I like alternative thinkers and lines of thinking.
Actually, I started wondering about the "Necronomicon". I've heard it exists so many times,
there are so many fakes out there, and it's existance still is an open debate.
It supposedly is a book, quoted many times by author H.P Lovecraft, and a cursed book at that.
...was just tripping...
At some point, I found a very, very interesting website.
Sober, well designed, obviously made by someone *quite clever, and funny.
Just a funny "frightening glance" at passages, quotes, articles, and all of a sudden...
A detail struck me: some passages supposedly were from existing forbidden books,
and they were backed up and translated... by high representatives of world famous french museums!!
....I started reading. These seemed to be transcripts from a weird, antique cult, and related to some Lovecraft stories somehow,
but sounded a lot more serious. Dogma, meant to shock and drive crowds.
..............................
People from the Louvre are quoted for having helped these translations.
The author also mentions another "myth", the Yellow King. In reality, a play by a scottish author,
but a play about another, french, forbidden play which drives people crazy.
And the dude posting these references did never, never -ever- express judgement: he was merely
reporting informations from sources like the Louvre.
...Since then, I've been looking for historical facts, but could not find many, except the fact a few of the people
quoted as authors of such books did exist at some point.
Some book names:
* The sand book
* The yellow book
* The necronomicon
What do you think? And if you can show me interesting references, please.
And I probably forgot sending that email altogether because of.. no excuse: I'll send it asap but my desktop is
currently full of junk and papers about this and that extreme algorithm (been working around the clock).
Check your email in a few hours when I wake up.
'bout this thing, what is frightening is that while no other article backs up his point clearly,
the rest is all debate, he says things like:
quote:
Anton Derek et Raoul Marcadier
Archivistes à la Bibliothèque Nationale.
Pour l'accès privilégié à certains ouvrages.
Which roughly, and quite obviously translates to:
quote:
.. and ...
Archivists at the national library.
For privileged access to some works.
And also, "Merci à ... Conservateur des galeries orientales du Musée du Louvre Pour les textes en arabe ancien."
eq, thanks to the guy in charge for oriental Louvre galeries for ancient arabic texts.
Granted, the guy has a thing for lovecraft, but as I said, he never, never ever gest judgemental,
not a single "pro" or "con", only facts expressed as that, and legends told as legends.
Basically, he says he has translated these "Psaknotic manuscripts", which in turn refer
to Gods and Godesses that typically can be found in Lovecraft's mythology.
And the so called translations tell tales of these Gods and Godesses,
theyre relationships, and some obscure and extreme recommendations like:
"C'est en tuant son frère que l'on renie sa famille."
In that passage, he is saying (the psaknotic thing author) that the fact of killing one's brother, and negating one's humanity,
leads to real elevation towards those demon-like Gods.
Eeeeeeeeeek.
......
More fule to the fire, while chit-chatting, I found that the above link is a mirror to an old version of his site.
Now, I've been spending quite some time tonight looking for the original "King in yellow" as I had said.
Aka a book about a book, a series of short novels that revolve around a supposed book called "King in yellow".
So far, so good, google won't mention the "book in the book" as something serious..
BUT.
I just caught a scan of another, hand-written document in this guy's site.
Which is the original "King in yellow", or a contemporary copy.
...a book supposed to drive the reader crazy.
In the novel series, the original book is described as "state of the art in terms of beauty, but inevitably drives
it's readers crazy or kills them".
I am relatively courageous, quite like horror tales, but I dare anyone to stand what's in that book for more than 10 seconds.
It's magnificient french poetry and indeed close to pure genius, but it's also terribly disturbing.
Double eek.
If this one is a hoax, (the King in Yellow), I am Wonder woman.
Ok... this one truely scares me,
but even if in french, tell me, does that print (Roi en Jaune section), the cover as well as text...
does it sound like some hoax? I mean, the poetry is really exceptional, reaches levels set by everlasting giants like Baudelaire.
An unknwon genius? Doubt that.
Reading a lot of RPG forums the Necronomicon comes up a lot. And really wikipedia sums it up rather neatly.
quote:The Necronomicon is the name of a fictional book created by H.P. Lovecraft and is often featured in Cthulhu Mythos stories inspired by his works. Some people, however, believe in the existence of an actual ancient text called the Necronomicon which may or may not fit the description given in Lovecraft's writings. Indeed, so convincing were Lovecraft's references to the tome that book dealers were seeking copies of it even during his lifetime.
Now on all the other stuff I can't say anything.
__________________________
Eagles get sucked into jet engines and weasels are oft maligned, but beavers just make nice hats. FA@H
But even on the Necronomicon, this is .. odd.
I mean, a Scottish author makes a play about a forbidden book.
Fine.
The supposed forbidden book is *supposed* to have been.. er, forbidden and destroyed
by governments.
Just as if making a fictional play on *top* of it was there to add confusion, somehow, with a purpose.
French poetry is difficult, as the french grammar is.
And a guy, who, although an admirer of Lovecraft, is a not so frantic one and takes it with humor
happens to own, scan, and publish a beautiful and troublesome poetry book that could be one of the copies of the original.
And is excellent in quality.
The same guy, as opposed to the many other less professional webmasters, happens to explicitely quote
high representatives of one of the oldest/biggest/major museums in the world.
??!
So, the king in Yellow and Psaknotic manuscripts seem - I said seem - to have some reality to it, and some secrecy around them.
Furthermore, as published above, they are not "horror tales" like Lovecraft's, they are not fancy fiction,
they're dogma or even - why not - summonning books or bibles for *dark religions. Text like nothing I have seen before or after,
sick-sick - but oh so well written for KiY - texts.
And they vaguely echo monsters and tales of Lovecraft: the King in yellow typically
could be the story of one of LC's "Ancients", or something of that kind (there are plenty of traits that ressemble *Hastur
as far as I know).
Now, granted, the Necronomicon is more than controversial and sounds fake, but wikipedia is a crowd driven encyclopedia,
does not prove a damned thing either.
It is a fact (the name of the Rose) that some books have disappeared over centuries, through inquisition,
the church, forbidden translations, etc.
So, would those books, which have caused so much fear - cursed or not -, be publicy "documented" on the internet if they had existed
at some point? Would they be in the public library vaults? Or would the rare authentic copies be locked
in the basement of such libraries and kept away from the audience?
I will admit that I have not had time to peruse the links you helpfully provided above (just as you apparently have not had time to send me that email . No need for it now, though, as I'm leaving the day after tomorrow). But I did want to say this: it is an ancient idea that language possesses magical power. Look at the Bible for one common example. How did God create the world? By speaking it into existence--that is, through language. Just as there is good magic, there is bad magic, and just as there are good words, there are bad words. Not that the words themselves are bad (although there are indeed single words that are believed to be magical in and of themselves--more on that later), but put together in a certain way, a certain grammar, they come to possess an evil influence. Mind you, there is a distinction between evil content and evil words. The former is a judgment of meaning, while the latter is a judgment of the intrinsic, magical power of the word(s). It is no surprise that there are many tales of forbidden books, magical tomes, evil texts that will drive the reader insane. These play on the ancient human belief of magical language. But it is another story entirely as to whether these texts actually ever existed.
The idea of magical language is a successful meme because it is fascinating and it convinces us that we can create--or destroy--with the fruit of our hearts and minds. The meme is not without factual basis, of course. We have sayings such as "the pen is mightier than the sword," which confirms our belief in magical language, as well as such sayings as "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me"--the biggest lie ever told to children, because we all know that names do hurt, and they go on hurting long after broken bones have healed, sometimes even to the grave. Each and every human being has experienced both the hurtful and healing power of words, so it is no great leap of imagination to postulate that words in themselves possess magical power.
But do they really possess this power? Remember, it is not the content we are referring to here. All those texts you mentioned? They have their power because not because of what they say, but because of the words they use to say it. To use Judeo-Christian tradition as an example again, take the Tetragrammaton--that is, YHWH, the rendering of the Hebrew name for God. Everyone knows what it refers to, but you can't actually write out the name because it is sacred. The Scriptures (any scriptures, really) as a whole are also a study in magical language--it took centuries for Europeans to even dare think about translating the Bible (despite the fact that the Septuagint was itself a Greek translation) because of the sacred nature of the text. Sure, the content was important, but they also believed that the words themselves were sacred. These days, though, we have numerous translations of the Bible in more languages than I can imagine. Why? Because we have moved away from a magical understanding of language and recognized that the importance of the semantic value of language--even sacred language. Not that the fascination with magical language has been disappeared, just that it has been suppressed by practicality, at least in this instance.
But I wander. Back to those texts. Did they really exist? I suppose that depends upon your point of view. If you're asking whether someone ever wrote a text about a yellow king, I would say yes, it is entirely possible. If you're asking whether that same text actually drove people who read it insane, I would say no, it is rather unlikely. Does this really matter, though? As a student of folklore and oral literature, I tread the fine line between "truth" and "reality." Truth is absolute, reality is relative. In terms of truth, The Yellow King probably never existed. In terms of reality, it had (and is still having, apparently) an effect on the minds and imaginations of people. Which is more important? I would say the latter, but I am biased because of my field of study.
There's a lot more to say on the subject, of course, but I'm getting into babbling territory. I apologize for not directly addressing the texts you mentioned, but I started thinking in general about the subject ever since I first read this thread. Due to my upcoming trip, I probably won't be able to contribute much more to the discussion, but I did just want to unburden my mind here and maybe give you some food for thought.
Fascinating, calls for reaction, thank you.
Sorry for automod.. am spending crazy days you wouldn't want to know about, but this thing will definitely happen, and fast (the report is due next week for me).
Next: in the links I posted, there is a text that pretends to be the Yellow King. As I said, it's "quality" is obvioulsy outstanding,
and it is disturbing - a lot.
quote:
How did God create the world? By speaking it into existence
So well put. Well, actually, the invention of written words drew the line between prehistory and history.
Something to think about.
Plus quantum physic freaks tend to think things exist because of a desire to observe them,
a conscious willingness to. They do *think* that, and explain it in many different ways, but it is the root to all modern
physics, it is accepted as facts that what exists does because it is observed.
Yea so that site you linked us to is all in french... Unfortanutely I do not possess the ability to translate such a langauge like master Suho .
The only other book that I've heard of entitled 'The Necronomicon' is one of H.G. Geiger's illustrated books. The airbrushed paintings all of which are very bio mechanical and sci-fi'ish, perhaps similarly relevant to Lovecraft's novels. If I remember correctly the coverpage depicts a humanoid type figure who's head is shaped of two opposing pentacles (thus making a ten pointed star) and having looked through it before I remember seeing other various religous/pegan/occultic symbols hidden within the artwork.
quote:
Yea so that site you linked us to is all in french...
English sites about the topic are so often biased, what struck me about that one was the absence of judgement, and I did not find an english equivalent
(sigh). Plus Suho asked me to post the link, had warned you. Kimmy and some people, poi for instance, do know french though,
and kimmy told me it was interesting to her.
This said, what the hell are you waiting for? Learn french! They do not only make good fries (and I am in Switzerland and italian myself, so I am not biased towards them,
even if theyre claim to be exceptional soccer players only is a claim ).
[this said, search engines like google do a decent translation job nowadays. They still come up with junk, but it's getting more rare]
posted 06-20-2006 02:58
. No need for it now, though, as I'm leaving the day after tomorrow). But I did want to say this: it is an ancient idea that language possesses magical power. Look at the Bible for one common example. How did God create the world? By speaking it into existence--that is, through language. Just as there is good magic, there is bad magic, and just as there are good words, there are bad words. Not that the words themselves are bad (although there are indeed single words that are believed to be magical in and of themselves--more on that later), but put together in a certain way, a certain grammar, they come to possess an evil influence. Mind you, there is a distinction between evil content and evil words. The former is a judgment of meaning, while the latter is a judgment of the intrinsic, magical power of the word(s). It is no surprise that there are many tales of forbidden books, magical tomes, evil texts that will drive the reader insane. These play on the ancient human belief of magical language. But it is another story entirely as to whether these texts actually ever existed.
).