The angels hear footfalls

John Crowley, The Solitudes (Book One of the AEgypt Cycle): Reading Notes, Part IV

The book agent, gypsy-blooded Julie, perceives that the new science is the one that is out of energy and that "the old, other stuff seem[s] right now actually more modern.". Among other things, the old knowledge recognizes planets as "living brings": "one big animal, and Man a part of it. A biosphere."

Of Pierce's reluctance to actually employ his studies, to embrace magic, Julie mulls: "One day he'll learn, she thought, if not in this lifetime, the next, or the next. It's the task set for him, even if he doesn't know it: he who knows so much.

Dee's decoding of the cypher text brought by Talbot also links the two prologues -- one possible solution refers to Pierce Moffat's fascination with the "three questions" conundrum and the other to Dee's own obsession with orders of angels.

Julie part of "a group that kept in touch coast-to-coast as much by an interlock of thought and feeling as by phone and letter." The group senses that Atlantis is about to rise.

Pierce leaves New York and moves to Blackbury Jambs to write his book, renting a second story apartment, and recommencing the imaginative journey of his boyhood: "And beyond, out there, he would sail the porch. Just as he had once used to sail a narrow second-story porch of the Oliphant house in Kentucky long ago. Vigilant; calm; his hand on the wheel; sailing at treetop level a sun porch windowed like a dirigible's gondola, or the bridge of a steamship headed east."

Pierce's imaginative sun porch voyage doubled in similar second story journey of the Buddhist child care giver Beau, who sits with folded legs on a carpet and soars over the surrounding countryside, then doubled again in John Dee's journey to Glastonbury with his son Arthur and the skyrer Talbot, when the Doctor ascends a hill and sees figures of the zodiac inscribed on the hills and valleys below.

Dee sees the multiplicities of meaning-systems and quests contained in the earth: "the grail sometimes a cup, sometimes a stone, sometimes a dish . . . there was not one Grail; there were, or will be, or have been, not one Grail but five, five Grails for five Percevals to find. There were grails of earth, water, fire, air; there was a stone, a cup, a crater or furnace, and the basin borne by Aquarius, who is a sign of air. And another, the Grail of the quintesence. . . . Doctor Dee raised his eyes to the heavens, whose stars were wept of cloud now, and Tell me, he said: Tell me: Is the universe one thing? Is it after all? The angels saw him, who manage those skies he put his quesstion to . . . They smiled, hearing his question; and then one by one turned away, tolook over their shoulders -- for they were disturbed by a noise, a noise as of footfalls far away and faint, the footfalls of someone coming through behind."

In the Carnegie library at Blackbury Jambs, Pierce browses and inwardly mocks a bestseller of the "ancient astronauts" variety, scowling at the questionable veracity of the very "lay lines" that have drawn Dr. Dee to Glastonbury along with the (it is now clear) fraudulent skyrer Talbot. Pierce remains an historian and it remains to be seen whether he will assume the role of reconstructing magical knowledge that Julie believes is his task.

Unpacking his own books, Pierce browses his copy of Dr. Dee's elusive metaphysical tract along with the four volume work of his mentor Frank Walker Barr (again, the Joseph Campbell resonance seems clear).