Chapter 55: 542-553
Page 542
Feng-Shui
See page 228.
Sha... Bad Energy
Note that the Cyrillic letter, Sha, is similar to the Hebrew Shin, which is related to the greeting (Star Trek-like salute) that was given outside the The Rabbi of Prague. See page
Sha has its earliest origins in Proto-Canaanite Shin and is linked closely to Shin's Greek equivalent: Sigma (Σ, σ). (Note the similar form of the modern Hebrew Shin (ש) which also derives from the same Proto-Canaanite source). Sha already possessed its current form in Saints Cyril and Methodius's Glagolitic alphabet. Most Cyrillic letter-forms were derived from the Greek, but as there was no Greek sign for the Sha sound (modern Greek uses simply "σ" to spell the sh-sound in foreign words and names), Glagolitic Sha was adopted unchanged. There is a possibility that Sha was taken from the Coptic alphabet, which was the same as the Greek alphabet but had a few letters added at the end, including one called "shai" which somewhat resembles both sha and shcha (Щ, щ) in appearance.
Page 548
"A complete, largely unsens'd World, held within our own [...] waiting for some Summons to Light"
The Hollow Earth theories posit that the planet Earth has a hollow interior and, possibly, a habitable inner surface. At one time, adventure literature made this idea popular, and it was a feature of many fantasy and science fiction works as well as some conspiracy theories.
Hollow Earth theory is also explored in Pynchon's 2006 novel Against the Day, where the Chums of Chance enter the "Telluric interior" through an opening in the Antarctic as a shortcut to the North Pole...
- "Some of the greatest minds in the history of science, including Kepler, Halley, and Euler, had speculated as to the existence of a so-called 'hollow Earth.' One day, it was hoped, the technique of intra-planetary 'short-cutting' about to be exercised by the boys would become routine, as useful in its way as the Suez or the Panama Canal had proved to surface shipping." (Against the Day, p. 115).
It is also further explored in Mason & Dixon on pages 603, 707 and 739.
