The John Dee Necronomicon: Codex Edition

A rendering of the Necronomicon as it might have been set down in 1596 by Dr. John Dee, court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, mathematician, alchemist, and one of the most notorious occultists of his age.

The text is composed in the cadence of Early Modern English, drawn from the legendary Kitab Al-Azif and recast in the voice of the late sixteenth century. It is accompanied by restrained woodcut illustrations in the manner of Renaissance design, set against the cosmology of Lovecraft. The interior is laid out to evoke a historical volume while remaining readable to a modern hand.

The book is bound in black cloth over substantial 3 mm boards, with gold foil stamping on the front, spine, and back. The front bears an Elder Sign in gold foil; the spine carries John Dee's own Monas Hieroglyphica. It is printed on white, acid-free archival paper and finished with black headbands and vintage-style printed endpapers. Smyth-sewn for durability, it opens flat and is built for sustained handling.

Edition specifications

• Format: Hardcover, cloth over 3 mm boards
• Binding: Smyth-sewn, opens flat
• Paper: White, acid-free, archival
• Stamping: Gold foil. Elder Sign on the front, Monas Hieroglyphica on the spine
• Endpapers: Vintage-style printed
• Headbands: Black
• Language: Early Modern English
• Pages: 564
• Dimensions: 22.2 x 29.2 x 4.2 cm (W x H x D)
• Weight: 2 kg.

How this edition was made

This edition is based on Lovecraft’s lore and was developed over several years to align as closely as possible with the information given about the Necronomicon in Lovecraft’s work.

AI-tools were used to help translate the original human-written material into Early Modern English. The text was then reviewed, revised, and extensively edited by hand to achieve its final form. No passages were simply generated and used as-is.

AI-assisted tools were also used in the development of some visual elements for the woodcut-style illustrations. These elements were then refined, corrected, combined, or redrawn using Photoshop and/or Illustrator. Other parts of the artwork were created by hand, or developed through a combination of manual design, stock material, and AI-assisted elements.