At every pile there was a paper in which he divided the books into subsections. If it was printed original writings or whether it was scientific literature, fiction, maps, monographs, essays, etc.
Almost all of the books could be listed in a category but after Bruno was a stack of books that were difficult to classify. There were some works of fiction and three Arabic books, Picatrix, Book of the Secrets of Creation and the Book of Crates.
Ludwig sat in front of the desk and approached the last pile. After several songs had played after Snoop Dogg, he had slipped down on the chair. He was approaching the end of the pile.
When he finished reading D.P. Walker's summary of Ficino's magic the playlist jumped to the last song in the list. Mike Patton's voice from Faith No More filled the room.
Ludwig got new energy, he sat up in his chair. He began to see a pattern. At random he picked two books from each pile and tested the hypothesis.
He read the table of contents where such existed.
Skimmed ten pages of each book. Wrote keywords in the notebook August gave him.
A sense of reward poured out his body.
A feeling he had not had in over a year. It kicked the shit out of the despair and anxiety for a while. Swept clean in the head and made up with the ape-fucker, as best it could, anyway.
He took out more books and read. It was masterpieces by Frances A. Yates, her The Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Thorndike and his History of magic and experimental science, Faivre, The Eternal Hermes: From Greek God to alchemical Magus, and Mead's Thrice-Greatest Hermes.
After a few hours, he had quickly gone through all the books on the table. The theory seemed to hold. He read the circled word in the notebook.
Hermeticism
All books, despite their different nature and their origin from different times and by different authors, were somehow about Hermeticism. A tradition of ideas that emanated from the fabled Hermetic writings, including the written collection that Leonardo di Pistoia found in a cavity under the examination room in the mountain monastery in Macedonia.
Ludwig was not particularly well-versed about hermetismen. As far as possible he avoided the writings and teachings which according to him was floating on clouds and never touched the ground.
As Ludwig understood it, the Hermetic writings was forged from sometime after Christ, the counterfeiters had, as Ludwig remembered it, a strong desire to have the scriptures seem older than they actually were. However, there were some who claimed that they were much older than that and authentic but what Ludwig knew they had come to naught when they were to prove it.
The scriptures would according to legend contain the old truth that went all the way back to Thoth in Egypt. The original religion that all religions then had distorted, which Ludwig thought was a little too big claim but he was a skeptic out in his fingertips.
Ludwig was satisfied with the work. He turned off the music and sat down in a chair. Stretched out his legs above the floor.
He closed his eyes and relaxed.
He was about to doze off.
It did not take long until he was back in the deserted town and behind her.
He stood still when she turned around.
The dawn was over. The sun shone strongly over the deserted city.
Her hair was above the shoulders.
The sun blinded him. He could not see her eyes. He only saw a bright light.
He stepped aside. The sun disappeared over the rooftops.
Ludwig flinched when he saw her.
Her cheeks and forehead were smooth. Over her eyes were skin and the nose had no opening. And her mouth had no lips, the opening was only a narrow stripe.
She had no face.
He woke up but didn´t open his eyes. He felt something.
It was a wind that swept through the library and in the halls next door.
It sounded like the hum of a seashell.
It came closer. He knew that he did not hear anything, his brain and his memory deceived him.
The sound entered the room. Ludwig kept his eyes closed. It flew around the table and crawled up the chair. The wind stopped at his ear.
The hum died out.
The library was completely silent.
Suddenly he felt a pain in the stomach. At his left ear, someone whispered.
It was Ella.
Her voice sounded weird.
She said. ”Ludwig, why did you do it?”
Quick as lightning he flew up and looked next to his chair. He was terrified.
No one was there.
He ran around the room and looked in the bookcases. Behind the desk. In the other rooms. He ran out to the rotunda, crawled on his knees under the table, moved the chairs. Shouted out.
”Hello, is anyone there?”
The words disappeared into the rotunda and into the aisles. He heard someone pick the books a few meters up. August came out on a ledge, near a spiral staircase made of wood with metal railings.
”Ludwig. Do not shout. Go and work.”
Ludwig waved to August and apologized. He returned perplexed and wondered what had happened.
He convinced himself that he imagined it all. If not imagination, what could it be. He walked up to the desk and changed playlist. It was Clint Mansell and Requiem for a Dream.
He put the music slightly higher. The whining strings would scare away all the ghosts of the mind.
He read faster than usual.
The bloody, throbbing, grinning ape-fucker would not fuck with him today.
Not the freak that lived in him.
Not today.
But despite the loud music he could still hear the hum. He could almost see the invisible, like a veil that wrapped him and tried to strangle him.
He ran out to August again. Asked him to accompany him back to the room to go through what he found.
He didn´t want to be alone.
16
The Castle Ruotkerspurch, Riegersburg
June 12
They sat at the table in Victoria's room. Ludwig opened the notebook and turned it against August. He pointed to the circled word, Hermeticism.
August looked blank at first. The word told him nothing except that he of course knew about it but shortly after he read it he struck his hands together and seemed to be filled with warmth but he would not say what it was to Ludwig. He urged him instead to continue.
Ludwig told him about the sectioning of the books on the table and told him what his research had resulted in so far.
”I have found several strange things. Just look at the notes in this book.”
Ludwig grabbed a book by G.R.S. Mead titled Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis, Volume 1-3. He flipped to page 102.
”Someone has written something here, beside the note there´s something fuzzy about transcendence and Hermetism:”
Seek the light, everything is in the light
”Have you any idea what that means?”
August shook his head. He reached for the book and took it from Ludwig. He filled his lungs and sighed. His hand trembled as he touched the handwriting.
”No, Ludwig. I have not the faintest. Have you found anything else?”
”Yes, plenty.”
He pointed to a figure that he drew in his notebook.
”For example. This strange V 'return in book after book. I have no idea what it is.”