Compiled by Dan Clore from sundry sources
Fake title page of the Dee edition
from the Hay-Wilson-Turner-Langford Necronomicon
From "The Hound" (1922):
Description of the ghastly soul-symbol of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. This is an amulet depicting the oddly conventionalised figure of a crouching winged hound, or sphinx with a semi-canine face. Its sinister lineaments, according to the old Arab daemonologist, were drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the dead.
From "The Descendant" (?):
Strange diagrams.
From "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926):
No real hint of the Cthulhu Cult, but double meanings which the initiated might read as they choose.
From The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927):
Instructions on raising the dead from their chemical salts.
From "The Last Test" (1927):
Things that weren't known in Atlantis.
From "The Dunwich Horror" (1928):
A kind of formula or incantation containing the frightful name Yog-Sothoth.
From "Medusa's Coil" (1930):
Hints of the old, hideous shadow that philosophers never dared mention, the thing symbolised in the Easter Island colossi -- the secret that has come down from the days of Cthulhu and the Elder Ones -- the secret that was nearly wiped out when Atlantis sank, but that was kept half alive in hidden traditions and allegorical myths and furtive, midnight cult-practices.
From "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930):
Hints of the fearful myths antedating the coming of man to the earth -- the Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu cycles.
Certain ideographs linked with the most blood-curdling and blasphemous whispers of things that had had a kind of mad half-existence before the earth and the other inner worlds of the solar system were made.
Vague guesses about worlds of elder, outer entity.
Mention of the amorphous, toad-like god-creature Tsathoggua.
References to the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space, mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth.
From a letter to Clark Ashton Smith (1930):
Mention of Clark Ashton Smith's ghoul [?], and his adventures. But some timid reader has torn out the pages where the Episode of the Vault comes to a climax -- the deletion being curiously uniform in the copies at Harvard and at Miskatonic University. When Lovecraft wrote to the University of Paris for information about the missing text, a polite sub-librarian, M. Léon de Verchéres, wrote to him that he would make him a photostatic copy as soon as he could comply with the formalities attendant upon access to the dreaded volume. Unfortunately, it was not long afterward that Lovecraft learned of M. de Verchéres' sudden insanity and incarceration, and of his attempt to burn the hideous book which he had just secured and consulted. Thereafter Lovecraft's requests met with scant notice.
From a letter to Clark Ashton Smith (1930):
Mention of Yog-Soth-oth [sic] made with manifest reluctance.
From At The Mountains of Madness (1931):
Reluctant descriptions of the evilly fabled plateau of Leng.
Primal myths of Elder Things, supposed to have created all earth-life as jest or mistake.
Whispers about 'shoggoths' -- not even hinting that any exist on earth except in the dreams of those who have chewed a certain alkaloidal herb, nervously trying to swear that none have bred on this planet.
From a letter to Clark Ashton Smith (1931):
A formula that is not in Olaus' Latin Text.
From "The Dreams in the Witch House" (1932):
Terrible hints relating to abstract formulae on the properties of space and the linkage of dimensions known and unknown.
The name Azathoth, standing for a primal evil too horrible for description.
Description of Nyarlathotep.
Guarded quotation of some croaking ritual in a strange language.
From "The Horror in the Museum" (1932):
Descriptions of black, formless Tsathoggua, many-tentacled Cthulhu, proboscidian Chaugnar Faugn, and other rumoured blasphemies.
A very peculiar symbol.
From a letter to E. Hoffman Price (1932):
Nothing about Zemargad, unless perchance it be that passage (Nec. xii, 58 -- p. 984; edition unspecified) in Naacal hieroglyphics, whose fullest purport Lovecraft was never able to unravel.
Material on the Vaults of Zin, so well known to all students of Alhazred.
From "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (1932-33):
An entire chapter that takes on significance once the designs graven on the Silver Key have been deciphered.
Instructions on certain obeisances made when one meets the Guide and Guardian of the Gate.
From "Out of the Aeons" (1933):
Certain primal symbols.
From "The Thing on the Doorstep" (1933):
A formula enabling the caster to exchange bodies with another person.
From a letter to August Derleth (1933):
Both the primal name Glyu-uho and new Arabic word Ibt al Jauzah, referring to Betelgeuse.
From a letter to Duane Rimel (1934):
Records of non-human sounds that were known to certain human scholars in elder days. Non-human names given a twist in the direction of Alhazred's Arabic, including Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, etc.
From a letter to Duane Rimel (1934):
An attempt to represent the non-human names R'lyeh and Cthulhu in human alphabets.
From a letter to Richard F. Searight (1934):
Tantalizing and subtly disquieting references to man's earliest struggles with the survivors of the pre-human world.
From a letter to Richard F. Searight (1934):
Many hinted horrors very ominously anticipated by the Eltdown Shards.
From "The Shadow out of Time" (1934-35):
Suggestions of the presence of a cult among human beings founded on hints of the forbidden past, derived from the memories of those who have exhanged minds with members of the Great Race -- a cult that sometimes gave aid to minds voyaging down the aeons from the days of the Great Race.
From "The Haunter of the Dark" (1935):
Equivocal secrets and immemorial formulae which have trickled down the stream of time from the days of man's youth, and the dim, fabulous days before man was.
From a letter to Henry Kuttner (1936):
Ridicule of the text of the Book of Dzyan.
From "The Return of the Sorcerer" (1931):
A singular incantatory formula for the exorcism of the dead, with a ritual that involves the use of rare Arabian spices and the proper intoning of at least a hundred names of ghouls and demons. (Only present in Arabic manuscript.)
From "The Faceless God" (1936):
Cryptic mention of the name Nyarlathotep, which Alhazred had heard whispered in tales of shadowed Irem.
From "The House on Curwen Street" (1943):
Hints that seem to indicate that the awaited time for the resurgence of Cthulhu is drawing near.
From "The Dweller in Darkness" (1944):
A terrible footnote which gives no clue as to the identity of Cthugha.
From "The Keeper of the Key" (1951):
The closest that anyone has ever come to revealing the secrets of Cthulhu and the cults of Cthulhu, of Yog-Sothoth, and indeed, of all the Ancient Ones.
Hints of things so terrible that the mind of man could scarcely conceive of them, and, conceiving, would instantly elect to reject them rather than adopt into the realm of the possible any potential event of such a nature as to refute many of the most fundamental principles by which the races of mankind exist, and relegate man to a position of even greater insignificance than his present mote-like place in the cosmos.
Oddly disturbing paragraphs concerning the return of the Ancient Ones, the devotion of the minions who serve them, some in the guise of men, others in guises far stranger.
Names reaching out from the pages to transfix with primal fear -- Ubbo-Sathla, Azathoth, the blind idiot god, 'Umr At-Tawil, Tsathoggua, Cthugha, and yet others, all suggestive of a weird and horrific godhead, of a terror-fraught panoply of great, gigantic creatures, in no wise similar to man, as ancient as and quite possibly more ancient than earth itself, or even the solar system so familiar to the astronomers of our times.
Specific statement that the region of the Nameless City is shunned by the natives.
An account of the 'spectral wind'.
From The Lurker at the Threshold (1945):
Description of Nyarlathotep as 'faceless'.
At least part of certain rites through which the Great Old Ones and their extraterrestrial minions might be 'called' to appear through 'openings'.
From "Witches' Hollow" (1962):
Description of ancient, alien races, invaders of earth, great mythical beings called Ancient Ones and Elder Gods, with outlandish names like Cthulhu and Hastur, Shub-Niggurath and Azathoth, Dagon and Ithaqua and Wendigo and Cthugha, all involved in some kind of plan to dominate earth and served by some of its peoples -- the Tcho-Tcho, and the Deep Ones, and the like. The books is filled with cabalistic lore, incantations, and what purports to be an account of a great interplanetary battle between the Elder Gods and the Ancient Ones and of the survival of cults and servitors in isolated and remote places on our planet as well as on sister planets.
From "The Church in High Street" (1962):
An engraving on page 594 (edition unspecified) that depicts a strange creature, so hysterically alien as to be indescribable; it is a glistening, pallid oval, with no facial features whatsoever, except for a vertical, slit-like mouth, surrounded by a horny ridge. There are no visible members, but there is that which suggests that the creature can shape any organ at will.
From "The Room in the Castle" (1964):
Descriptions of the alien beings which, according to the author, lurk in dark and shunned places of this world -- bloated Cthulhu, indescribable Shub-Niggurath, vast batrachian Dagon.
From "The Horror from the Bridge" (1964):
A very incomplete and long outdated astrological table.
Pages that deal with the commission of beings in tampering with the elements, including chants and a powerful formula that must be pieced together from various pages.
An illustration depicting a species of incarnate hideousness. The thing has eight major arm-like appendages protruding from an elliptical body, six of which are tipped with flipper-like protrusions, the other two being tentacular. Four of the web-tipped legs are located at the lower end of the body, and used for walking upright. The other two are near the head, and can be used for walking near the ground. The head joins directly to the body; it is oval and eyeless. In place of eyes, there is an abominable sponge-like circular organ about the center of the head; over it grows something hideously like a spider's web. Below this is a mouth-like slit which extends at least halfway round the head, bordered at each side by a tentacle-like appendage with a cupped tip, obviously used for carrying food to the mouth.
From the Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975):
Strange illustrations, always with five-sided borders just like the Pentagon in Washington, but with people inside doing freaky sex acts with other creatures who aren't humans at all (probably shoggoths).
Obscene metaphysics.
A lot of bragging and bombast about some Yog-Sothoth, probably a wog god, who was both the Gate and the Guardian of the Gate. Absolute rubbish.
Material on Tsathoggua.
Acrostics which Dr. John Dee deciphered to derive his Enochian Keys.
From Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan, Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in A.D. 922 (1976):
No specific information is attributed to the Necronomicon, but it is included in the bibliography under "General Reference Works" along with various volumes about the Vikings. The edition cited was edited by H.P. Lovecraft and published in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1934.
From Résumé with Monsters (1995):
Spells and portents, incantations, rituals that are effective against the Old Ones. All kinds of rituals and spells, in fact: tax evasive rituals, lawyer conjuring, inner child exorcisms, women (attracting, warding), travel (dimensional, linear, time), demon entreating ... and demon repelling, binding, contracts.
From An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural (1995):
Powerful formulas for calling up dangerous demigods and demons who are dedicated to destroying mankind.
Lots of hoky nonsense about Sumerian Mythology.
Have any further information on the contents listed here, or know of others that should be included?
Please inform me: clore@columbia-center.org.
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