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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

Wow, this takes me back to my undergrad days of dabbling in the occult.

If memory serves, an actual copy of Dictionnaire Infernal is ridiculously difficult, and expensive, to track down.

If all you want are the illustrations, you can find them more easily by grabbing a copy of "The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon" for about $20 or so on Amazon.

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>an actual copy of Dictionnaire Infernal is ridiculously difficult, and expensive, to track down

? https://www.amazon.com/Dictionnaire-infernal-French-Jacques-...

If you select the hardcover, they are close to $300 usd. Perhaps that is what was meant?

English version in imitation mammal skin $175. https://www.amazon.com/Infernal-Dictionary-Deluxe-Collin-Pla...

That's not the same thing. It has new (terrible) illustrations

If memory serves, an actual copy of Dictionnaire Infernal is ridiculously difficult, and expensive, to track down.

You think that's hard, try finding an early edition of the Necronomicon. The cheap paperbacks are a poor substitution, and the Kindle version is rife with errors.

I wonder how much Lovecraft was influenced by writings like this one. Creatures like 'Tsatoghua' and 'Azathoth' might be inspired by the depiction of 'Bael', 'Adramelech' and the likes.

Oh and by the way, with 'Necronomicon' you mean this this one [0]? I have one as paperback (I didn't even realized Hardcovers existed, up until now). Giger was always one of my favourite painters. I bet in a couple of decades, people will wonder about his images as we are wondering about Plancys Dictionnaire now.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/H-R-Gigers-Necronomicon-Giger/dp/0962...

Lovecraft was more directly influenced by writers like Robert Chambers ("The King In Yellow") and Ambrose Bierce ("An Inhabitant Of Carcosa"). And the beings he describe tend to be completely alien, unlike the natural chimeras in the Dictionnaire Infernal and similar works. Even the tentacles and such which are familiar on Lovecraftian horrors tend to be described in ways that distinguish them from the familiar appendages of squids and such.

Maybe the Internet Archive has a digital copy of Dictionnaire Infernal?

The way you do this is you say, "I doubt you can even find copies on the Internet." Then someone is going to take up your challenge :)

https://books.google.com/books?id=bjESAAAAYAAJ&printsec=fron...

Now we just need to find a vendor who will bind an on-demand copy in human skin.

Ahem: "I doubt you can even find that on the Internet."

Maybe now you can ;)

It has, it's even linked to in the article: https://archive.org/details/dictionnaireinfe00coll_1

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