Edwin, a once promising, imaginative poet, burnt out by Bohemia and myriad false trails and trials; and, his assistant, companion and much younger lover, Laura, find themselves on a quest at a country house in Norfolk.
Over centuries, a family, the Agnews, had a penchant for, and compelling interest in, the Hermetic quest pursued through the medium of alchemy but this tradition for reasons not understood had died out in the nineteenth century. Sir Henry Agnew's poetic account of the mysteries had stalled, unfinished at his death, and then disappeared and his accomplished daughter's text though published had been mysteriously recalled and burnt presumably at Sir Henry's request.
Was there a key to this mystery and could the line be reawakened and re-imagined? For Edwin believes that the spiritual tradition that is the Hermetic is a vital clue in reawakening humanity to its rightful understanding of itself - god bearing beings enfolded in a living and gifted creation and tasked with a role in its fulfillment.
They are unusual researchers - Edwin trawling through dense, illustrated texts with poetic intuition and an irascible, worrying mind and Laura gifted with troubling psychic abilities that allow her to be drawn across time in sympathetic identification with figures of the past - with Louisa, Sir Henry's daughter, in particular.
Into this charged activity walks Alex, an accomplished poet whose first steps were partly inspired by Edwin (whose disappearance from the literary world meant that Alex had long considered him 'dead') who is recovering from a broken relationship (where his wife has 'betrayed' him) leaving young children in his wake and a prospective divorce bearing down on him.
The drama unfolds principally between these three and the key three figures of the nineteenth century - the Agnews and Edward Frere, the local vicar. Clarke skillfully weaves the stories together such that both illuminate the other and yet forestall the reader's comprehension ever running ahead of the modern protagonists as they slowly, in so far as they can, understand what has taken place.
Clarke uses the Hermetic quest as a serious symbolic system for illuminating the relationship of men and women, faith and experience, matter and spirit. He pitches the individual quest for meaning alongside the social context of apparently insuperable problems (in this case, given the novel was written in the early 80s that of nuclear war evoked by the nearby airbase and one of the villagers adherence to CND).
What is the point of people attending to dreams and manipulating symbols, however living and felt, against the possibly apocalyptic consequences of social (and environmental) failure? A question of continuing and abiding relevance. To which the novel's answer (in so far as novels bear such simplicity) is to respond with a question? What change do you think will emerge from people who are panicked and unaware of themselves, who are not to a greater extent, whole? From people who do not know who they are and how they fit within the enfolding pattern that is the cosmos? For not knowing, not feeling that knowing course through you and transform you, and yet remain beyond you as an unfolding mystery, is to make of us unstable beings always reaching after simple certainties and rigid dogmas whether of science or faith.
The otherwise admirable Greta Thunberg in speaking of climate change suggested she wanted the world to panic - but panic alone is simply chaos, chaos, whilst necessary to change, as any alchemist would know, is only one component and slipped into unawares might lead to all kinds of unhelpful and destructive responses. Chaos needs reciprocal form and both need a container of awareness to navigate them successfully. One form of climate change panic might simply have us reach for 'technical' solutions (such as geo-engineering) that leave us worse off than we were.
This is what the Revd. Edware Frere does when internally confronted with his relationship with Louisa - trapped as he is in his framing as married clergyman - faced with an apparent 'Hermetic heretic' whom he recognizes he loves. His act is shockingly literal in its certainty and its symbolism and a possibility for transformation is lost or, at least, wounded thereby, one step towards the world's redemption missed.
We have not come to this impasse suggests Clarke simply through our social systems because these systems mirror who we think we are. If we are to change, we need to re-imagine who we are, anything less is only a 'fix' temporary and ultimately barren. There are many 'thought worlds' that invite such change - the Hermetic is one such and because it has thought so deeply about the relationship between spirit and matter and seen both as good and equally in need of (mutual) redemption, it does, in spite of its apparent obscurities, offer much to anyone seeking to live rightly on the earth and beyond. This imaginative, and beautifully written novel, is an invitation to explore further in this potential realm of gilding, gold.
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