This is the Necronomicon FAQ by Colin Low:

I guess all those people who still think the Necronomicon is an invention
of Lovecraft's just aren't keeping up with the fast-moving pace
of modern occult scholarship. It is time to repost the Necronomicon FAQ.

Q. What is the Necronomicon?

The Necronomicon of Alhazred,  (literally:  "Book of Dead Names") 
is not,  as popularly believed,  a grimoire, or sorceror's spell-
book;  it was conceived as a history, and hence "a book of things 
now dead and gone", but the author shared with Madame Blavatsky a 
magpie-like tendency to garner and stitch together fact,  rumour, 
speculation,  and complete balderdash,  and the result is a  vast 
and almost unreadable compendium of near-nonsense which bears more 
than a superficial resemblance to Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine".

In  times  past the book has been referred to  guardedly  as  "Al 
Azif",  or  "The  Book  of the Arab".  It was  written  in  seven 
volumes, and runs to over 900 pages in the Latin edition.

Q. Where and when was the Necronomicon written?

The  Necronomicon was written in Damascus in 730  A.D.  by  Abdul 
Alhazred.

Q. Who was Abdul Alhazred?

Little  is known.  What we do know about him is  largely  derived 
from  the  small  amount  of  biographical  information  in   the 
Necronomicon itself - he travelled widely, from Alexandria to the 
Punjab,  and  was well read.  He had a flair for  languages,  and 
boasts  on  many occasions of his ability to read  and  translate 
manuscripts   which   defied  lesser   scholars.   His   research 
methodology  however smacked more of Nostradamus than  Herodotus. 
As Nostradamus himself puts it in Quatrains 1 & 2:
 
     "Sitting alone at night in secret study;
     it is placed on the brass tripod. A slight
     flame comes out of the emptiness 
     and makes successful that which should 
     not be believed in vain.

     The wand in the hand is placed
     in the middle of the tripod's legs.
     With water he sprinkles both the hem
     of his garment and his foot.
     A voice, fear; he trembles in his robes.
     Divine splendour; the god sits nearby."

Just  as Nostradamus used ritual magic to probe  the  future,  so 
Alhazred  used  similar techniques (and an  incense  composed  of 
olibanum,  storax,  dictamnus,  opium and hashish) to clarify the 
past,  and it is this,  combined with a lack of references, which 
resulted in the Necronomicon being dismissed as largely worthless 
by historians.

He  is  often referred to as "the mad Arab",  and  while  he  was 
certainly eccentric by modern standards,  there is no evidence to 
substantiate a claim of madness,  other than a chronic  inability 
to  sustain  a train of thought for more than  a  few  paragraphs 
before  leaping  off at a tangent.  He is  better  compared  with 
figures such as the Greek neo-platonist philosopher Proclus (410-
485 A.D.),  who was completely at home in astronomy, mathematics, 
philosophy,  and metaphysics, but was sufficiently well versed in 
the  magical  techniques of theurgy to evoke  Hekate  to  visible 
appearance;  he  was  also an initiate of Egyptian  and  Chaldean 
mystery religions. It is no accident that Alhazred was intimately 
familar with the works of Proclus.

Q. What is the printing history of the Necronomicon?

No  Arabic manuscript is known to exist;  the author Idries  Shah 
carried  out a search in the libraries of Deobund in  India,  Al-
Azhar  in  Egypt,  and  the Library of the Holy  City  of  Mecca, 
without success. A Latin translation was made in 1487 (not in the 
17th. century as Lovecraft maintains) by a Dominican priest Olaus 
Wormius. Wormius, a German by birth, was a secretary to the first 
Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, Tomas de Torquemada, 
and  it  is likely that the manuscript of  the  Necronomicon  was 
seized during the persecution of Moors ("Moriscos") who had  been 
converted to Catholism under duress;  this group was deemed to be 
unsufficiently pure in its beliefs.      
     It  was an act of sheer folly for Wormius to  translate  and 
print the Necronomicon at that time and place. The book must have 
held an obsessive fascination for the man, because he was finally 
charged  with heresy and burned after sending a copy of the  book 
to   Johann  Tritheim,   Abbot  of  Spanheim  (better  known   as 
"Trithemius");  the accompanying letter contained a detailed  and 
blasphemous  interpretation  of certain passages in the  Book  of 
Genesis.  Virtually all the copies of Wormius's translation  were 
seized  and  burned with him,  although there is  the  inevitable 
suspicion that at least one copy must have found its way into the 
Vatican Library.
     Almost  one  hundred  years  later,   in  1586,  a  copy  of 
Wormius's Latin translation surfaced in Prague. Dr. John Dee, the 
famous English magician,  and his assistant Edward Kelly were  at 
the  court of the Emperor Rudolph II to discuss plans for  making 
alchemical  gold,  and Kelly bought the copy from  the  so-called 
"Black  Rabbi"  and Kabbalist,  Jacob Eliezer,  who had  fled  to 
Prague from Italy after accusations of necromancy.  At that  time 
Prague  had  become  a  magnet  for  magicians,   alchemists  and 
charletons of every kind under the patronage of Rudolph,  and  it 
is  hard to imagine a more likely place in Europe for a  copy  to 
surface.
     The  Necronomicon appears to have had a marked influence  on 
Kelly;  the character of his scrying changed,  and he produced an 
extraordinary  communication  which struck horror  into  the  Dee 
household; Crowley interpeted it as the abortive first attempt of 
an  extra-human entity to communicate the Thelemic "Book  of  the 
Law".  Kelly  left  Dee shortly afterwards.  Dee  translated  the 
Necronomicon  into  English  while warden  of  Christ's  College, 
Manchester, but contrary to Lovecraft, this translation was never 
printed - the manuscript passed into the collection of the  great 
collector  Elias  Ashmole,  and hence to the Bodleian  Library in 
Oxford.

There  are  many modern fakes masquerading as  the  Necronomicon. 
They  can  be  recognised  by a  total  lack  of  imagination  or 
intelligence, qualities Alhazred possessed in abundance.

Q. What is the content of the Necronomicon?

The  book  is  best  known  for  its  antediluvian  speculations. 
Alhazred appears to have had access to many sources now lost, and 
events  which  are only hinted at in the Book of Genesis  or  the 
apocryphal  Book  of Enoch,  or disguised as mythology  in  other 
sources,  are  explored in great detail.  Alhazred may have  used 
dubious  magical  techniques to clarify the  past,  but  he  also 
shared with 5th.  century B.C. Greek writers such as Thucydides a 
critical  mind  and  a willingness to  explore  the  meanings  of 
mythological and sacred stories.  His speculations are remarkably 
modern,  and  this  may account for his  current  popularity:  he 
believed  that many species besides the human race had  inhabited 
the  Earth,  and  that much knowledge was passed  to  mankind  in 
encounters with being from other "spheres".  He shared with  some 
neo-platonists the belief that stars are like our sun,  and  have 
their own unseen planets with their own lifeforms, but elaborated 
this belief with a good deal of metaphysical speculation in which 
these  beings  were  part  of a  cosmic  hierarchy  of  spiritual 
evolution.  He  was  also convinced that he had  contacted  these 
"Old  Ones"  using magical invocations,  and warned  of  terrible 
powers waiting to return to re-claim the Earth - he interpretated 
this  belief  in the light of the Apocalypse  of  St.  John,  but 
reversed the ending so that the Beast triumphs after a great  war 
in which the earth is laid waste.

Q. Why did the novelist H.P. Lovecraft claim to have invented the 
Necronomicon?
   
The answer to this interesting question lies in two  people:  the 
poet  and  magician Aliester Crowley,  and  a  Brooklyn  milliner 
called Sonia Greene.

There  is no question that Crowley read Dee's translation of  the 
Necromonicon in the Ashmolean,  probably while researching  Dee's 
papers;  too  many passages in Crowley's "Book of the  Law"  read 
like  a  transcription of passages in  that  translation.  Either 
that,  or  Crowley,  who claimed to remember his life  as  Edward 
Kelly in a previous incarnation,  read it in a previous life! Why 
doesn't  he  mention  the  Necronomicon  in  his  works?  He  was 
surprisingly reticent about his real sources - there is a  strong 
suspicion that '777',  which Crowley claimed to have written, was 
largely plagiarised from Allan Bennet's notes. His spiritual debt 
to  Nietzsche,  which  in  an unguarded moment he  refers  to  as 
"almost  an  avatar of Thoth,  the god of wisdom"  is  studiously 
ignored;  likewise the influence of Richard Burton's "Kasidah" on 
his doctrine of True Will. I suspect that the Necronomicon became 
an embarrassment to Crowley when he realised the extent to  which 
he had unconsciously incorporated passages from the  Necronomicon 
into "The Book of the Law".
     In 1918 Crowley was in New York. As always, he was trying to 
establish his literary reputation,  and was contributing to  "The 
International" and "Vanity Fair".  Sonia Greene was an  energetic 
and ambitious Jewish emigre with literary ambitions,  and she had 
joined  a dinner and lecture club called "Walker's Sunrise  Club" 
(?!);  it was there that she first encountered Crowley,  who  had 
been invited to give a talk on modern poetry.       
     It  was a good match;  in a letter to Norman  Mudd,  Crowley 
describes  his ideal woman as "rather tall,  muscular and  plump, 
vivacious,  ambitious,  energetic, passionate, age from thirty to 
thirty five,  probably a Jewess, not unlikely a singer or actress 
addicted to such amusements.  She is to be 'fashionable', perhaps 
a  shade loud or vulgar.  Very rich of course." Sonia was not  an 
actress  or  singer,  but qualified in other  respects.  She  was 
earning what,  for that time,  was an enormous sum of money as  a 
designer and seller of woman's hats.  She was variously described 
as "Junoesque",  "a woman of great charm and personal magnetism", 
"genuinely glamorous with powerful feminine allure",  "one of the 
most  beautiful  women  I have ever  met",  and  "a  learned  but 
eccentric  human phonograph".  In 1918 she was thirty-five  years 
old and a divorcee with an adolescent daughter.  Crowley did  not 
waste  time  as  far as women were  concerned;  they  met  on  an 
irregular basis for some months.
     In 1921 Sonia Greene met the novelist H.P. Lovecraft, and in 
that  year Lovecraft published the first novel where he  mentions 
Abdul Alhazred ("The Nameless City").  In 1922 he first  mentions 
the  Necronomicon  ("The  Hound").   On  March  3rd.  1924,  H.P. 
Lovecraft and Sonia Greene married.
     We do not know what Crowley told Sonia Greene, and we do not 
know what Sonia told Lovecraft.  However,  consider the following 
quotation from "The Call of Cthulhu" [1926]:

     "That cult would never die until the stars came right  again 
     [precession of the Equinoxes?], and the secret priests would 
     take 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 earth 
     would flame with a holocaust of ecstacy and freedom."

It may be brief, it may be mangled, but it has the undeniable ring 
of Crowley's "Book of the Law". It is easy to imagine a situation 
where  Sonia and Lovecraft are laughing and talking in a  firelit 
room about a new story,  and Sonia introduces some ideas based on 
what  Crowley  had told her;  she wouldn't even have  to  mention 
Crowley,   just   enough  of  the  ideas  to  spark   Lovecraft's 
imagination.  There  is no evidence that Lovecraft ever  saw  the 
Necronomicon,   or   even  knew  that  the  book   existed;   his 
Necronomicon  is remarkably close to the spirit of the  original, 
but the details are pure invention, as one would expect. There is 
no Yog-Sothoth or Azathoth or Nyarlathotep in the  original,  but 
there is an Aiwaz...

Q. Where can the Necronomicon be found?

Nowhere with certainty,  is the short and simple answer, and once 
more we must suspect Crowley in having a hand in this.   In  1912 
Crowley  met Theodor Reuss,  the head of the German  Ordo  Templi 
Orientis (O.T.O), and worked within that order for several years, 
until in 1922 Reuss resigned as head in Crowley's favour. Thus we 
have  Crowley  working  in close contact for 10  years  with  the 
leader  of  a German masonic group.  In the  years  from  1933-38 
the  few  known copies of the  Necronomicon  simply  disappeared; 
someone in the German government of Adolf Hitler took an interest 
in  obscure occult literature and began to obtain copies by  fair 
means or foul.  Dee's translation disappeared from the  Bodleian 
following  a  break-in  in the spring of  1934.  The  British  Museum 
suffered several abortive burglaries, and the Wormius edition was 
deleted  from  the  catalogue  and  removed  to  an   underground 
repository  in a converted slate mine in Wales (where  the  Crown 
Jewels were stored during the 1939-45 war).  Other libraries lost 
their  copies,  and  today  there is no library  with  a  genuine 
catalogue entry for the Necronomicon.  The current whereabouts of 
copies  of  the Necronomicon is unknown;  there is a story  of  a 
large wartime cache of occult and magical documents in the Oster-
horn area near  Salzburg. There is a recurring story about a copy 
bound in the skin of concentration camp victims.


This F.A.Q. was compiled using information obtained from

"The Book of the Arab",  by Justin Geoffry,  Starry Wisdom Press, 
                            1979

Colin  Low  has  never read  the  Necronomicon,  never  seen  the 
Necronomicon,  and  has no information as to where a copy may  be 
found.