The Valkyries
Page 14
“There. It’s done.”
“Maybe the guards will take it away when they find it here,” Gene said. “They watch over the desert as if it were a flower garden.”
“Maybe,” Paulo said. “But the spot will still be marked. It will always be one of my sacred places.”
“No,” Gene said. “Sacred places are individual places. In this one, a text was dictated. A text that already existed. One that speaks of hope, and had already been forgotten.”
Paulo didn’t want to think about that now. He was still fearful.
“In this place, the energy of the soul of the world was felt,” Gene said. “And it will be felt here forever. It is a place of power.”
They gathered up the plastic sheeting in which Paulo had mixed the cement, placed it in the trunk of the car, and left to take Gene back to his old trailer.
“Paulo!” he said when they were saying their good-byes. “I think it would be good for you to know an old saying from the Tradition: When God wants to drive a person insane, he grants that person’s every wish.”
“Could be,” Paulo answered. “But it was worth it.”
Epilogue
One afternoon, a year and a half after the angel’s appearance, a letter arrived for me in Rio, from Los Angeles. It was from one of my Brazilian readers living in the United States, Rita de Freitas, and was in praise of The Alchemist.
On impulse, I wrote to her, asking that she go to a canyon near Borrego Springs to see whether the statue of Our Lady of Aparecida was still there.
After I had mailed the letter, I thought to myself: That’s pretty silly. This woman doesn’t even know me. She’s just a reader who wanted to say a few kind words, and she’ll never do as I’ve asked. She’s not going to get into her car, drive six hours into the desert, and see whether a small statue is still there.
Just before Christmas in 1989, I received a letter from Rita, from which I have excerpted the following:
There have been some marvelous “coincidences.” I had a week off from my job over the Thanksgiving holiday. My boyfriend (Andrea, an Italian musician) and I were planning on getting away to someplace different.
Then your letter arrived. And the place you mentioned was near an Indian reservation. We decided to go…
…On our third day there, we went to look for the canyon, and found it. It was on Thanksgiving Day. It was interesting, because we were driving very slowly, but saw no sign of the statue. We came to the end of a canyon, stopped, and began climbing to the top of the cliff there. All we saw were the footprints of coyotes.
At this point, we concluded that the statue couldn’t any longer be here…
As we were returning to the car, we saw some flowers among the rocks. We stopped the car and got out. We saw some small candles burning, some golden cloth with a butterfly woven into it, and a straw basket that had been thrown aside. We decided that must have been the place where the statue had been placed, but it was no longer there.
What was interesting was the fact that I’m sure none of that was there when we had first passed by. We took a photograph—enclosed—and went on our way.
When we were almost at the mouth of the canyon, we saw a woman dressed in white. Her clothing seemed Arabian—turban, long tunic—and she was walking in the middle of the road. Very strange—how could a woman such as this appear out of nowhere, in the middle of the desert?
I was thinking: Could this be the woman who had placed those flowers and lighted the candles? There was no car to be seen, and I wondered how she could have come there.
But I was so surprised that I couldn’t bring myself to talk to her.
I examined the photo Rita had sent: It was exactly where I had placed the statue.
It was Thanksgiving Day. And I’m certain that angels were there that day.
I wrote this book in January/February 1992, shortly after the end of the Third World War—where the battles were much more sophisticated than those fought with conventional arms. According to the Tradition, this war began in the 1950s, with the blockade of Berlin, and ended when the Berlin Wall fell. The victors divided up the defeated empire, as in a conventional war. The only thing that didn’t occur was a nuclear holocaust—and this will never happen, because God’s Work is too great to be destroyed by human beings.
Now, according to the Tradition, a new war will begin. An even more sophisticated war, survived by no one—because it is through its battles that man’s growth will be completed. We will see the two armies—on one side, those who still believe in the human race, and know that our next step involves the growth of individual gifts. On the other side will be those who deny the future. Those who believe that life has a material ending, and—unfortunately—those who, although they have faith, believe that they discovered the path to enlightenment, and want the others to follow it with them.
That’s why the angels have returned and must be attended. Only they can show us the way—no one else. We can share our experiences—as I have tried to share mine in this book—but there is no formula for this growth. God has generously made His wisdom and His love available to us, and it is easy, very easy, to find them. One has only to understand channeling—a process so simple that it was difficult for me to recognize and accept. Since the combat will take place for the most part in the astral plane, it will be our guardian angels who will wield the swords and shields, protecting us from danger, and guiding us to victory. But our responsibility is huge, as well: We, at this moment in history, must develop our own powers. We must believe that the universe doesn’t end at the walls of our room. We must accept the signs, and follow our heart and our dreams.
We are responsible for everything that happens in this world. We are the warriors of the light. With the strength of our love and of our will, we can change our destiny, as well as the destiny of many others.
The day will come when the problem of hunger can be solved through the miracle of the multiplication of the bread. The day will come when love will be accepted by every heart, and the most terrible of human experiences—solitude, which is worse than hunger—will be banned from the face of the Earth. The day will come when those who knock at the gates will see them open; those who ask will receive; those who weep will be consoled.
For the planet Earth, that day is still a long way off. But for each of us, that day can be tomorrow. One has only to accept a simple fact: Love—of God and of others—shows us the way. Our defects, our dangerous depths, our suppressed hatreds, our moments of weakness and desperation—all are unimportant. If what we want to do is heal ourselves first, so that then we can go in search of our dreams, we will never reach paradise. If, on the other hand, we accept all that is wrong about us—and despite it, believe that we are deserving of a happy life—then we will have thrown open an immense window that will allow Love to enter. Little by little, our defects will disappear, because one who is happy can look at the world only with love—the force that regenerates everything that exists in the Universe.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky tells us the story of the Grand Inquisitor, which I paraphrase here:
During the religious persecutions in Sevilla, when all who did not agree with the Church were thrown into prison, or burned at the stake, Christ returns to earth and mixes in with the multitudes. But the Grand Inquisitor notes his presence, and orders him jailed.
That night, he goes to visit Jesus in his cell. And he asks why Jesus has decided to return at that particular moment. “You are making things difficult for us,” the Grand Inquisitor says. “After all, your ideals were lovely, but it is we who are capable of putting them into practice.” He argues that, although the Inquisition might be judged in the future to have been severe, it is necessary, and that he is simply doing his job. There is no use talking of peace when man’s heart is always at war; nor speaking of a better world when there is so much hatred in man’s heart. There was no use in Jesus’ having sacrificed himself in the name of the human race, when human beings still f
eel guilty. “You said that all people are equal, that each has the divine light within, but you forgot that people are insecure, and they need someone to guide them. Don’t make our work more difficult than it is. Go away,” says the Grand Inquisitor, having laid out all of his brilliant arguments.
When he is finished, there is silence in the cell. Then Jesus comes to the Grand Inquisitor, and kisses him on the cheek.
“You may be right,” Jesus says. “But my love is stronger.”
We are not alone. The world is changing, and we are a part of the transformation. The angels guide us and protect us. Despite all the injustice in the world, and despite the things that happen to us that we feel we don’t deserve, and despite the fact that we sometimes feel incapable of changing what is wrong with people and with the world, and despite all of the Grand Inquisitor’s arguments—love is even stronger, and it will help us to grow. Only then will we be able to understand the stars and miracles.
Author’s Note
Anyone who has read The Valkyries will know that this book is very different from The Pilgrimage (previously published as The Diary of a Magus), The Alchemist, and Brida.
It was an extremely difficult book to write. First, because it deals with matters that require sensitivity on the part of the reader. Second, because I have already told this story to many people, and I feared that I might have exhausted my capacity to write it down. This fear remained with me from the first page to the last, but—thank God—it was only a fear.
The third and most important reason: In order to relate the events that took place, I had to reveal details from my personal life—my marriage, my relationships with others, and the fragile distance that separates the magical Tradition to which I belong from the person I am. As is true for any human being, exposing my weaknesses and my private life is not easy.
But—as was made quite clear in The Pilgrimage—the path to magic is the path of the common people. One can have a master, follow the esoteric Tradition, and possess the discipline needed to perform rituals; but the spiritual search is made up of many beginnings (thus the searcher is called an “initiate,” someone who is always in the act of beginning something), and the only thing that matters—always—is the will to go on.
The Valkyries clearly presents the man that exists behind the magus, and this may disappoint those who are looking for “perfect beings,” with their perfect truths regarding everything. But true seekers know that, regardless of our faults and defects, the spiritual path is stronger. God is love, generosity, and forgiveness; if we believe in this, we will never allow our weaknesses to paralyze us.
The events narrated in this book took place between September 5 and October 17, 1988. The sequential order of some of the events has been changed, and in two places I made use of fiction, only so that the reader could better grasp the matter at hand. But all of the essential events are true. The letter quoted in the Epilogue is on file at the Registry of Titles and Documents in Rio de Janeiro under number 478038.
Paulo Coelho
Praise
International Acclaim for Paulo Coelho
“Among Latin American writers only Colombia’s Gabriel García Márquez is more widely read than Brazil’s Paulo Coelho.”
—The Economist
“Coelho exhibits an amazing virtue of transparency that makes his writing like a path of energy that inadvertently leads readers to themselves, toward their mysterious and faraway souls.”
—Figaro Littéraire, France
“Paulo Coelho represents the legend of the wise storyteller.”
—Corriere della Sera, Italy
“Coelho reveals, through his powerful poetry, a unique and incomparable message of life as well as developing a path to reach the Eternity.”
—Excelsior, Mexico
“Coelho is a pilgrim of a literature that soothes the soul, and of a philosophy that rediscovers the spirituality in people, our personal quest and reunion with the forgotten, everyday beauty of the world in which we live and the paths we weave. His books are a mirror: Refreshing, intense, messengers of love and of man’s most essential path. His magic irradiates when, after reading his books, one feels happy.”
—El Espectador, Colombia
“[Coelho’s] magic lies in the straightforward stance of being and living, and in those wholesome and positive concepts he feels able to convey.”
—Minas Gerais Daily
ALSO BY PAULO COELHO
The Alchemist
The Pilgrimage
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Credits
Cover design by Doreen Louie
Cove photograph © 2000 by Larry Ulrich
Copyright
The Valkries is an English version of As Valkírias, the Portugues original edition, published in Brazil by Editora Rocca Ltd. (Rio de Janeiro), copyright © 1992 by Paulo Coelho. English translation prepared by Alan R. Clarke.
THE VALKYRIES. English translation copyright © 1995 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Microsoft Reader April 2006 ISBN 0-06-119081-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coelho, Paulo.
[Valkírias. English]
The Valkyries: an encounter with angels/ Paulo Coelho; translated by Alan R. Clarke.
ISBN 0-06-251291-9 (cloth)
ISBN 0-06-251333-8 (intn’l.)
40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32
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