Invocation of the Eastern GateThee I invoke, Mistress of the Rising Star. Queen of Magic, of the Mountains of Mashu! Thee I call forth this day to guard this Most Holy mandal against the Seven Ensnarers, the Seven Liers-In-Wait, the evil Maskim, the Evil Lords! Thee I Summon, Queen of the Eastern Ways, that thou mayest protect me from the Eye of Death, and the evil rays of the Endukugga and Nindukugga! Be watchful, Queen of the Eastern Ways, and Remember! Spirit of the East, Remember!In the last years Alhazred dwelt in Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind.