Juan Luis Jorge.
****
De bibliotheca.
Reflections on the power of the verb in certain texts.
Archaos Publications.
****
1919.
Stafford.

Translation does not alter the occult power contained within such forbidden texts. The malevolent energy is in no way diminished. The spell must be cast aloud and clearly, in certain languages or little-known dialects… M’ghlafg fthang… The reader will understand that, in the light of these revelations, I would be foolhardy to continue quoting from the text I have before me. If spoken aloud in its entirety, it would surely awaken powerful and malignant forces.

I will go further and say that the simple reading of some of the more technical passages, describing specific practices, is in itself a perilous exercise: the ill-prepared reader can easily fall prey to attacks of demented hysteria not unlike those described in cases of individuals said to be possessed by evil spirits*.

*I recommend the study made by Zempf: “Urbain Grandier and Loudun” and the reports made by the Reverend Richard Price concerning a number of astonishing (to say the least) exorcisms carried out in a parish near Providence.

***

Given what I have written, we must be grateful to the librarians of the British Museum who have never allowed consultation of the work of Al Azif’s startling work, the infamous Necronomicon.

Copies of that work do exist, in spite of the zeal of book-burning inquisitors. For proof, we need look no further than the British Museum, of course, and the sealed archives of the Miskatonic University in Arkham.

Other examples of books whose evil can be unleashed by any thoughtless reader are Von Junzt’s Von unaussprechlichen Kulten and the abominable De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn, whose sordid death
should be a lesson to all those tempted by a study of the occult.