I’m preparing to review Paul Summers Young’s new edition of the Ars Goetia. I came across one passage that was particularly interesting:
Daniel Defoe wrote extensively on the supernatural, and in A Complete System of Magick (1727), he includes the story of an Sabian magician who encounters a spirit in a desert place, riding upon a dromedary… That, and the magician’s name is Ali Albrahazen, which may or may not be something Lovecraft once read at home in Rhode Island. (pp. 27–28)
Of course, a book that “may or may not be something Lovecraft once read” is practically every book written before or during Lovecraft’s time. Nonetheless, I do appreciate the caution here, which is not always typical from occult sources.
With the Lovecraft/grimoire overlap, this seems like a passage custom made for my commentary, so let’s get into it. Did Defoe’s A Complete System of Magick inspire Abdul Alhazred, the fictional author of the also-fictional Necronomicon?
“Abdul Alhazred” was originally a persona that Lovecraft took on around the age of five, during a phase of fascination with the Arabian Nights. Lovecraft seems confused as to where the name came from, referring to it as “the synthetic name (Allah only knows where I got it!) of Abdul Alhazred” (letter to Robert E. Howard, October 4, 1930), or guessing later that “some adult (I can’t recall who) devised for me” (letter to Harry Fischer, February 1937). Elsewhere Lovecraft supposes that it might have been Albert Baker, the family lawyer, but he wasn’t certain.
So there’s a good possibility that Lovecraft didn’t actually invent the name, which leaves us at a dead end unless a data source appears on the libraries of his relatives and family friends. But his uncertainty might also mean he invented it himself. Is that possible that he read A Complete System of Magick?
We know that Lovecraft had a fascination with eighteenth-century authors such as Defoe since childhood, and that he was precocious enough to be reading at the age of four. Our list of books from his library (recently updated in a Hippocampus Press edition) includes Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and History of the Plague, but not Magick. He also refers to the Defoe-attributed pamphlet The Apparition of Mrs. Veal in “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” Nonetheless, the book by a very popular 18th century author would certainly have been available in local libraries, if Lovecraft was allowed to visit them.
So we don’t have definitive evidence one way or another. For my part, I’m generally skeptical of any claims that “Lovecraft read X or Y” without any corresponding evidence.
…and I was going to leave this discussion there, except for one peripheral but bothersome detail.
You may go back to Young’s quote at the beginning of this, about the spirit that appears riding on the dromedary. This bears parallels to the description of Paimon from the Goetia, in which this spirit, the star of the movie Hereditary, “appeareth in ye forme of a man, sitting one a dromedary, with a Crowne most glorious on his head” (Peterson text). I’m sure that Young means for grimoire-knowledgeable readers to catch the parallel…
…except there isn’t one. Having read this passage multiple times, including that provided by Young, I can’t find a mention of a dromedary or camel anywhere within. Maybe I’m being obtuse, or missing something, but I’d be interested to hear from you.
