While in the area, Pierce comes up with a plan to write a book about Hermeticism, in the process finding several parallels with his own project and that of the nearly-forgotten local novelist Fellowes Kraft.

Pierce's two main sources for the book include the work of his graduate professor and speculative historian Frank Walker Barr, and the highly productive historical novelist Fellowes Kraft.

Suddenly, to their dread, the angels scatter and a child appears in the glass, "holding a space" Doctor Dee knows to be absolutely immense, into which both feel their souls being drawn.

During a "Prologue on Earth" immediately following, a young Pierce Moffett, preparing to serve as an altar boy reads a novel about Giordano Bruno (later revealed to be by Fellowes Kraft), the sixteenth century Dominican Friar, and finds himself sharply identifying with the narrator.

The novel proper begins under the sign of Vita, with Pierce now in middle age, taking a bus to apply for a job at Peter Ramus College.

"[7] A review in the Times Literary Supplement found in the novel "its own vivid reality is an absorbing one, and it leaves the reader impatient for the second volume.