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

“They began as seventy-seven developing countries, all members of the UN, who drew together in the early sixties as a lobbying group to promote cooperation among Third World countries. Today, though they still call themselves the Group of 77, they have nearly doubled their membership and have learned to vote as a bloc; as a result they’ve grown much more powerful. Although many of them also belong to the IAEA, the agency is insulated from such special interest groups by the fact that its board members mainly come from highly industrialized nuclear nations who remain prudent about with whom to share or not share atomic expertise.”

“So you think the Soviets are worried the Group of 77 may churn up the Central Asian republics?”

“Perhaps,” said Wolfgang. “There’s a person who could tell us a great deal more, if he chose to do so. He knows these people well. He was to join us at lunch, and I hope he’s waiting there now. The timing was extremely difficult: he’s old and obstinate, and he refused to speak about the matter with anyone but you. That’s why I was upset to think you’d missed that flight from Idaho. A good deal of effort has gone into the coordination of this trip on everyone’s part, you know.”

“It’s starting to look that way,” I agreed. I hadn’t a clue what was going on. As we went through the streets, the fog around us had thickened. Though Wolfgang was speaking, his voice seemed distant, and I only caught the last words.

“… from Paris last night, just when you and I ourselves were traveling here. He thought it was essential to see you in person.”

“Who came from Paris last night?” I asked.

“We’re going to meet your grandfather,” Wolfgang said.

“That’s impossible. Hieronymus Behn has been dead for thirty years,” I said.

“I don’t mean the man you think is your grandfather,” he said. “I mean the man who flew from Paris last night to meet you, the man who sired your father Augustus upon your grandmother Pandora—perhaps the only man she ever deeply loved.”

Maybe it was the fog, maybe my lack of sleep and food, but I suddenly felt dizzy, as if I’d just stepped off a carousel and things were still whirling. Wolfgang put his hand beneath my arm as if to steady me, but his voice went on.

“I wasn’t sure how much to say earlier, but this was the real reason I came to Idaho to find you,” he told me. “As I explained that first day on the mountain, the documents you are heir to must not fall into the wrong hands. The man we’re about to meet knows much of the mystery behind them. But first, I thought I must prepare you, for you might be—well, there’s something about him that’s hard to describe, but I’ll try. He seems like an ancient figure possessed of magical powers, like a magus of sorts. But perhaps you already suspect who it is, this grandfather of yours. His name is Dacian Bassarides.”

THE MAGUS

Magus is derived from Maja, the mirror wherein Brahm, according to Indian mythology, from all eternity beholds himself and all his power and wonders. Hence also our terms magia, magic, image, imagination, all implying the fixing in a form … of the potencies of the primeval, structureless, living matter. The Magus, therefore, is one that makes the operations of the Eternal Life his study.

—Charles William Heckethorn,

The Secret Societies

He it is who may owe his bond to the world of images and appearances—be sensually, voluptuously, sinfully bound to them, yet be aware at the same time that he belongs no less to the world of the idea and the spirit, as the magician who makes the appearance transparent that the idea and spirit may shine through.

—Thomas Mann

Man is superior to the stars if be lives in the power of superior wisdom. Such a person, being master over heaven and earth by means of will, is a magus. And magic is not sorcery, but supreme wisdom.

—Paracelsus

In his own magic circle wanders the wonderful man, and draws us with him to wonder and take part in it.

—Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Wolfgang wanted to “prepare me” to meet Dacian Bassarides. But how could anything have prepared me for the events of my past two weeks? And now this—the revelation that my insufferable, arrogant father might actually be the spawn of my grandmother’s illicit lover rather than the legitimate son of Hieronymus Behn.

As we headed through the maze of cobbled streets to the Café Central, Wolfgang seemed to understand I needed a little peace and quiet. I was fed up with all these surprises about my awful family. And it hardly helped that every new fact raised a new question. For instance, if Dacian Bassarides really was my grandfather and Hieronymus Behn knew it, why would Hieronymus have raised my father Augustus as the apple of his eye, preferring him not only to his stepson, Laf, but to his own legitimate children, Zoe and Earnest, too?

In the larger picture, Dacian Bassarides had played a pivotal role in each and every scene. For instance, if Pandora’s estate was parceled out—as Sam and I surmised—among members of the Behn family without anyone knowing who got what, then as executor of that estate, Dacian might well be the only person alive who could say how these manuscripts were connected, and to whom.

I recalled that when Uncle Laf gave me his version of the family saga, he’d described Dacian as his own early violin teacher, Pandora’s handsome young cousin who’d let them ride the carousel at the Prater and who’d later accompanied Pandora, with her friend “Lucky” and the children, to the Hofburg to view the spear of Charlemagne and the sword of Attila the Hun.

That was the basic story without filling in any blanks. One blank, however, might be a connection Laf had failed to make. Based on his eyewitness account, during that Prater merry-go-round ride Dacian seemed on