However, then, in 2014, only a charming poem knocked on my door («A lunar lantern is hanging on a palm tree»), further included in my «Island», which was materialized in the form of a philosophical and mystical story in… seven years. Due to the spirit of the mysterious Camotes, firmly settled in my heart, it sprouted and, gaining strength, branched out, turning into a real Tree of Wishes.
Throughout July 2021, «The Island» was boiling in my mind like a potion in an alchemist’s flask – individual ingredients were merging into a single and magical something. The boiling point reached me on the Full Moon, which happened on Athos on Friday, August 13, 2021, on the eve of the Orthodox holiday of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated in Greece from the 14>th to the 15>th of August (two weeks earlier than in Russia). It was the midnight between Friday the 13>th and Saturday the 14>th that collided the Forces of Evil and Good and became fatal for the main characters of «The Island», Alice and Mark, – instead of love, on the long-awaited first date a horror irony of fate met them.
Yes, I started writing «The Island of Charon» in the Greek village of Ouranoupolis, located on the border of Orthodox Athos, in the house of a beekeeper, where I lived in the summer (just since 2014, the year of my acquaintance with the pagan Camotes) in a small cell overlooking the tiny island of Ammouliani, the former possession of the Athos monastery of Vatopedi. Thus, two Islands appeared in the book, the one still «owned» by the magicians (Camotes) and the one, until recently, owned by the monks (Ammouliani). They create a Portal as a temptation for the souls, tearing between their Lower and Higher Selves not only during life, but also in the afterlife, for the souls, which sooner or later must make their final choice in favor of the Forces of Light or Darkness.
I started writing the book without knowing whether Mark would reach the Athos monks, who would meet Alice in the Other World, which way exactly the fate of my characters would be developed in the Other Reality, whether they would be able to avoid the traps of the Astral and leave the ghostly Island…
Have I been nursing a murder committed by the Forces of Darkness in the territory of the Forces of Light for all these seven years? It sounds scary. But no, of course, this is a mystical journey with elements of philosophy and the inside-out detective.