The 13 Gates of the Necronomicon

by Donald Tyson

  It is so simplistic to state that the Necronomicon does not exist. Of course it does not exist in the same way that the book Moby Dick exists. It was never copied onto parchment or printed on paper prior to Lovecraft's description of it. Yet to say that it does not exist accomplishes nothing. It ignores the continuing power and presence of the book, which only grows stronger with each year that passes. Does beauty exist? Does a mathematical theory exist? Does God exist? Existence is so much more than mere corporeal presence.

  It is not my desire to mislead readers as to the reality of fictional persons, places, or things-or at least, no more my desire than it was that of Lovecraft, who wrote of nonexistent books as though they could be borrowed from the local university library, and mythical towns as though they might be visited by bus. In my examination of these topics, I also treat them as real, since it becomes tiresome to constantly remind readers that they are invented. They are real within the context of Lovecraft's world, a world that has more substance on the astral planes than most imagine.

  To avoid the confusion that invariably arises when Lovecraft's creations are discussed, some writers divide mythos topics into the categories "real" and "fictional." At first consideration this seems like a useful division, but it has significant limitations. Many of the fictional matters treated by Lovecraft are real, in the sense that they exist in the larger world, even though they are fictional in nature. The gods of ancient Greece are a good example. They are real in the sense that Lovecraft did not dream them from nothingness, but they are fictional in the sense that they are not corporeal beings.

  Many of the books mentioned by Lovecraft are actual published works, but Lovecraft's references to them may be completely fanciful, and may have nothing to do with their contents. Should they be classed as real or fictional? For example, Lovecraft refers to the Book of Dzyan, which is part of the lore of Theosophy. Madame Blavatsky, the leader of the Theosophical movement, claimed to have read the ancient and lost Book of Dzyan, and pretended that she had published stanzas from this work in her own book The Secret Doctrine. As it happens, Blavatsky invented the Book of Dzyan just as surely as Lovecraft invented the Necronomicon-or perhaps, just as surely did not invent it, as Lovecraft did not invent the Necronomicon. Blavatsky claimed the ability to read books stored in the great astral library known as the akashic records. It was very likely here that she studied the Book of Dzyan. Similarly, Lovecraft did not so much invent the Necronomicon as dream it into existence, and for Lovecraft dreams were very real.

  Lovecraft's brief references to the Book of Dzyan have nothing to do with the actual stanzas published by Blavatsky. Should the Book of Dzyan be classed as fictional or real? Blavatsky claimed it to be a real work. Certainly, a portion of it exists in her Secret Doctrine, so it is real in the sense that it has been published. It was regarded as real enough by Theosophists. Yet most scholars agree that the Book of Dzyan had no existence of any material kind before Blavatsky wrote about it.

  Similar confusion might arise concerning the categorization of literary inventions of other writers borrowed by Lovecraft for inclusion in his Necronomicon mythos. For example, the Yellow Sign is a symbol or letter of dire portent described by the writer Robert W. Chambers in his short story of the same name. Lovecraft mentioned it, making it a part of his mythos. It might be marked as "real" because it was not invented by Lovecraft, but was taken by him from the greater world he inhabited. Yet it is not a real thing in the sense of something tangible or extant.

  The gods mentioned by Lovecraft that exist in the mythologies of ancient Greece are real to those who worship them, even though most people of more prosaic minds might be inclined to dismiss them as imaginary. Yet are they any less real than Christ or Krishna? Whether God and the Devil are treated as real or imaginary depends on one's point of view To a believer they are real; to an atheist they are fiction.

  It seems to me that a more useful division of the contents of the Necronomicon mythos, for the purpose of minimizing confusion regarding the sources of the material, is to mark items as either Lovecraft's invention, or otherwise. Since most of the material is from Lovecraft fertile dreaming mind, it is sufficient to mark the material not of Lovecraft's invention with an asterisk (*) after the title, and to explain its source in the text. The asterisk merely indicates that the topic, or part of the topic, has existence beyond Lovecraft's invention-it does not signify that the topic is real in the usual materialistic sense.

  For the purpose of exploration, the Necronomicon may be conceived as a walled Arabian city with many gates of entry. The pages of the book are its streets and buildings and marketplaces. Its inhabitants comprise the entire Necronomicon mythos as expressed in Lovecraft's stories and poems. We know the city is walled because of the mystery that shrouds the book. Its walls conceal what lies inside. To learn the byways of the city of the Necronomicon, we must enter into it through its gates, and to open the gates we must possess their keys.

  It is of practical advantage to limit the gates of the city to a manageable number. Each gate is a unique avenue of approach that opens on a different section of the metropolis, some filled with palaces and noble houses, others having open vistas and green spaces, and yet others sustaining murky ghettos where it is dangerous to wander alone. The city is square, each of its four walls facing a different direction of the compass, each wall with its unique qualities that are expressed by its gates. Why square? Because it is our purpose to bring the astral Necronomicon down to our everyday reality so that we may delve into its mysteries, which are the wonders of Lovecraft's mythic universe. The square is the most material of geometric shapes. The city of the book is a kind of mandala that may be entered during ritual meditation. Graphically represented, it somewhat resembles a modern circuit diagram.

  City of the Book

  The layout of the gates is simple enough to describe. Each of the three walls that face east, south, and west has four gates. The gates of the eastern wall open on the topic of persons, both individual creatures and races of beings. They admit the traveler to the habitations and meeting halls of the city. The gates of the southern wall give access to those areas of the city that concern places, both of this Earth and beyond its boundaries. They admit the traveler to the streets, public gardens, alleys, and catacombs. The gates of the western wall open on all manner of things both precious and noxious. They admit the traveler to the shops and marketplaces of the city. The northern wall has but a single gate in its center, the thirteenth gate of the city of the book. It gives entry upon a walled central garden in which take place all the rites and ceremonies of religion and magic, initiating travelers bold enough to use this lonely gate into the public rites of worship and the secret sorceries of necromancy and other forms of wizardry.

  The illustrations of the gates that accompany the sections of the book are each distinctive and unique, so that during the rituals of opening the gates they may be more easily visualized and sustained in the mind on the astral level. For the same reason, the keys that open the gates are distinctively styled, so that each may be associated with its gate without confusion.

  The city of the book is a construct of the imagination. It is difficult to manipulate a thing that exists purely on the mental level, where it remains uncontained and protean. For this reason it is useful to employ correspondences to the thirteen gates of the walled city that exist in the physical universe. As the great Hermetic maxim tells us, What is below is like to what is above; and what is above is like to what is below: to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing. Manipulation of the lower affects the higher; study of the higher reveals the lower.

  There are thirteen zodiacal constellations that were recognized by the ancient Greeks-a zodiacal constellation is a constellation through which the sun passes in its apparent yearly circuit of the heavens. This may come as a surprise to those who have assumed, based on their understanding of astrology, that the zodiac consists of twelve constellations. In classical astrology, two of the thirteen, S
corpius and Ophiuchus, were combined into one under the name Scorpius, and each of the resulting twelve was nominally given an arc of the zodiac of exactly thirty degrees. In this way, the perfect order and harmony of Greek philosophy was imposed on the intuited chaos of the night sky.

  It is convenient in astrology to reduce the number of zodiacal constellations to twelve, and give them zones of equal length. Indeed, the division of the band of the zodiac into twelve equal parts was made by the Babylonians a thousand years before the time of Christ. But like the perfect circle of Euclidian geometry, this division is artificial. You may raise the objection that the thirteen constellations themselves are artificial, imposed on the random pattern of the stars by the human propensity to find order in chaos. True enough, but this ordered chaos of thirteen irregular forms reflects an intuited level of perception that is more primal, and hence more potent, than the intellectual conceit that imposed on the heavens, by decree, an equal division of twelve zodiacal signs. The number thirteen is not arbitrary, but is integral to the yearly cycle. It should be noted that there are thirteen sidereal lunations in the course of a year.

  The rituals of the thirteen constellations described at the end of each section in this book are not about astronomy or astrology, and no knowledge of these subjects is needed to work them. They are about opening astral gateways in the heavens, so that by occult sympathy the corresponding gateways of understanding are unlocked in the city of the Necronomicon, which is itself an astral construct. It is no accident that the term "astral" is based on the Latin astrum, meaning "star." The definition of astral is "of or from the stars." Astral archetypes are framed and delineated by the constellations and their brightest stars.

  Most of Lovecraft's Old Ones came from the stars, but not from the common stars of our physical universe. Their origins were described as lying beyond the bounds of our universe, or as the places between the stars. It should be obvious to anyone who considers the matter that the Old Ones do not exist physically, in our material world. They would long since have been discovered by modern science were their bodies corporeal. No, the Old Ones are astral entities, and if they are to be communicated with, it must be through astral portals.

  Men walk the streets of cities, but the gods dwell in splendor amid the stars. The night sky is a kind of black mirror into which it is possible to scry reflected aspects of the deep mind that hide below the level of conscious thought. The thirteen zodiacal constellations perceived in the heavens by the ancients are higher spiritual doorways that mirror the depths of the racial subconscious-what Carl Jung termed the collective unconscious, wherein lies concealed the city of the book. The stars in the night sky are used in these rituals to open the lower, more tangible gateways of the city, so that individual human awareness can pass therein.

  The Arabs, and the Persians before them, and the Babylonians before them, studied the natures of the fixed stars and attributed to each a unique identity and power over the Earth, which it was believed to exert through the rays of light it emanates. The fixed stars formed a significant part of Arab astrology, but modern astrology tends to discount and ignore their influence, perhaps because so many of the stars have unfortunate associations. Each constellation has a small number of relatively bright fixed stars that define its outline and parts. The brightest stars in each constellation represent, in a symbolic way, its active forces-the star of the feet its motion, the star of the head its mind, the star of the heart its strength, the stars of its appendages its power, and so on. Some stars are considered benevolent and beneficial, whereas others are regarded as malevolent and harmful.

  In the rituals of the thirteen gates that follow each section of the book, two of the brightest stars in each constellation form the pillars or gateposts of its gateway. These two gateway stars of each constellation echo the myth of the two pillars that went before the Ark of the Covenant as it was carried across the desert by Moses and the Israelites, the pillar by day a column of smoke and the pillar by night a flaming column of fire (see Exodus 13:2 1). When Solomon erected the Temple to house the Ark at Jerusalem, he place two bronze pillars at its entrance in memory of these two spiritual pillars of the desert, the angels of God (First Kings 7:15). The right pillar was called Jachin ("he shall establish"), and the left pillar of the Temple was named Boaz ("in it is strength"). These pillars did not support any part of the Temple, but existed for one reason only-to open an occult gateway into the sacred space of the Holy of Holies by defining the limits of that gateway.

  The gates are the thirteen images in the heavens crossed by the sun, and the pillars of those gates are the stars. In an occult sense, the gateway stars of a zodiacal constellation show the place where an aperture through the constellation can exist. They define the edges of its potential being. No gateway can come into being unless its limits are fixed. The ritual opens the higher celestial gate by means of the key provided. Meditation upon the nature of the key yields entry through the corresponding gateway in the lower astral realm of the walled city of the book. A resonance is created between the pattern of the fixed stars and the parts of the city. By projecting attention outwardly, access is gained within to the secret center. As above, so below. The constellations are archetypal concepts that resonate in the deep mind with great power for transformation.

  If this course of study appears Byzantine in its conception, surely that is appropriate when dealing with a book supposed to have been written in the early part of the eighth century, a book that exists only in dreams and astral visions. I will be your guide and keeper of the keys as we visit in turn each of the gates of the dream city of the Necronomicon, following the course of the Sun through the year to the final solitary gate in the north. The Sun moves slowly against the backdrop of the stars from west to east, occupying each constellation and each astral gate for a unique duration of time. No two periods of occupation are exactly the same, although in this work they have been rounded to the nearest day. This differing duration of the solar passage helps define the uniqueness of each constellation and each gate. The actual dates of entry and exit vary slightly from year to year, and those given here should be understood as approximations.

  The open source astronomy computer program Stellarium was used to determine the beginning and end dates for each gateway-when the Sun crosses the celestial longitudes of its right and left pillar stars. This program, or one like it, will also be found useful for determining the days and hours when the Moon occupies each gateway. The selection of stars for the pillars is based upon several criteria. One, the thirteen gateways must not overlap-the Sun can only occupy one gate at a time. Two, the stars must be named stars familiar to the ancient Greeks and Persians, each with a history of its own that gives it a unique identity. Three, they must be prominent stars readily visible to the naked eye in the night sky. Where possible, I have selected the brightest stars in each constellation for its gate pillars, but this was not always possible due to other conflicting factors. For example, sometimes the brightest stars are too close together in longitude to form a workable gate. Sometimes they overlap the longitude of the gates of other constellations.

  We will begin at the northern corner of the eastern wall of the city with the constellation that marks the winter solstice, and will explore each important theme of the book in turn. The four keys of the east open upon the great alien races, the individual personalities, the gods and demons, and the misshapen monstrosities. The four keys of the south lead us inward upon the human landscapes, the alien realms, the dreamlands, and the worlds beyond this Earth. The four keys of the western gates open the ways to occult books, magic objects, curiosities, and abominations of the city. Entry through the lonely and dark northern gate allows us to reach the hidden garden at the center of the city, and experience the magical methods of the Necronomicon.

  I have designed each key in a unique way, utilizing my power glyph system of occult symbols (see my book Familiar Spirits for a fuller explanation of the glyphs) to create a potent seal of
entry for each of the thirteen gates. It is not necessary to understand the construction of the keys in order to use them effectively, but anyone familiar with my power glyph system will have little difficulty in tracing the manner by which the seals of the keys were composed. For the sake of those unfamiliar with the way in which the seals are made, who may have difficulty tracing their shape on the images of the keys, I have given the basic pattern for each seal in its ritual in the form of a graphic that shows the seal on the gate between the star pillars of that constellation. A chart showing the individual power glyphs is provided for reference at the end of this introduction.

  It is useful to open the gates at a time or in a place of transition. For example, on the shore of the ocean or margin of a lake where water meets land; at a crossroads where one road meets another; in a doorway between rooms, or upon a threshold between inside and outside; in a hallway or entrance chamber that leads from one place to another. Times of transition include such times as at twilight when night gives way to day or day gives way to night; at midnight where one day becomes another; on the solstices or equinoxes of the year; on the last or first day of the month. It is not essential that the ritual be done at a time or in a place of transition, but it is conducive to its success. When no natural threshold exists, an artificial threshold can be created by the symbolic erection of gateway pillars.

  To gain access through a gate following the ritual of its opening, the image of the gate should be visualized, and then built up in the imagination until it has a near-tangible presence. Bear in mind that the images of the gates that appear in this book are merely representations of the true gates of the astral city of the book. Your conception of the gates must be more detailed and more tangible. As you meditate upon the gates you will begin to see them with increasing clarity. The seal upon each key is to be traced upon the surface of its gate in a line of flickering white fire, using the key in the imagination as an astral wand, and the gate should be visualized in the imagination to open inward, allowing the astral traveler to pass through-for ritual entry into the city of the book is a form of astral projection.