otes regarding the
Necronomicon Project
by
HPL
from
AlAzif-Necronomicon Website
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What is the "Necronomicon Project" ?
Somebody called it, in a mail I received, a 'necronomicon project'...
it is not yet a project, but I would love to see it becoming one. The book as it exists
right now is a draft of what I think it could (or should) be.
This Necronomicon started as an HTML enhanced version of an old web page available on the
web back in 1994 (I can't find the original version anymore). It was part of
the De Web Mysteriis pages, a website about H.P.Lovecraft's works I used to maintain
when I was in college in 1994-1997.
De Web Mysteriis pages no longer exist, although I may revive them someday.
In a way, I am already reviving part of that site with these pages.
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Is this a real Necronomicon ?
No. Again, this is only an artistic view of what the mythic book could be.
I do not believe in the existance of a real Necronomicon whatsoever. To me, the
Necronomicon is a storytelling device created by H.P.Lovecraft to tie some of his
stories together. You can find references about letters where Lovecraft explained how he created
the book on the
brilliant
page by Donovan.K.Loucks. Click below button:
How did the idea start ?
The idea is very simple. It started from a sad observation : look around on
the Net, all you can find about so called versions of the Necronomicon are
raw ascii texts, sometimes with a couple of pictures. There are articles too,
bibliographies, analyses... fine.. but I could find nowhere something that
could look like the Necronomicon as I picture it. In the same time, I opened
a guestbook on my 'Mysteriis Pages' and it happeared some people wrote
very good pieces on it (unfortunately I lost a large part of the entries after
a crash :( ). What started with a simple guestbook looked more like a
kind of diary, filled with quotes, thoughts, warnings or poems about the
Mythos. This gave me the idea of a collaborative work around the Al Azif
and that's why I started to collect materials about the book and make my own
version.
The Necronomicon I envision is an imaginary book, with drawings, pictures,
poems, chronicles... just like the book described by Lovecraft. I have some drawing
left to scan and put on the net for some extra pages. It's just a question
of time.
I am sending this call for contribution for an obvious reason : There can't be a
single vision of the Necronomicon. If we could put together the works of
anyone who would like to share his own vision ( with drawings or poems or
ritual or whatever ), we could come up with a unique place on the web. A kind of
virtual Al Azif. Previous experiences proved it : collaborative work
on the net is far more various and interesting that the vision of a single
person.
All I am doing now is to offer web space and part of my time to build this
vision.
So.. how can people contribute to it ?
As I said it above, by sending :
- drawings, pictures, paintings to illustrate the pages already existing.
- stories, chronicles, articles that could have been written by the Mad Arab
himself or followers.
- comments, annotations, just like those you can find on real books.
They can be raw text or full HTML pages , it's fine, as long as I can download
them here and insert them in the site.
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