It felt like it was all made up.
I know the feeling, mainly as I grew older and actually read Lovecraft. It's funny that as a kid I could find a copy of SN almost anywhere, including a common convenience store wedged between the comic books and the porno mag rack. It was almost impossible to find Lovecraft's stories at the time. I didn't until I came across them in a high school library.
The SN is Sumerian-Babylonian reconstructionism in a very modern sense, with add touches of the Chthulu mythos, such as names like KUTULU itself. The publication story - not just as recounted in the Introductory section - kind of fascinates me.
The deities in the book are real and the rites are workable, but I can understand any aversion. According to publishers, after recounting all the mysterious misfortunes that went into making the book available, they could not share the original manuscript because it did not belong to them. So no one will ever know the "source" of the SN. But word has it that "Simon" is in fact Peter Levenda, most known for his research in the Nazi occultism. He denies this.
There is also a notion (er, cough, uh, Grant, cough), which I find interesting, that the
actual Necronomicon is not a
physical book, but rather an "astral grimoire" imprinted on this earth's aura which manifests itself to different authors at different times, making its mysteries know piecemeal. Lovecraft's introduction of the title and his snippets was part of a process that begins
outside of this earth. So the implication is that the Necronomicon is an
extraterrestrial projection into certain minds, even before Lovecraft, some of whom go insane and leave only fragments behind them. So, Simon Necronomicon...
Anyways, I was looking at it last night and had an impression of Saturnine resistance and the semi-conscious need to rationalize as to "fakery". The book, labeled an Avon paperback for the original price of $6.99 USD when I bought it. It felt so feather light in my hands. My Dad's original disappeared, sadly, a bit frightfully - that one had red dye on the edges of the pages. This one is a later print. My resistance to the book I look at as a barrier, btw - a prejudice that afflicts progress. Pushing through it, browsing the sigils, and forgetting Levenda and other culprits associated with it, I had the sense that there was
something "behind" the book. Not of human agency. This, of course, connects with my reminiscences from when I was a kid. With a little twist of chaote thinking, I got a sense somewhat like a get with LAM - but also the sort feeling I get when pondering deep cosmic fields of stars. That's all potential, I suppose - there are other visions, in the Gates, but this sense pertained more to the notion mention above. IT is a projection, a surface, a door...