The 13 Gates of the Necronomicon

by Donald Tyson

  The astral gate of Leo lies between the star of its right pillar, located on the breast of the lion, and the star of its left pillar, on the lion's rump. The sun enters the gate by crossing the longitude of the great star Regulus, star of the right pillar, around August 22. The solar transition of this wide gate takes eighteen days. The sun exits the gate around September 9, when it crosses the longitude of the star of the left pillar, Zosma.

  The key to the Ninth Gate opens the constellation Leo, allowing entry into that part of the walled city of the Necronomicon that concerns occult or esoteric books, both those that exist in this world and those that exist only on the astral planes. Use it for reading the information contained in their pages via scrying and dreams.

  Seal of the Ninth Key on the Ninth Gate

  Face the direction of the compass ruled by the Ninth Gate, which is southwest by west-that is, slightly to the right of the southwest point. Visualize before you the closed gate in the western wall of the city of the Necronomicon so that it is more than large enough for you to walk through.

  With the visualized image of the gate sustained in your mind and projected upon the astral plane in the direction southwest by west, speak this invocation to Yog-Sothoth, which has the same general form for all the gates:

  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 mighty 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 Leo, the Lion, that lies between the blazing pillar Regulus on the right hand and the blazing pillar Zosma on the left hand. As the solar chariot [or, lunar chariot] crosses between these pillars, I enter the city of the Necronomicon through its Ninth Gate. Selah!

  Visualize the key of the Ninth Gate in your right hand some six inches long and made of cast gold. Feel its weight, texture, and shape as you hold it. Extend your right arm and use the key to draw 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 of opening:

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

  Visualize the gate unlocking and opening inward of its own accord upon a shadowed space. On the astral level, walk through the gateway and stand in the darkness beyond. Focus your attention on the book described by Lovecraft that you wish to view or read, or upon the library or other place where you know the book you desire is located. Open your mind to receive impressions of the book, and use your will to project your intention to read its pages across the astral realms. Knowledge of its contents will be given in the form of scrying or dreams. In a more general sense, this ritual and this gate may be used to scry the contents of any astral book, and even to call into your possession a desired book that has material existence.

  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 Ninth Key on the surface of the gate with the astral key you hold in your hand, and mentally cause it to lock itself shut, as it was at the beginning of the ritual. Speak the words of closing:

  By the power of Yog-Sothoth, and authority of the supreme name Azathoth, I close and seal the Ninth 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 Tenth Gate

  bjects such as amulets, talismans, tokens, charms, icons, and the like were thought to acquire potency in magic by virtue of their substance, their shape or pattern, their associations, and by having occult force, which may be blind or intelligent, infused into them. These factors are frequently combined to further heighten the power of such objects, numerous examples of which appear in the Necronomicon mythos.

  Some materials were considered in that branch of occultism known as natural magic to be inherent attractors and reservoirs of various kinds of magical energies. For example, silver was thought to possess the properties of the Moon by virtue of its shining whiteness, and gold the properties of the Sun due to its bright yellow color. It is no accident that Randolph Carter's famous silver key is made of the metal of the Moon-the Moon is the ruler of dreams and visions.

  There was no need for the witch or wizard to do anything to these and similar natural substances in order to give them occult virtues-they possessed these virtues due to their own natures. Herbs of this kind were used in natural magic to heal the sick. Stones with occult virtues were employed to attract love, to convey eloquence, to find hidden treasure, and so on. Such natural substances were placed into charms or talismans to render their working more effective. It was common for wizards to insert small pieces of dried root beneath the stone of a ring for occult purposes.

  Stone has been intuitively recognized throughout history to act as a reservoir for occult potential. In ancient times rough standing stones known as menhirs were used to mark places of ritual and to define ritual spaces. Stonehenge is the best known of the stone circles of Europe, but there are many others with stones arranged in various patterns such as ovals, spirals, and lines. Lovecraft makes numerous mentions of stone circles and lines of standing stones, such as the circle in the northern Maine woods, and the lines of stones on the island in the Miskatonic River. Equally important to Lovecraft was the color of the stones. Black, white, and green stones have special significance in the mythos.

  Not only substances but shapes can be repositories for certain magic energies. The Stone Age tribes of Europe used standing stones as much for their upright, elongated forms, which possessed phallic significance, as for their composition. Rounded artificial hills, such as those described in the story The Mound, were worshipped as breasts of the Earth goddess both in Britain and in America. The symbolic significance of caves should be obvious-they are the mouth, or womb, of the Earth, to be ritually penetrated, just as Randolph Carter penetrated the Snake-Den in The Silver Key in order to pass over the boundary of our everyday waking reality.

  A talisman or charm can be empowered by inscribing upon it a specific form or symbol conducive to its intended function. The action of a charm designed to embody the virtues of a specific astrological planet will be enhanced by having the symbol of that planet carved into its surface, and if the substance of the charm is naturally resonant with that planet, its working will be even stronger. For example, Mars is the planet of strife and combat, but also of boldness and courage. The color of Mars is red; the metal of Mars iron or steel. By inscribing the symbol of Mars on the blade of a dagger, and filling the lines of the symbol with red pigment, the working of the charm as an attractor and repository of the occult virtues of Mars is greatly enhanced.

  Sometimes objects acquire occult energies merely because they are near those energies for prolonged periods of time. Houses that are used for ritual magic may pick up the energies of those rituals, and years later long after those rituals have ceased, they may cause visitors to feel uneasy or frightened due to the uncanny residue of magical force. Those who sleep in such houses often experience nightmares, or hear disembodied noises or voices. A book of spells known as a grimoire can acquire over time a kind of talismanic energy due to the ritual environment in which it is used, and the potently focused thoughts and emotions of those who employ it. Years later this occult potential will still be sensed by anyone who handles or reads the book. Personal objects of powerful witches and magicians are prone to pick up energies of this kind, due to their close contact with their possessors during ritual work.

  The effect is massively heightened when a witch or wizard sets out to deliberately infuse
magical virtue into an object. The energy projected into the object may be in the form of what is known as a blind force-an unthinking occult potential that is neither good nor bad in itself, but is simply energy analogous on the esoteric level to electricity. The elemental forces are often used by magicians in this way. The potency of elemental fire, for example, which has the qualities of forcefulness, decisiveness, quickness, and impetuosity, can be projected, concentrated, and infused into a charm designed to embody the occult virtues of elemental fire. By contrast, the potency of elemental water, which has the qualities of dreaminess, reflection, emotionalism, and receptivity, can be infused into a charm intended to embody the virtues of this element.

  The occult energy infused into a talisman or charm need not be a blind force. It may also be an intelligence-an astral being with conscious awareness and a self-identity that has either been created or summoned by the witch to inhabit the talisman. In past centuries, magicians often infused servant spirits known as familiars into rings and medallions, so that they could carry the spirits with them and call them forth at need. Spirits were sometimes made to reside within mirrors, where they usually functioned as oracles. The alien force that is bound up with the black, faceted stone know as the Shining Trapezohedron is such a being-in The Haunter of the Dark the black stone is used to summon this intelligence, which is then asked to reveal occult secrets. Spirits were also bound into objects or structures to act as guardians, and to prevent the intrusion of undesirables.

  In Lovecraft's stories, the distinction between demons and aliens is not always clear. A creature who would have been looked upon as a demon by a witch of old Salem such as Keziah Mason might not be regarded in this way by a professor of Miskatonic University. Many creatures of the mythos such as the Old Ones transcend our normal reality, making this distinction between spiritual and corporeal difficult to quantify. Wilbur Whatley's hybrid brother was so unnatural, he was invisible to human sight, and the Mi-Go are composed of such otherworldly stuff that when killed, they simply evaporate to nothingness. Those of past centuries would naturally have regarded such beings as demonic.

  Neither is there a clear distinction between magic and alien science. There are certain signs and marks that control various alien creatures in ways that appear to be magical. If there is a mechanism at work other than magic, it is not apparent to the limited human mind. In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the Deep Ones were said to have been kept at bay by the Kanaky islanders of the Pacific with marks on stones that resembled a type of swastika. The Elder Sign is a kind of hand gesture used to ward off the evil of the Old Ones and associated malign influences. In The Dreams in the Witch House, Gilman saves himself from the witch Keziah Mason by holding up a silver crucifix.

  Whether the use of such symbols is merely a shared superstition, or has tangible force on some transcendent level of reality, is never resolved in Lovecraft's writings. In the famous words of the science fiction writer, Arthur C. Clark, `Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." It might be added that from the practical standpoint of the inferior species, which is the human race in Lovecraft's mythos, such advanced technology might as well be magic, for all the difference it makes, since we can never understand it in other than a magical sense.

  Around the neck of a corpse in a five-centuries-old coffin in Holland, two young English grave robbers find a jade amulet. The corpse was reputed to have been that of a ghoul (that is, a robber of graves) in life, who had once taken "a potent thing from a mighty sepulchre." One of the men describes the amulet: "It was the oddly conventionalised figure of a crouching winged hound, or sphinx with a semi-canine face, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade." The expression on the face of the carving bears a disquieting malevolence that savors of death. It should be noted that the bones of the corpse exhibit signs of having been crushed by the powerful jaws of some great beast.

  The grave robbers recognize the amulet from hints they have read in the Necronomicon. It is the soul-symbol of the corpse-eating cult that dwells on the plateau of Leng, which in this story is placed in Central Asia. Alhazred wrote that the features on the carving were drawn from "some obscure supernatural manifestation of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the dead." The amulet was in the shape of a small three-dimensional statuette, not a flat piece of jade. Around its base ran an inscription, the letters of which neither of the grave robbers recognized from their occult reading. On the bottom of the base a skull was engraved, like a kind of maker's mark.

  The two young dilatants steal the amulet and carry it to England to place in their private collection of items taken from graves. Occasionally they burn candles before it in a sort of mock ritual observance. What they do not realize is that the separation of the amulet from the neck of its possessor awakens a nemesis in the shape of a giant spectral hound. They are also haunted by the ghost of the Dutch ghoul. After one of the young men, named St. John, is torn apart by the vengeful canine spirit, the other, who is never named, tries vainly to return the amulet to its ancient grave in an effort to avert the same fate, but the amulet is stolen in Rotterdam before he can replace it. Later he reads of the thieves having been torn apart, and under a strange compulsion of the mind, returns to the cemetery to dig up the corpse of the old Dutch ghoul. There he finds the amulet, hanging around the neck of the corpse.

  (The Hound)

  A carved black stone found by Henry Wentworth Akeley in the woods on Round Hill, east of Townshend, in Vermont, that is some two feet high and a foot across. Its angles are cut in an alien geometry that defies analysis. On its surface are unknown hieroglyphics, some of which may be recognized as "ideographs" that also appear in the Necronomicon. It is an ancient artifact of the Mi-Go. Akeley speculates in The Whisperer in Darkness that the inscription concerns "the Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu cycles-which are hinted at in the Necronomicon." The Mi-Go had a talent for carving curious black stones into planes with alien geometry-it was they who made the black stone known as the Shining Trapezohedron. Akeley is confident that the black stone he found on Round Hill has been fashioned on Yuggoth, a way station for the Mi-Go in this star system, where there are cities of terraced towers built of the same black stone.

  Concerning another different black stone, Old Sophy, the ancient negro servant at the Louisiana plantation of Antoine de Russy, asserts that she had "done got de black stone outen Big Zimbabwe in of Affriky!" She uses this stone as an altar in her rites of worship-she is referred to as a witch-woman in Medusa's Coil. Old Sophy mentions dancing around a crocodile stone in Big Zimbabwe by moonlight. The stone she brought to America may have been this stone.

  (The Whisperer in Darkness; Medusa's Coil)

  Walter Gilman saves himself from the clutching hands of the witch, Keziah Mason, who seeks to throttle him with her powerful fingers, by thrusting into her face a silver Christian crucifix he is wearing around his neck on a chain of nickel. The sudden shock of this sacred symbol startles the witch. Lovecraft wrote, `At sight of the device the witch seemed struck with panic, and her grip relaxed long enough to give Gilman a chance to break it entirely." Gilman wraps the chain of the crucifix around her neck and uses it to strangle her to death.

  Gilman had received the crucifix from the devoted Catholic Joe Mazurewicz, a fellow tenant of the Witch House, and he in his turn had been given the silver crucifix and chain by Father Iwanicki of St. Stanislaus' Church. Mazurewicz explicitly told Gilman that the holy symbol had been "blessed by the good Father Iwanicki" before it passed into Mazurewicz's hands. Whether it was the blessing by a priest of the crucifix, its right-angled geometric shape, its religious associations with Christ, Gilman's sudden-found faith in its power, or its silver composition that distressed Keziah enough to break her grip on Gilman's throat, Lovecraft does not indicate.

  The distinction between a crucifix and a Christian cross is worth mentioning. A crucifix is a Christian cross with an image of the crucified body of Jesus upon
it. Since the image of the body of Christ may be assumed to represent Christ more directly than the abstract symbol of the cross alone, superstitious Catholics are inclined to ascribe a greater power to the crucifix than to the naked cross.

  (The Dreams in the Witch House)

  After Barzai the Wise dares to climb to the summit of the mountain Hatheg-Kla to look upon the dancing gods of Earth, the Other Gods blast the mountain as a warning to the curious who might follow him, searing into its naked rock a "cyclopean symbol" some fifty cubits across "as if the rock had been riven by some titanic chisel." The same symbol is to be found in that part of the Pnakotic Manuscripts that is too ancient to be read.

  (The Other Gods)

  The two astrological symbols known as caput draconis or Dragon's Head (d3) and cauda draconis or Dragon's Tail (44) appear in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward as part of the occult incantation to Yog-Sothoth that raises the dead from their essential salts, or reduces them to their salts once again. The Dragon's Head is used to raise up the dead; the Dragon's Tail is used to lay them down once again.

  These signs were appropriately chosen by Lovecraft. The Dragon's Head is the ascending node of the Moon, the place in the heavens where the apparent circle traced by the orbit of the Moon crosses from below to above the apparent circle traced by the Sun; and the Dragon's Tail is the descending node of the Moon, the place in the heavens where the path of the Moon crosses from above to below the path of the Sun. These nodes do not mark the Moon itself, but empty points in space where the paths of the Moon and Sun intersect.

  The nodes of the Moon, which are always directly opposite each other, represent a kind of occult dance between the Moon and Sun, in which sometimes the Moon is above the plane of the Sun, and sometimes below. The nodes, are not stationary but wind around the heavens as the relationship between the paths of Sun and Moon change relative to each other. As a rule of thumb, in medieval and Renaissance astrology charts the ascending node was considered to exert a favorable influence, and the descending node an unfavorable influence.