When it comes to the realm of the supernatural and the dark side, this world recorded a lot of happenings and a lot of archived documents speaking of the unspeakable, forces beyond our comprehension, magic, summoning of the dark monsters from “out there”, religious stories and practices which are often described as mystic, mysterious and paranormal. From black masses to witchcraft, from ghosts to spells, from bloody rituals to detailed descriptions of horror, we had them all and we can explore them better if you are really interested. But in this whole X Files kind of research, one cannot ignore the recurrence and the references to some magic books and their dark powers. While some of these famous manuscripts still exist and still raise a lot of questions among scholars, the entertainment industry,  literature included, exploited their dark fame and presented them in an even more terrible aura. Today we will look at three books and their dark powers which are still a subject of debate and which still ignite peoples’ imagination.

3. The Book of the Dead

This ancient Egyptian manuscript is considered one of the most mind blowing religious and funerary texts ever known to mankind. You may have heard about it in video games, such as Darksiders II or referenced in the Blair Witch Project 2 under the name of the Book of Shadows, but the original manuscript contains a lot of spells, funerary guidelines, explanations about preservation, the afterlife, reincarnation and so on. It is still hard to understand everything it talks about and there are still many chunks of text which remained untranslated and unpublished. Of course, just as any powerful book, it is surrounded by a mystic, powerful aura, as it speaks about judgement and is said that since the book talk about curses of the past, present and future curses, there are some spells there which can bring death.

2. Pseudomonarchia Daemonum

This is only an annex to another very dark book, De praestigiis daemonum, written by demonologist Johann Weyer. This annex is said to contain a list of all demons which can be summoned for dark purposes, together with detailed described rituals people can use in order to achieve the summoning. Both the book and its annex became quite popular and were translated into English, French and German. The purpose of the book was not intended as to give all the regular Joes an instrument for summoning demons and becoming masters of the dark arts, but as a means to put back into their places the ones who boasted about being mages and having supernatural abilities.

1. The Voynich Manuscript

This is one of the most famous dark books ever known to man, simply because nobody managed to decipher it yet. It is a codex and blends drawings and written symbols (in an unknown language) and it seems to have a lot to do with medicine or some very disturbing practices, as the illustrations have a lot of nerve shattering effects. In the world of cryptography, this book is famous, as nobody managed to understand if this is a message from beyond, the product of a very disillusioned and sick mind, an instruction manual sent by entities we can’t comprehend and so on. The language seems to be a natural one and the drawings do look like something that can relate to botanic, anatomy or physiology,  just as well as they could be graphic explanations for summoning spirits. Nobody knows exactly.

BONUS: The Necronomicon

Now this one is so famous, we are wondering how nobody thought about making a movie from it. The story goes like this: once upon a time, there was this “Mad Arab” called Simon, who seems to have discovered the most dangerous, deadly and disturbing grimoire that ever cursed humanity, a book filled with dark magic rituals, incantations, curses, summoning practices, sacrifice rituals and so many other unspeakable things that only Satan could have put on paper. The problem with the Necronomicon is that sometime in its history, it was used as courtroom evidence against people accused of ritualistic murders, while it is quite obvious among the scholars that it is a well constructed hoax, a fake so well executed, it can be considered genuine. The biggest problem with the Necronomicon is that this “book” is a fake document that shows up frequently in H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and novels and it kinda comprises all Lovecraft’s lore regarding the Old Ones.

Oh, there are more, don’t fret about it. There is virtually no modern novel or movie to relate to magic and dark powers and not have a book in it, a book of spells and incantations. You can read about Clavis Salomonis, The Devil’s Bible (Codex Gigas), the Edwin Smith Papyrus and many other more.