A Greeting Options

Forgive my absence from the forum for some months, but the press of other work has kept me quite busy and preoccupied. Thank you for your indulgence.

And many thanks to all of you for your thoughtful comments on Gates of the Necronomicon. I realize this is a difficult book to understand for many; it was written about 1992 or so, when Herman Slater of the Magickal Childe Bookstore was still alive, and then disappeared after his death. I managed to locate an old hardcopy of the manuscript and was able to present it for publication last year.

There were a few difficulties with the text. In the first place, the original Gates had been set in type and was ready for printing when Herman died. No one seems to know what happened to the galleys, but a publisher advertised the book for sale in the mid-1990s and then quickly took it off the market when I made inquiries. It was never seen or heard of again.

I had a dilemma before me. Should I present the book as-is, or should I make a lot of changes and update the material? If I changed the book at all, there was always the possibility that the original would turn up somewhere and accusations would be made that the edition of Gates you have in your hands was not the real book. Considering all the accusations that have been leveled at the Necronomicon – and again, at Dead Names – I felt it was better to keep the book in its original state and only make those changes that were obviously necessary, such as the updated Tables of the Bear and a few introductory remarks. Otherwise, the copy of Gates that you have is the one that I wrote some 15 years ago.

That said, let us look at the other issue that seems to bother people the most: the role of the Elder Gods and the Ancient Ones in general.

Remember that the Necronomicon was not written by me, but edited. Gates was written by me, and so was Dead Names. There are some inconsistencies in approach between the texts, and the point of view I put forth in Gates is the one that represented my thinking at the time it was written, almost 20 years after the Necronomicon was first published. I am not a chaos magician, and I was not trying to put forth one agenda or another, but simply relating my experiences -- or the result of my experiences -- with the book. That distilled into the realization that we, as magicians, tend to anthropomorphize the gods and assign to them human attributes. This makes it easier for us to visualize them and work with the powers they represent, but it is not necessarily a strategy for the long run. Ideas like “good” and “evil” are qualities that we, as humans, assign to forces and to relationships between those forces and ourselves and do not exist in the “real” world. They are value judgments and, as such, are very useful for us in dealing with other human beings with whom we share the same understanding of those terms; when it comes to the gods, however, it is always better (in my experience) to be a bit more cautious.

This is nothing new. The Buddhists know this, and so do the Qabalists. And so do the Eastern Orthodox. We try to describe God in terms of what God is not, rather than what God is. This is called apophatism, a “negative theology” that understands that human perceptions and sensoria are inadequate to perceiving or describing the ineffable. Thus, one cannot even say that “God is good” because that would, in a sense, be limiting God. God is both good and evil or, better said, is neither good nor evil.

If we take that approach to the ongoing struggle between the Elder Gods and the Ancient Ones – as represented in the Necronomicon – we come close to understanding a valuable lesson, which is: keep your eyes open, your ears open and stay awake. Yes, guarding the Gate is necessary. I do not say that opening the Gate is wrong, but it is dangerous. We do have a humanitarian role in monitoring the Gate. The “Mad Arab” was in a state of extreme anxiety due to the activities of magicians who sought to let into our world beings that did not have our best interests at heart. That does not mean we should not Walk the Gates, nor does it mean that we should keep the Gate constantly closed; but it also does not mean that we should entirely trust one side over the other. Remember what Alan Watts once wrote: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” Experiencing the duality of the warring deities (and choosing sides) may be the most dangerous state of all, for we are neither one nor the other: according to the Sumerian creation story we have been created out of the blood of one side and the breath of the other. We, ourselves, are at war with ourselves (which pretty much sums up the global picture at the moment). How, then, to understand our role vis-à-vis the warring forces that the Necronomicon magician is called to confront?

Simple. Follow the instructions as given in the Necronomicon, with reference to Gates. Confrontation with these forces is essential if you are to understand your role in what appears to be a cosmic struggle. The forces that so frightened the Mad Arab are ones we need to fear, as well. Are they evil? That is probably the wrong question to ask. Are they dangerous? Yes, they are.

Devotion to Anu, Enlil and Enki is a good idea; keep in mind, however, that the gods operate in a different moral environment than we do. How else to explain the use – and the nature – of the Watcher, for instance? The Sumero-Babylonian Underworld is not an evil place; it’s a necessary place. Yet, it is nonetheless unpleasant and one to be avoided if at all possible, like a slaughterhouse or a morgue. Much can be learned from either place, though, and only the strong of heart (and stomach) are advised to contemplate such a visit.

I am reminded of the statement by Assyriologist Leonard W. King – and cited by R.A. Gilbert in his introduction to King’s Babylonian Magic and Sorcery – that “It must be confessed that with regard to a considerable section of the ritual we are still not in a position to follow the underlying trains of thought.” The confusion, according to King and Gilbert, rests in the mixture of religious sentiment with magical intentions, and this is an important (if at times baffling or frustrating) characteristic of the Necronomicon.

In Gates of the Necronomicon, I wanted to expand the basic structure of the Necronomicon to include other ancient spiritual systems and to show how much they had in common, not merely to “prove” the Necronomicon system but to give it more dimension by providing analogues to the Chinese and Indian systems which also focus on some of the same symbols, such as Ursa Major (which by the way is not a major focus of any of the medieval grimoires or qabalistic systems which stem from the Abrahamic, monotheistic faiths of the Middle East). These comparisons were, to me, extremely important from the point of view of scholarship and a little mind-blowing in their similarity in even small details. These comparisons seemed to be the key not only to the Necronomicon system but also to a deeper understanding of Thelemic systems (focused as they are on “Babalon”) as well as to some Theosophical concepts, etc.

In spite of less-informed criticism, there is a growing body of evidence that supports the theory that there was a great deal of commerce and communication between the Sumerian city-states and those of the Indus Valley Civilization. I suggest that the Necronomicon system may be the result of some sort of cross-fertilization with other mystical processes, some alien to Sumer and Babylon. After all, it has been my experience that the mystics of different cultures tend to understand each other better than the religionists of different cultures (well, except for this forum, perhaps!). And the importance of the Big Dipper to cultures as seemingly alien as the Chinese and the Babylonian reinforces the basic premise of the Necronomicon Gate Walking system.

So … are the seven Gates planets, or stars? To me, the seven “philosophical” planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn) represent the first level of astral awareness, what we might call the “outer court” of the esoteric lodges. The seven stars of the Big Dipper represent an “inner court” understanding. Indeed, in many systems the seven stars of the Dipper are given planetary analogues, reinforcing a kind of spiritual identity between the two groups. Many occult systems insist that there is a gross form of the planet and a subtle or etheric form; I believe that the stars of Ursa Major represent the etheric forms of the planets in the Necronomicon system. Some systems place more emphasis on the Pleiades, others on Orion. I feel, due to the circumpolar nature of the Dipper and its importance in navigation and time-keeping since ancient times, the seven stars of the Big Dipper asterism are really where we should be looking. This point of view is born out by the Daoist practices I describe in Gates, which may themselves be a survival of shamanic rites of Central Asia which themselves may have been influenced by Babylonian magic.

Are there “traps” in either the Necronomicon and/or Gates? There are blinds that can only be discovered through actually working the system (at which point they become obvious), and this most of you already know. Close attention to the cultural comparisons I presented in Gates, however, will enable anyone to safely negotiate any shoals.

Yes, as someone wrote here, I will be soon coming upon my sixtieth year. It is a number of perfection in Sumer, better understood as “completion”. I hope to have a more comprehensive analysis of the Necronomicon system by then; but until that time, much work still needs to be done, much analysis undertaken, and all of you are on the cutting edge of that with your focus on this difficult and demanding system (made no less difficult by the slings and arrows of outrageous criticisms and unending ridicule by the patronizing and the uninformed). I am certain – especially after seeing some of the posts on this forum the past year or so – that the work you are doing is as important, if not more important, than anything I may be able to accomplish in whatever time is left for me.

There are those who will be disappointed that I have not presented a complete, thorough and all-encompassing presentation of the Necronomicon material, satisfying every angle and answering every question, but that would have been impossible and still is. Understanding the system and working with it – as well as finding analogues in other systems – is an ongoing project, made more difficult because of the lack of available source material on the pre-Islamic occult practices of the Arab Middle East. The cuneiform inscriptions of Sumer, Babylon and related civilizations are insufficient, but more is being released and analyzed each day. In addition, there is some good work being done on the Central Asian civilizations and on the Indus Valley Civilization, and this work will impact our own, I am certain.

As always, then, good luck and Good Hunting!

I believe that as well. Once you start down the path by getting either sides attention then you should chose a side before they chose it for you. The only truly safe are those completely ignorant of the system entirely. There have been many posts on this board that talk about people picking up the system and then for what ever reason stopping with it, only to be brought back into it years later by a strange coincidence or what not. So now that we're all here we should make the most of it which ever side you choose.
gmcbroom