”Cultus Maleficarum” The Real Necronomicon?

All fans of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Myths are probably familiar with the Necronomicon, that forbidden book by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. What few know is that there is another book, within the same cycle, whose story is even more mysterious. It is known as Cultus Maleficarum, which means: “the cult of the witches”; and also as: The Sussex Manuscript.

The first to mention the Cultus Maleficarum was August Derleth, in the 1949 story: The Testament of Claiborne Boyd, later republished as: The Salapunarum Ravine: The Gorge Beyond Salapunco. There, Derleth mentions a book, The Sussex Manuscript, without providing further historical references, although he makes it clear that it is part of the canon of Cthulhu Myth books.

This brief mention was not accidental. Years earlier, August Derleth had received a proposal from a young Nebraska writer named Fred L. Pelton (1921-1950), who had written an alternative translation of the Necronomicon, which he called the Cultus Maleficarum, or Sussex Manuscript. Derleth considered adding this book to the forthcoming Arkham House publications, and its mention in The Will of Claiborne Boyd was intended to arouse readers’ interest in a work he would later publish himself.

The Cultus Maleficarum was not published at the time, although it aroused some controversy. It was said that the work was incoherent, even absurd, and that it did not respect H.P. Lovecraft’s philosophy. In a way, this is true, but that was precisely the author’s intention. Moreover, the master of Providence himself had already hypothesised that all the translators of the Necronomicon had lost their minds, so that inconsistencies are an essential part of these versions.

Fred L. Pelton thought of the Cultus Maleficarum as an inaccurate English translation of a fragment of the Latin version of the Necronomicon (that of Olaus Wormius) by one Fredericus Primus, Baron of Sussex, in 1597, perhaps in response to the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches) a century earlier.

The Cultus Maleficarum was forgotten until, in the early 1970s, writer Edward P. Berglund found a mysterious quotation in Lin Carter’s H.P. Lovecraft: The Books, in which the Sussex Manuscript was mentioned. Berglund then traced the whereabouts of Fred L. Pelton and sent him a letter. Two weeks later he received a reply from his son, John Pelton, informing him that his father had died in 1950, and that he was in possession of the Cultus Maleficarum.

Of the original four chapters of the Cultus Maleficarum, only three survived, with only a few pages of the fourth. The first describes the arrival of Cthulhu in our world; the second recounts his reign and overthrow; and the third the rites of his hated cult, which somehow managed to survive in the beliefs of witches during the Middle Ages. Apparently, the apocryphal translator of the Cultus Maleficarum, Fredericus Primus, was also the leader of the cult in the 16th century.

In that letter, Fred L. Pelton’s son claims that his father not only conceived the Cultus Maleficarum, but also embarked on another ambitious work, entitled “The Cthulhu Mythos”, where he addresses several fundamental points, which H.P. Lovecraft did not dabble in: language and literature, general patterns of the Myths, and history and rituals.

Finally, Pelton’s son sent Berglund a copy of the Cultus Maleficarum – which he refers to as the Sussex Manuscript – along with an interesting linguistic study by his father.

Thus begins the mysterious Cultus Maleficarum:

“Translated into English by this, your servant, and taken from an old Latin text by Celsus Olaus, called Wormius, itself from an older manuscript written by Abdul-al-Hazred, who learned the mysteries and the terrible secrets in the desert. Here is told the story of the dread Cthulhu, the Old Ones, of Azathoth and his dark legions, of the glories of R’lyeh, of his rites, and of the one who waits dreaming.

The Cultus Maleficarum is clearly at odds with Lovecraft’s Multiverse, for here Cthulhu and the Old Ones are not interdimensional beings, but basically aliens from our own universe who arrived on Earth long before the advent of man. However, this is not necessarily the case, as it may be part of the intentional inaccuracies of Fredericus Primus’ translation.

In any case, the “Cultus Maleficarum” remained in obscurity until, in 1989, it was finally published, albeit with many alterations and omissions, perhaps so as not to inconvenience the master of Providence. It is now part of the canon of the Typhonian Order, which regards H.P. Lovecraft as a prophet.