![]() ![]() ) In cases like Ferrell’s, crusading prosecutors, self-proclaimed “cult cops,” and the sensation-seeking news media have held the Necronomicon up as proof of a shadowy satanic conspiracy. (Laycock discusses the Farrell case in his 2009 sociological study Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampirism. But numerous factors that emerged in media coverage of the crime- including Ferrell’s self-identification as a vampire and the discovery of a copy of the Simon Necronomicon in his car-led to the murders being reframed as a satanic ritual killing. The Simon Necronomicon reads its ancient sources through a combination of medieval demonology, 19th-century Theosophy, and 20th-century pulp fiction.īut despite its clear origins as a hoax, the Simon Necronomicon has been used as evidence in murder trials like that of Rod Ferrell and his so-called “Vampire Clan.” In 1996, Ferrell murdered the parents of one of his friends in a brutal but mundane home invasion. (“Simon” has a tendency to present descriptions of demons’ evil natures in English, but slips back into transliterated Akkadian when the texts begin to call for the spirits to be cast out, leading to an implication that the demons are being invoked rather than exorcised.) These ancient Mesopotamian incantations have come to be considered “satanic” through a centuries-long process of reinterpretation. In their original context, these texts were incantations against evil spirits and the various ills they caused, not spells for conjuring them. Thompson, from whose Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia (ISAW Small Collection PJ3791.T5 1903 v.1-2) many of the translations are lifted. Simon’s text plagiarizes the work of pioneering Assyriologists like R.C. The book is cobbled together from a mishmash of recontextualized Sumerian and Babylonian texts peppered with added references to fictional deities created by Lovecraft and the orientalist magical system of Aleister Crowley. The most famous of these is the “ Simon Necronomicon ,” named for its pseudomononymous compiler (widely believed to be occultist Peter Levenda). Prankish rumors that the Necronomicon was an actual, historical text have circulated since the 1930s, leading to several hoax editions that claim to present the “real” text of this fictional book. In one story, Lovecraft states that Alhazred wrote the text after exploring Babylonian and Egyptian ruins. In Lovecraft’s stories, the Necronomicon is described as an ancient text compiled by Abdul Alhazred (called the “Mad Arab”) in the 8th century, containing magical spells and incantations for summoning monsters and archaic deities. My co-panelist Joseph Laycock (Texas State University), a sociologist of American religious movements, presented a paper on the Necronomicon, a completely fictional book mentioned in the stories of pulp horror author H.P. Though this paper is firmly rooted in the 20th century, the panel discussion that followed the presentation hinged largely on the question of the interpretation and misinterpretation of ancient texts. ![]() This project explores a crossroads between rare books librarianship, postwar counterculture, and the religious experience of flying saucer contactees. My own presentation concerned a project I began working on before coming to ISAW: a bibliography of the West Virginia-based UFO book publisher Saucerian Publications and the biography of its eccentric founder, Gray Barker. ![]() I attended presentations by Davis Hankins (Appalachian State University), who spoke on the origins of Israelite religion in the larger context of the Ancient Near East Daniel Miller (Landmark College), who offered a new reading of the Gospel dictate to “render unto Caesar” in the context of the political and economic climate of Roman Judaea and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn (Syracuse University), who compared the content and context of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations to the modern day “stoic revival” of self-help books like Stoicism and the Art of Happiness. Though many of the presentations concerned modern and medieval literature, ancient texts were very much in the air as well. The conference covered a broad range of topics, centered around the terms “secular” and “sacred,” not as non-overlapping realms in opposition to each other, but as intersecting and interrelated concepts whose meaning is in a state of flux. Earlier this month, I traveled to Syracuse, New York to attend the conference “Sacred Literature, Secular Religion,” hosted by the Le Moyne College Religion and Literature Forum. ![]()
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