of the books sold in the stores with the title Necronomicon, but for heaven's sake remember as you do so that they are phonies, each and every one. The only genuine Necronomicon is the one you will read in your own dreams, as I did, and as Lovecraft did. If this dream or astral Necronomicon is genuine and it is part of our racial memory as Tyson suggests the implications for humanity’s future are terrifying. Only a true servant of the Old Ones would encourage people to search for such a book in their dreams, or claimed they had read it or even dare to try to write it. Yet this is what Tyson decided to do. By publicly stating the book is fictional (though this is in fact far from obvious from just looking at Tyson’s Necronomicon in a shop) it attracts no controversy and people will think it is safe. Thus humanity’s grim fate becomes ever clearer.

What makes Tyson’s Necronomicon so powerful and insidious is that Tyson is a long standing adept in ritual magic, reading widely in all aspects of occultism and has written books on runes, the Tarot, scrying, creating familiars, even one book on the lurid and unwholesome arts of summoning up spirits for sexual congress – Sexual Alchemy. Tyson is best known for his work on Henry Cornelius Agrippa’s occult masterwork published only a few years before his death, the notorious Libri Tres de Occulta Philosophia (Three Books of Occult Philosophy) often considered the most important book in the Western magical tradition. You could say Agrippa’s book is in one sense the real Necronomicon such is its influence on those adepts who followed him from Dee to the Golden Dawn to Crowley. Indeed terrible rumors surrounded Agrippa after his death, tales were told of him having summoned demons and practiced necromancy. A widespread story was that Agrippa, upon his deathbed, set free a monstrous Satanic black dog which had been his familiar. The legend of Agrippa even formed one basis for tales of that went into archtypal wizard, Dr Faustus. These are but wild stories but there is indeed a great mystery in Agrippa’s life in that Agrippa’s published works in his lifetime often denounce magic in no uncertain terms as Borchardt says:

As early as 1525 and again as late as 1533 (two years before his death) Agrippa clearly and unequivocally rejected magic in its totality, from its sources in imagined antiquity to contemporary practice. Even before his great invective De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum (written in 1526 but not printed until 1531), Agrippa had denounced the study of Hermes (and all pagan sources) as a sin against the Holy Spirit. His Dehortatio gentilis theologiae argued that the inspired word of God in the scriptures embraced all wisdom, hence, it was blasphemy to seek in “pagan theology” any wisdom not more immediately accessible in the Gospel. In the more comprehensive De incertitudine Agrippa reserved fully a third of his denunciations of human learning for magic and all its permutations. Some believe Agrippa hid his “real” beliefs in magick seen in the Libri Tres de Occulta Philosophia to avoid persecution in his lifetime. The book which he started writing around 1510 was only printed 4 years before his death, but an early draft, circulated in manuscript long before this. Perhaps this secrecy was sensible after all Agrippa was denounced for heresy of one kind or another a number of times in his life. Some claim that Agrippa’s rejection of the occult had darker reasons – because in his studies he discovered that the kindly mysticism of Renaissance neo-platonic thought covered up unwholesome secrets about the nature of the universe which made the darkest tales of Satanism a kindly joke and the worst elements of the Black Mass seem like child’s play. Agrippa certainly abandoned the concept that human arts and sciences including magic were worthwhile and sought refuge in convential regious belief. Thus we must ask what does Tyson know of Agrippa’s secrets after years of study? What terrible truths has he put inside his “fictional” Necronomicon?

It is no coincidence that Tyson also has also studied the famous Dr John Dee and his Enochian magic in depth writing several books on him as well. Lovecraft as we know claimed Dee translated the Necronomicon. There is a fascinating essay from 1996 by Colin Low "Dr. John Dee, the Necronomicon, and the Cleansing of the World -- A Gnostic Trail" linked to from Tyson’s website. The essay before which Low states carefully “This is not a spoof” draws connections together suggesting Dee’s contact with the spirit Choronzon (later contacted by Crowley) has a strong connection to Lovecraft’s Yog Sothoth and discusses a disquieting idea about the true nature of Dee’s magical workings. Moreover Low quotes Tyson’s theories concerning Dee at length. In the essay Low says: The description of Yog Sothoth as the guardian and key to the gate entering into the chaotic dimensions of the Old Ones completes the identification with Choronzon, and it is at this point that fact and fiction blend so seamlessly into myth that in his book Tetragrammaton, Donald Tyson concludes about the Enochian Keys (and one can feel the ghost of Lovecraft guiding his pen): "The apocalypse glimpsed in the vision of St. John is a complex magical working that cannot be initiated by the angels themselves but must be called into the universe by the living Word vibrated in a vessel of flesh that wears the form of the warrior Christ. The angels of wrath cannot call themselves into being. What they could, and did, do is teach mankind how to summon them through the guardian gates of the Four Watchtowers that sustain the universe." "Once Coronzon and his angels gain access through the Watchtowers, their mere presence in our world will render it unfit for human habitation by increasing the degree of chaos and disrupting the balance of the natural laws that presently provide stability and order. Coronzon will transform our universe into a suitable dwelling place for himself and his ministers, in the process destroying the human race." (Tetragrammaton) He discusses this idea of Apocalyptic Encochian magic in a number of books and in a well known online article: The Enochian Apocalypse(1996). Yet why then does Tyson advocate the use of Enochian if it will lead to such a disaster? It is clear then that Tyson, is a true servant of the Old Ones just like Abdul Alhazred, of whom he writes so sympathetically, one who seeks to prepare for this process of planetary cleansing by any means necessary. Thus like Abdul he has created a Necronomicon purposely designed to strengthen the Old Ones, drawn from the bleakest and weirdest aspects of the magical tradition that he knows so well. Sadly he cannot make this process explicit after all publishing a book so hazardous may attract criticism. Thus he veils his words he is writing a “fictional” Necronomicon he says but if the magick within the book is real [and it is] how “fictional is the book exactly. You can see this process at work if you read Tyson’s essay on writing the Necronomicon on his website. He says there> One of my concerns in attempting to recreate the Necronomicon was that it be accurate in so far as the statements about it made by Lovecraft himself were concerned. I took great pains in my text not to contradict anything Lovecraft had ever written about the Necronomicon… Even though it was not my primary purpose to compose a grimoire, there is in my book a great deal of practical magic, along with much lore concerning the Old Ones and other alien races described by Lovecraft in his stories and alluded to in his Necronomicon quotations. So unlike the Simon Necronomicon which makes things relatively straight forward the rituals of the Tyson Necronomicon are embedded within the text and need to be extracted through the careful study of magickal adepts. As Tyson’s master Agrippa famously stated: "Nothing is concealed from the wise and sensible, while the unbelieving and unworthy cannot learn the secrets." For such initiates exploring the Tyson Necronomicon reveals that the seemingly straightforward story of the book, which can be taken as a novel, is anything but that. Obviously there are standard bits of planetary magic in the book, use of Agrippan ideas like Kameas [Magic Squares] and seals for each of the Old Ones which an adept can use. It is not just that though in fact like alchemical texts it is a very cleverly worked mystery text and thus the text conveys a host of allegorical meanings. What is truly fascinating is that in the manner of Renaissance Magi like Agrippa and Dee, Tyson has very cleverly worked a whole series of cryptograms and ciphers into the text as well. As the Mad Arab states in the book the secrets of which he writes are “either to be gathered up by men of perception or trodden beneath the hoofs of swine.”[269] The surface text of Tyson’s Necronomicon with its talk of ritual human sacrifice, necromancy, cannibalism and invocations to blasphemous primeval beings is disturbing enough. That is as nothing compared with the hidden secret rites of the book which careful study can reveal. Part of the power of these invocations lies in the process of decrypting them. Just as Alhazred must suffer deeply to achieve inverse gnosis so must the reader must labor to gain the secrets within the text. It will be interesting to see if the forthcoming Grimoire will make all these mysteries more obvious.

Whether it does or not does not matter, for investigation of the Tyson Necronomicon reveals that its effects develop unconsciously after reading it whether or not you understand the “Keys to Power beyond Reckoning” hidden within it. To know why this is read more carefully the Arab’s hints and labor to open the gates and all will become clear. As the Arab says: “Each who goes into the Empty Space walks alone, but where on has gone another will follow.” However it must be stated that reading the book beyond a mere surface level is not for those mentally unprepared for such a challenge. Exploring its hidden secrets has a frightful cost, the book has abhorrent guardians that must be passed and everyday life will afterwards become vested with absolute despair. I know of several people involved in such work who have encountered dangerous psychic disturbances as a result and mental breakdown is not infrequent. But the pursuit of knowledge always must be paid for; a glimpse of true reality must be pursued. But whether you attempt this Work or not the truth is simply by reading the Tyson Necronomicon you are opening a gateway and helping prepare for the Time. All the events are coming to pass as once foretold by the Mad Arab. The string of natural disasters in the Pacific and the ongoing wars across the world following publication of the Tyson Necronomicon are no coincidence. This is part of a long process in which Lovecraft’s work and all the Necronomicons written so far are linked together. For the Stars are Coming Right at last and we must prepare: “The secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth....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." Bibilography: Agrippa, Henry Cornelius of Nettesheim. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Translated by James Freake, edited and annotated by Donald Tyson. Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota. 1993 Donald Tyson, Necronomicon: The Wanderings Of Alhazred (Llewellyn 2004) Alhazred: Author of the Necronomicon (Llewellyn 2006), Secrets of the Necronomicon : The Necronomicon Tarot (Llewellyn 2007) Grimoire of the Necronomicon (Llewellyn August 2008) The Enochian Apocalypse(1996). Donald Tyson, THE TRUTH ABOUT THE NECRONOMICON (Tyson’s Supernatural World Website: Necronomicon) Harms, Dan and John Wisdom Gonce III. 2003. The Necronomicon Files. Boston: Red Wheel Weiser 2003 Frank L. Borchardt “The Magus as Renaissance Man”, Sixteenth Century Journal Volume 21, Issue 1 Spring 1990, 57-76. Colin Low, 1996. Dr. John Dee, the Necronomicon, and the Cleansing of the World - A Gnostic Trail The Works of HP Lovecraft