The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

The hopes of Christian Russians were kept alive for three hundred years, until Ivan the Great freed them, by the myth of the second city, Great Kitezh. The prayers of Lady Fevronia, an innocent forest maiden, bring the city protection by the Virgin Mary, who covers it with a lake through whose clear waters it can be seen, but not reached or harmed. Kitezh, like the Grail, is attainable only by the faithful like Fevronia, who can accept the concept of “life without time” and who will live in the restored city when it rises, dripping from the waters, like a New Jerusalem at the dawn of a new age, as it does at the end of the opera.

In this case, I knew the lost city wasn’t just a landscape of the mind. Lost cities of the Khazars had only recently been discovered in this same region, which Stalin had buried underwater by rerouting rivers. This triggered a picture that was gaining prominence in my mind, something that seemed to pop up at every metaphysical-metaphorical-mythical-mystical turn in this millennial hunt for the “sacred hallows”—something I knew must be the kernel of hidden truth in Pandora’s manuscripts.

“All these legends, the Kitezh, the Eddas, the Nibelungenlied, the Grail sagas of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chrétien de Troyes—they’re all tied together somehow, aren’t they, Volga?” I said.

He nodded slowly, but continued to study me, so I went on:

“It must mean something, then, that while they’re all a bunch of legends, they’re set within the context of plenty of verifiable historical facts. Not to mention that the objects and places and events described in these tales seem to have been sought for so long by everyone from powerful political leaders to mysterious mystics—”

I thought I noticed a strange gleam in the depths of Volga’s black eyes.

“Okay, I’ve got it,” I said, all at once on my feet. Though I could still see my breath in the air, I didn’t want another swig of slivovitz just yet. I paced as Volga sat in silence. “Norse, Teutonic, Slavic, Celtic, Semitic, Indo-European, Aryan, Greco-Roman, Dravidian, Thracian, Persian, Aramaic, Ugaritic,” I said. “But Pandora figured out how they’re all related, didn’t she? That’s the reason why she divided her manuscripts among four people in the same family who never spoke to each other—so nobody could ever put it all together and see what she had seen.”

Then I stopped and stared at Volga, realizing I might have revealed too much of what I knew or didn’t know. After all, hadn’t Laf sent him all this way here to reveal things to me instead? But when I looked down at Volga, he had a strange expression.

“There is one very important thing in what you’ve just said—more important than the rest,” he told me. “Can you see what it is?” When I was clearly at sea, he said, “The number four. Four people, four corners, four quarters, four sets of documents. Time is of the essence, for the aeon draws near. And you haven’t seen the parts Pandora herself collected, all combined.”

“As I understand it, nobody’s seen them all,” I pointed out.

“That is why I’ve come to Russia tonight,” Volga said with great care. My heart was pounding as I slowly sat down again. “In Idaho, you were unprepared for the acceptance of this mission that now I see in your eyes. I hope it is not too late. There is one person who’s had access to all the documents over the past many years—or at least, to those individuals who themselves possessed them. Although, as you’ve suggested, those four people—Lafcadio, Augustus, Earnest, and Zoe—were estranged from one another, they were not estranged from her.”

I stared at him, not believing my ears. There was only one person he could possibly be speaking of. But then mercifully, I thought of a hitch that would make his suggestion impossible.

“It’s true that Jersey was married to my father, Augustus, and afterwards to Uncle Earnest too,” I admitted. “And we lived off and on with Uncle Laf while I was growing up, in the years between. But Jersey never had anything to do with my horrid aunt Zoe in Paris. The two of them have never even met, so far as I know.”

If Russian walls had ears, it wouldn’t take an “initiate” to translate Volga’s reply.

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but it’s quite urgent that you know,” Volga said firmly. “Your mother, Jersey, is the daughter of Zoe Behn.”

WARP AND WOOF

[When the Moirai weave fate] the length of a man’s life … is represented by … the vertical i.e. the warp threads. [But] what of the woof, those threads which are … knotted round the individal warp threads? In these it would be natural to see the various phases of fortune which are his lot while he lives, and of which the last is death.

The old Norse goddesses, the Norns, spun the fates of men at birth.… The Slavs also had [such] goddesses … so too apparently the ancient Hindus and the Gypsies.… Not only do the Norns spin and bind, they also weave. Their web hangs over every man.

—Richard Broxton Onians,

The Origins of European Thought

Buddhism is both a philosophy and a practice. Buddhist philosophy is rich and profound. Buddhist practice is called Tantra. Tantra is the Sanskrit word meaning “to weave.”

… The most profound thinkers of the Indian civilization discovered that words and concepts could take them only so far. Beyond that point came the actual doing of a practice, the experience of which was ineffable.

… Tantra does not mean the end of rational thought. It means the integration of thought … into larger spectrums of awareness.

—Gary Zukav,

The Dancing Wu Li Masters

Volga Dragonoff’s revelation turned out to be the first of all my recent family shockers that didn’t make me feel like collapsing. Indeed, there were aspects of this revised picture—based on what I knew for