The 13 Gates of the Necronomicon

by Donald Tyson

  (Out of the Aeons)

  The undersea city of the Deep Ones that lies in the floor of an ocean trench off Devil Reef, just outside of the harbor mouth of the New England port of Innsmouth. It is only one of many such undersea cities. Lovecraft described it as "Cyclopean and manycolumned Y'ha-nthlei." In February of 1928 the United States Navy sent a deep-diving submarine into the waters of the abyss beyond the reef, where it discharged downward a spread of torpedoes and damaged the city, but failed to destroy it.

  (The Shadow Over Innsmouth)

  A city of Leng, described in The Diary of Alonzo Typer as "that lost and hidden city wherein brood eon-old secrets." The wizard Claes van der Heyl claimed in his manuscript book to have been the only man to have visited Yian-Ho in the flesh. From that forbidden city he brought back a padlock and a key, which were to be used to lock behind a specially constructed door the hellish thing that he and his future descendants had been commanded to find.

  The strange coffin-shaped clock with four hands in the possession of Randolph Carter's executor, Etienne-Laurent de Marigny, was taken away from Yian-Ho by a yogi who was sometimes mentioned by the unfortunate Harley Warren. The yogi is said to have boasted that he and he alone "among living men" had been to Yian-Ho. Since Claes van der Heyl was long dead at the time the yogi lived, it is possible that both his boast and that of the yogi were accurate statements.

  In The Whisperer in Darkness there is mention made of Yian amidst a list of other potent names, but it seems likely that Yian-Ho was intended, since Leng follows immediately after it in the list.

  (The Diary of Alonzo Typer; The Gates of the Silver Key; The Whisperer in Darkness)

  An inhabited land deep beneath the surface of the Earth in a vast cavern. Called red-litten Yoth because it is illuminated by a natural red radiance.

  (The Whisperer in Darkness; The Mound)

  The Key to the Sixth Gate

  Sun passes through Taurus: May 14 June 21

  Constellation is represented by the upper body of a bull emerging from the waves.

  Right Pillar: Aldebaran (Arabic: al-dabaran-The Follower). Astronomical designation: Alpha Tauri. Astrological nature: Mars. Influence: good fortune, honor and wealth, but with danger of a fall from grace. Magnitude: .9-irregular variable. Color: rosered. Sun crosses: June 1. Location: the southern eye of the bull. Comments: Associated by the ancient Persians with the vernal equinox, it is one of the four royal stars of the Persians.

  Left Pillar: El Nath (Arabic: al-natih-The Butting One). Astronomical designation: Beta Tauri. Astrological nature: Mars. Influence: fortune and promotion through cleverness, but a danger of quarrels and the enmity of others. Magnitude: 1.7-a double star. Color: white. Sun crosses: June 13. Location: tip of the northern horn. Comments: Threat of violence is minor.

  The astral gate of Taurus lies between the star of its right pillar, located on the southern eye of the bull, and the star of its left pillar, which occupies the tip of the northern horn. The sun enters the gate around June 1 when it crosses the longitude of Aldebaran, the star of the right pillar, and leaves the gate around June 13, when it crossed the star of the left pillar, El Nath. The transition of this gate takes twelve days.

  The key to the Sixth Gate opens the constellation Taurus, allowing entry into the section of the walled city of the Necronomicon that contains the dwelling places on the planet Earth of the alien beings described in the mythos. Use it for divining information or receiving dreams about alien cities, caverns, tombs, and ruins mentioned in Lovecraft's writings that are hidden in this world.

  Seal of the Sixth Key on the Sixth Gate

  Face the direction of the compass ruled by the Sixth Gate, which is south by east-that is, slightly to the left of due south. Visualize the closed gate of the walled city before you just as though it were a real gate in an ancient walled city, and make sure that it is large enough for you to walk through. Take the time to create it on the astral level in precise detail.

  With the image of the gate clear in your mind and projected upon the astral level to the direction south by east, speak the following invocation to Yog-Sothoth, taking care to insert those references that are specific to the Sixth Gate:

  Guardian of the Gate! Defender of the Door! Watcher of the Way! Who art the stout Lock, the slender Key, and the turning Hinge! Lord of All Transition, without whom there is no coming in or going out, I call thee! Keeper of the Threshold, whose dwelling place is between worlds, I summon thee! Yog-Sothoth, wise and great lord of the Old Ones, I invoke thee!

  By the authority of the dreaded name, Azathoth, that few dare speak, I charge thee, open to me the gateway of Taurus the Bull that lies between the blazing pillar Aldebaran on the right hand and the blazing pillar El Nath on the left hand. As the solar chariot [or, lunar chariot] crosses between these pillars, I enter the city of the Necronomicon through its Sixth Gate. Selah!

  Visualize the key of the Sixth Gate in your right hand some six inches long and made of cast iron. Feel its weight, texture, and shape as you hold it. Extend your right arm and use the key as a pointer to project upon the surface of the gate the seal of the key, which should be visualized to burn on the gate in a line of white spiritual fire. Point with the astral key at the center of the gate and speak the words:

  In the name of Azathoth, Ruler of Chaos, by the power of Yog-Sothoth, Lord of Portals, the Sixth Gate is opened!

  Visualize the gate unlocking and opening inward of its own accord upon a shadowed space beyond. On the astral level, walk through the gateway and stand in the dark space beyond. Focus your mind upon the hidden places on or within this planet where the alien creatures of the mythos dwell and open yourself to receive impressions of these realms. In a more general sense, the ritual of the Sixth Gate may be used to scry any alien habitation or residing place of spirits within the earthly physical realm and its astral reflection. For example, it would be the gate to scry the lands of fairies.

  After fulfilling the purpose for which this gate was opened, conclude the ritual by astrally passing out through the gate and visualizing it to close. Draw the seal of the Sixth Key on the surface of the gate with the astral key in your hand, and mentally cause it to lock itself shut, as it was at the beginning of the ritual. Speak the words:

  By the power of Yog-Sothoth, and authority of the supreme name Azathoth, I close and seal the Sixth Gate. This ritual is well and truly ended.

  Allow the image of the gate to grow pale in your imagination and fade to nothingness before you turn away from the ritual direction.

  The Seventh Gate

  ovecraft's dreamlands are in many ways his greatest creation. Not only are they described with a richness of detail and verisimilitude unmatched by his descriptions of more mundane settings, but their very concept challenges our usual way of looking at reality. A significant part of Lovecraft's fiction is based on the notion that men lead two lives, one while they are awake, and another while they sleep and dream. Lovecraft proposed in his dream cycle of stories that dreams are not mere fantasies lacking permanence and tangibility, but are a real world that we enter during sleep. More than this, he advanced the daring speculation that the time we spend in the dreamlands is more important than the time we spend in the waking world. - - - - - -- -- - -- - -- -

  This opinion that human beings lead double lives, one while awake and the other while asleep, was not unique to Lovecraft, but was also held to be true by Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophists, who believed that more developed souls assist the evolution of less evolved souls during dreams, most of them without ever knowing the nature of the work they perform during sleep. Similarly, those helped in their dreams awake with no conscious awareness of the lessons they have learned.

  Lovecraft set forth his philosophy of the dreamlands at the beginning of his 1919 story, Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Who can doubt but that these reflections on dreams and dreaming are a true expression of Lovecraft's own thoughts?

  I have often wondered if the majority of man
kind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences-Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism-there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permit of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier. From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncor- poreal life of far different nature from the life we know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

  Lovecraft distinguished between chaotic, trivial dreams that are generated by the memories of random waking incidents, and more coherent dreams that carry with them a sense of significance and meaning. Most of us have experienced this firsthand. There are a small minority of our dreams that stand out with greater clarity and carry with them a sense of importance. They seem in some indefinable way more real than the usual dreams. Their settings and characters are so clear, and often so unlike anything we have experienced or would ever choose to invent, that the dreams leave us wondering about their source. Lovecraft dreamed such dreams more frequently than the average human being, and some of them he dreamed repeatedly.

  These repeating dreams varied in their particular details, but the setting and main characters were the same from one dream to the next. One such repeating dream that left a life-long impression on his psyche was one he dreamed in early childhood, in which he found himself snatched out of his bed and carried high aloft by faceless black creatures with bat wings and barbed tails, who threatened to drop him onto a landscape far below that consisted of needle-sharp mountain peaks. Lovecraft called these things the nightgaunts. He succeeded in partially exorcising the terror they aroused in him when he made them allies to the dreamer Randolph Carter in his epic novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which tragically remained unpublished during Lovecraft's lifetime.

  "Dreamer" was Lovecraft's term for a person who could enter specific dream landscapes and cityscapes at will, retain consciousness and a sense of self while exploring these dream places, and retain a memory of them after waking. Today we would call such a person a "lucid dreamer," but that term was not common in Lovecraft's period. Lucid dreaming is a form of astral projection that occurs during sleep. Randolph Carter, an idealized portrait of the way Lovecraft wished to see himself, and a vehicle by which Lovecraft was able to enter into and actively participate in the unfolding of his own stories, was such a dreamer whose skill in dreaming was unsurpassed by any other living human being.

  Dreamers such as Carter are not only able to enter the dreamlands and explore them, but can create entire cities there through repeated dreams. For example, the dreamer Iranon dreamed the city of Aira, Kuranes dreamed Celephais into existence, and Carter dreamed a certain city that was based on his boyhood memories of New England. These cities persist in the dreamlands as they are discovered and experienced by other dreamers. The ability to create cities and such things as houses in the dreamlands is a strong indication that they astral. The mind has the power to create and shape astral substance.

  The dreamlands of Earth are those surrounding our planet that are visited by human beings and other residents of our world during sleep, while their corporeal bodies remain in the physical world. Other planets in orbit around other stars also have their own dreamlands. The Moon, being quite near the Earth by astronomical measures, is a part of our dreamlands, or at least in contact with them. Black galleys sail between the dreamlands and the far side of the Moon, and the cats of Earth are able to leap from the rooftops of the dreamlands to the Moon. The dreamlands are a vast place, perhaps larger in total area than the physical surface of the Earth. They have more than one level, and they extend off the edge of the world, which is flat in the dreamlands.

  Many ancient kingdoms with great cities, peopled with numerous races not all of whom are human, occupy the river valleys, deserts, and mountain ranges of the dreamlands. The plateau of Leng, which may have its correspondence in the physical world in a high mountain plateau in Antarctica, is represented in the dreamlands as is the mountain of the gods, Kadath in the Cold Waste. The seas of the dreamlands, are crossed by ships that carry goods from port to port, and from islands to the mainland. The edge of the western sea is marked by a great cataract that falls eternally into the gray void between the Basalt Pillars of the West, which correspond symbolically to the Pillars of Hercules of the waking world. The black galleys of the moon-beasts have the ability to sail between the Basalt Pillars and through the aether to the far side of the Moon, where the moon-beasts make their home.

  The dreamlands lie beneath the level of common dreams that lack any important significance. To travel from common dreaming to the dreamlands, it is necessary to enter light sleep and descend a staircase of seventy steps, and then pass through the cavern of flame that is presided over by the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah. Within the depths of the cavern are 700 steps that lead down to the Gate of Deeper Slumber, beyond which lies the beginning of the dreamlands, a region known as the Enchanted Wood.

  Below the surface of the dreamlands is a darker underworld filled with horrifying monsters and ever-present dangers, to be traversed only by the bravest of dreamers. It represented for Lovecraft the dark depths of his nightmares, which he could in his stories order, limit, and control. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Randolph Carter enters this dark zone of the dreamlands and emerges with allies in the form of the race of ghouls, who help him fulfill his quest for Kadath.

  A recurring theme of Lovecraft's dreamland tales is the desire of his characters to leave the waking world and remain in the dreamlands permanently. Time passes at a different rate in the dreamlands, so that in a single night a dreamer can experience months or even years, without growing any older. However, to remain in the dreamlands forever it is necessary to either die in the flesh, or undergo a kind of physical transition to the astral plane in which the body vanishes from the waking world. The latter event seems to have happened to the artist Richard Upton Pickman, who disappeared from Boston and became the king of the ghouls in the dreamlands.

  It might be argued that Lovecraft's stories of the dreamlands are not a part of his mythos, but the Necronomicon is mentioned in dream stories as well as the more commonly recognized mythos stories, and the dream stories contain figures and places from the mythos, such as Nyarlathotep and the plateau of Leng. Characters such as Randolph Carter appear in both stories of the dreamlands, and stories universally recognized as of the mythos. Indeed, there is such a cross-fertilization between the dream stories and the stories of the Old Ones and their kin, that it is impossible to separate them. Lovecraft presented both types of tales as belonging to a single unified reality. In my opinion the dreamland stories are a part of the Necronomicon mythos and should not be divided from it.

  City of marble and beryl located beside the glassy and curving river Nithra, where the wandering poet Iranon asserted that his father had once ruled as king. The city contains palaces with golden domes and painted walls that are surrounded by gardens with flowing fountains in the midst of reflecting pools. Upon the crest of a central hill stands a citadel with an open observation terrace from which the entire city can be viewed. Beyond the walls of the city in the valley it occupies are groves and fertile fields. A
brook called the Kra crosses the valley from the hills in a series of waterfalls. The sheltering hills are forested with brightly colored yath-trees. This city was dreamed by the beggar boy Iranon, who searched for it in vain for the remainder of his long life, at last committing suicide when he was told it was only a dream.

  (The Quest of Iranon)

  A snow-capped mountain in the land of Ooth-Nargai, not far from the city of Celephais. Its lower slopes are covered in gingko-trees.

  (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)

  Mighty port city of the great island Oriab. Ships are guided into its harbor at night between the twin beacons Thon and Thal. The wharves of made of porphyry, and the city rises steeply from them in a series of stone terraces. The flights of steps that connect these terraces are over-arched by buildings and bridges. Beneath the city is a canal that leads to the lake of Yath. On the far shore of the lake are the ruins of an ancient and unremembered city that was built of clay bricks.

  (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)

  The Basalt Pillars of the West are the dreamlands equivalent to the Pillars of Hercules. They mark the end of the known ocean. Beyond them the sea falls over a great cataract into a void-what is in the waking world only an ancient myth is in the dreamlands a reality. The black galleys sail between them and into the aether on their voyages to the far side of the Moon.

  (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)

  A place of "fragrant groves" containing aloe and sandalwood, similar to what is said in legend of the forests of unknown Cathuria.

  (The White Ship)

  An unvisited land known only in legend that lies beyond the "Basalt Pillars of the West." It is said to be the Land of Hope, where reside all perfect ideals. In it are said to be many groves and cities with splendid palaces. Its forests contain aloe and sandalwood, and are filled with birds. On its flowering mountainsides stand temples of pink marble. The cities of Cathuria are enclosed in walls of gold, and are paved with gold. Within the gardens of the cities are strange orchids and perfumed lakes. The dwellings are all palaces roofed with gold. They are built over canals of the sacred river Narg, which flows out from within the depths of the earth.