The ecological apocalypse visited on the Cumberlands is told through the personal history of Floyd Shaftoe. Floyd takes part in the "night battles" of Carlo Ginzburg recast in this American setting, failing to save the chestnut trees from the depredation of witches. Pierce, realizing he cannot make and execute a plan from the diamond he has stolen ( Read more... )

In chapter four we meet Sister Mary Philomel, whose Order (as I just learned from Google) is a fictional one. That Litany (also made up) on page 49 is some awesome Goddess worship. Sister is shown doing magic of the Catholic variety, appealing to saints and guardian angels, to some limited effect. Later on, Rose Ryder uses the power of the Holy ( Read more... )

Winnie's solution to the problem of forking paths seems to be the realization others express in the saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side ( Read more... )

Giordano Bruno is shown around the Vatican by an unnamed blonde boy, surely Hermes, leading him like a psychopomp down into the library. Bruno reading the Divine Pymander finds Aegypt at last, and the ending of all in Adocentyn. He has his realization of infinity in the Alps ( Read more... )

I had a book I loved so much that I actually stole it from the middle school library. It was called Mysterious Britain (Frater Hyperion told me he remembered it, too) and through it I already knew about the ley-lines and earthworks, Glastonbury and its zodiac, so marvelously described here. It is a pleasure to see it through Dee's eyes. Also a ( Read more... )

In page 247, Kraft is revealed to have been a practitioner of the art of memory (no armchair magician he.) I had forgotten the Sphinx pays Pierce back, had remembered the book deal as what paid for his move to the country. It seems insinuated that she prostituted herself for the money ( Read more... )

On page 198, the first heart-stopping moment of naked metafiction. Doctor Dee translates a mysterious cipher, and is given a sentence from earlier in The Solitudes; trying another method, he gets the first sentence of Aegypt. This might be thought of as the untitled, unfinished manuscript that is found on Sandy Kraft's desk, in which Doctor Dee ( Read more... )

I feel tired and a bit rushed today, so all I will say for now is this: honorificabilitudinitatibus.

Begins with a scene I had assumed to be based on the making of the movie "Caligula", but which the author later affirmed to have occurred pretty much as written. On page 63, the first appearance of a peculiarly Crowleyan word which seems to be unused by any other writer: operose. I had to look it up the first time I encountered it (in Little, Big) ( Read more... )

I took up the book with the first line already running in my memory, There were angels in the glass, two four six many of them... The details of the paragraph following were imperfectly remembered, though; pleasing, that some parts should still be novel, a little of my dread at coming here again dissipating ( Read more... )