The Fire (52 page)

INDIANS (Native Americans): Thanks to the former head of the Inter-Tribal Council and my friend of nearly twenty years Adam Fortunate Eagle, for introducing me to indigenous reality for the first time; Rick West, founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and his wife, Mary Beth, for connecting me with the D.C. area tribes; Karenne Wood, director, Virginia Indian Heritage
Trail, for helping to refresh ten thousand years of pre-European history here in Virginia; and Gabrielle Tayac (daughter of Red Flame, granddaughter of Turkey Tayac), for walking the ancient ossuary fields of Piscataway with me and for introducing me through her writings and our conversations to Mathew King,
Noble Red Man,
and to the Original Instructions.

ISLAM, MIDDLE EAST, FAR EAST: Thanks to Professor Fathali Moghaddam of Georgetown University for our many discussions, his helpful insights, and prepublication papers and books on pre-and post-9/11 terrorist psychology in these regions of the world; the director of the Middle East and Africa Division of the Library of Congress, Mary Jane Deeb (also my fellow novelist and friend), for getting me my first LOC library card and helping me dig out all of Byron’s collected correspondence and a glut of other great stuff; and to Subhash Kak, for his assistance over the years on all things Kashmiri, and especially for
The Astronomical Code in the RgVeda,
his connection between Indian cosmology, and fire altars.

MATHEMATICS, MYTHOLOGY, AND ARCHETYPES: Thanks to Michael Schneider, for the
Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe
and his subsequent workbooks (if I’d had these as a child, I’d be a mathematician today) and especially for finding for me the Islamic phoenixes that fit into the ‘Breath of God’ tilings in Iran; Magda Kerenyi, for giving me so much ‘mythological help’ over the years and for her many insights into the thoughts of her late husband, the great mythographer Carl Kerenyi; Stephen Karcher, of
Eranos I-Ching
fame, for information on deep east-west connections and divination; Vicki Noble, for providing me data from three years of her extensive travels and research into female shamanism, especially in eastern Russia; Professor Bruce MacLennan of the University of Tennessee, who has
never failed, these past twenty years, to help convert
any
mathematical puzzle I come up with, regardless of how obtuse or esoteric, into something that will work credibly within a novel; and especially my friend David Fideler, author of
Jesus Christ Sun of God,
for telling me so many years ago that 888 (my favorite number) is the Greek gematria (secret numeric decoding) for the name of Jesus, just as 666 is the gematria for mankind; and my friend Ernest McClain, for
The Pythagorean Plato
and
The Myth of Invariance
exploring the harmonics of such numbers in the names of the ancient gods of Egypt and Greece.

MEMORY AND PERCEPTION: First, thanks to Dr Beulah McNab of the Netherlands, for sending me, in 1996, de Groot & Gobet’s
Perception and Memory in Chess,
still the definitive study, which opened my mind to how chess players think differently than we mere mortals; thanks also to Galen Rowell, the late, great mountaineer and photographer, for his (August 1999) insights, in a private letter, into a similar intuitive process in rock climbing; and thanks especially to my mate, Dr Karl Pribram, for explaining (often under duress) what we know of memory and perception through brain research and how past and future interconnect in our thought processes.

RUSSIA: Thanks to Elina Igaunis for helping all of us Americans to escape from the monks at Zagorsk (and for lending us sweaters in the subzero ‘Women’s Summer’); and to Richard Pritzker many (mixed) thanks for choosing that Moscow restaurant where, while sipping margaritas, we witnessed an underworld-mob stabbing. Thanks to artist Yuri Gorbachev, for my magical ‘Bird of Heaven’ painting, and to his art dealer, Dennis Easter, for the Russian icon and the David Coomler
Russian Icon
book. And very special thanks to the late Aleksandr Romanovitch Luria and Professor Eugene Sokolov, for together taking Karl Pribram to the first
Soviet Palekh Art Exhibition – at Moscow in 1955 – and for presenting him with the boxed set of prints of the lacquered art that inspired the first scene of this book.

VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS: Thanks to the Yellowstone Society and all the park rangers and historians for updates on everything from mudpots to volcanoes in my old stomping grounds; the Geyser Observation and Study Association (GOSA) and Frith Maier for research and the film of the Kamchatka geysers; and especially to Stephen J. Pyne for his wonderful and definitive series of books on the history of fire that kept on inspiring this book, and to my friend of twenty years Professor Scott Rice of San Jose State University for introducing us.

THE REST: As Nokomis Key would say, if I ever loaded my plate with food that I left uneaten, ‘Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.’

Most of the fascinating research that people have provided me with more than generously over these past many years was, due to the exigencies of plot, unfortunately destined to be relegated to the cutting-room floor, at least for this book.

Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest: Director Lynne Beebe, archaeologists Travis MacDonald and Barbara Heath for decades of research assistance.

Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello: Foundation president Daniel P. Jordan; William L. Beiswanger, Robert H. Smith Director of Restoration; Peter J. Hatch, director of Gardens and rounds; Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy, Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies; Gabriele Rausse, associate director of Gardens and Grounds; Jack S. Robertson, foundation librarian; Mary Scott-Fleming, director of Adult Programs; Leni Sorenson, African-American Research Historian; Susan R. Stein, Richard Gilder Senior Curator and vice president for museum; and especially to Lucia ‘Cinder’ Stanton, Shannon
Senior Research Historian, for her many years of research and assistance.

United States Capitol Historic Society: Thanks to all the foundation people for assistance over the years, and especially to Steven Livengood for extensive background and a great tour of the Capitol.

Virginia Foundation for the Humanities: Thanks to President Robert Vaughan; Susan Coleman, director, VA Center of the Book; and Nancy Coble Damon and Kevin McFadden of VA Book.

Esoteric architecture, astrology, freemasonry, and design of D.C.: Thanks over many years to authors Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight; astrologers Steve Nelson, Kelley Hunter, and Caroline Casey; and to esoteric architecture experts Alvin Holm and Rachel Fletcher.

Dumbarton Oaks: Thanks to Stephen Zwirn, assistant curator, Byzantine Collection; and Paul Friedlander for
Documents of a Dying Paganism
on the Hestia Tapestry.

Thanks to Edward Lawler Jr., historian of the Independence Hall Association, for his extensive efforts at the President’s House in Philadelphia, which led to saving from obscurity and extinction the slave quarters where Washington’s chef Hercules, Oney Judge, and others lived.

Katherine Neville is the author of
The Eight
,
The Fire
,
The Magic Circle
and
A Calculated Risk
.
The Eight
has been translated into more than thirty languages. In a national poll in Spain by the noted journal
El Pais
,
The Eight
was voted one of the top ten books of all time. Neville lives in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

www.katherineneville.com

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

The Eight