KATHERINE NEVILLE’S “Triple-Digit Days” Newsletter Dec 12, 2012

The end of a cycle is always fascinating, but this one is especially so. The twelve first years of our new century are about to end: Today.

There will be no more magical “triple-digit” days, until our (western, Christian) calendar rolls around, 88 years from now, to 1-1-(21)01. But in the case of this century, starting with 2001, we have also entered a new aeon: a 2000-year cycle. The ‘myths’ of all civilizations, regardless when individual calendars may have begun – Hebrew, Mayan, Islamic, Roman – have predicted what would happen across the globe (even before we knew we were living on a globe!) at this moment when spring and autumn equinoxes have shifted, as predicted by our common celestial clock in the sky, whether tuning in through Egyptian pyramids and obelisks, Orkney Island temples, or Stonehenge.

Tuning in ourselves to George Santayana’s famous saying: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, I tried to remember what I was doing on each of those magical double-digit days in our new aeon. Can you remember yours?

Starting with January (=Janus, the 2-faced god who can see the past and future.)

1-1-1: Just back from Prague where Karl Pribram received the first-ever Dagmar & Vaclav Havel Prize for uniting the sciences and humanities. The documentary The Professor and the Prize will soon be up on his web site.

But today, no one knew what would happen to the world 8 months later, on September 11.

Well…almost no one. I’d recently written my novel The Magic Circle – a tale that begins in the last week in the life of Jesus, 2000 years ago, at that previous turning point when similar prophecies were being revived from even more ancient cultures.

2-2-2: (The first Cube: 2x2x2=8.) Candlemas/Groundhog Day. If the groundhog sees the light it predicts 6 more weeks of winter. We’ve seen the birds of excessive ‘Spirit’ flying into the twin towers of ‘Matter’ setting off a chain reaction. Our war in Afghanistan is now 4 months old. Everything I wrote about in Magic Circle is happening.

3-3-3: March=Mars, the god of war. (Februaria was his mother.) Today, 3/3/3, Turkey gives us permission to use their bases as a launching pad. We are now less than 3 weeks from the war in Iraq. Baghdad – the spot where my imaginary chess set in The Eight was first created, 1200 years ago, which will resurface in The Fire.

4-4-4: I commemorate the only triple-digit birthday that will occur in my lifetime; then I head to New York for the Authors Guild annual dinner, which I often co-chair when it takes place on my birthday week, and it’s usually at the Metropolitan Club where the first murder takes place in The Eight! (Karl leads guided tours of the men’s room where the grandmaster is killed.)

5-5-5: A housewarming for our 150-year-old Virginia house, and our ghost Esme.

6-6-6: (The Number of the Beast in St John, and an important clue in The Eight and The Fire.) Our second annual housewarming, followed by the annual Monticello Cabinet retreat, at Thomas Jefferson’s home.

7-7-7: Our third annual housewarming, followed by the completion of The Fire.

8-8-8: Just before leaving on book tour to launch The Fire.

9-9-9: I rescue a Japanese House. Hand-built in the 1960s by famous Japanese potter, Teruo Hara, it reminds me of the treehouse in Sausalito where I wrote my first 2 books. In disrepair and overgrown for decades, the place had been finally boarded up for 6 years when I save it from demolition.

10-10-10: I begin restoration of the Japanese House, then, by serendipity, on the west lawn at Monticello, I meet the Fay, the owner of the other Japanese house Teruo Hara built – Chogetsu – located on Martha’s Vineyard.

11-11-11: Fay, Karl & I have caught the last ferry to the Vineyard and with friend Olga, we go to see Chogetsu. Today, we four gather back in DC to visit Olga’s “Mouse House,” just before she sells it. (More about Fay, Olga, the Mouse House and Chogetsu – they play a big role in recreating my new treehouse.)

TODAY (12-12-12): Karl Pribram’s long awaited book about the story of brain science is about to be published!

By the way, what were those ancient prophecies that I mentioned in The Magic Circle? “Violent, revolutionary upheaval in the fabric of the entire socio-economic order; tidal waves of change that cannot be halted, tsunami floods of wind and water altering our reality…. ” Only those who remain flexible, and “go with the flow” will survive. Those who build walls, dams, who remain rigid and inflexible will be squashed by the wave.