A final piece of lapel-related Lovecraftian ephemera: the Necronomicon cloisonne badge, bearing the now-almost ubiquitous rendering of the Elder Sign by Khem Caigan, which made is first appearance in the controversial Simon Necronomicon. Whilst no reflection on the artist’s ability to produce an interesting-looking sigil, I’ve never really warmed to Caigan’s iteration of the Elder Sign, as it resonates too closely with the aesthetics of (Eurocentric) Golden Dawn-inflected Western occultures, (rather than with what I imagine the alien symbology of Lovecraft’s extraterrestrial sorceries to be); indeed, for all of its invocations of inconcevable Lovecraftian horror, I find the Simon Necronomicon itself far too wedded to the cosy parochialism, hierarchical elitism, and dubiously colonialist, crypto-fascistic primordialism of Western magickal traditions for my liking.
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