In search of the miraculous My quest along the path of personal meaning: Beneath the veneer of Protestantism, I experience a deep undercurrent of Chinese and Javanese spirituality. When my search began in the Netherlands, only New Age could be found on the bookshelves, and Taijiquan and Yoga in community centers; only later did I reconnect with broader developments, especially shamanism:
Meetings with remarkable people Various encounters with people who inspire me: In addition to the inspiring stories of my father, I have learned much from teachers of Taijiquan and from books/teachers within the Chinese tradition (Confucius, Mencius), as well as books/teachers in Western spirituality (Gurdjieff, Regardie, Starhawk). As a bridge, I experience Modern shamanism (Harner) as an excellent “connector.”
“Most precious are the people; next come the spirits of land and grain; and last, the kings.” (Mencius, 7B.14)
Main current sources of inspiration: Mencius, with regard to shaping humanistic forms of society. Modern shamanism, with regard to rituals. Reclaiming, with regard to political action.
The Master of Ravens had sent Maggie into the world of Men to learn what Faery could not teach her. Under another name, Maylee Fox, she had entered the wilderness of human affairs, carrying the memory of a compact with the Ravenqueen and the suspicion that the world was coming apart at its seams.
She had not expected Gotham, a grand experiment in bankruptcy, corruption, and human endurance. Maylee survived among its homeless children until Sister Bridget of Our Lady delivered her to Homestead, that improbable refuge on the border. There, among bread ovens, broken machines, and lessons in acrobatics, she learned the useful art of appearing ordinary.
But Maylee was no ordinary girl. The lighthouse signals were intended for a watcher who served a power older than the machinery he commanded. The body was merely a disguise; its destruction had interrupted a transfer from somewhere beyond the ordinary world. The black-clad figure found hanging in the woods had been another messenger, carrying in its head fragments of a map—and a name that refused to remain written.
Herr Claus had been searching for that same name. Beneath Gotham’s North Tower, Lady Blackbird examined a brass cylinder recovered by her shadowrunners. Its delicate inscriptions resembled neither engineering notation nor any known language, yet one symbol showed a fox enclosed within a circle of ravens.
“Maylee Fox,” said AoQi, the boy in blue.
Lady Blackbird raised an eyebrow. “An associate of yours?”
“An associate of circumstances. She once interrupted a machine that was trying to enter our world. Unfortunately, it remembered the interruption.”
The shadowrunners exchanged glances. They had encountered machines with grudges before, although rarely machines powered by supernatural resentment.
The boy explained that the dragon’s heart and the Clockwork Golem beneath Gotham were responding to the same signal that had animated Maylee’s mechanical pursuers. The Mirror of Unnaming was the instrument through which their hidden master sought to erase the boundaries between worlds.
Lady Blackbird understood at last why her commission had been so carefully worded.
Far below, two hearts beat in unison.
And somewhere in the dark, the Fox heard the call of the Ravenqueen.
Lady Blackbird had come by dirigible, accompanied by adventurers whose professional virtues included discretion, agility and trustworthiness.
Gotham, meanwhile, was recovering from its revolution. The citizens had dismissed Macdonald’s mercenaries and discovered, with characteristic disappointment, that liberty did not provide breakfast. Engineers repaired the sewers; politicians repaired one another’s reputations. Beneath the city, however, the dragon’s heart continued to beat inside the broken Clockwork Golem.
The adventurers descended through a disused counting-house, where they discovered footprints in the dust belonging to something . At the seventh landing they encountered a boy in blue, seated upon a brass gargoyle and eating an apple of remarkable antiquity. “You are late”
“We were not expected,” said Lady Blackbird.
“Precisely. That is why you are late.” “The dragon’s heart was awakening the Golem, while the Golem’s gears were teaching the heart a new rhythm. Unless separated, the two would eventually excavate themselves into Gotham”
Lady Blackbird studied the boy. She recognised him from a tale told in a distant village, where a nameless river spirit had spoken of Gotham and a mirror that stole the names of things.
“The Mirror of Unnaming,” she said.
He bowed. “And its maker awaits us below.”
They proceeded together. Far beneath them, two hearts beat.
Coil noticed a new entry in the Gatekeeper’s ledger. It was written in blue ink. “Gotham, the Black Mirror. The missing clapper.” “That wasn’t there before.”
The ledger shivered. A narrow door appeared in the air above the table, and through it came the smell of river water, coal smoke, and something old enough to have forgotten its own death. Beyond the threshold stood a boy in a blue coat. “I’m looking for people who can cross worlds without bringing the wrong things with them”.
Hull frowned. “That sounds suspiciously like us.”
“My name is AoQi. Gotham is in danger, and I think your new Compact has something to do with it.”
Vixen offered AoQi her hand. “We’ll help you, but you must promise not to lead us into anything that eats its rescuers.”
“I can promise to warn you,” AoQi replied.
Together they stepped through the doorway.
Far beneath Gotham, a bell stirred in its sleep. And somewhere in the darkness, a mirror began to remember hidden names.
AoQi, the boy in blue had spoken before, though never quite where one expected him. In Gotham, where the old stones remembered kings and the river carried secrets beneath its bridges, he had been seen on rooftops, in ruined chapels, and once reflected in a window that had no building behind it. Those who met him afterwards remembered his blue coat, but seldom his face.
AoQi worked patiently at the river spirit’s tangled reeds. With every knot released, the water grew clearer, and something ancient stirred beneath the bathhouse floor.
“Gotham,” murmured the spirit, tasting the word as though it were a fishbone. “That is where forgotten things gather.”
The bath-mistress looked sharply upwards. The soot sprites fell silent. “You know the city?”
“I knew its river before men built their walls. I knew its wells before they gave them numbers. And I remember a bell that rang beneath the streets, calling things by their true names.” “The bell has been silent for years/ Someone stole its clapper. Since then, Gotham has been growing stranger. Doors open onto rooms that never existed. Portraits forget their sitters. And in the oldest quarter, a man has begun selling mirrors in which nobody has a name.” “The Black Mirror .” “Its maker has come to Gotham, looking for something buried beneath the city.
The bath-mistress placed a hand upon AoQi ‘s shoulder. “Then your well and our river are bound by the same wound.”
Outside, the tide turned. Far away, beyond the mist, a bell sounded once beneath the earth.
The river spirit rose, taller than the bathhouse doors, water pouring from its ancient shoulders. “Go, name-walker. Find what Gotham has forgotten. But remember this: a name is not a label to pin upon the world. It is a promise to pay attention.”
Laughter came through the door in three distinct stages: first as a chuckle, then as the grinding of stones deep underground, and finally as a small, polite cough. A Voice said: “THE GATEKEEPER OF THE BLACK DOOR REQUESTS ADMISSION”
The door opened inward, though there was no space behind it in which it could possibly open. The Gatekeeper entered.
He was tall enough to require the room to make certain adjustments. His armour was black, his face hidden behind a visor without eyeholes, and from his shoulders hung a cloak that appeared to have been woven from extinguished stars. In one gauntleted hand he carried a key. In the other, a ledger whose pages turned of their own accord. “I have come,to remind you that the Compact remains in force.”
“Splendid,” said Demon. “Then we agree on something already.”
The Gatekeeper tilted his helmet. “Agreement is not required. Obedience is.” The Gatekeeper placed his ledger upon the table. It landed with a sound like a coffin being lowered into a grave. “Under the original Compact, you owe me seven years of service, the surrender of one unspoken secret, and the right to claim the first shadow cast by any child born within your jurisdiction.”
Coil produced a scrap of parchment, damp at the edges and singed in one corner. Demon recognised it immediately: the document they had stolen from the kingdom of promises, where every word spoken in earnest acquired a physical existence. “We found this, In the archive beneath the sea of memories. It records the original terms, including the amendments you made when the Ninth Gate was sealed.”
For the first time, the Gatekeeper became entirely still.
Vixen leaned forward. “You accepted our ancestors’ service in exchange for guarding the passage between worlds. But the Ninth Gate is sealed. You no longer perform that duty.”
They negotiated until the green fire burned blue. At last, our heroes proposed a revised Compact.
The shadowrunners would retain the right to travel through the Black Door, provided they neither broke its seals nor carried an uninvited soul across the threshold. In return, they would answer three summons from the Gatekeeper, each summons limited to a single day’s labour. The Gatekeeper would abandon his claim upon their shadows, secrets and years.
The Gatekeeper opened his ledger to a blank page. The parchment shivered beneath his pen.
Demon signed first. Then Vixen, Grip, Hull and Coil.
Finally, the Gatekeeper pressed his gauntlet against the page.
A narrow line of silver fire travelled through the signatures and vanished into the walls. THE COMPACT HAS BEEN AMENDED.
The Gatekeeper closed his ledger. “You have obtained favourable terms, do not mistake that for friendship.” He stepped ards through the door and disappeared.
The Coven smelled of damp wool and scorched incense. Its familiar clutter of spellbooks, empty bottles, and ancient weapons seemed almost indecently comforting. Coil emerged first, followed by Hull, whose boots struck the flagstones with a noise like a dropped safe. Vixen stepped through last, adjusting her hair. The black door shut behind them. For several seconds nobody spoke. Then footsteps sounded.
Demon stood beside the hearth, his lean face illuminated by green flames. Grip occupied the divan, where he was methodically removing splinters from his left hand.
“You’re late,” said Demon. “We took the scenic route,” Coil replied. Grip grunted. “Through where?” “An error.” Hull sat heavily in an armchair. It collapsed, recovered, and collapsed again, apparently uncertain which century it occupied.
Vixen surveyed her companions. “You escaped?”
“Eventually,” said Demon. “We found ourselves in a kingdom where every promise became a physical object. Grip promised to neutralize the pretender “
Grip displayed his wounds. “The pretender was a remarkable bastard.”
“We stole a boat,” Demon continued, “sailed through a sea of memories, and came ashore in a place where shadows were resided. Fortunately, I knew the Way”
Coil nodded appreciatively. “Professional work.”
“Then we followed a talking crow to a door.”
The shadowrunners looked towards the new door in the wall.
It possessed neither handle nor keyhole. Upon its surface, silver letters slowly arranged themselves into a sentence:
THE COMPACT REMAINS IN FORCE.
Hull rose. “I’ll break it.”
“Certainly,” said Coil. “And when it opens into the inside of your skull, do try not to inconvenience us.”
Vixen approached the door, listening. From somewhere beyond came the faint clink of armour.
She smiled.
“Gentlemen, I believe our landlord has arrived.”
Demon poured five drinks.
“Excellent,” he said. “We should discuss the rent.”
And somewhere beyond, something ancient began to laugh.
An armored elven guardian stands watch beside a glowing spell scroll in a moonlit enchanted forest.
The Sidhe Knight received the shadowrunners with the air of a magistrate accepting overdue taxes. He raised his gauntleted hand, and the souls, bound in filaments of blue fire, vanished into the fissures of his armour. “Your wishes,” he intoned, “have been granted according to the letter of our compact.”
One demanded a haven beyond the reach of their enemies. The second required a conduit between the Tower and their Coven. The third, who had little patience for metaphysics, merely wanted a door that opened. The Knight inclined his helm. “You have all three.” Then he laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. The Tower shivered, the shattered battlements knitted themselves into unfamiliar geometries, and every window displayed a different sky. The staircases descended into their own beginnings. Doors opened upon rooms where the three shadowrunners stood, pale and bewildered, watching themselves arrive.
Hull kicked a door. It swallowed his boot and returned it three hours older.
Coil, who had made a career of discovering loopholes in contracts, examined the compact. The Sidhe had stipulated that the Tower should be a haven for them, and that the link should join the Tower to their Coven. Nothing had been said about which side of the threshold they might inhabit. “We’ve been comprehensively cheated,” “Cheated?” said the Knight. “You have received precisely what you purchased.”
Vixen smiled. It was the sort of smile that had induced several respectable men to mortgage their estates and one bishop to resign his office. She approached the Knight and whispered an offer involving his freedom, her gratitude, and certain pleasures unknown even to the oldest chronicles.
For a moment, the black visor reflected something resembling interest.
Coil seized the instant. He spoke the Knight’s forgotten name, extracted from stolen scrolls, and Vixen hurled her crystal ball against the floor. The crystal ball shattered. A doorway appeared. Beyond it lay Midgard, rain-soaked and reassuringly vulgar. The shadowrunners plunged through. Behind them, the Black Knight thundered, “You have not escaped! The compact endures!”
The shadowrunners returned to their Coven, finding a new black door stood where the wall had been.
Imagine that America had never become united, but instead had developed like Renaissance Italy: a continent filled with rival city-states, powerful trading republics, principalities, and alliances.
New York, for example, becomes a powerful trading republic on the Atlantic coast, Chicago controls trade across the Great Lakes, and San Francisco emerges as a wealthy maritime city-state on the Pacific coast.
The political landscape might look something like this:
New York — a North American Venice, wealthy thanks to maritime trade, bankers, and diplomacy.
Boston — a republic of merchants, shipbuilders, and scholars.
Chicago — a strategic trading power controlling the connections between the Great Lakes and the interior.
San Francisco — a maritime republic with trade routes across the Pacific.
New Orleans — an important river city-state controlling access to the Mississippi.
Mexico City — a powerful southern empire with its own political and cultural traditions.
Just as in Renaissance Italy, these states would constantly form alliances, wage wars, hire mercenaries, and compete for control of trade routes. Smaller cities might sometimes become particularly powerful by controlling a mountain pass, a river mouth, or an important harbor.
The fascinating consequence: the United States would not exist as a single country. Instead, the continent would resemble an American patchwork of Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Milan, alongside larger kingdoms and Indigenous states pursuing their own struggles for power.
Op een avond waarop de stad langzaam tot rust komt, verzamelen de Sibylles van de Staatsliedenbuurt zich. Ze komen niet uit één traditie, maar uit vele werelden. Iedereen brengt iets mee: een gebed, een lied, een symbool, een beweging, een verhaal dat al generaties lang wordt doorgegeven.
In het midden staat een paard, wit als een leeg vel papier. Het kijkt niet naar het verleden, maar naar wat nog moet komen. Zijn open mond lijkt een boodschap te bewaren.
De eerste Sibylle steekt haar handen omhoog. Ze luistert naar de wind. Een tweede beweegt langzaam, alsof ze water tussen haar vingers voelt stromen. Een derde sluit haar ogen en spreekt woorden die niemand helemaal begrijpt, maar die toch vertrouwd klinken. Rondom hen klinkt muziek uit verre landen. Er wordt gebeden, gezongen, gemediteerd en gedanst.
Dan verschijnt er een visioen.
De Sibylles zien de Staatsliedenbuurt over honderd jaar. De straten zijn groener. Huizen zijn verbonden met tuinen en pleinen. Mensen van verschillende leeftijden, afkomst, overtuigingen en sociale werelden ontmoeten elkaar. Niemand hoeft zijn eigen traditie achter te laten om deel te worden van de gemeenschap.
De Sibylles zien ook de Nassaukerk. Tweehonderd jaar oud, maar nog altijd een plek waar mensen samenkomen. Niet alleen voor één geloof, maar voor ontmoeting, bezinning, ritueel, kunst en gesprek.
Een van hen vraagt: *“Wat zal er gebeuren?”* De oudste Sibylle glimlacht. *“Wij voorspellen geen toekomst. Wij luisteren ernaar.”*
Het paard heft zijn hoofd. De wereld wordt stil.
Dan spreekt de Sibylle haar laatste woorden:
**“De toekomst verschijnt daar waar mensen elkaar werkelijk zien.”**
En langzaam gaan de Sibylles uiteen, terug naar hun huizen, hun rituelen en hun dromen — met de toekomst als een nog onbeschreven verhaal.
Het is het jaar 2126. Ik loop door de Staatsliedenbuurt en herken tegelijk veel en weinig. De straten zijn groener geworden. Tussen de huizen groeien bomen, geveltuinen en kleine moestuinen. Kinderen spelen waar vroeger auto’s stonden. Op pleinen ontmoeten mensen elkaar, zitten ouderen in de zon en is ruimte voor stilte, beweging en gesprek.
Boven alles rijst de Nassaukerk. Tweehonderd jaar oud, maar nog altijd levend. De toren is vertrouwd herkenningspunt en de kerk is opnieuw een hoopgevend ankerpunt voor de buurt. De deuren staan open. Hier komen mensen samen die van verschillende werelden afkomstig zijn: geboren in Amsterdam of elders, met uiteenlopende culturele tradities, spiritualiteiten, overtuigingen en levensverhalen. Ook verschillen in inkomen of sociale positie vormen geen reden om elkaar buiten te sluiten.
In de kerk is plaats voor een buurtmaaltijd, een stiltekring, muziek, lezingen en gesprekken over wat mensen bezighoudt. Er worden taallessen gegeven, kinderen maken er kunst en jongeren ontmoeten ouderen. Soms is er een viering, soms een debat, soms gewoon koffie aan een lange tafel. Niemand hoeft hetzelfde te geloven om zich hier thuis te voelen.
Buiten gaat het verhaal verder. De markt brengt geuren en smaken uit vele landen samen. Mensen delen kennis over koken, tuinieren, zorg en duurzaamheid. Een buur helpt een andere buur met een boodschap; een kind leert van een oudere hoe je planten verzorgt. De wijk ademt samen.
En ergens tussen al die ontmoetingen zwemt een kleine vis in een zon van licht. Een eenvoudig beeld, maar ook een herinnering: blijf kijken, blijf dromen.
Want een wijk wordt niet alleen gebouwd met stenen. Zij wordt gemaakt door mensen die naar elkaar omzien.
Zo hoop ik dat West over honderd jaar voelt: als een plek waar je kunt thuiskomen, bij jezelf én bij elkaar.
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