Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  The audacity of the reptilian race that built their city beneath the sands where stand the ruins of Irem was astonishing, for they dared to construct a soul portal to the mighty fortress that adorns the heights of Kadath, where out of unity with this material existence that we know as our world dwell in perpetual twilight the gods of this sphere. No king or sorcerer of men would have dared such an outrage. The crocodile beings cared nothing for the sanctity of human adoration; their curiosity knew no bounds of respect or prudence, and at the height of their wisdom they grew arrogant and indifferent to the wrath of the gods, who indeed had not the power to thwart them, even though they were aware of the portal and resented it.

  Kadath rises beyond the barrier mountains in the southernmost land of this world. It is higher by far than any material peak of stone, but it is not wholly of this world and may only be seen by the unaided mortal gaze at certain times of the year when the heavens align, and under moonlight, for know you that the moon has power to reveal what the light of the sun hides. Atop Kadath was built by the gods a great fortress of vertical black battlements miles in extent from their bases to their towered crests. Within these protective walls and higher still in elevation is a palace of the richest metals and stones, so that it seems a single shining jewel. At the heart of the palace is a vast throne room with walls of onyx and floors of multicolored polished stones, a circular vault so lofty that its very ceiling is lost in mists. Here the thrones of the chief amongst the gods, each shining with gold and silver, stand in a ring facing inward, and in the center of the floor lies a great round mirror in which the gods look down upon the affairs of mankind as through a window that opens downward upon our world.

  A traveler entering the portal to Kadath emerges within this throne room, not in the body of a god, for even the reptilian race that constructed it was not capable of such an outrage, but in the flesh of one of the numerous servants of these earthly deities, who are ever present to tend to their slightest whims and are constantly moving to and fro, in and out from the vaulted chamber. Many bear the features of our race, which are like to the features of the gods themselves, though less subtle. The gods take comfort in having servants that resemble them to tend to their more personal desires. Other creatures less human perform the drudgery of the palace. The humanlike servants are more numerous, and it is likely that the soul flyer will find himself within such flesh. They are easy to control with the will, and may be made to approach and regard any object of interest.

  A secret must here be revealed to the wise, who will not repeat it save by whispering it into the ear of a trusted disciple of many years, for it has caused the deaths of many men. It is believed by the heathens and the barbarian races, and also by certain hidden sects in our own lands, that these gods who dwell at Kadath in the frozen wastes were the makers of mankind; the truth is opposite, for it was the dreams and visions of men, empowered by their desires and driven by their wills, that caused the gods to coalesce from the very fabric of space itself in the dim beginnings of humanity. Man was created along with the other benign animals of this earth by the Elder Things for their amusement; and when man first began to dream, the gods were formed.

  This is the secret held by the Egyptian priests, who never forgot it even over the centuries their land suffered the subjugation of the Greeks, and after them the Romans. The priests teach that men have power over the gods through the art of magic, because humanity created them in dreams. Indeed, the dreams of our race sustain the gods still, and without those dreams they would fade to the nothingness from which they arose. A visitor to Kadath will observe that the gods vary in size, the smallest being no larger than their servants and the largest of gigantic proportion and towering above the rest; the thrones themselves are similarly various in their dimensions. Nor is the size of any god fixed, but changes over the passage of generations as many or fewer of our race remember and worship it; as the god increases or diminishes, so does its throne, for the throne is the seat of its power.

  It might be thought that the gods, in the midst of their beautiful palace, surrounded by every luxury and diversion they desire, live an existence free from care in which they enjoy endless pleasure; not so, for a darkness hangs over them, making their voices hushed and their smiles pale. The gods do not rule Kadath unhindered, but endure an overseer who dwells in a small chamber located directly above the dome of the throne room. The chamber is of simple and rough stonework, unadorned by any hanging tapestry or carpet, having no furniture or illumination, lacking even windows or a door. Within its darkness resides the formless creature named Nyarlathotep, the faceless black god of distant space, he of a thousand forms, who is the messenger of the Old Ones.

  It is whispered by the gods that Nyarlathotep dreams in his tomb, even as does great Cthulhu in R’lyeh, though where the tomb of Nyarlathotep is located upon the earth, or under the sea, they do not say. Within his dreams Nyarlathotep is present in Kadath, which he rules as a spider rules the shining strands of its web, sensitive to every movement and every presence. The gods have pledged their obedience to the purposes of the Old Ones, and in return the Old Ones aid the gods against their enemies and perform services for the gods that are beyond their power. No action is taken by any god of man without the knowledge and assent of Nyarlathotep, and those who defy his will, he destroys so completely that not even their memory is left to our race.

  It is for this reason that the gods never laugh. They gaze down upon us through their mirror and aid those who worship them with prayers and offerings, for a gift given demands a gift in return, yet always with the sufferance of dreaming Nyarlathotep, whom no god has seen but who is ever present in the midst of their councils. When he withholds his favor, they are powerless to act, and must watch as their worshippers are destroyed by their enemies and their own vital force is diminished. The traveler feels relief in his heart when the time of his journey expires and his soul is drawn back through the portal of Kadath and into his own body of flesh, for flesh is warm to the touch and has a heart that beats, but the gods are only solemn shadows, fearful of the thing that watches from above.

  he isle of Albion lies beyond the Pillars of Hercules in the northern part of the western ocean, yet so near to shore that it may be seen across the strait that separates it from the mainland. It is edged by high cliffs in color as white as the whitest bone bleached in the sun, and from this extraordinary feature it derives its name, for albus signified the color white to the Romans, who conquered the land and subjected its barbarous inhabitants to their rule. Beyond the white cliffs extend flat grasslands. They were once the home of a cunning race wise in the secrets of the earth, who constructed many sacred monuments to their gods. The race departed long before the coming of the Romans, leaving only their curious constructions of earth and stone to continue upon the land, scarcely altered by the passage of myriads of years.

  The greatest of these ancient monuments is a temple of monoliths arranged in a circle so that they resemble rough-hewn pillars that are squared rather than rounded. A massive series of lintel stones joins the ring and provided support for a roof of great beams that has fallen inward, prey to the corruption of the passing of years, so that only vestiges of it remain. Within the ring are even larger stones, as great in size as any erected by the arts of the Egyptians, though not so massive as the stones of R’lyeh, which indeed it would not have been possible to move by the efforts of human beings. One of these great interior stones lies flat and served as an altar to the primary god of the ancients of the white isle, Yog-Sothoth; indeed, it is said that the rounded shapes of all the temples of this race were in imitation of the shape of Yog-Sothoth, who is seen as a conflux of spheres or circles of many colors.

  Upon the surface of the earth, and beneath it, are certain places where the barriers between worlds are thin, so that realities distant in space, or time, or in other ways that cannot be measured draw near and touch. The primordial ancestors of our race, who dwelt in harmony with the changing of the se
asons and the movements of the stars, and who communicated with the Old Ones in their dreams, felt the power of these exceptional intersections of invisible lines of force and marked their locations with monuments, markings etched in the earth, mounds, temples, and other sacred forms. Of all these gateways to distant realms, the temple of monoliths on the isle of Albion is the greatest, the mother to whom all others are dependent children.

  It has been written by our holy scribes that the al’kabar in the great mosque at Mecca is the center of the world, but here is the confutation of this conceit, which is not blasphemous, for truth cannot blaspheme—that the center of our world lies in Albion, and the circle that is a doorway from which many lines radiate across the land is the temple of monoliths upon the grassy plain. Read it and be wise, yet in your wisdom seal your lips to the ears of other men, for to speak it before fools is to court death at their hands. Many truths are known that are not to be spoken, and many truths have been lost to the silence of ages.

  The barbarians who dwell presently on Albion have forgotten the beginnings of the temple. The Romans believed the local fable that it was the work of the druids, a priest caste that flourished in the forests of the northlands and on the white isle before the time of the prophet of the Christians, but even this lie has been forgotten by those whose mud and wattle huts are now erected near the temple; yet in their ignorance they cannot deny its power, and a forbidden cult makes sacrifice of human souls at certain angles around the perimeter of the stone circle on appropriate days of the year, when the sun aligns with the stars and the gates are unlocked. For these offerings to Yog-Sothoth, whose true name they do not speak, criminals condemned to death are used, and the form of sacrifice is to strike off their heads with swords as they kneel within their shallow graves, which they have dug beforehand with picks.

  By their blood, the lines of the earth that radiate from the temple, as the strands of a spider’s web from its center, are quickened and their vital forces constrained in balance for the continuing fruitfulness of the soil; for if these lines become weak or entangled together, blights, upheavals, and quakings of the earth result not only on the isle of the temple but in distant lands in the far places of our world. The cult of the temple regards itself as the safekeepers of our world, and should its numbers fail, great catastrophes would surely follow. All its work is the harmonizing of the lines, and the use of the gateways to reach other worlds has been forgotten, save to a few man who gained it in the deep places from things more ancient than our race.

  A recent soul traveler to the round temple of Albion chanced to find himself inhabiting the body of the high priest of the mysteries of its cult at the moment of sacrifice in their most sacred ritual, which occurs at dawn on the shortest day of the year. Since he possessed no knowledge of the proper litany, he stood as one dazed with the broad sacrificial blade upraised in his doubled hands, staring down at the naked youth bound with his face to the sky upon the altar. The lesser priests began to murmur uneasily among themselves. Their leader came forward and demanded in the language of Albion that the high priest complete the correct recitation of verses. The traveler knew the language, but not the verses.

  Thinking to escape his predicament, he feigned illness and, swaying as though sick, caught himself upon the corner of the altar stone. The surprise of the surrounding throng drained the blood from their faces, so that in their white linen robes they resembled a host of specters in the pale light of winter dawn. After a moment of stillness, the lesser priests cried out, sprang upon their leader, thrust him in the place of the bewildered youth upon the altar, and drove the sacred blade through his heart. Only his great skill in necromancy allowed him to survive the death of his host and thus record this amusing tale as a warning to future users of the soul portals.

  It is to best advantage that the traveler to the temple of monoliths go there in his human vessel alone in the darkness when the waning moon has three nights remaining to complete her term, and await within the temple the moment when the moon is centered above the solitary standing stone that lies beyond the doorless entrance to the temple. He must have his human vessel chew continually the leaves of the

  herb known as cinquefoil, so that its juice is ever on his tongue. When the moon has attained the standing stone, certain hieroglyphics will appear upon the surface of the recumbent stone. Mark their shapes well in the mind, and at the first opportunity inscribe them on parchment, for they have great utility in dealings with the Old Ones and those things that serve them.

  One who has read this book with care, and understood its words, may find these hieroglyphics elsewhere, if he has wit to seek them beneath the rays of the moon; for the sun is the moon’s mate, and what is writ bold to his full face is whispered to her turned cheek.

  Gloss of Theodorus Philetas: The strange markings copied here I found painted beneath the black script of the Arabic text on a parchment leaf of the book of Alhazred; they were not to be seen by day, or by lamplight, but only under the rays of the quarter moon in her waning phase, which I happened upon by accident of a night when the breeze from my window extinguished the glow of my oil lamp. By what art they were made I can find no enlightenment. Led by this chance, I made investigation, and discovered other images and writings beneath the penned words of the manuscript, some visible to the rays of the full moon, others at its waxing or waning phase, which I have copied on to the pages of this book for all to see where they appeared in the places of the original.

  n the sacred text titled Bereshit, signifying the beginning of things in the tongue of the Jews, we are taught that the Holy One created the world in six days, and on the seventh rested from his travail. Before he began there was nothing, and when he completed his work, all that we know was perfected—all stars of the heavens, all forms of plant and beast, all seas and mountains and plains, and that most noble pattern, Adam, the first man, more beautiful than the angels since his face mirrors the face of God. Our race was formed at the end of the sixth day, the final thing made by the creator to be the lord and ruler of every lesser creature and of the spaces of this world.

  So it is written, and men who are devout believers accept it as the sacred word of God, but a few among our race who are uncontent to receive teachings as an infant receives its milk, but must restlessly seek them out where they lie hidden, know that on the spaces between the days other creatures were made by other makers, and since they were made at night, they have remained unseen and veiled in shadow.

  Neither may it be presumed that our race is the most ancient or last of the masters who rule this world, or that the aggregation of living forms known to man walks unaccompanied. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. They walk not on the places we know but between them, tranquil and primal, by us unseen, for they are formless. Yog-Sothoth remembers the gate; Yog-Sothoth is the gate; Yog-Sothoth is the key and protector of the gate. What was, and is, and shall be are one in Yog-Sothoth. He remembers where once the Old Ones broke through the vault that separates our sphere from the outer darkness, and where they shall break through again. He remembers where they left the imprint of their feet in the mud of the earth, and those places where they still walk to and fro, and why no one can behold them as they pass.

  By their odor can men sometimes know their presence, but of their semblance no man can know, but only indirectly by peering into the liniments and expressions of those they mingled with mankind; and of those there are many types varying in appearance from the mirror of man to the shadow outline of that invisible and formless presence that made them. They walk unseen and reeking in desert places where the words have been intoned and the rites howled through at their proper times. The wind gibbers with their voices and the earth rumbles with their thoughts. They bend the trees and crush the cities, yet neither forest nor city beholds the hand that strikes.

  Kadath in the cold waste knows them, yet what man may truly boast that he knows Kadath? The ice wilderness that lies far to the south and the i
sles drowned beneath the seas bear stones upon which their seal is cut, but who among common men has seen the frozen city or the sealed tower garlanded for ages with seaweed and encrusted by barnacles? Great Cthulhu is their kin, yet he can discern them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall you know them. Their hand is at your throats, yet you see them not; and their dwelling place is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate wherein the spheres meet. Mankind rules where they ruled once; they shall rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait, patient and potent, for here shall they rule again.

  At their return all men shall bow their heads and serve them as lords; those few who remember their ancient presence with invocations and offerings given at their places of power shall command the mass of our race who bleat as sheep and low as cattle when they are led to the slaughter, for we are as food to them and as beasts of burden that toil in the fields. The prayers of the prophets shall not prevail against them; neither crescent nor cross nor star can forestall their approach, when once again the heavens align and the gate is opened. Iä! Nyarlathotep! They shall visit us in darkness, but by their fires the night will be made flashing with the brightness of polished brass set against the face of the sun.