Augsburg-Fortress issues inclusive language translation of the Neconomicon

Motivated by the demand in the ELCA and other mainline churches for more eclectic and inclusive texts- including those aiding congregations such as Ebeneezer/herchurch Lutheran, San Francisco in the worship of alternative deities- Augsburg-Fortress has published a new, inclusive language version of the Necronomicon, or Al Azif, a sixth-century religious text by Abdul al Hazred (probably a corruption of Abdullah Ala zred, which some scholars believe to be derived from Arabic or Persian phrase meaning "Servant of the Forbidden").

His biographer, Howard Philips Lovecraft, says this of al Hazred:

Of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen the fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.

The noted scholar and theologian was a native of Sanaa, in Yemen, and is believed to have authored the Necronomicon some eight years prior to his public ingestion. Other accounts suggest that the incident occured within months of the completion of al Azif. There is also a legend- probably apocryphal, in view of the public nature of his gobbling- of his kidnapping, torture and execution by servants of extra dimensional powers.

Both the Latin and the Greek texts of the Necronomicon were banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, doubtless because of the offensively patriarchal and non-inclusive use of gender pronouns characteristic of the original. This fault is shared by translations into Greek by Theodorus Philetas in 950, into Latin by Olaus Wormius in 1238- some 368 years prior to his own birth- and into English by John Dee during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The latter version was never actually published, and only fragments survive.

The current edition is therefore the first complete English edition of the Necronomicon in history. A sample of the text:

Nor is it to be thought that humankind is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters and mistresses, or that the familiar manifestations of life and substance walk alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. They do not walk in the spaces we know, but between them, serene and primal, undimensioned and unseen- at least by us. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. Yog-Sothoth knows where Yog-Sothoth broke through of old, and where Yog-Sothoth will break through again. Yog-Sothoth knows where Yog-Sothoth has walked upon earth's fields, and where Yog-Sothoth still walks upon them, and why no one can see Yog-Sothoth as Yog-Sothoth walks. Human beings can sometimes know that Yog-Sothoth is near by Yog-Sothoth's smell, but no human being can know Yog-Sothoth's appearance, except through the features of those Yog-Sothoth has begotten or borne with the cooperation of human beings. Of those are there many kinds, differing in appearance from humanity's truest image to that shape without sight or substance which is Yog-Sothoth's truest essence. Yog-Sothoth walks unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Yog-Sothoth's voice, and the earth mutters with Yog-Sothoth's consciousness. Yog-Sothoth bends the forest and crush the city, yet neither forest or city may see the hand that smites it. Kadath in the cold waste has known Yog-Sothoth, and what human being knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of the ocean hold stones upon which Yog-Sothoth has engraved Yog-Sothoth's sign, but who has seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Yog-Sothoth's cousin, yet Cthulhu can he see Yog-Sothoth only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! You shall know Yog-Sothoth as a foulness. Yog-Sothoth's hand is at your throats, yet you do not see Yog-Sothoth; and Yog-Sothoth dwells even one within your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, by means of which the spheres meet. Humankind rules now where Yog-Sothoth ruled once; Yog-Sothoth shall soon rule where humankind rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. Yog-Sothoth waits patient and powerful, for here shall Yog-Sothoth reign again.

The new edition of the Necronomicon is suitable both for private devotional and for liturgical use. It is available in a hard-cover pew edition, as well as in handsome imitation human skin.

For prices, consult the current Augsburg-Fortress catalog.