De Vermis Mysteriis

🔀 This article is about the fictional book in the Cthulhu Mythos, for other uses see Mysteries of the Worm (disambiguation)

“	[De Vermis Mysteriis is] something...that told you how you could compound aconite and belladonna and draw circles of phosphorescent fire on the floor when the stars were right. Something that spoke of melting tallow candles and blending them with corpse-fat, whispered of the uses to which animal sacrifices might be put. It spoke of meetings that could be arranged with various parties most people don't...even believe in...[with] cold deliberate directions for traffic with ancient evil....	„
	~ Robert Bloch , Black Bargain

De Vermis Mysteriis, or Mysteries of the Worm, is a fictional grimoire created by Robert Bloch and incorporated into the lore of the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft. It is described as containing "spells and enchantments", particularly those that can summon strange entities. (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars)

Author Ludvig Prinn[]

Main article: Ludvig Prinn

Description[]

A folio-sized printing in black ink with over 700 pages long, the earlier of the sixteen chapters of the book discuss ghosts, zombies, and the like. Latter parts of the book details the author's travels amongst the Saracens of Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Libya, and of his encounters with djinn and efreet. There is much material regarding the summoning and binding of different "demons". The last chapter contains the formula for a drug that allows one to travel through space and time (Liao/Plutonian drug). (EXP: The Keeper's Companion)

Prolong readings of the book could cause unexpected spontaneous summoning of maggots and snakes close by, or hallucinations that something is crawling beneath one's skin. (EXP: The Keeper's Companion)

Being a grimoire of great importance and one of the most famous in the entire Mythos, the contents of De Vermis Mysteriis have since been expanded in numerous stories and materials.

Chapters[]

A chapter specifically dealing with familiars (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars).
"Saracenic Rituals", a chapter that "revealed the lore of the efreet and the djinn, the secrets of the Assassin sects, the myths of Arabian ghoul-tales, the hidden practices of dervish cults" and "the legends of Inner Egypt", providing backstory on the cults of Bubastis (CIRCLE: The Brood of Bubastis), the cults of Sebek (CIRCLE: The Secret of Sebek), and on the Pharaoh Nephren-Ka's worship of Nyarlathotep (CIRCLE: Fane of the Black Pharaoh). It also contains info regarding the worm-wizards of many-columned Irem (EXP: The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana).
A chapter on divination (CIRCLE: The Sorcerer's Jewel).

Spell and recipe list[]

Contact spells for Byatis, Yig, and Han. (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars)
Controlling spells for Star Vampire (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars), Byakhee, Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, ghost, and zombie. (EXP: The Keeper's Companion)
A potion recipe to transform a person into a female dog (at least in the English version). (CIRCLE: Philtre Tip)
Spacetime travelling drug recipe (Liao/Plutonian drug). (EXP: The Keeper's Companion)
Mind transfer spell. (EXP: The Keeper's Companion)
Prinn's Crux Ansata, a spell used to create a creature-banishment ankh. (EXP: The Keeper's Companion)
The Voorish Sign. (EXP: The Keeper's Companion)

References to Mythos entities[]

Outer Gods[]

Iod (EXP: The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic)
Magnum Innominandum (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars)
Nyarlathotep (CIRCLE: The Faceless God)

Great Old Ones[]

Byatis (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars)
Han (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars)
Sebek (CIRCLE: The Secret of Sebek)
Tsathoggua (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars)
Yig (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars)

History[]

De Vermis Mysteriis was written in Latin by Ludvig Prinn in prison circa 1542. A more historically likely date of 1484 has also been given. (EXP: The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana). The manuscript is smuggled out and published in Cologne in 1543, a year after Prinn's execution. In 1569, the book is banned by Pope Pius V and almost all copies were rapidly destroyed. (CIRCLE: The Shambler from the Stars)

Existing copies[]

Fifteen copies are known to have survived (EXP: The Keeper's Companion). Location of known ones:

In the Church of Starry Wisdom in Providence, Rhode Island (HPL: The Haunter of the Dark).
At Miskatonic University in Arkham, with marginal notes handwritten in by Wingate Peaslee (HPL: The Shadow Out of Time).
At the library in the van der Heyl house in Attica, New York (HPL: The Diary of Alonzo Typer).
At the Huntingdon Library in California. (EXP: The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana)
Half of a copy, in very poor condition, at the British Museum. (EXP: The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana)
Tiberius owns a copy that grants him immortality and can be used to pilot Belzebuth. (EXP: Demonbane) Although it does not appear in the actual series, an official illustration depicts his grimoire as taking the form of a human girl. (similarly to Al Azif, Etheldreda and the R'lyeh Text)

Variants[]

An English translation by Edward Kelley, a disreputable magician, medium and associate of John Dee, was published in London in 1573. The spells for contacting deities were corrupted in this version. (EXP: The Keeper's Companion)
A German translation was published in Dusseldorf in 1587. One copy is at the British Museum. Much of the material was expurgated. (EXP: The Keeper's Companion, The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana)
A German translation by Johann Lindenmuth of Nuremberg was created in 1670 but never printed, and the location of the manuscript is unknown. (EXP: The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana)
A version, potentially in Latin, was published in Prague in 1809. (EXP: The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana)
An English translation of the chapter "Saracenic Rituals" by the mysterious "Clergyman X" was published in the nineteenth century. Several passages are omitted. A copy of this pamphlet is kept at the British Library. (EXP: The Lord of the Worms)
A German-to-English translation by Charles Leggett was published in London in 1821. Fewer than twenty copies are known to be in the possession of major libraries, but more may be in small libraries or in the hands of private collectors. This version omitted Plutonian Drugs and Prinn's Crux Ansata. (EXP: The Keeper's Companion)
An English version by Starry Wisdom Press supposedly was published in 1895. No trace of this version has ever been seen. (EXP: The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana)

Behind the Mythos[]

De Vermis Mysteriis was first mentioned in Robert Bloch's story The Secret in the Tomb and made its first appearance in The Shambler from the Stars, in which a character reads a passage from the book and accidentally summons an extradimensional horror.

Bloch, a teenager in 1935, corresponded with Lovecraft about his story The Shambler from the Stars prior to its publication, in part to get permission to kill off a character based on the older writer. While giving his enthusiastic blessing, Lovecraft also suggested that the book featured in the story, named by Bloch as Mysteries of the Worm, be referred to instead by the Latin equivalent De Vermis Mysteriis.

Lovecraft also provided Bloch with a bit of Latin to use as an invocation from the book: "Tibi, Magnum Innominandum, signa stellarum nigrarum et bufaniformis Sadoquae sigilum"--which can be translated as "To you, the great Not-to-Be-Named, signs of the black stars, and the seal of the toad-shaped Tsathoggua".