The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

the gaudy jewel at its center: Saint Stephan’s, the gold-tiled, multispired cathedral that forms the heart of the circle of Vienna.

Wolfgang was pacing at the corner where the two streets met. He glanced at his wristwatch, then scanned the crowds. I was reminded of the first time I’d seen him, in the same elegant camel overcoat and silk scarf and leather gloves, at the Technical Science annex of the nuclear site back in Idaho—good lord, was it only one week ago? It seemed a million years.

“Do you know the meaning of the word ‘aeon’?—or more properly aion in Greek,” Dacian asked me. “It has to do with why I’ve brought you both here to this corner.”

“It’s a long span of time,” I said. “Longer than a millennium.”

Wolfgang caught sight of us and cut through the swirling throngs with an expression of relief. But after one look at me his eyes clouded with concern.

“I’m sorry I agreed to leave you,” he told me. “You were already exhausted before.” Then he snapped at Dacian, “She looks awful—what have you said to her?”

“Gee, thanks a lot,” I commented with a wry smile. But I knew if my stress was so visible at first glance, I needed to pull myself together fast.

“Come now,” Dacian reassured Wolfgang. “Ariel has merely survived the ordeal of an hour or so spent with a member of her own family. Not a pleasant chore perhaps, but a task she’s managed splendidly.”

“We gorged on food and philosophy,” I told Wolfgang. “Now we’ve moved on to the millennium—Dacian was about to explain what the Greek word aion means.”

Wolfgang glanced at Dacian in surprise. “But it’s what Ariel and I were speaking of only yesterday in Utah,” he said. “The coming of this new century will also be the start of a new ‘age’ or aeon—a major two-thousand-year cycle.”

“That’s the common understanding,” said Dacian. “A vast span, a recurring cycle, from aevum, a full circle or axis. But for the ancient Greeks the word aion meant something more: moisture, the cycle of life itself that begins and ends in water. They imagined a river of living waters surrounding land like a serpent swallowing its tail. Earth’s aion consisted of rivers, springs, wells, underground waters that erupted from the depths and radiated outward to create and feed all forms of life. The Egyptians believed we were born from the tears of the gods, and that the zodiac itself was a circling river whose axis was the small bear’s tail. Another reason why the bears are called ladles or dippers—which leads to what I want to show you, just near here.”

Back at the corner where Wolfgang had been pacing, mounted on the wall of an unobtrusive grey building, Dacian pointed out a small cylindrical glass case. Within it was a gnarled object about three feet long, with a skin of black lumps as if diseased with a fungal growth. It seemed to be writhing—alive. Even separated by the glass, I got a chill of repulsion looking at it.

“What is this?” I asked Dacian.

It was Wolfgang who answered. “It’s very famous—it’s the Stock-im-Eisen. Stock means stump, and Eisen is iron. This is a five-hundred-year-old tree trunk, studded with old-fashioned square-headed carpentry nails so thickly you can’t see any wood. People say it was the tradition of some blacksmith guild. The Naglergasse, or Nailmakers’ Alley, is not far from here. This stump was found only recently, when the U-bahn was dug. They also found an early chapel which you can see, perfectly restored, in the subway. No one has ever understood why they were buried so deeply, centuries ago—or by whom.”

“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