103 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
103 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
Newsgroups: alt.horror.cthulhu,alt.necromicon
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From: mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mitchell Porter)
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Subject: NecroMicon FAQ
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Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
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Date: Sun, 1 Nov 92 05:13:09 GMT
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The alt.necromicon F.A.Q.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q. What is the NecroMicon?
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The NecroMicon (literally, "The Book of Dead Mice") is a near-legendary text,
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also known as "Al As-if". It was written in Damascus in 730 A.D. by Abdul
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Alhirra (known irreverently in the modern West as: "Bill the Cat"), of
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whom little is known, other than that he travelled widely and may have
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been the originator of the "Ackankar" cult.
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Q. Where may the NecroMicon be found?
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Unfortunately, the original Arab text has been lost, and only fragments
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remain of the various translations that were attempted. The most notable
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such translation was the work of an otherwise unknown cleric called "the
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mysterious Wormius"; we even know of his name only through tertiary sources
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(for example, the fine historical researches of Dr Phileus Sadowsky). Most
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likely Wormius encountered Alhirra in the course of an inspection of booty
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brought back from the Crusades.
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It is believed that the exiled cabalist Ignatz Eliezer carried a copy of
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Wormius' translation with him to Prague, where he met Dr John-D, the
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famous English magician and rapper (best known in this regard for introducing
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the magickal cry "IAO!" to rap, the modern form of which is "Yo!"). John-D in
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turn translated Wormius into Enochian, encoded the result with a complex
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multivalent substitution cipher, and sold the new manuscript to Rudolf II
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of Bavaria, as the work of Roger Bacon. Over the centuries many scholars of
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the occult puzzled over John-D's handiwork; perhaps the most notorious of
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these was Adam Weishaupt, who as a young man was fascinated by the mysterious
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"illuminated manuscript".
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Rudolf's collection was broken up with the passage of time, with his
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collection of rare manuscripts making its way to the venerable Jorge's famous
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library in Italy. It survived the fire that destroyed Jorge's abbey and
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took his life, and along with the other remaining fragments of Jorge's
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collection was stored at a Jesuit college for many years.
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In 1912 it was discovered there by Wilfred Voynich, a Polish scientist
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and lover of rare books. He was also the son-in-law of George Boole, the
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logician, and he may have had the impression that the manuscript contained
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certain ideas of Bacon's that anticipated modern combinatorics.
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Ever since then there has been a global effort to decipher the Voynich
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Manuscript, as it is now known. A history of this effort can be found in
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"The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma", by Mary D'Empirio (ADA 070
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618; US Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service,
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Washington DC, 1978). Several times solutions have been announced, but all
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have been found wanting. The text of the manuscript itself is available via
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anonymous ftp from rand.org (192.5.14.33) (/pub/jim/voynich.tar.Z).
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Q. What is the content of the NecroMicon?
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The book is generally agreed to have contained Alhirra's metaphysical
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speculations. "Bill the Cat" appears to have outlined a baroque cosmology
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in which our world is one of many "fabricated" worlds, made for various
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purposes. Alhirra's philosophy is not unusual for its time in possessing
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teleological elements, but what truly sets it apart is that the purpose of
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our world is seen to be the performance of a giant *calculation*
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(ironic, given Voynich's likely presumptions about the manuscript's
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content, mentioned above). In this respect he is remarkably modern (see,
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for example, Edward Fredkin's recent attempts to view the universe as a
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computational process).
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From the modern viewpoint, Alhirra subsequently diminishes the
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attractiveness of his thought by then introducing his pet obsessions -
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cryptozoology and numerology. He believed that the overseers of this vast
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computation (the "Archons" or "Sysadmins", in occult jargon), although
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originating in another dimension ("the spaces between"), had incarnated in
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a form visible to us - as *mice*. (Hence the book's title.) He believed
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that their centre of operations was "an alien city in a cold land to the
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north" - presumably the Antarctic. Alhirra had several visions of this
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city from space, perhaps while scrying (these visions later formed the basis
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of the "Piri Reis" map); he described the city's physical environment, and
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its flora and fauna, in considerable detail, and it is for this reason that
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the NecroMicon is also sometimes known as "The Penguin Opus".
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Alhirra also attached great significance to the number 42, suggesting
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that this number somehow lay at the heart of the planetary entelechy, but
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never explaining why. It is a frequent observation that 42 is twice 21,
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the number of characters in John-D's Enochian alphabet, but otherwise no
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one know what "Bill" meant by this. Colin Low has written that Alhirra's
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scrying technique involved the use of "an incense composed of olibanum,
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storax, dictamnus, opium and hashish", and it has been surmised that the
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NecroMicon was not meant to be understood except by individuals who had
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ingested certain rare psychedelic plants. (For more on this line of
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thought, see ethnopharmacologist Terence McKenna's article on the Voynich
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manuscript in Issue #7 of "Gnosis" magazine, and the scene in Wilson and
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Shea's "Illuminatus!" in which Weishaupt attempts to fathom the NecroMicon.)
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Alhirra himself may have been unhinged by his exploration of
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consciousness. He is said to have written that to free oneself from "the
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click of the mouse" (an unclear phrase, apparently referring to the means
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of their alleged control) one must become "like that cat, dwelling in the
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midpoint between Something and Nothing, which is neither alive nor dead."
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Perhaps this is similar to the sentiment that one should be "in the world,
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but not of it." In any case, Alhirra is said to have met his end while
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standing on a chair, literally frightened to death by his invisible
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persecutors; his last words were, "Ia! Cthulhu ack-phffftagn..."
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Q. What about the Necronomicon?
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A. A modern superstition, in my opinion, but there are some people
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on alt.horror.cthulhu who take it seriously.
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