PORTA MAGICAE
THE LORE
Once upon many times, in a land just beyond a magic door…
“You might call it lore, or a fish story, but so it goes that a writer and a painter teamed up on a quest to find a magic door…
While living in a small town in the mountains of Appalachia—a beautiful little town that once was home to many toymakers and woodcarvers—their (already rather unusual) lives were upended by a curious discovery: a tattered old journal lying at the bottom of an intricately carved wooden box in one of the many antique shops in the area. This journal led them circuitously around the globe in pursuit of a magic door—the ‘Porta Magicae’—promising phenomena you can only describe as bridges across time and space.”
What you just read, well, that’s no fish story. The writer and the painter, that’s us, and we’ve been jumping around the world for many years searching for that magic door. Our quest for the Porta Magicae has taken us to the ends of the earth, to its quietest corners and most cacophonous quarters. Now, we dedicate our lives to chronicling its magic and mysteries, and for the first time in many years, we are ready to share our findings with you.
As we travel, we’ve collected fantastic stories about the Porta Magicae and the very few and incredibly young adventurers who have dared to cross its threshold, creating “The Porta Magicae Adventure Book Series.”
However, the task of bringing such a series together is not an easy one, as the door is very elusive—it appears and disappears continuously, sometimes materializing in the most remote, yet magical, places around the world. We hear stories about it everywhere—but which leads to follow? To organize our own adventure and everything it takes to make the book series, we have created the “Porta Magicae Project” and will be posting on social media our findings, sharing our ideas, and hopefully, receiving great tips, clues, and suggestions from you about where to go next – please share with us any information you might have about the door’s whereabouts and we’ll come investigate, or maybe create a new team with you and your friends to do the research in your area, especially if you can draw or are a good writer!
On this website, you can follow what is happening with both storylines – “the Porta Magicae children’s book series,” as it is created, and our “Quest” to find the magic door. Join us, and our team from around the world—people like you, people from everywhere—in the creation of the series, and help us plan our next adventure. Click on our “Archives” and “Behind Doors” sections to read about the stories, help us figure out clues, and see the book illustrations in the making; or follow us on Facebook and Instagram as the pages start to unfold and the stories come to life. You’ll find the links at the bottom of this page.
We have been working hard at solving the mystery of the Porta Magicae, trying to decipher the clues left in the sketchbook – the plan is to keep publishing them on this website as soon as we find new ones, so you can help us figure them out! So far, we have traversed North America, sailed through the Caribbean and part of the Pacific, traveled across the Andes and into the Amazon, visited hundreds of little towns and big cities in Europe—from southern Spain to Turkey—and explored the Mediterranean, Northern and Southern Africa, all in pursuit of the magic door.
Recently, we’ve started hearing stories about travelers who have found the door, about time explorers who have been able to use a magic key to open it. Are they talking about us, or could it be you? Do you have a magic key? If you do, or suspect that a key you possess might hold magical properties, please sketch or photograph it and send us the image via email. We’ll exhibit it on our website. Across different countries and languages, the story is the same: a magic door exists. Are these tales and lore just flights of fancy? If they inspire you to explore this incredible world we inhabit, then perhaps they’re worth believing.
Discover more about the Quest – the actual treks in search of the stories—the stories behind the stories.
THE LEGEND OF
THE WOODCARVERS’ VANISHING DOOR
Once upon a time, in the Mountains of Appalachia, USA, there lived a small community of woodcarvers and toymakers. With the outbreak of World War I, wooden toys that used to come from the Tyrol region in Europe were no longer available. The toymakers, masters of their craft, trained local boys and girls so that they too could learn the wonderful craft and create beautiful toys. The woodcarvers, on the other hand, created furniture, altars, and intricately carved windows and doors.
One rainy day—one of those very unusual ones when it rains even while the sun is out and shining—an old shopkeeper from a small store on the town’s main street, stopped by the woodcarvers’ shop to inquire as to who had left what he described as an “exquisitely carved door” in his storage room—but more so, he wanted to know how they had managed to leave it there, as that room had remained locked all week, and he had the only key. Intrigued, all the masters and a few children went to visit the store to see the incredible door, but when they got there, the door was gone. Now, more than a hundred years have passed, and so I’ve heard, the sightings of the door have never stopped. While visiting the towns in the area, I heard from Lori, the wonderful painter, that she heard the door has appeared many times in the area’s stores — and Bruce has similar stories. Carri says she found a very old negative with what seems to be the door—but it’s really too dark to see in good detail; and Mark, the writer, actually keeps meticulous notes of the stories he hears about all the appearances. And Bill and Kam, the art collectors, are rumored to have an old painting of the door. And Robert, the soap maker, who swears he saw the door through his store window one morning when he was opening his shop, but it vanished in seconds while he looked for his keys. No door, but some wonderful soaps were left inside—the kind that were handmade in the 1800s. Ask him; he’ll tell you. Hundreds of stories abound, if you know whom to ask.
But of all the stories, the one that intrigues me the most is still the one about the very first appearance. People say that the old man was so terrified to enter that storage room after the door vanished that he built another wall right in front of the one where the door had appeared. Because recently, I’ve learned, while working on the remodeling of the local ice-cream parlor (which has really good ice-cream, by the way), someone tore down an old wall to install a piece of equipment, and there in the dark, behind the wall, for a moment, he thought he saw a door. If it was actually the Porta Magicae, the one we have seen in the sketchbook, and if it truly does what the writings describe, there is nothing to fear; it is a magical door, one that so many have used to journey wherever they wish and travel through time as they please— one that will always lead to incredible adventures. So, next time you notice it’s raining while the sun is out and shining, open your heart, and get ready for an adventure.
