Decrypting Magic in The House with a Clock in its Walls
“Dr. John Dee, the personal astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I of England, and his assistant, Michael Kelly, raised the spirit of a dead woman in an English churchyard at midnight. The two men were standing inside a chalk circle drawn on the ground.” Ever since he was little, Dr. John Dee was a very smart student, and after he finished obtaining both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree, he set to work in the Royal Court under Queen Mary I. After his interest was diverted to mathematics and astrology, his relationship with the Royal Court deteriorated. In 1555, the esteemed Doctor was charged with treason (which was ridiculous because he had been offered lucrative teaching positions at the University of Paris and a Court appointment in from the Czar of Russia, Fedor I, which he’d turned down for patriotic reasons) and had to serve three months in 1555 behind bars until Bishop Edmund Bonner finagled his release. After a mere 3 years, in 1558, Queen Elizabeth I became the queen, and he regained his honor and was once again in favor of the court. She, unlike Mary I, supported Dee’s wide interests, including the occult. Dee helped pioneer the Voyages of Exploration that England started in the sixteenth century, aiding the various ship captains in their mathematical techniques of navigation, but he eventually gave up his work as a navigation specialist and chose instead to focus on his research into the forces of nature and the supernatural forces of the universe. What Dr. John Dee was most famous for was his work in attempting to commune with the spiritual world, particularly heavenly angels. Dee wrote his first astrological book called Monas Hieroglyphica in which he discusses the various facets of the symbol he created to represent the cosmos, but Dee’s struggle to find a prestigious patron continued. Eventually he tired of this work on the cosmos and began to focus his efforts more seriously on his angelic search, eventually joining forces with a medium called Edward Kelley. Through their continued meetings, Dee and Kelley claimed to have been given the gift of a new alphabet, said to have been revealed to them by angels. They called the language ‘Angelic’ and later it became known as ‘Enochian’. After Queen Elizabeth I died, her successor, James VI and I, did not like Dr. John Dee. Despite becoming the Warden of Christ’s College in Manchester, England, Dee spent his final years in poverty at Mortlake, his big house outside London, forced to sell off various possessions to support himself and his daughter, Katherine, who cared for him until the end. He died a poor man’s death in 1608, or early 1609, aged 82.
John Bellairs was born in Marshall, Michigan in the year 1938. He was a very hard working person, graduating from Summa Cum Laude, going to the University of Chicago and obtaining his master’s degree at the University of Notre Dame. Here Bellairs developed his true passion for writing. His first book, St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies, was written in 1966. After St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies he wrote a few books but really developed his well known writing style in The Pedant and the Shuffly, also the first time ever featuring a wide variety of magic. He continued to write many books and series, one of the more known works of his were, the Lewis Barnavelt Series where he and illustrator Edward Gorey perfectly collaborated. Edward Gorey adds a creepy feel, perfectly complementing Bellair’s magical writing and bringing it to life. But they never talked or even ever actually met! He wrote about plenty of different kinds of magic: amulet magic (the power to control someone completely with a cursed object), time travel (self-explanatory), even necromancy (the revival of the dead), just to name a few. John Bellairs tragically died of cardiovascular disease at the age of 54. In the novel, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Bellairs, with one foot firmly planted in European history, and the other stuck into the ooze of magic, provides the reader with instance after instance of magical shenanigans that can be corroborated in a basic encyclopedic search. The lessons from history that Uncle Jonathan teaches Lewis include the power of magic-induced time travel; the Hand of Glory Lewis so bravely identifies and counters against; the eclipsing of the moon (very exotic); and Mr. Izard enchanting the doomsday device within Uncle Jonathan’s house walls to drive him crazy.
“All the stars were out, and a large full moon was rising over the four elm trees at the far end of Jonathan’s yard.” For Jonathan to do the moon eclipse, the time has to be perfect. No more, no less. Timing is key for magic to work because timing pulls power from the different seasons. Even though Uncle Jonathan was a masterful wizard, he needed to prepare. He went to the north side of the house, to an “old mossy rain barrel. He breathed on the “dark water” 3 times, and “with his left forefinger cut the faintly shimmering surface into four quarters.” This must have been a very important preparation step in the process: breathing exactly three times on a very suspicious, mossy rain barrel, then cutting the water into four. After cutting the water into four quarters, he “leaned low over the mouth of the barrel and began whispering in a strange language”. This “strange language” described is probably Enochian, the language of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley. What surprises me the most is how even Mrs. Zimmerman is confused by what Jonathan is doing. “They craned their necks around a good deal trying to figure out what the wizard was doing.” Even though Mrs. Zimmerman has a D.Mag.A (Doctor Magicorum Artium) from a university in Germany, she is still somewhat confused by her friend’s actions. Uncle Jonathan went back to the spectators: “in one hand he held the cane, and in the other he had a saucepan full of rainwater.” Then he pours the rainwater into the birdbath. I believe he is doing this because the rain comes from the sky, and the moon, the thing Jonathan is trying to eclipse, is also in the sky. So possibly, by using rainwater, it could be a shortcut to eclipsing the moon. He poured in total three saucepans full of rainwater, again the number three. The number three must be a number that is good for magic. Then he continues to “mutter” most likely Enochian.
The number 3 is believed to be the first true number, meaning All. It represents the tripartite nature of the world: water, earth and air, or fire. After Jonathan calls for the spectators to see what is going on in the bird bath, they see that “the water in the flat, shallow concrete pan had started to heave and pitch, like ocean water in a storm. Lewis was surprised to see tiny whitecaps forming”. Suddenly, the glass ball on the top of Jonathan’s magic cane starts to emit a “dusty, grey light”. Is this a makeshift moon for the mini-ocean in the bird bath? This makes sense because really only the moon sends out rays of “dusty gray light”. After all, it is merely a reflection of the sun, as the moon is dead. This supports how the tripartite nature is a big factor in magic. Then Jonathan cried, “Peace! Peace to the waters of the earth! Show unto us the round disk of the moon, even as she now appeareth in the heavens above!” This possibly could be lending the power of the Ghost Module of white magic, or you could say, an energy module of white magic. Ghost Modules includes the belief that there is a spirit behind all things; this could prove that Jonathan used Ghost Modules because he could be channeling the moon’s power to eventually eclipse it. After he finished chanting, he picked up a small boulder, and slammed it into the water of the birdbath. Then when the water calmed down, he reached down to the birdbath, but, instead of picking up the rock that he just threw down, he picked up the reflection of the moon! Lewis predicts that it was just a trick, but, “the cold, icy-gray disk he held up looked like the reflection that had floated in the pool a moment before.” Uncle Jonathan then waved it back and forth “as if it were a dinner plate”. The reflection “burned cold and bitter”. As if looking at the sun, “it hurt Lewis’s eyes to stare at it for very long”. Then Uncle Jonathan snapped his wrist and threw the disk like a frisbee. Right after Uncle Jonathan threw the disk, he immediately took off after it. When he came back he said, “Ha! Have at you in your bladder for a blaggard slacker! Hoo! Hunh! And the third in his bosom!” Then, suddenly, but very slowly, “a black, tarry, drippy shadow oozed down over the face of the surprised moon”, until the entire face of the moon was covered. As if everything surrounding the group of four absorbed the energy from the moon, everything became enhanced. Even their senses were much better than before. “Lewis put his ear to the damp earth” after Uncle Jonathan motioned the others to join him. “He heard strange things. He hear the noise the earthworms make as they slowly inch along, breaking hard black clods with their blunt heads. He heard the secret inwound conversations of bulbs and roots, and without knowing how he came to know them. He knew that there was a cat named Texaco buried in the patch of ground he knelt on. Its delicate ivory skeleton was falling slowly to pieces down there, and its dank fur was shrivelled and matted and rotten. The boy who had buried the cat had buried a sand pail full of shells near it. Lewis did not know the name of the boy or how long ago he had buried the cat and the pail, but he could see the red and blue pail clearly. Blotches of brown rot were eating up the bright designs, and the shells were covered with green mold.”
The enchanted clock which is the centerpiece of the novel fills up the entire house. Uncle Jonathan is obsessed with it, and not in a positive way. He and Mrs. Zimmerman are engaged in trying to fix the problem, and in fact, when Lewis first meets Mrs. Zimmerman, she is “standing, with her ear to the wall, listening.” But, as compared to the other magical events and objects in the book, the enchanted clock is hard to understand. It’s as if Bellairs wants to leave the secrets of this type of dangerous magic hidden. But we do find out that Mr. Izard has been planning something terrible. Jonathan recalls with a shudder that he’d see “…old Isaac’s evil face in the window of the cupola at the top of the house. He’d be holding an oil lamp and staring out into the night. … He seemed to be taking notes.” The ever-curious Lewis finds himself on third floor one afternoon, sitting at the bench of a parlor organ. “He touched the keys, but all he got was a gaspy tubercular sound. Darn.” Lewis continues to poke around the organ, messing with the organ stops. “The stops were supposed to change the sound of the organ in various ways, but he had never pulled any of them out. Well, now was the time.” He wiggles one free and finds that it is a dummy stop: it isn’t attached to anything. “But then he stopped and thought. He had read a story once where a car had had a dummy dashboard that came out so you could hide things behind it. What if this organ… ?” So he goes downstairs all the way to the “cellarway” where Uncle Jonathan keeps his tools and brings back up to the third floor a “screwdriver, a hammer, and a rusty butter knife that Jonathan kept there for prying things open.” He immediately sprints back upstairs as fast as he can, eager to see what was in the mysterious organ. Lewis sits down at the organ scanning the “long wooden panel” decorated with “seven round black holes” that “stared back at him”. There were only four measly screws that held the wooden panel to the organ case that surprisingly came out easily. Then, “Lewis stuck his fingers into two of the holes and pulled”, unfortunately, the panel was stuck. Using Uncle Jonathan’s rusty butter knife, he “slid it into a crack”. John Bellairs’s expert use of written sound effects not only just make his books more entertaining to read but more realistic. “Skreek!” the wooden panel was still stuck, so Lewis “moved the knife along to the right a bit and pried again. “Skreek!” again, and the panel “flopped out onto the keyboard”. Lewis tries to investigate further, but he “couldn’t see a thing”, as he forgot his flashlight! The smell of dust was strong, Lewis just decides to reach in and feel around. “His arm went all the way up to the armpit.” That’s when he touched something… paper? Or money. He “grabbed hold of the bundle” and ripped it out, “his heart sank. It was just an old pile of papers”. Lewis was so disappointed: “so, this was the secret treasure of Wizard’s castle! Some treasure!” He was hoping for something worth a pretty penny due to it being Mr. Izard’s Castle for Christ sake. Then Lewis thought, well might as-well look through it, “there might be something interesting in them”. He flipped through the papers. Lewis figured the writing was Mr. Izard’s due to the first sheet being the title page of his “Cloud Formations and Other Phenomena – Observed from this Window” research paper. Then Lewis remembered Mrs. Zimmermann saying “that she had seen old Isaac taking notes on the sky”, obviously observing how he could eventually use the weather to help further his cause. Then suddenly a “spatter of rain hit the window” making Lewis jump. Then Lewis saw “thick masses of blue clouds piled up in the west” assuming the form of a hungry mouth opening up, “a ray of blood-red light shot into the room” as almost guiding Lewis to read: “Doomsday not come yet! I’ll draw it nearer by a perspective, or make a clock that shall set all the world on fire upon an instant.” Maybe the clouds understood what Mr. Izard had planned and tried warning Lewis before everything all went down. Or, maybe the clouds were angry at what Mr. Izard was doing. So how does the weather study and the placing of the clock match up? Bellairs doesn’t exactly say, but in a later book, The Dark Secret of Weatherend, he devotes an entire book to weather magic. That series stars Anthony Monday and Miss Ells, and is set in Minnesota. When you read widely in Bellairs, you see that he is constantly probing all aspects of magic, both good and bad.
It all started with Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann getting suspicious of Lewis when while eating dinner on Halloween evening. Lewis was pre-occupied, not participating in conversation which was very unusual due to his being a chatterbox. Lewis had already made his mind to try to revive the dead that midnight. When he was asked if he was all right, Lewis said he was fine and continued eating with his head down. Then Lewis very surprisingly said that he wasn’t going trick-or-treating, claiming that he was too mature for it. Mrs. Zimmermann then asked if he was going to join them for cider and doughnuts because if he wasn’t she was going to “show up at midnight at the foot of your bed in my role of Grinning Griselda, the resuscitated cadaver.” Lewis, visualizing what Mrs. Zimmermann just said, has a horrified look on his face, but forces a smile confirming his attendance to the her cider-and-doughnut party. Lewis quickly excuses himself telling the two that he has just arrived at an exciting part in one of John L. Stoddard’s books.
Before Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann were definitely suspicious, and Lewis’s reaction confirms the suspicion. They talk about why Lewis might be acting this way. Perhaps, it was Tarby’s arm getting healed and playing with the more athletic boys, leaving Lewis out. When the cider-and-doughnut party was set up, the three of them shared a bunch of doughnuts and glasses upon glasses of cider. After Lewis ate a few doughnuts and swilled four glasses of cider, Uncle Jonathan announced that the entertainment for that night was “Historical Illusions, or Famous Scenes from the Past” then asked Lewis what historical scene he would most like to see. Lewis immediately answered: “The defeat of the Spanish Armada. Not the battle scenes, because I’ve read all about them in John L. Stoddard. But he doesn’t tell what happened when they had to sail all the way around England and Scotland to get home. I want to see that part.” Uncle Jonathan intends to cheer Lewis up – he knew that Lewis was already acting weird and maybe even a little sad, so he’s doing what a good uncle who’s taking care of their orphan nephew would do. They walked to the fireplace, where three “big comfortable chairs waited for them. When they were all ready, “Jonathan pointed his pipe at the two electric candles over the mantelpiece.” What happens next? Read the book.
Later that evening Lewis does something so unutterably evil – but hey, you need to read the book yourself. The cruellest magic is the magic left unknown, and even if the book is read through and through, and each event deciphered, the understanding of Mr. Izard’s magic will forever be left untouched. It could be the devil’s work, or even an angel’s work, but the sad truth is, that we will never know.
All quotations from The House with a Clock in its Walls by John Bellairs. Dial Press, 1972