BQ ARCHIVE
Vol I, No. 4
Sept 29, 2004

 
 
 by agnesdv

ARCHIVE #023

Table of Contents 

Archive:
September
October


Website:
Journal
 

BOOK REVIEW:


If You Don't Like the Book, Burn It 

I am not a superstitious person.  Although I was raised in a superstitious Catholic culture, I was also privileged to study in a university that encouraged its students to question the existence of everything conceivable, including the existence of God, the existence of our economy and our sovereignty, the existence of our basic rights, the existence of our constantly absent professors, even the existence of our intelligence.

I am not superstitious, but sometimes, I slip back to my old traditional belief patterns.  I love to read books, I love them so much that however badly written they are, I'd never in my life burn one.  Well, except once.  I did not do the actual act myself, but I was a witness, although I heard later that I was the one who ordered the book burned.  Maybe indirectly.

The book was the infamous, feared and dreaded Necronomicon, "the most evil of the black magick grimoires," written by the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.  Written in Damascus in A.D. 730, it contains invocations to Sumerian deities, ancient glyphs and symbols, and incantations to summon demons to do your biddings, to harm people, to bring wealth and power to you.  Precaution is highly advised because the use or misuse of the book drives the reader to violence, insanity, and sometimes, death.  Books like that are hard to find in our Catholic country.  This one used to be displayed at National Bookstore but was pulled out because of some concerned citizens' complaints.  Harry Potter almost suffered the same fate.

A professor I knew owned the book.  While he had the book in his possession, his brother had an accident and lost his eye.  Another professor borrowed the book and while it was in her possession, her husband lost his leg.  Another read the book, and his mother almost had her leg amputated.  Very much concerned with the events happening around them, they consulted another professor about the book, but while she was reading it, her close-knit family started having fights and showing signs of breaking up... I was consulted, but to avoid further accidents, they did not allow me to read it (I wasn't really keen on losing anything anyway).  So I advised them that if the book was that bad, why not burn it?

So it was burned and the ashes were secretly buried in the four corners of a downtown plaza in the middle of the night while no one was looking.  It seems so funny to me now, that whenever I pass by that plaza, I grin at the picture we (two of the professors and I) must have made that night, sneaking in the dark, digging holes with small rocks (because we didn't bring any shovel or tools with us), and burying the ashes separately so the 'satan' in the book won't be able to resurrect itself.

A friend told me, that throwing the book into the garbage can would have gotten the same effect.  A book, she said, is absolutely nothing.  It's toilet paper, like all books.  And the Necronomicon is nothing if you don't read it and ingest it, but once the book is in the mind of someone, then it has power.  I absolutely agree, especially when it comes to the Necronomicon, and the story behind its non-existence.

I wonder why, with all the information readily available now, why no one knows that the Necronomicon is a book of fiction, a book written AFTER the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft invented it for his 1922 horror story, The Hound.  Lovecraft mentions it again in his other stories, then his friend writers started mentioning it in their stories, until fans began to believe that the book actually existed.  Lovecraft didn't write the book himself, although he invented its historical existence.  The book is not mentioned in any other history or occult books, except by Lovecraft and later by his followers.  The book took on a life of its own that in a letter to his colleagues, Lovecraft mentions that "...one can never produce anything even a tenth as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about.  If anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon, it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it."  Still, some attempted to write their own versions of the book, one of which is a pseudo ancient Sumerian manuscript that is however, inconsistently full of medieval sygils.  This was the version we burned.

I wonder how a work of fiction can harm people.  How a book can grip them in fear.  Why the Necronomicon can cause accidents.  It took me years to realise that it can't.  It cannot because it's only an object.  We have to stop blaming objects for our misfortunes.  We have to stop giving power to certain objects because they're only that: inanimate objects.  The power we give any object, any belief, is equal to the power we get from it.  The more people believe in an idea, the more powerful the 'idea' gets.  That is how evil is spawned.  It grows like weeds in your garden.  Which then becomes a collective thought that turns into a belief pattern, the beginnings of which we don't question anymore.

Anything that happened to my friends' families was not the book's fault.  It came from the power of everyone's thoughts, their desires and emotions, their fears and their will.  Such is the power of the mind, that it can manifest thoughts, fueled by desire and emotions, into existence. 

So why then did I have the book burned?  I guess it was for the simple reason that I do not like to see people gripped in fear of an object, being controlled by their fears instead of the other way around.  I guess it's because I dislike being immobile with fear myself, and feeling helpless and frustrated and angry that something or someone can have that control over me.  They wanted to purge that fear out of their system but didn't know how, so i said, burn the book.

Does that make me a bad book critic?

"I wonder how a work of fiction can harm people.  How a book can grip them in fear.  Why the Necronomicon can cause accidents.  It took me years to realise that it can't.  It cannot because it's only an object.  We have to stop blaming objects for our misfortunes.  We have to stop giving power to certain objects because they're only that:  inanimate objects."