Black Stars in Dim Carcosa: Necronomicon Field Notes

It’s a question I’ve often asked myself. I’ve heard a few people talk about it in the past, from chaos magician Steve Ash to occulture scholar Dr Justin Woodman. I’ve also previously read a few books by ceremonial magicians, including Kenneth Grant and Donald Tyson.

The answers I got ranged from the lure of forbidden knowledge to actually wanting to bring about the end of the world. The first I kind of get, the second seems a daft act of nihilistic rebellion. 

Nevertheless, I have a fascination with the Cthulhu Mythos, as it’s called. I love the stories and have myself written scenarios for Chaosium’s roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu, under the name Lucya Szachnowski. But I was still wondering why people don’t simply appreciate it as fiction? Why attempt to contact – or bring into being – powers described as utterly inimical to humanity?

I’ve just read a new book called Black Stars in Dim Carcosa - Necronomicon Field Notes which fully explains the various approaches to it, and the reasons, with clear guides on how to do it without going mad or ending the world. Here’s a description from author Marco Visconti’s website:

“Black Stars in Dim Carcosa is the definitive Necronomicon field notes, the bridge between the book’s messy legend and the step-by-step reality of practice. [It] opens with the strange, contested story of the Simon Necronomicon and the postmodern current it helped catalyse, a volatile braid of Mesopotamian sorcery and the literary mythos of H. P. Lovecraft.” 

As Black Stars in Dim Carcosa explains, the Simon Necronomicon was the first non-fiction book that claimed to be the tome Lovecraft described. It wasn’t. Instead, it was written later and inspired by the fiction, overlaying that onto traditional Mesopotamian deities and planets. It offered an initiatory system of ceremonies to walk through seven “gates” on a spiritually transformative journey. It also offered ways to contact the Ancient Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos.

I’ll admit I’ve never read the Simon Necronomicon so I was fascinated to read Marco Visconti’s description of it, commentary on how it works in practice, and guidance to: “What changes when you practice it with discipline rather than curiosity?”

Marco adds: “The first half [of Black Stars in Dim Carcosa] offers a clear, operational reading of the Seven Gates and the logic that drives them, then moves into step-by-step gatewalking as a repeatable method.”

He goes into similar analysis of the other, later, occult grimoires and types of working that have been inspired by the Mythos. These are primarily: 

• Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian Trilogies and other material, which ”wove together strands of Thelema, Tantric and Qabalistic mysticism.
• Polish occultist Asenath Mason’s book Necronomicon Gnosis: A Practical Introduction.
• Karl Stone’s The Moonchild of Yesod: A Grimoire of Occult Hyperchemistry.

I found Marco’s book fascinating. I absolutely loved it! Black Stars in Dim Carcosa is well written and engaging. It clearly explains and describes the different approaches and where they fit in to postmodern occult theory. If you want to work with the forces of the Necronomicon, I thoroughly recommend Marco Visconti’s book as a helpful and common-sense companion on the potentially dangerous path. It’s also worth reading if, like me, you’re just curious.

But what are the sensible reasons one might choose to work Necronomicon rituals? 

Well, facing one’s fears and active taboo-breaking are initiatory techniques in many spiritual and magical traditions. Many chaos magicians work with fictional entities, saying they can be as powerful as more traditional gods, goddesses, and demons because of the belief invested in them. But what if the Ancient Ones are real? Well, in that case, learning about them in a managed and controlled way is perhaps safer than sitting around waiting until the stars are right.

At the end, Black Stars in Dim Carcosa offers another approach to Mythos magick apart from gatewalking or invoking entities. It’s a Lost Carcosa guided visualisation, shaped around Hastur and the King in Yellow, which is a ruined city and it’s mysterious ruler originating in the fiction of Robert W. Chambers. 

Marco writes that integration is the point of the work. “Dread is treated as a way of knowing, and tangential tantrums as usable data, those sideways eruptions that may signal real contact, real risk, and, sometimes, real initiation.”

I’ll probably not do any of these magical workings. However, Marco points out: “Grant and those inspired by him often treat art, whether writing, painting, music, or even performance, as a magical act and a channel for the Nameless forces.”

Grant believed that Lovecraft had in fact been inspired by those forces, even though the horror author didn’t know it. Perhaps that’s true for me too. Perhaps my own writing, fiction and roleplaying scenarions (pictured), are magical workings of a kind. That’s certainly something to think about.

You can view Black Stars in Dim Carcosa on Amazon as well as on Marco Visconti’s website, which I linked to earlier.

Please note: I earn commission from some links

Other previous related posts
https://www.badwitch.co.uk/2023/05/books-aleister-crowley-manual-thelemic.html
https://www.badwitch.co.uk/2009/08/necronomicon-lecture.html
https://www.badwitch.co.uk/2009/10/review-grimoires-history-of-magic-books.html
https://www.badwitch.co.uk/2008/10/god-of-week-dagon.html