Brida

by Paulo Coelho

  The Magus remained impassive.

  “A point of light,” he said. “A point of light above the left shoulder of your Soul Mate. That is how it is in the Tradition of the Moon.”

  “I have to leave,” she said, hoping that he would ask her to stay. She liked being there. He had answered her question.

  The Magus, however, got up and accompanied her to the door.

  “I’m going to learn everything that you know,” she said. “I’m going to discover how to see that point of light.”

  The Magus waited until Brida had gone down the stairs. There was a bus to Dublin in the next half hour, so there was no need for him to worry about her. Then he went out into the garden and performed the ritual he performed every night. He was used to doing it, but sometimes he found it hard to achieve the necessary concentration. Tonight he was particularly distracted.

  When the ritual was over, he sat down on the doorstep and looked up at the sky. He thought about Brida. He could see her on the bus, with the point of light above her left shoulder and which, because she was his Soul Mate, only he could see. He thought how eager she must be to conclude a search that had started the day she was born. He thought how cold and distant she had been when they arrived at his house, and that this was a good sign. It meant she was confused about her own feelings. She was defending herself from something she couldn’t understand.

  He thought, too, somewhat fearfully, that she was in love.

  “Everyone finds their Soul Mate, Brida,” he said out loud to the plants in his garden, but deep down, he sensed that he, too, despite all his years in the Tradition, still needed to reinforce his faith, and that he was really talking to himself.

  “At some point in our lives, we all meet our Soul Mate and recognize him or her,” he went on. “If I were not a Magus and couldn’t see the point of light above your left shoulder, it would take a little longer for me to accept you, but you would fight for me, and one day I would see the special light in your eyes. However, the fact is I am a Magus, and it’s up to me to fight for you, so that all my knowledge is transformed into wisdom.”

  He sat for a long time contemplating the night and thinking about Brida traveling back to Dublin on the bus. It was colder than usual. Summer would soon be over.

  “There are no risks in Love, as you’ll find out for yourself. People have been searching for and finding each other for thousands of years.”

  Suddenly, he realized that he might be wrong. There was always a risk, a single risk: that one person might meet with more than one Soul Mate in the same incarnation, as had happened millennia before.

  Winter and Spring

  Over the next two months, Wicca initiated Brida into the first mysteries of witchcraft. According to her, women could learn these things more quickly than men, because each month they experienced in their own bodies the complete cycle of nature: birth, life, and death, the “Cycle of the Moon” as she called it.

  Brida had to buy a new notebook and record in it any psychical experiences she’d had since her first meeting with Wicca. The notebook always had to be kept up-to-date and must bear on its cover a five-pointed star, which associated everything written in it with the Tradition of the Moon. Wicca told her that all witches owned such a book, known as a Book of Shadows, in homage to their sisters who had died during the four hundred years that the witch hunt lasted.

  “Why do I need to do all this?”

  “We have to awaken the Gift. Without it, you will know only the Minor Mysteries. The Gift is your way of serving the world.”

  Brida had to reserve one relatively unused corner of her house for a kind of miniature oratory in which a candle should be kept burning day and night. The candle, according to the Tradition of the Moon, was the symbol of the four elements and contained within itself the earth of the wick, the water of the paraffin, the fire that burned, and the air that allowed the fire to burn. The candle was also important as a way of reminding her that she had a mission to fulfill and that she was engaged on that mission. Only the candle should be visible; everything else should be hidden away on a shelf or in a drawer. From the Middle Ages on, the Tradition of the Moon had demanded that witches surround their activities with absolute secrecy, for there were several prophecies warning that Darkness would return at the end of the millennium.

  Whenever Brida came home and saw the candle flame, she felt a strange, almost sacred responsibility.

  Wicca told her that she must always pay attention to the sound of the world. “You can hear it wherever you are,” she said. “It’s a noise that never stops, which is there on mountaintops, in cities, in the sky, and at the bottom of the ocean. This noise—which is like a vibration—is the Soul of the World transforming itself and traveling toward the light. Any witch must be keenly aware of this, because she is an important part of that journey.”

  Wicca also explained that the Ancients spoke to our world through symbols. Even if no one was listening, even if the language of symbols had been forgotten by almost everyone, the Ancients never ceased talking.

  “Are they beings like us?” Brida asked one day.

  “We are them. And suddenly we understand everything that we learned in our past lives, and everything that the great sages left written on the Universe. Jesus said: ‘The Kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how.’

  “The human race drinks always from this same inexhaustible fountain, and even when everyone says it is doomed, it still finds a way to survive. It survived when the apes drove the men from the trees and when the waters covered Earth. It will survive when everyone is preparing for the final catastrophe.

  “We are responsible for the Universe, because we are the Universe.”

  The more time Brida spent with Wicca, the more aware she became of what a very pretty woman she was.

  Wicca continued to teach Brida the Tradition of the Moon. She told her to find a two-edged dagger with an undulating blade like a flame. Brida tried in various shops, but there was nothing suitable. In the end, Lorens solved the problem by asking a metallurgical chemistry engineer, who worked at the university, to make such a blade. Then he himself carved a wooden handle and gave the dagger to Brida as a gift. It was his way of saying that he respected her search.

  The dagger was consecrated by Wicca in a complicated ritual involving magical words, charcoal designs drawn on the blade, and a few blows with a wooden spoon. The dagger was to be used as a prolongation of her own arm, keeping the energy of her body concentrated in the blade. Fairy godmothers used a wand for the same purpose, and magi used a sword.

  When Brida expressed her surprise at the charcoal and the wooden spoon, Wicca said that in the days of witch hunts, witches were forced to use materials that could be mistaken for ordinary everyday objects. The tradition of the dagger, the charcoal, and the wooden spoon had survived, while the actual materials once used by the Ancients had been lost entirely.

  Brida learned how to burn incense and how to use the dagger inside magic circles. There was a ritual she had to perform whenever the moon changed its phase; she would place a cup of water on the windowsill so that the moon was reflected in the surface. Then she would stand so that her own face was reflected in the water and the moon’s reflection was right in the middle of her forehead. When she was completely focused, she would cut the water with the dagger, causing the reflections to break up and form smaller ones.

  This water had to be drunk immediately, and then the power of the moon would grow inside her.

  “None of this makes sense,” Brida said once. Wicca ignored the remark, for she had once thought exactly the same thing, but she remembered Jesus’ words about the things that grow inside each of us without our understanding how or why.

  “It doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not,” she told her. “Think of the Dark Night. The more you do this, the more the Ancients will communicate with you. They wi
ll do so initially in ways you cannot understand, because only your soul will be listening, but one day, the voices will be heard again.”

  Brida didn’t want to hear voices, she wanted to find her Soul Mate, but she said nothing of this to Wicca.

  She was forbidden from returning to the past again. According to Wicca, this was rarely necessary.

  “Don’t use the cards to read the future either. The cards are to be used only for growth without words, the kind of growth that occurs imperceptibly.”

  Brida had to spread the cards out on a table three times a week and sit looking at them. Occasionally she had visions, but they were usually incomprehensible. When she complained about this, Wicca said that the visions had a meaning so deep that she was incapable of understanding it.

  “And why shouldn’t I use the cards to read the future?”

  “Only the present has power over our lives,” replied Wicca. “When you read the future in the cards, you are bringing the future into the present, and that can cause serious harm. The present could confuse your future.”

  Once a week, they went to the wood, and Wicca taught her apprentice the secrets of herbs. For Wicca, everything in the world bore God’s signature, especially plants. Certain leaves resembled the heart and were good for heart disease, while flowers that resembled eyes could cure diseases of the eye. Brida began to understand that many herbs really did bear a close resemblance to human organs, and in a book on folk medicine that Lorens borrowed from the university library she found research indicating that the beliefs of country people and witches could well be right.

  “God placed his pharmacy in the woods and fields,” Wicca said one day when they were resting under a tree, “so that everyone could enjoy good health.”

  Brida knew that her teacher had other apprentices, but she never met them—the dog always barked when her time with Wicca was up. However, she had passed other people on the stairs: an older woman, a girl about her own age, and a man in a suit. Brida listened discreetly to their steps until the creaking floorboards above betrayed their destination: Wicca’s apartment.

  One day, Brida risked asking about these other students.

  “Witchcraft is based on collective strength,” Wicca told her. “All the different Gifts keep the energy of our work in constant movement. Each Gift depends on all the others.”

  Wicca explained that there were nine Gifts, and that both the Tradition of the Sun and the Tradition of the Moon took care that these Gifts survived over the centuries.

  “What are the nine Gifts?”

  Wicca told her off for being lazy and asking questions all the time, when a true witch should be interested in all forms of spiritual inquiry. Brida, she said, ought to spend more time reading the Bible (“which contains all the true occult wisdom”) and to seek out the gifts in St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. Brida did so, and there she found the nine gifts: the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of the spirits, speaking in tongues, and the interpretation of tongues.

  It was only then that she understood the Gift she was seeking: the discerning of the spirits.

  Wicca taught Brida to dance. She said that she needed to learn to move her body in accordance with the sound of the world, that ever-present vibration. There was no special technique; it was simply a matter of making any movement that came into her head. Nevertheless, it took a while before Brida could become used to moving and dancing in that illogical way.

  “The Magus of Folk taught you about the Dark Night. In both Traditions—which are, in fact, one—the Dark Night is the only way to grow. When you set off along the path of magic, the first thing you do is surrender yourself to a greater power, for you will encounter things that you will never understand.

  “Nothing will behave in the logical way you have come to expect. You will understand things only with your heart, and that can be a little frightening. For a long time, the journey will seem like a Dark Night, but then any search is an act of faith.

  “But God, who is far harder to understand than a Dark Night, appreciates our act of faith and takes our hand and guides us through the Mystery.”

  Wicca spoke of the Magus with no rancor or bitterness. Brida had been wrong; Wicca had clearly never had an affair with him; it was written in her eyes. Perhaps the irritation she had expressed on that first day had merely been because they had ended up following different paths. Wizards and witches were vain creatures, and each wanted to prove to the other that their path was the best.

  She suddenly realized what she had thought.

  She could tell Wicca wasn’t in love with the Magus by her eyes.

  She had seen films and read books that talked about this. The whole world could tell from someone’s eyes if they were in love.

  “I only manage to understand the simple things once I’ve embraced the complicated things,” she thought to herself. Perhaps one day she would follow the Tradition of the Sun.

  It was quite late on in the year and the cold was just beginning to bite when Brida received a phone call from Wicca.

  “We’re going to meet in the wood in two days’ time, on the night of the new moon, just before dark,” was all she said.

  Brida spent those two days thinking about that meeting. She performed the usual rituals and danced to the sound of the world. “I wish I could dance to some music,” she thought, but she was becoming used to moving her body according to that strange vibration, which she could hear better at night or in certain silent places. Wicca had told her that when she danced to the sound of the world, her soul would feel more comfortable in her body and there would be a lessening of tension. Brida began to notice how people walking down the street didn’t seem to know what to do with their hands or how to move their hips or shoulders. She felt like telling them that the world was playing a tune and if they danced a little to that music, and simply allowed their body to move illogically for a few minutes a day, they would feel much better.

  That dance, however, was part of the Tradition of the Moon, and only witches knew about it. There must be something similar in the Tradition of the Sun. There always was, although no one appeared to want to learn it.

  “We’ve lost our ability to live with the secrets of the world,” she said to Lorens. “And yet there they are before us. The reason I want to be a witch is so that I can see those secrets.”

  On the appointed day, Brida went to the wood. She walked among the trees, feeling the magical presence of the spirits of nature. About fifteen hundred years ago, that wood had been the sacred place of the Druids, until St. Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, and the Druid cults disappeared. Nevertheless, respect for that place had passed from generation to generation and, even now, the villagers both respected and feared it.

  She found Wicca in the clearing, wrapped in her cloak. There were four other people with her, all wearing ordinary clothes and all of them women. In the place where she had once noticed ashes, a fire was burning. Brida looked at the fire and for some reason felt afraid. She didn’t know if it was because of that part of Loni which she carried inside her or because she had known fire in her other incarnations.

  More women arrived. Some were her age and others were older than Wicca. Altogether, there were nine.

  “I didn’t invite the men today. We are here waiting for the kingdom of the Moon.”

  The kingdom of the Moon was the night.

  They stood around the fire, talking about the most trivial things in the world, and Brida felt as if she’d been invited to a tea party with a lot of old gossips, although the setting was rather different.

  However, as soon as the sky filled up with stars, the atmosphere changed completely. Wicca didn’t need to call for silence; gradually, the conversation died, and Brida wondered to herself if they’d only just noticed the presence of the fire and the forest.

  After a brief silence, Wicca spoke.

  “On this night, once a year, the w
orld’s witches gather together to pray and pay homage to our forebears. According to the Tradition, on the tenth moon of the year, we gather round a fire, which was life and death to our persecuted sisters.”

  Brida produced a wooden spoon from beneath her cloak.

  “Here is the symbol,” she said, showing the spoon to everyone.

  The women remained standing and held hands. Then, raising their joined hands, they heard Wicca’s prayer.

  “May the blessing of the Virgin Mary and of her son Jesus be upon our heads tonight. In our bodies sleeps the Soul Mate of our ancestors. May the Virgin Mary bless them.

  “May she bless us because we are women and live in a world in which men love and understand us more and more. Yet still we bear on our bodies the marks of past lives, and those marks still hurt.

  “May the Virgin Mary free us from those marks and put an end forever to our sense of guilt. We feel guilty when we go out to work because we’re leaving our children in order to earn money to feed them. We feel guilty when we stay at home because it seems we’re not making the most of our freedom. We feel guilty about everything, because we have always been kept far from decision making and from power.

  “May the Virgin Mary remind us always that it was the women who stayed with Jesus when all the men fled and denied their faith. That it was the women who wept while He carried the cross and who waited at His feet at the hour of His death. That it was the women who visited the empty tomb, and that we have no reason to feel guilty.

  “May the Virgin Mary remind us always that we were burned and persecuted because we preached the Religion of Love. When others were trying to stop time with the power of sin, we gathered together to hold forbidden festivals in which we celebrated what was still beautiful in the world. Because of this we were condemned and burned in the public squares.