THE STORIES OF THE NECRONOMICON:
1. ARABIA - The Nameless City and the door to nowhere.
2. PERSIA - Afrasiab: Mystery involving the name 'Afrasiab': You doubtless
recall the closing passage of Poe's 'Premature Burial'- where, after an
allusion to 'Carathis' which baffled me till I had read 'Vathek,' there
occurs the tenebrous final simile: "...but, like the Demons in whose company
Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour
us-they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish." Now that image
of Afrasiab sailing down the mysterious Oxus (a cryptic stream whose imaginative
associations always fascinated me) on an accursed vessel full of sleeping
demons - ineffable nighted things - held for me a macabre terror of peculiar
intensity; a terror al the acuter because I could not trace the allusion
to any source. 'Carathis' is found in 'Vathek'. Afrasiab and
his daemons are derived from Firdousi's great Persian epic, the 'Shah-Namah.'
3. ARABIA - Ibn Schacabao. "I laste Nighte strucke on ye Wordes
that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that face spoke
of by Ibn Schacabac in ye------------------. And IT said, that ye
III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes y Clavicle. With Sunne in
V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth
Verse thrice. This Verse repeate eache Roodemasand Hallow's Eve,
and ye thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres. And of ye Seede of
Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes."
4. EGYPT - A discussion with Hermes Trigmegistus on the nature of magic
and the universe while dining with Queen Nictokris in the Sphinx.
He reads the Emerald Tablets. And is given the -- Books of Thoth.
5. Mind taken by the Great Race. Visions of the past and future.
The world of early earth.
6. ARABIA - The Al Azif in the Great Desert. Strange visions and
meetings.
7. PERSIA - The Yezidi demon-worshippers of the Old Ones.
8. DREAMWORLD - Meeting with Um at-Tawil.
9. BABYLONIA - Cave of the Universe.
10. BABYLONIA - Seduction by Lilith or Cybele or Asenath.
11. Meeting with the Fungi from Yuggoth.
12. DREAMWORLD - Meeting with Randolph Carter.
13. DREAMWORLD - Meeting with the ghouls to seek the entrance to ...
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