Past Lives

The source data for the lives described in The Passing of Merlin Zauber are based on my own past lives, recovered by hypnotic regression.

That includes Eric's life, which seems to be the result of a karmic debt incurred as a result of the life of Gianni the sculptor's boy, described in Chapter 8: "Headless Gianni." Attributing this life to the character Eric, Merlin's young patient, rather than Merlin himself, seemed necessary to give the novel the structure it needed. In the dream described at the beginning of Chapter 1: "Moving Beyond," in which a boy standing at the top of the stairs tosses a stick of dynamite that symbolizes Merlin Zauber's death, I can only speculate about the actual meaning of the dream. However, I suspect that it pointed back to Gianni, who, judging from my dream data, was responsible for considerable unrest in my psyche.

Gianni

The lives are presented in The Passing of Merlin Zauber with a minimum of revisions. However, the life of Gianni in particular deserves special commentary.

Gianni's account can be corroborated historically, on the basis of the wooden crucifix. I didn't find out until long after I had recovered the past life as Gianni that the crucifix in Santa Spirito in Florence, dated 1492, and attributed to Michelangelo, actually existed and still does:

Click the image to enlarge it.

I dreamed the dream incorporated into the dream sequence in Chapter 1 when I was in my late 20s. The image of the headless, nude corpse I found very puzzling. It was not until about twenty more years afterwards when I was able to recall the life of Gianni that I realized that this obviously referred to him, who obscessed over the fact that the sculptor was depicting the crucifix with Gianni's body but with the sculptor's head instead of the boy's. The final dream, incorporated into Chapter 14: "The Final Synthesis," in which Merlin discovers his own severed head and decides to bury it himself, reflects the fact that the psychic conflict evoked by Gianni's life could finally be resolved.

The discussions in which the various past lives are applied to Merlin are in fact actually applicable to me. I was careful to be as accurate in the comments as possible. While The Passing of Merlin Zauber is fiction, the source data I drew upon to create this novel are true, as far as I can tell.