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Flow Down Like Silver (Hypatia of Alexandria)

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This is a lyrical telling of the story of nearly forgotten Hypatia - a giant of antiquity so shunted aside by the 'flaw' of her gender and the antagonism of the Catholic Church that little has remained of her life's work beyond the lurid cruelty of her death at the hands of the fledgling Church threatened by her wisdom and erudition #doubt me, then be alerted that the Catholic Church has tried to stop the new movie on Hypatia to be shown in Italy#. Author Ki Longfellow, like a forensic anthropologist, has skillfully added color and flesh back to the few remaining bones of history to create a spellbinding novel of a very alive woman.

Those familiar with the history and those fresh from viewing the new movie Agora starring Rachel Weisz will be all to aware of the impending ending as they read this novel; though the author does an excellent job in allowing us to forget and be swept up in Hypatia's soaring thoughts as she juggles philosophy with mathematics and then matters of faith as she seeks to answer the timeless questions of "who are we?" and "what does it all mean?" There is plenty here, too, for the historical reader as Hypatia was a woman of many talents living through a very turbulent era in human history. There is romance, action, and drama.

Scenes that stand out in my mind because of the intensity of the writing include a fascinating depiction of the terrifying rigors of ancient surgery, Hypatia's battles with bandits, the burning of the Library of Alexandria, as well as an incredibly beautifully written storm at sea where Longfellow authoritatively evokes the art of sailing within the eye of the storm.

I suppose my biggest criticism of the novel is that it seems too short. I wish I had been able to spend more time in Hypatia's world, looking through her eyes.

After reading the engrossing "The Secret Magdalene", I couldn't wait to read Longfellow's second book in this unusual trilogy, Hypatia of Alexandria". Hypatia was one of the world's brilliant forgotten women. She was a mathematician, the most famous and influential philosopher of her day, a cosmologist, alchemist, and the last of the great mystery Alexandrian teachers just as Christianity was sweeping through the Roman world forbidding all that Hypatia believed in, taught and did. She was a woman of beauty and sensuality and courage. She stood her ground when the "faithful" came calling for her in the guise of Cyril, the new Bishop of Alexandria.

This is a beautifully written story (just as "The Secret Magdalene" is) but it's an easier read. That's not to say the first book was hard, it's just good timeless literature, not a Harlequin novel you take to the beach. I'm hooked now and looking forward to reading her third book in this exciting trilogy. Highly recommended to those who love good books.

I have just finished reading this book - much too soon! Like its subject, the mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, it beguiles at first with its brilliance and high drama, then demands the attention of the mind, the understanding of the heart, and finally, it touches the soul, with mingled pain and discovery, and the glimpse of something precious - a vision of gnosis, if not its experience. Longfellow's characterization is in the heroic rather than realistic style - all her characters are larger than life, higher, lower, etched like Egyptian tomb drawings (for the "higher") and newspaper caricatures (for the "lower"), and hits with as much impact. She weaves together public and private history, the dying years of an extraordinary civilization, city and woman; and the intellectual, emotional and spiritual struggles that all who lived through that time went through. Above all, she recreates - part imagination, part spiritual understanding, part historical reconstruction - the intimate path to Light of a woman who rose to be a public figure more feted than some of the greatest men of her time, friend to exceptional minds, Christian, Jew and Pagan, during a period when tolerance died and a single, overwhelming, fanatical version of a single belief system arose and plunged the Mediterranean world in darkness for centuries.

The parallels with our own century, when questioning and intelligence are so widely devalued and opposed with powerful and violent stupidity (not least by the Catholic Church, who want to stop people from seeing a recent film of Hypatia's life and death, Agora), are not a coincidence. But for all that, the culmination of the novel is not a rant or a lament, but Hypatia's gnosis, a mirror of Innana's descent and rebirth. Though Hypatia's ending is well known - tragically better than her works and life - in coming after such a stellar experience as her personal discovery of the divine, it seems to concern more the world she loved, and which was dying with her, than Hypatia herself: the ultimate symbol of the victory of fanaticism over intelligence, compassion or even good sense. Hypatia herself died a free and accomplished woman.

After reading The Secret Magdalene last March, I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer depth of the story she presented to me. Not just the depth of the story, but also the beauty of her language, the solid composition of the book thrilled me. Having read her latest novel, Flow Down Like Silver, Hypatia of Alexandria, I know that The Secret Magdalene was not a one-time high. This lady - I'm referring to the author now - contains gold and I can only hope that she's given the perseverance and the time to share more of her artistic wealth with us.

As in The Secret Magdalene gnosis plays a major role in Flow Down Like Silver, although it is not as much on the surface as in Magdalene. Silver relates the story of the last 24 years of the 4th-5th century scientist Hypatia of Alexandria, as told through the eyes of different characters. We learn how Hypatia has grown up, as if she were a son to her father. Being left with only daughters by his wife, who died in childbirth from the third child, he chooses Hypatia, the middle one, to follow in his footsteps as a teacher of mathematics, philosophy, science, music and so on. Her older sister, Lais, is a mysterious and introvert character. She seems to understand life, its meaning or is content with the fact that it just lacks all meaning. There is something acquiescent about her. She and Hypatia love each other very much, as the latter in the beginning of the book says: "my sister, more precious than the beating of my own heart." (2) Her younger sister, Jone, is not loved by her father. In his eyes she caused the death of his wife and for this he ignores her and with that branding her for life. She is the most tragic of the three sisters. One of the main characters in the book, Minkah the Egyptian summarizes: `Hypatia is all mind, Lais all spirit, Jone all bodily emotion.' (40)

The novel starts in the year 391. In Roman Egypt the `new' religion, christianity, is on the rise. These christians are raiding the libraries of the city and are burning books that in their eyes are superfluous. Throughout the story it becomes painfully clear that the actions of many so-called christians have nothing whatsoever to do with the intentions of the one they claim to follow: Jesus. Lais is the neutral observer, free of judgment or any urge to evangelize her point of view. But the young Hypatia is furious about the way the christians burn books. Then Lais says this: `What they love is not this life (...), but the one that follows. If you were they: poor, ignorant, suffering, without privilege of any earthly kind, might you too not listen to this new faith which promises so much after death?' At this Hypatia marvels: `My sister is theodidactos; God-taught'. (12/13)

This book is filled with allusions to or direct descriptions of alchemy (even the Atalanta Fugiens appears very briefly), Hermes Trismegistus and all that goes up and comes down with gnosis. (The table Hypatia inherits from her mother `made of stone as green as emeralds' might be in fact the Emerald Tablet, that is said to reveal the secret of primordial substance and how life as we know it came into being.) In Magdalene the whole journey towards gnosis, is stronger interwoven into the story. In Silver I find it is more hidden between the lines, although hard to miss for an interested reader. Lais knows gnosis, she intuitively knows THE ALL. Hypatia has to make a long and arduous journey, but at an early age she understands the bliss that surrounds Lais: `I think if I desire anything, I desire this: to know what Lais knows.' (20) Hypatia repeatedly asks herself who she is and what is her contribution to mankind.

Occasionally the reader is confronted with the real background of the Christian faith and its rites and symbols with the cults of Mithras, Isis and Osiris and much more that justifies the question of how original the christian faith is. More than once does Hypatia question her contribution or her being: `I am only what I am, a thing of the mind (...) questioning constantly all it sees and all it hears. I believe nothing, not even what my senses assure me is so, for fear that by holding to one belief I lose the possibility of another.' (93) For Hypatia asking questions is a way of life, a way to constantly checking if her reality is still her home. It is the way of the scientist that is continuously seeking proof of what his senses tell him. After a discussion on religion with a christian she realizes: `One who believes is like a lover; he would hear nothing ill of his beloved.' (97) Or later on: `I ask christians: where are your questions? Where are your great doubters, those who lead us all to discovery?' (157) During a visit to Constantinople, Hypatia shows courage by questioning Atticus, the Bishop of this Byzantine capital. As he rambles on about the low place the woman has, Hypatia speaks up. `(...) to hear the ignorant speak out with authority is a great evil. (...) You repeat what you have heard. You question nothing. You expect no one to question you.' (215)

Again I underlined very much in this books. Sentences that struck me as pure poetry (`a man whose brain would not threaten a cow' (227)), parts that delivered me insight or that rare shock of recognition. As shown above, there is a lot of questioning about the christian faith. One of the things that I for instance have always wondered about is the strong rules that Islam, or Jewry, or Christianity enforce regarding the human body. The many dietary rules, the cloaking of the female body to extremes, circumcision. Ki Longfellow lets Hypatia say it thus: `If God (...) created the world and all that is in the world, how then can anything made by His Hand be impure?' (110) A very just question.

Hypatia has hidden many of the forbidden books, that she saved from the raiding and arsonist christians, in a cave in the desert. After the early death of her beloved sister Lais, her poetry is added to this secret library. Later on Hypatia comes across Gnostic gospels that had lain hidden under an old temple for hundreds of years. This find, with the gospel of Mary Magdalene among them, prompts Hypatia to write her own path to glory: The book of Impossible Truth. Names that we know from Magdalene come forth, like Seth of Damascus. And once again the subjection of women is condemned strongly. `(...) man has come to fear woman's sexual power before which he is helpless, so turns it back on her, making her the one who is helpless.' (232)

At the very end of her life - when it has become clear to her that the end of science and therewith of her part in the world of her time is very near - she hides these books in the same cave. (The Nag Hammadi Scrolls that were found in 1945, are located about 350 miles to the south of Alexandria. Wouldn't it be wonderful to believe that there is still a place somewhere near Alexandria, where in a cave are many jars containing not only Gnostic gospels, but also many of the lost books from the ancient library of Alexandria.) It is a long walk through the cave, and she loses her way. Lost in the utter darkness she realizes that this may very well be the end. It is one of the most impressive parts of the novel, filled with highly insightful phrases. Again Hypatia wonders what the meaning of her life is. `What did it serve? (...) All I have done is learn only to learn this one last true thing. I know nothing.' (281) Even though this truth breaks her heart, she gradually accepts this. She undergoes the alchemical process of death and being reborn. `I am snatched away from me and suddenly I fall out of myself, and then I fall into myself - completely.' (282)

In this scene she finally finds gnosis. It is one of the most beautiful and pieces of prose I've ever read on the core of gnosis, and coming very close to finally catching this what is beyond words in words nevertheless. The reader who knows, can almost feel the transition.

Incredibly beautiful also are the final words of Minkah the Egyptian, when he's on the verge of his death. He is the great love in life of Hypatia and she is his. I'll not repeat them here, for I've quoted more than enough from this superb novel. The best review would be to hand over the book itself and urge the receiver to `please, please, read it'. Ki Longfellow is working on the sequel of The Secret Magdalene. With every book she publishes it becomes more clear to me that she is one of my favourite authors. To all you questioners, searchers and lovers of beauty in words out there: please, please, read Flow down Like Silver, Hypatia of Alexandria!

Right now the Catholic Church is denying the Italian people the right to see a movie called "Agora." It's about a woman who lived long ago in Alexandria Egypt. Her name was Hypatia and she was a mathematician, a philosopher, an astronomer, an alchemist, and the last of the great Pagan teachers. Unfortunately she lived just when the Roman Empire was forcing its people to become Christians. Hypatia was so famous and so influential that everyone, even Christians, flocked to her lectures. Many came just to see her in person. She was lovely and young and free of the shackles of ignorance and unquestioned "faith." As a Hellenist she was also free of the idea of chastity and of the needs of the body being shameful. She questioned everything, thought about everything, and could do virtually anything including sail boats and ride horse and drive chariots. But virtually no one now knows who she was. The Church not only destroyed her body, they destroyed her work. This is the second book in Longfellow's trilogy about great women and the eternal search for meaning and personal divinity. The first, The Secret Magdalene: A Novel, was a revelation to me. This is quite a different novel about a very different woman, but just as fascinating, well-drawn, well-researched, and revelatory. Perhaps even more so because I came to Hypatia fresh. I left feeling both angry and elated. Angry that Hypatia was denied us all this time, elated that she's back in such a wonderful book.

I love reading about great women, especially one who's famous in certain circles but unknown to most people. While there are groaning shelves of books about Cleopatra and Nefertiti and Elizabeth I and Joan of Arc, there's not much written about the amazing life of Hypatia of Alexandria. This one book all by itself illuminates the life of this overlooked woman in the most exciting way. Longfellow's book about Mary Magdalene knocked my socks off in "The Secret Magdalene", and now she's created a Hypatia that jumps off the page as if she were alive now. This is a good book worthy of a great, forgotten woman.

I lay in bed reading this, living in this book as if nothing else existed - which is the best kind of book. In my own bed, I traveled the world with a magnificent, flawed, heroic, brilliant woman who has hardly been heard of, even with a major motion picture made about her. But what happened to that film? The Church managed to keep Agora bottled up, almost unseen, even though at least in Spain it was a huge hit. Now you can only see it on DVD. Thank God for the latest technology. And here is the book that will take you farther and deeper into Hypatia and her world. Full of beautiful imagery and wonderful heart-breaking characters, this is a book for the ages. It's different than Longfellow's other wonderful book, The Secret Magdalene: A Novel, but it's no less good.

Really enjoyed this book and the author's captivating style of writing. The quality of the binding on the book, however, was not great and pages began falling out of my paperback as I was reading. Contacted Amazon and they quickly replaced the book with no hassle, allowing me to finish the book without the distraction of "falling leaves". Bought this book because of the publicity over the movie Agora recently released, depicting Hypatia of Alexandria's life. By buying this book, out of curiosity, I have found an author well worth reading...inspiring me to purchase another of her books, The Secret Magdalen. Both books richly woven with interesting details.

If I was a writer I would write a wonderful review, I love this book so much. I do not understand people now or then. Why go out to hurt someone just because they don't feel or think like you do? It made no difference what you did or did not believe in...someone was out to get you. Why can't we be like little children and love everyone and everything? I don't know the answer. As brilliant as Hypatia was she didn't either. I love the characters and how they seem to intertwine together. To make it short and sweet I LOVE THIS BOOK.

More of the rich storytelling and compelling research that Ki Longfellow brought to her previous book, "The Secret Magdalene". Unlike "Magdalene", "Flow Down Like Silver" is told through, not one, but several 1st-person witnesses - Hypatia herself, plus intimates and acquaintances of the legendary mathematician/philosopher during the latter half of her life. This approach tempers a bit of the reader's emotional empathy for the principal character, offering in its place the intimate perceptions of several who came within her sphere of influence. Hypatia is portrayed as a lovely and guileless intellectual with a streak of heroic stubbornness. Her existential example of a life lived with integrity and authenticity provokes admiration, fear and even wonder in those who encounter her.

5th century Alexandria becomes as much a character in this tale as any one individual, much as 1st-century Palestine came so alive in The Secret Magdalene. The principal conflict between the tolerant, intellectual agnosticism represented by Hypatia, and the reactionary intolerance of the rising Christian sects offers obvious and troubling parallels with today's world.

The story leaves us with the intriguing possibility and fervent hope that some of Hypatia's own writings, and perhaps books of the once great Library, are waiting somewhere under the Egyptian desert to one day be recovered.