Out of all the spiritual entities described in the Simon Necronomicon, we find that the “Watcher” is discussed in much detail. We first encounter the term Watcher in the Mad Arab’s First Testimony:
“The third sign is the Sigil of the Watcher. It is called BANDAR. The Watcher is a Race sent by the Elder Ones. It keeps vigil while one sleeps, provided the appropriate ritual and sacrifice has been performed,: else, if called, it will turn upon you.”
The Watcher is an emissary between the Initiate and the Elder Gods. What is interesting about the above cited passage is that it describes the Watcher as ‘keeping vigil while one sleeps.‘ This brings to mind a section in the Magan Text entitled Of The Sleep of Ishtar. While most critics of the Simon Necronomicon and even the editors of the tome will describe this section of the Magan Text as a basterdized version of Ishtar’s Descent into the Underworld, we find that it is an initiation formulae using the aesthetics of the ancient myth. We find that this section of the Magan Text applies to the Watcher’s function of ‘keeping vigil while one sleeps’ when we look at the origin of the practice of keeping vigil. Barbara Walker in the classic work, The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, makes note of the following on page 192, under the topic Vigil, we read:
“The Christian custom of “keeping vigil” overnight descended from the pagan custom of doing the same thing in a temple; it used to be called incubation. Sometimes the participant in the rite was supposed to sleep and thus receive prophetic dreams. At other times, it was assumed that wakefulness would be maintained all night, which would bring mysterious visions or omens of future events.”
In some aspects, during physical sleep we visit the underworld, also known as the subconscious mind. The ruler of the subconscious mind, as taught in the Necronomicon Mysteries is the reptile brain, also known as Tiamat/Kutulu. It is from this “underworld” that the Watcher rises up as the Initiate’s personal god and is able to send messages to the Initiate in dreams, as we saw in Barbara Walker’s work. We also see in Walker’s work that the term “keeping vigil” was formerly known as incubation, from which we get the word incubus. In another work written by Walker entitled, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, we find this information under the topic Incubus:
“The pagan incubus was a special priest embodying a prophetic spirit who would come in dreams or visions to those who “incubated” overnight in an earth-womb Pit of a temple (see Abaddon)…..This custom of incubation was carried into Christianity. It became known as “watching” or “keeping the vigil.” It was recommended in times of troublesome decision making that one should “watch and pray” in a church overnight in order to court a vision of guidance.”
Walker gives us another example of “incubation” in the previous cited work, The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, we find these words on page 200:
“Actually, the fish-tailed god Dagon was just another form of the Babylonian Ea, or Oannes, king of the sea, who in turn was the basis for the legend of Jonah…It was this mystic birth that gave rise to the derivative legend of Jonah’s incubation and rebirth from the “womb” of the whale, as it was called in earlier biblical translations…One of the names of this Mesopotamian deity actually suggested that he was identified with the biblical Yahweh at some point in his history. The name was given as Yahweh-Daganu, meaning literally “Yahweh is Dagon.”
The Simon Necronomicon gives us further details about the Watcher in The Conjuration of the Watcher section:
“The Watcher comes from a Race different from that of Men and yet different from that of the Gods..”
The Watcher, as we have discussed on many occasions, comes from the underworld, the land of Kur. notice what is mentioned in the Normal Invocation of the Watcher:
“Cease to be the Sleeper of EGURRA.
Cease to lie unwaking beneath the Mountains of KUR.
Rise up, from the pits of ancient holocausts!
Rise up, from the old Abyss of NARR MARRATU!”
Keep in mind that the underworld can apply to the depths of outer space. In any event, the Watcher is a spirit of the Abyss, a spirit of the dead. So too, do we find in the writings of Barbara Walker that Yahweh is likened to Dagon and based on our Chart of Comparisons, both Yahweh and Dagon are relative to Enki, who is the “Lord of the Watchers.”
Since the Hebrew culture derives from ancient Sumeria, it would seem likely that the deity Yahweh was an emissary for Din.Gir Enki and not the god himself. We know for certain that Yahweh was not a celestial deity but a spirit of the dead, like the Watcher. Yahweh was a god that constantly demanded sacrifice. Spiritism and the Cult of the Dead in Antiquity by Lewis Bayles Paton, states the following on page 261:
“Sacrifice is a rite that only has meaning in the cult of the dead. The blood, in the life of the animal resides, is poured out in order that the shades may drink of it and renew their vigour. Offerings of food and drink are not needed by celestial deities, but are needed by spirits of the dead, and have been offered to them from the earliest times.”Based on the information cited above, Yahweh would have been categorized as a spirit from the land of the deceased. This is further emphasized by the findings of S.N. Kramer, mentioned in his work The Sumerians, on page 294 he states:
“To judge from the covenant between God and Abraham-note, too, the reference to a “god of Nahor” in Genesis 31:53-the ancient Hebrews were familiar with the idea of a personal god. The belief in the existence of a personal god was evolved by the Sumerians at least as early as the middle of the third millennium B.C. According to Sumerian teachers and sages, every adult male and family head had his “personal god,” or a kind of good angel whom he looked upon as his divine father. This personal god was in all probability adopted by the Sumerian paterfamilias as the result of an oracle or a dream or a vision involving a mutual understanding or agreement not unlike the covenant between the Hebrew patriarchs and Jahweh….To be sure, there could have been nothing mutually exclusive about the covenant between the Sumerian and his tutelary deity, and in this respect, therefore, it differed very significantly from that between Abraham and his god. All that the Sumerian expected of his personal god was that he speak in his behalf and intercede for him in the assembly of the gods whenever the occasion demanded and thus insure for him a long life and good health. In return, he glorified his god with special prayers, supplications, and sacrifices, although at the same time he continued to worship the other deities in the Sumerian pantheon. Nevertheless, as the Sumerian literary document “Man and His God” indicates, there existed a close, intimate, trusting, and even tender relationship between the Sumerian and his personal god, one which bears no little resemblance Jahweh and the Hebrew patriarchs and, in later days, between Jahweh and the hebrew people as a whole.”
Here we can see some of the similarities between the Hebrew god Jahweh and the Watcher, as observed by Kramer in the information quoted above. The Watcher is listed by some scholars as the sedu and the lamassu. the lamassu is a protective female deity and may appear as an Amazonian woman with a flounced skirt. The sedu can be either benevolent of an evil spirit, but when accompanied by the lamassu, it had close affinity with the gods themselves. The Doctrine of Sin in the Babylonian Religion, page 27 states:
“…while the conception of the sedu and lamassu as guardian deities of man himself was the result of the generalization of their functions as guardians of the house. That they were closely related to the gods is shown by the determinative that always precedes their ideograms. The goddess Istar is described as having a sedu before her and a lamassu behind her, one to her right, and one to her left.”
The Mad Arab also describes the sedu and lamassu around Ishtar
“And the Demons rose
And the Spirits of the Dead
And went with her out of the Gates
Looking neither right nor left
Walking in front and behind”
“Seventh, thou must needs arrive back at the centre of the Gate, before thine altar, at which time thou must fall to the ground, looking neither to the right nor to the left at what may be moving there, for these Operations attract many kinds of wandering demon and ghost to the Gates, but in the air above the altar whereupon thou wilt presently see the Gate opening for thee and the Spirit-Messenger of the Sphere greeting thee in a clear voice, and giving thee a Name, which thou must remember, for that is the Name of thy Passing the Gate, which thou must use each time thou passeth thereby. The same Spirit-messenger will meet thee and, if thou know not thy Name, he will forbid thee entrance and thou wilt fall to the Earth immediately.”
