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One of the greatest mysteries of the Necronomicon Tradition concerns itself with the identity of “Simon” of Simon Necronomicon fame. In a Wikipedia article under the subject of the Simon Necronomicon, we read:
“The authorship of the Simon Necronomicon has been attributed to figures as diverse as Sandy Pearlman and Anton LaVey. Some attribute it to James Wasserman [1], a well-known producer and designer of occult books and protege of Samuel Weiser, the largest publisher of occult books in America (Wasserman has been associated with the recent re-publishing of many of the works of Aleister Crowley). The more likely author would be nonfiction writer Peter Levenda, a possibility “Simon” (whether intentionally or accidentally) does little to deny in Dead Names. Levenda had not yet officially published any books at the time of the first printing. He has subsequently done so, publishing nonfiction works on the topic of the influence of occult secret societies on international politics. The U.S. Copyright Office identifies Levenda as the author and copyright holder of Gates of the Necronomicon.”
The article, cited above, lists a few possibilities of just who “Simon” could be, but he is often identified with Peter Levenda. The question of Levenda’s involvement with the editing of the Simon Necronomicon is to the point, but it should also be kept in mind that Peter Levenda is mentioned by “Simon” with various others, in the Acknowledgements. If someone edits a text, they edit a text, there isn’t any real need for secrecy, even if it is considered to be a hoax by some, this would still not warrant any reason for secrecy by the editor unless other factors were involved. Is it possible that Peter Levenda was put on the frontlines, as a patsy of sorts, in efforts to distract the public from the identity of the real “Simon?”
Before we continue into further depths regarding the identity of “Simon,” we can say to some extents that although Peter Levenda was put in the forefront of the project, there are other things presented in the Simon Necronomicon that reveal Simon’s identity other than Levenda. In the Simon Necronomicon’s Acknowledgements, we find:
“And, finally, to the Demon PERDURABO, without whose help the presentation of this book would be impossible.”
The “Demon PERDURABO” is a reference to Aleister Crowley. What is interesting about all of this is something that was mentioned during the Warlock Asylum-Dan Harms debates, some of which is covered at the following link http://warlockasyluminternationalnews.com/letter-to-dan-harms/open-letter-to-gan-harms-part-2-lifting-the-veils-of-deception/
“If Crowley were made mention of in just a few passages, I could agree with Mister Daniel Harms, but we Gate-Walkers know otherwise. First, the name Crowley appears within the introduction of the Simon Necronomicon 39 times Mister Daniel Harms. This means that the name “Crowley” appears more that even the book’s title. Were you aware of this Mister Daniel Harms? Keep in mind that i am not concluding other references to him such as, Beast, PERDURABO, and etc. What is also interesting is that when you reverse 39, you get 93, which is a very significant number in Thelemic circles Mister Daniel Harms. Wait, there’s more! The Second edition of the Simon Necronomicon included a dedication to Aleister Crowley, his year of birth marking a century. In that edition the term NECRONOMICON is used 33 times. When you add that with 39, you get 72. Aleister Crowley lived for 72 years, but besides all of this Mister Daniel Harms, you are an excellent author. You are a published author. Since when does a published author of any work, whether fiction or fact, mention someone’s name at least 38 times, and that individual is not responsible, or co-author of the writing involved. We know the answer to that, don’t we Mister Daniel Harms?”
Whether one is a fan of the Simon Necronomicon or not, the fact still remains that the name “Crowley” appears more in the Simon Necronomicon than the works that Crowley authored combined. I can understand Harms’ original point that maybe the name Crowley could have been used to appeal to others. While this may be the case, on some levels, the repetitive use of the name to such a degree would still be unnecessary, as the name “Crowley” appears more than the word “necronomicon” in the Introduction. These signs illustrate that the identity of “Simon” is a little more complex than just assigning the role to Peter Levenda. In order for us to understand the identity of who “Simon” is, we must first understand the identity of the Mad Arab.
If we were to compare the words of the Mad Arab with certain aspects of what is written about Crowley in the Simon Necronomicon’s Introduction, it can be easily seen that Aleister Crowley is the Mad Arab, a fact that cannot be denied by the Initiates of the Necronomicon Tradition. This fact can be ascertained by comparing what is written about Crowley in the tome’s Interoduction with the experiences of the Mad Arab himself;
INTRODUCTION: “NEW SINISTER REVELATIONS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY read the front page of the Sunday Express….Aleister Crowley was a Magician, and one of the First Order.”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “THIS IS THE TESTIMONY of all that I have seen, and all that I have learned, in those years that I have possessed the Three Seals of MASSHU. I have seen One Thousand-and-One moons, and surely this is enough for the span of a man’s life, though it is said the Prophets lived much longer.”
INTRODUCTION: “Born on October 12, 1875, in England – in the same country as Shakespeare – Edward Alexander Crowley grew up in a strict Fundamentalist religious family, members of a sect called the “Plymouth Brethren”. The first person to call him by that Name and Number by which he would become famous (after the reference in the Book of Revelation), “The Beast 666”, was his mother, and he eventually took this appellation to heart.”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “The wolves carry my name in their midnight speeches, and that quiet, subtle Voice is summoning me from afar. And a Voice much closer will shout into my ear with unholy impatience.”
INTRODUCTION: “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, the vehicle of a New Age of Man’s history, the Aeon of Horus, displacing the old Age of Osiris.”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “Before that time, I must put down here all that I can concerning the horrors that stalk Without, and which lie in wait at the door of every man, for this is the ancient arcana that has been handed down of old, but which has been forgotten by all but a few men, the worshippers of the Ancient Ones (may their names be blotted out!).”
INTRODUCTION: “In 1937, the year Lovecraft dies, the Nazis banned the occult lodges of Germany, notable among them two organisations which Crowley had supervised: the A\ A\ and the O.T.O., the latter of which he was elected head in England, and the former which he founded himself. There are those who believe that Crowley was somehow, magickally, responsible for the Third Reich, for two reasons: one, that the emergence of New World Orders generally seems to instigate holocausts and, two, that he is said to have influenced the mind of Adolf Hitler. While it is almost certain that Crowley and Hitler never met, it is known that Hitler belonged to several occult lodges in the early days after the First War; the symbol of one of these, the Thule Gesellschaft which preached a doctrine of Aryan racial superiority, was the infamous Swastika which Hitler was later to adopt as the Symbol of the forms, however, is evident in many of his writings, notably the essays written in the late ‘Thirties. Crowley seemed to regard the Nazi phenomenon as a Creature of Christianity, in it’s anti-Semitism and sever moral restrictions concerning its adherents, which lead to various types of lunacies and “hangups” that characterised many of the Reich’s leadership. Yet, there can be perhaps little doubt that the chaos which engulfed the world in those years was prefigured, and predicted, in Crowley’s Liber AL vel Legis; the Book of the Law.”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “And if I do not finish this task, take what is here and discover the rest, for time is short and mankind does not know nor understand the evil that awaits it, from every side, from every Gate, from every broken barrier, from every mindless acolyte at the alters of madness.”
INTRODUCTION: “We can profitably compare the essence of most of Lovecraft’s short stories with the basic themes of Crowley’s unique system of ceremonial Magick. While the latter was a sophisticated psychological structure, intended to bring the initiate into contact with his higher Self, via a process of individuation that is active and dynamic (being brought about by the “patient” himself) as opposed to the passive depth analysis of the Jungian adepts, Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos was meant for entertainment. Scholars, of course, are able to find higher, ultermanifestation of Art.”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “For this is the Book of the Dead, the Book of the Black Earth, that I have writ down at the peril of my life, exactly as I received it, on the planes of the IGIGI, the cruel celestial spirits from beyond the Wanderers of the Wastes.”
INTRODUCTION: “Therefore it was (and is) insanity for the tyro to pick up a work on ceremonial Magick like the Lesser Key of Solomon to practise conjurations. It would also be folly to pick up Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practise with the same intention. Both books are definitely not for beginners, a point which cannot be made too often. Unfortunately, perhaps, the dread NECRONOMICON falls into this category…Crowley’s Magick was a testimony of what he has found in his researches into the forbidden, and forgotten, lore of past civilisations and ancient times. His Book of the Law was written in Cairo in the Spring of 1904, when he believed himself to be in contact with a praeter-human intelligence called Aiwass who dictated to him the Three Chapters that make up the Book. It had influenced him more than any other, and the remainder of his life was spent trying to understand it fully, and to make its message known to the world. It, too, contains the formulae necessary to summon the invisible into visibility, and the secrets of transformations are hidden within its pages, but this is Crowley’s own NECRONOMICON, received in the Middle East in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, and therein is writ not only the beauty, but the Beast that yet awaits mankind.”
Mad Arab Testimony: “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, when the Elder Gods walked the Spaces, the race of MARDUK, as he is known to the Chaldeans, and of ENKI our MASTER, the Lord of Magicians.”
INTRODUCTION: “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 realised it as such or not, he had heard the “Call of Cthulhu”. “
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “Know, then, that I have trod all the Zones of the Gods, and also the places of the Azonei, and have descended unto the foul places of Death and Eternal Thirst, which may be reached through the Gate of GANZIR, which was built in UR, in the days before Babylon was.”
INTRODUCTION: “Lovecraft’s mythos deals with what are known chthonic deities, that is, underworld gods and goddesses, much like the Leviathan of the Old Testament. The pronunciation of chthonic is ‘katonic’, which explains Lovecraft’s famous Miskatonic River and Miskatonic University, not to mention the chief deity of his pantheon, Cthulhu, a sea monster who lies, “not dead, but dreaming” below the world; an Ancient One and supposed enemy of Mankind and the intelligent Race. Cthulhu is accompanied by an assortment of other grotesqueries, such as Azathot and Shub Niggurath. It is of extreme importance to occult scholars that many of these deities had actual counterparts, at least in name, to deities of the Sumerian Tradition, that same Tradition that the Magus Aleister Crowley deemed it so necessary to “rediscover”. “
Mad Arab’s Testimony: I came to possess this knowledge through circumstances quite peculiar, while still the unlettered son of a shepherd in what is called Mesopotamia by the Greeks…When I was only a youth, travelling alone in the mountains to the East, called MASSHU by the people who live there, I came upon a grey rock carved with three strange symbols. It stood as high as a man, and as wide around as a bull. It was firmly in the ground, and I could not move it.”
INTRODUCTION: “Judging by a Sumerian grammar at hand, the word KUTULU or Cuthalu (Lovecraft’s’s Cthulhu Sumerianised) would mean “The Man of KUTU (Cutha); the Man of the Underworld; Satan or Shaitan, as he is known to the Yezidis (whom Crowley considered to be the remnants of the Sumerian Tradition).”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “My head began to ache as though a devil was pounding my skull, when a shaft of moonlight struck the metal amulet, for I know now what it was, and a voice entered into my head and told me the secrets of the scene I had witnessed in one word:..KUTULU.”
INTRODUCTION: “AZAG in Sumerian means “Enchanter” or “Magician”; THOTH in Coptic is the name given to the Egyptian God of Magick and Wisdom, TAHUTI, who was evoked by both the Golden Dawn and by Crowley himself (and known to the Greeks as Hermes, from whence we get “Hermetic”). AZAG-THOTH is, therefore, a Lord of Magicians, but of the “Black” magicians, or the sorcerers of the “Other Side”.”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “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.”
INTRODUCTION: “Coming from a fanatically religious Christian family, and suddenly freed upon the neighbourhood of Cambridge, Crowley did, in a sense, turn Satanist. He identified strongly with the underdog, politically as well as spiritually, and came eventually to take the Name of the Beast as his own,..”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “I have raised armies against the Lands of the East, by summoning the hordes of fiends I have made subject unto me, and so doing found NGAA, the God of the heathens, who breathes flame and roars like a thousand thunders.”
INTRODUCTION: “Therefore, it seemed almost logical that he should seek in the defeated, Old Religions of the world for the basis of his new philosophy and, some say, his new “religion”. He raised the female aspect back up to one of equality with the male, as it was in the rites of Egypt, and of Eleusis. “Our Lady Babalon” (his spelling) became a theme of many of his magickal writings, and he received he Credo, the Book of the Law, through a Woman, his wife Rose Kelly. The lunar element, as well as the Venusian, are certainly accessible in his works.”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “I have found the Gate that leads to the Outside, by which the Ancient Ones, who ever seek entrance to our world, keep eternal watch. I have smelled the vapours of that Ancient One, Queen of the Outside, whose name is writ in the terrible MAGAN text, the testament of some dead civilisation whose priests, seeking power, swing open the dread, evil Gate for an hour pass the time, and were consumed.”
INTRODUCTION: “The Moon has an extremely important, indeed indispensable, role in the tantrick sex magick rites that so preoccupied Crowley and the O.T.O. There can be no true magick without woman, nor without man, and in the symbolic language of the occult there can be no Sun without the Moon.”
Mad Arab’s Testimony: “In such a case, no recourse is to be had until the light of the moon shines upon the earth, for the moon is the eldest among the Zonei, and is the starry symbol of our Pact. NANNA, Father of the Gods, Remember!”
INTRODUCTION: “Side by side with the worship of the Moon, NANNA, there was fear of the Demon, PAZUZU, a genie so amply recreated in the book and the movie by Blatty, The Exorcist, and similarly recognised as the Devil Himself by the Church. PAZUZU, the Beast, was brought to life by Aleister Crowley, and the Demon walked the Earth once more. “
Mad Arab’s words from Urilia Text: “..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…And they cause plagues, for they summon PAZUZU. And they cause madness, for they call AZAGTHOTH…And they work by the Moon, and not by the Sun,”
We can easily see from the comparative analysis of the Simon Necronomicon’s Introduction and the Mad Arab’s Testimony that the identity of the Mad arab can be none other than Aleister Crowley. Based on such, it would also appear that “Simon” is not Peter Levenda, but a close associate of Crowley himself.
Reasons why the identification of Crowley as the Mad Arab , and the secrecy regarding who Simon is, were kept from hidden view from the public, in order to protect certain people legally. We find this the case since the literary estate of Aleister Crowley was at one time in dispute, and based on a study of such, we can determine the identity of Simon. In an online article entitled Crowley Copyrights, written by Hymenaeus Beta X, http://www.arcanearchive.org/religion/thelema/more-copyright-stuff-1.php
“A Literary Estate is a strange institution; all great writers have one,and they are a hybrid of business office, trust, registry and research institute. They are responsible for negotiating contracts with publishers,dealing with permissions requests, designating and assisting editors,collecting royalties and safeguarding the intellectual property which is any literary estate’s principal asset. More importantly, they are responsible for determining (or divining!) and wherever possible carrying out the author’s wishes posthumously. They have a moral responsibility to the author to ensure that his or her work is competently edited and professionally published…The needs of professional publishers are comparatively simple. Before they will make the required investment to publish a copyrighted work by a deceased author, they want a contract from his estate that will grant them exclusive rights to the work, sometimes for a specified period of time, or territory, or language. Any estate usually assures a publisher that a) the estate actually owns the publishing rights granted in the contract, and that b) they will assist if necessary in the defence of those rights in case they are infringed. What publishers do not want is to become entangled in a legal dispute over the rights. It’s bad for business when a competing edition appears, which is why rights are usually granted exclusively…This is of course how it is supposed to work. Crowley knew this, and his intent was clear: the O.T.O. should own the Crowley copyrights after his death. It is also clear, at least to several Federal judges and the best American and European copyright specialists we could find, that the O.T.O. now owns them. But things were not always so clear-cut, and from Karl Germer’s death in 1962 until Grady McMurtry’s death in 1985, confusion had the rule of law.”
Here we not only see the importance of a “Literary Estate,” but how there was a struggle in this regard with the works of Aleister Crowley. The article continues:
“Around 1968-9 Crowley’s literary executor John Symonds joined with expelled O.T.O. member Kenneth Grant in claiming the copyrights. Whatever else Symonds may be (and he is a clever novelist), he is not a solicitor. He apparently felt that he could deal in the copyrights by claiming that Germer never discharged him as the executor, glossing over the fact that he the fact that he had never held the copyrights in trust, as shown above. But, assuming we are following his reasoning, he apparently felt the need for an O.T.O. in whose name he would act, and Kenneth grant accordingly revived the abberant psuedo-O.T.O. that had caused his expulsion by Germer in 1955. he had closed it down In 1962, probably not coincidentally the year Germer died.”
The information cited above illustrates aspects of the struggle over Crowley’s literary estate, even going so far as to imply a severe magical war, as the article mentions:
“…and Kenneth grant accordingly revived the aberrant psuedo-O.T.O. that had caused his expulsion by Germer in 1955. he had closed it down In 1962, probably not coincidentally the year Germer died.”
It would seem that Kenneth Grant (a direct student of Crowley who was of African ancestry) sought to expand Crowley’s work, as well as, having possessed certain notes by Crowley that he did not have the legal right to publish. In view of such, Grant took an already existing fictional paradigm to mask one of Crowley’s greatest discoveries:
“Our work is therefore historically authentic; the rediscovery of the Sumerian Tradition”. – Aleister Crowley
The above quote was thought for a long time to be a fabrication of Kenneth Grant to support some of his mystical writings. Lovecraftian scholar Dan Harms, searched out the meaning of this quote while writing the Necronomicon Files with John Gonce. His efforts were worth the time. http://danharms.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/necronomicon-files-correction-on-the-sumerian-tradition/ says:
“Yesterday Donovan sent me a link to this post by Khem Caigan in which he locates the quote in the introduction to Part IV of Crowley’s Liber ABA/Book 4. I’ve ordered the book through ILL to verify the quote.”
Grant was putting out information that was long overlooked and doubted by many, but later admitted as being authentic. Grant even asserts that many of his works, were in fact, gleamed from the relationship that he had with his mentor, Aleister Crowley. Grant published Magickal Revival in 1972, a few years before the Simon Necronomicon was published. It is in this writing that we read:
“The author has at his disposal the entire body of Aleister Crowley’s writings (published and unpublished) and wishes to thank Mr. John Symonds-Crowley’s literary executor –for allowing complete freedom in the use of it.”
It is interesting to note that the Typhonian Trilogy, of which the Magickal Revival is a part, have much to do with understanding the Necronomicon. Crowley, during his time with the Yezidis, was able to secure a formulae from them that is known today as Gate-Walking. When Grant inherited this information, he could not publish it legally as written by Crowley, but could do so under the name of the fictional Mad Arab. Grant continues in Magickal Revival:
“But whatever the drink of drug, Crowley used them all in his search for the mysterious elixir potent to unseal the gates of the invisible world. He also wished to compare the states of consciousness induced by their use with those resulting from madness..”
This compares greatly with the words written by the Mad Arab written in the Book of Entrance:
“There was a time when the Gate to the Outside was open too long and I witnessed the horror that struck, of which words cannot speak, and of which writing can only confuse. The Ancient One that had escaped into the Inner World was forced back through the Gate by a magician of great power, but only at a great loss to the villages and flocks of the Island.”
Grant goes on further to describe the origin of the Gate-Walking rituals that Crowley recovered from the Yezidis:
“the theme of Crowley’s work is his ritual for achieving congress with the Higher self, or Holy Guardian Angel. To this end he successfully adapted an ancient Akkadian, or Sumerian, rite used by the Yezidi-the “devil” worshippers of Lower Mesopotamia. “
When we considered the fact that Kenneth Grant is “Simon” of Necronomicon fame, things begin to make a lot more sense. Although, Peter Levenda does provide some fine essays in Gates of the Necronomicon, these works do not compare to the amount of information given by Grant by way of his Typhonian writings. It is the combined experiences of Kenneth Grant and Aleister Crowley that personify the Mad Arab, similar to the relationship that Azag-Thoth (Crowley, possessed by Aiwass) and Nyarlathotep (Kenneth Grant). We find this striking similarity in Kenneth Grant’s description of how he met Aleister Crowley on page 87 in the classic work Outside the Circles of Time:
“One night in 1939 I dreamed of entering a winding cavern. At each turning the darkness grew denser so that it came as a shock when, after groping round yet another turning, I was suddenly dazzled by brilliant light. It flashed from the cavern wall that faced me and which abruptly terminated my journey. When I recovered from the glare, I saw that its source was a mysterious sigil emblazoned on the rock. It seemed to vibrate with such energy that the wall trembled as a curtain shivers in a breeze. The sigil, though unfamiliar, had for me an instant personal appeal, although at the time-and for a long time afterwards-no special meaning. I adopted it instinctively as a secret cypher of my Magical Self, although I can offer no rational explanation as to why I did so.”
How striking similar do we find the words of the Mad Arab:
“I could see clearly now that the three carvings on the stone monument were glowing a flame red colour, as though the rock were on fire.”
While the work of Peter Levenda is useful to the Necronomicon Tradition, his work lacks the depth of Kenneth Grant, who established himself as “Simon” to those who were secretly initiated under oath at time, not to reveal such things. Grant, throughout the bulk of his work, explains the many “basterdized” accounts and spellings, as they appear in the Simon Necronomicon as coded references. For example we find the following in his work Beyond the Mauve Zone:
“Its number, 813, is that of LAMMAShTA, a Name from the Necronomicon secret formula of Lam, Ma, and Set.”
This raises up several questions. How could Kenneth Grant define the entities found in the Simon Necronomicon is great detail according to qliphotic, kabbalistic, and geometric means, if the tome was a hoax? How is Grant able to make additional correspondence to the formulae appearing in the Simon Necronomicon and those of ancient antiquity, if he were not “Simon?” The commanding position of Kenneth Grant in his works clearly show that he is Simon, and Levenda was brought in for more editing. By the time Gates of the Necronomicon was released, Grant had already published at least six book where mention of the “necronomicon” is made. We will discuss this further in the future, but for now we will close with a few excerpts from a Kenneth Grant work entitled Outer Gateways:
“It is possible to determine the nature of the various phases οf the Gnosis by referring to the ‘magical’ numbers relevant to their expression. In the earliest phase, for instance, space was visualized as having seven gates, the number seven indicating the primordial stellar cult….Whatever the interpretation of Tutulu, or Kutulu, there can be little doubt that Cthulhu surfaced in the Aeon of Zaa and was ‘heard’ by Crowley two decades before Lovecraft wrote (in 1926) The Call of Cthulhu which was not published until 1928. These considerations do not preclude the possibility of earlier published records of the name, but they do affirm the ‘objectivity’ of the concept and its independence of Lovecraft’s individual subjective range. “
