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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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 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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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

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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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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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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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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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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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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Few characters in the All Souls trilogy inspire as much affection from readers as Gallowglass. When he appears in the story, he brings a kind of warmth and steadiness that contrasts with the darker tensions surrounding Matthew and Diana. He’s loyal, fearless, and often unexpectedly funny — the sort of character who feels immediately trustworthy.

Yet beneath that humor lies a much quieter tragedy.

Long before Diana Bishop knows who he is, Gallowglass has already spent centuries watching over her. The reason traces back to Philippe de Clermont. Many years before the events of the trilogy, Philippe gave Gallowglass a command: when the time came, he was to protect Diana.

And Gallowglass obeyed.

Across centuries, wars, and changing countries, he remained close enough to protect her while keeping his distance from the life she didn’t yet understand. By the time Diana finally meets him, he’s already known her story for far longer than she has.

Over time, that watchfulness grows into something deeper. Gallowglass comes to love Diana. It’s a quiet love — never acted upon and rarely spoken — but it’s unmistakably present beneath his loyalty.

And that’s where the question becomes complicated.

How much of that love is truly his own?

Philippe’s command gave Gallowglass a purpose. It tied his life to Diana’s centuries before she was even born. Watching over her wasn’t simply a role he chose later; it was a promise made to the patriarch of the de Clermont family long ago.

Loyalty runs deep in that family. Matthew’s life is shaped by his loyalty to Philippe. Ysabeau’s strength comes from her fierce loyalty to her family and their history. Gallowglass carries that same devotion, but in his case it demands a different kind of sacrifice.

He’s devoted himself to protecting Diana without ever expecting anything in return.

What makes his story so moving is that Gallowglass never expresses resentment about this role. He doesn’t serve because he’s afraid of Philippe’s authority. He serves because he loved Philippe, and because loyalty has become part of who he is.

Still, the question lingers.

Did Gallowglass fall in love with Diana simply because he came to know her across centuries of watching and protecting her?

Or did Philippe’s command shape the course of his life so completely that the outcome was inevitable?

It’s one of the quiet tragedies of the trilogy that Gallowglass’s story unfolds mostly at the edges of the central narrative. He’s a protector, a friend, and a witness to a love story that could never be his own.

Yet there’s something profoundly honorable in that choice.

Because Gallowglass never stops protecting Diana — even when it means stepping aside.

Which leaves us with the question readers still debate.

Did Gallowglass truly love Diana or was his devotion shaped by Philippe’s command?

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There are only two points each year when day and night come into near alignment. The Spring Equinox is one of them—a brief moment when the world feels evenly held before the season begins to shift.

On March 20, daylight and darkness share the day almost equally. It is not exact, but it is close enough to notice. For a short time, nothing dominates. The light has not yet overtaken the dark, but it is no longer receding.

And then the balance begins to change.

A Different Kind of Beginning

For much of history, this moment marked the start of the year. Not in the middle of winter, but here—when the natural world began to visibly move again.

The change was practical. Days grew longer. The ground softened. Cycles that had paused through winter resumed. What had been dormant responded to light and warmth.

This was not a symbolic reset.

It was a seasonal one.

A Gradual Shift

What defines the equinox is not just balance, but transition.

There is no clear dividing line between seasons. The shift happens gradually, often unnoticed at first. One day does not feel dramatically different from the next, but over time, the pattern becomes clear.

The equinox sits inside that change.

It marks the point where movement has already begun.

In the World of All Souls

This kind of change feels familiar within the world of A Discovery of Witches. Deborah Harkness builds her story around forces that exist in tension—science and magic, past and present, instinct and control. These elements do not resolve easily, and they are not meant to.

They are understood through their relationship to one another.

The equinox reflects that same structure. It is not a resolution of opposites, but a moment in which they are briefly held in balance before something shifts.

What This Moment Offers

The equinox does not ask for action.

It asks for attention.

It invites a different kind of reflection—not focused on what needs to change, but on what is already changing. The shifts that matter most are often the ones that begin quietly, before they are fully visible.

Taking a moment to notice those changes is enough.

The Return of Light

The light returns gradually, extending itself into the days ahead without announcement. Most forms of growth follow the same pattern—they begin quietly and gather strength over time.

In A Discovery of Witches, change unfolds in much the same way. It emerges through study, through time, through the recognition of what has been there all along but not yet fully understood.

The equinox belongs to that kind of change.

A moment of balance that does not last, but marks the beginning of something that will.

A Small Practice for the Equinox

To mark this moment, I’ve created a simple two-page Spring Equinox Reflection you can print or save. It offers a space to notice what feels steady, what is beginning to emerge, and what you may be ready to leave behind as the season shifts.

Download Your Copy

If you return to it at the Summer Solstice, you may find that more has changed than you expected.

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Few places in the All Souls trilogy feel as alive as the Bodleian Library.

For many readers, including me, it is the setting where the story truly begins.

It’s where Diana Bishop sits down to research alchemy.
It’s where she calls the mysterious manuscript Ashmole 782 from the stacks.
And it’s where the quiet rhythms of scholarship suddenly collide with the hidden world of witches, vampires, and daemons.

But the Bodleian in Deborah Harkness’s story is more than a backdrop.

It feels almost like a character — exhaling when Diana opens the Ashmole manuscript

It’s a place that holds centuries of history, connection, and perhaps even a little magic within its stacks.

A Library Older Than the Story

The real Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is one of the oldest libraries in Europe.

Its origins stretch back to the early seventeenth century, when the scholar and diplomat Sir Thomas Bodley rebuilt Oxford’s university library and opened it to scholars in 1602.

From the beginning, the Bodleian was designed to preserve knowledge.

Unlike many earlier libraries, its books were not meant to circulate. Scholars came to the books rather than taking them away. Over time, the library developed one of the most remarkable collections of manuscripts and printed works in the world.

Today, the Bodleian holds millions of items, including medieval manuscripts, early scientific texts, maps, and rare books.

It’s the kind of place where centuries of scholarship quietly accumulate.

Which makes it a perfect setting for the beginning of a story about a hidden manuscript.

Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room

One of the most recognizable spaces in the Bodleian is Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room, where Diana first encounters Ashmole 782.

The room feels almost unchanged from earlier centuries.

Long wooden desks stretch across the hall beneath a high timbered ceiling. Tall bookcases line the walls. Portraits of historical figures watch silently from above the shelves.

Readers work quietly under the gaze of centuries of scholars who came before them.

The atmosphere is part study, part cathedral.

It’s easy to imagine how a historian might lose track of time there while reading old manuscripts.

And it’s equally easy to imagine how a book like Ashmole 782 might appear suddenly among the ordinary texts of academic research.

A Library That Notices Everything

One of the subtle details in A Discovery of Witches is the way the Bodleian seems to react when Ashmole 782 appears.

The moment Diana calls the manuscript from the stacks, creatures throughout Oxford become aware of it.

The library itself becomes a gathering point.

Witches arrive to investigate.
Vampires begin watching the reading room.
Daemons appear among the scholars.

The Bodleian suddenly becomes the center of a hidden conflict.

This moment captures something important about the library itself.

For centuries, scholars have believed that libraries are places where knowledge waits patiently to be discovered.

But stories like this suggest something slightly different.

That libraries also hold connections.

Ideas linked across time.
Readers connected through centuries of study.
Manuscripts waiting for the moment when the right person opens them.

The Scholar’s Ritual

Part of the magic of the Bodleian lies in its rituals.

To read a manuscript there, scholars must first request it using a call slip. The request disappears into the vast system of stacks behind the reading rooms.

After some time, a librarian appears with a box containing the manuscript.

The reader opens it carefully.

For the first time in years—or sometimes centuries—the manuscript’s pages are turned again.

Deborah Harkness understands this ritual intimately. As a historian of early modern Europe, she spent years working in libraries like the Bodleian.

Which is why the scenes in A Discovery of Witches feel so authentic.

The quiet desks.
The careful handling of manuscripts.
The sense that knowledge lives not only in the books themselves but in the community of readers who study them.

The Bodleian Today

The Bodleian Library is still very much alive.

Scholars from around the world continue to work there, studying manuscripts and rare books that connect modern research with centuries of intellectual history.

Many of its collections can now be explored online.

Bodleian Library Digital Collections
Visitors to Oxford can also tour several of the Bodleian’s historic spaces, including Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room and the Divinity School.

Walking through these rooms, it is easy to see why Harkness chose this library as the starting point of her story.

Few places feel so filled with the presence of the past.

In the world of A Discovery of Witches, the Bodleian is more than a setting.

It is a place where centuries of knowledge converge.

A place where scholars gather.
Where manuscripts wait quietly in the stacks.
And where the past sometimes reveals itself at exactly the right moment.

Which is why the story begins there.

Because if a mysterious manuscript were ever to reappear in the modern world, the Bodleian Library might be exactly where you would expect it to happen.

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One of the most intriguing things about the world Deborah Harkness creates in A Discovery of Witches is how ordinary it often appears.

Witches walk through the streets of Oxford. Vampires sit in libraries. Daemons browse bookstores and meet friends for lunch. And most of the people around them never notice anything unusual.

Early in the novel, Diana Bishop leaves the Bodleian Library and does something completely ordinary. After spending the morning researching alchemy manuscripts, she stops for lunch in one of Oxford’s cafés. Students move in and out, cups clatter on tables, and the city continues its quiet academic rhythm.

It’s there that she meets Agatha Wilson.

To the people around them, Agatha looks like nothing more than a stylish woman enjoying tea in Oxford. But their conversation quickly reveals that something much larger is unfolding beneath the surface of this ordinary moment. Agatha is a daemon, and she begins explaining the rumors circulating through the creature world about Ashmole 782.

In the daemon community, she tells Diana, the lost manuscript is believed to contain the story of origins—not only of creatures, but perhaps of humans as well.

The conversation happens in the middle of a busy café, surrounded by students and tourists who remain completely unaware of what’s being discussed at the next table.

And that’s part of what makes the moment so fascinating.

Creatures live among humans, not apart from them.

The Covenant and the Ordinary World

For centuries, witches, vampires, and daemons have lived under the rules of the Covenant. Its purpose is simple: creatures must remain hidden and must avoid drawing attention to themselves.

That rule shapes how creatures move through the human world. They work as scholars, doctors, artists, and scientists. They sit in cafés, walk through markets, and attend university lectures. Their lives unfold in the same streets and buildings as everyone else.

The result is a strange coexistence. Creatures carry centuries of memory and power, yet they share everyday spaces with people who have no idea they’re there.

The café where Diana meets Agatha is one of those places.

It’s not magical in itself. It’s simply part of the daily life of Oxford.

But in that ordinary setting, the hidden world briefly reveals itself.

Oxford as a Living City

Oxford makes this blending of worlds possible.

Unlike many university campuses, Oxford isn’t separate from the town around it. Colleges, libraries, cafés, bookshops, and pubs are woven into the same narrow streets that people have walked for centuries. Students, professors, tourists, and local residents all move through the same spaces.

Many of the city’s pubs and tea rooms have histories stretching back generations. Some were already standing when Matthew Clairmont first walked through Oxford hundreds of years ago.

For someone like Matthew, the city must feel both familiar and strange. Buildings change, shops open and close, and new students arrive every year. Yet the rhythms of daily life remain surprisingly constant. People still pause for tea, share simple lunches, and gather with friends between lectures and research.

Across centuries, Oxford remains a city shaped by conversation and ideas.

Visiting Oxford: A Few Places to Begin

For readers who would like to experience the atmosphere of All Souls themselves, Oxford still offers many of the same streets, cafés, and pubs that appear in the novels.

You might start with The Turf Tavern, tucked down a narrow lane behind Holywell Street. It’s been serving students and scholars since at least the 1600s and remains one of Oxford’s most atmospheric pubs.

Another historic stop is The Bear Inn, one of the oldest pubs in Oxford, with roots stretching back to the thirteenth century.

For tea near the Bodleian, The Vaults & Garden Café sits beside the University Church of St Mary the Virgin and offers views of the Radcliffe Camera just steps away from Diana’s research world.

And if you’d like to visit the site of England’s first coffee house, The Grand Café occupies the location where coffee was first served in Oxford in 1650.

Walking through these places, it’s easy to imagine creatures sitting quietly among the students and visitors.

The World Hidden in Plain Sight

What makes the café scene in A Discovery of Witches so memorable isn’t the setting itself but what it represents.

Two women sit together discussing the origins of the creature world.

One of them is a daemon.
The other is a powerful witch who has spent much of her life pretending she’s human.

Around them, the café continues its ordinary routine. Students read books, sip tea, and talk about their day. No one notices that the future of the creature world may be unfolding quietly at the next table.

That’s the quiet brilliance of Harkness’s world-building.

The extraordinary doesn’t exist in some distant realm. It unfolds alongside the ordinary—sometimes in a library reading room, and sometimes at a small table where two women share tea and sandwiches while discussing the origins of the creature world.

In Oxford, the magical and the ordinary sit side by side.

Most of the time, no one notices the difference.

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Ysabeau de Clermont is one of the most formidable figures in the All Souls trilogy. Elegant, disciplined, and fiercely loyal to her family, she commands attention the moment she appears on the page. When Diana first arrives at Sept-Tours, Ysabeau is intimidating enough that even Matthew approaches her with caution. Her composure, however, hides a deeper truth about who she is and what has shaped her.

Ysabeau carries a long memory.

She has lived through centuries of human history and through the countless conflicts that shaped the creature world. Like many creatures in Deborah Harkness’s universe, she has witnessed both the best and worst of what humans—and creatures—are capable of. But her distrust of witches runs deeper than simple prejudice or old rivalries.

Part of that distrust began long before Diana ever appeared in her life.

Before she was turned into a vampire, Ysabeau possessed second sight—a rare gift that allowed her to perceive things others could not. That gift vanished the moment she was transformed. Her maker did not turn her out of mercy or love. He changed her because he wanted to possess her.

The transformation took more than her mortality. Ysabeau lost her second sight, her ability to bear children, and the natural human life she might have lived. Immortality brought strength and power, but it also came with losses that could never be undone.

From that moment forward, Ysabeau lived with a complicated relationship to witches. They still possessed magic. They could build families. They could live full lives and eventually die natural deaths—things she could no longer do.

Then came the event that hardened those feelings into something far deeper: the death of Philippe de Clermont.

During the Second World War, Philippe was captured by the Nazis with the help of witches who betrayed him. Their collaboration allowed his enemies to locate and destroy one of the most powerful and respected figures in the creature world. For Ysabeau, this was not simply the loss of a mate. It was a profound betrayal that struck at the center of her family and the world she had built with Philippe over centuries.

She responded the only way she knew how.

Ysabeau hunted the witches responsible—not through the structures meant to govern the creature world, and not through the rules of the Covenant or the authority of the Congregation. She acted according to her own sense of loyalty and grief.

For creatures who measure time in centuries rather than decades, memory does not fade easily. Loss lingers. Betrayal can carry weight across generations.

Yet Ysabeau’s anger toward witches was never about a single moment alone. It was built from layers of loss: the life she might have lived as a human, the second sight she lost when she was turned, and the death of Philippe himself. The knowledge that witches had betrayed him only deepened a resentment that had already taken root long before.

Seen in this light, her hostility toward Diana when they first meet becomes easier to understand. Diana is not simply another witch arriving at Sept-Tours. She represents the very things Ysabeau lost—magic, possibility, and the chance to build a future that includes both love and family.

Over time, however, Ysabeau begins to see something different in Diana. She recognizes strength, loyalty, and a willingness to challenge the old divisions that have governed creatures for centuries. Slowly, the possibility emerges that witches and vampires might build a different kind of future together.

But that realization does not erase the past.

Ysabeau belongs to an older world—one shaped by loyalty to family above all else, and by a belief that betrayal demands a response.

Which raises the question that lingers quietly beneath this part of the story.

Was what Ysabeau did justice, or was it vengeance?

The witches she hunted were responsible for Philippe’s death and had aligned themselves with a regime that brought unimaginable destruction to the world. Yet Ysabeau did not seek judgment from the Congregation or from the structures meant to govern the creature world. She acted on her own.

Perhaps that is part of what makes her such a compelling character. Ysabeau embodies a world shaped by centuries of memory, loyalty, and loss. In the All Souls universe, the past is never truly past—it echoes through every alliance, every betrayal, and every choice creatures make.

And so the question remains.

Was Ysabeau justified in hunting the witches who betrayed Philippe?

Or does vengeance, even when born from loyalty and grief, leave its own kind of legacy—one that lasts just as long as the memories that inspired it?

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Coming Sunday

Next we’ll step inside one of the most famous libraries in the world: the Bodleian Library.

But rather than looking at it simply as a place, we’ll explore how the Bodleian functions almost like a living character in the story — a space that holds centuries of history, connection, and perhaps even a little magic within its stacks.

When readers think about the moment Ashmole 782 appears in A Discovery of Witches, we usually picture the manuscript itself.

The strange illustrations.
The shifting pages.
The sudden realization that something extraordinary has surfaced in the Bodleian Library.

But before Diana Bishop ever opens the manuscript, something else happens first.

A librarian places a simple archival box on her desk.

Inside that box is Ashmole 782.

It is a small moment in the story, easy to overlook. But for anyone who has spent time in research libraries, that object carries its own kind of quiet significance.

Because in the world of manuscripts, the box is where the encounter begins.

The Moment Before the Manuscript

In the Bodleian’s reading rooms, manuscripts do not sit openly on shelves waiting to be taken down.

They arrive.

A scholar fills out a request slip. The request disappears into the hidden stacks of the library. And after some time, a librarian returns carrying a labeled box.

Inside that box is the manuscript.

For the reader waiting at the desk, this moment always carries a small sense of anticipation.

You do not yet know what you will find inside.

The manuscript may contain something familiar.

Or it may reveal something you were not expecting at all.

For Diana, the box placed in front of her desk holds Ashmole 782 — a manuscript that creatures across centuries have been searching for.

The Object That Bridges Centuries

Archivists store fragile manuscripts inside specially designed boxes.

These containers protect delicate materials from light, dust, and unnecessary handling. Most are made from acid-free archival board, designed to prevent the slow chemical decay that ordinary paper and cardboard can cause over time.

Many manuscripts are hundreds of years old.

Some are older still.

The box acts as a quiet barrier between the manuscript and the world around it.

Inside, the pages remain stable in carefully controlled conditions until a reader requests them.

Opening the box becomes a ritual.

The reader lifts the lid, removes the manuscript carefully, and begins turning pages that may not have been opened in years.

Sometimes in decades.

Sometimes even longer.

Libraries Still Use Them

Even today, libraries like the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale, and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York still use archival boxes for their collections.

In fact, they are an essential part of how rare materials are preserved.

Scholars who work in these libraries often encounter the same quiet sequence Diana experiences:

A request is submitted.
A librarian disappears into the stacks.
And after some time, a box appears at the reader’s desk.

Inside might be a medieval manuscript, a Renaissance notebook, or an early scientific text that has survived for centuries.

For the reader, opening that box can feel like stepping into another time.

Why the Boxes Remain

And yet, even in an age of digital libraries, the manuscript boxes remain.

Because no digital image can fully replace the experience of encountering the original object.

A manuscript carries more than its text.

The weight of the paper.
The texture of the ink.
The marks left by readers centuries ago.

All of these details are part of the historical record.

For that reason, the quiet procession continues in research libraries around the world.

A request slip disappears into the stacks.

A librarian returns carrying a box.

And inside that box is a manuscript that has traveled through centuries to reach the reader’s desk.

Waiting in the Stacks

In A Discovery of Witches, the moment Diana opens Ashmole 782 is brief.

The manuscript reveals itself.

And then it disappears.

Later, when she attempts to recall the book, the box does not return from the stacks.

To the librarians, it appears the manuscript is missing once again.

But by the end of the trilogy, we learn something remarkable.

Ashmole 782 was never truly gone.

Despite renovations in the Bodleian and centuries of movement through the stacks, it had simply hidden itself in plain sight.

Waiting.

Not for any reader.

But for the moment when Diana herself was ready to receive it.

And when the archival box finally appeared on her desk, centuries of history were ready to unfold.

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Coming Friday

Next in Between the Lines:

Was Ysabeau justified?

The loyalty, grief, and vengeance behind one of the most formidable figures in the creature world.

One of the most complicated characters in the All Souls trilogy is Matthew Clairmont.

He is a brilliant scholar.
A devoted partner.
An ancient vampire who has lived through more than fifteen centuries of history.

And he has done terrible things.

Long before Diana meets him in Oxford, Matthew has fought wars, hunted enemies, and struggled with the darker instincts that come with being a vampire. His past is filled with violence, loss, and choices that cannot be undone.

But Matthew is not simply a vampire.

He was once a human man.

Before the centuries of war and survival, there was a son and brother in medieval France. There was a husband who dreamed of building churches and raising a family. Those memories are not erased by becoming a vampire. They remain part of him.

And perhaps that is why Matthew carries such a deep sense of guilt.

The human he once was still exists within the creature he has become. He remembers the ideals he once believed in. He remembers the life he hoped to build. And across the centuries, those memories stand in painful contrast to the violence he later committed.

Deborah Harkness allows Matthew to remain many things at once.

He is the vampire shaped by blood rage, capable of devastating violence.
He is Philippe’s son, trained to wield power in a world ruled by secrecy and survival.
He is a scholar who has spent centuries studying history, science, and philosophy.
And somewhere beneath all of that is still the human man who once dreamed of building something lasting.

When Diana enters his life, something begins to change.

She brings vitality back into a life that has become defined by memory and caution. Where Matthew often carries the weight of centuries, Diana moves through the world with curiosity, energy, and a belief that the future does not have to repeat the past.

She does not ask him to forget what he has been.

Instead, she asks him to imagine what he might still become.

By the third novel, that possibility expands even further.

Against all expectations, Matthew finds himself facing something he believed was forever lost to him: the promise of family. The coming of their children introduces not only hope, but joy — a kind of life that has been absent from his world for centuries.

It is a reminder of the man he once was.

But it is not simply a return to the past.

Matthew now carries the knowledge of the vampire he has been — the centuries of experience, mistakes, and hard-won understanding that shape who he is.

Perhaps what Diana offers him is not simply forgiveness for the past.

Perhaps she offers him the chance to become something new.

A man who still carries the memory of his human life.
A vampire who understands the cost of violence.
And a father who hopes the next generation of the creature world might live differently from the one that came before.

Matthew Clairmont will always carry the weight of the centuries he has lived.

What matters is what he chooses to do with that history.

And that leaves us with a question worth considering.

Can a vampire who has lived for centuries truly escape the weight of his past?

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What exactly is Ashmole 782?

Is it simply an alchemical manuscript?
Is it a book of magical allegories?
Or is it something more important - a record of the origins of witches, vampires, and daemons themselves?

Illustration from the Thesaurus of Alchemy, ca. 1725

Within the world of Deborah Harkness’s novels, Ashmole 782 is more than a mysterious book discovered in the Bodleian Library.

It is the thread that quietly holds the entire story together.

And the moment it appears, everything begins to change.

The moment Diana Bishop calls the manuscript from the Bodleian stacks, every creature in Oxford seems to feel it.

A Moment in the Bodleian

The scene unfolds in one of the most remarkable libraries in the world.

Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room in the Bodleian Library at Oxford is a long medieval hall lined with wooden desks and towering shelves filled with manuscripts studied for centuries. Portraits of kings, queens, and scholars watch silently from the walls above the bookshelves.

It is the kind of place where history feels almost alive.

Readers sit quietly beneath the high timbered ceiling, turning pages that once passed through the hands of monks, scholars, collectors, and scientists.

Diana is there as a historian of alchemy.

She requests a manuscript — Ashmole 782 — expecting nothing more than another alchemical text for her research.

Instead, something extraordinary happens.

The pages shimmer with hidden illustrations.

Images appear that were not visible before.

And before Diana fully understands what she is seeing, the manuscript slips away again — vanishing back into the library’s vast system of stacks.

But the moment it appears, something else happens.

Creatures across Oxford feel it.

Witches.

Vampires.

Daemons.

All of them suddenly know the manuscript has surfaced again after centuries of absence.

The Many Stories About Ashmole 782

Part of what makes Ashmole 782 so fascinating is that no one seems to agree on what the manuscript actually is.

Within the world of the trilogy, the book has been surrounded by rumors for generations.

Among witches, there are whispers that the manuscript may contain the earliest traditions of spellcraft — perhaps even the first grimoire.

Among vampires, the legends are darker. Some believe the book may hold secrets about the origins of their strength and longevity.

Daemons tell yet another story. In their version, the manuscript contains something even older — a history of origins that might explain where daemons fit within the creature world.

At the beginning of the story, these explanations contradict one another.

Each group sees the manuscript through the lens of its own fears and ambitions.

And that may be the most interesting thing about Ashmole 782.

For centuries, witches, vampires, and daemons have lived under the rules of the Covenant — an agreement designed to keep the three groups separate from one another.

But the rumors surrounding this manuscript suggest something different.

That somewhere in its pages might be a story that does not belong to just one creature at all.

The Image of the Alchemical Child

One of the most striking images associated with Ashmole 782 is the alchemical child.

In historical alchemy, the child symbolized transformation — the moment when opposing forces combine to create something entirely new.

Alchemical manuscripts often depicted this moment as the union of two elements producing a child — not a literal birth, but a metaphor for renewal and possibility.

Within the story, this symbolism begins to feel less metaphorical.

Because the future of the creature world may depend on exactly that kind of union.

Diana, a powerful witch, and Matthew, an ancient vampire, come from histories that the Covenant has kept separate for centuries.

From Gemma Sapientiae et Prudentiae (18th century)

But the manuscript hints that the boundaries between witches, vampires, and daemons may never have been as fixed as everyone believed.

And eventually, Diana and Matthew will become the parents of twins.

Children who embody the transformation the alchemists once imagined.

Not a return to the past.

But the beginning of something new.

The Scholar Behind the Name

The name Ashmole comes from a real historical figure: Elias Ashmole, a seventeenth-century English scholar, collector, and antiquarian.

Ashmole lived during a time when the boundaries between science, philosophy, and magic were still fluid. Astronomy and astrology were studied side by side. Chemistry was emerging from the older traditions of alchemy.

In 1652 he published Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, a collection of English alchemical texts that preserved centuries of earlier writings.

He was also an extraordinary collector.

Ashmole gathered manuscripts, antiquities, and historical records with remarkable dedication. His collections eventually formed the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, one of the oldest public museums in the world.

Without collectors like Ashmole, many of the manuscripts that inspired writers like Deborah Harkness might never have survived.

Manuscripts You Can Explore Yourself

One of the most wonderful things about modern libraries is that many of these manuscripts can now be viewed online.

If the world of A Discovery of Witches makes you curious about real historical manuscripts, here are a few places to begin exploring.

The Bodleian Library Digital Collections

The Bodleian has digitized thousands of manuscripts and rare books from its collections — including alchemical texts similar to the ones Diana studies.

Trinity College Dublin Digital Library

Trinity College holds one of the most famous manuscripts in the world: the Book of Kells, an illuminated gospel manuscript created around the ninth century. Visitors to Dublin can see it in person, but many of its pages can also be viewed online.

The Morgan Library & Museum Digital Collections

The Morgan Library in New York holds extraordinary medieval manuscripts, early scientific texts, and Renaissance notebooks.

The Voynich Manuscript (Yale Beinecke Library)

This mysterious illustrated manuscript — filled with strange plants, astronomical diagrams, and an undeciphered language — remains one of the most famous unsolved puzzles in manuscript history.

Exploring these collections is a little like stepping into the same world Diana inhabits.

Scholars turning pages.

Images revealing themselves slowly.

Centuries of knowledge waiting quietly in the stacks.

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Coming Friday

Next in Between the Lines:

Matthew Clairmont.

A brilliant scholar.
An ancient vampire.
And a man whose past is filled with violence.

The question readers keep returning to is a difficult one:

Can a vampire who has lived for centuries truly escape the weight of his past?