The Magic Circle

by Katherine Neville

  “Almost no one,” said Dacian with a mysterious smile. “But it’s late, and I’ve another nail to show you at the Hofburg treasury. I must speak a bit of trees and nails as we go.” We set off on foot down the broad Kärntner Strasse with tourists swirling around us in the late afternoon light.

  “In many cultures,” Dacian began, “the nail was thought to possess a sacred binding property, bringing together contrasting realms like fire and water, spirit and matter. Since the tree was often regarded in ancient texts as the World Axis, channeling energy from heaven to earth, the nail was called the hinge or pivot of God, anchoring that energy. Indeed, in Hebrew, God’s name itself has a nail in it: the four-letter word Yahweh is spelled Yod-He-Vau-He, where the letter Vau means ‘nail.’ And in German, Stock not only means stump or trunk, it also means stick, rod, grapevine—and beehive. And bees are associated with hollow trees. It’s of the greatest importance, how all these things are connected,” he said.

  I didn’t have a bee in my bonnet—at least, not yet—though my head was buzzing: The zodiac might be a zoo of archetypal beasts, but this new aeon we were talking about was to be symbolized by a man, Aquarius the water-bearer, pouring a stream of water into a fish’s mouth. Though this might fit well with dippers, Dacian said there was something that connected it all—the rotating sky, the trees and nails, the flowing waters, the bears—and perhaps even Orion the mighty hunter. Then I thought I saw it.

  “The goddess Diana?” I said.

  Dacian shot me a surprised glance. “Precisely,” he said approvingly. “But retrace the path you’ve followed. The journey is often as important as the conclusion.”

  “What conclusion?” Wolfgang asked, turning to me. “Forgive me if I fail to see what a Roman goddess has to do with trees or nails.”

  “Diana, or Artemis in Greek, was equated with the Dippers,” I said. “Ursa Major and Minor, the bears revolving around the celestial pole—that is, the axis. She also drove the chariot of the moon, just as her brother Apollo drove that of the sun. She was a virgin huntress who followed the chase by night with her own pack of dogs. In early religions, the act of hunting and devouring an animal forged a unity with that animal. So Artemis was patron of all totem beasts. Today, she still rules the heavens, as her name suggests—arktos is bear; themis is law.”

  “More than law—themis is justice,” Dacian said. “It’s an important distinction. The oracle at Delphi was themistos—one who not only knew right but could prophesy, could translate the higher justice of the gods.”

  “So that explains her connection with bees—” I started to add.

  “Please,” Wolfgang cut in, frustrated. “I’ve no idea what you mean.”

  “Bees were prophetesses,” I said. “Deborah in the Old Testament, and Melissa, a name for the Delphic oracle and for Artemis too—both names meant ‘bee.’ Bees were also identified with the virgin because it was believed they created themselves through parthenogenesis, without copulation.”

  “Exactly,” said Dacian. “The virgin is important to the aeon just ending now. Two thousand years ago, when the age began, the virgin goddess was worshiped throughout the world. The Romans called her Diana of the Ephesians: her Greek temple at Ephesus, the Artemision, was one of the seven wonders of the world. The famous statue of the goddess, whose worship Saint Paul so hotly opposed as idolatry, still stands there today, its robes covered with carvings of animals and birds, and also with her prophetic bees. It’s this same goddess in a new incarnation, along with her son, the ‘fisher of men’s souls,’ who forms the axis of the aeon now ending: the age of Pisces, the fish. The constellation opposite Pisces on the circle of the zodiac is Virgo the virgin.”

  “Jesus and the Virgin Mary are a duo because those constellations are across from each other in the zodiac?” I said, intrigued as I always was when before my eyes a code was broken that I hadn’t seen myself. I could tell Wolfgang was interested too.

  “The twelve constellations of the zodiac are, in reality, of greatly varying sizes,” Dacian pointed out. “Astrologers simply divide the sky into twelve equal pieces like a torte, and appoint one constellation within each slice as its ‘ruler.’ Because of the earth’s tilt on its axis, every two-thousand-year aeon, during the spring and fall equinoxes—the two days each year when day and night are equal in length—the sunrise seems to shift from one of these wedges in the sky to another, moving backwards through the signs of the zodiac. That is, at each new age, the sun appears in a sign preceding the one that would follow, if the sun were moving through its normal course in the span of an ordinary year. Which is why the succession of aeons is called the Precession of the Equinoxes.

  “Throughout the past two-thousand-year cycle, during the equinoxes, we’ve seen the sun rise against the backdrop of the dual constellations jointly ruling this age: Pisces at the spring equinox, and Virgo in autumn. In this sense, the character of the age is defined by the character of its rulers. One might call it celestial mythology.

  “It seems of great interest that the legends of all peoples have so closely matched the archetypal images associated with each new aeon. The age of Gemini, for example, was an historical period noted for legends of twins: Remus and Romulus, Castor and Pollux. The next age of Taurus, the bull, was symbolically represented by the Egyptian bullgod Apis, the golden calf of Moses, and the White Bull of the Sea in Crete, who fathered the Minotaur. The age of Aries, the ram, is associated with the Golden Fleece sought by Jason’s Argonauts, the ram’s horns of Alexander the Great, and other initiates of the later Egyptian mysteries. And of course Jesus the Lamb, who was the chief pivot of the transition from the Arian age into the one that is just now ending: the age of Pisces.

  “Fish symbols, too, have penetrated throughout this aeon. There’s the Fisher King, who guarded the Holy Grail sought by King Arthur and his Round Table of holy knights. Though the Grail chalice itself would be a more appropriate symbol of the coming new age—pouring out, you see.”

  We had cut through an open plaza with a grotesque Baroque fountain splashing water everywhere. I knew we were approaching the Ring.

  “What can you tell us about the age of Aquarius?” I asked Dacian.

  “From the beginning, the image of this age has been rather like that of a deluge,” Dacian told me. “Not a flood such as Noah experienced in Genesis, where the earth was drowned in waters from the heavens as punishment for mankind’s sins. Instead, this will be a time of unexpected, volatile upheaval in the fabric of the entire social order. The liquid the water-bearer pours out is seen as a gigantic tidal wave of liberation: the waters of the earth will rise, gushing wellsprings of freedom unleashed against all bonds of tyranny—at least, for those seeking such liberation. It seems no accident, therefore, that Uranus, the planetary ruler of this coming age, was discovered at the dawn of the French Revolution.

  “According to the ancients, our coming age will be ushered in by unchecked waters gushing forth. Those who build dams to hold it back, who construct walls to resist change, who are repressive, inflexible, unaccepting—those who wish to turn back the clocks, to return to a golden era that never existed—will themselves be destroyed by this tidal wave of transformation. Only those who learn to dance atop the waters will survive.”

  “‘Go with the flow,’” I said with a smile. “But there’ve been so many books and songs and plays written about the age of Aquarius from my mother’s generation. They made it sound like a time of love and peace and—what was it?—‘flower power.’ What you’ve described sounds more like a real revolution.”

  “A revolution describes a circle, too,” Dacian pointed out. “But the ideas you’ve mentioned are fantasies more decadent than any sugar-dusted bonbons: their values do not suit the age at all. Indeed, it’s just such ‘utopian’ concepts that are deeply dangerous in the circumstances. Remember that Utopia, ou topos, translates as ‘no-place.’ And if you look carefully, that’s precisely where you’ll find each ‘golden age’ of legend exists.�
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  “How could dreaming of a better world be dangerous?” I asked him.

  “It isn’t, as long as that world is truly better for everyone. And as long as it is a real world, not just a dream,” said Dacian. “Our present year, 1989, marks two centuries since the utopian ideals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau ushered in the French Revolution we were just speaking of. The sunrise at spring equinox at that time was within five degrees of the cusp—the point on the zodiacal circle marking the sun’s entry into the sign of Aquarius—close enough to feel the tug of the coming age. Yet twenty-five years of bloodshed later, the French monarchy was restored, followed by further decades of upheaval.

  “Then 1933, the year that Hitler came to power, brought us within one degree of the countdown toward the new age. As of today, we are within one-tenth of one degree of the cusp of the Aquarian age: it is already happening.”

  “You’re saying Napoleon and Hitler are connected with the new aeon?” I said. “They certainly wouldn’t fit anyone’s image of utopian idealists.”

  “Would they not?” said Dacian with lifted brow. “And yet that’s exactly what they were.”

  “Just a minute!” I said. “Please don’t tell me you admired those guys!”

  “I am telling you,” said Dacian carefully, “just how dangerous idealism, even spirituality, can be, when nurtured in the wrong hothouse. Idealists who begin by wanting to create a higher civilization almost always find they must begin by trying to improve cultures and societies. And invariably, this ends where it must, with trying to cull wheat from chaff—by genetics, eugenics, whatever it may be—to create a better breed of human being.”

  With these weighty words, we’d reached the Hofburg. Wolfgang got us tickets, and we all entered the Schatzkammer.

  We walked through rooms of big glass cases chock-full of crown jewels, imperial regalia, costumes, and reliquaries: the octagonal jewel-crusted millennium-old crown of the Holy Roman Empire with the figure of Rex Salomon emblazoned on the side, the Habsburg crown and orb with AEIOU—Austriae est imperare orbi universo: Austria Has Sovereignty Over the Entire World—and other modest family trinkets. At last we reached the final chamber with the swords of state and other imperial ceremonial weapons.

  There, on a bit of red velvet inside a small case against the wall, along with other items of seemingly greater value and interest, was a small dagger-shaped object, two pieces crudely made of some kind of iron, tied together with something that looked like catgut. The handle was designed to be fitted to a shaft, the center section surrounded by a thin collar of brass: the perfect image of the spear Laf had described from his childhood visit here nearly eight decades ago.

  “It looks like nothing, really, doesn’t it?” said Dacian, standing beside me as we gazed down into the glass case.

  Wolfgang, at my other side, said, “However, it is supposed to be the famous spear of Longinus. Many books have been written about it. Gaius Cassius Longinus was a Roman centurion who, it’s said, pierced the side of Christ with this very weapon. Beneath the brass collar, they say, is one of the crucifixion nails removed from the body of Christ. It is said, too, that Charlemagne’s sword in the next display case—thought to have belonged to Attila the Hun—is the same once wielded two thousand years ago by Saint Peter in the garden of Gethsemane.”

  “All nonsense, of course,” Dacian said. “The sword here is a medieval saber, not an early Hebrew or Roman weapon at all. And this spear before us is only a copy. Books have been written about that, too. Everyone coveted it, right down to Adolf Hitler, because of mysterious powers it possessed. It’s reported that when Hitler took the true spear of Longinus off to Nürnberg, along with other such treasures he’d gathered, he had copies made of each—and those copies are what we see today. From then on, everyone interested in power or glory was looking for the real ones, including the Windsors during their long exile and the American general George Patton—who’d studied his share of ancient history, and who himself turned Nürnberg Castle upside down hunting for them as soon as he arrived there at the end of the war. But the authentic objects had vanished.”

  “You don’t credit all those stories about Hitler living on after the war, and keeping the sacred hallows with him?” Wolfgang asked Dacian.

  “As you see, my dear,” Dacian addressed me with a smile, “there are many stories afloat. Some even support the lengthy survival, well beyond death, of nearly everyone in history associated with these objects, from Hitler to Jesus Christ. Since religions and political movements—which I confess often are indistinguishable to me—have been widely based on such tales, I decline to comment. I find the topic neither of importance nor of interest. What is of interest, however, is why individuals like Hitler or Patton wanted the so-called hallows at all. Only one person can answer that question.”

  “You don’t mean to say that you know where the sacred hallows might be?” said Wolfgang. Naturally, I wanted to hear the answer too, but Dacian didn’t bite.

  “As I explained to Ariel earlier,” he said patiently, “it’s the process, not the product, of the quest that’s truly important.”

  “But if the hallows aren’t the point,” Wolfgang said in frustration, “what is?”

  Dacian looked grim and shook his head. “Not what,” he repeated. “Not who, nor how, nor where, nor when, but why: that is the question. However, since facts seem so important to you, I’ll share what I do know. Indeed, I’ve already arranged to do so just after we’ve finished here.”

  He put one finger beneath my chin. “The moment I learned from Wolfgang what you might be carrying with you, I reserved a spot for us, by telephone from the restaurant. Our appointment is just one minute from now, at three o’clock, only a few steps from here on the Josefsplatz. We have the place to ourselves for an hour, until four when they close, and it may well take that long. I hope our friend Wolfgang won’t be disappointed that it’s not all cut-and-dry facts; quite a lot of background goes with the story, as well as some hearsay and a few surmises of my own. I’ll tell it while the two of you dispose of those dangerous papers—”

  “Dispose of the papers!” I choked, tightening my fingers on the bag. Wolfgang seemed shocked as well.

  “My dear, be reasonable,” Dacian said. “You can’t take them into the Soviet Union. Their customs officials confiscate, on general principles, whatever cannot be identified—including parking tickets. Nor can you scatter them on the streets of Vienna, nor entrust them to Wolfgang or me, since we’re both leaving the country tomorrow too. Therefore I urge the only solution I myself can think of given such short notice—to hide them in a place where no one is likely to find them soon: among the rare books of the Austrian National Library.”

  The Nationalbibliotek, built in the 1730s, is one of the most impressive libraries in the world—not because of its size or grandeur but because of its unearthly, fairylike beauty and the exotic nature of its collection of rare books, from Avicenna to Zeno, which places it second in importance only to that of the Vatican.

  I’d been here rarely as a child, but I still recalled vividly the library’s whipped-cream Baroque architecture and the astonishing pastel trompe l’oeil ceiling of the lofty dome. Last but not least—the most wonderful surprise in the world to a child—the bookcases were actually doors, paneled in books on each side, that swung open to reveal secret book-lined chambers beyond, each containing a large table and chairs and big airy windows overlooking the courtyard, where scholars could shut themselves away and work in private for hours. It was one of these that Dacian had reserved for us.

  “It’s a good plan,” Wolfgang assured me when we three were ensconced within the room. “I’d never have thought of anything better at such short notice.”

  Once I’d thought it over I agreed that, risky as it might be, Dacian had come up with a plausible way to protect the manuscripts. Even if anyone learned they were hidden here, the quick tally I’d made from the placard up front told me the library’s collections of books, f
olios, manuscripts, maps, periodicals, and incunabula totaled around four million items. That, and the fact that the stacks were closed to public access, made retrieving the scattered pages a project of colossal proportions for anyone so minded.

  For ten minutes we filled out cards for dozens of titles, handing them to librarians and waiting for the books to be pulled. When we were alone, I inserted pages of text into books pulled from shelves here in this room. As a further precaution, I proposed that once we were done we destroy all the call cards and keep no list.

  “But how will we find them again?” Wolfgang objected. “To find a thousand pages by trial and error among so many books—it would take dozens of people years and years!”

  “That’s what I’m counting on,” I said.

  I didn’t feel it essential to mention my photographic memory again, but I could recall a list of five hundred items—such as the author/title of each book where we’d stashed a few pages—for up to about three months. If I couldn’t return in that time, I’d write out the list, recommit it to memory, and destroy it again.

  More urgent was the matter of Dacian. As he said at the Schatzkammer, he had to fly back to Paris, so this session at the library was likely to be our last for quite a while, and I had plenty I needed to know before he got away. I’d have to walk and chew gum at the same time—try to split my brain to pay attention to Dacian while committing the book list to memory. I drew up my chair near his beside the window. Wolfgang stayed at the door accepting fresh shuttle-relays of books. He slid each pile down to me, maintaining a watchful eye to be sure we weren’t overheard. As I stuffed the volumes with folded pages of manuscript, I nodded for Dacian to proceed.

  “I’ll try to address both your questions,” he began, “the thirteen hallows Wolfgang is interested in, and the meaning of Pandora’s papers in Ariel’s possession. The answer to both centers on a remote part of the world little visited today—and then, little understood. Once this region had the highest culture. But now its past lies buried beneath the dust of centuries. It has been battled over constantly by the great powers, and its lines of demarcation even now are in dispute. But as some have learned to their cost, this is a land so wild and mysterious that its people, like the wild panther, can never be tamed.”