We Get Necronomicon Posts, Part 3

Another post from Warlock Asylum. The highlights:

I never knew that the two herbs he mentioned played a ‘prominent role’ in the Simon Necronomicon. Most of the GateWalkers I know do not use it. Interesting statement Mister Daniel Harms; Or is that one of you codes that none of us can figure out?

Here “it” refers specifically to the herb olieribos. It’s something of a surprise that Warlock sees it as a code. After all, in the Simon Necronomicon, olieribos is part of an offering to the spiritual and highly irritable guardian called the Watcher . The Watcher is employed in turn for the gatewalking, the callings, some of the banishings, and the last-resort defense of the magician. The sacrifice is very important, as the Watcher is an amoral creature who has no qualms about tearing apart the magician if annoyed. In effect, identifying olieribos is the first key to working the system as presented in the Necronomicon, if you don’t want to keep it on the “enchant a pomegranate to get laid” level.

(UPDATE:  Upon more careful reading, I’ve found that even the crucial “enchant a pomegranate to get laid” spell requires a gatewalking, thus the watcher, thus olieribos.)

The key words there are “as presented.” In the decades after the Simon book appeared, many would-be magicians picked it up and noticed the word “olieribos” therein. Some of them stopped there, while others ignored it or made a substitution and kept going. (Innovation is a common factor in most spiritual practice, of course.) John and I had people writing us, trying to play us off against each other or threatening to take down our website, just so they could find out what it was. Nonetheless, my experience has been that those who didn’t use the herb didn’t know what it was. I’ve never encountered anyone who knew what olieribos was going into the system and then chose to omit it.

You mention Lovecraft often because a lot of your works are about Lovecraft. I would expect that. However, in the case of the Simon Necronomicon, the name ‘Crowley’ appears an astonishing 39 times. Why did Simon feel so obligated to make Crowley a part of the work? Because he was part of the work.

The question is a good one, but the answer is not so simple. For example, the Necronomicon was originally marketed to the community of occultists served by Magickal Childe. If an advertisement they published is any indication, Crowley was the single most popular author at the store, with the number of his titles far outstripping any others. This suggests an alternative scenario – that Simon wanted to sell the book, and Crowley sold at Magickal Childe.

Frankly, most of the references in the introduction to Crowley are largely superficial and sensationalistic, concentrating on the bloodiness of the Aeon of Horus, Crowley’s identification with the beast, his poor media coverage, particular passages of Liber Al taken out of context, etc. It’s not a document I’d expect from someone who’d made a serious study of Crowley’s philosophy.

Finally, Mister Dan Harms sees no validity to my comment concerning Theodoros Philetas. Well, if you don’t understand, Why don’t you ask Sonia Greene? I guess you don’t like to write anything about that legend, huh? Hiding behind the ‘chasing Simon’ ordeal to deal with the real story Mister Daniel Harms?

Warlock Asylum, being a magician, is writing in code here. When he says I’m “hiding” from the Sonia Greene legend and I “don’t like to write anything” about it, he actually means “there’s a page and a half on it in The Necronomicon Files.” Oddly enough, the original author who invented the connection told me he did so as – surprise! – a blind to mislead the unwary.

As for talking to Sonia Greene, she passed away in 1972 and is not available for conversations with most of us.

Speaking about not engaging with a topic, I note that Warlock Asylum is concentrating on what might be superficial similarities in wording rather than engaging with the broader philosophical differences between Crowley and the Simon Necronomicon. Nor has he addressed why “Theodorus Philetas” can be linked to Thelema. I hope he will address these soon.