New Book By Simon Options

I just wanted everyone to know there is a new book coming out by our old friend Simon. Yes the same author of the Necronomicon.

The title of the new book which is Dead Names : The Dark History of the Necronomicon has been out for awhile and it is still not released as of yet BUT they have finally released a picture of the book and a quick overview.

Here is the picture of the new book:

(IMG:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/Frater_Nero/newbook.jpg)

and here is the Book Description:


The most feared, fascinating, and dangerous book in the history of humankind . . . Necronomicon

An ancient Arabic text -- a powerful book of spells that could, in the wrong hands, create unimaginable and irreversible devastation -- the Necronomicon featured prominently in the stories of legendary horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. For many generations, few believed it to be anything other than pure fiction.

But in 1972, a young man who, for his own protection, must be known simply as "Simon," stumbled upon an old, handwritten manuscript that ultimately proved to be an authentic edition of the unholy work.

Dead Names is the startling true account of the dark and violent history of this most fearsome of books: from its Middle Eastern origins to its reemergence centuries later; its role in pivotal events of the twentieth century, from the JFK assassination to the Son of Sam murders; and the terrible fates that befell those who helped bring the Necronomicon out of the shadows and into the light of day.

Dipping back into Dead Names...

To support his theory of a continued "Sumerian tradition," Simon cites the Toda, dwellers in highlands near the Nilgiri river valley in southwest India, as evidence that Sumerian traditions are still maintained today. Most of his information on them, however, is dated and inaccurate.

Simon's first evidence on this front is genetic, noting their lack of sickle cell anemia as proof they came from elsewhere. This is not as surprising as he portrays it. The sickle cell gene, when partially expressed, can lower the severity of malaria. When the highland Toda are compared with nearby lowland tribes in an area prone to mosquito-borne malaria, the difference is striking but hardly proof of Sumerian origins.

Those who read Simon's section on the Toda will note that he never says that recent anthropologists believe in a Toda-Sumerian link. Well, it's because they don't, and neither did the "early anthropologists" he mentions. The link was first proposed by Prince Peter of Greece in 1951. (Simon states that Peter was a contemporary of Blavatsky, when in fact the prince wasn't born until 1908, seventeen years after Blavatsky's death.) It was not a theory maintained for any great period of time, and was quickly rejected.

Simon mentions that the god of the underworld in this place is called On and asks, "who can that be but the Sumerian An or Anu"? Two years after Peter's first paper, M. B. Emeneau, an ethnologist and linguist working with the Toda, published an article in American Anthropologist citing the word's links to several other words in the tongues of neighboring people and discounting any Mesopotamian origin.

Also, there are some parts of this section that are just baffling. Simon mentions that archaeologists state that the stone monuments in the region are not Toda work, being constructed by people who lived in the highlands before the Toda's arrival. Nonetheless, a page later he is discussing the symbolism of the "stone monuments of the Toda" as connected to Sumer.

Likewise, he tells us about a ritual in which cattle are killed with hammers in a stone circle, and that they practiced infanticide by tossing baby girls beneath the hooves of cattle. Apparently this is done to make the Toda seem mysterious, but what any of it has to do with Sumer, aside from the basic notion of sacrificing cattle, is uncertain.

Today, the Toda's links to the Sumerians, as well as all other theories that they are the survivals of some far-off culture, are dismissed as "amateurish speculation" by the Encyclopedia of World Cultures. I'm not certain what sources Simon used for his research, but it is odd that his conclusions are certainly at odds with the people who have studied the culture.

Dipping back into Dead Names...

To support his theory of a continued "Sumerian tradition," Simon cites the Toda, dwellers in highlands near the Nilgiri river valley in southwest India, as evidence that Sumerian traditions are still maintained today. Most of his information on them, however, is dated and inaccurate.

Simon's first evidence on this front is genetic, noting their lack of sickle cell anemia as proof they came from elsewhere. This is not as surprising as he portrays it. The sickle cell gene, when partially expressed, can lower the severity of malaria. When the highland Toda are compared with nearby lowland tribes in an area prone to mosquito-borne malaria, the difference is striking but hardly proof of Sumerian origins.

Those who read Simon's section on the Toda will note that he never says that recent anthropologists believe in a Toda-Sumerian link. Well, it's because they don't, and neither did the "early anthropologists" he mentions. The link was first proposed by Prince Peter of Greece in 1951. (Simon states that Peter was a contemporary of Blavatsky, when in fact the prince wasn't born until 1908, seventeen years after Blavatsky's death.) It was not a theory maintained for any great period of time, and was quickly rejected.

Simon mentions that the god of the underworld in this place is called On and asks, "who can that be but the Sumerian An or Anu"? Two years after Peter's first paper, M. B. Emeneau, an ethnologist and linguist working with the Toda, published an article in American Anthropologist citing the word's links to several other words in the tongues of neighboring people and discounting any Mesopotamian origin.

Also, there are some parts of this section that are just baffling. Simon mentions that archaeologists state that the stone monuments in the region are not Toda work, being constructed by people who lived in the highlands before the Toda's arrival. Nonetheless, a page later he is discussing the symbolism of the "stone monuments of the Toda" as connected to Sumer.

Likewise, he tells us about a ritual in which cattle are killed with hammers in a stone circle, and that they practiced infanticide by tossing baby girls beneath the hooves of cattle. Apparently this is done to make the Toda seem mysterious, but what any of it has to do with Sumer, aside from the basic notion of sacrificing cattle, is uncertain.

Today, the Toda's links to the Sumerians, as well as all other theories that they are the survivals of some far-off culture, are dismissed as "amateurish speculation" by the Encyclopedia of World Cultures. I'm not certain what sources Simon used for his research, but it is odd that his conclusions are certainly at odds with the people who have studied the culture.

Simon is actually very wise to be looking into other religions for the old Sumerian tradition. Its about time that someone start thinking in that direction. My wife is Turkish Muslim and the many simularities and coincidences between the Sumerian tradition and modern day Islam are quite numerous.

As I prepared to call Malah <on the Mexican day of the Dead> whos name is linked with that of Allah I realised a strange coincidence. That day in the Turkish Muslim religion <Descendents of Sumerians> is the day of Saint Hizir. It is believed that if you write your name on a coin and say a prayer making a wish and then if you tie the coin in a red cloth and hang it in a rose bush that the wish will come true.

As I studied this Saint I came across sources given below which say the saint is actually a God that is 3000 years older than Islam. The green man of the Greeks. A water god. The saint travels disguised as an old man with long white beard. The water God? Enki is the water God of course. Not surprising the Sumerian paganism can be found in modern day Islam. After all Marduk is now called Allah by the descendents of the Sumerians. The Elder ones have not left the planet. They continue on in our religions today. This Saint has alot to do with baptism. Read my sources below for more info. Baptised by the water of Enki.

Peace to all.


http://aton.ttu.edu/Hizir.asp
Hizir may well be one of the oldest gods of the Middle East — pre-Moslem, pre­-Christian, pre-Roman, pre-Greek — a vegetation god and a water deity. The Turkish name Hizir is transliterated from the Arabic Al-Kidr, an epithet that means, literally, ‘The Green One’ or “The Green Man.’ (Because of the flexibility of implicit vowels in Arabic, the name appears as Al-Kadr, Al-Kedr, or Al-Kidr. The Jews call him Hudr; the Persians, Kisir; and the Turks, Hizir.) His identity has become obscured by time and by that curious syncretism through which Islam has always appropriated and transmuted elements of surrounding cultures. But in certain contexts, always involving water, the god still puts forth his features sharply and unmistakably.

His presence is most visibly objectified in the long line of shrines that stretches along the Mediterranean coast from Antalya, Turkey, through Syria to the environs of Beirut, Lebanon. Whitewashed stone structures, the larger ones domed and encircled with high steel fencing, they stand at intervals along the shoreline like a system of miniature lighthouses. There is a steady flow of pilgrims to these shrines throughout the year, with the heaviest attendance on July 1, the day on which farmers bring their flocks to be baptized in the sea.

At Arsuz (between Antioch and Iskenderun) 20,000 to 30,000 people participate in this daylong ceremony that climaxes when the salt water turns fresh and everyone wades into the sea, leading approximately a quarter of a million head of livestock. It is an annual fertility rite enacted in high religious fervor. One of our informants who had attended this ceremony at Arsuz testified with solemn oath to the miracle that occurred that day: “By Allah, out there I drank the sea water, and it was as sweet as sherbet.” (By way of parenthesis, it may be observed here that collecting information about rites of this type is usually difficult and often dangerous. Orthodox Islam is strongly opposed to the elevation of Hizir from the role of a saint to that of a god, and thus much of the ritual of the cult has been driven underground, open only to the initiate. Furthermore, many of the larger shrines are controlled by communities of the minority Shi’ite or Alevi sect, which is fiercely pro­tective of the secrecy of

Our own quest for Hizir has been made entirely through the medium of the current oral tradition in Turkey, and the hypotheses we have advanced have been based on data collected during field trips in recent years. There is also evidence in the written tradition, however, that sheds additional light on this elusive figure, evidence collected and ana­lyzed by Israel Friedlander, Ernest Budge, and other scholars.[4] Although Hizir is not named its the Koran, he is universally acknowledged to be the Servant of Allah whose activities are described its Chapter XVIII of that holy book. In the Koran Hizir is shown teaching divine truths to Moses, and he is associated, in what is said by then to be already an old tradition, with the Abu-Hayat, or the Water of Life. H

An equally ancient tradition that associates Hizir with water is his identification with the biblical prophet Elijah. In the Old Testament book of I Kings, as in later Talmudic literature, Elijah is pictured primarily as a rainmaker, and to this day hundreds of Elijah Shrines in the Middle East and in Greece testify to his continuing effectiveness in this capacity.[5] Hizir is the Moslem equivalent of Elijah, but, curiously enough, the Turkish folk mind, influenced here as much by the Jewish as by the Arabic tradition, has refused to allow the image of Elijah to be completely assimilated by that of Hizir. Instead, the two exist side by side as doubles, a situation most noticeable in the naming of the Hizir celebration on May 6. It is always called Hizir-Ilyas Da

Still another tradition that both draws upon and contributes to Hizir lore is the ‘‘Green George” festival in Greece and other Balkan states. In the rites of spring, the vegetation god “Green George” is represented by a young man clad from head to toe in green leaves. After performing a long series of ritual gestures that symbolize planting, harvesting, and procreation, this surrogate for the god is thrown into the water. Identi­fied at a very early date with Saint George, the pagan “Green George” still survives in countless Christian communities. The “Green George’’ festival and the Feast of Saint George are celebrated on the same day, and it is no accident that that day is April 23, time day sacred to Hizir on the older calendar.[6]

No one has yet undertaken a thorough study of Hizir in Turkey — or, more accurately, in Asia Minor, for Hizir preceded the Turks in that part of the world by at least 3,000 years.[7] Our exploratory probings have revealed that there is a tremendous body of Hizir lore and legend and that much of it has deep religious significance for the rural Turks who constitute 75 percent of the country’s population. As we have indicated, Hizir seems to us to be associated in the folk mind with fertility, with the annual renewal of vegetation, and with the seasonal life cycle — all of which are dependent on water, more obviously amid more dramatically so in an arid land. But what are the various forms of sacrifice and ritual practiced by devotees of Hizir? How consciously do modern Turks think of Hizir as the latter-day water god he so clearly is? How do devout Moslems — and most rural Turks are very devout Moslems — rationalize adherence to so primitive a nature cult? These are among the many questions that cannot be answered until considerably more research on the subject has been completed.




http://www.rumi.org.uk/glossary.htm
Khizar, Khizer, Hizir: mysterious saint or prophet, chief minister to Alexander the Great, who discovered the Water of Life. Khazir was a mysterious guide who first appears in Koran XVIII 64 (not named, but identified by the commentators as 'one of Our servants unto whom We had given mercy from Us, and We had taught him knowledge proceeding from Us') as accompanying Moses and doing strange things. The Sufis took him as the exempler of the Shaikh who requires absolute and unquestioning obedience of the disciple

No one has ever as of yet done a thourough study of this ancient Mesopotamian god surviving in the religion of Islam. The Sumerians affected world religion as a whole and continues to do so even today as many of our Biblical myths are actually ancient Sumerian myths. We would be foolish to think that the religion of the Sumerians totally vanished off of the face of the earth because Sumerian paganism is clearly evident even in the ritual of the Christian Church. The bread and wine communion flesh and blood of the Sun God. The Baptism of Enki in salt water. The symbol of the cross as the symbol of the sun. The great grandchildren of the Sumerians live on today. Times may be much different but still remain the same.

We need more scholars like Simon who can help us find links such as this to the old Sumerian tradition in our traditions of today. It is a ground on which perhaps few wish to tread.

The more I learn the more I realise how little I know. The mind must remain open to new ideas. The great thinkers and philosopers are the ones who break outside the box of cloned thinking. We must think differently and try to reach our own conclusions rather than closing our minds and accepting truth as whatever out government or pastor / priest says it to be. A closed mind is clinically dead. Let us be alive in our thoughts and seek truth with an open mind or truth will pass right over our heads and pass into darkness where it will never be seen by our minds again.

This post has been edited by smasher666: May 7 2006, 07:49 PM

Simon is actually very wise to be looking into other religions for the old Sumerian tradition. Its about time that someone start thinking in that direction. My wife is Turkish Muslim and the many simularities and coincidences between the Sumerian tradition and modern day Islam are quite numerous...

We need more scholars like Simon who can help us find links such as this to the old Sumerian tradition in our traditions of today. It is a ground on which perhaps few wish to tread.

That's actually not the case. For decades, scholars have accepted that beliefs from Sumerian times have survived in the Middle East to the present day. Simon's scholarship on the Toda and the Yezidi is actually well behind the curve - in fact, his own writings and readings contain reference to material that make a much better case for that point. He doesn't seem to have followed up on them.

(Sorry, Simon, but I'll let you do the legwork for your next book on this. Others can PM me for details.)

To answer the obvious question, this changes nothing in my attitude. The evidence still suggests that Simon's book is a modern hoax, one which certainly doesn't share any ties to the material I just mentioned or to Lovecraft. We can still be amazed by the cultural survival of Sumerian ideas and beliefs without accepting the Necronomicon as factual.

Simon is actually very wise to be looking into other religions for the old Sumerian tradition. Its about time that someone start thinking in that direction. My wife is Turkish Muslim and the many simularities and coincidences between the Sumerian tradition and modern day Islam are quite numerous...

We need more scholars like Simon who can help us find links such as this to the old Sumerian tradition in our traditions of today. It is a ground on which perhaps few wish to tread.

That's actually not the case. For decades, scholars have accepted that beliefs from Sumerian times have survived in the Middle East to the present day. Simon's scholarship on the Toda and the Yezidi is actually well behind the curve - in fact, his own writings and readings contain reference to material that make a much better case for that point. He doesn't seem to have followed up on them.

(Sorry, Simon, but I'll let you do the legwork for your next book on this. Others can PM me for details.)

To answer the obvious question, this changes nothing in my attitude. The evidence still suggests that Simon's book is a modern hoax, one which certainly doesn't share any ties to the material I just mentioned or to Lovecraft. We can still be amazed by the cultural survival of Sumerian ideas and beliefs without accepting the Necronomicon as factual.

I am confused. Do you admit the survival of Sumerian tradition or are you still saying that is false???

Here is some more on the survival of the Sumerian tradition in Islam the great great grandchildren of the Sumerians. I could give you numerous references from the Bible and the Koran that proves the survival of the Sumerian tradition but I do not want to trivialise something that is Holy.

The angel Marut in the Koran has the same name as Marutukka of the Necronomicon. Harut and Marut seem vaguely like Firik and Pirik. However Firik and Pirik guard knowledge and Harut and Marut gave knowledge to man. My sources are below.

Wikpedia.
Harut is one of two angels mentioned in the Qur'an, who were sent down to deceive the people at Babel. (Sura Al-Baqara, verse 102). He is accompanied by Marut.

According to the Qur'an, some of the angels derided mankind, criticising them and the corruption of their rule. Allah said to them "If you were in their place you would be doing the same thing." (In another tradition is also reported that Allah said to them, "I have given them ten carnal desires, and it is through these they disobey me.") Allah challenged the angels to do better if they are placed in the same condition. They accepted the challenge, saying "O Lord, if you give these carnal desires we would descend and judge with justice." Harut and Marut were chosen and were sent to the city of Babylon. However, they soon fell victim to the same carnal desires experienced by man.

Another tradition holds that Harut and Marut did not deceive the people, they taught the people many sciences they did not know, but warned their students about the temptation that comes with knowledge. Later their teachings were used to practice magic which they did not teach the people. The teachings of these two angels were perverted just as they had warned people of the ill-use of knowledge.



Magick in Arabic is “sihr” and means “to produce illusion on the eyes”. The origin of magick in Arabia is believed to be in Babel. It, supposedly, was revealed there by two angels, “Harut” and “Marut”, who instructed mankind in the art.

Unlike the ancient Egyptians, the use of magick in Arabia was not looked upon kindly. In fact, it was forbidden, and proven practice of the art lead to the death penalty. Those convicted were not allowed to repent.

The Arabs used magick for different purposes, most popular of which was to separate lovers, or on the other hand, to provoke love. “Jinns”, good and evil spirits, were recognized, and played an a role in the Arab practitioner’s “sihr”. They were invoked and commanded to do the magicians bidding or to inspire divination.

With the coming of Islam, some of the negativity surrounding magick was lifted as the Muslim Arabs, began to believe that the use of magickal prayers would counteract the “evil eye” and snake poison.They practiced crystal-gazing, and used the entrails of slaughtered animals to aid them in the prediction of future events. An example of this, is the use of the shoulder-blade of a dead animal to foretell if the year that lies ahead is a good or bad one, they would examine the shoulder-blade and the lines on it caused by the formation of the bone to determine this.

Communication with the dead was also practiced by the Arabs, and was made possible by the use of the “Magic Mirror”. This was a mirror made out of metal or glass with a polished surface, on which the spirit was believed would appear.In spells, the Arabs used names they believed possessed magickal powers. The magician would write the names on parchment paper which he then places in water. This water is believed to cure various ailments. In a love spell, the same process is used, and when the object of one’s desires drinks that water, he or she is immediately smitten with love.

The use of talismans and charms was popular amongst the Arabs. Charms, usually in the form of necklaces were made and worn as protection from danger. To protect the living from the ghost of a victim of murder, the Arabs would “nail down the ghost”. This practise, literally involved the driving of a brand new nail into the spot where the person was killed, thus trapping the ghost.

The Arabs were avid believers in Astrology. In “The Goal of the Sage”, a book on Sorcery, written by “Maslamah” in Madrid in 1008, the author states that the planet Mars, for example, possesses powers of natural attraction for natural science, surgery, toothdrawing, the gall, heat, hatred, bitter tastes and divers other things, Maslamah said “Those who desire the services of the planets should bow down to them and address them by their names in Arabic, Greek or Indian”.

This Islamic magick and the angel Marut is just a tiny shred of evidence from a mountain of evidence that supports the theory that the Sumerian tradition has not vanished and is alive and kicking.

This post has been edited by smasher666: May 8 2006, 07:25 PM

To answer the obvious question, this changes nothing in my attitude. The evidence still suggests that Simon's book is a modern hoax, one which certainly doesn't share any ties to the material I just mentioned or to Lovecraft. We can still be amazed by the cultural survival of Sumerian ideas and beliefs without accepting the Necronomicon as factual.
[/quote]

As to whether or not the Necronomicon is a hoax. It is perhaps to be expected that such a weapon given by the gods to defend this planet only encounter resistance from the evil forces which wish to destroy this planet.

I am far from a scholar but in college I did have the wit to study world mythology and world religion. I also took classes on Sumerian mythology and Sumerian history.

Much of the book of Maklu is recorded in the library of Ninevah from Maklu tablets. The book of Maklu has spells which are almost identical. Pg 86 The exorcism against the possesing spirit is my favorite of these nearly identical spells. In the ancient addition it also has in the spell magick against ulcers and boils.

The Germans <My ancestors.> have done the most research on the Maklu spells. I feel rather unfortunate that I do not know much German but my wife is a linguist and pretty good translator.

As to the Holy Book being a hoax let us contemplate on this. How can truth come from a lie or a lie come from the truth? If the book is a fraud then it should not work. If it is a hoax then its magick should not work. Why then does it work so effectively?

Danharms you remind me a bit of a writer named Konstinonas who wrote a book on psychic vampirism. He knows nothing of Rieki and tells us that he is not vampire of any sort. His book is written in true ignorance as he speaks of something that he has never tried and very obviously does not know anything about.

So then let us determine whether or not it is a rare book of power or if it is a hoax. If you want I can help you get ready for some ritual. You can consider it an experiment. Try the spells and then report to us your findings. It should be a very interesting experiance for you.

This post has been edited by smasher666: May 8 2006, 11:22 PM

As to whether or not the Necronomicon is a hoax. It is perhaps to be expected that such a weapon given by the gods to defend this planet only encounter resistance from the evil forces which wish to destroy this planet.

I'd like to take this opportunity to state that I am not an evil force wishing to destroy the planet. As the Tick says, that's where I keep all my stuff.

I am far from a scholar but in college I did have the wit to study world mythology and world religion. I also took classes on Sumerian mythology and Sumerian history.

Much of the book of Maklu is recorded in the library of Ninevah from Maklu tablets. The book of Maklu has spells which are almost identical. Pg 86 The exorcism against the possesing spirit is my favorite of these nearly identical spells. In the ancient addition it also has in the spell magick against ulcers and boils.

The Germans <My ancestors.> have done the most research on the Maklu spells. I feel rather unfortunate that I do not know much German but my wife is a linguist and pretty good translator.

As to the Holy Book being a hoax let us contemplate on this. How can truth come from a lie or a lie come from the truth? If the book is a fraud then it should not work. If it is a hoax then its magick should not work. Why then does it work so effectively?

Take one of Newton's equations that describe gravitation. I copy this onto a piece of paper, and then write at the top a tale of how I received this last night in a dream from Merlin, who was riding a bicycle. I hand this to you. Now, you will still be able to solve that equation in the same way as anyone else could. Nonetheless, if you were not familiar with it, your information regarding its origins would be incorrect.

John and I assert that the Necronomicon is a hoax. Now, what makes for a successful hoax is its combination of new material with that of established lore. Lovecraft was not a hoaxer, but he created the legend of the Necronomicon by the same means - placing his imaginary creations in familiar settings and with reference to names with which the reader was already familiar.

You have said that certain tablets from the library of Ninevah correspond to parts of the Necronomicon. I do not argue against that. Yet it does not necessarily follow that this means the Necronomicon is valid. It is also possible, as I assert in The Necronomicon Files, that Simon was able to access the same source and put that material in his own book.

How to get around this? Well, there are two ways. The first is to look for details that must have their origin in recent times. If the manuscript is supposedly ninth century, we should not find details originating in later times within. As we've already seen here regarding Rawlinson, the Necronomicon's gatewalking procedure mirrors the theory of a nineteenth-century scholar of Mesopotamian archaeology instead of Mesopotamian ritual. Another example is the Necronomicon's god "Ninib", which scholars have determined was actually the name of "Ninurta." In these and other cases, the Necronomicon reflects the beliefs of later times rather than those of its supposed origin.

The pro-Necronomicon argument would be more compelling if we could find a discovery about Mesopotamian belief that was anticipated in the text of Simon's book, but not known at the time it was written. I may not be convinced if someone finds such a thing, but that's the sort of evidence that should be sought.

I'm not inclined to work on experiments with the Necronomicon, but I don't see how they would prove anything. If I performed such an experiment and received results, it could also be because of my will, or that this particular segment of the Necronomicon was derived from an authentic incantation. If it did not work, the same principles would still be in effect. In the end, I'd be no wiser regarding the status of the book.

The pro-Necronomicon argument would be more compelling if we could find a discovery about Mesopotamian belief that was anticipated in the text of Simon's book, but not known at the time it was written. I may not be convinced if someone finds such a thing, but that's the sort of evidence that should be sought.

With a continuing war in Iraq and the disappearance and destruction of many Sumerian and Babylonian artifacts and cuneiform texts from its museums and archaeological sites, we aren't bloody likely to see many more discoveries about Mesopotamian beliefs in the near future. (unpaid political announcement!)

I understand your refusal to accept the Necronomicon as anything other than a hoax, Dan. Why not? It's obvously the easy way out on this subject. It's your scattershot approach to both the text itself and to Dead Names that leaves me unimpressed. Your views on the Toda are not exactly representative of all contemporary research in the field, and quoting the Encyclopedia of World Cultures is not exactly the same as quoting primary sources. As I admit quite clearly in Dead Names, this is a controversial area of study. There simply is no universally-held point of view about the Toda, and study of this fascinating and anomalous tribe is still ongoing ... even as the tribe is dying out. Your approach seems to be, though, to latch onto a phrase here or there and build an entire critical theory out of it. We don't have the definitive answer on the Toda, or on the Sumerian tradition, yet. There are still people who refuse to accept the Diffusionist position on the population of the early Americas, for instance; I imagine you are one of these, still clinging to the belief that all Native Americans are descendants of the so-called Clovis people who walked over the ice bridge, in spite of all the evidence now coming to light that supports the contrary position, that America was visited by, and inhabited by, peoples from all over the world including Europe and North Africa and Asia, in addition to whomever may have wandered down from the Bering Straits. I mention this only as an example of the state of archaeological and anthropological science in the present day: contentious, argumentative, partisan. How can we rely on what we find in something called the "Encyclopedia of World Cultures", then?

There is a lot of new evidence coming to light concerning the "Aryan Invasion Theory", for instance, which does tend to prove some of the statements made both in my Introduction to the Necronomicon and in Dead Names, information that was not available at the time the Necronomicon was published. And there is more on the way, as my research as shown and will show and as anyone else can find out if they look hard enough.

With a continuing war in Iraq and the disappearance and destruction of many Sumerian and Babylonian artifacts and cuneiform texts from its museums and archaeological sites, we aren't bloody likely to see many more discoveries about Mesopotamian beliefs in the near future. (unpaid political announcement!)

It is a shame. Nonetheless, there's a great amount of material that lies untranslated in museums, archives and private collections. Perhaps the Middle Eastern situation will turn attention to these sources.

I understand your refusal to accept the Necronomicon as anything other than a hoax, Dan. Why not? It's obvously the easy way out on this subject. It's your scattershot approach to both the text itself and to Dead Names that leaves me unimpressed. Your views on the Toda are not exactly representative of all contemporary research in the field, and quoting the Encyclopedia of World Cultures is not exactly the same as quoting primary sources. As I admit quite clearly in Dead Names, this is a controversial area of study. There simply is no universally-held point of view about the Toda, and study of this fascinating and anomalous tribe is still ongoing ... even as the tribe is dying out. Your approach seems to be, though, to latch onto a phrase here or there and build an entire critical theory out of it. We don't have the definitive answer on the Toda, or on the Sumerian tradition, yet. There are still people who refuse to accept the Diffusionist position on the population of the early Americas, for instance; I imagine you are one of these, still clinging to the belief that all Native Americans are descendants of the so-called Clovis people who walked over the ice bridge, in spite of all the evidence now coming to light that supports the contrary position, that America was visited by, and inhabited by, peoples from all over the world including Europe and North Africa and Asia, in addition to whomever may have wandered down from the Bering Straits. I mention this only as an example of the state of archaeological and anthropological science in the present day: contentious, argumentative, partisan. How can we rely on what we find in something called the "Encyclopedia of World Cultures", then?

I chose the Encyclopedia of World Cultures because, as a reference work, it is more likely to represent the general consensus in the field. Other sources I also consulted that verified this position included the Emeneau paper already cited, Paul Hocking's Blue Mountains Revisited, and Anthony Walker's The Toda of South India: A New Look. If you'd like, I can track those down again - keeping too many books around here gets confusing.

While double-checking those last two references, however, I did run across this intriguing piece by Anthony Walker from 2004:

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2105/sto...12000206600.htm

In it, he denies a number of assertions about the Toda made in a tourist site article(http://www.indiaprofile.com/lifestyle/todas.htm). Here are some of his points:

* The Toda originated in India;
* They do not have a physical type distinguishable from their neighbors;
* Their language diverged from Tamil-Malaysian in the 3rd century BC;
* They consider the moon neither a god nor male;
* They have not practiced female infanticide in over a century, and never tossed babies beneath the hooves of cattle;
* Cattle sacrifices are rarer today, and young men do not leap into the herd and beat animals to death with hammers, and there is certainly no competition to see who could kill the most; and
* The Toda population, though low, is not "dying out", and has actually seen a considerable rebound in the last half century.

All of these, of course, contradict what is said in Dead Names. Combined with what I've already said, this could indicate that the bulk of the information therein on the Toda might be inaccurate.

Based on this discovery, I'd be very interested in hearing exactly what sources were used for the section on the Toda. Name them, and I'll get them. I have a master's in anthropology, so I'm qualified to evaluate them. At this point, it's your word, and that of an Indian tourist site, against that of a social anthropologist who's worked with the Toda for over four decades.

In it, he denies a number of assertions about the Toda made in a tourist site article(http://www.indiaprofile.com/lifestyle/todas.htm). Here are some of his points:

* The Toda originated in India;
* They do not have a physical type distinguishable from their neighbors;
* Their language diverged from Tamil-Malaysian in the 3rd century BC;
* They consider the moon neither a god nor male;
* They have not practiced female infanticide in over a century, and never tossed babies beneath the hooves of cattle;
* Cattle sacrifices are rarer today, and young men do not leap into the herd and beat animals to death with hammers, and there is certainly no competition to see who could kill the most; and
* The Toda population, though low, is not "dying out", and has actually seen a considerable rebound in the last half century.

All of these, of course, contradict what is said in Dead Names. Combined with what I've already said, this could indicate that the bulk of the information therein on the Toda might be inaccurate.

Based on this discovery, I'd be very interested in hearing exactly what sources were used for the section on the Toda. Name them, and I'll get them. I have a master's in anthropology, so I'm qualified to evaluate them. At this point, it's your word, and that of an Indian tourist site, against that of a social anthropologist who's worked with the Toda for over four decades.
[/quote]

Ah, the Toda. Sometimes referred to as "Dodha" in Indian publications and on Indian sites. And, ah, Anthony Walker and the whole school of social anthropology.

I also have a background (at the master's level) in anthropology and religious studies. We both know how ambiguous is this "science" and how partisan it has become. If you like, I can trade the same references with you -- Tyler, Frazier, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Durkheim, Malinowski, Geertz, Douglas, Evans-Pritchard, et al -- until the cows (or, in this case, the buffaloes) come home. We know how Margaret Meade found one set of "facts" in Samoa, which were later criticized by another anthropologist decades later; or even how some anthropologists return to a site after an absence of ten years only to realize that what they thought they knew, they didn't (due to poor relationships with the local people, language and translation difficulties, being of the wrong sex, wrong religion, wrong age, etc etc). The observer changes the event observed, especially (as is now realized) in anthropology and ethnography.

That being said, my sources on the Toda are many and varied. My interest in them began with a reference in a work by Octavio Paz, the Nobel-Prize-winning Ambassador of Mexico to India who spent many years there and understood the controversy over the Toda but was disinclined to reject the Sumerian hypothesis out of hand. After that, I read the ideas of Prince Peter (who was commenting on the Toda decades after Emenau's sojourn there in the 1930s) and the admittedly dubious concepts of Mme Blavatsky, and began then to contact friends and associates from India -- among them persons working to improve the lot of the "indigenous peoples" in general -- and including a trip to India myself in the late 1990s, beginning in Mumbai. The Todas are convinced that their origins are ancient, and that their liturgical language is a survival of a time when "the whole world was Toda"; at least, that was how it was expressed to me. We may credit Walker's implication that the Toda have romanticized themselves to a great extent in order to attract the attention of the world and improve tourism, but as any traveler to India can tell you very few Europeans or Americans are intrepid enough to have made the trip to the Nilgiri Hills unless they had an ulterior motive, such as "social anthropology". In fact, I have known American tourists to India who never got further than the airport in Delhi or Mumbai ... they turned right around and took the next flight out!

It is not my intention to discredit your or any degree in anthropology, but generally-speaking I am rather contemptuous of what has happened to the field. Anthropology, like sociology and psychology, pretends to be a "hard science" in order to claim the same academic and scholarly prestige as, say, particle physics. In order to do this, anthropologists and sociologists and psychologists have reduced their study as much as possible to mathematics and statistics, since these are the linguae francae of science. They refuse to take a universalist or reductionist approach to their fields, and instead insist that each social group be studied without reference to any other, an-sich , and these studies are then neatly bound and placed on a reference shelf somewhere to gather dust. While I much prefer the approach of an Eliade, for instance, to the field -- and sympathize with his contempt for modern anthropology -- I realize that the intent to perfect their science is laudable. I just simply do not accept that their approach is the right one; at least, they should admit up front that the results of their work are largely subjective and seen through the eyes of a foreigner with no common culture, language, or religion with the group being studied and that, indeed, their informants may have been (a) playing tricks on them; or (b) thinking that their deeper mysteries are not for the outsiders; or © the wrong informants from the start with regard to the information being sought. Prof Tyler's objections to Walker's work may indicate a general dissatisfaction with the approach: how do you begin to study a foreign -- especially an ancient -- culture from a privileged position of an outsider? What relationship does language have to truth, in an existential sense if nothing else? What is the relationship between sign and signed?

I'm going to stop now before I start quoting Derrida! To paraphrase Goering, when I hear the word "anthropology" I reach for my revolver. I will try to answer your objections more specifically in a later posting.

Ah, the Toda. Sometimes referred to as "Dodha" in Indian publications and on Indian sites. And, ah, Anthony Walker and the whole school of social anthropology.

I also have a background (at the master's level) in anthropology and religious studies. We both know how ambiguous is this "science" and how partisan it has become. If you like, I can trade the same references with you -- Tyler, Frazier, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Durkheim, Malinowski, Geertz, Douglas, Evans-Pritchard, et al -- until the cows (or, in this case, the buffaloes) come home. We know how Margaret Meade found one set of "facts" in Samoa, which were later criticized by another anthropologist decades later; or even how some anthropologists return to a site after an absence of ten years only to realize that what they thought they knew, they didn't (due to poor relationships with the local people, language and translation difficulties, being of the wrong sex, wrong religion, wrong age, etc etc). The observer changes the event observed, especially (as is now realized) in anthropology and ethnography.

That being said, my sources on the Toda are many and varied. My interest in them began with a reference in a work by Octavio Paz, the Nobel-Prize-winning Ambassador of Mexico to India who spent many years there and understood the controversy over the Toda but was disinclined to reject the Sumerian hypothesis out of hand. After that, I read the ideas of Prince Peter (who was commenting on the Toda decades after Emenau's sojourn there in the 1930s) and the admittedly dubious concepts of Mme Blavatsky, and began then to contact friends and associates from India -- among them persons working to improve the lot of the "indigenous peoples" in general -- and including a trip to India myself in the late 1990s, beginning in Mumbai. The Todas are convinced that their origins are ancient, and that their liturgical language is a survival of a time when "the whole world was Toda"; at least, that was how it was expressed to me. We may credit Walker's implication that the Toda have romanticized themselves to a great extent in order to attract the attention of the world and improve tourism, but as any traveler to India can tell you very few Europeans or Americans are intrepid enough to have made the trip to the Nilgiri Hills unless they had an ulterior motive, such as "social anthropology". In fact, I have known American tourists to India who never got further than the airport in Delhi or Mumbai ... they turned right around and took the next flight out!

It is not my intention to discredit your or any degree in anthropology, but generally-speaking I am rather contemptuous of what has happened to the field. Anthropology, like sociology and psychology, pretends to be a "hard science" in order to claim the same academic and scholarly prestige as, say, particle physics. In order to do this, anthropologists and sociologists and psychologists have reduced their study as much as possible to mathematics and statistics, since these are the linguae francae of science. They refuse to take a universalist or reductionist approach to their fields, and instead insist that each social group be studied without reference to any other, an-sich , and these studies are then neatly bound and placed on a reference shelf somewhere to gather dust. While I much prefer the approach of an Eliade, for instance, to the field -- and sympathize with his contempt for modern anthropology -- I realize that the intent to perfect their science is laudable. I just simply do not accept that their approach is the right one; at least, they should admit up front that the results of their work are largely subjective and seen through the eyes of a foreigner with no common culture, language, or religion with the group being studied and that, indeed, their informants may have been (a) playing tricks on them; or (b) thinking that their deeper mysteries are not for the outsiders; or © the wrong informants from the start with regard to the information being sought. Prof Tyler's objections to Walker's work may indicate a general dissatisfaction with the approach: how do you begin to study a foreign -- especially an ancient -- culture from a privileged position of an outsider? What relationship does language have to truth, in an existential sense if nothing else? What is the relationship between sign and signed?

I'm going to stop now before I start quoting Derrida! To paraphrase Goering, when I hear the word "anthropology" I reach for my revolver. I will try to answer your objections more specifically in a later posting.

Don't worry; I'm well aware of anthropology's sins and shortcomings. Nonetheless, I can see considerable worth in its methods. Sure, someone's fieldwork may yield different responses based on a wide range of factors, but its emphasis on close contact with other cultures (living with them, learning the language, and so forth) nonetheless yields data that can provide insights about others - and ourselves - that we wouldn't get otherwise. Also, the greater acceptance of behavior which had in the past been called "going native," the foregrounding of the discourse between the people and the ethnographer, and continuing work (at different times and with different people) in the same areas have also been helpful in alleviating some of those problems with the fieldwork methods.

In short, gaining an understanding of other cultures via fieldwork has its problems - but so does every other way of doing that, and many of those are much worse.

Anyway, let me know when you've got those Toda references.

This post has been edited by Danharms: May 24 2006, 08:40 PM