Status Updates From Lilith

Ch. 2 Hello! A mirror! Incident, 3 days, incident, 7 days, incident. Fairy tale numbers! He tries moving the strange book to no avail. He’s sitting in the chair, deciding to overhaul the books, he suddenly rises and sees Mr. Raven. He equivocates in his description because it can’t be real. A thing stooping man with a black cloack, black-stockinged legs, and slipper-like shoes. He follows the shadow out of the room.

Raven encouraged him to read dark, evil books and one day both disappeared. Mr. Raven has been seen occasionally. She thinks Raven is the devil himself. Some say they are dead and some say they live in an alternate world. The butler does not know how the ancient woman knew this but the figure seen by the young man matches her description. He’s only seen meddling with books. They agree to remain silent.

The young man’s dad was eight when this was happening. The butler had never seen the figure but others had. His grandfather, Sir Ralph, sacked anyone who gossiped about the figure and called it a maid’s tale. Everyone shut up but it was not seen anymore. An ancient woman (wise woman?) in town said an old librarian, Mr. Raven (Norse symbol of wisdom), served the man in the portrait Sir Upward.

There is a lot of seeing and not seeing here. That afternoon, he sits there reading in the same part of the house. He looks up to think and sees the same man open the door that the sham shelf sits on and disappear. The sham book is back in its spot. The young man runs to the door to open it and, as always, it’s stuck. He rings for the butler who spills the beans. When he arrived long ago, the dark figure made visits.

He sees a tall dark figure grab a book and vanish. He thinks it’s an optical illusion until he looks for a book and sees that spot empty, only to see the book in its spot in the next morning. THREE days later, in the oldest part of the library, a sham book on a prank shelf is missing but, when I asks his most faithful servant to confirm what he does not see, the servant sees nothing wrong.

He’s drawn to the Bacons, Dante, Boyle, and Ptolemy (the PLANETS) instead of modern scientists. He’s rejecting the Enlightenment! In the evening of a gloomy rainy day, he watches the sun’s red glory splash into a water fountain (wisdom and vitality) and he follows its rays which lights up a picture of an ancestor and he is seeing it with new eyes. Very gothic! The reflection in his eyes makes him turn his head.

An ancient house and what appears to be a dying family. Is this a gothic romance? Only the library of the house matters. Does this mean that his sole focus is the mind and he doesn’t know how to live? He describes it as a moving panorama and he has added books to his taste. It has grown throughout the years and has spilled into other rooms on the ground floor. Is a homeschooler’s dream, a homeschooler’s warning?

Ch. 1 - I read this book over twenty years and all I remember is being very confused. This is a Romance and the hero had a fall in status as a child. Both parents died within a year of each other. He returns from a year at Oxford to manage the estate he inherited. He knows little of his ancestors except that they liked to study as did he. He prefers physical sciences as a way to find metaphysical metaphors.

Preface - I am wondering why he quotes Thoreau. They both cared about nature, and they most likely diverged in thought concerning spirituality and truth. Rather than respond with philosophy or writings from nature, he chose to let Imagintion do its deep magic. Reading The Silver Chair and Princess and the Goblin at the same time is mind-blowing. Now, I am adding Lilith due to the Lit Life podcast.

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Not really tracking here but that’s ok