Season of the Witch

NOTE

I was inspired to bless my characters with the gift of remote viewing after reading about a top secret program of the United States government called Project STARGATE. Before being closed down in the nineties, STARGATE received federal funding and its director, Dale Graff, trained and used remote viewers to gather intelligence information and to search for high-profile objects and people. Notable successes included tracking down a missing Soviet plane and assisting the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). These adventures are chronicled in Mr. Graff's books River Dreams and Tracks in the Psychic Wilderness. I have to confess that the remote viewers in Season of the Witch are especially gifted-even more so than the talented viewers who belonged to STARGATE-and that the phrase "slamming the ride" is completely my own.

The Art of Memory is the other big theme in my book. It is a highly esoteric subject, and I had to simplify many of the issues involved in order to meet the demands of a work of fiction. For those readers who would like to acquaint themselves in greater depth with the fascinating but rigorous world of Giordano Bruno, Ramon Lull and Giulio Camillo, I strongly recommend Dame Frances Yates's definitive work on the topic.

I used Benjamin Woolley's book The Queen's Conjurer as the source of my information on John Dee and am indebted to Erik Davis for his writings on gnosticism and information culture. Over the years I have read more books on enlightenment than I can recall, but Mark Hedsel's The Zelator remains one of the best.

In her spell, Minnaloushe makes use of fragments from the Mandaean gnostic text called The World of Darkness; Psalms 14 and 25, Thanksgiving Psalms from the Dead Sea Scrolls; the gnostic tract titled The Thunder, Perfect Mind and a Manichaean text written in Old Turkish called Salvation of the Soul. However, as this is her own, unique spell, she has adapted these fragments according to an idiosyncratic interpretation and knowledgeable readers will therefore notice significant changes from the original texts in word and concept. The numerology she uses is Pythagorean numerology.

The name Eldaah means "Knowledge of God." In Genesis 25:4, there is mention of Eldaah, son of Midian, of Abraham with Keturah.

Any readers who are interested in a behind-the-scenes peek at how I came to write Season of the Witch, please visit my Web site: www.natashamostert.com.