Greetings!
I would like to welcome everyone to the Gate-Walker’s Journal. If this is your first time here, please review some of our previous articles that appear to the right of this page.
Over the years since the publication of the Simon Necronomicon, there has been a growing number of people who have validated and can testify to the Tome’s authenticity. Many of these people, some whom I have personally met, are hard-working individuals who live day-to-day lives. They are doctors, lawyers; some even are involved in the entertainment industry. On the other hand, there is another group of people, who claimed they believe in America’s freedoms and every citizen’s right to worship as they please, but they attack the Necronomicon Tradition due to their own ignorance, which we will see over the next couple of days. One of these individuals is Andrew Pernick. His thoughts concerning the Simon Necronomicon are found at the following link:
http://www.mythostomes.com/content/view/50/72/
We will analyze some of Mister Pernick’s comments to see if they hold any value. In one section of his essay Mister Pernick says the following:
“It must first be stated that Simon was a product of his times and, thus, that his Necronomicon, oft
mockingly called the ‘Simonomicon’, is also a product of said times. Simon was a member of the inner sanctum of the Magickal Chylde store in downtown Manhattan, one of the principal centers of metaphysical thought and magickal research during the 1970s-early 1980s. The other members of the inner sanctum were known for throwing rather outlandish parties, involving the imbibing of large quantities of liquor and the ingesting of hallucinogenic substances, as well as the use of other such mechanisms for altering one’s state of consciousness via chemical means.
It was at one such party that the inner sanctum, long since tired of having misguided fans of H.P.
Lovecraft and his ilk enter their store, convinced that Lovecraft lied when he claimed he invented the Mad Arab’s book as a plot device, and further convinced that Magickal Chylde, being an epicenter of magickal thought, had at least one copy available for purchase, decided to craft such a book.
It must be noted that the inner sanctum crafter their fraud whilst under the influence of many strange and assorted chemicals. That said, the book they crafted was replete with lies and omissions, drawn from all and sundry’s respective knowledge of the Occult Arts. In other words, they created a book of traps, some more sinister than others. It is by mere negligence that the Simon Necronomicon exists at all – each member of the inner sanctum agreed to destroy the book, then in draft form on various scraps of paper, if they left the party last (it must be noted that Simon also agreed to this stipulation) – Simon broke his word, however, and, instead of destroying the assorted traps, brought them together into a pile and had the collection edited and published.”
I am not sure where Mister Pernick is getting his information from, but it seems to be quite erroneous assumption to make about the editors of the Simon Necronomicon. According to Alan Cabal, who was there when the Simon Necronomicon was being edited, asserts that Peter Levenda, the legendary Simon, never got “high” in public. Cabal’s observations appear in the following New York Press article:
“Into this bubbling swamp of spiritual fecundity stepped Peter Levenda, aka “Simon.” Charming, soft-spoken and aloof, well-versed in all aspects of occult theory and practice, he eased his way to the center of the scene. The Necronomicon was a team effort. Herman provided the sponsorship, while the design and layout were the work of Jim Wasserman of the OTO, a raving cokehead from Jersey named Larry Barnes whose daddy had the production facilities and a fellow who called himself Khem Set Rising (who also designed the sigils). The text itself was Levenda’s creation, a synthesis of Sumerian and later Babylonian myths and texts peppered with names of entities from H.P. Lovecraft’s notorious and enormously popular Cthulhu stories. Levenda seems to have drawn heavily on the works of Samuel Noah Kramer for the Sumerian, and almost certainly spent a great deal of time at the University of Pennsylvania library researching the thing. Structurally, the text was modeled on the wiccan Book of Shadows and the Goetia, a grimoire of doubtful authenticity itself dating from the late Middle Ages.
“Simon” was also Levenda’s creation. He cultivated an elusive, secretive persona, giving him a fantastic and blatantly implausible line of bullshit to cover the book’s origins. He had no telephone. He always wore business suits, in stark contrast to the flamboyant Renaissance fair, proto-goth costuming that dominated the scene. He never got high in public.”
Although Alan Cabal and Peter Levenda are not on good terms, Cabal still describes Simon as a person who is well-versed in all aspects of occult theory. He also mentions that Peter Levenda never got “high” in public, and to the contrary of Mister Pernick’s opinion that the grimoire was a “party joke,” Alan Cabal, an enemy of Peter Levenda says the following about the origins of the Tome:
“Certain theories have it that even a bogus (or, to be kind, synthetic) grimoire will work if it is internally consistent, but that means following the rules to the letter.”
In the above quote, Alan Cabal, an enemy of Levenda, is describing “Simon’s” mindset when he approached the work of creating and editing this grimoire, and how it had to follow the “internally consistent” paradigms of all ancient grimoires. They “had to follow the rules to the letter.” Here we can see that Mister Pernick’s introduction to his essays concerning the Simon Necronomicon are completely erroneous.
Mister Pernick fails to support any of his opinions with factual evidence. This can be easily seen in Part 2 of his essay where he attempts to unravel the origins of the Gate-Walking rituals that appear in the Simon Necronomicon. Mister Pernick’s comments are as follows:
“Simon’s Gate rituals discuss the existence of seven so-called Gates, or doorways to higher planes
of consciousness. The book (it is useless to pin all of the blame on Simon himself, as it is impossible to know with any reasonable degree of certainty whether it was Simon or another of the inner sanctum who indeed wrote the Gate-related portions) claims that these Gates open to seven zones above the Earth, and that the Gates were known to the Chaldeans, followers of Greek texts written in the 2nd cent. BC by Julius the Theurgist. Such followers included, in the modern era, the Golden Dawn, whose membership rolls included, as a high-ranking member, Aleister Crowley.
It is from this point on that the Gate rituals become mere folly at best, a disastrous affair at worst,
especially if they are performed by one who has not mastered Form…”
I discussed the authenticity of the Gate-Walking Ritual in my essay that can be found at the following link:
http://warlockasyluminternationalnews.com/the-ancient-art-of-gatewalking/
Since monst of Mister Pernick’s information is just a summarization of other critics’ opinions concerning the Simon Necronomicon, his essay is filled with blanket statements. In Part 3 of the essay written by Mister Pernick, we can see more errors and more opinions that lack evidence in his copy and paste mythology. He states the following:
“In order to perform the Ritual of Walking, one must purify oneself for a period of a Lunar Month,
going from the night before the New Moon to the night before the New Moon. One must abstain from sex during that time but, in typical circumloqutious fashion, one can engage in pleasuring a woman (which, in the ‘Simonomicon’, is called, cleverly enough, “worship[ping] at the Temple of ISHTAR” – a veiled reference to the bringing about of orgasm via oral manipulations of the vagina), provided one does”
Wow! This is a little bit funny. Mister Pernick mentions that “worshipping at the Temple of ISHTAR is a veiled reference to “bringing about an orgasm via oral manipulations of the vagina.” That’s funny most Gate-Walker’s know it has a lot to do with sacrificing ones semen to ISHTAR, which was done in ancient Mesopotamian times, as a way of showing respect for life and for the Necronomicon’s Traditional tantric rights. The incantations that are read while this “sacrifice” is performed are found in the Simon Necronomicon on pages 110-111. Of course, Mister Pernick shows no origin of his assumptions. Later in the same section Mister Pernick asserts the following:
“In keeping with standard Ritual and Ceremonial Magick practices, oil lamps (preferably, as they
do not blow out easily in low to medium winds) are to be placed at the North, East, South, and West of the ritual space, all an equal distance from an altar at the South, which itself is to face North, and are to be lit clockwise (‘Deosil’) from the North. This is a standard practice that is used to separate the ritual space from the physical world. In Ceremonial workings, it is so that any otherworldly beings outside the ritual space before it is sanctified remain on the outside; it also serves so that anything summoned into the ritual space cannot leave the ritual space. As will be detailed below, this is also part of the trap, as, in Ceremonial thought, breaking the circle formed by these Watchtowers (the N,E,S,W oil lamps) can result in disastrous side-effects such as demonic possession, or worse, depending on who one talks to.”
Once again Mister Pernick makes a grave error. He keeps associating the Simon Necronomicon with Western Ceremonial Magick, while not taking the time to research and see if the SN has any connection with the Cult of the Dead, also known as the ancient systems of divination so dear to pre-historic, or indigenous peoples. I guess evidently Mister Pernick is unaware, though he can write an essay, that the Watchtowers that appear in the Simon Necronomicon, and the invocation of them, is a part of divination that didn’t start in Western Ceremonial Magick, but has everything to do with the lands that the Mad Arab traveled through, Persia. Invoking the Four Directions is based not on ceremonial magickal practices, but the practices of indigenous peoples who worked heavily with the Royal Stars of Persia. The following link provides us with this insight concerning the Four Royal Stars of Persia:
http://www.queenofcups.com/AR27article.htm
“The Royal Stars of Persia are so named because roughly 5,000 years ago, during the fabled pyramid age of Egypt, these luminaries held tremendous influence. Endowed with almost archangelic power, these legendary stars of antiquity are Aldebaron, Regulus, Antares and Fomalhaut, and in the epoch of 5,000 years ago they were considered to be guardians of the four corners of heaven and watchers of the directions, forming a heavenly cross near the ecliptic.”
Many so-called scholars are unaware of the history of the Royal Stars of Persia, since they are left unaware of the many contributions and occult sciences that were kept by the indigenous peoples of various lands, Persia being one of them, and it is due to such ignorance that the invocation of the Four Watchtowers are mistakenly said to originate with Western Ceremonial Magick. It seems that Mister Andrew Pernick should do a little more of his homework.
Mister Pernick’s logic and his approach to the Simon Necronomicon is very confusing. In his article as he approaches the discussion of the Watcher, he makes the following comments:
“This is the point where the trap begins. The ‘Simonomicon’
“Conjuration of the Watcher” summons Enki, a trickster God (while it is true that Enki is the Sumerian God of water and intellect, there are several legends in which he is a trickster along the same lines as the Norse Loki, or the Greek Goddess of Chaos Eris (the Roman Discordia), though it should be stated that these are distinct characters, and have their own stories and personalities).”
Throughout Mister Pernick’s article he seems to suggest that it is a “trap” to invoke Enki. I almost had to laugh while reading this because it is documented that the Chaldeans invoked Enki, also known as Hea, heavily in their rites, but since Andrew Pernick is unaware of all of this he makes some laughable assumption to those who know ancient Mesopotamian history.. Andrew Pernick continues:
“It also calls upon “He of the Name Unspeakable, the Number Unknowable.” This is a reference, thinly veiled, to the Hebrew God, whose true name was lost with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem centuries ago, and whose true name can only be recovered through the Qabbalistic manipulation of the Torah entire, to find the correct hundreds-of-digits-long number which corresponds to said true name. One is advised, at this point, to research the power of names, especially true ones. Especially on-point on this subject is Robert Graves, specifically The White Goddess, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2001), pp. 45-48ff.
This trap requires some careful elucidation. Under the Torah’s Ten Commandments, specifically
the Second Commandment, the Hebrew God commands, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me (“alpa- nai a-chei-rim e-lo-him yih-yeh-lek-ha lo”, in the transliterated Hebrew).” Thus, to invoke Enki and the Hebrew God would be an offense to the Hebrew God of such a nature that, at the very least, the person making said invocation would wind up having the entire invocation being for naught, thus leaving him (gender assumed from Simon’s text) without a Watcher; at worst,”
Mister Pernick seems to make quite a few assumptions, as he compares the Watcher, who is described as he of the Name Unspeakable and etc, as Yahweh. Yet Mister Pernick doesn’t explain how he arrive at this conclusion. Amongst the Gate-Walking Community, one association of the Watcher is with the Kundalini force, so the words found in the Watcher’s invocation are quite fitting. Here we see another example of the lack of validity of Mister Pernick’s argument. It gets a lot worst. Following these observations Mister Pernick makes another verbal blunder:
“It is at this point that the second trap is possible. One is then to loudly recite the Incantation of
the Walking, while walking Deosil around the depiction of the Gate that the practitioner has drawn on the Earth. The trap here is that the second Gate’s Incantation has an invocation to Azathoth. Thus, in order to pass through the second Gate, one must not only twice invoke Enki, an infamous trickster God, but one must also twice anger the Hebrew God, and one must also invoke Azathoth.”
First, there is no mention of Azag-Thoth in the second Gate’s incantation. Now I am starting to wonder if Mister Pernick is just ranting on and who did he pay to get this type of garbage linked to a Wikipedia article about the Simon Necronomicon, as his opinions are completely off course. I was going to do a paragraph by paragraph analysis on Mister Pernick’s essay, but I got so tired of reading and I find it a waste of time for someone to read an essay where the author is trying to criticize the Simon Necronomicon, and Mister Pernick has only proven that he-himself has no knowledge of Ancient Mesopotamian culture. Have a nice life Mister Pernick!
The Dark Knight
