Reviews

10 May 2012—great-granddaughter of Jan van Riebeeck, Eva Picard, now in her 90s, offered us her notes on Knot of Stone: “Beautifully illustrated. Beautiful use of language. In this esoteric detective story the main characters find in modern Cape Town the skeleton of Almeida, murdered here in 1510, and in searching why, who and how they travel from Sagres to Chartres, going via Tomar and Santiago, and then on to Arlesheim and Amsterdam, studying every clue available. Inspiring. A truly great book.”

 

29 April 2012—heritage activist and social historian Patric Tariq Mellet comments on several recent publications dealing with the Almeida-Khoena encounter, including Knot of Stone: “It’s wonderful to see how a simple footnote of history gets a burst of interest and information. It highlights yet again how those stories caught between the cracks of history are often far more interesting than the over-amplified narrative.”

Mellet and Nicolaas Vergunst debate contesting readings of the event on our Blog page.

 

1 March 2012—On the Bookshelf blogger and radio host Dave Kirby reviews the events behind the life and times of Francisco d’Almeida.

Last year I made two international music trips, one to Portugal, the other to South Africa. This book links these two nations through a seminal event at the Cape of Good Hope, today Cape Town, where the Viceroy of Portuguese India was led ashore, attacked, slain and hurriedly buried in a shallow grave. Was it an ambush or an assassination? And how did that single act change the history of Europe, Africa and south Asia?

What we learn from Knot of Stone is that on 1 March 1510, one hundred and fifty years before the first Dutch settlers arrived at the Cape, the first recorded murder and later, the first monument, set southern Africa on a new course. Francisco d’Almeida, the ex-Viceroy of Portuguese India, died along with sixty of his soldier and sailors, slain by naked herders. More recent evidence seems to indicate that it could have been a political assassination, rather than just a random bad contact with indigenous people. The author uses the fictional device of several inquiring researchers to chase down the evidence in this very, very Cold Case.

Only one year before, as 1st Viceroy of the Indies, Almeida had led Europe’s entry into the Asian environment, re-establishing direct links between the East and the West after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. With one fell swoop, the Ottomans had already severed Europe’s access to the land, sea and river routes of the East—including Poland, Russia, India and China. The Atlantic coastal cities of Europe considered an entirely new idea: the circumnavigation of Africa, even though no one yet knew how big the continent really was. Prince Henry founded his famous school of navigation, launching an era of modern global ocean traffic. At Henry’s death, his 19-year-old grandnephew Crown Prince João became King, and sent Bartolomeu Dias south along the African coast to find the East. And it seems Dias may have seen Table Mountain, too, which he called “The Cape of Good Hope”.

Almeida apparently syncretized folk superstition with religious rationalism, fusing grace and karma. His diplomatic contacts included soldiers, envoys and monarchs from the Middle East, learning ancient knowledge from Greek, Hebraic and Moslem cultures. His so-called Blue Sea policy cut back Muslim control of traditional trade routes from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. As a Knight in the Order of Christ (a Portuguese re-organization of the disgraced and destroyed Knights Templar), he forged ties with potential allies in East Africa and West India. There he governed a land with the world’s oldest blend of Christianity—which included elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam—a potpourri of religious beliefs and practices. Almeida helped expand Portugal’s influence around the Indian Ocean Rim. His untimely death allowed for Dutch, French and British settlement in South Africa, rather than that of any Portuguese colonizers.

Dutch colonization allowed the French and the British, and later German and Russian settlers to arrive, due to alliances made with the House of Orange. This would not have been possible if South Africa had developed into another Portuguese colony—like Brazil. It would also have turned South Africa into another source of slaves for the Portuguese economy, bound for the New World, just as Angola had been used for centuries. What we learn, then, is that the history of southern Africa would indeed have followed a very different course had it not been for this one tragic event.

Finally, while I feel the author muddies his story with too much “karmic research”, these historical quagmires are best left for readers to explore themselves.

Dave “Doc” Kirby

The above review will be broadcast by WTBF radio (Alabama, USA) and posted on Dave Kirby’s own blog, onthebookshelf.biz, to commemorate the death of Viceroy D’Almeida on 1 March 1510.

 

 

London, 13 January 2012—Lightworker magazine presents Revisiting the past, ancestral voices and the karmic novel

“Having been displaced as the Portuguese Viceroy of India, Francisco d’Almeida sailed for Lisbon in peril of his life,” began the clairaudient, speaking slowly, as he described what had happened five centuries before. We stood together on a low, desolate beach before Table Mountain, Cape Town, as near to the murder scene as was still possible. Most of the old beach had since been covered by tons of landfill.  Read more…

 

 

New York, 30 October 2011—Paulo Figueiredo reports for LUSA on the assassination of Francisco d’Almeida in Knot of Stone (Nó de Pedra).

Using dreams, prophecies, a clairaudient and other non-traditional sources for his historical research, Dutch-South African author Nicolaas Vergunst reconstructs the 16thC assassination of Francisco d’Almeida.

“The massacre of Viceroy D’Almeida and his compatriots—invariably recast as a racial conflict—appears to be a more intriguing affair involving conspirators, Catholic cabals, rivalries between military Orders and, of course, family jealousies at court”, the author told LUSA today.

“My book begins with a question: What if it wasn’t an ambush but, say, a mutiny or an assassination?”, he adds. Following the UK in September, Knot of Stone is now launched in the US by Arena Books and, in March 2012, is set to be released officially in South Africa.

The central issue is the assassination of the Portuguese Viceroy, Francisco d’Almeida who, together with his sixty compatriots, was killed by local herders where Cape Town stands today, in what is considered to be the first battle between Whites and Blacks in South African history.

“We seldom find historical documents proving an assassination, certainly not one that happened 500 years ago, nor one before Lisbon’s archives burnt down”, said the author, “which is why I chose the novel form over that of a historical study. For example, look at the deaths of Dag Hammarskjöld, former UN secretary-general, or US president JFK only 50 years ago—in both cases we have photographs, tape recordings and film footage, and yet we’ve never found any conclusive proof of assassins operating behind either tragedy. Just one lone gunman and a plane with technical problems.”

Now living in Strasbourg, France, Vergunst dedicated five years to researching this book—although his involvement with the story started 25 years ago when a priest first mentioned a possible assassination, c.1984. He also hopes to see the work translated into Portuguese and will, in 2011, return to the theme as more can be said about the murder of Almeida. Apart from the text, he also produced the design, layout and illustrations for the entire book. “I visualise scenarios before writing them”. Knot of Stone, he explains, is “primarily a work of historical detection that straddles different literary genres, rather than being a work of ‘faction’. That is, a synthesis of fact (factos) and fiction (ficção)”.

“I’ve striven for a synergy between recorded experience (facts) and imagination (fiction). After all, don’t we need both to make sense of life, to give meaning to the world in which we live?”, the author smiles rhetorically. The book’s contemporary setting provides a perspective for Almeida’s assassination and its consequences in South Africa which, had it been colonized by Portugal, may have been “a second Brazil”.

“As most documents were destroyed by the Great Fire of Lisbon in 1755, I had to turn to unconventional sources for fresh information: images, oral testimonies, dreams and prophecies… My main informants never published the material used to reconstruct the events in this book: one being a European history teacher who ‘dreamt’ the murder and the other, quite separately, an African clairaudient who ‘heard’ what happened”, says the author. Although the Viceroy’s sucessor, Afonso de Albuquerque, was put in irons on his arrival in India, there is no hard evidence of his involvement in Almeida’s death. While Albuquerque had the motive, means and opportunity to order the assassination, Vergunst tends to finger “factions within the Catholic Church, antagonistic to Almieda’s secret mission”, for doing so.

Paulo Dias Figueiredo

Paulo Dias Figueiredo writes for the Lusaphone news agency LUSA in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique and Brazil. For the original Portuguese text, see LUSA interview.

 

 

19 October 2011—arts page reporter Joseph Nthini reviews Knot of Stone for The South African; while The Archival Platform picks up the story a week later—28 October.

Nicolaas Vergunst’s debut novel is both challenging and inventive. It sets South African history in a context of international developments spanning 500 years since Almeida’s murder. Knot of Stone is an engaging and intelligent read, but above all it is a labour of love and a tale of discovery that stresses one message: uncover the truth.  Read more…  The Archival Platform.

 

 

22 September 2011—an avid reader Alf May reviews the book for Red Pepper Books.

I read Knot of Stone twice; and both times with intrigue and delight. Never before have I come across a book which embraces so much esoteric knowledge, so much encyclopaedic information and so much reader fulfilment—all within 450 pages—and on a subject the average person would never have known about. The book may not become a best-selling novel, in a commercial sense, but I sincerely believe that it is a major contribution to the historiography of South Africa and its origins. I can but only offer my congratulations to the author.

The above thumbnail of Cain slaying Abel (2008) is by South African artist Conrad Botes whose dark comic allegories look at the origins and abuses of racial violence. Courtesy Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town.

  

 

21 September 2011—specialist in Portuguese-African relations João Perestrello writes for GoodReads.

Nicolaas Vergunst’s latest Knot of Stone book is an enchanting tale that masterfully fuses history and fiction with amazing effect. The reader is drawn into a world of richly and impeccably sourced old and modern history. With its remarkable flow of characters, deep knowledge of many nations and people, this is a captivating world story set in Africa. In this riveting book a Dutch historian and Afrikaans archaeologist revisit a Portuguese tale of mystery and take the reader on a wonderful adventure of discovery and entertainment.

  

 

12 September 2011—Harrie Salman, historian and author of Europe, reviews Knot of Stone for New View magazine (Fall 2011, pp.78-80).

In 1510 Francisco d’Almeida, the former Viceroy of Portuguese territories in India, was on his way home when he and his men went ashore to take in water and food at present-day Cape Town. According to historical sources, he was killed in a skirmish with the Khoekhoen (Hottentots) and buried near the beach. His grave has never been found. The skirmish took place at Aguada de Saldanha, the name then used by the Portuguese for Table Bay.

While such an ignominious death seems unlikely for a high-ranking officer in the company of veteran soldiers, it passed into official history and has never been questioned. After this incident, fearing more attacks, the Portuguese did not care to take possession of Africa’s southernmost coast. It was only in the mid-17^th century that Dutch settlers established themselves at the Cape.

Some four centuries on, in 1924, the German Waldorf School teacher Walter Johannes Stein (1891–1957) had an inner vision in which he saw this event and recognised the victim as his own earlier incarnation. In the same year Rudolf Steiner confirmed this insight—formally identifying Stein with Almeida. In his ‘retrospective vision’ Stein saw how Almeida, a knight and confidante of kings, had been ritually killed by his own men. He understood that this death was an execution carried out at the request of the Spanish-orientated Order of St James (Ordem de Sant’Iago), for whom Almeida had once served as a commander-in-arms.

Stein remembered too that, as Almeida, he had been wounded in the siege of Moorish Granada when it fell to the Spanish in 1492. During this campaign he recuperated in the house of a Muslim nobleman who, subsequently, gave him an unknown Aristotelian treatise about the secret properties of nature. After being nurtured back to health, Almeida left Granada with this precious book and a mysterious pearl, also a gift. The latter was apparently an alchemical reliquary. Though bound by oath to submit such things to the Order, he made them available to the German alchemist Basilius Valentinus. For this act of ‘betrayal’, the Order issued an unofficial request for Almeida’s execution.

Various publications by and about Stein drew the attention of other researchers of spiritual history to Almeida. Through anthroposophical channels Stein’s investigations into the circumstances around Almeida’s death also reached Cape Town. Rachael Clayfield, a priest of the Christian Community, investigated Stein’s claims and shared the fruits of her research in the early 1980s. Among those Rev. Clayfield spoke to was Nicolaas Vergunst, a young man of Dutch descent and born in Cape Town.

After a career with the national museums of South Africa, Nicolaas Vergunst started his own research into Almeida’s murder. This has resulted in a fine and well-documented novel, entitled Knot of Stone: the day that changed South Africa’s history, published in September 2011. The book commemorates the death of Almeida and attempts to unravel the mysteries around this death and its long-term implications. The genre of this kind of mystery literature has been made famous by books of Umberto Eco, Dan Brown, Paulo Coelho and others. Readers will find in Knot of Stone an eloquently written and fascinating book that surpasses others in this genre; offering a lot of well-grounded spiritual facts instead of esoteric fantasies.

The story is presented as a journey initiated by the chance discovery of Almeida’s bones. A South African archaeologist, Jason Tomas, and a Dutch historian, Sonja Haas, are brought together by a professor of anthropology, a former Jewish exile, who is himself well informed on matters of spiritual history, including the views of Rudolf Steiner. Once the action moves to Europe—where sites relating to Almeida’s life and the Grail story are revisited—a Russian collector and Dutch educator enter the story to bring in more anthroposophical background.

The psychiatrist Laurence Oliver, a new spiritual source from South Africa with whom the author has been acquainted since 2004, has provided new and essential confirmation of Stein’s earlier claims. With his clairaudient faculties, Oliver offered further karmic backgrounds to several other events and personalities in western history—both before and since Almeida’s murder. His messages help to create a context to otherwise isolated pieces of information. Knot of Stone is a splendid example of a new genre—the karmic novel.

With more and more spiritual information becoming available since the beginning of the 20^th century, books that elucidate spiritual history have become necessary. Stein himself, a man of deep spiritual insights, wrote such a book about the 9^th century in relation to the Grail stories, commenting: “The history of the Grail is the history of the world. And the history of the world is the history of East and West.” (1928)

Stein often spoke about the polarity between East (Asia) and West (Europe), a polarity which permeates the Grail story of Wolfram von Eschenbach. The search for the kingdom of the enigmatic Prester John of India—known from the Grail story and from his mysterious letters—not only motivated the Portuguese discoveries of the 15^th century, but lay behind Almeida’s secret mission in India. All this comes to new life in Knot of Stone.

From 1933, when he emigrated to England, and until his death in 1957, Stein played a prominent role in British Anthroposophy. He became well-known to the general public through the rather dubious books of Trevor Ravenscroft, in which he was to be featured posthumously. In Knot of Stone we meet Stein and some of his earlier incarnations again.

To propel his plot, Nicolaas Vergunst introduces a dossier containing crucial clues which assist the reader in his or her own quest. This dossier’s contents—articles, postcards, maps, handwritten notes and biographical lists—are interspersed throughout the text to produce a handsome publication of some 450 pages.

Central to Knot of Stone is the idea of the ‘eternal return’; namely, that we return to live again and again with the same friends, family and foes. This is demonstrated via several tabulated karmic biographies. The reader will certainly not take all the karmic information given in the book for granted. Also in this area of research mistakes can be made and people with clairvoyant or clairaudient faculties can be misled by spiritual beings trying to spread lies. For this reviewer, the information received by Laurence Oliver (and presented in the book) about Jesus and Maria Magdalene having a son is a clear example of this phenomenon. As in all literature about spiritual matters, the readers are asked to develop their inner sense of truth.

In the case of Almeida, the information about his karmic biography receives a clear context and thus makes sense to readers who wish to judge matters for themselves. Other karmic sequences—such as the transpersonal lives of, for instance, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Constantine the Great, Charlemagne, Winston Churchill and Dag Hammarskjöld—miss such a context. They require further elaboration, a deeper understanding of karma, and confirmation from other sources, perhaps even another novel. To this end, the author is already preparing his sequel,  An Endless Knot.

Harrie Salman

Harrie Salman is a Dutch philosopher, historian and sociologist. He is the author of several acclaimed books, most notably Europe: Continent with a Global Mission (2009).

 

 

5 September 2011—publisher James Farrell of Arena Books says: “This book is primarily a work of historical fiction; but in its search for facts or greater clarification of a very murky episode early in South Africa’s history, it seeks to reveal a number of underlying truths of existence which touch us all.”

1 September 2011—Ben Cameron of Smith Publicity  describes Knot of Stone as having “the intelligence and research of Umberto Eco and the urgency of Dan Brow”.

26 August 2011—social historian and philosopher Harrie Salman, author of Europe: Continent with a Global Mission (2009), says Knot of Stone “is one fine example of a new genre—the karmic novel”.

16 June 2011—Frans Lutters, biographer and author of Who is Harry Potter? (2011), says that Knot of Stone “draws in the lives of medieval Grail knights and modern Grail researchers, binding them to the murder of Francisco d’Almeida. Elegantly told, this story pulls together a unique history of our world.”