Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (Part 1)

Necronomicon, a book which its contents are said to exceed all other books in Christendom in wickedness, yet at the same time holds secret wisdom. The unfortunate circumstances surrounding the death of the man claimed to have translated this work are a sufficient warning to the idle curious, for the Necronomicon is suitable only for the deepest intellects wedded to Christ and in the Holy Spirit, and will corrupt all who seek to turn its arcane law to basic ends. It is a sword poisoned with nightshade that cuts the hand that seeks to seize it, but one with godly purpose and subtle touch may cradle it like a sleeping serpent without receiving its venom. The title Necronomicon means the exposition of the ways of the dead, and is intended for the control and working of the dead through the sorcery of corpses that bears the common name of necromancy. The ways of the dead, and secret matters known only to the dead and those with whom they have dealings, have been set forth in this book. It contains the accounts of living creatures beyond the higher spheres, of lost cities and other places forgotten by the memory of mankind. It shows the manner of summoning souls of the dead back into their mortal clay, and eliciting from them, by means of torment, secrets that lie hidden at the roots of the world, in dark caverns and beneath the depths of the seas. It also contains instructions on the making of things which have a semblance of life, things that were better left unmade, but cannot be unmade after having been created. All these are reasons to consign this book to the depths of hell, if not that those ancient beings dwelling between the stars, threatening the continuance of our race, are to be controlled in some way by the teachings of this evil book. In it, lie the practical tools of our salvation on that dreadful day which by the grace of our Lord shall never come. Necronomicon, the Wanderings of Alhazred, is associated or attributed to two men. One was a scribe named Theodorus Philetus, also known as the Wise, for his devotion to arcane learning. Theodorus is said to have translated the book from its native Arabic tongue into Greek. He completed the translation of this book in the city of Constantinople, for its ancient copies were all in the tongue of Muhammad, and the title then was not Necronomicon, but Al-Azif, a name supposedly signifying in that language the sound of insects heard in the night but vulgarly expressed as the howling of demons, seeing that the night sounds of the desert were mistaken for demon voices by the heretic nomads of those lands. When reports about the nature of the Necronomicon spread throughout Constantinople, the clergy and population of the city raised a cry against Theodorus. Theodorus was forced to stand on the steps of the great church and denounce the work of his own hands as devilish. He was forced to publicly beg the forgiveness of Christ for his sins, and then to burn the parchment bearing his translation of the Necronomicon. By so doing, the people of Constantinople pardoned him and ceased to call for his death. However, his book did not die, for other copies had already been made, and these copies spread abroad and multiplied under numerous pens. For the lust to possess a work so rare and so strange was great, even if it was damning to the soul and it continues to this day. Theodorus forfeited his honors in the emperor's court, he saw his wife and three sons killed by plague in the space of a single season, and finally he succumbed to the most horrible of afflictions, the disease of lice. And the scribes of the church wrote that the fate of Theodorus was punishment for his sins, for by rendering the Necronomicon into the Greek tongue, he was forsaken by God and the angels, and brought misfortune upon himself. So great is the power of the book over the souls of the sinful, for only the godly may read it and remain whole in body and spirit. A century after the work of Theodorus Philetas was brought forth into the world, Michael Serularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, commanded that all known copies of the book should be gathered together in one place and burned for the greater glory of Christ Jesus. This was in the year of our No Arab copies were found, but about 170 Greek copies were found, piled up and burned on the same steps where Theodorus had made his public apology. However, the author seriously warns us that knowledge once lost is lost forever, and who can say which teaching shall be useful in time of need, and which teaching shall be of no value to men forevermore? May there never come a time when secret knowledge is sorely needed to fight the armies of darkness. For if all the books that teach you how to fight the armies of darkness are burned, then men will search in vain for the instrument of their salvation. Keep you all copies of the Necronomicon chained and locked, let no man who reads it speak of its contents, and let no man who knows of it reveal its existence to the ignorant, who are unfit to carry so grave a burden. Before God and his angels, may the soul be damned of him who seeks to practice what is written in these leaves, for he has damned himself by the mere temptation. It is better that his eyes were put out with glowing coals from the fire, and his lips sewn tight with flaxen thread, than to read aloud the words in this book, written in the forgotten tongue that was never meant to be spoken by the sons of Adam, but to be spoken only by those who have no mouths, those who dwell in the shadows between the stars. As a tribute to the Lord, Theodorus offers this book to true seekers after wisdom who remain steadfast of mind and courageous of heart. In it are found keys to power beyond reckoning and knowledge yet unspoken by human lips. The wise will use it with circumspection, and fools will be consumed. It is sufficient that this book continue to exist in the places of men, so that when the stars coincide, it shall make itself known for the use of one destined to wield its potency, fare thee well. The maker of this book was born into a humble house in the city of Sana'a, in the land of Yemen. His family name has been long lost, but he is universally known by the title Abdul al-Hazred. The date of his birth is not known, but his death is said to have occurred in the year of our Lord 738, when he was in the extremity of old age. In early youth al-Hazred found renown both for piety, as a faithful follower of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, and for poetic invention. He was handsome in face, with uncommonly white skin and green eyes that caused wonder at his birth, seeing that his father was dark in both face and eye. Talk arose that his mother had laid with a jinn while crossing the desert by caravan on her way to be wed, but her extreme godliness dismissed this rumor. Al-Hazred was tall and well built, with graceful movement like that of a fine horse. But most remarkable was his voice, for when he recited the words of the Prophet, the birds paused in their singing to listen, and desert foxes came forth from their dens, and sat upon mounds to hear the teachings of God. When the king of Yemen learned of this child wonder within the bounds of his kingdom, he summoned al-Hazred to his court when the boy was just twelve years old. He was so taken with the beauty of the youth that he made an offer to al-Hazred's father to keep the boy with him, and have him educated by the same palace tutors who instructed his own sons. In this way al-Hazred was raised as a prince of the royal court, and had the love of the king as a second father. The only price expected of him was the composition of poetic verses, which he sang for the enjoyment of the king and his counsellors. When he turned eighteen years of age, al-Hazred fell in love with one of the daughters of the king. Had he controlled his passion, perhaps the king might have been persuaded to give his daughter to the young man in marriage. But love knows no boundaries in its reckless course, and alas al-Hazred took his pleasure with the girl who conceived a child. The discovery of the affair roused the fury of the king, who had the child strangled as soon as it was born, and for his act of betrayal, al-Hazred the poet was punished by mutilation. His genitals, nose and ears were cut off and his cheeks were scarred. He was forced to watch the unholy fruit of his union with the princess roasted over embers on a spit, and was made to eat portions of the flesh of the child's corpse. Then the king hired desert nomads to carry him eastward into the depths of the Roba al-Qaliyah, the Empty Space, as it was known to the ancients. There he was left without water to die. This ordeal took away al-Hazred's sense of reason. The king had ordered all who travelled that desolated area to shun him and refuse him aid, in the expectation that he would soon perish, yet al-Hazred clung to wretched life. For an unrecorded span of time he wandered the desert, scorpions and carrion hawks his companions by day, and by night, the demons who dwell only in such barren and hateful lands. These spirits of darkness taught him necromancy and led him to discover forgotten caves and wells that run deep beneath the surface of the earth. He renounced his faith and began to worship antediluvian titans, adored by the desert spirits who were his guides and teachers. He embarked on a mad quest to restore the mutilated and excised members of his body, so that he might return to Yemen in triumph and claim the princess as his bride. With magic he disguised his face so that it appeared like that of a normal man, and abandoned the wasteland to scour the world for arcane wisdom. In Giza, in the land of Egypt, he learned from a secret cult of pagan priests with shaven heads, the way of restoring life to corpses and commanding them to do his bidding. In Chaldea he acquired perfection in the arts of astrology. From the Hebrews at Alexandria he acquired the knowledge of forgotten tongues, and the use of the voice for the utterance of barbarous words of evocation, for though all his other graces had been stolen away from him by the malice of the king, the beauty and power of his voice remained. After roaming the wide world in search of some magic that would restore his manhood, he was made to accept his repellent condition in bitterness of heart, since it could not be mended by any potion or spell or object of power discovered in the course of his wandering. From his maturity until the end of his life, Alhazred lived within the walls of Damascus in great luxury, freely pursuing his necromantic experiments, but shunned and abhorred by the inhabitants of the city, who regarded him as an evil wizard. It was during his residence at Damascus that, in a fit of mad humor, he composed the work he titled Al-Azif, which means The Chittering of Insects, or The Drone of Beetles. Yet, because of its contents, the book was popularly known as The Howling of Demons, seeing that the night sounds of the desert are mistaken for the cries of spirits by the common peoples of that place. The work was penned during his final decade at Damascus, around the year of our Lord 730. Alhazred died in a strange manner, difficult to believe, if not that everything about the man himself was strange. It is said that one day while buying wine in the market square, Alhazred was caught up into the air by some invisible creature of great size and strength, and his head, arms and legs were ripped from his torso and devoured, so that all his body vanished from sight in pieces, leaving only splashes of blood upon the sands. Alas, his own flesh became the final tribute to the dark gods he worshipped. You who would learn the wisdom of hidden things and traverse the avenues of shadow beneath the stars, heed this song of pain that was chanted by one who went unseen before you, that you may follow the singing of his voice across the wind-blown sands that obscure the marks of his feet. He who goes into the empty space walks alone, but where one has gone, another may follow. Do not turn your mind from night fears, but embrace them as a lover. Let terror possess your body and course through your veins with its heady intoxication, to steal your judgment and your very reason. In the madness of the night all sounds become articulate. A man sure of himself, confident in his strength, aware of his rightful place, remains forever ignorant. His mind is closed. He cannot learn in life, and after death there is no acquisition of knowledge, only unending certainty. His highest fulfillment is to be food for the things that burrow and squirm, for in their mindless hunger they are pure, undefiled by reason, and their purity elevates them above the putrefying pride of our race. By writhing on your belly in abject terror, you will rise up in awareness of truth. By the screams that fill the throat unsought is the mind purged of the corruption of faith. Believe in nothing. There is no purpose in birth, no salvation of the soul in life, no reward after death. Abandon hope and you shall become free, and with freedom acquire emptiness. The night things that hop and skitter and flit at the edges of the campfire glow exist only to teach, but no man can understand their words unless he has lost the memory of his name in fear. Two serving maidens will come to you when you lie alone, and will lead you to the place within yourself that cannot be known but only felt. These handmaidens are terror and despair. Let them guide you into nightmares that follow one upon the other, like windblown grains of sand, until they cover over the markers of your mind. When you have lost yourself in the wasteland of unending nothingness, the night things will come. With hope utterly abandoned, all else will leave you except only fear. With your name forgotten, your memories deprived of meaning, without desire or purpose, and having no regret, you would cease utterly to exist and would become one with the greatness of the night were it not for fear. Let your terror be your standing place in the ocean of darkness. From it you cannot retreat, for it is all that you have become. Pure fear is undifferentiated, a smoothness without line or color. Hence a man in the extremity of terror is united with all other terrified men. But more than this, in the purity of terror, he becomes one with all fearful creatures in this world or other worlds, both in this moment and in distant aeons of time, and in that unity wherein the wisdom of all dwells, his mind is opened, and the night things speak. Pain is the terror of the body, and as the body is but a pale reflection of the mind, so is the pain of the flesh, no more than a distant echo of the terror of dreams. Even so, do not despise your pain, for it has its function. Pain anchors the mind to the flesh. In the absence of pain, the mind would fly up and become lost in the spaces between the stars, and darkness would consume it. Just as the mind can lose all aspects of itself, but will never cease to fear, so can the body lose all strength and sensations or longing, but will always feel pain. While there is life, there is pain, and fear continues even when life is no more. Despair is not separate from terror, but is the consequence of the decrease of fear. When terror fills the mind, there is room for nothing else, but when it withdraws in part, as it must do, for it ebbs and flows even as the tides of the seas, then the mind is left cleansed and empty, and this condition is called despair. In despair there is a void that yearns to be filled up. Let the night things fill it with their whisperings, and in this way you will grow wise in the secret ways of this world, and other worlds unknown to men. Of all pains, hunger is the most useful, since it gnaws unceasingly like the worm in the tomb. It is the gateway upon an emptiness so vast and endless. For no matter the quantity or kind of food, it is never filled up. All living creatures are but embodiments of hunger. Man is a hollow tube, ingesting food at one end and excreting waste at the other. How then is it possible for man to be other than empty? As it is for the body, so it is also for the mind. The natural condition of the mind is emptiness. All efforts to fill it are temporary diversions that fail to deny this truth. To learn arcane wisdom is the simplest of tasks. Purge the mind with terror, purge the body with pain and hunger. Take yourself out into the empty spaces of the world that express in their limited way the same qualities as the empty spaces between the stars. The things that dwell there are ever watchful. They exist only to teach. After terror comes despair, and in despair the language of the shadows becomes intelligible. As you empty your mind of self, the night creatures fill it with their wisdom. The wisest of these creatures is the black beetle that lives on the dung of others. Dead food is better than food that is living, since its essence is nearer to the ultimate state of decay to which we all tend. From corruption arises new life. Fill yourself with corruption, and from it you shall be reborn, just as the fungi arise and glow with radiance on the faces of the dead who have rested in their tombs a span of years. Emulate the beetles and the worms and learn their teachings. Eat of the dead, lest you be consumed by the emptiness. The living cannot teach the dead, but the dead can instruct the living. Dwelling in the wasteland are those creatures that cannot stand the light of reason. Just as man is a creature of the day and ceases to know himself during the darkness, so do these creatures of the void cease to articulate their identity during the hours of the sun. They sleep by day and wake by night to feed. The terror of man is their nourishment, and their excrement is higher wisdom. The dung of these things may only be consumed when the mind is made empty by terror and is in a receptive state of despair. Unless the mind is perfectly purged, their excrement will be vomited up and lost. The rapture of hunger retains all foods and extracts nourishment even from the husks of beetles and the castings of worms. Ingest wisdom with the darkness and sleep by day. Separate yourself from humanity, for what use have you for these pale blinking fools and their ceaseless yammerings? In life they serve no function, and in death they are only food for the crawling creatures. Take yourself apart, embrace your fear and listen to the darkness. Your teachers will come, and as they appear before you, consume their wisdom. Grind their chitinous cases between your teeth and partake of their essence. The whirring of their wings and the rubbing of their legs is music. Consume all, even the other things that approach, those that have no bodies but only teeth and eyes that gleam in shadow. The crawling things instruct the body and the shadow shapes teach the mind, but the wisdom of both must be consumed. There is only hunger in the universe. Devour everything. The desert known as Roba Elcalia is a lover of the dead and a hater of all things that have life. The creatures that dwell in the desiccated wastes of this empty space imitate the dead in all possible ways and thereby steal life from the dryness. What are the qualities of the dead? They are cold and lie without motion within the earth, hidden from the burning sun. Their skin is hard and black. At night they rise and wander far, in search of nourishment to satisfy their ceaseless hunger and thirst. So it is with the living things that struggle to remain alive in the land of the dead. The creatures of the empty space lie beneath the earth in caves or covered over with sand. During the heat of the day they move little or not at all to conserve their fluids. Their skin is hard and dark, their eyes dry and glittering like jewels. Only under the light of the moon dare they venture forth to hunt. He who would cross the wilderness of stone and sand must emulate the dead, just as the creatures that live in the waste do, for only by becoming as they are may he survive. At the setting of the sun arise and go in quest of nourishment. Water is more precious than food, so always seek water and food will cross your path without the need to look for it. The life of the desert is an endless quest for water that renders other quests meaningless. When the paling of the east announces the dawn, dig a hollow in the sand and cover your body, or huddle in a cleft between rocks that is forever in shadow. Lie as one dead and sleep out the day. Seek the deepest depths between the rocks in the low places of the land where the sands have fallen inward, for there will be found moisture. Even when it is too little to serve the needs of life directly, it may be had by sucking the juice of crawling things that concentrate the dampness within their shells. Corpses newly buried along the caravan roads are fat with water. The brain remains wet for weeks, so does the marrow of the bones. The blood of a hunter hawk is good, but the blood of a carrion bird may carry disease that cripples or kills the unwary. More wholesome is the flesh of serpents and worms, sweet to the taste and a glut to the belly. In the deepest pits where water drips and pools, there flourishes a certain fungus that may be known by its color, for it is like the green mingled with yellow of the pus from a newly lanced boil. This growth emanates a faint radiance that seems bright to eyes accustomed to the blackness of caves. It is of the length of half a forefinger, but from it emerge longer stalks, containing pods of spores that break open with a faint sound, like the crackle of brush in a fire when disturbed. Among this living carpet that covers the rocks and walls and roofs of caverns dwell small spiders of the purest white. As they move among the stalks, they brush them with their legs and cause them to open and spread their seed upon the damp air, so that in the silence deep beneath the earth, there is an endless soft crackle that resembles stifled laughter. To consume three of the white spiders transforms the power of sight, for it allows demons and shades of the dead that wander the desert after the setting of the sun to be seen clearly with eyes, though these wraiths pass unseen otherwise. To gain this power of sight, three spiders and three alone must be eaten. Two is insufficient and four causes vomiting and sickness that persists for several days, but three yields merely a lightness and spinning in the head that is not so severe as to inhibit walking. It is the spores from the pods fallen upon the spiders that produce the second type of sight. By themselves, the spores have no power, but when mingled with the secretions on the back and legs of the spiders, they acquire this potency. To the eyes which have been transformed and fortified by this strange meat, the shades and spirits of the desert stand forth from the rocks and dunes with the whiteness of candle wax. Near the burial sites of Bedouin caravans, there are lairs who retain their human form though they go naked after death. These are mindless vessels that stand or stagger upon the earth above their graves, moving in circles and arcs, but never venturing more than a dozen paces from the mound where their putrefying flesh lies buried. They have one use alone, to identify the place of burial when the desert nomads have attempted to conceal the place from ghouls and tomb robbers. No matter how well concealed the surface of the grave, the lair of the corpse stands watch above it. When a grave is opened, the shade that is bound to it strives to slay the violator by seeking his throat or heart with its fingernails or sometimes with its teeth, all the while emitting a faint keening cry that is easily mistaken for the sigh of the night breeze. Since these lairs lack material force, they may be ignored without harm. They vanish the moment the brain, heart or liver is removed from the corpse, though the cutting of the dead flesh and the removal of smaller portions of the body is not sufficient to dispel their presence. To dispel their presence, it is best to shatter the skull with a stone when first the corpse is exposed, and having vanquished the troubling shade, the remaining viscera and organs may be handled and used without distraction. There is another type of spirit, common in the rocky hills, that resembles a large wingless bat, but possesses the hindquarters and legs of a wild dog. Its mouth is unnaturally large for its size and filled with curved white teeth like the bones of a fish, and its forepaws hairless and slender, looking like nothing other than the graceful hands of a dancing girl, save that they are ebon with elongated nails. These creatures, in their own tongue, call themselves chaklachi. They move with great rapidity at a loping run across the sands, and hunt in packs any living thing that they find alone and unprotected in the waste at night. Their method of attack is to surround their prey so closely that their insubstantial bodies replace the air itself, so that the uncomprehending prey slowly suffocates to death. Only then can they consume its vital essences, for they eat the dead and cannot abide the essences of the living. They consume the spirit of the flesh, not the flesh itself, but after they have eaten, the flesh holds no nourishment for the living. A man who possesses the power of the second sight by consumption of the fungoidal spiders, that man is able to make a pact with the chaklachi, who prefer to feed on corpses dead for several days than upon the bodies of the newly slain. These demons do not have the physical force to move the ground protecting bodies that have been buried, but if a man shall move the stones and sand for them and allow them to feed unhindered, in exchange they will reveal secret places where treasures of various kinds lie hidden, or repeat knowledge long lost to the world. If it should happen that the chaklachi seek to kill the one with whom they have formed a pact, as commonly happens, the utterance of the name of the guardian of the gates, in the language of the old ones, sends them scattering like dried leaves upon the wind. They pose no danger to the man who holds the power of this name, and may be useful as guides in the empty space. These things speak not as a man speaks, they speak by striking the air with his breath, but inwardly, like a thought that echoes within the mind. Their intellect is weak, but they remember all they have ever seen or heard, and they endure far longer than a man. Light they cannot abide, nor the camps and habitations of our race. The human voice is painful to them, and they fly away from the sound of laughter. With the faculty of the second sight, things that never possessed life of their own, but merely contained or conveyed life, may be clearly seen in the darkness across the sands. Caravan roads stand forth like ribbons of silver, and the domes and towers of towns long fallen to decay and forgotten, rise against the starry horizon. These ghostly structures glow most bright under the energizing rays of the moon, but are dim when the moon is in her dark phase or not yet risen. They are most clear in distance, but when approached, they waver and grow dim, until at last they fade utterly as the foot extends to cross their thresholds. By these shadows of towns long fallen, one can trace the wanderings of ancient races and their places of dwelling. Upon the open desert are gateways in the form of whirling columns of iridescent dust. In the day they resemble dancing pillars, and by night they resemble glowing spires. They may be opened only at certain times, when the rays of the wandering bodies of heavens and the greater stars conspire to unlock them. Their opening is by means of phrases chanted in an inhuman tongue, the words of which have geometric forms in space possessing length, breadth, and height. The Chaklahi know the words but do not understand their meaning or use, and for a gift of blackened and putrefying flesh, they may be induced to repeat them. Such are the several beauties of the desert called Roba el Kaliye, which is death to a man for so long as he remains alive, but life to the man who has become as the dead, emulating the ways of the dead. When the winds blow soft across the sands, they carry the murmur of seduction kissed with promises of pleasure, but when they quicken, their howl of murderous fury will not be appeased. The winds foreshadow the coming of demons that are born alone in whirling cones of dust from other planes of existence. The lustful demons and the angry demons are driven by the same hunger and seek to nourish themselves on the emotions of man. But the first is fed upon the sensation of arousal and the desire for carnal consummation, while the second fattens on fear. The second kind is more dangerous, since fear is the stronger emotion. The lover of the winds is beautiful to behold. She comes in dreams with her white arms extended and her long and glossy hair rising about her head, her smiles sweet with orange blossoms, and her eyes deep wells of reflected starlight. A gown of the finest transparent silk adorns her slender body. Her fingers, neck, and What man whole in body can resist her allurements? She causes the nocturnal emission of semen during sleep and feeds upon the odor and heat of the semen, stealing away a portion of its vitality. She impregnates herself with the stolen semen, giving rise to demons and monstrous offspring. These demonic children become her servants, and since they are possessed of a portion of vitality, they are capable of tangible acts. When she visits the sleeping man, they gibber and caper around their bed, pulling upon their hair and beard and howling with glee. Night after night she returns to her dreaming lover, who welcomes her embrace without complaint, his mind lulled by pleasure, until she has drawn out all he has to give and alas, his heart ceases to beat. She is like the tar of the poppy that brings unfailing delight, even when it causes death. There is hardly a man who would not fall prey to this seductress' charms, except one. Only a man like those who guard the harem of the monarch, who have had their manhood and genitals removed by the edge of a knife, or have suffered a similar loss through violent misfortune, only they can resist the allures of this temptress. And since they have no seed to she is frustrated in her attempt and flies away, wailing and gnashing her teeth. The howling demon comes with violence and seizes the mind of the sleeper, shaking it as a dog shakes a rat, transforming dream to nightmare. It has as many forms as the foes that inhabit the imagination, but is quick to seek out and discover the shape that its victim fears the most. The victim's worst fear then becomes its vessel or its mask, for it has no identity of its own, only a hunger that must be appeased. When dreams and nightmares alone fail to terrify its victim, it causes cuts and scratches and marks upon the skin of the sleeper, which are discovered with the rising of the sun, but only for the purpose of eliciting terror, as pain alone offers it no nourishment. Its purpose is to interrupt sleep so many times that the man who is its prey begins to dream while awake. Only then will it be able to come and go within the sleeper's mind at will, and take whatever thing of value it finds there. The common consequence of the nightly visits of this demon is madness and suicide, for only by death can its torments be avoided or stopped. He that is safe from this demon is only he who has learned to embrace his fears like a lover, rejoicing in their multiplicity and power. Such a man welcomes the angry demons of the wasteland as his friends, and finds amusement and diversion in their change of masks. In the case of this type of man, when the angry demon recognizes the futility of its attempt at terrorizing him, the demon will depart in sullen silence, its fury calmed at last, and the wanderer in the desert would then sleep and dream without molestation. But there is a way to control both the lustful demon and the angry demon, and it is by the seals of the gods from the stars. By these seals, these two forms of night demon can be commanded and sent to terrorize others who travel across the empty space, and even those who dwell within cities and inhabited lands. They serve as a potent form of attack, suited to the exacting of vengeance. And what are these seals and their gods? The seductress and mother of monsters is obedient to the authority of the seal of Shub-Niggurath, the prolific goat, while the angry demon obeys the seal of the great Cthulhu quick to fury. And how do you use these seals? Wait for the coming of the demon as you lie within your dreams alert and aware, and before it commences its work, command its attention with the name and seal of the god under whose wandering star it dwells, whether bright and pitiless Venus or red-eyed Mars. The star of the god must be above the horizon, thus the best time to make a contract with the demon of lust is shortly before dawn. Compose the seal of the god in your imagination and picture it upon the air before you as you confront the demon. Then you may give the demon instruction concerning the identity of the person it should terrorize unto death. Your desire will surely be attained within the cycle of the moon. The diagrams of the seals of the old gods will be given as the series progresses. Caravans crossing the desert of Robba el-Khaliye must bury their dead along the way, for in the heat of the desert a body soon putrefies, and in the span of two days no man could bear to stand near it, and no beast would carry it upon its back. The only exception is made when a person of wealth dies on the journey, for the family of the corpse has the means to cause it to be wrapped in rags saturated with honey, which has the property of inhibiting decay. The honey is used to fill the mouth, nostrils, ears, eye sockets, and other vents of the body, and provided every opening is sealed, the flesh may be preserved as it was in life for several weeks. A man alone in the wasteland learns to follow the tracks of the camels, and to recognize the graves of those who have died along the way. The carcasses of beasts are of no use for food, since these are swiftly picked clean to the bones by the creatures of the desert, but the corpses of men are protected by the earth and stones piled above them. The hungry traveler soon learns to trust his nose to guide him to his repast, and the glowing shade that stands above the place of its burial, so clearly visible to the second sight, is a sure sign that his belly will soon be filled. But he must be quick if he is to reach a fresh grave before it is found by the eaters of the dead, for they are skilled at this hunt, and rarely let a body rest in the earth for more than a day and night. These ghouls are rarely seen by our race, and are almost unknown apart from fables that frighten children, but in the deeper reaches of the desert they are not so difficult to discover, especially when their only observer is a solitary wanderer who has the same purpose as their own. They are small of stature, with slender arms and legs, but rounded bodies possessing distended bellies, and their naked skin is black, so that they are almost invisible to the ordinary sight. Standing no taller than the elbow of a man, they appear at first impression to be a band of children, except that they move silently, with their shoulders hunched and their clawed hands brushing the sands, their glittering black eyes alert for danger, and their yellow teeth, like those of a dog, exposed between their parted lips, for they sniff the air with both nose and open mouth, to catch the scent of death. A man untroubled by fear may easily defend himself against five or six of these creatures, using only a large stone or a thigh bone for a weapon. But these creatures are attracted by the sound of conflict and quickly gather in larger numbers, in which case it becomes wise to retreat and leave them the enjoyment of the prize. Never do they consume the flesh of the living, yet they know how to uncover a corpse and how to bury it. And any man they slay they cover his corpse with the earth for a day, and then return to feast on it. They must compete not only with the desert foxes and other scavengers of the night, but also with the Chaklahi, who deprive the corpse of its nourishing virtue unless driven away. The Chaklahi and the eaters of the dead are old enemies well accustomed to dealing with each other, and for the most part they observe the pleasantry of respecting the claim of whichever race first discovers the grave. Sometimes the ghouls will leave portions of the corpse for the Chaklahi to feed upon, and the Chaklahi in turn will not draw the virtue from the bones of the dead, but will allow it to remain in the marrow, for the sake that the ghoulish eaters of the dead may also feed. The ghouls of the desert are smaller of body than those who lurk at the outskirts of cities, near burial places. Lack of food and the harshness of the land stunt their growth and shrivel their limbs, yet they are tenacious of life, which enables them to endure hardships that would kill their larger brethren, who dwell near the places of men. In spite of these differences, they are a single race, sharing the same language and even the same folklore. Those of the desert relate among themselves the tale of a man named Nuruddin Hasan, a noble householder of Busurah, who made a pact with a ghoul of the city whose name was Ganaka, so that in return for allowing his beloved wife to lie in her grave unmolested, the man agreed to murder eight strangers on successive nights and provide the ghoul with their corpses. The murders were discovered after Hasan had killed seven of his fellow citizens, and the unfortunate man had to take his own life to make up the eighth corpse for the ghoul, and by so doing he fulfilled his oath. This tale is not unknown to our own storytellers, but for the eaters of the dead it has a special meaning, since they revere the sanctity of a bargain above all other bonds, and once having agreed to a service, they fulfill it without fail. Another fable they tell of this same city ghoul concerns the stealthful robbery of a sacred tomb beneath a mosque during the fast of Ramadan, and how the gluttony of the ghoul brought him into conflict with the worshippers. This city ghoul called Ganaka is a kind of hero to their race, whose exploits form the subjects for many tales. The traveler is advised to make peace with the eaters of the dead by offering them the greater part of any corpse unearthed along the caravan roads. This is no keen sacrifice, since dead flesh does not remain wholesome long in the desert, and no man, regardless of his hunger, could consume more than a small portion of the corpse before it becomes too foul to retain in the stomach. In return for this display of grace, the creatures will cease their attacks, for they are not warlike by nature, and only fight over food, which is ever scarce in the wastes. They speak in dry whispers in their own language, which is unknown beyond their race, but they have learned enough of our tongue from the campfires of the caravans to make their meaning known. Their knowledge of the old places of the desert is complete, because for countless generations they have sought their meat across the sands, and unearthed stranger things than the dead from beneath the stones. What the Chaklahi do not know, the ghouls remember, and what cannot be learned by questioning one race will be gained from the other. Neither of the two races has any use for hidden tombs, or ancient cities, or buried gold and silver, but they will trade this knowledge for flesh. A traveler once purchased from the eaters of the dead the location of the valley of the lost city of Irem of the Many Pillars for the extraordinary price of the body of a beautiful maiden of high family that had been wrapped in honey after succumbing to the bite of a serpent. The ghouls feared to approach the campfires of the caravans, lest they be slain by the arrows of the guards. But they learned of the death of the maiden from words spoken by members of the family, and this traveler among them was bold and clever enough to steal into the camp shortly before dawn, and carry off the sweetly dripping corpse when everyone in the camp still laid asleep, and after those paid to sit up and guard the corpse during the night had retired to their blankets. The body was not consumed that night, for it was too fresh, having been preserved by the honey, and the hour was late, but the traveler performed the same service as that of the mourners by sitting with the corpse while it rotted in the sun and was visited by beetles and flies, after having carefully unwrapped it and scraped its skin clean of its sticky golden sweat. The next night it was eaten with pleasure, and the secret of the valley of Irem was revealed. The tale is told of a city of tall towers and glimmering domes in the depths of the empty space, far from the roads and dwellings of men. Once it was a great center of humanity, a well-watered garden fed by vast underground cisterns that never dried, but were ever replenished by subterranean streams. Irem was the name of the city, renowned across the world for its beauty and its wickedness. Its wealthy inhabitants, who had grown rich from the constant caravans that in ancient times passed through its gates on their journeys to far places, indulged their love of sensuality and finery to the utmost. No cloth was too costly for its bejeweled courtesans, no fortified wine was too potent for its fat merchants, and no drug was too poisonous for the jaded delights of its ruler and his courtiers. Alas, without warning or sign, the city was destroyed in a great cataclysm that cast down its pillars and domes and covered them with sand, killing all the inhabitants. The legend states that it was the judgment of God upon the wickedness of the people, but few men know the real cause of its downfall. The secret is only to be learned by going there and looking, for Irem has been lost to the world for longer than the histories of man can tell. It was one of the places of the earth so long inhabited that those who dwelled there forgot why it had first been founded. Now it is only a scattering of dusty mounds and broken pillars, the mystery of its destruction as deep as the secret of its creation. The eaters of the dead know the location of Irem, but they will not go there, and will only lead the traveler to as far as the outer slopes of the hills surrounding the valley that holds its ruins. But even at that, the place can only be found by a man possessing the secret sight bestowed by the consumption of the white spiders of the radiant fungi. Eat three of these spiders and wait for nightfall outside the hills of the valley of the city of many towers. And in the darkness, across the sands, you will see a glowing ancient caravan road that cannot be perceived under the sun with normal sight. It enters the valley between two hills. Follow it, and on the breeze the sounds of stones rolled beneath. You will hear the hoofs of walking camels, and the tinkle of silver and brass from the bridles. You will hear the creak of hemp ropes and oiled leather, and perhaps the murmur of voices. All these sounds come from the distant past and must be disregarded, for they are a trap for the imagination of the unwary. Those who listen to them too closely will drift into a dream, and awake walking beside the camels of the caravans, forever lost to their own time. The silver band of the caravan road leads into the fallen gate of the city, of which there is no sign remaining. Yet beneath the light of the full moon, you may sometimes see a pale arch of translucent stones, the shade of the gateway that collapsed so many ages ago. Enter the gate. The tops of the pillars appear as worn stones, for they project no more than a cubit above the sand, and wind storms have rounded and cut them beyond recognition. Scattered are fragments of pottery and glass, easy to find since they glow under the moon to one who has awakened the second sight. Continue on past a hill on the left side, and you will come upon a shallow but broad hollow, much like a sink pit in the sand. Descend its slope and stand in the center. Know that you stand in the center of the fallen city where the palace of the king once stood. The shaking of the ground that felled the towers began in this place, and drew the palace under the surface so that no trace of it remains exposed. Yet stand there and listen. Do you hear the sifting of sand? It is faint and may easily be mistaken for the sound of a beetle walking across a dune. Seek it out, and there you will find in a deeper hollow that is shadowed from the moon, a small opening resembling the den of an animal. Then you must determine whether you choose to enter this den, or to walk from the hollow, and leave the ruins of fallen Irem. The way within is perilous, not just for the flesh, but for the reason. For only a man who is already mad can enter the cisterns below Irem, and bear to look upon what dwells in its darkness, without seeking death as an escape from the horror. Only he who becomes one with the serpent can enter, extending his arms and writhing with his belly. A fat man cannot enter at all, but only he who has gone long without much food. The channel is like the passageway of birth, and yields with reluctance only after much effort. After you have won your struggle and fallen within, you will find a cave, with a sand-strewn floor that slopes downward. All that will be seen is darkness, but the shells of tiny sea creatures embedded in the rocks glow to the second sight, and give sufficient illumination to go forward. As the cave descends, it widens and broadens. Faint in the distance is the drip of water, and water may be plainly smelled, though no water is to be found. The cave at last opens into a vast space, the limits of which cannot be seen, for the glow from the shells in its walls does not have the strength to provide sight more than a dozen paces. Rats that are unusually large dwell there in that place. They may be recognized by the soft rustle of their scabrous naked tails as they move over one another, and they have no fear of the stranger, but eagerly scurry forward to nip and eat away at any exposed flesh. But they are wise in the ways of the desert, for when they see and recognize one who is a lover of the empty space, they keep a courteous distance. The blood of these rats is sweet and their meat is lean but filling, and good to the taste and particularly succulent are their eyes. Still exploring the cavern, the traveler soon discovers by pacing the curved wall of the dark cavern that it opens outward into other similar spaces, which also have their several openings. The traveler would find that the entire ground beneath Irim is not sand and rock, but voids whose arching roofs are held up by natural rock pillars. For in truth, it was the collapse of one of these caverns that drew the palace of the king beneath the surface, and it was the upheaval of the earth that caused the collapse and toppling of the domes and towers of the city. All this may be reasoned out in days of darkness and silence, broken only by the rustle of rats and the drip of phantom water that is never to be found.