Diana Bishop does not first learn the nature of her magic in a university or library.

She learns it in a small London house filled with witches.

In Shadow of Night, Diana and Matthew arrive in Elizabethan London searching for knowledge that has vanished from their own time. Their goal is to understand Ashmole 782 and the strange power unfolding inside Diana, but their search eventually leads them somewhere unexpected. Near St. James Garlickhythe, a gathering of local witches meets regularly under the guidance of an elderly woman known as Goody Alsop.

The house is lively and crowded with magical practitioners who live within the rhythms of the city. Unlike the formal covens Diana knows in the modern world, this community feels older and more organic. Magic here is shared through observation, conversation, and practice rather than rules written in grimoires.

It is in this house that Diana’s magic is finally recognized for what it truly is.

A weaver.

Why Goody Alsop Recognizes Diana

One of the mysteries surrounding Goody Alsop is how quickly she understands what Diana is. By the sixteenth century, weaving magic had already become rare. Many witches believed the ability had disappeared entirely, leaving only fragments of its knowledge behind.

Yet Goody Alsop does not hesitate when she sees Diana’s power.

She recognizes the signs immediately.

This reaction suggests that Goody Alsop belongs to an older magical tradition that still remembers the structure of weaving. She is described as having been apprenticed to Ursula Soothtell, the fifteenth-century seer later remembered in English folklore as Mother Shipton. Through that apprenticeship she inherited knowledge that had already begun fading from the wider magical world.

In other words, Goody Alsop is part of a lineage of teachers who quietly preserved a nearly lost craft.

When Diana arrives in Elizabethan London, Goody Alsop may already be one of the last witches capable of recognizing a true weaver.

Teaching the Lost Craft

Instead of beginning Diana’s training with traditional spells, Goody Alsop starts with something deceptively simple.

Threads.

She introduces Diana to ten colored cords known as the weaver’s cords. At first the exercise seems almost childish. Diana practices tying complex knots in the cords, repeating the patterns again and again as Goody Alsop watches closely.

The lesson, however, is not about knots.

It is about structure.

Each knot represents a way that magical forces can combine and interact. The cords stand in for strands of magical energy, and the knots demonstrate how those strands can be twisted together to create something entirely new. Through repetition Diana begins to understand the architecture of magic rather than simply memorizing spells.

This is the difference between reciting a poem and learning how to write one.

Among the patterns Goody Alsop teaches are the Ninth Knot and the mysterious Tenth Knot, both of which carry extraordinary power. The Ninth Knot later becomes essential to the spell that allows Diana and Matthew to return to their own time.

The Tenth Knot represents something even more profound.

Creation and destruction.

The Rowan Tree and the Firedrake

As Diana’s training progresses, she begins to experiment with weaving on her own. One of the most striking demonstrations of her growing abilities occurs when she creates a powerful forspell that calls forth a living rowan tree.

Rowan has long been associated with protection in European folklore, and in the novels its magic becomes strong enough to tame Diana’s firedrake familiar, Corra. The spell combines natural magic, elemental power, and the instincts of a weaver learning to shape threads of energy into new forms.

The witches around her react with astonishment.

For Goody Alsop, however, the moment feels less surprising.

Diana’s magic is powerful, but its structure is familiar. Goody Alsop recognizes the patterns unfolding within it and understands what Diana is learning to do. Her calm reaction suggests that she has seen weaving before, perhaps decades earlier when weavers were still more common.

The moment reveals something important about her experience.

Goody Alsop remembers a world where this magic still existed.

A Lineage of Magical Teachers

Goody Alsop’s presence in the story hints at how magical knowledge survives across centuries. Many spells are preserved in written grimoires or passed down within families, but weaving seems to have survived through a different method.

Mentorship.

The connection between Goody Alsop and Mother Shipton suggests that weaving knowledge once existed within networks of seers and wise women scattered across England. These teachers may have passed their knowledge quietly from apprentice to apprentice, preserving techniques that the wider magical world had begun to fear.

Over time those networks faded.

What remained were fragments of memory carried by a few individuals who still understood the old traditions.

By the time Diana appears in Elizabethan London, Goody Alsop may be one of the last witches holding that knowledge.

Why the Training Matters

Without Goody Alsop’s guidance, Diana might never have understood her own abilities. In the modern era of the story most witches have forgotten what weaving magic is, let alone how to train someone who possesses it.

Diana’s powers would likely have remained unstable and misunderstood.

Instead, the Elizabethan witches give her something far more valuable than spells.

They give her context.

Through Goody Alsop’s lessons Diana begins to see magic not as something fixed but as something that can still evolve. Weavers do not simply inherit power from the past.

They create something new.

In that sense, Goody Alsop’s decision to train Diana may shape the future of magic itself. By passing on the nearly lost knowledge of weaving, she ensures that the craft survives long enough to reach another generation.

And that leaves us with a question worth considering.

Did Goody Alsop teach Diana simply because she recognized a weaver—or because she knew the future of magic depended on one?

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It is where power gathers.

The Congregation meets there, in a space that feels removed from the rest of the world, hidden in plain sight among the canals, palazzos, and narrow streets. It is a city built on layers, where what is visible and what is concealed exist side by side.

That makes it an ideal location.

Because the Congregation itself operates in much the same way.

On the surface, it is structured, formal, and controlled. It defines the rules that separate witches, vampires, and daemons, reinforcing boundaries that are meant to keep the world stable.

But beneath that structure, there is tension.

Venice reflects that.

The city is beautiful, but it is also fragile. It depends on balance, on systems that require constant maintenance. It is shaped by water, by shifting ground, by the need to hold something steady that is never entirely fixed.

That instability matters.

Because the Congregation presents itself as permanent. Its authority is meant to feel absolute, rooted in tradition and reinforced through repetition.

But like Venice, it depends on conditions that are already beginning to change.

The space itself reinforces that sense of controlled visibility. Meetings take place in rooms that are enclosed, formal, and removed. Authority is performed there. Decisions are made within boundaries that are carefully maintained.

Everything is contained.

Everything is observed.

That structure leaves little room for movement.

Which is why Diana’s presence there feels disruptive.

She does not fit easily within the system the space is designed to uphold. Her power does not align neatly with the rules that define the Congregation’s authority. She introduces something the space is not built to accommodate.

And the longer she remains within it, the more that becomes clear.

The setting begins to feel less stable.

Not because the walls change, but because what they are meant to contain no longer fits within them.

This is where Venice moves from backdrop to meaning.

It reflects a world that appears solid, but is already shifting beneath the surface. A system that depends on control, even as that control becomes harder to maintain.

For Matthew, that tension is familiar.

He understands the system. He has lived within it for centuries. But he also recognizes its limits. The structure that once defined everything is no longer enough to account for what is happening now.

And Venice makes that visible.

It holds power in place, but only as long as the conditions allow it to.

The question is not whether the structure exists.

It’s how long it can continue to hold.

For centuries, creatures believed one rule was absolute.

Witches, vampires, and daemons could not have children together.

The Covenant reinforced this belief by forbidding relationships between the three species. The law was meant to preserve peace among creatures, but it also ensured that the boundaries between witches, vampires, and daemons remained firmly in place. Over time, the rule came to feel less like a political decision and more like a law of nature.

Creatures simply assumed that their differences were permanent.

The birth of the Bright Born challenges that assumption in a profound way.

When Diana Bishop and Matthew de Clermont’s twins—Rebecca and Philip (Pip) —are born, they represent something the creature world had long believed impossible. Their existence forces creatures to reconsider a question that few had seriously asked before.

What if the boundaries between them were never as fixed as they believed?

Darwin and the Question of Origins

Matthew de Clermont has lived through many intellectual revolutions, but one of the most significant would have been the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859.

Darwin proposed a deeply unsettling idea for his time: species were not fixed creations. Instead, they changed gradually over time through variation and natural selection. Traits that helped organisms survive tended to persist, while others faded away. Over generations, these small changes could reshape entire populations.

Perhaps the most radical part of Darwin’s theory was the suggestion that all living things might share a distant common ancestry. Life, Darwin argued, may have begun from a single origin and branched outward into the extraordinary diversity we see today.

For Matthew, a scientist who had spent centuries observing creatures, Darwin’s ideas must have raised some intriguing possibilities.

If humans evolved over time, could creatures have evolved as well?

Matthew’s Notes in the Margins

Matthew did not simply read Darwin’s work.

He studied it closely.

In The Book of Life, we learn that Matthew kept copies of scientific texts filled with his own handwritten observations. His copy of Darwin’s book contains marginal notes—questions, comparisons, and ideas that reveal how carefully he considered Darwin’s argument.

Matthew had already begun to notice patterns among creatures that felt almost biological. Some witch families produced extraordinary magical abilities for generations, while others seemed to lose their magic entirely. Certain vampire bloodlines appeared strong and stable, while others weakened over time in ways that puzzled the Congregation.

Darwin’s theory offered a possible explanation.

If life on Earth shared a common origin, perhaps witches, vampires, daemons, and humans did as well. Instead of entirely separate creations, creatures might represent different expressions of a much older evolutionary history.

It was a possibility that most creatures had never seriously considered.

The Mystery of Ashmole 782

Long before the Bright Born were born, creatures sensed that the answers to their origins might exist somewhere.

That hope was one of the reasons so many factions pursued the mysterious manuscript known as Ashmole 782, later revealed to be the Book of Life.

Each creature group believed the book held something they desperately needed.

Vampires hoped it might explain why their bloodlines were weakening and why they struggled to reproduce. Witches believed it might reveal the source of their magic and why some families seemed to lose their powers entirely.

For daemons, the mystery was even more personal.

Agatha Wilson tells Diana that daemons wanted the manuscript because they hoped it would finally help them understand themselves—how they were created, why they existed, and what role they played within the creature world. For centuries daemons had been treated as unstable outsiders, brilliant but unpredictable, rarely trusted by the Congregation.

They hoped the Book of Life might finally reveal their place in the larger story.

The Role of Daemons

Within that larger story, daemons may be far more important than most creatures realize.

They are often described as volatile, imaginative, and intellectually restless. Their minds move quickly, generating ideas and connections that others sometimes struggle to follow.

Yet those same qualities may play an essential role in the balance of the creature world.

Many of the most unusual developments among creatures appear in families where daemon bloodlines intersect with those of witches or vampires. Their creativity introduces variation into a system that might otherwise become stagnant.

From an evolutionary perspective, variation is the engine of change.

Without it, species cannot adapt.

Seen this way, daemons may not simply be the most unpredictable members of the creature world. They may be the source of the diversity that allows creatures themselves to continue evolving.

The Meaning of the Bright Born

The birth of Rebecca and Philip Bishop-Clairmont brings these questions into sharp focus.

Bright Born children carry traits from both of their parents. They inherit the magical potential of witches alongside the physical strength and longevity associated with vampires. Their existence alone suggests that the divisions creatures relied upon for centuries may not be as absolute as they once believed.

In a quiet way, the Bright Born also answer the question that drove so many creatures to search for the Book of Life.

If witches, vampires, daemons, and humans share a distant common origin, then the Bright Born may not be a miracle or an anomaly.

They may simply be the next stage in a much longer story.

For daemons in particular, this discovery changes something fundamental. The Bright Born suggest that daemons are not merely the unpredictable outsiders of the creature world. Their presence within creature bloodlines may be essential to the future of creatures themselves.

In that sense, the Bright Born give daemons something they had long hoped to find.

A clearer place in the creature world.

A New Chapter

For Diana and Matthew, the birth of their children is deeply personal.

But for the creature world, it may represent something much larger.

Rebecca and Philip are not only the continuation of their family. They are also a glimpse of what creatures might become if the boundaries that once divided them begin to shift.

Matthew’s scientific curiosity and Diana’s historical insight allow them to see something that others are only beginning to understand. The patterns Darwin described in the natural world—the slow unfolding of variation and change—may apply to creatures as well.

And the signs of that change are already appearing.

When Sophie Norman and Nathaniel Wilson child is born, the baby is a witch—even though both parents are daemons. It is another quiet disruption of the assumptions creatures have lived with for centuries. If a witch can emerge from daemon parents, and if Diana and Matthew’s twins represent something entirely new, then the old rules that defined the creature world begin to feel far less certain.

Suddenly the future becomes harder to predict.

For centuries the Covenant attempted to hold the creature world in place, preserving clear boundaries between witches, vampires, and daemons. But evolution rarely respects the rules societies create to control it.

The Bright Born suggest that the story of creatures is still unfolding.

And if the next generation is already rewriting the rules, then all bets may be off.

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It is marked.

Seals appear throughout the series as small, physical objects, often pressed into wax, carried on rings, or attached to documents. They are easy to overlook, but they carry weight. A seal does not just identify the person who uses it. It confirms their place within a larger structure.

It makes authority visible.

Historically, seals functioned in exactly this way. A signet ring or engraved stamp allowed someone to authenticate a document, to stand in for their presence, and to assert identity without needing to be physically there. Once pressed into wax, the mark could not easily be altered. It fixed something in place.

That idea carries directly into All Souls.

For Matthew and Philippe, seals are not just tools. They represent lineage, responsibility, and a system that extends across time. Authority is not something they claim in the moment. It is something they inherit, something already defined before they step into it.

That distinction matters.

Philippe’s use of seals makes that especially clear. When he sends a message, it is often accompanied by a coin, something that must be returned by the recipient. The exchange creates obligation. It is not simply communication. It is a system of accountability, a way of reinforcing authority through action.

Nothing is casual.

Everything is structured to confirm position, loyalty, and response.

Matthew’s relationship to that system is more complicated.

His authority is tied to Philippe, but it is not fully his own until he chooses to accept it. That moment is marked through the Knights of Lazarus. When Marcus breaks Matthew’s Lazarus seal, it is not just a symbolic act. It confirms that Matthew has stepped into his role, that he has accepted the responsibility that comes with it.

The seal does not create the authority.

It confirms it.

This is where the object takes on its full meaning.

A seal does not ask who you are becoming. It reflects who you are expected to be.

For Matthew, that expectation is shaped by centuries of history and by Philippe’s influence. The seal becomes a continuation of that authority, something that carries his father’s presence forward even when he is no longer physically there.

It is a form of control that moves through generations.

That control can be stabilizing. It creates continuity, a way of maintaining order across time. But it also limits. It defines identity in a way that is difficult to change, especially for someone like Matthew, whose life spans centuries.

This is where the seals begin to take on a different meaning.

As the story progresses, the question of authority becomes less fixed. Diana’s presence changes how power is understood, not by removing structure entirely, but by shifting how it operates. Authority is no longer only inherited. It is also shaped.

That tension is reflected in the contrast between objects in this series.

The Bishop House holds identity loosely, allowing it to evolve. Poppets are made in the moment, shaped by intention. The Old Lodge adapts as the life inside it changes.

The seals do something else.

They fix identity in place.

They represent a world where authority is defined before it is questioned, where belonging is determined by lineage and reinforced through repetition.

And yet, even that begins to shift.

Matthew still carries that authority. He still operates within systems that rely on it. But the meaning of those systems changes as his world expands, as new forms of power emerge, and as the boundaries that once defined everything begin to blur.

The seal remains.

But what it represents is no longer as stable as it once was.

And the question is not whether authority exists.

It’s how it changes when it is no longer the only way to define who someone is.

It is something to build.

When Diana Bishop and Matthew de Clermont travel back to the sixteenth century in Shadow of Night, Diana is not simply meeting Matthew’s father. She is entering a world shaped by Philippe’s decisions, a world built on centuries of loyalty, hierarchy, and survival. Philippe does not greet her with warmth or immediate acceptance. Instead, he observes her closely, asking careful questions and placing her in situations that reveal how she thinks, how she responds, and whether she can endure what lies ahead.

He is not simply judging her.

He is assessing what will last.

His behavior reflects the world he comes from. Philippe is not simply a father in the modern sense. He is the head of a powerful family whose stability depends on strength across generations. In that world, relationships are never only personal. They must be able to withstand pressure, conflict, and time itself. Diana, as a witch and a weaver, represents something entirely new. She is not just Matthew’s partner, but a disruption to a system Philippe has spent centuries maintaining.

And disruptions must be tested.

Diana meets those tests without trying to overpower them. She does not respond with defiance or fear, but with a steadiness that Philippe recognizes. What matters to him is not brilliance or force, but consistency. He needs to know that she will remain when circumstances become difficult, that her loyalty is not conditional or fragile.

That she will hold.

Over time, it becomes clear that Diana understands something essential about Philippe. His questions are not about control. They are about survival. As Philippe watches her, his understanding begins to shift. He does not simply see a witch. He begins to recognize that Diana is connected to something larger, something that will shape the future of his family in ways he will not live to see.

He sees what she means to Matthew.

And that changes everything.

The question is no longer whether Diana belongs.

It is how to secure her place.

Philippe’s answer is decisive. He makes Diana his blood daughter, placing her within the de Clermont lineage in a way that cannot easily be challenged. In the context of his world, this is not a symbolic gesture. It is a structural one. He gives Diana a position that will endure beyond his own lifetime, ensuring that she is protected not only by Matthew, but by the authority of the family itself.

He does not simply accept Diana, he anchors her.

At the same time, Philippe makes a second choice that reveals something more subtle about his understanding of power. He leaves Diana with a dowry and an inheritance, giving her the means to exist independently within a world that might otherwise define her entirely through Matthew. In doing so, he acknowledges that strength within a family is not only about loyalty.

It is also about autonomy.

A woman who can stand on her own is not a risk to the family’s stability. She reinforces it. Philippe understands that a future built on dependence is fragile. One built on strength - shared and independent - is far more likely to endure.

Placed alongside Diana and Matthew’s relationship, Philippe’s actions take on a different meaning. Diana and Matthew are working to change the structure of the creature world itself, challenging rules that have existed for centuries.

Philippe is not trying to change the system. He is making sure it holds.

His work is quieter, but no less significant. He is building something that will last beyond him, shaping a future he knows he will never see.

When Diana returns to her own time, she carries with her a knowledge Philippe never will. She remembers the man Matthew lost, and she understands the intention behind choices that once felt severe. The presence of Ysabeau’s wedding ring, passed down through generations and worn by Diana, becomes a quiet symbol of that continuity.

A link between past and future.

Philippe never witnesses the life that Matthew and Diana build together. He does not see the peace that eventually comes, or the family that grows from their union. But he prepares for it with a clarity that is both practical and deeply human.

He acts not for himself, but for what comes after.

Which brings us to the question Philippe’s story quietly raises.

What does it mean to love someone enough to prepare a future you will never be part of?

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But it is where Diana does.

It sits in the Hudson River Valley, separate from the old systems and inherited structures that define so much of the All Souls world. It is not a house tied to hierarchy or control. It does not belong to an order, a lineage, or a set of rules.

And that absence matters.

The Bishop House carries memory, but not in the way other spaces in the series do. It does not preserve history through structure or discipline. It holds it more loosely, through presence, through objects, and through the people who have lived there.

Because the house is not empty.

It is filled with the presence of Bishop women who came before Diana. Their lives remain in the space, not as something formal or curated, but as something felt. The house remembers them, and in its own way, it responds.

It knows when guests are coming.

It reacts when the Bishop women argue.

It holds onto what matters.

Objects move through the house in a way that feels intentional. A page appears for Diana when she needs it. Books and belongings are not just stored, they are kept in a way that reflects the life inside the house.

The Bishop House is not controlled.

It is responsive.

That difference shapes Diana.

She grows up in a space where knowledge exists, but is not imposed. Where magic is present, but not structured. Where the past is not something she is required to step into, but something that surrounds her quietly.

That freedom allows her to resist magic, to define herself outside of it for as long as she can.

But it also means that when she returns to it, she does so on her own terms.

The Bishop House does not tell her who she is.

It leaves that question open.

That stands in contrast to the spaces she enters later.

At Sept-Tours, history is structured and unavoidable. At the Old Lodge, it is carried forward and reinterpreted. In Oxford, knowledge is controlled and guarded.

The Bishop House offers none of that.

And yet, it is the place that makes all of those later spaces possible.

Because Diana enters those worlds with a sense of independence that does not come from training or tradition. It comes from growing up in a place that allowed her to exist without being fully defined.

The house gives her distance.

And that distance becomes strength.

It allows her to question systems rather than accept them. To move through spaces without immediately submitting to their rules. To carry her own understanding into places that expect something else from her.

Seen this way, the Bishop House is not just a point of origin.

It is a different kind of structure.

One that does not rely on control, but on presence. One that holds memory without fixing it in place. One that allows what comes next to unfold.

And that matters now.

Because as Diana builds a life with Matthew, she is not simply stepping into his world.

She is bringing something with her.

A way of living with history that does not try to contain it, but allows it to move.

The Bishop House may no longer be where she lives.

But it is still part of how she does.

Some forms of power are measured.

Others are understood.

In The All Souls novels, the Ten Knots of Power are often described as a way of defining a witch’s abilities - a scale that reflects strength, control, and potential. At first glance, they appear to offer something straightforward: a way to rank what a witch can do.

But the knots are not simply a measure.

They are a structure.

Each knot represents a different aspect of magic, something to be learned, practiced, and understood over time. Together, they form a system that shapes how witches access and use their power. Most witches move through this system gradually, developing their abilities within its boundaries and relying on it as a guide.

The knots do not just define power.

They organize it.

A System Witches Inherit

For most witches, the Ten Knots of Power provide a framework for understanding magic.

Each knot builds on the one before it, requiring discipline, control, and repetition. Magic, in this sense, is not something chaotic or undefined. It follows patterns. It can be taught, practiced, and refined through experience.

This structure creates stability within the witch world. It ensures that magic develops in predictable ways and that witches can rely on established methods to access what they need. Power is not only something you possess.

It’s something you learn to manage.

Within this system, mastery comes from moving carefully through each level, understanding not only what magic can do, but how it behaves. The knots are not simply techniques.

They are a way of thinking about magic itself.

A Weaver’s Difference

Diana Bishop does not experience the knots in the same way.

As a weaver, her relationship to magic is fundamentally different. Where other witches work within the structure of the knots, Diana begins to see how those structures connect. The individual aspects of magic are not separate for her. They are part of a larger pattern.

She doesn’t simply access the knots. She moves between them.

This shift changes the nature of power in a subtle but important way. Instead of progressing through a fixed system, Diana begins to understand how the system itself can be reshaped. The knots are no longer boundaries.

They are points of connection.

Through her training with Goody Alsop, Diana learns not just how to tie each knot, but how the relationships between them create something new. Magic becomes less about mastering individual skills and more about understanding how those skills interact.

Power, in this sense, becomes creative.

Building Something New

As Diana’s abilities develop, the purpose of the knots begins to shift.

They are no longer simply a measure of strength or control. They become tools for construction. Each knot holds a different kind of energy, and when those energies are combined, they create possibilities that do not exist within the traditional system.

This is what makes weaving distinct.

It’s not about how much power a witch has.

It’s about what she can build with it.

Diana’s magic does not replace the structure of the knots. Instead, it reveals something that had always been there but rarely used: the ability to move beyond the system while still understanding it. The knots remain essential, but their meaning changes.

They become part of a larger design.

Knots Beyond Magic

The idea that power might be shaped through knots is not entirely confined to fiction.

In mathematics, knot theory studies how loops and strands can be arranged into stable structures, where the way something is connected matters as much as the material itself. In physics, similar ideas appear in the study of fields, where energy can form patterns that remain stable not because of their strength, but because of how they are configured.

Even in biology, strands of DNA twist and coil into complex forms that affect how life itself functions.

Across these fields, the pattern is the same.

Structure matters.

What holds something together is not only what it is made of, but how it is arranged.

Seen this way, the Ten Knots of Power feel less like a scale of strength and more like a language, one that describes how different forms of energy can be combined, shaped, and sustained.

The Tenth Knot

Within the system of the knots, the tenth holds a different significance.

It is often described as the Knot of Creation and Destruction - the point at which magic moves beyond structure and into something far more powerful. While Diana learns the foundations of weaving in Shadow of Night, the full expression of the tenth knot comes later, when she uses it in ways that reshape the balance of power itself.

It is not simply another level. It is a threshold.

The existence of the tenth knot suggests that the system was never meant to remain static. It contains within it the possibility of change, of creation, and of transformation on a scale that earlier knots only begin to hint at.

A Different Kind of Power

The Ten Knots of Power were designed to create order within magic.

They provided structure, discipline, and a way to understand what witches were capable of. For generations, that system held.

But Diana’s experience reveals something else.

Power is not only something that can be measured or contained within a structure. It can also be shaped, combined, and reimagined. The knots remain important, but they are no longer the final definition of what magic can be.

They are part of something larger.

And that larger system is still evolving.

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Coming Friday

Poppets are something else entirely.

They are small, handmade objects, simple in appearance and made from whatever materials are close at hand. They don’t carry the weight of history in the same way other objects in the series do, and they don’t draw attention to themselves.

But they matter.

Because poppets represent a different kind of magic, one that is physical, immediate, and personal. This is not magic discovered in a book or inherited through a system. It is something that is made.

That distinction is important for Diana.

Her relationship to magic has always been complicated. Early on, it is something she avoids, tied to loss and uncertainty. When she begins to engage with it more fully, it often comes through structure—manuscripts, teaching, rules.

Poppets move in the opposite direction.

They require touch and intention. The act of making becomes part of the magic itself. It is not about control in the abstract. It is about what she chooses to do, in a specific moment, with her own hands.

That makes them feel different from the other objects in this series.

The Book of Life carries knowledge. The Lazarus pendant carries discipline. The Old Lodge carries memory.

Poppets carry intention.

They are not inherently dangerous, despite how they are often portrayed. In many traditions, they are used for protection, healing, or focus. They are a way of directing energy toward something specific, often quietly and without spectacle.

That fits the direction Diana’s magic begins to take.

As her power grows, it becomes less about accessing something external and more about understanding what she can shape herself. Poppets reflect that shift. They are not about unlocking power. They are about using it.

And they require trust.

Not in a system, but in her own ability to act, to decide, and to follow through. That kind of trust is harder to build, especially for someone who has spent so long trying to keep her magic contained.

Which is why these small objects matter so much.

They represent a version of magic that is not overwhelming or distant. It is close. It is made. And it is hers.

Seen this way, poppets are not just tools. They mark a shift.

A move away from inherited systems and toward something more personal, more flexible, and more responsive to the moment.

And the question is no longer whether Diana has power.

It’s how she chooses to use it when it is entirely in her hands.

When we first encounter the Congregation in A Discovery of Witches, it appears to be the center of power in the creature world. Witches, vampires, and daemons each send representatives to this ancient council, which exists to enforce the Covenant—the agreement that keeps the three species separate.

Among its members sits Agatha Wilson.

She is not the loudest voice in the room. While vampires and witches argue over rules and authority, Agatha often seems content to sit quietly and listen. At first she can appear almost peripheral to the political drama unfolding around the council.

But Agatha’s silence is misleading.

She is paying attention.

The First Meeting in Oxford

Diana first meets Agatha long before she understands who she is.

Early in A Discovery of Witches, shortly after Diana calls up the mysterious manuscript Ashmole 782 in the Bodleian Library, she encounters a stylish and perceptive daemon in an Oxford café. Agatha introduces herself warmly and strikes up a conversation that feels unusually direct.

She already knows about the manuscript.

And she knows Diana is at the center of something important.

The conversation is brief but revealing. Unlike the witches who soon begin pressuring Diana to return the manuscript, Agatha is curious rather than confrontational. She asks questions, listens carefully, and seems genuinely interested in how Diana experienced the moment when the manuscript appeared.

It is one of the first hints that the daemons may be watching the situation from a very different angle.

For Agatha, the appearance of Ashmole 782 is not simply a political problem.

It is an intellectual mystery.

The Daemon’s Perspective

Daemons occupy a unique place in the creature world. They are not defined by physical strength like vampires or by structured magical traditions like witches. Instead, they are often associated with creativity, intellectual intensity, and curiosity about how the world works.

Artists, musicians, philosophers, and scientists frequently appear among their ranks.

This way of seeing the world shapes how Agatha approaches the politics of the Congregation. Where vampires and witches often focus on control and hierarchy, Agatha tends to notice patterns and possibilities. She listens carefully to conversations and watches how events begin to connect.

So when Diana retrieves Ashmole 782 and begins traveling with a vampire, Agatha does not simply see a violation of the Covenant.

She sees a clue.

Helping Nathaniel and Sophie

Agatha’s perspective becomes especially important when the story expands beyond the Congregation to include other daemons.

Nathaniel Wilson and Sophie Norman arrive in the story carrying their own mystery. Sophie is pregnant with a child that will become central to the future of the creature world, and she possesses a small statue that will eventually play an important role in Diana’s journey.

Agatha understands that the daemons must be part of whatever change is coming.

Instead of treating Nathaniel and Sophie as outsiders, she helps guide them toward Diana and Matthew. The meeting allows Sophie to give Diana the statue—a quiet but important moment that connects the daemon story line to the larger mystery surrounding Ashmole 782.

For Agatha, this is not simply an act of kindness.

It reflects a deeper belief.

If the creature world is going to understand what is happening, daemons must be part of the solution.

What Agatha Understands About Ashmole 782

One of Agatha’s most revealing conversations with Diana focuses on the manuscript itself. Daemons, she explains, have long believed that Ashmole 782 might contain answers about their own origins.

While witches focus on spells and vampires focus on bloodlines, daemons have always wondered why their minds work the way they do—why creativity, inspiration, and intellectual intensity appear so strongly among them.

The manuscript might hold clues to that mystery.

This perspective gives Agatha a broader view of what is unfolding. Diana’s connection to the manuscript may not simply be about magic or power.

It may be connected to the deeper history of all three creature species.

The Power of Paying Attention

Agatha Wilson’s influence comes from something that often goes unnoticed in political spaces.

She listens.

While other members of the Congregation focus on protecting ancient rules, Agatha watches the new patterns forming around Diana, Matthew, and the manuscript they are searching for. Her willingness to question assumptions allows her to see possibilities others dismiss too quickly.

In a council filled with powerful figures, Agatha’s greatest strength may be her curiosity.

She is one of the few members willing to consider that the creature world might be changing.

A Voice of Possibility

Agatha rarely dominates the room, but her perspective introduces something the Congregation often lacks: openness to new ideas.

Instead of immediately condemning Diana and Matthew’s relationship, she wonders what it might mean for the future. She recognizes that the Covenant, which once protected creatures, may now be preventing them from understanding themselves.

In that sense, Agatha becomes an important voice of possibility within the council.

She is willing to imagine that the rules creatures have followed for centuries might not be the final answer.

And that leaves us with a question worth considering.

What did Agatha Wilson see in Diana and Matthew that others missed?

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From the beginning, it feels different.

Deborah Harkness’s inspiration for The Lodge - Speke Hall

The Old Lodge carries history, but not in a distant or decorative way. It feels lived in, shaped by the different versions of Matthew who have passed through it.

In the sixteenth century, it was connected to the world of the School of Night, a place of ideas, experimentation, and intellectual risk. That history doesn’t disappear. It lingers in the structure of the space and in the way it is used.

What makes The Old Lodge especially interesting is how it changes over time.

By the present timeline, it is no longer just a private residence tied to Matthew’s past. While he remains connected to it, the space now exists alongside something new. Amira, a witch, teaches yoga within the estate, bringing witches, vampires, and daemons together in a shared, physical practice.

The presence of yoga within the estate brings witches, vampires, and daemons into the same room, moving together in a way that would not be allowed under the rules of the Congregation. At the Lodge, those boundaries begin to loosen. It becomes one of the few spaces where that kind of gathering feels possible, where different forms of power can exist alongside each other without immediate conflict.

That matters because it offers a glimpse of something larger.

The Old Lodge once held secrecy, control, and carefully managed knowledge. It was a place where ideas were contained and explored within clear boundaries. Now, within the same walls, there is movement, breath, and a different kind of discipline, something more open and shared.

This is where The Old Lodge begins to feel less like a setting and more like something active in the story. It reflects Matthew’s evolution in a way that is easy to miss if you only see it as background.

Earlier in his life, Matthew’s world was structured around control. The School of Night, the Knights of Lazarus, and the systems he built all relied on boundaries and a clear sense of order. The Old Lodge reflects that version of him.

But in the present, those structures are shifting. Diana’s presence changes what the space is used for, just as it changes Matthew himself. What was once private becomes shared. It now serves the role of as a safe, intimate space for new beginnings to take shape between Matthew and Diana.

It becomes the natural place Matthew brings Diana when he wants to step away from the intensity of Oxford. Removed from expectation and scrutiny, it offers something neither of them has had before, a space that feels contained but not controlled.

Within those walls, their relationship begins to shift. They practice yoga. Matthew cooks for her. They settle into small, shared routines that feel ordinary, and their relationship grows.

The Old Lodge has becomes an early version of the world Diana and Matthew are beginning to build together, one where connection replaces separation, and where the structures that once defined everything no longer hold in the same way.

That idea connects to the way Deborah Harkness builds her world. Many of the spaces in All Souls are rooted in real places, like Speke Hall that reflects the kind of layered history the Lodge represents.

These buildings are not preserved as static artifacts. They are lived in, adapted, and reshaped over time. You can walk through them and feel that layering.

The Old Lodge works in the same way.

It is not just where Matthew lives. It is a record of who he has bee and a reflection of who he is becoming. And like Matthew, it continues to evolve, quietly, as the life inside it changes.

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Diana Bishop travels back to Elizabethan England searching for two things.

A teacher for her magic and the lost knowledge surrounding Ashmole 782.

What she does not expect to find is a teacher of alchemy.

Or someone who shares the passion that has shaped her entire life.

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

In Shadow of Night, Diana and Matthew arrive in a world where scholars, poets, and natural philosophers are constantly debating how the universe works. Renaissance England is full of curiosity. The boundaries between science, philosophy, and magic are not as rigid as they will become later, and many thinkers move easily between these fields.

Their search eventually leads them into the orbit of one of the most remarkable intellectual women of the age.

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke.

A Woman at the Center of the Renaissance

Historically, Mary Sidney was one of the most influential intellectual figures of Elizabethan England. A poet, translator, and patron of scholars, she helped create a vibrant literary and scholarly circle that attracted some of the most ambitious thinkers of her time.

Her estate at Wilton became a place where writers, philosophers, and natural philosophers gathered to share ideas. Conversations about poetry might easily turn into discussions about science, religion, or the nature of the universe.

In Shadow of Night, that environment becomes especially important.

Mary Sidney is not simply supporting scholars.

She is deeply curious about the same questions they are asking.

And she is especially interested in alchemy.

For Diana, this is an unexpected discovery. Here is a woman who moves comfortably within both worlds Diana cares about: the world of scholarship and the experimental world of early chemistry.

Alchemy and the Pursuit of Knowledge

To modern readers, alchemy can seem mysterious or even mystical. But for many Renaissance thinkers it was a serious way of trying to understand how nature worked.

Alchemists believed that the secrets of the natural world could be found by watching how things change. By heating metals, dissolving minerals, and mixing different substances together, they tried to understand the patterns that governed matter itself.

Mary Sidney shares that curiosity.

In Shadow of Night, Diana discovers that Mary maintains a laboratory at Wilton House where experiments in alchemy and natural philosophy take place. Furnaces burn steadily, glass vessels hold strange mixtures, and careful notes record what happens during each attempt.

For Diana, the discovery is thrilling.

This is not simply a noblewoman with an interest in ideas. Mary Sidney is actively taking part in the intellectual life of the Renaissance.

At first it might seem surprising that so little evidence of her work in alchemy survives. But in many ways that absence is typical of the time.

For women of the period, intellectual work was often recorded under the names of fathers, husbands, or male patrons.

Matthew himself offers an example.

In his copy of the alchemical manuscript Aurora Consurgens, the intricate illustrations are believed to have been created by a woman named Bourgot Le Noir, an artist who worked in Paris during the fourteenth century. Her drawings were admired by scholars and circulated widely among alchemists.

But the work would almost certainly have been attributed to her father.

Women were involved in artistic and intellectual life across medieval and Renaissance Europe, but their contributions were often hidden within the historical record.

Seen in that light, Mary Sidney’s quiet work in alchemy becomes easier to understand.

History simply did not record women’s names and contributions.

An Unexpected Mentor

Diana travels to the sixteenth century expecting to find teachers who will help her survive the dangers of the magical world. Goody Alsop trains her to understand weaving magic, and the London witches help her navigate the complicated politics of creatures.

Mary Sidney offers something different.

She introduces Diana to the intellectual culture of the Renaissance.

Their conversations move easily between poetry, philosophy, science, and alchemy. Mary Sidney treats Diana not as a curiosity but as someone capable of thinking alongside the scholars of the time.

That recognition matters.

For Diana, who has spent most of her life immersed in books and research, this environment feels like a gift. In the middle of a dangerous and uncertain journey through the past, she finds a place where her academic passions are fully alive.

The Joy of Practicing Alchemy

For most of her life Diana has studied history through manuscripts and archives. She understands how earlier thinkers described their work, but she has rarely had the chance to experience that world directly.

Mary Sidney changes that.

Working in the laboratory allows Diana to see how Renaissance scholars approached knowledge. Alchemical experiments require careful observation, patience, and the willingness to test ideas repeatedly.

The process feels surprisingly familiar.

Like history, alchemy involves looking for patterns, asking questions, and trying to understand how small details connect to larger systems.

As Diana begins to experiment alongside Mary Sidney, she starts to see the manuscript they are searching for—Ashmole 782—in a new way.

It is not simply a magical text.

It is part of a much larger intellectual tradition.

Patronage and the Preservation of Knowledge

Mary Sidney’s role in the story also highlights something essential about Renaissance intellectual life: patronage.

Many scholars depended on powerful individuals who could offer support, protection, and a place to work. Without patrons like Mary Sidney, many ideas that shaped early modern science and literature might never have flourished.

In Shadow of Night, her household provides exactly that kind of refuge.

It offers Diana and Matthew safety, resources, and access to a community of thinkers who are exploring the boundaries of knowledge.

More importantly, Mary Sidney recognizes Diana not only as a witch.

But as a fellow scholar.

A Mentor Diana Never Expected

Diana travels into the past expecting to find magical teachers and ancient secrets.

She does find them.

But she also discovers something she did not anticipate: a mentor who shares the intellectual curiosity that has shaped her life.

Mary Sidney reminds Diana that the search for knowledge has always taken many forms. Poetry, chemistry, philosophy, and magic all grow from the same desire to understand how the universe works.

Under Mary Sidney’s guidance, Diana is able to experience the Renaissance not simply as a historian studying the past.

But as a scholar living within it.

And that leaves us with a question worth considering.

Why did Mary Sidney agree to become Diana Bishop’s mentor?

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It appears in small, physical moments. He reaches for it when he is trying to stay calm, holding onto it as a way to steady himself. Over time, it becomes clear that this is not just habit. It is something he relies on.

The origin of that object goes much deeper.

Deborah Harkness inspiration for Matthew’s ampulla

The Knights of Lazarus in All Souls are rooted in a real historical order. The Order of Saint Lazarus was established during the Crusades and became known for caring for people with leprosy while also protecting pilgrims traveling through the Holy Land. It was both a religious and military order, built around service, discipline, and survival at the margins.

Deborah Harkness draws directly from that history, but she reshapes it.

In the series, the Knights of Lazarus become something different. Instead of serving a religious hierarchy, they operate as a hidden network that protects creatures, witches, vampires, and daemons, who exist outside the systems meant to control them.

That shift matters. It takes an order originally built around care and containment and turns it into something that protects what does not fit.

The pendant itself reflects that layered history.

It is described as an ampulla, a small vessel traditionally used to carry sacred oil, water, or relics. In the medieval world, these objects were often worn as pilgrimage badges, physical reminders of faith, protection, and connection to something larger.

That meaning carries through to Matthew. The pendant is not decorative. It is something he uses. A way of grounding himself in moments when control is at risk. It connects him to the order he leads, but it also connects him to something more personal.

Atonement.

Matthew’s life is shaped by violence, by long memory, and by the consequences of choices he cannot undo. The pendant becomes a way of holding that awareness close. Not to erase it, but to manage it.

It is a reminder of what he is capable of. And what he is trying not to become.

It is personal and symbolic. A private object that also signals something larger about who Matthew is and what he leads.

And like many objects in All Souls, its meaning shifts over time.

At first, it represents control. A system Matthew has built to manage himself and the world around him. But as the story moves forward, that system begins to strain. The rules that once held everything in place are no longer enough, and the structures Matthew depends on start to change.

The pendant remains, but what it represents becomes less certain.

It is still something he reaches for, but the question is no longer whether it can help him maintain control in the same way.

It’s what it means to carry that symbol forward in a world that is no longer defined by the same rules.

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Next week in Places & Possessions, we step inside The Old Lodge, Matthew’s private residence outside Oxford, and look at how the space holds his past while quietly making room for something new to take shape between him and Diana.

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In the magical world Deborah Harkness created, most witches practice magic that has already been shaped by centuries of tradition. Spells are preserved in family grimoires, taught by mothers and grandmothers, and repeated generation after generation.

A witch typically works with magic that already exists.

Weavers are different.

A weaver does not simply cast spells but instead creates them, assembling magic from its fundamental strands. In the books, this ability is often described as seeing and manipulating threads of power—distinct elements of magical energy that can be twisted, knotted, and woven together into entirely new forms.

The metaphor is an ancient one. Across many cultures, weaving has long symbolized the shaping of destiny and creation itself. Mythological figures like the Fates spin and cut the threads of human lives, while traditional crafts transform simple strands into complex patterns.

In the world of All Souls, the metaphor becomes literal. Magic itself can be woven.

Because of this ability, weavers were historically both admired and feared. A spell created by a weaver had never existed before. Its effects could be extraordinary—but also unpredictable.

Over time, many witches came to see this power as something dangerous.

The Disappearance of the Weavers

By the time the story begins, most witches believe weavers have disappeared entirely.

Their knowledge survives only in fragments of magical history and in warnings passed quietly through witch communities. Few witches living in the present day have ever encountered one.

The disappearance was not entirely accidental.

Within the series it becomes clear that many weavers were deliberately driven out or destroyed by their fellow witches, who feared their ability to create new magic. A witch capable of inventing spells could not easily be controlled by established traditions or magical hierarchies.

In some cases, witches turned against their own.

This quiet culling echoes through Diana’s own family history. Her father, Stephen Bishop, recognized that Diana possessed unusual magical abilities long before she did. His efforts to protect her—and the dangers surrounding her power—ultimately cost him his life.

By the modern era of the story, weaving has become something close to legend. The magical world still practices spells, but the ability to create entirely new magic has nearly vanished.

The Hidden Genetics of Magic

As the series unfolds, a deeper explanation begins to emerge—one that connects witches and daemons in unexpected ways.

Within the lore of All Souls, daemons are often associated with creativity and intellectual intensity. Artists, musicians, philosophers, and scientists frequently appear among their ranks. Their minds move quickly, generating ideas and insights that sometimes feel overwhelming even to themselves.

When this creative spark intersects with the magical inheritance of witches, something unusual can happen.

Weavers often appear in families where daemon and witch bloodlines intersect, suggesting that weaving magic may arise from the combination of creative and magical traits. In this sense, weaving resembles artistic creation as much as traditional spellcasting.

The weaver does not simply repeat knowledge.

They invent.

Magic becomes something closer to composition or craftsmanship—an act of creation rather than preservation.

Threads, Patterns, and the Structure of the Universe

The idea that magic might appear as threads woven together feels like pure fantasy, yet the image echoes a much older way of thinking about the universe.

For centuries, scholars tried to understand reality by searching for hidden patterns beneath the surface of the visible world. Renaissance thinkers believed that mathematics and natural philosophy revealed the underlying structure of creation. Numbers, geometry, and symbols were not merely tools of calculation but clues to the deeper design of the universe.

Modern science approaches that mystery from a different direction, yet it often arrives at imagery that feels strangely familiar.

Astronomers have discovered that galaxies are not scattered randomly through space. Instead, they form enormous interconnected filaments stretching across the universe in what scientists now call the cosmic web. These vast strands of matter link clusters of galaxies together, forming structures that resemble threads woven across unimaginable distances.

If you want to see what scientists mean, NASA and astrophysicists have produced remarkable visualizations of these structures:
https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-matter/

At smaller scales, modern physics also describes reality not as solid objects but as interacting fields and patterns of energy. Some theoretical models even imagine fundamental particles as tiny vibrating strings.

The language is different from the magic of All Souls, but the imagery is strikingly similar.

In both cases, the universe is imagined not as a collection of isolated things but as something closer to a fabric—an interconnected structure where individual strands combine to form larger patterns.

Within the world of the novels, a weaver sees these threads directly and learns to shape them.

In the real world, scientists use mathematics and observation to uncover the patterns that hold the universe together.

Both begin with the same instinct: the belief that beneath the visible world, there is an order waiting to be understood.

Learning to Weave

Because weavers became so rare, the knowledge of how to train them nearly disappeared as well. Few witches in Diana’s own time understand what weaving magic is, let alone how it works.

This is why Diana must travel back in time to find a teacher.

In Elizabethan London she encounters Goody Alsop, the powerful elderly witch who leads the St. James Garlickhythe gathering. Among witches of the period she is widely respected for her knowledge of ancient magical traditions, and she quickly recognizes Diana’s true nature.

Under Goody Alsop’s guidance, Diana begins to learn the foundations of weaving magic.

Instead of traditional spells, Goody Alsop teaches her to work with ten colored cords, known as the weaver’s cords, which allow Diana to practice tying intricate magical knots. Each knot represents a different way of combining the threads of magical power, gradually teaching Diana how spells themselves can be constructed.

Through these lessons Diana learns to shape increasingly complex forms of magic. The Ninth Knot becomes essential to the spell that will eventually allow Diana and Matthew to return to their own time. Goody Alsop also teaches her about a far more powerful Tenth Knot, associated with both creation and destruction.

During her training, Diana weaves a powerful forspell that calls forth a rowan tree, whose magic allows her to tame and bind her firedrake familiar, Corra, a creature of fire and ancient power.

These acts of weaving hint at something even larger. Diana’s ability to create living magical structures connects to an alchemical idea sometimes described as the Arbour Dianae, or “Diana’s Tree,” a concept associated with the creation of life through the union of different forces.

Goody Alsop herself belongs to an older lineage of magical teachers. She is described as an apprentice of the fifteenth-century seer Ursula Soothtell, better known in English folklore as Mother Shipton. Through this chain of mentorship, the nearly lost knowledge of weaving survives long enough to reach Diana.

Other Weavers

Diana is not the only weaver in the story.

Another powerful witch, Satu Järvinen, also possesses weaving abilities. Unlike Diana, however, Satu grew up aware of her powers and learned about them from her mother.

This difference shapes the paths both witches take.

Satu understands early on what she is capable of and seeks to control her power. Diana, by contrast, must rediscover weaving almost entirely from scratch. Without the intervention of Goody Alsop and the Elizabethan witches, she might never have understood her abilities at all.

The contrast between them highlights how fragile magical knowledge has become.

Some traditions survive within isolated families.

Others must be rediscovered across centuries.

Why the Weavers Matter

Within the larger story of All Souls, the return of weavers hints at something much deeper about the future of magical creatures.

For centuries, witches, vampires, and daemons believed their species existed as separate and stable groups. Yet the mystery of weavers suggests that these boundaries may be more fluid than anyone realized. The ability appears at the intersection of different bloodlines, hinting that magic itself may evolve when creatures who were once isolated begin to connect.

In that sense, the rediscovery of weavers is not only about Diana’s personal power.

It may signal the return of something the magical world nearly lost: the ability to create new magic rather than simply inherit it.

And like many forgotten traditions, it survived just long enough to be found again.

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In the chapel, hanging in the minstrels’ gallery, there is a tapestry depicting a unicorn in a garden. It is exactly the kind of object you would expect to find there, something old, intricate, and quietly symbolic.

And then it’s torn.

Corra, Diana’s familiar, takes refuge in the chapel. As she is chased, she flies upward and claws through the tapestry, ripping straight through the image. What had been preserved for generations is altered in a moment.

That shift matters, because the tapestry itself carries a long artistic tradition. Works like The Unicorn Tapestries depict a unicorn enclosed within a garden, surrounded by carefully rendered plants and animals. These images are often read as symbols of purity and magic, but also of containment. The unicorn is powerful, but it is still held within a defined space.

In All Souls, that symbolism starts to feel familiar in a different way. The unicorn, so closely tied to magic, feels aligned with how witches are portrayed in the series. And when you think about the other animals that appear alongside it in these traditions, especially lions, the connection becomes clearer. Lions carry a sense of strength and control that echoes the vampire world Matthew comes from.

Daemons, as always, are harder to place. They don’t settle neatly into a symbol, which is exactly the point. They exist just outside the structure, resisting the kind of definition the tapestry seems to rely on.

That idea connects directly to the structure of the All Souls world. For much of the series, power exists within systems. The Congregation, the Covenant, and the rules that separate witches, vampires, and daemons all function to keep that power contained and understandable.

The tapestry reflects that logic. Power can exist, but it must be controlled.

What makes this moment different is that the image of control is not preserved. It is broken. Corra does not move around the tapestry or respect its boundaries. She tears through it, disrupting the very idea it represents.

This is where the scene shifts from reference to meaning. Corra represents a form of magic that does not fit within established systems. She is not governed in the same way, and by this point in the story, neither is Diana.

Diana’s magic is no longer something that can be easily categorized or contained. It is expanding beyond the structures that once defined it. The tapestry, with its enclosed and controlled image, reflects an older way of understanding power.

Corra’s action challenges that entirely.

The setting makes that disruption even more significant. This happens in the chapel at Sept-Tours, a place tied to family, continuity, and tradition. The act of tearing the tapestry suggests that what has been preserved for generations may no longer hold in the same way.

That matters for Matthew as well. His world has always been shaped by structure, hierarchy, and control. The tapestry reflects that worldview, one where power is managed and contained within clear boundaries. But Corra does not recognize those boundaries, and her presence changes the space around her.

This is where the object connects back to Diana and Matthew’s story now. They are no longer living within the old systems in the same way. They are navigating forms of power that are still evolving, in a world that has not yet caught up to what they have become.

The idea of containment no longer works as it once did.

The tapestry shows us what that world looked like. Corra shows us what it is becoming. And the question is not whether those old structures will hold, but how Diana and Matthew will respond as they begin to break. Because the rules that once defined their world are no longer enough to explain what is happening inside it.

Maybe that’s the next part of the story we explore in The Falcon and the Rose.

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Some of the most powerful characters in The All Souls novels are the ones who speak the least.

Marthe is one of them.

When readers first encounter Sept-Tours, the ancient de Clermont family home in France, Marthe appears to be exactly what she presents herself as: the housekeeper who manages the estate and oversees its daily life. She moves quietly through the house, ensuring meals appear at the right moment, rooms are prepared, and the rhythms of the household continue without interruption.

But it quickly becomes clear that Marthe is far more than a housekeeper.

She has lived at Sept-Tours for centuries. Like Ysabeau, she’s a vampire whose memory stretches across generations of the creature world. That long life gives her a perspective few others possess. She’s seen alliances form and break, watched the creature world change, and observed the ways power moves quietly beneath the surface of events.

Where visitors see only a grand house filled with history, Marthe sees something alive - an institution that holds the memory and continuity of the de Clermont family itself.

And she protects it.

Her authority doesn’t come from rank or political power. Instead, it comes from experience. Marthe understands the house, the family, and the traditions that shape them. She knows when to intervene and when to let events unfold.

That quiet knowledge appears in small but revealing moments.

One of the most striking occurs when Marthe gives Diana a tea meant to prevent pregnancy. When Ysabeau notices what’s happening, she raises an eyebrow. Marthe answers with a small lift of her chin, a gesture that feels almost defiant.

In that brief exchange, the two women clearly understand each other.

They both know what the tea is.
And they both know why Marthe has offered it.

But the moment raises a deeper question. How would Marthe know that such a precaution might be necessary? For most of the creature world, the idea that Diana and Matthew could have a child would seem unlikely—perhaps even impossible.

Yet Marthe behaves as though the possibility is entirely real.

Later she remarks that she hasn’t seen power like Diana’s in centuries. That quiet observation suggests something remarkable about the life Marthe has lived. Over the long span of time she’s witnessed the creature world unfold, she may have known witches whose powers resembled Diana’s - true weavers whose magic moved through the world in ways later generations no longer recognize.

Marthe never explains what she remembers, but her reaction suggests recognition.

Perhaps she senses it in Diana’s scent, something subtle that most humans would never notice. Perhaps it’s in the strange rhythm of Diana’s magic—the song of her blood, as creatures sometimes describe it. Or perhaps it’s simply the way Diana’s power bends rules that others believe are fixed.

Whatever the reason, Marthe seems to understand something long before the rest of the creature world does.

She has seen this kind of power before.

That perspective shapes the way she treats Diana. At first Marthe observes her carefully, measuring whether this witch truly belongs in the house that Philippe built. Gradually her stance changes. Marthe begins to treat Diana not as a guest but as someone who’s part of the family.

And that acceptance matters.

Sept-Tours isn’t simply a building; it’s the center of the de Clermont family’s identity. Being welcomed there means becoming part of something far older than any one person.

Marthe’s loyalty extends not only to the house but also to Philippe’s legacy. She understands what the family has endured and what it must protect moving forward. That perspective gives her a unique place within the household. She isn’t driven by the rivalries or ambitions that sometimes shape the creature world.

Instead, she represents something steadier.

That loyalty becomes especially clear later in the story, when Ysabeau allows herself to be taken to Gerbert’s stronghold as part of a carefully planned strategy in The Book of Life. To the outside world it appears as though Ysabeau has been captured, but the move is deliberate.

When she leaves Sept-Tours, Marthe walks beside her, arm in arm, fully aware of the danger ahead.

The image is striking: two women who have shared centuries of the creature world stepping into the plan they’ve set in motion. Marthe isn’t simply accompanying Ysabeau - she’s standing beside her as someone who understands exactly what’s at stake.

In a story filled with vampires, witches, and daemons, Marthe rarely draws attention to herself.

Yet in many ways she’s one of the strongest figures in the entire household. While others wrestle with power, revenge, and destiny, Marthe quietly represents continuity - memory stretching across centuries, loyalty that doesn’t waver, and the steady presence that keeps Sept-Tours standing.

Which leaves us with a question worth considering.

Is Marthe the quiet force holding the de Clermont family together?

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Not the main house at the manor, but the Lodge’s guest house, the more private space where Matthew lives while Amira teaches yoga to the creatures in the manor house. It is a quieter setting, slightly removed, and that makes what hangs there feel more intentional.

It’s easy to pass over the painting at first. Just another portrait in a house filled with history.

Matthew pauses long enough to explain that the woman in the potrait is Louisa de Clermont, his sister, dressed in yellow, striking and composed in a way that immediately sets her apart.

The portrait Deborah Harkness draws on reflects a specific artistic tradition. Works like Portrait of a Lady by Sir Peter Lely were designed to capture not just likeness, but presence.

The drapery, the lighting, and the pose create a sense of control, while the yellow gown draws the eye and signals visibility, confidence, and a kind of deliberate presence.

That matters in the context of Louisa’s character.

Even before she appears, we are given a version of her through this image. She is positioned within the de Clermont world, but slightly apart from it—visible, distinct, and uncontained.

Matthew tells Diana that Louisa left for Barbados to become “queen of the Indies,” and describes her as someone who absorbed every vice of every age she lived through. He also tells her how it ended. Louisa was executed by local plantation owners, beheaded and burned after becoming too dangerous to control. Her death was later hidden within the chaos of a slave rebellion, allowing those responsible to erase what had really happened.

What stands out is what Matthew does not explain.

There is no clear reason given for why Louisa was sent away, only that she was removed from the center of the family and left to create her own domain.

At this point, Diana feels sympathy for Louisa and for Matthew, who carries that history with him.

That understanding soon changes.

When Diana and Matthew travel back to 1590 in Shadow of Night, Louisa is no longer a story from the past. She is present, and the version Diana encounters is far more immediate, unpredictable, and dangerous than the portrait suggests.

Looking back, that shift changes how the painting reads.

The portrait, once a piece of history, becomes a warning she didn’t yet know how to read.

This connect to to the larger pattern in the All Souls worlds.

Objects don’t just reflect the past. They prepare you for what is coming. They introduce tension before it fully unfolds and draw your attention to what will matter later.

Louisa’s portrait does exactly that. It places her in the story early, establishes her presence before her arrival, and quietly signals that when she does intersect with Diana and Matthew’s lives, it will not be neutral.

Maybe that’s the next part of the story we explore in The Falcon and the Rose.

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Some books change the way people understand the world.

When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, it did exactly that. His theory of evolution by natural selection challenged long-held assumptions about how life develops and how species adapt across generations. The book sparked enormous debate. Religious leaders questioned it, scientists argued over it, and readers across Europe struggled to understand what Darwin’s ideas might mean for the future of life on earth.

Among those readers, in the world of The All Souls novels, was Matthew de Clermont.

And Matthew didn’t just read Darwin’s book, he wrote in the margins.

A Scientist Reading Darwin

Matthew Clairmont has lived through centuries of intellectual history. He has watched scientific theories rise and fall, seen the Enlightenment reshape European thought, and spent much of his long life studying the nature of life itself. Darwin’s work would have captured his attention immediately.

Darwin argued that species aren’t fixed. They evolve across generations, shaped by environmental pressures and the slow accumulation of genetic change. For Matthew, that idea raises a far more complicated question: if human species can evolve, what about creatures?

In A Discovery of Witches, Diana discovers Matthew’s annotated copy of On the Origin of Species. His notes reveal that he has been thinking about creatures in evolutionary terms long before the events of the trilogy begin. In the margins, he wonders whether vampires, witches, and daemons might once have been part of a single species that diverged over time.

He also notices something troubling. Across generations, creatures appear to be losing the abilities that once defined them. Vampires struggle to sire children, witches find their magic weakening, and instincts that once guided creatures seem to fade.

Darwin’s book doesn’t answer those questions.

But it gives Matthew a framework for asking them.

Darwin’s Impact in the Real World

Darwin’s book didn’t simply change biology. It changed how people thought about life itself.

Victorian readers were accustomed to thinking of the natural world as orderly and permanent, arranged in a hierarchy that had remained unchanged since creation. Darwin challenged that idea by proposing that species evolve slowly through natural processes.

The reaction was immediate and intense.

Some scientists embraced Darwin’s ideas, recognizing the explanatory power of natural selection. Others rejected them outright, arguing that evolution undermined traditional religious beliefs about creation. Public debates filled lecture halls and newspapers across Europe.

Darwin himself understood how radical his proposal was. In one of the most famous passages of On the Origin of Species, he writes:

“There is grandeur in this view of life… from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

For Darwin’s readers, this idea was both exhilarating and unsettling. If life could change and diversify across generations, then the boundaries people believed were permanent might not be permanent at all.

The debate Darwin began in the nineteenth century still continues today.

The Creature World’s Version of the Same Debate

In The All Souls novels, the creature world is struggling with a remarkably similar question.

For centuries, witches, vampires, and daemons have lived under the authority of the Congregation and its central law: the Covenant. Officially, the Covenant exists to prevent creatures from drawing attention to themselves. Relationships between species are forbidden so that witches, vampires, and daemons remain hidden within human society.

But the Covenant preserves something else as well.

Power.

By forbidding relationships between the species, the Congregation maintains the existing hierarchy. Vampires and witches hold the greatest influence, while daemons, often dismissed as unstable or unpredictable, remain at the margins of creature society.

The rule appears simple, yet its consequences are profound.

By keeping the species separate, the Covenant prevents the exchange of traits that might strengthen them all.

Over time, the creature world begins to weaken.

The Missing Piece

Matthew’s research eventually reveals something the Congregation failed to understand.

Daemons aren’t the weakest members of the creature world.

They are the missing piece.

Matthew’s genetic studies suggest that daemons carry an extra chromosome, something that contributes to their creativity, unpredictability, and bursts of brilliance. More importantly, those genes appear to stabilize the others. Without daemon genes entering the population, the remaining species begin to decline.

Vampires lose the ability to sire.

Witches lose the strength of their magic.

The Covenant, designed to preserve order, has slowly been weakening the entire creature world.

Weavers and the Bright-Born

This discovery also helps explain something that had puzzled creatures for generations: the appearance of weavers.

Weavers are rare witches capable of shaping magic in ways other witches cannot. Instead of simply casting spells, they create them, weaving strands of magic together in new patterns. Matthew’s research suggests that weavers often appear in families where daemon and witch bloodlines intersect.

In other words, the very relationships the Covenant forbids are the ones that produce the most powerful magic.

By the end of the series, the next generation of children begins to reflect that possibility. Diana and Matthew’s twins carry elements of both species. One inherits Matthew’s vampiric nature while the other shows Diana’s magical abilities, yet both retain something unexpected: mortality, though stretched across unusually long lifespans.

Another child appears as well.

Margaret Clairmont-Nilsen, the daughter of the daemon Sophie Norman and the witch Nathaniel Wilson, becomes one of the first examples of this new future. At first, children like Margaret were feared as dangerous crosses between species and were often sought by the Congregation.

But Matthew’s research suggests something very different.

They may represent the future of the creature world.

A Different Kind of Evolution

Darwin’s theory proposed that species evolve slowly through generations as the pressures of their environment shape survival and reproduction. In the world of The All Souls novels, something similar may be happening.

For centuries, the Covenant tried to freeze the creature world in place, enforcing divisions between species and protecting the existing hierarchy. Yet nature rarely remains fixed forever. Over time, the children appearing at the end of the series suggest that the creature world is adapting despite those rules.

The traits of witches, vampires, and daemons may once again begin to exist together.

A brighter, more complicated future than the one the Congregation tried to preserve.

Sometimes revolutions begin with wars or declarations.

And sometimes they begin quietly, in the margins of a book.

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One of the quieter questions running through The All Souls novels concerns immortality—not the drama of becoming a vampire, but the idea of choosing it.

For most vampires in the series, transformation happens suddenly. Some are dying. Others are turned in moments of crisis or violence. Very few are given the opportunity to consider what eternal life might really mean before it becomes their reality.

Phoebe Taylor is different.

Her story begins in London at Sotheby’s Auction House, where she works among paintings, manuscripts, and historical artifacts that carry centuries of history within them. When Marcus Whitmore visits the auction house in Shadow of Night, he’s there to purchase two Elizabethan miniature portraits painted by Nicholas Hilliard—images of Matthew de Clermont and Diana Bishop from the year 1590. Ysabeau has sent him to retrieve them quietly so they can be returned to Sept-Tours and kept out of public attention.

It’s during this encounter that Marcus meets Phoebe.

At first their conversation is simply part of the auction house transaction, but Marcus is immediately struck by her intelligence and curiosity. He asks her to dinner, and what begins as a chance meeting gradually develops into something deeper.

Phoebe approaches Marcus’s world with the instincts of a historian. Her work has already taught her to think across centuries, tracing the stories carried by objects and artifacts. When she learns the truth about vampires and the de Clermont family, her reaction isn’t fear so much as fascination. Instead of turning away from the creature world, she begins to understand it.

Over time Phoebe becomes part of the de Clermont circle, and her knowledge of art and artifacts proves unexpectedly valuable. In The Book of Life, Baldwin quickly recognizes that someone who understands provenance, historical objects, and the movement of wealth across centuries can be extremely useful to a family whose history stretches far beyond the modern world.

Yet the most important decision Phoebe faces is still ahead.

Unlike many vampires before her, she’s given time to consider what immortality might mean. When she eventually chooses to become a vampire in Time’s Convert, the transformation happens with preparation and care. Miriam oversees the process, bringing a scientific understanding to something that was once far more dangerous and unpredictable.

Phoebe’s choice grows partly out of love for Marcus, but it’s also tied to her own fascination with time. As someone who studies history through objects and artifacts, she’s always been drawn to the long arc of human experience. The idea of living across centuries holds a strange appeal.

Placed beside Diana and Matthew’s story, Phoebe’s decision highlights a different kind of transformation.

Diana and Matthew are working to change the structure of the creature world itself. Their relationship challenges the Covenant and the centuries-old rules that separate witches, vampires, and daemons.

Phoebe’s choice is more personal.

While Diana and Matthew try to reshape the rules of their world, Phoebe must decide whether she’s willing to live within that world forever.

Choosing immortality means leaving her human life behind. It means accepting that everyone she’s ever known will eventually disappear while she continues forward through time.

Phoebe understands this, and still, she chooses it.

Which brings us to the question her story quietly raises.

Even with all the knowledge in the world, can anyone truly understand what immortality means before experiencing it?

Phoebe studies history for a living. She understands time better than most people.

But living forever isn’t the same as studying it.

Which leaves us with the question her story asks.

What do we give up when we choose forever?

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They are proof.

While Diana and Matthew are living in Elizabethan England, those they have left behind are searching for any sign that they survived their journey into the past. Ysabeau watches auction houses closely, looking for something tangible. Something that confirms they existed in that time.

And then the miniatures appear.

Painted in the sixteenth century and attributed to Nicholas Hilliard, they show Diana and Matthew exactly where they should not exist, in the 1590s. Marcus is sent to secure them, and in doing so, the present timeline finally has confirmation.

They made it. They lived there. They left a trace.

That is what makes these objects so powerful.

Miniature portraits in the Elizabethan world were never just decorative. They were deeply personal, but they were also records. They captured not only a likeness, but a moment in time. A person’s presence. Their place within a specific world.

They could be carried, hidden, exchanged, or displayed. But they always functioned as something concrete.

Evidence that someone existed.

The connection to Diana and Matthew is exact.

These portraits do what all good objects in All Souls do. They anchor the story. They take something uncertain and make it real. Without them, the people in the present are left with theory and belief. With them, they have confirmation.

The miniatures also reflect the structure of Diana and Matthew’s relationship.

They are painted separately, two distinct images, but held together in a single object. That pairing mirrors what we see again and again in the series. Two different identities, two different histories, existing side by side without being reduced to one.

But what matters most is what they represent now.

At the time they are discovered, the miniatures answer one question. They prove that Diana and Matthew survived the past.

Now, that question has been answered, and the role of the object shifts.

It is no longer just about proof. It becomes about what is remembered, what is preserved, and what is carried forward.

Diana and Matthew are no longer trying to prove they existed. They are deciding what parts of their story will shape what comes next.

The twins will grow up knowing this history not as something discovered, but as something inherited. They are not looking for proof. They are living with the consequences of it.

Which makes the miniatures feel different.

They’re no longer just evidence of survival.

They’re a record of who Diana and Matthew were at a particular moment in time. A version of them that can be held, returned to, and remembered.

And the question now is not whether that moment happened.

It’s how much of it they choose to carry forward, raising children with abilities no one has seen before or fully understands.

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When Diana Bishop and Matthew de Clermont step into Elizabethan England in Shadow of Night, one of the most intriguing people they encounter is John Dee.

Dee was a real historical figure, but he often feels as though he stepped directly out of a novel. He advised Queen Elizabeth I, studied mathematics and astronomy, collected rare manuscripts, experimented with alchemy, and spent years trying to communicate with angels. In sixteenth-century England he was known not as an eccentric outsider but as one of the most respected scholars in the country.

What makes Dee fascinating is that, in his world, these pursuits weren’t separate from one another. Mathematics, astronomy, alchemy, theology, and mystical philosophy were all part of the same search for understanding. Scholars believed the universe was built on hidden patterns, and that careful study—of numbers, texts, or symbols—might reveal how it worked.

Knowledge wasn’t divided into tidy academic disciplines.

It was a mystery waiting to be explored.

The Queen’s Scholar

John Dee moved comfortably within the highest circles of Elizabethan England. He advised Queen Elizabeth I on matters ranging from navigation to political symbolism and even helped determine the most astrologically favorable date for her coronation.

England was beginning to imagine itself as a maritime power, and Dee’s work on mathematics and navigation helped shape the thinking of explorers and diplomats alike. His ideas about geography and empire contributed to the intellectual environment that would soon launch England’s global ambitions.

At the same time, Dee never believed that the visible world told the whole story.

For him, understanding the universe meant looking for deeper patterns—connections between mathematics, philosophy, ancient texts, and divine knowledge.

A Library at the Center of the World

One of the most remarkable things about Dee’s life was his library at Mortlake, just outside London.

At a time when most scholars owned only a handful of books, Dee gathered thousands of volumes and manuscripts, creating one of the largest private libraries in England. Historians estimate that the collection contained nearly 4,000 books and more than 1,000 manuscripts, an incredible archive of knowledge in the sixteenth century.

Visitors came from across Europe to see it. Scholars debated ideas there, compared manuscripts, and shared discoveries from across the Renaissance world of learning. Dee’s home became a place where knowledge circulated freely, where the latest astronomical theories might sit beside ancient philosophical texts.

But Mortlake was more than a library.

It was a working intellectual laboratory.

Rooms in the house were dedicated to alchemical experiments and spiritual “conferences,” where Dee believed he might learn how the universe itself was structured. Books, instruments, diagrams, and mystical symbols all belonged to the same search.

In Shadow of Night, Diana and Matthew step directly into this world. They travel to Mortlake hoping to locate the mysterious manuscript Ashmole 782, believing it may be hidden somewhere among Dee’s thousands of volumes.

Where Science and Magic Met

One of the details about John Dee that surprises many people today is how comfortably he moved between what we would now call science and magic.

He kept careful notes on mathematical problems and astronomical observations, but he also spent years recording conversations he believed were taking place between himself, a medium named Edward Kelley, a daemon in Deborah Harkness’s world, and a group of angels.

To Dee, these pursuits weren’t contradictory.

If the universe had been created with order and meaning, then every method of understanding—whether mathematical or spiritual—might reveal part of that design. The challenge was learning how to read the signs correctly.

He was looking for the pattern behind everything.

The Unsettling Partnership with Edward Kelley

Dee’s search for divine knowledge eventually led him into one of the most unusual intellectual partnerships of the Renaissance.

Because Dee believed he could not communicate directly with spirits, he relied on a man named Edward Kelley, who claimed to possess the ability to see visions. Kelley would gaze into a polished “shew stone”—a dark obsidian mirror—and report what the angels revealed. Dee carefully recorded every word.

Together they believed they were receiving a complex divine language now known as Enochian, which they thought might reveal hidden truths about the structure of creation.

But the partnership was never entirely stable.

Dee approached the work with intense religious devotion, hoping to uncover universal truths about the cosmos. Kelley, by contrast, often appeared more interested in the possibility of turning alchemy into gold.

In Shadow of Night, this tension becomes central to the story. The novel portrays Kelley as secretly stealing the manuscript Ashmole 782 from Dee’s library before fleeing to the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Bohemia.

Even historically, the relationship ended in turmoil. At one point Kelley claimed the angels had commanded the two men to share everything—including their wives—an event that deeply disturbed Dee and strained his marriage to Jane Dee.

The pursuit of knowledge, it seems, could lead scholars into deeply uncertain territory.

A Scholar’s Greatest Fear

For John Dee, knowledge was fragile.

He spent decades assembling his library at Mortlake, believing it could become a center for learning that would preserve the intellectual traditions of the ancient and medieval worlds.

Yet he also feared losing it.

While Dee was traveling in Europe later in life, his home was looted. Books, manuscripts, and scientific instruments were scattered or stolen. Much of the remarkable library he had built simply disappeared.

In many ways, that loss echoes through Shadow of Night as well.

The house at Mortlake feels filled with knowledge but also with the uneasy sense that knowledge can vanish.

Dee in the World of All Souls

Deborah Harkness understood this intellectual world intimately. As a historian of the Elizabethan Era she spent years studying scholars who believed knowledge could unlock both natural and spiritual mysteries.

John Dee fits perfectly into that world.

In Shadow of Night, he appears not simply as a historical cameo but as a reminder of how scholars once approached the unknown. Books, symbols, and ideas were tools for discovering truths that might reshape how people understood the world.

The same impulse drives many characters in the series.

The belief that somewhere in a manuscript, a symbol, or a forgotten piece of knowledge the answer is waiting.

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