Necronomicon - to read or not to read?

[SpaceMarine93]

Many of you may know something about this book known as the Necronomicon, featured heavily in many works by famous Horror fiction author HP Lovecraft. Supposed to be written by an ancient crazed Arab, it contains knowledge of ancient Cosmic horrors and revelations so horrifying that it would drive men mad, and arcane spells so powerful one of them is enough to destroy the world.

Now, this book is complete fiction, but it gets me thinking - suppose a book so outrageously powerful and destructive like it exists, and the knowledge of the ancient horrors and spells are true, what should people do with it?

I mean, for some who knows what reasons, it seems something like this is frequently said to be pretty much easily available, being for example be found in a library storage like in the story The Dunwich Horror, and on the internet e.g. Simon Necronomicon and Tyson Necronomicon, (written by modern occultists for fun and money, fortunately). And just as I speak I am reading a version of it right now online. For all its fearsome reputation it seems anyone who knows where to look could just borrow it off the shelf and use it for whatever reasons good or ill.

So here's the thought - if such a book exists, and you have it, or know where to get one, what would you do with it? Would you read it? Use it? How would you use it? Or rather, would you try to destroy the book immediately?

[Sarevok]

Destroy it.

[HMS Sophia]

Destroy it.

This. Unlike many characters, we know what sort of shit this book can do. Burn the fucker.

[Sharp-kun]

Read it. I've never believed in "secrets that would drive you insane". As to what I'd do with the knowledge, depends what I find out from it.

I've seen /d on 4chan. How much worse can it be?

[Lord of the Abyss]

Destroy it. Even ignoring the fact that a book containing ways to contact Lovecraftian entities is potentially more dangerous than as a book describing a working method of hijacked the US nuclear arsenal, this is the equivalent of a race of AIs leaving the Big Book of Computer Viruses just lying around for any passing robot to read. This isn't like the real world, where a book is just a book; this is a book that can cause insanity in those who read it. What if someone scanned passages from it and spammed it across the Internet?

[Ahriman238]

Burn it, burn it all! Possibly the library you found it in, just to be safe.

Would you read the King in Yellow? This book is about a hundred times more dangerous.

[SpaceMarine93]

Destroy it. Even ignoring the fact that a book containing ways to contact Lovecraftian entities is potentially more dangerous than as a book describing a working method of hijacked the US nuclear arsenal, this is the equivalent of a race of AIs leaving the Big Book of Computer Viruses just lying around for any passing robot to read. This isn't like the real world, where a book is just a book; this is a book that can cause insanity in those who read it. What if someone scanned passages from it and spammed it across the Internet?

Well, there are occultists who put versions of the Necronomicon on the web...

Me? I would use the SHEER FACT OF ITS EXISTENCE of the book to threaten the world into compliance, than use the new position to make the world a better place without actually reading or using it.

[HMS Sophia]

Me? I would use the SHEER FACT OF ITS EXISTENCE of the book to threaten the world into compliance, than use the new position to make the world a better place without actually reading or using it.

And then you get a rather fancily inscribed .50 cal round put through your skull from 2 miles. You have no actual power, you're not invulnerable, and you'll have to go outside at some point. Killing you is safer. (that or nuking your house. that destroys the book as well)

[SpaceMarine93]

Burn it, burn it all! Possibly the library you found it in, just to be safe.

Would you read the King in Yellow? This book is about a hundred times more dangerous.

HECK NO! While using spells from the Necronomicon would not necessarily destroy the world immediately, going through the whole King In Yellow is DEFINITELY going to drive everyone mad and summon [CENSORED] from beyond.

I would prefer not just burn it and the library down, but nuking the whole town and everyone in it.

[SpaceMarine93]

Me? I would use the SHEER FACT OF ITS EXISTENCE of the book to threaten the world into compliance, than use the new position to make the world a better place without actually reading or using it.

And then you get a rather fancily inscribed .50 cal round put through your skull from 2 miles. You have no actual power, you're not invulnerable, and you'll have to go outside at some point. Killing you is safer. (that or nuking your house. that destroys the book as well)

Well, a user might just simply need to hide his location and identity from the public when you make your demands or decrees on live international television. And maybe fabricate some misinformation which would suggest nuking the Necronomicon would have some disastrous consequences.

[weemadando]

The Necronomicon is a powerful weapon against all things squamous. Studying it under multiple redundant failsafes in a secure environment within another secure environment in a pocket dimension is the reasonable option.

We have to prepare for CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN somehow.

[HMS Sophia]

Well, a user might just simply need to hide his location and identity from the public when you make your demands or decrees on live international television. And maybe fabricate some misinformation which would suggest nuking the Necronomicon would have some disastrous consequences.

Someone, somewhere fitted your external connections (tv, satellite, internet whatever)
Plus, you immediately become one of the most wanted people in the world. You will have left a paper trail, and you will be found.

As for your nuking point:
For this to happen, you have two options:
1) People don't know about the necronomicon. You are the only one spreading info. When you tell the world you have this book, they laugh at you, as they don't know hos dangerous it is.
2) People know about it. They then find a way to get the book from you without nuking you. That .50 cal round sounds more tempting.

[weemadando]

Me? I would use the SHEER FACT OF ITS EXISTENCE of the book to threaten the world into compliance, than use the new position to make the world a better place without actually reading or using it.

And then you get a rather fancily inscribed .50 cal round put through your skull from 2 miles. You have no actual power, you're not invulnerable, and you'll have to go outside at some point. Killing you is safer. (that or nuking your house. that destroys the book as well)

Yeah. Between Delta Green, The Laundry and every other counter-cult agency in the world, suddenly announcing that you've got a copy of the Necronomicon and trying to blackmail the world is seriously just announcing that there's a wetwork convention at your house and everyone is invited.

[zipster]

"What if someone scanned passages from it and spammed it across the Internet?"

I'm reading the "Dreams of Terror and Death" collection and I had this exact thought today!

Personally I would at least scan it, and would be interested in translating as much of it as possible into English.

I wonder if translating the text away from Latin and other gibberish would cause it to lose its power?

[Purple]

I would start taking Latin classes, and as soon as I can I would start reading the book. My logic is simple. If there is such a book, than there must also be all those other madness inducing things from the series and quite honestly that thought is enough to drive me insane. Hence I would apply what is left of my life to seeing just how much damage I can cause before I burn out.

[Cykeisme]

What sort of spells does it have in it?

[DPDarkPrimus]

This isn't like the real world, where a book is just a book; this is a book that can cause insanity in those who read it. What if someone scanned passages from it and spammed it across the Internet?

Delta Green were too late - by the time they got to the house, the kid had already scanned and uploaded The King in Yellow to /b/.

[TOSDOC]

If you read the Tyson Necronomicon, you already have the answer. The Necronomicon contains not only info on how to summon evil, but how to prevent it as well. This is why it must be preserved, so mankind does not lose a valuable source of information on the subject at hand.

Never burn a book! All information is useless until you need it.

What you do need is folks like Professor Henry Armitage and his expert guard dogs of the Miskatonic Library looking after Special Collections in the meantime. It is possible, with enough wisdom, to read the Necronomicon in its entirety without going mad--Danforth did it before his fateful expedition.

And from what I've read of the Tyson version, The Human Centipede movie is still worse as the grossest thing I've ever witnessed.

[Lurks-no-More]

Would you read the King in Yellow? This book is about a hundred times more dangerous.

Actually, the idea of Necronomicon as something that will eat your soul / mind / sanity if you so much as read it is a complete CoC-ism from the Chaosium RPG. There are several Lovecraft characters who've read parts of or the whole of Necronomicon - including Dr. Armitage in "The Dunwich Horror" - without coming to any kind of harm.

Taken by itself, the book is just a long, dense encyclopedia of really weird esoteric lore and black magic, with haunting turns of phrase and disturbing claims about humanity's role in the cosmos. Unless you are very sensitive and fragile to begin with, it will at worst creep you out and give you occasional nightmares. (Whereas reading The King in Yellow is the mental equivalent of turning off your firewall and antivirus and opening every attachment in your e-mail's spam folder - the play is essentially a memetic-viral attack on human minds/souls.)

The real danger of having read Necronomicon is, at the same time, more prosaic and more insidious. To quote Lovecraft himself:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

All the dark lore you've read up is sitting there in your brain like a bundle of dynamite, just waiting for a spark: some kind of an encounter or experience that makes you go "Oh fuck, this stuff is real... and it implies that those other things are real too... Oh god, I can see forever!" (This is pretty explicitly what happened to Danforth at the end of "At the Mountains of Madness", by the way. He saw something that fit in with the things he'd learned from Necronomicon, causing a mental breakdown as his mind suddenly connected the dots and saw the Big Picture.

[Ugolino]

The Necronomicon is vague, poorly-worded, and downright, terribly, horribly inaccurate in places. That said, the knowledge in it can be useful, but isn't something that you'd read on a lark.

The King in Yellow is nothing more or less than a killing machine. No good comes of reading it, and you will suffer a fate worse than death by doing so.

[SpaceMarine93]

What sort of spells does it have in it?

One that could summon Yog-Sothoth. If you know the mythos, that's the most powerful being inside and outside the universe. God knows what it could do if it ever gets in via Necronomicon.

[General Mung Beans]

Shouldn't the book be necessary to protect against those crazy or evil enough to use it for bad things? After all that's what a lot of characters in Lovecraft do.

[Night_stalker]

No, if we were to keep the book, all we would be doing is to allow those who would worship the Old Ones a target to aspire to. If they get their hands on it, it would make the 1928 Dunwich Horror seem like a picnic in comparison!

Burn the damn book!

[SpaceMarine93]

We probably need the Necronomicon anyway, just in case someone else has it and we need to conjure a counter-spell to what they have.

[Swindle1984]

In the story where the mutant guy tried to steal the book from the Miskatonic University library and had an invisible monster brother living in the house, didn't the professors (who had read the Necronomicon and not gone made) use the book to find the incantation and materials necessary to make the powder they unsummoned the invisible monster with? The book is useful, in the right hands, for dealing with problems created by the wrong hands. And obviously just reading it doesn't guarantee you go insane.

In fact, I don't remember anyone going insane just from reading the book. A handful of characters had mental breakdowns upon seeing things they couldn't cope with or didn't have the frame of reference to understand (imagine how mentally healthy a stone age tribesman would be if suddenly his entire village were murdered by modern US soldiers in MOPP gear tossing around VX nerve gas grenades, flamethrowers, and machine guns. Strange monsters whose skin blended with the foliage! Horrible black faces with no visible nose or mouth, hissing breath, and large, shiny eyes! They made a horrible sound like thunder and struck men down with invisible spears from impossible distances, spat flame at people and huts! Men, women, and children gasping once and then collapsing every time the wind blew in their direction! Oh, the horror!) or upon connecting the dots to the big picture and realizing just how bizarre and dangerous the universe really was. It also seems that the more educated and more open-minded someone was, the less likely he was to be mentally disturbed/distraught by what he saw/experienced/read.