I am not the person to write this. I am neither a Buffy scholar or a student of the occult. I've just noticed a couple of interesting correspondences between the Buffy mythos and the lost book known as The Necronomicon.
According to H.P. Lovecraft, The Necronomicon was
composed by Abdul Al-Hazred, a mad poet of Sanaa, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa 700 A.D. He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia - the Roba al Khaliyeh, or "Empty Space" of the ancients and "Dahma" or "Crimson" desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years, Al-Hazred dwelt in Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told.
So how did Lovecraft know about this book? According to Colin Low, the book influenced the Norse eschatological myths. It has connections with Kabbalist creation texts. The medieval English magician John Dee translated it. in the 1920s Aleister Crowley found it among Dee's papers at Oxford and tried to pass much of it off as his own. While in America Crowley became involved with Sonia Greene of Brooklyn, who later married H.P. Lovecraft. The Necronomicon thus became a central part of the Lovecraft mythology, the core curriculum of Miskatonic University.
Well, not really. Lovecraft made the whole thing up. Lovecraft said it was a "synthetic concotion of my own." This has not prevented plenty of people from publishing fakes, and a lot of people apparently really really want to believe that the Necronomicon exists. Because, you know, it could be real. (Low has a pretty interesting postmodern take on the book's "existence".) Real or not (a flamewar I'm not going to wade into), the Necronomicon has taken its place in popular culture. (Astute readers will recognize the Necronomicon as the source of all the trouble in the Evil Dead movies.)
Interesting, but what does all this have to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer? (A question I ask myself several times a day.) First, there's a connection to the Buffy creation myth. We've started watching the first season on DVD and in the second episode Major Exposition Giles explains:
"This world is older than any of you know, and contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise. For untold eons, demons walked the Earth, made it their home, their Hell. In time, they lost their purchase on this reality, and the way was made for mortal animals. For Man. What remains of the Old Ones are vestiges: certain magicks, certain creatures..."This is basically Lovecraft crossed with Bram Stoker (or maybe Anne Rice). Low again:"The books tell that the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, mixed their blood. He was a human form possessed--infected--by the demon's soul. He bit another and another...and so they walked the Earth, feeding. Killing some, mixing their blood with others to make more of their kind. Waiting for the animals to die out and the Old Ones to return."
According to Alhazred, the Old Ones were beings from "beyond the spheres", presumably the spheres of the planets, and in the cosmography of that period this would imply the region of the fixed stars or beyond. They were superhuman and extrahuman. They mated with humans and begat monstrous offspring. They passed forbidden knowledge to humankind. They were forever seeking a channel into our plane of existence.The Old Ones are identified with the Nephilim of the Jewish apocrypha, fallen angels who lusted after human women and gave birth to a race of giants:
This is virtually identical to the Jewish tradition of the Nephilim (the giants of Genesis 6.2 - 6.5). The word literally means "the Fallen Ones" and is derived from the Hebrew verb root naphal, to fall. The story in Genesis is only a fragment of a larger tradition, another piece of which can be found in the apocryphal Book of Enoch. According to this source, a group of angels sent to watch over the Earth saw the daughters of men and lusted after them. Unwilling to act individually, they swore an oath and bound themselves together, and two hundred of these "Watchers" descended to earth and took themselves wives. Their wives bore giant offspring. The giants turned against nature and began to "sin against birds and beasts and reptiles and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood".Not exactly the same as vamps, but you still have supernatural beings using humans to spawn monsters. Plus the whole blood drinking thing. (The naming of the Old Ones as "Watchers", compared with the "Council of Watchers" on BtVS -- well that's just weird.)
What's more interesting is the connection from the Necronomicon to this season's From-Beneath-It-Devours, First-Evil, Mighty-Morphing-Big-Bad. Buffy et al. have been tormented by a demon who appears in the guise of people they know and tries to tempt them into doing Very Bad Things. Debbie figured that the MMBB was the same as the Serpent in the Garden -- he doesn't actually do anything bad, he just tempts others to do so. As such this First Evil isn't corporeal and may be resistant to your average high-heeled-boot-kicking, stake-through-the-heart-type slayage.
And guess what? The MMBB shows up in the Necronomicon. Or rather, through it.
In 1909, Alisteir Crowley and the poet Victor Neuberg went to the desert in Algiers (the same one where Al-Hazred purportedly spent ten years receiving/writing the Necronomicon). Whilst there, he attempted to call forth the aforementioned Old Ones, using a magical system (the "Enochian calls") put together by the aforementioned John Dee, the medieval translator of the Necronomicon. During the 10th Call, he manages to bring forth the demon Choronzon, who says:
Choronzon hath no form, because he is the maker of all form; and so rapidly he changeth from one to the other as he may best think fit to seduce those whom he hateth, the servants of the Most High. Thus taketh he the form of a beautiful woman, or of a wise and holy man, or of a serpent that writheth upon the earth ready to sting.Low (who says he's not joking this time), in his essay on John Dee and the Necronomicon, says:
At this point Neuburg literally saw these many forms of Choronzon, even the form of a woman he loved. Sometimes Choronzon spoke with Crowley's own voice.Sound like someone we've seen on TV recently? It gets better. Low demon-strates that Chronozon, far from being that sort-of-pink-guy who battles Morpheus in Gaiman's Sandman books, is "identical with the Serpent of Genesis, and with the rebellious angel Samael in Jewish midrashic and kabbalistic legend." Hence, the First Evil.
OK, want to get really obscure? There's a third John Dee-Necronomicon-Buffy connection, which I found tucked in a footnote to Bruce McClelland's By Whose Authority? The Magical Tradition, Violence and the Legitimation of the Vampire Slayer. (Somebody, please stop this Internet thing before it sucks all my time from me. Away, Google, away!) Buffy's first watcher of course wasn't Giles, it was Donald Sutherland Merrick Jamison-Smythe, in the movie/prequel. McClelland thinks that name is
a cryptic reference to Meric Casaubon. . . . Meric Casaubon in 1659 edited and published a transcription of a mystical work that involved automatic writing between Dr. John Dee, mathematician and alchemist to Elizabeth Regina, and Edward Kelley, an alchemist-magician whose reputation did not stand up quite so well. The manuscript purported to have been dictated by the Angels in a language called Enochian, which had its own mystical (quasi-Hebrew-quasi-alchemical) alphabet.Which same ms. was used by Crowley in the desert in 1909 (and which I've actuallly seen at the library at Oxford). Coincidence? I think not!
I don't know where Whedon gets his material. Could it be that he's got a grimoire locked in his closet?
| H.P. Lovecraft | Religion | History | Aleister Crowley | Occult | Joss Whedon |
Sorry, Mike. This makes you a Buffy scholar.
Comment #1 :: link :: December 6, 2002 09:00 AMSorry, Mike. This makes you a Buffy scholar.
Comment #2 :: link :: December 6, 2002 09:00 AMNot to mention a Buffy fanantic. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
That was impressive. Much more than even I've been able to delve into. But was the Vampire at the end of "Never Leave Me" the manifestation of the First Evil? And then who are the blinded monks killing all the other Slayer wanna-bes? And what about the First Slayer? There's gotta be a Yin/Yang kind of thing with her (Cain/Abel? Zoroastrianism? Janus? Ben & Glory?)
And Joss has pretty much disowned anything to do with the movie.
Oh wait, sorry, I'm geeking out now.
Not to mention a Buffy fanantic. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
That was impressive. Much more than even I've been able to delve into. But was the Vampire at the end of "Never Leave Me" the manifestation of the First Evil? And then who are the blinded monks killing all the other Slayer wanna-bes? And what about the First Slayer? There's gotta be a Yin/Yang kind of thing with her (Cain/Abel? Zoroastrianism? Janus? Ben & Glory?)
And Joss has pretty much disowned anything to do with the movie.
Oh wait, sorry, I'm geeking out now.
The Vamp, it seems from reading the TwoP newsboards, is the First Vamp, but not the First Evil. (First Vamp being created by Departing Old Ones, not an OO itself.) The blinded monks are the "Harbingers", servants of the FE, and they (may) be killing off potential Slayers. Don't know how the First Slayer fits in. Guess we'll have to wait and see...
Comment #5 :: link :: December 9, 2002 09:00 AMTwo quick notes (otherwise I'll be here all afternoon).
The other women who were being killed by the Harbingers were in different time periods (and different locations) so I think we're given to understand that they are other slayers.
The first episode of the fifth season (the Ben & Glory season) sees Buffy go on a mystic quest where she confronts the First Slayer, a primordial African (?) woman, possibly a priestess of some kind. The First Slayer tells her that "Death is your gift." Throughout the season, Buffy wrestles with the concept that death is the nature of her life and what it means that it's her role to dispense it. At the end of the season, she comes to understand that it's her death which she can give as a gift to the world. Which she does.
Pretty heady stuff for a kids' show. (Though I don't know any kids who watch it, do you?)
The Vamp, it seems from reading the TwoP newsboards, is the First Vamp, but not the First Evil. (First Vamp being created by Departing Old Ones, not an OO itself.) The blinded monks are the "Harbingers", servants of the FE, and they (may) be killing off potential Slayers. Don't know how the First Slayer fits in. Guess we'll have to wait and see...
Comment #7 :: link :: December 9, 2002 09:00 AMTwo quick notes (otherwise I'll be here all afternoon).
The other women who were being killed by the Harbingers were in different time periods (and different locations) so I think we're given to understand that they are other slayers.
The first episode of the fifth season (the Ben & Glory season) sees Buffy go on a mystic quest where she confronts the First Slayer, a primordial African (?) woman, possibly a priestess of some kind. The First Slayer tells her that "Death is your gift." Throughout the season, Buffy wrestles with the concept that death is the nature of her life and what it means that it's her role to dispense it. At the end of the season, she comes to understand that it's her death which she can give as a gift to the world. Which she does.
Pretty heady stuff for a kids' show. (Though I don't know any kids who watch it, do you?)
Along the Crowleain Priciple of LITLLUW, All reality manifests like ripples in a continum- when the ripples calm there is the Big L, and tra0la-lally there we are back in the truth again, as if we ever left. In all possible worlds of realization we are bound by the realization of the sum of all we encounter. There are two sides, worlds where we realize the truth and inevitable come back to it- and worlds where we are encased in darkness eternally. The game is in how far can we go into each without leaving the other. So really, all worlds should gravitate back to the Big L, becuse that is the calm in the continuum. (like, they say GOod always wins, etc) But lets just say there are infinite ways the world can be or dimentions of the world (in our imagination). Try to separate imagination from the world and we'll call you a 18the Century 'enlightenment' type, otherwise you can hang with the 'common sense crowd' So there is the Big Imagination and the Little one. The little one has little dreams and never takes in to itself the possibility of not being in control. The big I has the little I and the discrete sense of being part of something (like in the presence of a demon or being, or unified force like the big L) This all descends into matter, and goes down through the tarot kabalah of the rabinic common sense masters (becuase the majority already know the truth of Vau (like king/subject, smarter stupider,) but do they know the truth of zain, is good and evil a wedding of matter, or a fight like cain and abel. This is buffys place, to balance the zain in a world on the cusp of the realization of truth. Though perhaps more of an institution of sorts for those who would learn about the Big L - at least as understood by the greatest ones, Hadit. Perhaps certain factions fight in ignorance, but with the vision and the voice as their keys through vau they can bridge the gap of the lower arcana hold the great cup of the waters below, understand death and return to eternity as the star and at last reach the big L at the center of the universe. That is the Nature of Drama. Thanks Buffy!
Comment #9 :: link :: December 20, 2002 09:00 AMAlong the Crowleain Priciple of LITLLUW, All reality manifests like ripples in a continum- when the ripples calm there is the Big L, and tra0la-lally there we are back in the truth again, as if we ever left. In all possible worlds of realization we are bound by the realization of the sum of all we encounter. There are two sides, worlds where we realize the truth and inevitable come back to it- and worlds where we are encased in darkness eternally. The game is in how far can we go into each without leaving the other. So really, all worlds should gravitate back to the Big L, becuse that is the calm in the continuum. (like, they say GOod always wins, etc) But lets just say there are infinite ways the world can be or dimentions of the world (in our imagination). Try to separate imagination from the world and we'll call you a 18the Century 'enlightenment' type, otherwise you can hang with the 'common sense crowd' So there is the Big Imagination and the Little one. The little one has little dreams and never takes in to itself the possibility of not being in control. The big I has the little I and the discrete sense of being part of something (like in the presence of a demon or being, or unified force like the big L) This all descends into matter, and goes down through the tarot kabalah of the rabinic common sense masters (becuase the majority already know the truth of Vau (like king/subject, smarter stupider,) but do they know the truth of zain, is good and evil a wedding of matter, or a fight like cain and abel. This is buffys place, to balance the zain in a world on the cusp of the realization of truth. Though perhaps more of an institution of sorts for those who would learn about the Big L - at least as understood by the greatest ones, Hadit. Perhaps certain factions fight in ignorance, but with the vision and the voice as their keys through vau they can bridge the gap of the lower arcana hold the great cup of the waters below, understand death and return to eternity as the star and at last reach the big L at the center of the universe. That is the Nature of Drama. Thanks Buffy!
Comment #10 :: link :: December 20, 2002 09:00 AMA couple years late, but to add to conection, the final season adds alot. So does the hell-mouth for that matter. First, let's start with the first;
If the First is Choronzon, one of the Old ones, it would make sense that the Harbingers have no eyes, but can see. The Harbingers are the servents of the First/Chorozon, and according to Lovecraft, the Old Ones' looks are so strange that they would drive people made. How can you drive someone made if they cannot see? Or maybe they did see the true form of the First/Chorozon and they tore out their own eyes? And them killing people through the ages, if Chorozon/The First had a following of people since the beginning of time, no big stretch there. The Harbingers are merely trying to raise Chorozon/The First from the tomb it is from when the stars went out of alignment and all the Old Ones had to Sleep.
Hence, The Hell-Mouth;
In a new Edition of The Necronomicon, Thewas a cave with portals to different worlds that one could pass through, andthings might be able to come back throgh also? But if there are several of these gate ways, which are actually portals to diminsions the old ones are sleeping it (Last episode Giles says there's another hell-mouth in Cleveland. The Hell-mouth in Sunnydale could be theportal to Chorozon/The First's dimension, while the other hell-mouths lead to other Old Ones.
Then you have the old guys who made the first slayer;
Are they the Elder Gods of Lovecrafts mythos? This part I have flushed out yet, but I think I've added too much already.
A couple years late, but to add to conection, the final season adds alot. So does the hell-mouth for that matter. First, let's start with the first;
If the First is Choronzon, one of the Old ones, it would make sense that the Harbingers have no eyes, but can see. The Harbingers are the servents of the First/Chorozon, and according to Lovecraft, the Old Ones' looks are so strange that they would drive people made. How can you drive someone made if they cannot see? Or maybe they did see the true form of the First/Chorozon and they tore out their own eyes? And them killing people through the ages, if Chorozon/The First had a following of people since the beginning of time, no big stretch there. The Harbingers are merely trying to raise Chorozon/The First from the tomb it is from when the stars went out of alignment and all the Old Ones had to Sleep.
Hence, The Hell-Mouth;
In a new Edition of The Necronomicon, Thewas a cave with portals to different worlds that one could pass through, andthings might be able to come back throgh also? But if there are several of these gate ways, which are actually portals to diminsions the old ones are sleeping it (Last episode Giles says there's another hell-mouth in Cleveland. The Hell-mouth in Sunnydale could be theportal to Chorozon/The First's dimension, while the other hell-mouths lead to other Old Ones.
Then you have the old guys who made the first slayer;
Are they the Elder Gods of Lovecrafts mythos? This part I have flushed out yet, but I think I've added too much already.
A couple years late, but to add to conection, the final season adds alot. So does the hell-mouth for that matter. First, let's start with the first;
If the First is Choronzon, one of the Old ones, it would make sense that the Harbingers have no eyes, but can see. The Harbingers are the servents of the First/Chorozon, and according to Lovecraft, the Old Ones' looks are so strange that they would drive people made. How can you drive someone made if they cannot see? Or maybe they did see the true form of the First/Chorozon and they tore out their own eyes? And them killing people through the ages, if Chorozon/The First had a following of people since the beginning of time, no big stretch there. The Harbingers are merely trying to raise Chorozon/The First from the tomb it is from when the stars went out of alignment and all the Old Ones had to Sleep.
Hence, The Hell-Mouth;
In a new Edition of The Necronomicon, Thewas a cave with portals to different worlds that one could pass through, andthings might be able to come back throgh also? But if there are several of these gate ways, which are actually portals to diminsions the old ones are sleeping it (Last episode Giles says there's another hell-mouth in Cleveland. The Hell-mouth in Sunnydale could be theportal to Chorozon/The First's dimension, while the other hell-mouths lead to other Old Ones.
Then you have the old guys who made the first slayer;
Are they the Elder Gods of Lovecrafts mythos? This part I have flushed out yet, but I think I've added too much already.
In ye elder writings, ye Elder gods are a somewhat benevolent but indifferent group of all-powerful stellar beings. Cthulhu rebels when they spurn some plan of his for galactic domination. Cthulhu gathers other beings of great power into an alliance "The Old Ones" who will assist Cthulhu in his eventual master plan, as well as overcome his old comrades, the Elder Gods. Eventually they fight a great conflict with the Elder gods in the prehistoric days of earth that some of the Old Ones had inhabited as a base of operations. Genetic experiments to build creature armies and like had progressed and the ancestors of modern humans were naught but food and gentic material for these Old Ones and many of their creature creations.The Old Ones lost the conflict of course and were punished and imprisioned in different ways, depending on their natures and their powers.
- Naimandus
The shadowmen were the 3 shamans who created the 1st slayer her power would change forms she never returned from her battle the 2nd slayer was chosen before the moon reached mid-sky the very same night.
Comment #15 :: link :: October 29, 2007 11:02 PM
