The “Kandarian Passages”

Updated Apr. 5, 2018
Further updated March 3, 2020

The Ghostbeaters: Kelly Maxwell, Ashley J. Williams and Pablo Bolívar. 

It is only after great difficulty and with reluctance that I now present my tentative advances in rescuing a particularly controversial chapter of the Necronomicon, after careful research and comparison of the surviving notes by the late Necronomicon scholar professor Raymond Knowby, for which I am indebted to Mr. Pablo S. Bolivar and –I promised to him to emphasize, after his emphatic insistence- to the Ghostbeaters. Prof. Knowby’s notes and transcriptions have been carefully contrasted with various quotes and references found in the works by reliable scholars including Ramsey Campbell, Tom Sullivan, Sam Raimi, James Kuhoric, Ron Marz, John Layman, Fede Alvarez, Ryan Parrott, et al.

Also, a young woman by the name of Mia has repeatedly emailed me to demand that I at least include this most emphatic exhortation to all readers: “DON’T SAY IT DON’T WRITE IT DON’T HEAR IT!” Ms. Ruby Knowby agrees, in fact she promised to “rip my lungs out through my ears” if I didn’t comply. So there.

The author consulting Prof. Knowby's copy of the book, currently in possesion of Mr, Ashley J. Williams. No pictures of the corresponding pages were possible due to the hasty retreat of Williams and his associates off-city after the controversial El Refugio Halloween bloodshed.

Here follows Chapter I of the Necronomicon’s Liber X: Mortis or Book Ten: Of Death,” being, as Ambrose Bertram Hunter rightly points out, “from which the corrupted name “Necronomicon Liber Ex Mortis” most likely was derived.” (Bertram, Ambrose; Necronomicon: An annotated new verse rendition with supplementary materials,” 2008); this chapter transcribes the surviving text of the Sumerian grimoire titled, in R’lyehian, Naturom Demonto (Nekritebyblos in Greek; loosely translated, Book of the Deadites*). Further chapters, such as those concerning the use of the Kandarian Dagger and the summoning of Goetic demon Eligos, will hopefully surface in the future.

Translation and transcription is somewhat speculative at various points; any and all suggestions or corrections will be greatly appreciated. 

Note to the updated version: 
A full passage, obtained from a rather unusual source, has been added at the end of the chapter. The circumstances are as follows:

In a live Cable TV show about dealers in antiques, a young woman named Amy brought what appears to have been a copy of the Necronomicon found -so she said- "in the mud". The dealer read a passage aloud and finished just before the transmission was temporarily lost. When I stumbled onto this in YouTube, and realized it was clearly a different Kandarian conjuration and not a "descriptive passage" as the idiotic art dealer said, I compared the chant with the few words I had transcribed from the unreadable pages at the end of this chapter, and realized it was indeed part of the original text! This has allowed me to tentatively reconstruct a further section of the text.

After doing this, I phoned Pablo Bolivar to ask him about this, and as I suspected, he and his associates were already involved in the matter. He said something about going to the former site of the cabin in the forest where Ash Williams first found the book. "Former?" I said, and he said something about blowing it up in 1981, then went on to rant about some "p*ndejo" claiming to belong to the "Knights of Sumer". I promised to write to Warlock Asylum to ask about these guys. Seems he also wants to see if they can read Sumerian; I told him they surely can, suggested him to look up Warlock's book The Atlantean Necronomicon: The Veils of Negative Existence, but he didn't sound like he had much time to read right now. He also warned me off about Ruby Knowby; I don't want to know what got into her. All the same, I am hoping this new line of research will perhaps reveal the content of the final section of this rarest of chapters of the Necronomicon; there is a further text that mentions the Dark Ones and a Viryklu (a Viryklu, lit. "Woman of Fire", was a priestess of Ilyth'la (Lilith), Mother of the Cult of the Old Ones, in the mythical Arkandian temples -see my piece, "The Pilgrimage of Viryklu", in the book Lilith: Goddess of the Sitra Ahra-, but this appears to refer so something very different, relating one of the Dark Ones to the Viryklu; intriguing stuff).

Knights of Sumer? This is the kind of thing that gets me weird looks from orthodox historians, especially when I bring up the hieratic Sumerian language in the Necronomicon passages, which is actually derived from ancient R'lyehian. I mean, really; Knights of Sumer implies at least four anachronisms, and it's only got three words!

 Concerning the Gate of Kanda

I am the Scribe of the Old Ones, Those who were, are and shall be indifferent; blessed be Their secret Names.

This Book, is a gateway to Hell; its pages constitute a way to summon forces of evil into our earthly realm. Know that, in ancient times, there were those known as the Dark Ones, neither dæmon nor fully human. They created this Book as a weapon against humanity. These pages, were cut from the bodies of the damned, upon which the Dark Ones inked their passages in human blood. Passages that contain the power to create portals, connecting our world, to the underworld, where evil resides. The Dark Ones use this Book to hold power over all mankind.

The life that sprouts and grows from putrefaction is but the shallowest soil of a vast, profound vale of strange and sometimes unwholesome life. As Sheik Ibn Schacabac, wisely known as “the Boaster”, learned much to his disgrace, our land is but a hollow veneer cast upon a vast geography of lands and beings and spaces undreamt of by the prophets of old, and glimpsed barely by madmen, the day before they were touched by madness. Yet such unknown lands and places may be explored by the wise Traveler and Necromancer, therein to plunder the wonders and wisdom that lieth beyond the life of men; but only the fools have ever attempted to chart the unchartable seas Outside, to trace the Three Veils of Varloorni upon parchment, to forge the Spheres of Yog-Sothoth in copper, to set down the Voor unto words.

Only the vaguest charts of that which lieth Beyond, can be found, not in the scribblings of men, but on the great parchment of the skies, traced with stars. Truly, as the star Mismar [Polaris] serves as a valued sign for seafaring travelers knowledgeable in the movements of the stars, and likewise is Mismar a guide for the astrologer, wise in the seasons of the stellar signs, and the courses of the Zoned stars, and of the Azonei, the Northern star is also the celestial Pharos for those who would venture in the worlds and spheres not only above, but beneath the Earth, as well. Therefrom doth the twisting Serpent unwind its body from Mismar on high unto the Pit of Y’qaa beneath the Mountains. Yet forget not that Kadath can also be Voormithadreth, and that the pyramid that scrapes the heavens is also the one whose hollow shade plumbs the depths of the Pit. Where there is life there is always corruption. And likewise, where there is death, there is also life. Flesh decays. Every creature must eat, and if it eats, it defecates. And wherever death gives way unto life, or life is surrendered unto death, there may a doorway gape, if one but knows the keys. Death is but a doorway to another life. And there are ways to keep the door closed so that one wilt never lose those one loves. The doorway can go in both directions; however, to draw one back from death, a sacrifice must be made. Beware lest you may lament having lived to watch the outcome of thy endeavour. 

Manifold is the life which unfolds and thrives in the tombs of man, unknown and unheeded by all save those who know the Hours and Signs, or otherwise the unwary prey of the unknown.

Bewhilst a tomb as yet untenanted is no more than a ditch in stirred soil, a sepulchre seeded with a corpse and left to root, grow, and sprout, soon festers with abundant life of every sort. Such life, however, is but the apparent visage of teeming death, for, as I have written before, a corpse buried in the soil is a lock, and its tomb is a doorway unto the land beneath the hills; and much is there that comes, drawn by the smell of the living, when such a doorway is opened, be it by the unwary, or by those foolish enough to pay obeisance to the offspring of the tomb.

The tomb-herd confer no benefits upon their worshippers. Their powers are few, for they can but disarrange space in small regions and make tangible that which cometh forth from the dead in other dimensions. They have power wherever the chants of Yog-Sothoth have been cried out at their seasons, and can draw to them those who will open their gates in the charnel-houses. They have no substance in this dimension, but enter earthly tenants to feed through them while they await the time when the stars become fixed and the gate of infinite sides opens to free That Which Claws at the barrier.

And the herd casts itself in flesh to besiege, and seeks to sate its unending hunger by swallowing the souls of the living, which are then lost unto the shifting pits of Kanda, where the spheres of Yog-Sothoth steal those who have opened the Gate unprepared, while the things that were and shall be again turn their bodies unto Deadite shells for themselves.

This is an easily opened Gate, for its key is a human key; ‘twas sealed away in order to impede the hunger of the Deadites from harrowing the flesh of the living in the times before the reign of the Watchers in old Babylon, when the seas ran red with blood. And said Gate mayest be flung open at those places where the spheres meet, and the Veils of Varloorni are very thin. The peoples of Albion know the Gate of the tomb-herd, for there was the Mirror broken of old and its crack permits the resurrection of the old Daemons, and of those forces which roam the forests and the dark recesses of man’s domains. These beings abide in their slumber, yet may be brought when the aproppriate Rites are performed, and through the words which the ancient sorcerers of Albion forbade in vain to ever be set down in writing, much less to be pronounced aloud; those words which grant the Daemons license to possess the living.

And this is the Conjuration for Daemon resurrection from Kanda, which has only once been set in writing, and then with a man’s blood, in the past, which I now reveal it to thee:

Katra a’mistrobeen

A’santa tande’ea manoan

Manseez

O’han on’sopar

Soman’ta rosa

Kanda

Kanda es-tratta

Mon’tose

Er-grets gatt’nos

Veratoos Amantos

Kanda

Kanda es-tratta

Ta-thun hazan sobbar

Er-grets gatt’nos

Veratoos Amantos

Kanda

Kunda astratta

Montosse Kanda

Kanda tranya

Verata mesartra

Mistrobeen

Once the words are recited, the Being will be released and will seek out the weakest soul to host the Evil. The wise Necromancer may allow some of the Kandarian Daemons to rise and work his Will by means of the Deadite shapes which grant them matter, however, thou shalt do well in acting prudently and guarding these words well, because even a bumbling halfwit mayest speak with true effect yet in blunder the Conjuration of Kanda, and then the entire Army of Darkness mayest escape forth through the smashed Mirror until it becomes more numerous than the ranks of the living. For thus has it been written in the Book of Magan:

I shall cause the dead to rise and devour the living,

I shall grant the dead power over the living,

That they become more numerous than the living.

Unto Kanda shall arrive the one Promised by the oracle of the old priests of Albion, the Ez’nadril n’Altornos’n, the Chosen One of the Old Ones, him who has been prophesied that he shall fall from the skies and deliver them from the terrors of the Deadites. However, his arrival is also a promise of further storms, since the oracle consulted by the priests of Albion is the very Prophet of Hell, and he hath also said that when the obsidian instrument of destruction has fed its sharpness upon sufficient lives, a Wizard from olden Hyboria shall rise, from times past unto the present days, and summon out of himself phantasms, emanations of destruction. Unopposed, they shall poison the world and tear it asunder, and the Earth shall be no more. Yet opposers there shalt ever be, and these from among those who stand for life and against it, as well as those who seek to master it, or to feed atrociously from its core. For many are the shapes and substances of those who now doth walk upon the Earth, and multiform the lips that doth breathe the air above its surface, and Earth makes no distinction among their ranks. The Hyborian curse shall be concealed in a dead city at the Country of Life’s Silence. Time shall devour itself. The present shall return unto the past, and be drowned in blood. The instrument of destruction shall be discarded, then found, and finally lost forever.

Other, greater Gates shall be found along the barrier that awaits to be broken through when the Spheres conjoin and twelve Moons cross the skies over the eternal ices. The Promised One’s soul is the key. His blood, the answer. Likewise, for a reversal to be achieved, the annulment lies inside the origin of the man. For the Chosen One is also the Ore Magnus Necronomicon, the Great Mouth of the Book. Wisely is it said in the axioms of Zeghel Bliel:

Tempered in torment, consumed in flame,

Chosen remnant which bears the name.

Cloaked in darkness Thy servant lies,

Hiding from light’s prying eyes;

If Thy will is to be done,

Draw to me Thy Chosen One.

Upon Revelation,

 From the temple of the Sun of Suns,

The seven phantasms of ruin shall be sent in haste.

Deliver us, from this Wickedness,

That we may bring an End unto the End.

Do as I demand now, to set down the world’s fortune.

Unwise it is to open every door with no further motivation than a foolish confidence footed in pride; poor indeed is in wisdom him whose creed is quoth as the common sayings doth consign it, that

every door is to be passed, every liquor is to be drunk.

For those who reason thusly shall only know a very brief time in their journey through the winding paths of Hidden Knowledge.

Truly there are doors, grilles and passageways that were sealed in order to safekeep treasures of wisdom and forces of high value to the Sorcerer; indeed, with sufficient wisdom and strength, even the Abyss of the dead shall keep no secrets for thee; the Sorcerer who holds the keys may even laugh at the challenge before which the prophet Ayoub (Job) remained speechless:

Hast thou penetrated unto the sources from which the seas sprang?

Hast thou wandered the bottom of the abyss?

Hath the gateways of Death been shown to thee?

Hast thou gazed upon the threshold to the Shadow land?

(Job 38:16-17)

Yet there are others which were shuttered with beams and chains with which to barely contain things whose sole reward for their impudent liberator shall be one of agony, rending of the entrails, torture of the spirit, and madness. Furthermore there are to be found, among these, Gates and passageways that were sealed by Elder hands as well as some others which, mayhap, do not even require for a hand, human or divine, to cause their Seals to fall away in pieces before That Which they contain on the other side. And other Fences were furthermore set merely to obstruct and hide something as ephimeral as light, yet as inexorable as the stars. The Gate of Al-Gibar (Orion) was bound by the Lord of the Great Abyss in the stars, and the Gate of Athtar (Venus) was bound by N’tse-Kaambl, that Al-Ghul (Algol) and Shi’ra (Sirius) might not pour their putrescent light upon the ancient abodes of Those who came first. But, although the keys were cast unto the Great Abyss, the Crawling Chaos observed the place where they were left buried, and ‘tis Him Who has placed this secret within the reach of men’s grasp, so that they, in their ignorance and foolish ambition, find the keys and the locks and remove the bolts from the Gates, allowing the forbidden light of cursed stars to again reach the secluded, unknown reaches of the world’s darkness, and things which abideth for Aeons to be stirred, readying themselves to rise forth again. For some of the words which were spoken to Ayoub do guard a valuable warning:

May’st thou fasten the restraints of the Athorai'e (Pleiads),

Or loosen the bindings of Al-Gibar?

Shalt thou cause Athtar (Venus) to rise at its appointed time?

Wouldst thou lead Dobh (Ursa Major) with Her young?

Dost thou know the ardanes of the heavens?

Shalt thou dispose of their might upon the earth?

(Job 38:31-33)

Because even the Sorcerer who hath trod the Abyss knows that the Aeons cannot be hastened in their course, and that the Fences shall fall when the stars are right, with scarce need of human guides intent upon sheperding them, and the Dogs which are to shepherd the stars when they weigh upon the body, snort ever impatient in the angles awaiting the hour, and the Watchers out of time wait for the Fence of Stars to break open at the Scorpion’s wake, at the appointed hour.

The elemental forces giveth more than they take away, and never return to the depths wherefrom they were invoked. Truly, whomsoever desireth to call upon that which is better left to abide in the abode of nightmares shalt be wise to heed my final warning:

Call None whom thou may’st not banish. Summon the Lesser Daemon, lest the Greater commands thee more than thyself.
For these Spells and Incantations, if read out loud, might connect the Demons of the Netherworld with our own, as described in this Kandarian passage: 

Kanda anoa es-tratta

Elektu Ahtu saru kipftu 

Elektu koroth indora

Saraptu kiphtu Ahtu indora 

Saraptu saru koroth 

Saru zerresh sadhe 

Kanda

Kanda

Kanda 

And the living shall look upon their works and despair. For even with all their knowledge, it will not save them. Their stories shall not feed them. Their songs shall not warm them. And their dreams shall strangle them in their sleep. Their lives will rot away like so much flesh, their bellies will be filled with their loves ones, and the Age of the Deadites shall begin. 
Heed the warning! 

NOTES: 

*The commonly used term, "Deadite", is obviously a barbarism, an mixture of Greek and Latin components. The word seeminly was coined in the year 1300 by the inhabitants of Castle Kanda, thus named by later lore as the place where the Gates to the Kandarian netherworld were opened in that age. The word used by Theodoras Philetas in his Greek rendering of this chapter is "Nekrite". I have yet to find out how the word was rendered in Latin and English versions such as those of Olaus Wormius the Elder and Dr. John Dee,  although it is set down by Prof. Raymond Knowby in his Notes on the Kandarian Myth-Cycle (Miskatonic University Press, 1971) that Dee once visited Castle Kanda, so it would not surprise me if he adopted the Old English word "Deadite" found in old chronicles.