The Falcon and the Rose: Looking Back at The Black Bird Oracle
What did Diana learn at Ravenswood and could it matter for the next chapter of the All Souls story?
In our last two artilce we looked at the title of Deborah Harkness’s next All Souls novel, The Falcon and the Rose. We explored the Tudor Rose and the falcon associated with Anne Boleyn, two symbols that point toward the Tudor world that plays such an important role in Shadow of Night.
But before we follow those historical clues any further, it helps to pause and look at where the story most recently left Diana.
That story unfolds in The Black Bird Oracle.
Why Diana Went to Ravenswood
In The Black Bird Oracle, Diana travels to Ravenswood in Ipswich, Massachusetts, the ancestral home of the Proctor family on her father’s side.
The visit is prompted by a message from her great-aunt Gwyneth Proctor, a witch Diana has never met. Gwyneth tells Diana that there are things she still needs to learn about her own magic and about the deeper history of her family.
Ravenswood functions almost like a place of inheritance and training. It is also a place where the memories and traditions of Diana’s extended family have been preserved.
What Diana discovers there surprises her.
She had always thought of her magical inheritance primarily in terms of the Bishop witches on her mother’s side. At Ravenswood she learns that her father’s family, the Proctors, carries an equally powerful and ancient magical tradition.
The Proctor Family Magic
At Ravenswood Diana encounters a large and powerful branch of witches descended from the Proctor line. These witches practice forms of magic that are both older and in some cases darker than the spellwork Diana studied earlier in the series.
The Proctor witches are known for working with what they call higher magic and bloodcraft, and for their connection to the Blackbird Oracle cards used within the family.
Through these traditions Diana begins to understand that she inherited different aspects of her magic from each side of her family. From her mother, Rebecca Bishop, she carries the fire magic that first appeared earlier in the series. From her father’s side she may have inherited other abilities, including water magic and a deeper potential for forms of magic she has not yet fully explored.
This discovery changes how Diana understands her own power.
The Bishop and Proctor Lines
Another revelation at Ravenswood is that the Bishop and Proctor families are deeply intertwined.
Both families were connected to the events surrounding the Salem witch trials. Diana learns that she is descended from Salem witches on both sides of her family, and that Ravenswood has long served as a sanctuary preserving the combined history of the two lines.
In this sense the farm is more than a family home.
It is a repository of memory.
Where the Story Leaves Diana
By the end of The Black Bird Oracle, Diana has not fully mastered the traditions she begins to uncover at Ravenswood. What she gains instead is a clearer understanding of how complex her magical inheritance really is.
Her power comes from both sides of her family.
At the same time her children Rebecca and Philip are growing older and beginning to show the unusual inheritance that comes with being bright born.
The creature world has never had to deal with children like them before.
And the old rules may not hold, causing problems for Diana and Matthew. Again.
Why This Matters
From that perspective, The Black Bird Oracle does something very specific in the larger story.
It expands Diana’s understanding of her magical lineage while leaving her with unanswered questions about how to use that knowledge safely.
She has begun learning these older traditions.
But she has not yet mastered them.
And in the All Souls series, when knowledge is missing in the present, Diana often finds answers somewhere in the past.
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