Redefining The Necronomicon Tradition Part 3: Is There Really A War Between The Ancient Ones And The Elder Gods?

Greetings:

I would like to continue our discussion of “Redefining the Necronomicon Tradition.” One of the misconceptions concerning the Simon Necronomicon comes with the idea of thing that the Elder Gods are actually at war with he Ancient Ones.  Many avid readers of the Simon Necronomicon are not aware that this “war” is completely symbolic of initiation. This post was written in response to a comment posted by Satan’s Avenger in the article, Redefining The Necronomicon Tradition Part 2. The Mad Arab mentions the following:

“Let all who read this book be warned thereby that the habitation of men are seen and surveyed by that Ancient Race of gods and demons from a time before time, and that they seek revenge for that forgotten battle that took place somewhere in the Cosmos and rent the Worlds in the days before the creation of Man,…”

In the above quote, we see hat the Ancient Ones were a race of both gods and demons. This is also reflected in other writings of the Mad Arab in his First Testimony:

“I have traveled beneath the Seas, in search of the Palace of Our Master, and found the stone of monuments of vanquished civilizations, and deciphered the writings of some of these; while still others remain mysteries to any man who lives. And these civilizations were destroyed because of the knowledge contained in this book.”

The passage cited above reveals that these rites were that were responsible for the destruction of former worlds like Atlantis. Simon (L. K. Barnes) suggests this in the tome’s Introduction:

“the Dragon or Serpent is said to reside somewhere “below the earth”; it is a powerful force, a magickal force, which is identified with mastery over the created world; it is also a power that can be summoned by the few and not the many.”

When we look at the Simon Necronomicon text we begin to realize that this war between the Ancient Ones and the Elder Gods is a metaphor of initiation, wherein the Initiate goes through the seven gates as a form of initiation to work with the energies of the Ancient Ones.

“And if thou performest these operations often, thou shalt see things becoming dark; and the Wanderers in their Spheres shall no more be seen by thee; and the Stars in their places will lose their Light, and the Moon, NANNA, by whom thou also workest, shall become black and extinguished,..”

“And they cause plagues, for they summon PAZUZU. And they cause madness, for they call AZAGTHOTH. And these Spirits come upon the Wind, and some upon the Earth, crawling. And no oil, no powder, suffices to save a man from this iniquity, save that exorcisms handed down and recited by the able Priest. And they work by the Moon, and not by the Sun, and by older planets than the Chaldaens were aware.”

“he whom secret priests, initiated into the Black Rites, whose names are writ forever in the Book of Chaos, can summon if they but know how….”

Also the reader will do well to review an article written defining the meaning of the term Elder Gods:, which can be accessed by this link:

http://warlockasyluminternationalnews.com/2010/11/23/origin-of-the-term-elder-gods-part-1-evidence-of-h-p-lovecrafts-occult-initiation/

“We find evidence of the Elder Gods existence prior to Lovecraftian fiction in the Greater Mysteries. Written in 1893, years before the Lovecraftian Mythos, The Pacific Theosophist, Volumes 4-6,  states the following on page 65:

“There has existed for tens of centuries in the inaccessible wilderness about the Himalaya mountains a secret  Brotherhood of great souls-which is the meaning of the word Mahatma-or Elder Brothers;  men who after many incarnations have obtained great wisdom; have learned to control themselves and through that control to make the forces of  Nature their servants. These Mahatmas are the repository of wisdom of the ages, which, accumulating century after century, has been entrusted to their keeping.  Nations have appeared and disappeared with their various civilizations; priesthoods have advanced to great power and have been abolished, yet the Brotherhood has continued, and has been made the heir of all which these civilizations and priesthoods have developed. Continents have risen above the ocean, have been made ready for inhabitants, have been occupied by millions, and have been sunk beneath the waves; still the Brotherhood has endured, not as the same individuals, but as successive Adepts possessed of all knowledge and power of their predecessors.  When one Brother has laid aside the body, a neophyte has been advanced to his place, and so the number has always remained undiminished. Not always have all the Elder Brothers remained in the same place; as occasion required they have appeared now in one place and now in another. For not only are they deep students and custodians of the knowledge of myriads of years, bur are Saviors of humanity. Their special charge is to help the human race in its slow evolution process of evolution from the man of flesh to the man of Spirit.”

A careful reading of the above this section reveals that the “ancient ones” were the forces of nature, which the Elder Gods had mastery of:

“THIS is the Book of the Ceremonies of Calling, handed down since the time the Elder Gods walked the Earth, Conquerors of the Ancient Ones.”

The reader here should note that the term “ancient ones” is used in conjunction with the forces of nature in some cases and the forces that ruled Universe B, or the Jinn:

“Know that our years are the years of War…And our days are measured as battles..And every hour is a Life…Lost to the Outside..Those from Without..Have builded up charnel houses..To nourish the fiends of TIAMAT..And the Blood of the weakest here…Is libation unto TIAMAT..Queen of the Ghouls..Wreaker of Pain..And to invoke her..The Red Water of Life..Need be split on a stone..The stone struck with a sword..That hath slain eleven men..Sacrifices to HUBUR..So that the Strike ringeth out..And call TIAMAT from Her slumber..From her sleep in the Caverns..Of the Earth.”

“UTUKK XUL..The account of the generations..Of the Ancient Ones here rendered..Of the generations of the Ancient Ones..Here remembered…Cold and Rain that erode all things..They are the Evil Spirits..In the creation of ANU spawned..Plague Gods..PAZUZU..And the Beloved Sons of ENG..The Offspring of NINNKIGAL..Rending in pieces on high Bringing destruction below..They are Children of the Underworld..Loudly roaring on high..Gibbering loathsomely below..They are the bitter venom of the Gods…The great storms directed from heaven..Those are they..The Owl, Messenger of UGGI..Lord of Death..Those they are..THEY ARE THE CHILDREN..BORN OF EARTH..THAT IN THE CREATION..OF ANU WERE SPAWNED.”

The key to all of this comes primarily with the work. I am sure that if people knew, as mentioned in the SN’s Introduction that the rites of the Urilia text can attune one to great power they would immediately work with these rites while skipping the initiation process, which is very similar to people work with alternating current before learning the basics of electricity and how to work with direct current. Therefore, the rival between the Ancient Ones and the Elder Gods is a necessary safety trap since many are called and even fewer can work with these rites. Remember, what was cited earlier in the SN’s Introduction:

“the Dragon or Serpent is said to reside somewhere “below the earth”; it is a powerful force, a magickal force, which is identified with mastery over the created world; it is also a power that can be summoned by the few and not the many.”

Not everyone can work with this current. We find a similar principle in martial arts. Before working with the advanced steps of combat, the novice must first learn to work with the basic forms, which are the foundation of a said fighting style. Interestingly, in many forms of ancient martial art styles, certain movements cannot be properly executed until the Initiate changes his/her way of thinking. We find the same in the Necronomicon tradition, wherein the Initiate must walk the seven gates first before venturing into the rites of Ancient Worship , if he/she is called to do so. Notice what is mentioned in the following passages, which confirm what we have discovered thus far:

“And there are many another, of which this is not the rightful place wherein they may be mentioned, save to warn the Priest against the ambitious striving against the Ancient Ones of the Outside, until mastery is acquired over the powers that reside Within. Only when ADAR has been obtained, may the Priest consider himself a master of the planes of the Spheres, and able to wrestle with the Old Gods. Once Death Herself has been stared in the Eye, can the Priest then summon and control the denizens of Death’s darkly curtained halls. Then can he hope to open the Gate without fear and without that loathing of the spirit that slays the man.”

“Of all the Gods and Spirits of Abomination, there can be no use or gain to call upon AZAG-THOTH, as he is Surely Mad. Rendered sightless in the Battle, he is Lord of CHAOS, and the priest can find little use for him. He is also too powerful to control once called, and gives violent struggle before sent back to the Gate, for which only a strong and able magician may dare raise him.”

“I have summoned the ghosts of my ancestors to real and visible appearance on the tops of temples built to reach the stars, and built to touch the nethermost cavities of HADES. I have wrestled with the Black Magician, AZAG-THOTH, in vain, and fled to the Earth by calling upon INANNA and her brother MARDUK, Lord of the double-headed AXE.”

Everyone n the Gate-Walking Community understands what it means to become an Ancient One, while many who stand outside of our Tradition are left with a literal interpretation of the text, but common sense would dictate even amongst the novice that the “war” between the Ancient Ones and the Elder Gods is just a metaphor. It could not be anything otherwise, since the book is dedicated to Aleister Crowley, who is described in the Simon Necronomicon as an Ancient One. So why would a book that is supposedly against the worship of the Ancient Ones, call for special dedication to Crowley:

“He changed his name to Aleister Crowley while still at Cambridge, and by that name , plus “666”, he would never be long out of print, or out of newspapers. For he believed himself to be the incarnation of a god, an Ancient One,”

“Basically, there are two “sets” of gods in the mythos : the Elder Gods, about whom not much is revealed, save that they are a stellar Race that occasionally comes to the rescue of man, and which corresponds to the Christian “Light”; and the Ancient Ones, about which much is told, sometimes in great detail, who correspond to “Darkness”. These latter are the Evil Gods who wish nothing but ill for the Race of Man, and who constantly strive to break into our world through a Gate or Door that leads from the Outside, In. There are certain people, among us, who are devotees of the Ancient Ones, and who try to open the Gate, so that this evidently repulsive organization may once again rule the Earth…..The actual meaning of this phrase has taken volumes to explain, but roughly it concerns the uniting of the conscious Self, a process of individuation which culminates in a rite called “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel”; the Angel signifying the pure, evolved Self….Yet, there are many terrors on the Way to the Self, and an Abyss to cross before victory can be declared. Demons, vampires, psychic leeches, ghastly forms accost the aspiring magician from every angle, from every quarter around the circumference of the magick circle, and they must be destroyed lest they devour the magician himself. When Crowley professed to have passed the obstacles, and crossed the Abyss of Knowledge, and found his true Self, he found it was identical with the Beast of the Book of Revelation, 666, whom Christianity considers to represent the Devil. Indeed, Crowley had nothing but admiration for the Shaitan (Satan) of the so-called “devil-worshipping” cult of the Yezidis of Mesopotamia, knowledge of which led him to declare the lines that open this Introduction. For he saw that the Yezidis possess a Great Secret and a Great Tradition that extends far back into time, beyond the origin of the Sun cults of Osiris, Mithra and Christ; even before the formation of the Judaic religion, and the Hebrew tongue. Crowley harkened back to a time before the Moon was worshipped, to the “Shadow Out of Time”; and in this, whether he realized it as such or not, he had heard the “Call of Cthulhu”.

There are some of the mysteries revealed in the inner workings of the Necronomicon Tradition, for those who wish to enter the halls of initiation. Notice what is mentioned in other parts of the Simon Necronomicon’s Introduction:

“Probable the most inconsistent concept the Sumerians possesses with reference to the Craft is the naming of the Goddess as a deity, not of the Moon (as the Craft would have it), but of the planet Venus. The Moon was governed by a male divinity, NANNA (like INANNA but minus the initial ‘I’), and was considered the Father of the Gods by the earliest Sumerian religion. It should be noted, however, that all of the planetary deities, termed “the zoned Ones” or zonei in Greek, and indeed all of the Sumerian deities, had both male and female manifestations, showing that the Sumerians definitely recognized a yin-yang composition if the universe (the “male Moon” idea is, the Editor is given to understand, common to so-called Aryan mythologies). There is also evidence to show that every god and goddess also had both a good and an evil nature, and evil gods were banished in the exorcism formulae of that civilization as well as the lesser forms of demon.”

Let us remember:

“For what is new..Came from that which is old..And what is old..Shall replace that which is new..And once again the Ancient Ones..Shall rule upon the face of the Earth!..And this is too the Covenant!”