The Magic Circle

by Katherine Neville

  To: Joseph of Arimathea

  at Glastonbury, Britannia

  From: Miriam of Magdali

  at Bethany, Judea

  Dearly beloved Joseph,

  Many thanks for your letter, which James Zebedee brought after his visit with you. I regret it’s taken one whole year to fulfill your request, but as you’ve no doubt learned from James by now, everything here has changed—everything.

  Oh, Joseph, how I miss you! And how grateful I am that you’ve asked me to carry out this undertaking. It seems you alone recall how much the Master relied upon women. Who but women financed his mission, provided him shelter, traveled and taught and healed and ministered by his side? With his mother Miriam we followed his path to Golgotha; we stood weeping beneath the cross until he died and we went to the sepulchre to wash his body, to prepare it with rare herbs and fine Magdali linen. In short, we women were the ones who stayed with the Master from beginning to end. Even beyond the end, until his spirit ascended to heaven.

  Joseph, forgive my pouring out these turbulent feelings. But when you reached across the waters through your letter, I felt like a drowning woman rescued at the final hour. I agree that something significant happened in the Master’s last days, and I’m the more frustrated since I can’t come at once to Britannia as you wish. But this delay could prove a blessing—for I myself may have discovered something that hasn’t been hinted at in any of the memoirs I’ve collected for you: it’s related to Ephesus.

  The Master’s mother, who’s been like a mother to me, is as disturbed as the rest of us at what’s become of her son’s legacy in so short a time. She’s determined to move to Ephesus on the Ionian coast, and has asked me to accompany her there and to stay out the year until she’s fully settled.

  Her protector, young Johan Zebedee, whom the Master used to call parthenos, or ‘blushing virgin,’ now seems a grown man. He’s built us a little stone house on Ortygia, Quail Mountain, in the outskirts of the city: perhaps you recall it from your travels? I’m sure the Master did, for he selected the location himself and told his mother of it shortly before his death. It’s an odd choice of site: the house, I’m told, is only a stone’s throw from the sacred well the Greeks believe marks the spot where their goddess Artemis (or Diana, as the Romans call her) was born. But there is more.

  Each year at their festival of Eostre—the spring equinox when the goddess’s birth is celebrated—Ortygia becomes the focus of pilgrimages from all over the Greek world. Small children tramp across this mountain searching for the fabled red Eostre eggs, symbols of luck and fertility, sacred to the goddess. Ironically, this celebration takes place just during our Pesach: the very week, two years ago, when the Master died. So this pagan goddess and her rites seem strangely linked with the memory of the Master’s death, and also with the one thing I told you was missing from all the other accounts: a story the Master told us up on the mountain, the same day you came to my house two years ago, just home from your year at sea.

  “When I was young,” the Master told us that morning, high in the wildflower meadow, “I went abroad among many foreign peoples. I learned that the people of the far north have a word for something they hold true: ‘dru,’ which also means belief, and ‘troth’—a pledge. So just as in our Judaic tradition, truth, justice, and faith are one: priests are also lawgivers. When one of their priests dispenses justice, as our own ancestors did in ancient times, he stands beneath the duru, a tree we call oak. Their priest is therefore called d’rui or d’ruid in plural, meaning ‘giver of truth.’

  “Also like the ancient Hebrews, these northerners hold most sacred the number thirteen, the number of months in a year of the lunar calendar. Because the thirteenth moon marks the end of the year, it’s the number we identify with change, the number of a new cycle, the number of rebirth and of hope. This number itself is the kernel of truth in the story of Jacob, who wrestled with the angel of God and was transformed into ‘Isra’el.’ As everyone tends to forget, our forefather, Jacob, did not have twelve children—he had thirteen.”

  Then, as if he’d explained everything clearly and the session were at an end, the Master seemed to drift back toward an inner realm, and turned from us as if to depart.

  “But, Master!” cried Simon Peter. “Surely there’s some mistake? I admit I know nothing of these oak-men you speak of. But among our own people it’s an established fact of Torah that there are twelve tribes of Israel—not thirteen as you said. Such a thing has never been questioned!”

  “Peter, Peter, God gave you ears. You should pay Him back by using them!” said the Master, laughing as he squeezed Peter’s shoulder. When Peter looked crestfallen, the Master added, “I didn’t say thirteen tribes but thirteen children. Listen to the story with new ears: ask yourself why this fact should represent the kernel of truth I was seeking.”

  The Master came over to where I sat with the others in the broad ring of grassy meadow, and he placed his hand on my hair and smiled down at me.

  “One day Miriam may find the answer,” the Master told Peter. “I’ve always thought of Miriam as my thirteenth disciple. But one day she’ll also be my first apostle: thirteen and one, the completion of a cycle. Alpha and omega, the first and last.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “Jacob’s forgotten child that I spoke of was named Dinah. As I see it, Dinah herself embodies the kernel of truth in the story. Her name, like that of her brother Dan, means judge.”

  Smiling that strange smile, the Master turned away again and went off down the mountain, leaving all of us to follow in his wake.

  Joseph, you know as well as I that the Master never used parable or paradox to confuse, or merely to titillate: there was motive behind his method. He thought that only if we quested after truth, and arrived at it ourselves, would the truth we found be completely understood, thoroughly absorbed, and become a part of us.

  That morning the Master made clear the number thirteen was related to the Hebrew lunar calendar, therefore to the concept of seasonal change. But why didn’t he also mention what he must have known: that the Roman name for Dinah is Diana? And why didn’t he tell us the plan I’ve just spoken of: that he intended one day for his own mother to live in a famous oak grove in Ortygia? That her house was to be built beside a well on the very spot where the moon goddess Artemis—also called Diana of the Ephesians, patroness of springs and wells, whose rites are conducted in oak groves throughout the Greek world—was born? No, it could be no accident that this was the last story the Master told his flock, on what proved to be the last day we were all together. The only mistake was mine, in not seeing it before.

  Joseph, I know that this story and the reports I’ve sent will give rich fodder to your mind, and that before we meet again, you’ll have digested them fully. I myself, meanwhile, shall strive to learn more about the Master’s private motives—for such, I’m convinced, they were—in sending his mother to the home of this famous Ephesian goddess. Perhaps, together, you and I can find the missing link that will knot together all these seemingly diverse and scattered events of the Master’s last days.

  For now, Joseph, I pray that you walk with God; and I send you my eyes, my ears, my heart, and my blessing—that you may see, hear, love, and believe as the Master wished us to do.

  Miriam of Magdali

  When Joseph looked up from this letter, the sun had dipped below the horizon, staining the sea bloodred. The churning fog rolled over the waters like sulfuric fumes rising from the depths. Lovernios stood beside him, his eyes on the fiery vista as if lost in thought, and did not speak.

  “There’s something in this tale Miriam hasn’t mentioned,” said Joseph. “While it’s true Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, was one of thirteen children, she wasn’t the thirteenth child born to him. In Torah, birth sequence—at least among the sons of a tribe—is quite important. Dinah was the last child born to Jacob’s elder wife, Leah, but not the last of Jacob’s thirteen.”

  “He had more than one wife, then, your ancestor
?” asked Lovernios with interest. Polygamy among the Keltoi was rare, and unacceptable within the elite class of Druid.

  “Jacob had two wives and two concubines,” said Joseph. “I told you the Master’s memory was remarkable, especially regarding Torah. All the numbers in Torah are significant—for the Hebrew alphabet, like the Greek, is based on numbers. I agree that the Master wanted the story of Dinah to be seen from many angles.”

  “Tell me then,” said Lovernios.

  It was dusk, and the fog had encased the beach below. It would quickly grow dark, so Lovernios collected some nearby brush and a few branches and twigs, and chopped at the flint he’d extracted from his thong-tied sack, to make a hastily improvised fire. The two men sat on a nearby rock plateau as Joseph recounted the tale.

  THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE

  The story begins with our ancestor Jacob as a young man. Twice Jacob had tricked his older twin brother Esau out of his birthright. When he learned Esau had threatened to kill him as soon as their father died, Jacob fled the land of Canaan and headed north, to the country of his mother’s tribe. Arriving in the mountains near the Euphrates River, the first thing Jacob saw was a beautiful young shepherdess who brought her sheep to a well, and Jacob fell in love with her. As it proved, she was his own cousin Rachel, the younger daughter of his mother’s brother, Laban. At once Jacob asked for her hand in marriage.

  Jacob worked seven years for his uncle to earn Rachel as his bride. But the dawn after his wedding night he learned he’d been tricked: the woman he’d lain with that night—substituted under cover of darkness for Rachel—was her squint-eyed older sister, Leah, for it was the custom in the north to marry off the eldest first. When his uncle Laban offered Jacob Rachel as a second wife, Jacob agreed to pay her dower by toiling seven years more in his uncle’s fields. The number seven is also a key number in our people’s history. God created the world and took his rest within seven days. The number seven marks the fulfillment and completion of all creative undertakings, the number of divine wisdom. It is therefore significant that seven is the birth sequence of Jacob’s only daughter, as are the key events leading up to her birth:

  While God ignored Rachel’s desire to have children, her sister Leah gave birth to four sons. Rachel offered to her husband her servant Bilhah, who gave birth to two more sons. Because Jacob no longer came to Leah’s bed, she offered her own servant, Zilpah, who likewise had two sons by Jacob—while the unhappy Rachel still remained barren. But things were about to change.

  One day the eldest son, Reuben, found some mandrakes in the wheat fields and brought them to his mother, Leah. Mandrakes, like May-apples, promote conception and are associated with the temptation of Eve. Rachel asked Leah to share them, but Leah would agree only in exchange for Jacob’s restored services as a husband. The desperate Rachel said yes, after which Leah gave birth to two more sons. And then the vital event was about to occur. Leah’s seventh and final child—the eleventh of Jacob’s children—was a girl, who was given the name of Dinah.

  Upon Dinah’s birth, Leah’s fertility and Rachel’s barrenness were both at an end. Rachel’s firstborn son Joseph, later viceroy of Egypt, therefore became Jacob’s twelfth child. And the final child was Benjamin, whose birth resulted in Rachel’s death and the end of the family cycle. His number was thirteen.

  The sequence in which the children were born, the way each was blessed by Jacob before his death, and even the way in which the tribes were later blessed by Moses in the desert, are all known to be important in the history of our people. But Dinah herself does not reappear in the story until her father Jacob returns from self-imposed exile in the north, and brings his family back into the land of Canaan.

  Jacob bought land from the local prince, Hamor, and dug a well that’s still there today at the foot of the sacred Mount Gerizim, and settled in with his family in the land of Canaan. When Dinah went through the wheat fields one day to meet some of the local maidens, Hamor’s son Shechem saw her and wanted her, and he defiled her there in the field. But when Shechem realized he was in love with Dinah, he took her home and asked his father Hamor to arrange that they might marry.

  When Hamor went to Dinah’s father and her brothers, he offered to share half his estates if they’d permit this marriage. Jacob and his sons agreed, only if all males of the Canaanite clan would agree to be circumcised, as Jewish covenant requires. But two of Dinah’s brothers were lying—for no sooner had the Canaanite men undergone surgery than Simeon and Levi fell upon their households, killing all the men, removing Dinah forcibly from the house of her captors, looting and destroying the houses, and making off with the women and children, sheep and oxen and material wealth. Jacob’s family was forced to flee Canaan in fear of retribution for this deception and bloody massacre.

  We know two more things regarding this tale:

  Jacob and his family left Canaan, never to return. Near the well he’d dug there—Jacob’s well—grew the Oak of Shechem, where Moses would one day instruct the Hebrews to build their first altar upon their return from Egypt to the promised land. Beneath that now famous tree, Jacob buried all the clothes and jewelry and treasures, and even the statues and idols—all the belongings of his wives and concubines and servants and the captives from Canaan—so that each might put on clean clothes and begin a new life before starting into the land of his father’s people.

  Between the land of Canaan they’d left behind and the land of Judea that lay before them, near Bethlehem, Rachel gave birth to the thirteenth and last child, whom she called Benoni but whom Jacob named Benjamin—and then she died.

  “And what of Dinah, the cause of all these changes in fortune, these beginnings and endings and reversals of fate?” asked Lovernios when Joseph had finished his tale.

  “We’ll never know how she felt about the treachery that had been done by her brothers in her name, for this is the last time she’s mentioned in Torah,” said Joseph. “But the objects that were buried beneath that oak are often called ‘Dinah’s legacy,’ since they changed the destiny of the Hebrew people from what it might have been, stripping them of their past and even their identities. From that day nearly two thousand years ago when they left Canaan—modern Samaria—and entered Hebron—now Judea—they were reborn into a new and different life.”

  “Do you think this was the hidden message of Esus of Nazareth?” Lovernios asked. “To strip ourselves of our past and be reborn to a new way of life?”

  “That’s what I hope to learn from the contents of these cylinders,” Joseph replied.

  “I believe by this woman’s letter I can already guess what was in the mind of Esus of Nazareth, and why he told that tale to his disciples,” said the prince. “It has to do with the well of Jacob you spoke of, and the tree.”

  Joseph looked into those deep blue eyes, nearly black pools in the firelight.

  “My people have oak trees too, my friend,” said Lovernios, “groves of them, each with its sacred well, fed by a sacred spring. And in each of these holy spots we pay tribute to a special goddess. Her name is neither Dinah nor Diana. But it is Danu—my own tribe, for instance, the Tuatha De Danaan, are the people of Danu—which seems rather too close for chance. Danu is the great virgin, mother of all ‘found waters’—that is, fresh waters like those of springs and wells. Her very name means ‘the gift,’ for such water is life itself. And we pay tribute to her much as your ancestor Jacob did, only we don’t bury our treasure under an oak, we throw it down the well near the oak, where it’s received into the waiting arms of the goddess.”

  “But you can’t really think the Master’s final message was—” Joseph began.

  “What you might call heathen or pagan?” Lovernios finished for him with a wry smile. “I fear you never understood him, any of you, even since his boyhood. You saw him as a great philosopher, a mighty prophet, a saviour king. But I saw him as one fili, or seer, regards another, with unveiled eyes: naked, as it were. Naked as when we come into the world, and naked as when we
die. A fili can see the raw soul of another—and his soul was ancient, your Esus of Nazareth. But there was something more.…”

  “Something more?” said Joseph, though he was half afraid to ask.

  The Prince of Foxes gazed into the fire, watching the sparks that crawled like living things across the ground before slipping soundlessly into the black night sky. Joseph felt his skin prickle in anticipation before hearing the drui’s whispered words:

  “He has a god in him.”

  Joseph felt his breath let out suddenly, as if he’d been struck a sharp blow.

  “A god?” he said. “But, Lovern, you know for our people there can be but one God: King of Kings, Lord of Hosts, the One whose name is not spoken, whose image is never graven, whose breath created the world, and who creates Himself simply by saying ‘I am.’ Do you suggest this God might actually enter into a living human being?”

  “I’m afraid I saw his resemblance to another god,” the prince said slowly. “For even his name is that of the great Celtic god Esus, lord of the netherworld, of wealth sprung from the earth. Human sacrifices—or, more properly, those who sacrifice themselves to Esus—must hang upon a tree in order to gain true wisdom and the knowledge of immortality. Wotan, a god of the far north, hung for nine days from a tree to obtain the secret of the Runes, the mystery of all mysteries. Your Esus of Nazareth hung for nine hours, but the idea is the same. I believe that he was a shaman of the highest degree—that he sacrificed himself to enter the magic circle where truth resides, in order to achieve divine wisdom and spiritual immortality.”

  “Sacrificed himself? And for wisdom? For some kind of immortality?” cried Joseph of Arimathea, leaping to his feet in agitation. It was true that the Romans spoke of human sacrifice among the Keltoi, but this was the first he’d heard a drui mention it. “No, no. It simply isn’t possible. Jesua may have been a Master, but I raised him—I thought of him as my only child. I knew him better than anyone. He could never have turned his back on mankind, or turned away from his life’s mission of seeking the salvation of his fellow beings through love, right here on earth! He strove always toward life and light. Don’t ask me to believe that the Master would engage in some dark, barbarian ritual to invoke the bloodthirsty gods of our ancestors.”